The Art of Manliness - The Science of a Better Daily Routine

00:00:00.000 We're at McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast.

00:00:11.000 There's plenty of advice out there about how to have a better daily routine, but what's

00:00:15.400 just bunk and what actually works to improve the quality of your day and your overall life.

00:00:19.660 My guest medical doctor turned science educator, Stuart Fairmont took a deep dive into the

00:00:25.060 research to find the authoritative answers to that question.

00:00:27.480 And he shares them in his book, live your best life, 219 science-based reasons to rethink

00:00:33.000 your daily routine.

00:00:34.360 Today on the show, we walk through a daily routine from morning to night.

00:00:38.220 And Dr. Fairmont shares some best practices to make the most of it.

00:00:41.840 We discuss why waking up to an alarm clock feels so terrible, why you shouldn't drink coffee

00:00:46.300 first thing in the morning, the ideal length of an afternoon nap, how to improve your commute,

00:00:51.260 the best time of day to exercise and more.

00:00:53.400 After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash daily routine.

00:01:14.480 All right, Dr. Stuart Fairmont, welcome to the show.

00:01:17.480 Thanks for having me.

00:01:18.220 So you started off your career in medicine, but then you made the jump to science writing,

00:01:23.080 particularly writing about health and science for a lay audience.

00:01:27.220 Why do you make that jump?

00:01:29.600 Yeah, so originally I was a medical doctor.

00:01:31.860 I was working in a UK hospital, so I'm based in the UK.

00:01:35.280 And we're talking about 15 or so years ago, I was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

00:01:41.120 So it was just kind of completely out of the blue, unexpected.

00:01:43.820 I was having some tests for some other stuff.

00:01:45.660 It was discovered and I actually had the scan and the result whilst I was at work one day.

00:01:51.620 And essentially it was a cancerous and malignant brain tumor that I had to have surgery on

00:01:55.760 pretty much straight away.

00:01:57.280 So I guess, what was I, I was 25 or so?

00:02:01.220 Yeah, about 25 when I was diagnosed with it.

00:02:03.940 So I had the surgery, it went well, but it left me with epilepsy afterwards.

00:02:08.300 And because of the epilepsy, it basically meant that I couldn't carry on with medicine

00:02:11.920 because part of the, as I'm sure you appreciate, part of the job of being a hospital doctor

00:02:16.140 is that you've got to do hours of hours, on calls, night shifts, things like that.

00:02:20.280 And basically I couldn't really do that and not risk having a seizure in my profession.

00:02:25.980 So that led to me having to step down from medicine, sort of take basically long-term sick.

00:02:32.460 They always sort of say, well, keep the job up.

00:02:34.800 You can always come back at any point.

00:02:36.100 But basically I don't really, how can, my epilepsy is never going to go away.

00:02:39.540 My brain tumor is never going to go away.

00:02:41.320 So I've never been able to go back.

00:02:43.360 To be fair though, I don't miss it because after I left medicine, I got a job in teaching

00:02:48.520 and I taught for three years in a further education college in the UK and further education colleges.

00:02:55.840 They're like a halfway house between school and university.

00:02:59.480 And I ended up teaching science themed topics to young people who were interested in going

00:03:05.180 to some kind of health profession.

00:03:07.920 And I just really fell in love with teaching and then busting people's ideas of what science is.

00:03:14.280 Because I don't know about you, but at school for many of us, science was this really dull

00:03:19.340 and dry subject.

00:03:21.660 And actually for me now, I find that science is a thing that helps us understand the world.

00:03:26.700 And actually it makes me more amazed about the world around me, how my body works.

00:03:31.820 And I want to share that with other people.

00:03:33.400 And I discovered the joy of doing that when I was doing this teaching job.

00:03:37.100 And then it kind of evolved into doing things more broadly.

00:03:41.160 And I realized that actually these 16, 17, 18 year olds, they don't really appreciate,

00:03:47.140 you know, the science of the everyday.

00:03:49.260 But they reflect pretty much what the average Joe on the street appreciates.

00:03:54.200 And so I realized, actually, if I can reach more people, then I can touch their lives in

00:03:59.420 ways that help them actually appreciate the world more and appreciate how science can inform

00:04:05.060 pretty much every area of your life.

00:04:07.220 And that's where I am now.

00:04:08.680 So I write books about lots of different themes.

00:04:11.180 I do quite a bit on the science of food and cooking, as well as this book that we're going

00:04:15.980 to talk about today, which is about health and well-being, about pretty much every area

00:04:19.620 of your life.

00:04:20.220 And what's the state of your brain cancer today?

00:04:23.100 So my brain tumor is that it was a low-grade glioma.

00:04:28.200 A glioma is basically the name for these tumors, probably the most common types of these malignant

00:04:33.940 brain cancers.

00:04:35.100 Although that said, all brain cancers are quite rare.

00:04:38.380 It regrew a few years ago.

00:04:40.180 It came back and it's now more aggressive than it was.

00:04:42.800 It's gone from what's called a grade two to a grade three.

00:04:45.740 So it's more aggressive than it was before.

00:04:47.900 And I've had to have more surgery and chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which happened, I guess,

00:04:53.920 about three or so years ago.

00:04:55.780 And I finished off my chemotherapy during the COVID lockdown.

00:04:59.180 So the first lockdown.

00:05:00.140 So we're talking 2020 February time.

00:05:02.500 That's when I sort of finished the treatment of most recently.

00:05:05.600 And I just have three monthly scans for the tumor.

00:05:08.680 And thus far since then, it's not been growing, which is pretty good.

