Paul Roberts: Chris, thank you so much for taking
the time to do this. I love it. Chris :
You're welcome. Thank you for coming. Paul Roberts:
A couple of questions here about improving sleep. You'd made comments at previous
podcasts about two things. One was, glycine at bedtime, which I was doing about 3 grams,
and the other is sodium chloride salt. Paul Roberts:
I was doing about a half teaspoon, about 2 grams to help avoid having to get up to
go to the bathroom. I found both of these things work. And would you mind elucidating a little bit
the mechanism on how those things work? Chris:
Sure. The glycine is probably working primarily by acting as an inhibitory neurotransmitter and
lowering core body temperature to promote faster falling asleep and deeper sleep achieved.
The way that I think about it is, and I've talked to my friend Dan Pardi about this
who's an expert in sleep, so basically waking up or not waking up is largely a
sort of coalescence of many different waking or sleeping signals.
And so if having to pee is one of the signals that would put pressure on you to wake
the more you have signals telling you to sleep the more that's counteracted.
And so if you're in a deeper sleep and you have the same impetus to wake up from
having a full bladder you're less likely to wake up just because you've achieved a deeper
state of sleep where you're less disturbed. And then on the salt. The salt is going to
stimulate antidiuretic hormone or vasopressin, which is really a mechanism to regulate
the concentration of solutes in the blood, and make
sure your electrolyte and fluid balance is proper. But by doing so, the way that it achieves that is
to reduce the likelihood that your bladder will get filled up with water, and or well, rather
that you will have the urge to urinate it out. And so it's not really, that part of it's not
really acting on your sleep. It's really acting on your likelihood of having to pee.
And so glycine's getting you a deeper sleep. Salt is preventing you from having to pee,
and the two of those make you less likely to wake up for that purpose.
Paul Roberts: Yeah, having to pee definitely
interferes with sleep. Chris:
Yeah. Yeah. Does that help along the... What you were looking for?
Paul Roberts: That does. Thank you.
Chris: Cool. Anything else?
Paul Roberts: That's it.
Chris: Okay, great. Thank you Paul for your question.