Maureen Benkovich (00:01.004)
Hey everybody, welcome back to Sober Fit Life. If you have ever told yourself that a drink helps you fall asleep, this episode of Sober Fit Life is going to challenge that belief in a big way. The truth is alcohol and real restorative sleep do not mix. This conversation might change what you think about alcohol and sleep for good. I am so thrilled to be joined by Molly Eastman, creator of Sleep is a Skill and the Sleep is a Skill podcast. After struggling with severe insomnia while traveling in
she realized that sleep isn't just something that happens. It's a skill you can learn, optimize, and protect. Molly blends behavioral science, wearable tech, and circadian rhythm research to help people transform their nights and their days. She's been featured on over 150 podcasts, writes a popular weekly sleep newsletter, which I highly recommend getting, and partners with top wellness and lifestyle brands. In this episode, we're going to unpack how alcohol disrupts your body's natural sleep systems.
why sedation isn't real sleep, how drinking grows off your internal clock, and what you can do instead to train your body to sleep well, naturally, and substance-free. So with all that, welcome, Molly, to SoberFitLife.
Mollie Eastman (01:12.352)
thank you so much, Maureen, for having me. And we're praying to the technology gods that everything fares nicely. I know we had a delightful round one with our recording. And so I'm excited to be able to bring in even more information together and just jive on this topic that I know we're both very passionate about. And it could really be summed up in a potentially, for some people, controversial sentence in that
Maureen Benkovich (01:23.317)
Right.
Mollie Eastman (01:41.57)
I would take a strong stand that one of the lowest hanging fruits that you could bring in to support your sleep is to reduce or eliminate alcohol. And it's just so clear, even going against societal norms and all of these things that are present, what we see in the research, wearable data, and of course, subjectively is just it.
Maureen Benkovich (01:59.276)
Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (02:09.038)
impacts our sleep results. So we'll get into all that, but excited.
Maureen Benkovich (02:13.024)
Yes, I'm excited too. First, I'd love for you to share your story, the severe insomnia that brought you to doing what you do, and then also how your journey with alcohol has changed over time with all you've learned about sleep.
Mollie Eastman (02:17.07)
Sure. Yes.
Mollie Eastman (02:26.234)
totally. Yes. And I hope that this could potentially speak to anyone that maybe is dealing with insomnia, which I really like to encourage people to, if they hear that word, you know, to start like removing it from their vocabulary, from an identity perspective, because that's one thing that I did. I held it as an identity piece. And the truth is, it's really just a label for that right now you're having some difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep.
but I wanna help support that we have it as just like a current snapshot in time right now of how you're relating to your sleep, but it doesn't have to be a life sentence, it doesn't have to be a part of your personality, DNA, any of these things. But how, right? And so the reason I say that is hard one because I went through my own period of insomnia about a decade ago while traveling internationally and it changed the course of my life so much so that I started this company.
Maureen Benkovich (03:05.6)
Love that.
Mollie Eastman (03:19.598)
But what it looked like was I was traveling internationally with my husband on the heels of tons of stress. You know, we were entrepreneurs out of New York. So night after night, I couldn't sleep. And at first I thought maybe is this jet lag? And I'm so stressed again. you know, it was starting to, I knew that I was running on this kind of revved up state. And yet, you know, night after night, can't sleep, can't sleep. I start.
going down rabbit holes of searching and forums and just things you really don't want to do when you're dealing with some of these things. And so I start learning about these things, this idea called certainly insomnia, but also sleep anxiety. And now I'm starting to have multiple labels. Now, no, now I have insomnia. Now I have sleep anxiety. What do I do? Because now I'm fixating on my sleep and I was doing everything in retrospect not to do when you are struggling with your sleep. And I'm certainly happy to share some of those things if supportive.
But, you know, didn't know, so I was trying to compensate and was sleeping in all odd hours and all these things. So eventually I go to the doctors and because we're traveling, we happen to be in this little clinic in Croatia. I leave with sleeping pills. You know, I had to bring like Translate and what have you. And I leave with sleeping pills. And in that moment, it was a real sort of kind of
wake up call, no pun intended, because the fear for me was that I come from a family with a lot of mental health issues and heavy pharmaceutical use. And also many of them had had different like bouts with sleep issues. So for me, it was like, no, is this the moment that I'm gonna be destined for a similar fate? So the fire was lit within me to figure this out. And so, know, dove down the rabbit hole.
Maureen Benkovich (04:58.516)
Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (05:08.318)
I'm certainly an obsessive personality for better or for worse. Now on the bright side, it was part of what got me into that situation, the overthinking, the rumination, the whatever. But thankfully it also helped be kind of this catalyst out of this problem. so what I discovered changed the course of my life, got me back to sleeping, but then also so fascinated me that I started this company, Sleep is a Skill. felt...
you know, just an immense empathy and fear and not fear, but concern for people when they are dealing with this, because I know what it feels like and how, you know, just
debilitating it can be. And so it kind of had started organically, you know, the same forums that I had been on, I was starting to then aim to support people with what I was discovering. And then, you know, sleep as a skill was born. And over time today, now we have one of the top sleep podcasts interviewed, you know, over 250 experts in the world of sleep optimization in various capacities.