00:05:12.360 I think that's sort of, it's unexpected.

00:05:14.900 So I'm doing pretty well, things considered.

00:05:17.500 So that's where I'm at.

00:05:18.380 So every three months, I go through the mill of, is it growing back?

00:05:22.520 Is my life going to, you know, just turn upside down with one day, one results?

00:05:27.280 So just sort of always living under that cloud.

00:05:29.660 But it does make you really appreciate every day.

00:05:33.160 And so when I write my books, when I do talking, when I'm on this podcast with you, you know,

00:05:38.460 it matters because I may or may not be here for, well, nobody's going to be here forever.

00:05:43.140 But I appreciate, you know, that life is very, very temporary and very fleeting.

00:05:47.200 So you want to make everything count.

00:05:49.120 Yeah.

00:05:49.200 And you mentioned in the forward of this book, we're going to talk about live your best life.

00:05:52.920 You were finishing this while it was during COVID and you were doing your treatments.

00:05:57.640 And you said that, you know, the questions you ask, you answer or seek to answer in this book,

00:06:02.080 things like how do you get the best sleep?

00:06:04.000 What's the best breakfast?

00:06:05.340 What's the best way to not be stressed out at work?

00:06:08.060 A lot of people think, well, that's kind of mundane and trite.

00:06:10.560 But, you know, for you, you mentioned like, well, no, actually this stuff's really important.

00:06:13.820 Like I, ever since your diagnosis, like you said, you have an appreciation for these really

00:06:18.960 small things.

00:06:19.580 These little small things add up to make a life well-lived.

00:06:23.240 So your book, Live Your Best Life, it's organized around questions, but then you organize

00:06:27.440 these questions about our daily routines.

00:06:29.620 You start off in the morning, work your way to the afternoon and then to the night.

00:06:33.680 So let's start off with the morning.

00:06:35.040 Take a look at some of these questions you answered.

00:06:37.440 One question I think some people might have had is, why is it that sometimes when we wake

00:06:43.160 up, we feel refreshed, ready to take on the day, you just feel awesome.

00:06:47.220 But other mornings, you just feel super groggy and it takes, you know, like an hour to fully

00:06:53.160 awaken.

00:06:53.740 What's going on there?

00:06:55.560 Yeah.

00:06:55.800 So that groggy sensation that you get in the morning when you sort of feel half drunk,

00:06:59.240 almost kind of zombie-like.

00:07:00.920 We have a name for that and that's called sleep inertia.

00:07:04.180 And basically what's going on in your brain is it's not fully switched on yet because

00:07:08.000 waking up in the morning, you're going from this comatose, unconscious state into the land

00:07:13.200 of the living.

00:07:13.580 And it takes a while for your brain to switch on for all those cogs to get going.

00:07:18.240 You know, like getting a car stung on a cold morning, that sort of thing.

00:07:21.580 And that's called sleep inertia.

00:07:23.740 Whether you get sleep inertia varies on how well rested you are and also, interestingly,

00:07:29.760 how you woke up.

00:07:31.740 So when we sleep, we go through different stages of sleep.

00:07:35.220 We cycle between going through deep sleep and light sleep.

00:07:38.360 During deep sleep is when we're snoring and that's when all the restorative work goes on.

00:07:42.780 In light sleep, that is when we're dreaming.

00:07:44.920 That's when if you were to lift somebody's eyelids up, you'd see their eyes darting left

00:07:48.600 and right.

00:07:48.980 And sometimes that's when we speak, when words sort of escape from our dreams.

00:07:53.360 And if you wake up from the deepest sleep, from the deep sleep, then you will wake up quite

00:07:58.280 groggy.

00:07:58.780 Whereas if you wake up from the light sleep, from the dreaming sleep, which is the natural

00:08:03.140 way for you to do it in the early hours, you dream more and then you naturally come out

00:08:08.160 of that into waking.

00:08:10.200 But if you wake up from the deep sleep, you will generally wake up with that grogginess.

00:08:15.040 So several factors, one of which is if you're poorly rested, you're more likely to have it.

00:08:19.860 If you're stressed, you're more likely to have disturbed sleep and you're more likely to

00:08:23.980 have this sleep inertia.

00:08:25.700 A lot of us, though, do just get sleep inertia in the morning.

00:08:28.140 And so I would always say, and part of what I put in the book is that don't check your

00:08:31.860 smartphone first thing in the morning, because regardless of how well you slept that first

00:08:36.340 30 minutes, you will be experiencing some sleep inertia.

00:08:39.420 When you look at people's brain scans during that time, your brain actually looks like

00:08:44.540 you're slipping back into sleep again.

00:08:46.280 So you're only actually half awake, which is why, you know, you shouldn't really make any

00:08:50.520 decisions first thing in the morning.

00:08:51.740 You should just get yourself up, get yourself going, get yourself in the shower, whatever

00:08:55.300 your morning routine is, and then hold off checking emails, all the other stuff, all

00:09:01.520 the juices of the day up to later on.

00:09:04.340 And interestingly, I think that is why, because we can't make decisions very well first thing

00:09:09.140 in the morning, why I think we tend to have the same thing for breakfast every day, because

00:09:12.720 we can't cope with making difficult decisions first thing in the morning.

00:09:15.940 So sleep inertia lasts about half an hour, can last up to two or three hours, depending

00:09:21.740 on all those different factors that I've mentioned.

00:09:24.260 There's no solution for it.

00:09:25.980 You've just got to ride it out, but just be aware of it.

00:09:29.120 So, you know, let yourself ride it out.

