Bryan Johnson· Author
Typically, by that point, I'm around like 46 to 47. And then by the time I put my head on the pillow, I'm 44 beats per minute.
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Typically, by that point, I'm around like 46 to 47. And then by the time I put my head on the pillow, I'm 44 beats per minute.
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What you do, Brian, which I think is super interesting and I think you should share with the listeners, is tracking your resting heart rate prior to sleep as opposed to the lowest heart rate you've had while you're sleeping, which is what most of these devices like Whoop and things like that do.
And my experience has been this is that my sleep depends upon my resting heart rate before bed. And so I've tried to structure my entire life around this idea of things that increase my resting heart rate are bad. You know, of course, excluding exercise, like that's a different topic. Things that lower my resting heart rate are good. And then you can map your daily life habits and decisions on these two, whether it goes up or whether it goes down. So for example, when you eat food close to bedtime, your heart rate goes up. And when your heart rate goes up, your sleep quality goes down. If you have a fight with someone right before bed, your heart rate goes up, your sleep goes down. If you are on your screens or working and you're in a high stress or in a high more aroused state, heart rate goes up, sleep goes down. And so you start pattern matching all these things in your life where anything that increases your heart rate is going to lessen the quality of your sleep. And it goes back to what Mike said is the the increase in the heart rate, you know, is you're you're activating your sympathetic nervous system either in terms of stress or some kind of arousal or like metabolic activity to dig digest food. And so I've tried to build my entire life around this one number to lower my heart rate before bed, which means it determines what I eat, when I eat, uh how I do a night nighttime windown routine. So, for example, I'm trying to resolve my internal stress and my worries, trying to avoid rumination. I'm trying to have a 30 to 60 minute block of time before bed where I can turn screens off, go for a walk, meditate, read a book, like take it easy, but have a demarcation between workday and rest day. But I've built these all these sets of habits around how to reduce my resting heart rate in that final moment before bed. And that will then boost sleep quality. Can I ask you a question, Brian? like yeah maybe it's a p personal question uh do do you experience anxiety? I think I experience anxiety in the form of that my mind is always working on problems and if it hasn't solved the problem in a way that I feel like is appropriate my mind will just continue to grind on that problem until it feels like it's actually addressed it. Okay. just because like the the description that you gave around checking your resting heart rate before sleep like I could just see myself doing if I did that on a regular basis the I would I would struggle if I checked it and it were elevated because I would be like ah I'm going to have a bad night of sleep I'm I'm guaranteed to have a bad night of sleep I'm screwed like you know and then I I will inevitably have a bad night of sleep because I now have anxiety about having a bad night of sleep like sleep anxiet is a thing that a lot of people have to worry about. So like I love the fact that you have found this like check my resting heart rate before I go to sleep to know how I'm going to sleep kind of thing like but I I could see how for some people who maybe run a little hotter that might actually it might be sort of like a loop that it puts them in that it makes it harder for them to to get good sleep. I don't know your thought your thoughts on that. Has anybody ever expressed that to you or or thought about that? Yeah and I'm curious Brian like when you do see an elevated heart rate what's your experience of it before bed? Yeah. I mean, this happened actually on Tuesday night when Kate and I, we we were actually finishing up the day. We had eaten late. I I rolled the dice in deciding to eat uh to get my calories today. And I did a quick check on my resting heart rate and it was, I think, 53 beats per minute. Typically, by that point, I'm around like 46 to 47. And then by the time I put my head on the pillow, I'm 44 beats per minute. And so I did say to Kate, "Oh no, like th this is a challenging situation because I
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