We do have that newsletter that you spoke to that's been running for almost seven years every Monday. We never miss a Monday. I would love to have anyone listening on there. I really get a lot of joy out of that. And they still respond to every single email. It takes me some time sometimes, but I will get back to everyone, at least for right now that we're still able to do that. And so then we also have online courses. have audits. So we do a lot with wearable data. So we can audit your wearable data. And in alignment with that, we have one of the
largest orering databases from a sleep optimization perspective. So that helps us really understand a lot on the ground, like on a granular level of what are some of these things that can make a difference for people with their sleep. But I can certainly tell you alcohol is one of the clearest things, and we'll get into that. And so we can see the measurable shifts in alignment with that subjective experience for people with their sleep. And lastly, we work with all different types of people that are struggling with their sleep. But I would say we do have
Mollie Eastman (07:09.23)
a kind of niche in working with people like entrepreneurs or people that can make their own schedules. But then also particularly with high stakes poker players. And I just mentioned them because they're a great example because they are often in environments designed on purpose to confuse this Arcadian rhythm. These casinos that have no windows, no clocks, lots of stimuli, lots of blue light, lots of excitement. And so on the other side of that, there can be a
Maureen Benkovich (07:34.368)
Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (07:37.986)
a lot of sleep disturbances and yet if we can make a difference with that sort of group we can absolutely make a difference with anyone listening and that yeah please sure
Maureen Benkovich (07:46.784)
Yeah, let's stay there for a minute because you said something to me that was so interesting that we are not living lives that are too far off from these professional poker players. So when you said that to me, that helped me visualize, you know, she's right. So could you share that a little bit, how we're actually living like that? Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (07:54.466)
You nailed it. You nailed it. Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (08:02.542)
Yeah, I'm glad you said that. Yeah, I'm so glad you said that because actually I'm working on a book right now and that's kind of some of the parallels that I'm drawing is with these poker players because it can sound like, oh, jeez, you know, that's not me. But what we would argue is for a couple of reasons we might be closer than we realize. So one, I often share this study that was done in 2001 where the EPA found that the average American was spending well over 90 percent of their days indoors.
Maureen Benkovich (08:14.25)
Right.
Mollie Eastman (08:30.926)
And that was in 2001 before Netflix, before our smartphones, all the fun things, our work from home revolution, all these things have brought us more indoors. And so as a result, we're really disconnected from these rhythms of nature, not to mention our smartphones and our screens and all of these gadgets are really designed in a slot machine like method to have that kind of dosing process of that dopamine hit.
Maureen Benkovich (08:58.134)
Yes.
Mollie Eastman (08:58.566)
We did one of our more popular podcasts was with Dr. Anna Lemke out of Stanford who wrote Dopamine Nation. She was also on Andrew Huberman's podcast. And so we're really grateful to have her on the podcast and, you know, spoke to some of this kind of dopamine reward system that many of us are kind of linked up with now in our indoor environments, including our tech and what have you. And so many of us are kind of synced up with this problem of
Maureen Benkovich (09:05.494)
Yes.
Mollie Eastman (09:26.734)
being disconnected from the rising and the setting of the sun, which when we think about our circadian rhythm, that's really, in essence, what it is. It's this alignment with the rising and setting of the sun, which circa meaning around, so around 24 hours. So in the past, it was kind of hard to get away from that when you lived largely outside. And so when we think about sleep, there's a great book called,
Mapping the Darkness, and it's a newer book, and it's really all about the history of sleep as a medicine, as a discipline. And it really identifies that it wasn't thought of as much of an area of science and study until the Industrial Revolution, until we started going indoors. Right? And so the same rules apply with our casino analogy is that when we have just that
Maureen Benkovich (10:11.53)
Right.
Mollie Eastman (10:20.12)
dosing of blue light, that dosing of stimuli, that disconnection from these very clear diurnal rhythms, which is what we are meant to be diurnal creatures. are meant to be active by day and at rest at night. And when we throw those things off, like in my example, I had absolutely thrown that off.
Maureen Benkovich (10:30.092)
Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (10:41.23)
because I was trending as much more of a very justified and righteous night owl, but extreme night owl. And so, and I would say, I get my best work done at night and all these things, right? And so part of what it took to restore my sleep was to align with these rhythms of nature, but also bring in this level of consistency, because sleep loves consistency and it doesn't like that variable slot machine kind of ups and downs and all arounds. So.
Maureen Benkovich (10:45.676)
Thank
Maureen Benkovich (10:49.44)
Right, I've heard that.
Maureen Benkovich (11:08.075)
Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (11:08.846)
That's what we're working on. So sleep as a skill is designed to help support us to build the skillset of sleep. And the last thing I wanna say about that is it's never meant to be about perfection because we know that sleep and perfection don't often go well together. I think it's that kind of pressure with our sleep is never a great bedfellow for sleep. So instead, and also knowing that we're all going to have...
some rough patches or struggles or what have you, myself included, and yet it's all about having those tools and resources to with velocity get back on track. And I think that's the missing in our society is that this is something we do a third of our lives on average. 26 years are spent asleep and yet the average doctor even out of Harvard Med gets about two hours of training in this area.
Maureen Benkovich (11:50.857)
right.
Mollie Eastman (11:57.294)
So there's a real mismatch in our education, our know-how, our ability to support people when things are not working and also to illuminate for the people that may be listening and saying, I'm not like that woman. I don't have problems like that. you know, we also want to support just optimizing. you know, we might, exactly.
Maureen Benkovich (12:17.13)
Optimizing, preventative, getting better. Yes.
Mollie Eastman (12:20.61)
Yes, exactly. So that's what we can really dive into today. And certainly the work you do is so crucial for this because it's one of the clearest hits that I see day after day for people with their sleep is alcohol.
Maureen Benkovich (12:31.626)
Yeah, so I love how you said it's the low hanging fruit. It's something you can change and affect and I work with people to help them how to do that. Over time, I'm imagining as you learned all this about sleep, like I did when I learned everything about alcohol and how it affected brain chemistry, I couldn't unsee what I had seen and unlearned what I had learned and that's why I no longer drink. And I'm imagining for you, you kind of went on this journey. Can you share that a bit and specifically with
Mollie Eastman (12:34.508)
Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (12:39.235)
Yes.
Mollie Eastman (12:54.498)
Yes. Same. Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (12:59.732)
all you're learning about sleep and alcohol.