00:09:31.440 You've got to be very wary about jumping in the car straight after waking up, because you

00:09:35.380 will be suffering from this.

00:09:37.680 And so you will be at higher risk of making mistakes when you're in the car during that time.

00:09:42.240 Well, the other thing you point out too is the sleep inertia that's caused by

00:09:45.760 waking up during a deep sleep is one of the reasons why you don't want to hit the snooze

00:09:50.300 button on your alarm, because you'll fall back to sleep and you might fall back into

00:09:54.120 that deep sleep, and then you wake up and you're all groggy.

00:09:58.580 Yeah, absolutely.

00:09:59.340 So alarms, ideally, you know, in an ideal world, you would wake up naturally, and that is when

00:10:04.900 your body is naturally used to waking up.

00:10:06.880 You'll find this out is that when you're on vacation and there's no pressure, you'll find

00:10:11.320 out what your natural waking time is, and that will give you a good gauge.

00:10:15.760 And if you have a job that lets you, and if you can have any capacity to change your job

00:10:21.520 so that you can have it so that you wake up at your natural waking time, that is the ideal.

00:10:26.660 Unfortunately, many of us have to have alarms, because alarms aren't very good ways of waking

00:10:30.640 up, because they basically stimulate our primitive, vital flight response.

00:10:35.660 We wake up as if a panther or a tiger has just walked into our room.

00:10:39.620 It's that there's this part of our brain called the amygdala, which is alert to threats all

00:10:44.740 the time, even when we're asleep.

00:10:46.900 And so when you have a loud noise, it fires off the amygdala, gets adrenaline going, gets

00:10:52.220 you fired up.

00:10:53.020 You wake up with a jolt, basically, because your primal brain thinks there's a threat.

00:10:59.320 So you're not in a great place when you wake up.

00:11:02.160 You're not waking up relaxed, calm, ready for the day.

00:11:05.320 You hit the snooze button, and you're quite right.

00:11:08.480 10 minutes or so on the snooze button is just about the right time to start slipping into

00:11:12.440 the deep sleep.

00:11:13.860 You then can wake up back into a jolt again.

00:11:16.320 And so actually, you feel increasingly groggy.

00:11:19.220 And actually, all those sort of rude awakenings, they kind of add up.

00:11:23.860 And so they will increase your stress levels in the morning.

00:11:26.440 And furthermore, if you wake up naturally, or you just wake up, you just get up when you

00:11:31.320 wake up naturally, you've got a natural chemical boost from a hormone called cortisol, which

00:11:36.920 is a stress hormone that is released when you wake up.

00:11:39.340 It's been building up slowly in the early hours, getting you ready for waking up.

00:11:43.060 When you wake up, you get this surge, like a jab in the arm of this hormone called cortisol.

00:11:47.660 It's the stress hormone.

00:11:49.020 That's what gets you going.

00:11:50.460 If you stay in bed, if you keep hitting the snooze button, that will fade away.

00:11:54.540 And so you'll lose your natural get up and go hormone.

00:11:59.060 Okay, so we wake up, we might have that sleep inertia, feeling groggy.

00:12:02.820 I think the first thing a lot of people do to counteract that as well is have my morning

00:12:06.720 caffeine, whether that's coffee or tea or some other type of caffeinated beverage.

00:12:11.760 But you've found research that suggests drinking coffee or caffeine first thing in the morning,

00:12:17.420 you're actually not doing anything.

00:12:18.900 Why shouldn't you drink your caffeine right when you get out of bed?

00:12:23.120 Yeah, answering this question, if I'm going to give an answer to the best time to drink

00:12:28.880 coffee, if it's different to what you do, most people don't like to hear it because everybody

00:12:33.120 thinks their way of drinking coffee is the right way of doing it because they find that

00:12:36.800 helps them. In reality, when you look at the science, if you find out how caffeine works,

00:12:43.720 then you can understand when the best time should be to have coffee. Caffeine works by blocking a

00:12:50.880 naturally sedative, relaxing chemical in the brain called adenosine. And this is a substance that is

00:12:57.980 produced naturally throughout the day. When you wake up in the morning, it's very low. Throughout the

00:13:03.180 day, it builds up and it builds up. It's sort of like a waste product of your brain throughout the

00:13:08.100 day. When you sleep at night, your brain gets rid of it all. And it's adenosine that makes you sleepy,

00:13:13.700 not the sleep hormone called melatonin that people so often know about when people take melatonin

00:13:19.420 supplements because they think it's going to help them sleep. Most of the time, it doesn't do anything

00:13:23.620 at all. The thing that makes you sleepy is this brain hormone called adenosine. And caffeine works

00:13:29.680 by blocking that substance, that adenosine. And that's great because in an evening or if you're

00:13:36.260 driving in an evening and you need to sort of a pick-me-up to keep yourself going, then having

00:13:40.580 some coffee, that will keep you going. That will keep you on the road because it knocks the edge

00:13:44.900 of this adenosine that is making you feel sleepy, wanting to make you to go to sleep. But first thing

00:13:50.680 in the morning, that is the time when you have your lowest levels of adenosine. So you have your coffee

00:13:55.820 first thing in the morning and actually it's not going to be doing much. It's like you've already

00:14:02.440 got this get-up-and-go hormone called cortisol getting you going first in the morning. Having coffee

00:14:07.400 on top of that is basically like throwing a couple of matches onto an already raging bonfire. It's not

00:14:12.740 going to do very much. And actually, first thing in the morning, strong coffee is more likely to make

00:14:17.140 you jittery and give you the side effects of caffeine, make you more uptight, make you a bit more

