Kirk Parsley MD | Sleep As Medicine: How To Sleep Like Royalty + Stop Being Sick

Wellness + Wisdom | Episode 734

How is poor sleep quietly sabotaging your health, performance, and relationships?

Dr. Kirk Parsley, Performance Enhancement Physician + former SEAL, joins Josh Trent on the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast, episode 734, to uncover the shocking truth about mainstream sleep drugs and how they hijack natural processes like GABA without delivering true rest, how high-stress lifestyles demand recovery strategies, and why optimizing your sleep might just be the missing key to a better life, stronger communication, and lasting emotional resilience.

"When you don't sleep very well, you're choosing to age faster. If you stay up for 20 hours, you've added 4 hours of damage, which means your brain is aging 25% faster. If you do this regularly, you will get neurological decline." - Dr. Kirk Parsley

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In This Episode, Kirk Parsley MD Uncovers:

[01:05] The Dangers of Sleep Drugs

• Kirk Parsley MD
• 125 Dr. Kirk Parsley – Sleep To Win
• 256 Navigating Transitions In Relationships, Health, and Wealth: Dr. Kirk Parsley & Krisstina Wise
• How the pharmaceutical industry formulates sleep products.
• Why Benzodiazepines are 100X stronger than GABA.
• How sleep has nothing to do with GABA, but pharmaceuticals mainly focus on GABA.
• Why sleep drugs can cause anomalistic behavior.
• How alcohol decreases deep sleep and REM sleep.

[08:20] Sleep Quality Directly Impacts Performance

• Why success can't be predicted but failure can.
• How millions are spent on Navy SEAL trainings.
• Why none of the SEALs complain about sleep, even though they barely get any during their training.
• How Kirk made the SEALs test 98 blood markers to find out why they were not performing to their full potential.
• How he discovered that Ambien was negatively impacting their sleep and performance.
• How he gave the SEALs sleep supplements to improve their sleep.
• Why sleep impacts all other aspects of well-being and performance.

[23:15] Modern Lifestyle Changed How We Sleep

• How Kirk's work translated from the Navy SEALs to all people.
• Why he became a private health consultant.
• How stress ages us.
• Why the Industrial Age affected our sleep quality.

[27:35] Super Sleeper Genes

• Why wearable data is not actionable.
• How we can't change what we don't measure.
• Why our genes define whether or not we suffer when we get less than 8 hours of sleep.
• How to treat insomnia using non-sleep deep rest.
• Why we need to mimic what our ancestors did to sleep well.
• The importance of creating a list of our worries.

[39:05] The Science of Sleep

• 591 Dr. John Lieurance | Biohacking Big Souls: How UFC Fighters + Big Wave Surfers Holistically Heal
• Why parents lose 6 months of sleep during the first 2 years of their baby's life.
• How we can recover from long-term lack of sleep.
• Why it takes 8 hours to recover from being awake for 16 hours.
• How we clean the waste inside of our body through sleep.
• What happens in the body when we go to sleep.
• Why our body creates inflammation when we don't manage to get rid of the waste product.
• How calcified plaque is created in the body.

[44:55] Chronic Sleep Deprivation = Neurological Decline?

• How psychiatric illnesses are highly impacted by sleep.
• What chronobiology has discovered about psychiatric patients and their mental health in relation to circadian rhythm.
• Why being awake is catabolic and being asleep is anabolic.
• How we repair our stress levels while we sleep.
• Why immediately after working out we are weaker and we need to repair during our sleep.
• How aging affects our capacity to repair our body.
• Why long-term lack of sleep makes us age faster.
• How releasing stress hormones can help us repair if we don't get enough sleep.
• Why we're the only stress-deprived species on Earth.

[54:20] How to Navigate Sleep Deprivation As a Parent

• Why co-sleeping with our children is not essential.
• How each child has different sleep needs.
• Why Kirk repressed a lot of his childhood anger and trauma.
• How he used to pull all-nighters when he was studying, working, and raising his children.
• Why sleeping 4 to 5 hours a day for several years caused Kirk's health to decline.
• How he was helping the SEALs with their health issues but wasn't helping himself.