Mollie Eastman (13:01.942)
Yes, and sorry, I know you asked that question too and I didn't quite answer it. So thank you for keeping us on track. So one, yes, this was a big part of my journey for sure. And what you said too is like, it's essentially when we know better, we can do better. And one of the things that I love so much about wearable data is that it really makes this argument for us so clearly.
Maureen Benkovich (13:04.33)
That's okay. That's why I'm here.
Mollie Eastman (13:27.182)
Sometimes it's harder to see some of the connections of some of the other things that we can talk about, know, the light dark or whatever direction we go in, but light dark, exercise timing, meal timing, drug timing, your supplements, our thoughts, so thought patterns and timing, all these things. Sometimes it can get harder to understand, well, what's coming from where? But alcohol is one of the things that is clear. It's so funny. remember when years back,
Maureen Benkovich (13:32.192)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (13:48.748)
It's clear. Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (13:56.75)
when we first started bringing in with everyone and really kind of having most people wear different wearable trackers. I remember one client, she had gone wine tasting and so she didn't start our call about that, but it was immediately, was like, so tell me what happened, what's going on? You know, cause you could see, and she was literally over in Sweden of all places, but it's just a wonderful example of just how across the world,
because of these metrics, we can know that someone was engaging in something that was markedly throwing off their ability to recover. And really this is what these metrics are about. Sleep is a metric of recovery. Certainly some of these more nervous system indicators when we look at things like heart rate variability, heart rate, readiness, or readiness is with our ring, but all of the readiness indicators. looking at respiratory rate,
Maureen Benkovich (14:45.238)
Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (14:53.516)
body temperature, oxygen, blood oxygen levels, et cetera. All of these can wildly be impacted by even just, I'm talking like a drink, two drinks. Now I will say some people are more sensitive than others and there is some strategy that you could, there's a lot of variables certainly. And there can be some things people would say, well, how can I drink? Like, what can I do? Can I take some sort of supplement? Can I change the time? There are little things, but I can tell you.
Maureen Benkovich (15:04.992)
Yes. There's a lot of variables there too. Right.
Mollie Eastman (15:23.296)
almost always we're going to see that really show up. And especially if you start going over like one drink or two drinks. And we're talking like a tremendous, you know, shift in how you're managing these things to even reduce, to get to some sort of livable level. So meaning you're gonna really need to like have that be a boozy brunch or something to pushing back so egregiously early. And then of course we have a whole
Maureen Benkovich (15:50.208)
Yeah, that's another issue. Right.
Mollie Eastman (15:52.918)
And that's another issue. We're gonna have a whole spillover of other things like why were we going to that? Was that presumably for many of us to help with stress reduction, but then we got a whole spillover on the autonomic nervous system as a result as we're processing these things and then dealing with blood sugar instabilities, which further can aggravate the nervous system and then of course sleep. So it's really an unavoidable piece. You might be trying to work within these small, you know, kind of the domain of how can I still get by? But the truth is if you're really committed,
Maureen Benkovich (16:09.974)
Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (16:22.638)
to health and well-being and to feeling good, know, time and time again, it's really gonna be part of it. So to answer your question about my own story, this was a big transition for me because I, for so long, and as someone that has skewed and thought of myself as, you know, type A, anxious, overthinking, for so long, to relax equaled a drink, you know? So that was really part of the journey for a long time. And then it became,
Maureen Benkovich (16:45.44)
Right. Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (16:51.822)
you know, longer stretches in between, but still a piece of that lifestyle that to truly connect with others, to meet up with a group, to be off or something meant a drink. eventually then the cognitive, right, exactly. And then the cognitive dissonance became so great that you just really couldn't justify, and also not even just from like a, you know, some sort of like I should.
Maureen Benkovich (17:01.494)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (17:11.606)
Yes.
Mollie Eastman (17:19.968)
It became a, don't want to because you start to feel how greatly this will impact you and will take you out for the subsequent day. And even for me, it would take me out really pretty shortly thereafter. I'm quite sensitive. So I would get headaches, you know, like later that night, certainly start having sleep fragmentation. And this is not uncommon for many people, but I'm especially sensitive. I would deal with temperature fluctuations. So the thermoregulation piece would get thrown off. So I get so hot.
Maureen Benkovich (17:29.11)
Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (17:37.612)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (17:48.78)
Mm-hmm. Me too.
Mollie Eastman (17:49.838)
And so then, right, and so then throughout the REM stage of my sleep in particular, so that second half of the night, often I'm waking up all over the place and now I'm way more anxious than maybe I was for the reason for drinking the drink before. So over time it became just a natural thing to take out of the rhythm of my lifestyle and really getting to see that, it's possible to not only be with people without this,
but to actually thrive without this, to feel better with us and not to feel like a victim of, because there would be times where eventually I'd be like this juxtaposition of I wanna be social, I wanna go out with people, but I don't wanna feel awful thereafter and kind of almost be like I had to, which makes no sense. So to remove that was huge.
Maureen Benkovich (18:23.339)
Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (18:36.374)
But we're conditioned to think that. So it makes sense that you've thought and felt that. I did too. But much like sleep is a skill that you practice and you learn and you're curious and you experiment, same thing. Learning how to live an alcohol-free lifestyle is a skill. And so you have to rewire your brain. How do you socialize without it? How do you get to sleep without it? And that is one thing when people are taking a break with me, I try to encourage them to work on their morning routines as well as their nighttime. So what would you say to someone
Mollie Eastman (18:40.398)
Right.
Mollie Eastman (18:55.896)
Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (19:06.112)
that would help optimize this time when they're taking a break. That's what I do with people. And then how can they optimize their sleep? And at first they struggle because they were using alcohol to sleep.