00:14:22.780 anxious, rather than when actually if you're going to have coffee, you're going to have a caffeine, you

00:14:26.920 want to have it so that it picks you up and it gets you going. So a sort of a nice way of doing it

00:14:32.420 is to wait an hour, hour and a half, maybe a couple of hours into the morning so the cortisol shot in the

00:14:40.760 arm has started to fade and adenosine has started to come up. So that mid-morning when you're starting

00:14:45.440 to feel a bit sluggish, that will be a time when to have your coffee that it will actually get much more

00:14:50.420 bang for your buck if you have your coffee then. Okay, so shift to two hours or wait an hour to

00:14:55.440 two hours. Let's talk about breakfast. Is there an ideal breakfast that will help us get going in

00:15:01.460 the morning? Now breakfast is an interesting one because it's a meal for which we have breakfast

00:15:08.160 foods for. And we don't really have lunch foods or evening meal foods, but we have breakfast foods,

00:15:14.000 which is kind of a curious thing. Across the world, there will be breakfast foods. And you tend to find

00:15:19.460 that if you take a step back and you look across cultures, that breakfast tends to be based on

00:15:24.200 starches, on carbohydrates or what you call carbs. They're the things that provide the, and I know

00:15:29.680 that they're sort of, they're seen as a bad thing these days, carbs are, but actually they're the

00:15:34.740 main fuel for your brain. They're the main fuel for your muscles. So if, especially if you've got an

00:15:39.660 active job, if you're a kid, then breakfast is really important. And ideally it should be based

00:15:45.820 on carbohydrates because they're the main fuel that your body and your brain likes to use.

00:15:51.520 You can get by without it. And interestingly, if your body, if you're not a morning lark,

00:15:56.340 if you wake up in the morning and actually you don't want breakfast, you doesn't feel

00:15:59.980 right for you, your body isn't asking for it, then there is no benefit in forcing yourself to have a

00:16:05.340 breakfast. Skipping breakfast does not make you put on weight. There is no evidence for that. And

00:16:10.220 actually when they've done the studies and they've got people to skip breakfast, they actually lost

00:16:14.140 weight compared to putting it on. So it's a myth that the breakfast is the most important meal of

00:16:19.700 the day. Many people will need a breakfast because of their lifestyle, because of their body clock,

00:16:25.800 but it's not the thing that it's made out to be.

00:16:28.540 You know, it's, it's interesting, your observation about there being special breakfast foods across

00:16:33.320 cultures and that they're usually carby foods. There's been some research coming out that our

00:16:39.660 bodies metabolize carbohydrates and just, you know, just food in general better in the morning.

00:16:45.220 And we get less efficient at it as the day wears on. And so maybe there's like some wisdom into how

00:16:52.080 people used to schedule their meals, right? Like today, our biggest meal for most people in the West,

00:16:58.000 it's dinner. And we eat that late, but a couple centuries back, the biggest meal of the

00:17:03.260 day was, well, they called it dinner, but it was like at mid, midday, right? So they had a really

00:17:08.600 big, what we would call lunch. And then they just have a, you know, like a very light supper in the

00:17:14.220 evening. So it might be better for you to eat more of your carbs and calories earlier in the day.

00:17:20.200 And, you know, and there is some evidence for that. I think eating big and late at night,

00:17:24.600 that is linked with poor sleep. There is definitely evidence for that because at nighttime,

00:17:30.420 everything shuts down. The whole intestinal system goes into sleep much like the rest of you. So if

00:17:36.440 you have a big meal at night, it'll just be sitting there largely overnight. And actually that's not

00:17:41.260 very good for you really, because, you know, it's going to more likely to give you indigestion. It's 0.99

00:17:45.560 going to disturb your sleep. As you process the food, your intestines generate quite a lot of heat

00:17:50.500 in that process of digesting the food. So especially, you know, protein, that's something that generates a

00:17:56.140 lot of heat. Your body has to work quite hard to process that, to digest it, which is why you get

00:18:01.140 meat sweats at nighttime if you had a big meal at an evening. So whether it's bad for putting on

00:18:06.920 weight, that's a controversial thing. But generally speaking, you're probably best avoiding a large

00:18:11.700 meal at an evening. That said, in the Mediterranean, they eat really late. And people only sit down for

00:18:16.860 their evening meal about eight o'clock in the evening oftentimes. And I don't know how they do it.

00:18:21.240 Typically, you'd have like a pastry and a coffee first thing in the morning is your breakfast.

00:18:24.620 Then you'd have a lunch and then you'd have a big thing in the evening meal. And that's the way

00:18:28.640 they've always done it. I don't know how they do it because generally, you know, the evidence would

00:18:32.340 say that's not the ideal way of doing things. So yeah, you're quite right. It's that a big meal

00:18:37.860 in the evening is probably not ideal for most people. Okay. So you're eating breakfast in the

00:18:44.340 morning, maybe. You don't have to eat breakfast necessarily, but you're probably, hopefully,

00:18:50.020 definitely brushing your teeth. So what's the best time to brush your teeth? Is it before you eat

00:18:54.600 breakfast or after? It depends what you have for your breakfast. If you have anything citrus

00:19:00.720 for breakfast, there's pros and cons of each of them. If you have anything citrus for breakfast,

00:19:06.000 then avoid brushing afterwards because citrus and indeed carbonated drinks, you know, carbonated

00:19:12.220 drinks are quite acidic. And if you have something acidic, then you brush your teeth. There is a risk

00:19:17.640 that you start to brush off the enamel, which is the super hard, very white protective coating

00:19:23.920 that's on the covering of your teeth. So I would say typically it's better before because it means

00:19:29.600 that you can get rid of the detritus from overnight. You know, we often wake up with

00:19:35.420 very bad breath in the morning and that's because there's been an overgrowth of bacteria in the night

00:19:40.060 because we produce less saliva over the night and saliva has antibacterial properties in it.