[01:07:55] Sleep Affects Your Relationships

• The role that sleep played in the issues in Kirk's first marriage.
• William Dement
• How research proved that couples who don't get enough sleep perceive each other more negatively.
• The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal MD
• Why stress causes impulsive behavior and lack of emotional control.
• How sleep deprivation is used as a torture technique in interrogation.

[01:14:20] Good Communication Starts with Good Sleep

• Why brain function is essential for communication.
• How the brain holds on to arguments even after it has ended.
• The role of emotional categorization.
• How good quality sleep rebalances our hormone levels.
• Why hormones impact how we show up.

[01:21:10] Are You Good At Suffering?

• What makes some people exceptionally good at suffering.
• Why our genetics influence our ability to endure suffering.
• What led Kirk to believe that suffering is a choice.
• Why he doesn't suffer even though he's suffering.

[01:26:50] Fear Is For The Weak

• Why Kirk grew up fearful because he lived in a dangerous environment.
• What made him decide that being fearful is weak.
• Why he's happy with everything that's happened in his life.
• How fear only takes us out of enjoyment.
• Why everything that matters to Kirk is driven by love.

[01:32:20] The Journey Back to God

• How Kirk defines his faith in God.
• Why we only have control of how we react to what's happening around us.
• How he asks God to show him the path every morning.
• Why psilocybin made him face darkness.
• How the psilocybin experience changed how he perceives fear.
• Why love and fear are the only emotions, but only love is real.

[01:44:15] The End of Suffering

• Why Kirk used to believe that we need to choose to suffer for a reason.
• 692 Paul Chek | Spirit Gym: How To Find The Truth of Your Soul + Live Your Dream
• How he always wanted to raise his children to be able to handle as much as him.
• Why the consequence of suffering was that he got tired of suffering.

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Power Quotes From The Show

Lack of Sleep = Threat?

"The only animal on this planet that sleep deprives itself on purpose is us. It makes evolutionary sense that our brains perceive lack of sleep as famine or threat because there's some kind of stressor going on. That is why people who don't sleep well or don't sleep enough have higher amygdala tone and higher stress hormones." - Dr. Kirk Parsley

Benefits of Sleep

"It takes 8 hours to recover from being awake for 16 hours. The benefit of sleep is the hormone production, the repair, the acceleration of your immune system, the consolidation of memories, the categorization of emotional events." - Dr. Kirk Parsley

Your Brain Creates Waste Products

"When you go to sleep, the neurons that hold the structure of the brain contract about 30% and they create little channels for the cerebral spinal fluid to flow through. There are ways for it to clear and get outside of the blood brain barrier and get rid of your waste products. If you don't clear that, it's toxic. It's a waste product. It'd be like if you leave feces in your living room, you don't get rid of it, it's toxic. And what happens is that your brain or your body attacks it. It's like a foreign object. So it's an inflammatory response." - Dr. Kirk Parsley

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Links From Today's Show 

• Kirk Parsley MD
• 125 Dr. Kirk Parsley – Sleep To Win
• 256 Navigating Transitions In Relationships, Health, and Wealth: Dr. Kirk Parsley & Krisstina Wise
• 591 Dr. John Lieurance | Biohacking Big Souls: How UFC Fighters + Big Wave Surfers Holistically Heal
• William Dement
• The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal MD
• 692 Paul Chek | Spirit Gym: How To Find The Truth of Your Soul + Live Your Dream

 

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About Kirk Parsley, MD

Kirk Parsley, MD is certified in Hyperbaric Medicine, Anti-Aging Medicine, and Hormone Replacement Therapy, and is currently pursuing national certification in Psychedelic Medicine Therapies.

He dedicates a significant portion of his time to advising non-profit organizations that support the SEAL community and providing healthcare guidance and treatment to veterans.

Operating his practice and supplement business from Austin, Texas, Kirk is an avid outdoorsman and fitness enthusiast.

His philosophy is straightforward: our bodies are built on a 100,000+ year-old model, and we perform best by emulating the lifestyle we evolved to live, as closely as possible, striving to approximate the health metrics of our 25-30-year-old selves (the physiologic peak of most humans).

Kirk firmly believes that 80% of health is derived from focusing on Sleep, Nutrition, Exercise, and Stress mitigation, with a strong emphasis on Sleep.

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