Mollie Eastman (19:09.443)
Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (19:17.282)
Totally and I want to do a couple things with that. So one I want to empathize because I can tell you when I went through my period of insomnia Alcohol was one of the things that I went to in a desperation, right? So part of the story was that we were overseas and so we're in Europe and In Europe, there's you can't just go to any sort of pharmacy and buy all the things for better or for worse
that you can buy in the United States of all these over-the-counter sleep aids that I might have done as some sort of band aid or even just like a placebo effect, even to have that component that wasn't there. So that felt even more like a lack of familiarity. And now like I have less external support because I didn't have the trust in myself and my own abilities to sleep, which is a whole other thing. So in desperation, then at different points I'm like.
well, maybe a drink, a nightcap, as they say. And there was a couple, know, a stretch where then it would get me to sleep. And so then I'd be in this really bad loop of, well, now I guess I gotta keep having this, you know, on a routine basis. I mean, it was just grasping at straws, you know, to try to make this work. And yet I'm waking up and now my sleep duration is a mess. But, you know, it felt like to have that sleep on set, it felt initially like, okay, maybe this is a band-aid.
Maureen Benkovich (20:18.796)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (20:23.561)
Right.
Maureen Benkovich (20:41.409)
Right.
Mollie Eastman (20:41.422)
And so, and I'll share that because we do have research to support, to validate people's experience, that alcohol does seem to commonly help with sleep onset to a certain extent. So that's a sleep latency period. So the amount of time it takes you to fall asleep does seem to be, to a small extent, reduced for some individuals in different pieces of research. That's about where all the benefits end. And...
Maureen Benkovich (21:08.236)
But isn't that more sedation though than sleep? Yeah. Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (21:10.42)
Of course, yes, you are right. Yes. And because so many people will be like, well, that's nice about you, but I'm telling you, it helps me fall asleep, whatever. And so not to discount. And yet, one, often we see that in kind of the short term. And if we kind of keep going with this, then you might need to have a higher dosage. And the same rules apply with sleeping pills, and same problems that we get ourselves in when we ever, any time we start depending on something external.
for our sleep-wake cycle, this is part of what we see. And so not only to your point, not only do we, now that we're asleep, quote unquote, but now the quality of that sleep is very much impaired. And what does that look like physiologically? Commonly, what we'll see is heart rate going markedly up while you're sleeping, temperature going markedly up while we're sleeping, respiratory rate. So the numbers of breath
Maureen Benkovich (21:50.955)
Yes.
Mollie Eastman (22:05.462)
that you're taking per minute while you're sleeping going up. And if you think about, you know, kind of what it's like to feel at ease even by day, it's usually we want to be breathing slower and calm and, lowering the amounts of breaths we're taking per minute, not upping that. Same rules apply while we're sleeping. So we don't want to see that respiratory rate going up from our baseline. And then HRV, heart rate variability, which is a very sensitive metric.
and can give us a really nice kind of proxy of the nervous system to a certain extent. It's like one of the few metrics that we can look to with such, you know, on a granular scale to see that our nervous system is struggling to recover and that can really get markedly hit. And that's all within the time when you are now quote unquote asleep, but to your point, it's more of the sedated sleep. What else does this do? Well, on the first half of our night,
Maureen Benkovich (22:46.806)
Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (22:59.798)
largely this is more of a time for deep sleep and deep sleep and some of the processes that go about in deep sleep started to come more into conversation back because in 2012 we discovered this process called glymphatic drainage with a G versus lymphatic drainage with an L. Yep, and so glymphatic drainage with a G is this very important
Maureen Benkovich (23:19.124)
Okay.
Mollie Eastman (23:26.52)
Cleansing of the brain where the brain actually sort of shrinks in size a bit to allow for this beautiful fluid to then Kind of pulse through and then take out the accumulating toxins throughout the course of the day just to build up the almost it's kind of a janitorial system That really really needs to happen every single night and it largely is occurring during deep sleep and what we find is if that's not able to that
process is not able to happen with count onableness each night, then we start to have some buildups. And the reason it became a big talking point is that it appears to have connections with neurological breakdowns. So neurological difficulties like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, dementia, things that previously we might have said, well, maybe it's in our genes. There's not much we can do about it. Just hope. No, it looks as if this whole kind of approach and theories and studies are
hold true, then sleep is something you could do decades in advance of any overt severe symptoms. But even on the short term, so while maybe you're not dealing with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's invention at the moment, right, thank you. On the short term, then we can be experiencing some of those things.
Maureen Benkovich (24:38.187)
Yet.
Mollie Eastman (24:44.492)
where if the brain is not being able to have this cleansing process, kind of this like brain fog, cognition off, little memory off, memory retrieval, a number of things that we want to support. So that's just one piece and that's on the first half of the night. Then not to mention that commonly one of the things that can really get messed with too with alcohol is REM, which is on our second half of our night. That's when the body is often starting to naturally improve like,
go up in its bodily temperature. And we kind of want to support that to a certain extent because that's helping, if you think about it, with deep sleep, it's helping the body get into this really cooler state. The delta activity of the brain is really slow and calm, know, our heart rate's low. So you wouldn't really want to go from that state to like, okay, now go do all your work that you got to do for the day and all that. So instead, the body's really intelligent, so it takes us through that.
Then it moves us to REM, which is almost like you're watching this movie of whatever is going on in your dreams and all these things to process things for the day or traumas or stressors or whatever. And we could think of REM as like an inner therapist to a certain piece, right? So for emotional regulation and to process some of these stressors, especially if you're maybe getting off of alcohol or weaning or whatever you might be doing, some things can come up.
So REM is something we wanna support to process that. But if it's being fragmented all throughout the course of the night because of alcohol, then you're not properly getting that REM. And for some people, once you wake up, many people are just up for the rest of the night. And I've been there too. And so now you're cutting into your sleep duration and all that to say that you're not getting that ability to recover both physically and mentally, emotionally. And we want to support that to,
powerfully break through this dependency on alcohol because then we get into this vicious cycle where we feel like we need more because now we can't emotionally regulate so we feel like we need something external.