00:19:45.260 And so overnight we've had this overgrowth of bacteria. So it's good to, I mean, you could brush

00:19:49.400 before and afterwards, that would even be better providing that you haven't had anything citrus

00:19:54.060 for breakfast. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:20:03.180 And now back to the show. So let's move on to our commute. A lot of people commutes like the worst

00:20:08.160 part of their day. Why does our commute make us so miserable? And then anything we can do to improve

00:20:13.040 it? Yeah, yeah. And research shows that an extra 20 minutes onto your morning commute can impact job

00:20:20.200 satisfaction as much as a 20% pay cut. And what happens is that we associate our commute with our

00:20:26.960 job. Psychologically, we see it as one and the same thing. So if we don't enjoy our commutes, it means

00:20:32.940 that our job satisfaction overall will be lessened. So likewise, if you can improve your commute, then you can

00:20:39.600 improve the quality of your job experience. 90 minutes of total commuting time a day seems to

00:20:45.700 be the turning point for when it starts to impact our health. So if you're commuting 45 minutes each

00:20:51.720 way, then that's a point at which you've got to be very careful that it may be impacting your health

00:20:56.980 because people have a total commute of more than 90 minutes every day. They tend to be, they weigh more,

00:21:02.240 they're more likely to have diabetes, more likely to have higher blood pressure, all the things that we

00:21:05.980 associate with the ills of the day. They are linked with longer commutes. And that's largely if you,

00:21:12.660 because most people commute, they do it sedentary, they do it in a car or they do it on some kind of

00:21:16.620 public transport. To improve your commute in any way you can, make it as active as possible. So

00:21:22.880 walking, cycling, anything that moves your legs, and that will improve your commute or make you

00:21:29.800 healthier and also put you in a better place when you get to work. So that's one thing that you can do.

00:21:34.520 So if you've got a journey that has multiple stops, try and simplify your morning commute, because

00:21:41.240 a lot of the thing that makes the commute bad and stressful is stress on the journey. It's holdups in

00:21:46.940 the traffic, it's delays, it's somebody cutting you off in the traffic, it's something getting in your

00:21:51.720 way, it's roadworks. These are the things that, and if you add to that, if you've got to drop the kids

00:21:56.020 off at school and you've got to do another, another errand on the way to work, that makes it all the

00:22:01.460 more stressful. And so that will negatively impact your commute. So make your journeys as simple as

00:22:06.800 possible, try and make them active. And yeah, I guess the thing is, is to try and see if there are

00:22:12.340 ways in which you can make it less stressful and possibly shorter, especially if you have a

00:22:17.300 sedentary form of commute.

00:22:19.040 And what's counterintuitive though, is you found the research that suggests that some people,

00:22:22.760 they need a commute for their job to make that transition, right? The commute itself can act as a

00:22:26.760 transition from home life to work life and work life to home life.

00:22:30.020 Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And we've always discovered this now. We're working from home and some people's

00:22:34.600 mental health has worsened as a result of this. And because we have commuted since Neanderthal time,

00:22:40.340 since Stone Age, there's good evidence to show that we've always moved away from where we live and

00:22:45.900 where we sleep to go and do our daily work. And there's something really important in that.

00:22:50.920 And it seems to be the ideal commute is about 15 minutes. And that gives you just enough time to

00:22:56.820 mentally move yourself away from home life and into work life. And conversely, when you're coming

00:23:02.480 back, it's really important that we switch off from work and we re-engage to what's going on at home.

00:23:08.360 You know, you start thinking about our family, our spouse, so that when we get home, we're interested

00:23:12.860 in them and we're not preoccupied by our work. And so having that physical distance helps mentally

00:23:19.280 with having that mental distance. And so it is good for our mental health to have a commute

00:23:23.860 and 15 minutes research points are being the optimal length of time.

00:23:28.100 Let's take a look at our work life. We're at the office. Is there anything to the idea that

00:23:31.660 there's certain types of work we should do in the morning or the afternoon?

00:23:36.120 Yeah. And this comes back to your body clock. And what you find is that there are differences

00:23:40.860 because obviously night owls, it's flipped a little bit and they work better in the evening. But for

00:23:45.720 most of us, something like 75% of us, the first two or three hours of our working day, and when I

00:23:52.640 say a working day, that's from nine o'clock in the morning. I'm assuming that that's the sort of

00:23:56.260 the standard time of the working day. Those first, that morning is our brain's prime time. That is when

00:24:02.980 we need to prioritize the most important tasks. So I don't know about you, Brett, but sometimes I sit

00:24:07.760 down at my workstation first thing and I start work and I go, all right, I'm going to clear out my

00:24:12.980 emails or I'm going to, I'm going to do something on social media. But in reality, that's probably

00:24:18.680 not that you really shouldn't be doing that because those first two or three hours until you

00:24:22.900 get to about 11 midday, that is when your brain is the computing and the thinking powers of your

00:24:29.340 brain are at their maximum. So you should first thing prioritize that thing that you've been putting

00:24:34.840 off, that project, that assignment, whatever it is, that work, sort of bite the bullet and get on

00:24:40.220 with it. Because after that time, after those first two or three hours, after lunchtime,

00:24:44.400 whatever you do, no matter how much coffee you have, you're not getting that back again.

