055. Amy Bender - Sleep Scientist

This week on the podcast I am speaking with Amy Bender @sleep4sport, Director of Clinical Sleep Science at Cerebra.

“Cerebra was founded with a single purpose: to help people achieve their best sleep possible by understanding sleep where it happens, in the brain.“

Amy has wanted to be a scientist since she was in elementary school and was always asking questions about the world around her. Amy was inspired by her Aunt’s work as a sleep technologist and would often accompany her at the lab, fascinated by the brain wave data being collected. She ended up volunteering in a sleep lab which led to her becoming the lead sleep technologist at a Sleep and Performance Research Centre at Washington State university working on sleep deprivation studies. After acquiring her Masters and PhD in Experimental Psychology, she returned to the same lab to continue her work in Sleep Research.

Amy’s research expertise has been featured in Oprah Magazine, Good to Go (book), Parade Magazine, City News, and Global News. She has acted as a consultant to corporate wellness businesses, corporations, Professional & Olympic teams and has consulted other key clients such as Gatorade Performance Partner, Toronto Maple Leafs, Calgary Flames, TB12, Hockey Canada, and Rowing Canada.

I have been fascinated by sleep for the last couple of years. After I heard about Amy’s work in the book, Peak, by Marc Bubbs, I immediately reached out to Amy and invited her on the podcast. In this episode we talk about the evolution of sleep, the hormonal fluctuations that illicit sleep,  sleep architecture and the physiological function of the different stages of sleep. We discuss the accuracy of wearables and focus on some of the key changes we can make in our life to improve the quality of our sleep, commonly referred to as Sleep Hygiene.  And of course we chat about possible sleep strategies for an endurance athlete.

There are a ton of great takeaways in the episode and I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did.