Maureen Benkovich (26:48.288)
Yeah, I mean, what keeps going through my brain is that we know alcohol crosses the blood-brain barrier. It's one of the things that it touches every cell in the body. How does that affect our sleep? Is that affecting directly the glymphatic drainage, the fact that it can cross the barrier?
Mollie Eastman (26:54.243)
Yes.
Mollie Eastman (27:03.884)
Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And a few things about that. So for anything that's gonna be impacting deep sleep on the front half, so that rich delta sleep is impacting our ability to even access some of those deeper levels of sleep because that can be more stimulating. It can have more of this effect of the body is trying to survive this kind of.
dare I say, poison that we just put in toxins, certainly, right? And this ethanol and processing all of this. So it's now you're giving it extra homework. And I often talk about one extra piece of homework that we don't necessarily want to be giving to it. And many of us are totally unbeknownst to us, even if we feel like we're really healthy or what have you, is eating later. And so then suddenly you're turning on the digestive clocks. And so you're having to then give this extra homework. So you're kind of splicing.
Maureen Benkovich (27:30.71)
Toxin, yeah.
Mollie Eastman (27:58.146)
the activity and energy load of the body to now be dealing with digestion down here, which is lots of blood flow and all that, as opposed to focusing on certainly the brain health aspect of things, but also the overall bodily, so say you're working out, say, know, a sober fit chick. So the working out piece, all the benefits that you want to support there, and this goes for both men and women too. And this is often a good one for men for testosterone because
Maureen Benkovich (28:16.428)
Right.
Mollie Eastman (28:27.758)
One of the best ways to hit at testosterone is to drink repeatedly and not get proper sleep and not get that, especially that deep sleep on the front half and growth hormone. So all of those things are gonna be impacted, but that includes that brain health, that inflammation factor. So it's just this whole cascading effect of problems when we are bringing that drinking aspect in.
So I guess what I would say is I would put in for people if they, one of the things that I've seen is if they start adding in wearables, if they haven't been doing it previously, there's a couple of things I would want them to do with alcohol in particular. Yes, exactly. Which one do you have? Sorry. The garment. Exactly. Sure. And actually in the world of, yeah, please, please.
Maureen Benkovich (29:09.612)
I have a Garmin, Garmin Phoenix, yeah, a Pro. Let me just interject there for people. What I love is the wearable technology takes out the emotion, the attachment to this thing that has become a friend, a comforter, a sleep aid, a de-stressor, but this gives you tangible data without emotion that you can truly see what it's doing to your heart rate and all the other systems that you mentioned. I love that you're recommending people to get.
Mollie Eastman (29:22.2)
Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (29:38.418)
wearable tech. Now there's everything from Apple to Aura to Whoop to do you have certain recommendations? Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (29:44.108)
I do, yes. And actually, late breaking news in the world of this because there's actually been a lot of cool things happening in wearable tech even just the past couple of weeks. So one, would say, Whoop just released their new Whoop 5, and so that has a lot of new features.
not only just an ease of use, so now the battery life lasts like 14 days, but also more high fidelity information, so it's pulling more routinely, including blood pressure is now an option to be able to track that and medical grade offerings on the whoop as well, which is a big news, so they've got a lot that's available there. The other news is that
Maureen Benkovich (30:17.878)
Hmm.
Mollie Eastman (30:26.186)
Aura has now partnered up with Dexcom and a huge aspect of getting great sleep is having stable blood sugar regulation. And of course, as we know, alcohol is going to do a whole number on your metabolism and on your blood sugar. So even though it can be so confusing, some people will get their CGM and be like, well, I guess it helps because my blood sugar goes down. yeah, exactly. Don't think that, which I know is confusing because I get it.
Maureen Benkovich (30:40.756)
On the blood sugar. Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (30:48.062)
Yes.
Mollie Eastman (30:53.742)
And yet, while it on the short term can have a little bit of a drop, just wait, there's all kinds of volatility to come. Exactly, exactly. So, Aurorang and Dexcom have now kind of joined forces. So now you can be tracking your sleep paired with Dexcom. they also now have, this is all for the United States. They have something called Stelo. So that's a...
Maureen Benkovich (31:00.97)
It's you on the backside. Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (31:20.238)
option that comes without a prescription. So you can get the CGM without a prescription for really affordably. So now you're tracking your blood sugar throughout the day and night, and then you can start to overlay that data and see, man, at 3 a.m. when I was always waking up and just thought it was, you know, because I had to go pee, which is a misnomer that I shouldn't say always a misnomer. Sometimes you really just are drinking a lot close to bed. But commonly people think that the waking up to go pee is because of the pee, but it's not.
Maureen Benkovich (31:31.276)
Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (31:49.198)
always real, it's actually a source point. There's other roots to play like alcohol, but also blood sugar, and many times a whole puzzle of things. So that's the oar ring and paired with the Dexcom now can help us illuminate, oh, wow, I have a real blood sugar problem. And that's part of what I need to heal to support the sleep. And they're bi-directional too. So getting great sleep is going to help with that blood sugar. So
Maureen Benkovich (32:14.208)
Yeah, and the cool thing is you help people interpret this stuff too, right? I saw that you, because even though you have this on your wrist and you have these numbers, sometimes we don't know what that really means. so everybody, Molly is full of information as you can tell. I mean, it's amazing how much, important sleep is, but I just want to throw that in there that they can talk to you about what does all this data mean.
Mollie Eastman (32:17.71)
100%.
Mollie Eastman (32:24.588)
Totally.
Mollie Eastman (32:30.755)
Yes.
Well, thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it really truly is my mission on the planet to help support people in navigating this area because it can feel disempowering, frustrating, sometimes scary if you're dealing with sleep anxiety, or just something that's overwhelming or confusing. So there's absolutely ways that we can unpack this. So we do help people with these audits where we go through, especially, yeah, Oura Ring Audits and Whoop Audits are some of our most popular offerings.