00:24:47.960 It's a one hit deal. You've got to make the best of it in the first thing in the morning.

00:24:52.240 You know, some people say they work, you know, especially in stateside. I know people like to

00:24:56.080 boast about how many hours they work and how they got so early in the morning and they stayed at work

00:25:00.160 till, you know, gone dark. But actually people who do that, they're not productive as they think

00:25:05.520 they are. And it's about understanding how your body works and you can actually work smarter and

00:25:12.060 not harder. So that is one way of doing it is realizing, you know, my most productive time,

00:25:17.980 my mentally, my most productive time is going to be in the morning before 12 o'clock, before 11 or 12

00:25:23.800 o'clock when things will naturally start to slow down. So that would be what the science would point

00:25:28.720 towards. Well, let's talk about just being at the office of the day. Most people have jobs where

00:25:32.560 they're sitting down, uh, sedentary, anything we can do to alleviate some of the, I don't know,

00:25:39.140 it's, it hurts. Like it doesn't feel good to sit down all day. And then also I think it's a mental

00:25:43.020 stressor. Anything we can do throughout the day to maintain our health and mental sharpness.

00:25:47.420 Yeah. I mean, it was once fashionable to have standing workstations, which some people get on

00:25:53.500 with and they've not really taken off in the way that it was once imagined. You know, it's often said

00:25:58.060 that sitting is the new smoking. It's nothing as bad as smoking, but yeah, there are high correlation

00:26:04.040 between sitting a long time and poor health, weight gain and all these things associated with

00:26:09.080 Western lifestyle. So a good way to do it is to try to make yourself stand up and do something. If you,

00:26:14.660 if you work from home, then make yourself a cup of tea every, or whatever it is, or a cup of coffee,

00:26:19.460 maybe not coffee, but get yourself a glass of water or something, you know, regularly,

00:26:23.100 may even set yourself a timer just to get up, walk around and yeah. And that will help. I mean,

00:26:30.220 the thing is, is that you can't concentrate for very long periods of time. Anyway, between 60 and

00:26:35.080 90 minutes is the maximum capacity in which you can focus on a task with complete concentration and

00:26:43.000 actually be performing well. So when your concentration starts to fade on any given task,

00:26:49.780 swapping to something else is good. Taking a break is even better and using that as an opportunity to

00:26:55.800 stand up and walk around. Another thing that I heard, which I thought was quite a smart thing is

00:26:59.880 get yourself some dumbbells or a dumbbell and put it somewhere, maybe by your kettle or by your fridge,

00:27:06.040 somewhere that you will often go to in the daytime. It's maybe a little bit more difficult to do it in

00:27:09.980 an office space at work, but you can, you can do it. You can put a little dumbbell somewhere and

00:27:14.360 whenever you go there, you can do a few sort of arm curls with it and you're not going to become,

00:27:19.460 you know, you're not going to become really muscular, not become Arnold Schwarzenegger from it,

00:27:23.920 but it will just help. Any kind of physical exercise will help combat the overall fatigue because

00:27:30.380 fatigue will worsen as we're lots of times sedentary. So any of these things, take the stairs if you can,

00:27:36.940 anything that you can, and it will be specific for you, it will be for your working environment.

00:27:41.500 You will know things that you can do. If it involves setting a timer on your phone,

00:27:46.200 you know, every 45 minutes to an hour saying, stand up now, that will help.

00:27:51.400 Let's shift to the afternoon and evening. Some people get sleepy, naturally sleepy,

00:27:57.100 like one o'clock, two o'clock. Is it okay to take a nap in the afternoon? And if so,

00:28:02.140 how can you do it in a way so it doesn't disrupt your sleep in the evening?

00:28:05.840 Yeah, again, it's something that's become quite trendy is having an afternoon nap, having this,

00:28:09.840 and the siesta is, as you probably appreciate, is very much ingrained in Mediterranean culture and

00:28:18.700 in Chinese culture. There used to be a law in China that meant that workers were entitled to

00:28:24.400 an afternoon nap. It was a right that they could have their, I think, 90 minutes or something like

00:28:29.020 that in the early afternoon where they could have a sleep. And actually having an early afternoon nap

00:28:34.580 is something that seems to be a part of our biology because we evolved in the savannah.

00:28:41.380 And if you've ever been to equatorial regions, you will know that the middle of the day after,

00:28:46.360 after about one or two o'clock in the afternoon, it's absolutely, I did my medical elective in West

00:28:51.840 Africa. And those hours of the day, you had to retreat inside. You couldn't do anything.

00:28:57.220 It's utterly, utterly stifling. I mean, people in the States who live in the southern regions,

00:29:01.840 you will know this very well, that you need, you can't do very much. And so our body is geared to

00:29:07.380 actually taking, is just lying down and resting during that time. So even now it's in our genes

00:29:13.060 that during that time we naturally get sluggish. We have the post-lunch slump that isn't actually

00:29:19.660 entirely to do with the lunch itself. It just happens to be that our body clock is geared towards

00:29:25.440 slowing down, actually having a nap at that time. So yeah, it's a difficult thing to get your head

00:29:30.540 around because we have this whole thing. I've got to work nine to five, having a sleep is lazy.