Maureen Benkovich (32:41.516)
Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (33:02.51)
But to your point, there's other wearables as well. So of course the Garmin. Apple is really exciting too. And I'm just waiting for them to just have like a mic drop moment of, you know, like the ultimate. Yeah, I don't know why it's taking so long, but one thing that they did just kind of roll out recently is this ability to flag for potential sleep apnea, which is huge, huge, huge. Because this, I mean, there's so many people.
Maureen Benkovich (33:12.15)
Yeah, they need a little bit more. Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (33:26.454)
Yes.
Mollie Eastman (33:29.44)
I guarantee you a huge portion, I mean just numbers wise, of your listeners are gonna be dealing with sleep apnea that they don't even know about. So I'm a big stand that people, and everyone gets tested, not just once but multiple times for sleep disorders. There's over 100 sleep wake disorders. And you can get tested for about 100 bucks nowadays. So we have on our store different companies that they're just a ring and you can easily.
Maureen Benkovich (33:54.452)
Okay.
Mollie Eastman (33:55.074)
Just go to bed, put this ring on, and be done. And then if you want to have more nights of data, you can pay a little bit more if you want additional. But bare minimum, $100 or so in the United States. So these are all just a... Please.
Maureen Benkovich (34:06.118)
I want to say, I want to just jump in there for a minute because I had sleep apnea when I was drinking. And now that I'm not drinking, I don't have it. Although I do tape my mouth. I love the somnifex. I'm used to that now. I really can't sleep without it. But I had really developed sleep apnea and it was scary. That was another reason why I stopped drinking, you all these. And that's what I love what you're doing. You're informing people. Sleep is important. Sleep is a skill. It's going to be another biomarker.
Mollie Eastman (34:11.316)
I'm not surprised.
Mollie Eastman (34:17.644)
Yes.
Mollie Eastman (34:23.138)
I believe it. Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (34:32.236)
Yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (34:33.812)
almost more important it sounds like than blood pressure and cholesterol. But the more informed, all related, yes. And the more informed they can be, they can make better choices. Same with alcohol. It's not about judgment or guilt. It's about get informed so you can make choices for your longevity, your long-term health, less disease state, brain health. I see so much parallel and connection between these two things that we do.
Mollie Eastman (34:37.686)
and connected and related. Yep.
Mollie Eastman (34:45.454)
Thank you.
Mollie Eastman (34:51.48)
Yes.
Mollie Eastman (34:55.288)
Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (35:00.696)
I'm actually my brain and I've been wanting to do this is to have a, I run a six week group with people and I would love it to have everybody have wearable technology. And for the first few weeks they can drink while we're getting mentally prepared. I don't have them change anything. I don't encourage them to drink more, but I don't have them change anything. And then the six weeks without alcohol, so they could literally see the numbers. I think that would be really powerful information for people.
Mollie Eastman (35:00.814)
100 %
Mollie Eastman (35:11.022)
100%.
Mollie Eastman (35:14.968)
Yes. Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (35:25.934)
100 % on a couple things that I would say about that one I have had people say to me Oh, yeah, I track and it's not that bad when I drink so but I always have them go in deeper and we almost always uncover the things that they're missing so what I want to explain about that is Sometimes depending on the tracker and the algorithm
then they might put out a score based on certain markers and certain weighted aspects of sleep that they might bring in. Because for some people, what we'll find is that they fall asleep and they're kind of, like you said, sedated. They're just kind of knocked out. And so some of these will give you a decent score because they say, well, you were asleep. And for some people, that's longer than they would have been in other states of however they might be running their lives. So it can, at first glance, look like it is not bad. But if we go in deeper.
Maureen Benkovich (36:00.15)
Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (36:18.764)
we can almost always uncover those other pieces that we spoke about, meaning more of those nervous system indicators. then we'll see often a huge rise up, often an order of magnitude of around 10 beats per minute with the people that we work with in our groups on average when they have a drink or two in the evening.
Maureen Benkovich (36:40.118)
Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (36:40.718)
that they can expect to see that go up with their heart rate and a drop down, a measurable drop down from their baseline in heart rate variability and certainly a rise up in respiratory rate, different amounts for different people. And then certainly with sleep apnea, one of the surefire ways to either create sleep apnea where there was no sleep apnea or in wildly amp up the severity of sleep apnea is to throw in alcohol.
And then often when people are drinking, they might be eating too, and then you get a double whammy. So all of that is very clear. Now, if anyone has dealt with this, because I love that you're sharing about your sleep apnea, I would also encourage people to fairly routinely, especially women, to fairly routinely, even after they stop drinking, to still just check in. And again, it's like 100 bucks. just, right? Yes, just why not?
Maureen Benkovich (37:30.892)
I'm going to do it. Yeah, totally. Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (37:34.222)
Right? Because one of the things that we do see, especially for women, and this is a big, we want to sound the alarm, is that while before the age of around 40, we are a little bit less likely to be diagnosed with sleep apnea than men, things drastically start shifting, right? As we enter into perimenopause and then menopause and postmenopause.
then we start to see becoming more one-to-one with our instances of having sleep apnea. So I've had women that, you know, they come in, whatever, they're 46 or something, and they said, yeah, yeah, a few years ago I was tested, I didn't have sleep apnea. Then we test them now, and they've developed sleep apnea. And to your point, alcohol is just gonna flare it up, but there still might be pieces of that that's at play.
And the only thing I would call out about the mouth tape too is because mouth tape can be wonderful. Like I use mouth tape every night and know, it's your read breathe by James Nestor. If people want to learn more or if they want more of a heady academic side, Jaws has a lot of kind of academic approach, but just huge. However, if you are dealing with undiagnosed or untreated sleep apnea, there is an instance where that can make it worse. So that's just an important little call out to if anyone.
Maureen Benkovich (38:25.312)
Mm-hmm.
Maureen Benkovich (38:43.945)
Mm-hmm, I can see that.
Mollie Eastman (38:47.722)
Because some people will say, you know, I snore my partner stores, but we throw in the mouth safe and now it's like better. But unfortunately, that might be causing some other things for some people. But if they're not dealing with that, absolutely, please investigate that because we want to prioritize nasal breathing.
Maureen Benkovich (39:04.032)
Yeah, that is, wow, you have so much information. I could talk to you for like two hours, but I think I have to have a part two. Yeah, I would love to. So if you could give one piece, and I know that sounds very difficult, of information or advice or guidance to people who are taking a break from alcohol, maybe a little bit, what could they do to improve their sleep around like less blue light? I talk to people about less scrolling before you get into bed, less blue light.
Mollie Eastman (39:08.913)
my gosh, I know we gotta, we gotta hang. Come on over to Austin.
Mollie Eastman (39:18.082)
Yes.
Mollie Eastman (39:32.45)
Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (39:33.42)
There's even red light that you can sleep with, maybe just some quick things there that you could throw in.
Mollie Eastman (39:36.332)
Yes. Yes, yes, please. Yes, absolutely. Thank you for bringing us to that. OK, so I would say there are two anchor habits that we have everyone begin with no matter what. And this also will certainly apply for the average person, especially as they might be embarking on kind of just a little time of uncertainty with the alcohol might have been a coping mechanism or tool for you are doing wonderful work to help people unpack all that.
And so, but either way you cut it, it's kind of likely new or different. And so when we go into those periods of time, we might expect that there's gonna likely be some probably for some people rough nights or what have you. So when rough nights occur, often what we see is compensation. And that was one of the things that I did when I was struggling with my sleep was I would have this horrible nights, barely any sleep. And so then I would be grasping to try to get sleep wherever I could. I would sleep in longer.
I would then try to take these longer naps. might take more, have stimulants. I might then, a very common one is, well, I'm gonna go to bed so early tonight because I am exhausted. Make up for it. And we think that that is all like responsible and taking care of ourselves. And at first glance, seems like it. And yet it can oddly kind of backfire.
Maureen Benkovich (40:43.07)
Make up for it. Yeah.
Mollie Eastman (40:55.278)
because then it can throw off our circadian rhythm, all these inner clocks that are in virtually every cell and organ in our body now start to be confused on what time it is, what to be doing when. So instead we want to create this well-oiled machine, especially when we're going into times of uncertainty. So the first thing to do with that anchor habit is to choose a consistent wake-up time. And I say that intentionally over the bedtime, and that's not to say that we don't do the exact same thing where we support like...
Maureen Benkovich (41:03.084)
Hmm.
Mollie Eastman (41:22.54)
winding down in the evening and absolutely to your point with red light, I would avoid red light therapies like in the eyes late at night. And that's been a little bit of a confusing one because many times we'll see biohackers with these huge red light panels before bed, but those can be really excitatory and bright. You can test them with apps like MyCircadian app, and then you'll see the Lux readout. And often they can be like 2,000 Lux or so, so it's very bright.
And so any light is activating if very bright. So we want to minimize that. But red light, just like a red light bulb that's not therapeutic, is wonderful because then that's not going to be impacting our melatonin production. so you want to think about mimicking fire. So fire is what we evolved around. So amber hues, red hues are really helpful.
Maureen Benkovich (42:01.612)
Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (42:15.97)
So candles could be another one if you want to get old school Himalayan salt lamps, the red light as we discussed, all of that to help support kind of that winding down. But then remove the pressure for yourself of falling asleep at a specific time. Just set the scene for that and then just practice resting and relaxing and all of that. And then over time, sleep will come at a specific time as you maintain that wake up time. But you might have some rough nights or what have you.
Maureen Benkovich (42:29.196)
Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (42:43.15)
So instead of throwing that off, maintain that, but seven days a week because often people will try to cope with it on the weekends and sleep it. And then the second anchor habit to pair with that is that say you choose whatever, 7 a.m. is your wake up time. Then we want to pair bright light exposure, so-called sunlight anchoring. This was coined by Dan Party out of Stanford. So you want to get that sunlight anchoring process.
by going outside, getting bright light in your eyes and on your skin. That's partly why I'm talking to you outside with the wind blowing because I'm really committed to setting up my life as much as I possibly can to get exposure to that light where it can be possible. And I lived in the Northeast in a Northern latitude location. So the more North we are, then we want to be even more aware of this because there can be more of a tendency to go indoors.
Maureen Benkovich (43:16.084)
Yeah, it's so nice.
Mollie Eastman (43:38.382)
And that's a whole other conversation because you can use cold therapy to kind of help with this, but we can talk about that another time. But so, yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (43:44.032)
Yeah, I have a quick question though. Do those SAD lights help if you say you can't get outside? Would that help?
Mollie Eastman (43:50.05)
Great question. Yes, great question. Okay, so there's a few different types of the SAD, the SAD, know, so SAD lights or seasonal affective disorder lights. They can be helpful. Now, what I would say is, especially in the northern latitude locations, we really push for people to get a particular type of light if possible that can help produce vitamin D.
And the fact that you can get vitamin D from a lamp is pretty crazy for the average person. So one is called a Sperdy lamp. And that one, often if you have anything going on from a skin disorder perspective, sometimes it can be covered under insurance, so like eczema, psoriasis, that sort of thing. And then you can get that. And or there's one called a company called Chroma D. And one of the things, or Chroma, and then their product is Chroma D.
So that one will support vitamin D production and it's cut with red light, which I like because instead of in nature, we would never be exposed to just one wavelength of light. We would have this full spectrum kind of rainbow effect. So that's what we're trying to mimic as much as possible. So that would be one that I would suggest. And I would still say if, you know, anything you can do to set up your lifestyle to still even get a few minutes to get outside to get that full
Maureen Benkovich (44:56.876)
makes sense.