00:29:35.120 But I know that, you know, a lot of the tech companies are now getting onto this idea or they

00:29:38.780 have been in recent years of having your sleep pods where you can go and have a nap. And if you can

00:29:43.420 work that into your day, you may well find that energy, mood, learning and productivity are boosted

00:29:49.180 by a 10 to 20 minute nap in the early afternoon. If you go longer than that, if you go to about 60

00:29:56.000 minutes, then that's the time where you will, over more than about 20 minutes to 60 minutes,

00:30:00.260 you may well find that when you wake up, you have that groggy thing again, that sleep inertia. So

00:30:04.760 you wake up and you feel worse than before and you think, oh, I'm never going to, why do people do

00:30:09.100 this nap thing? I just feel wasted for the rest of the day. So, and that's because you've gone into

00:30:13.760 deep sleep. If you're going to do longer than half an hour, then you should do 90 minutes because

00:30:19.060 90 minutes is enough time to go into deep sleep and out again, and you'll come out feeling refreshed.

00:30:23.480 The problem is that if you go much longer than an hour and a half, it obviously eats into your day

00:30:27.700 and it can affect your nighttime sleep. So ideally 10 to 20 minutes. And another way that I've heard

00:30:33.820 people do is to have a coffee before you have your nap. And it takes about 15, 20 minutes for

00:30:40.620 the full effect of the caffeine to kick in. So that will, when you wake up again, you'll have the

00:30:45.540 combination of the feeling refreshed from the nap and the sort of the, the extra boost from the

00:30:51.020 caffeine. Personally, I don't do that one because I, I find that the caffeine will affect me before

00:30:58.440 I get to sleep, but that's a tried and tested thing that many people do. All right, let's talk about

00:31:03.420 exercise. When's the best time to exercise or does it matter?

00:31:08.960 Any exercise is good, but when you look at people's physical performance, you find that it is best

00:31:14.920 eight to nine hours after waking. So that we're talking early mid afternoon for most people.

00:31:21.260 It's geared towards your body clock as well. So you tend to find that people who are in their early

00:31:26.060 twenties and teens, because their body clock is shifted forward by a couple of hours, they will

00:31:30.480 tend to be in their prime in the early evening time, which I've, my theory behind this is that most

00:31:36.300 world records are broken in the early evening time. And I, some of that is going to be because

00:31:42.620 things are televised in the evening time. Uh, that's when they put on events. But I think that

00:31:47.540 a large part of that is the world records are broken in that time. Olympic world records are

00:31:51.200 broken that time is because the people who are athletes, they're in generally in their early

00:31:56.680 twenties. So they have a body clock that peaks later in the day. And so their prime physical

00:32:02.260 time for exercise is in that early evening time when they're performing at their best.

00:32:07.140 But it's the same for you and me, Brett is that best exercise time will be in the mid early to

00:32:12.260 mid afternoon. You can try this. I don't know if you do much exercise, Brett, but if you

00:32:15.980 go for a run first thing in the morning, and then you do another run at five or six in the

00:32:20.080 evening, you will find that the one in the afternoon evening time will be easier. And

00:32:25.940 you'll probably find that you can do better times than you did first thing in the morning.

00:32:29.560 And that's just the nature of the fact that our body takes a while to warm up. It's like

00:32:33.280 a, it's like a locomotive. It just sort of takes a while. Everything, all our muscles,

00:32:37.020 all the chemical processes and the enzymes that power our muscles, which are just the

00:32:42.140 chemicals that work within, within our muscles to get them going. They take a while to get

00:32:46.640 going throughout the day. You know, I think they warm up throughout the day, but that said

00:32:51.220 any kind of exercise is good. And you know, more than exercise is still good for you, but

00:32:55.980 generally speaking, it's better to do the most vigorous exercise later in the day because

00:33:02.520 going at it too hard in the morning, you're much more likely to have a risk injury.

00:33:06.560 Yeah, I've noticed that. So I do powerlifting and when I first started, I trained first thing

00:33:13.640 in the morning. So I had like the sleep inertia thing going on. I was really groggy. So I didn't

00:33:18.660 perform as well. I think the other issue too, was I didn't have time to eat before I trained.

00:33:23.740 So I was training in a fasted state and that's not good if you're doing like explosive strength

00:33:28.600 stuff. And then when I shifted to training later in the afternoon, things got better. My performance

00:33:36.060 started improving. And I still noticed the difference today, right? Like sometimes I can't

00:33:41.020 train in the afternoon for whatever reason. So I have to train in the morning and there's

00:33:45.620 a big difference between afternoon training and morning training. And you know, it's interesting

00:33:51.000 that given people perform better or do better later in the day that, you know, competitions,

00:33:57.700 you know, things like 5k races, I've done, you know, weightlifting competitions, amateur

00:34:03.340 ones, like they're usually in the morning. And you know, like my wife, she's a runner and 0.99

00:34:09.260 I think she'd do more running races if they were later in the day, because, you know, she 1.00

00:34:15.220 likes to run, but she doesn't like to run at, you know, seven or eight o'clock in the morning.

00:34:21.080 She'd much prefer to run late in the afternoon or early evening. Yes. I think it's interesting.

00:34:28.020 We need more competitions later in the day, I think. Okay. So we've covered waking up,

00:34:33.100 commuting, working, exercise, and then comes nighttime, right? It's time to sleep. And in

00:34:40.420 the book you suggest, you know, the kind of sleep hygiene tips that I think most people

00:34:44.540 are familiar with if you want to get better sleep. But what about snoring? Snoring can disrupt

00:34:49.940 your sleep and possibly other people's sleep. So what can we do to stop snoring?

00:34:55.800 Yeah. Four in 10 blokes snore. It's one of those things like you never know you do it until

00:35:00.200 somebody tells you. But yeah, it is a problem. I know a couple that they can't sleep in the

00:35:04.760 same bedroom anymore because he snores so loudly and he doesn't like being woken up to be told.

00:35:10.140 I mean, I snore sometimes when I roll onto my back, but yeah, it can be really problematic.