Mollie Eastman (45:11.79)
light source that would be great. Now if you are getting those sad lamps, if you say, listen, I broke my legs, I can't go out something, whatever, and hopefully it's a really good reason why you can't go out. But if you for a short period of time can't go out, yes, you could get some of those lights, but my concern is can you split that at least with some red light therapy, which you had touched on, which can be so valuable.
and kind of cut that so that there's still a bit of a healing process of not having all of that bright blue light, which can be cortisol inducing. And so some people like that because now they feel, I'm excited. It's like natural coffee. But most of us don't need this huge surge of cortisol either. So we're trying to favor the really beautiful healing aspects of morning sunlight, which are very rich in red light. So if you can mimic some of that, it's always going to go to nature as our guide.
Maureen Benkovich (45:43.221)
Mm, cortisol.
Maureen Benkovich (46:04.64)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. Your wealth of knowledge is incredible and the way you can articulate this. So I hope everybody will go follow Molly, get her newsletter because it's in there. And you often recommend these type of tools and tactics in your newsletter. So if anybody's trying to take notes right now, just know that you can get her newsletter. I always like to ask Molly, people, what do you do in your life since you're no longer drinking to be sober fit? What do you do in your lifestyle?
Mollie Eastman (46:24.291)
Yes.
Mollie Eastman (46:30.041)
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Well, a few things. One, I would say one of the things we talked about with sleep is skill is kind of sleep leadership, if you will. And the idea that some people will struggle in the beginning when they start really writing in their sleep. One of the things that they'll see is they'll start to be less drawn to some of the activities that maybe they used to be drawn to. But then they don't want to be isolated because social connection is
huge for our wellbeing and for our sleep. have a whole, we have a number of podcast episodes about loneliness and its impact on our wellbeing and sleep and what have you. So we still wanna feel connected. So one of the things that we talk about is kind of sleep leadership. How can we take control of our calendar to still have those connections? So maybe it looks like my husband will host a poker night or my, or I'm.
Maureen Benkovich (46:59.862)
Mm-hmm.
Mollie Eastman (47:27.246)
setting up these book club kind of meetups or a brunch or just different things that can help you design. So instead of being at the effect of your kind of preconceived notions of, well, if I ever go out, everyone's always drinking, it's always late and it's da da da da. And one of the cool things, and I get it, like that was kind of my whole racket in the past too, right? Yes, exactly. And then, but you start to see if you are powerful in your commitment and leading an empowered life,
Maureen Benkovich (47:49.184)
Me too, yeah.
Maureen Benkovich (47:55.67)
Yes.
Mollie Eastman (47:57.258)
it's wild because then suddenly people just will follow suit with whatever you do. So if you say the dinner is at 5.30 PM, the dinner's at 5.30 PM and there's no drinking and you're eating early and you're sleeping great and everyone just kind of goes along with it. It's a wild thing and you can be that leader. And that's one of the cool things that I've found in the people that I'm surrounding with.
here in Austin is just, it's no long, we don't even talk about it. Like no one really drinks in our group, in our people, not group, but in the people that we run around with. And that's one of the things that I also think is exciting is like people like yourself that are getting this information out, it just feels like it's starting to reverberate and it's becoming like a clear thing. And then just about every person we're talking to is tracking in some way, shape or form. They know what it's doing. So it's only a matter of time before everyone kind of just follows suit.
Maureen Benkovich (48:25.418)
Right. Right.
Maureen Benkovich (48:38.998)
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Maureen Benkovich (48:50.604)
Yeah, and you really live that being a sleep leader because I heard on another podcast that you said when people come to stay at your house, if they're lucky enough to be a guest, they often tell you they have the best night's sleep ever. You must set it all up with Himalayan salt lamps and early bedtime and great meal and conversation. And so I love how you really
Mollie Eastman (49:04.365)
yet.
Hopefully it's because we're boring them to death or something. yeah, definitely the environment is going to be pulling for circadian alignment. I'm excited actually. This week we're getting a delivery from a new hyperbaric chamber, which I'm doing some new content around how that could be supportive of sleep. A new sauna is coming because we just moved into this new place. But how can we have some of those be like our state changers? Because I often refer to alcohol as
Maureen Benkovich (49:10.814)
It doesn't sound like it at all.
Maureen Benkovich (49:24.46)
Mmm.
Maureen Benkovich (49:28.641)
Right?
Mollie Eastman (49:36.93)
we're going to because we want to change our state and we don't like where we're at now. So we want to change our state. So can we have some healthier state changers? So can we all go sit in a sauna together? Can we do a hyperbaric? Can we go for a walk? Can we, know, just other ways, right?
Maureen Benkovich (49:48.704)
You're speaking my language because that's what I help people see. You can't just remove alcohol and not replace it with another state changer. And so being curious about what works for you and willing to find out what's in your toolbox. So your sleep toolbox, your alcohol-free toolbox to down-regulate your central nervous system. So I love everything you're saying. I could continue, as I said, to talk to you forever, but I want to say thank you so much for breaking down the science and I hope people will follow you to find out more.
Mollie Eastman (49:53.815)
Yes!
Mollie Eastman (49:57.4)
Well said.
Yes.
Mollie Eastman (50:10.518)
Yes, same.
Maureen Benkovich (50:17.43)
for calling out the myths. I think it's so important to have expertise like you really just giving people the information to make informed choices. So for anybody who's rebuilding their sleep while taking a break or completely removing alcohol, your insight is a game changer and sleep really is a skill and one worth mastering. If you wanna learn how to master it, please look up Molly Eastman. Thank you, Molly, for being here.
Mollie Eastman (50:40.664)
Thank you. I so appreciate it.