00:35:14.540 How can we stop it? The reason why we snore, you can either have nasal snoring, which is

00:35:19.460 because of the configuration of your nasal cavity, or you can have mouth snoring or throat snoring,

00:35:25.120 which is probably the most common type of snoring. And that is because at nighttime,

00:35:29.300 when we go into this deepest sleep, the deep restorative stage of sleep, we become very floppy.

00:35:36.080 The tone of the muscles drops a lot, so everything becomes relaxed. And unfortunately, that means that

00:35:41.040 the muscles at the back of the throat that keep our windpipe open, they can relax so much that it

00:35:47.540 starts to close our airways. And it becomes like a flapping door in a breeze as it vibrates and you

00:35:52.680 have this snoring sound. It's more likely to happen in people who are bigger, people who are

00:35:57.640 overweight. So people often find if you lose some weight, then the snoring will stop. Lying on your

00:36:02.940 back is also more likely to cause snoring. Something that people have done with great success is in

00:36:08.480 their nightwear, in their pajama top, they'll sew in a tennis ball into the middle of the back so that

00:36:13.280 it's impossible for them to lie on their back. And they find that that is quite a drastic thing

00:36:18.240 to do, but they find that that is enough to stop them snoring because it stops them rolling onto

00:36:21.740 the back. There's lots of different things, lots of different aids that you can buy. There's like

00:36:25.200 nasal strips, things that you can put into your nose. There's chin straps. There's pillows.

00:36:30.480 There's some evidence that pillows, anti-snoring pillows can help because they align your neck in a

00:36:36.120 certain way so that you keep the airways open more and you're much less likely to snore.

00:36:41.340 The thing is that if you snore and you're very, very sleepy in the daytime,

00:36:46.940 then you could be experiencing, could be suffering from a record obstructive sleep apnea or OSA.

00:36:53.040 That's very, very common, more common than I think we appreciate. And that is actually very

00:36:58.440 harmful for your health, not least because your sleep is so unrestorative that you will drift off

00:37:04.840 in the daytime and your risk of having a car accident while driving are very, very magnified hugely

00:37:10.920 because you're not getting restorative sleep. What happens with people with OSA is they're

00:37:16.900 snoring and as the muscles relax even more and more, eventually it blocks off their airways.

00:37:22.720 So you start to suffocate. You then wake up with a jolt, but it's so brief that you don't realize

00:37:28.480 that you're awake. Because interestingly, in those very lightest layers of sleep between awake and being

00:37:33.300 asleep, you have no memory of it. You may have noticed this, Brett. If you're sat on the sofa,

00:37:38.380 you're watching a movie or something, your partner drifts off, falls asleep, and you wake up and say,

00:37:43.960 you fell asleep, they will swear blind, I was not asleep. And that is because in those periods,

00:37:49.220 there's very light stages of sleep, you have no memory of it. So when people wake up with a start

00:37:54.340 very briefly, they'll have no memory that they've had a very disturbed sleep. Every time they go into

00:37:58.900 that deep restorative sleep, they're being woken up at the very deepest part of it. So they're not

00:38:04.620 getting the benefits of sleep. So throughout the daytime, they're constantly fatigued.

00:38:09.700 And that has long-term impacts, much like doing night shifts. Actually, unfortunately,

00:38:15.400 no matter what we do, it seems to, when you're working against your body clock, it has negative

00:38:19.960 effects, causes your arteries more likely to fur up a process called atherosclerosis, increases

00:38:25.400 the likelihood of having diabetes and other such conditions by having long-term disturbances to

00:38:30.620 sleep. And this is also the case with OSA, obstructive sleep apnea. So if you feel exhausted,

00:38:36.420 if you find yourself falling asleep when you're waiting for the lights to go from red to green,

00:38:41.300 or you're woken up because somebody's sounding the horn behind you, and especially if your partner

00:38:45.780 says that you snore, then it's worthwhile getting an assessment for that because it's something that's

00:38:50.720 very treatable.

00:38:52.380 Well, Stuart, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book

00:38:55.320 and your work?

00:38:55.820 Yeah, sure. I mean, the book is called Live Your Best Life. If you're outside of North America,

00:39:01.500 it's called The Science of Living. So The Science of Living or Live Your Best Life. You can find out

00:39:06.620 more about me on all the socials. My name is Dr. Stuart Farman or Dr. Stu Farman. My handle is

00:39:13.300 realdrstu, all one word, R-E-A-L-D-O-C-T-O-R-S-T-U. And that's what I'm on, on Twitter and Instagram

00:39:19.240 and all those things. I'm not a big social media user, but I will do updates of books and things.

00:39:24.720 I've got a book out recently, which is all about gardening, believe it or not. So it's a completely

00:39:29.640 left field thing for me, but that's selling very well as well. It's just another one of my missions

00:39:35.020 of using science in the everyday in ways in which you wouldn't have thought.

00:39:40.360 All right. Well, Dr. Stuart Farman, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:39:43.040 Awesome. Thanks, Rick.

00:39:44.460 My guest today was Dr. Stuart Farman. He's the author of the book, Live Your Best Life. It's

00:39:48.300 available on amazon.com. You can find more information about his work at his website,

00:39:51.960 stuartfairman.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash daily routine,

00:39:57.220 where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.

00:40:06.960 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website

00:40:10.960 at artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles

00:40:15.060 that we've written over the years about pretty much anything you'd think of. And if you'd like to

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00:40:45.660 is Brett McKay. Remind you to want to listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - April 17, 2023

The Science of a Better Daily Routine

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