Latest / Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano / Sleep: No More Bed Dread with Michael Byrne

Transcript

Sleep: No More Bed Dread with Michael Byrne · Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano

• Lyndsay Soprano (00:01.43) If you've listened to this show for longer than one episode, you know that I do not sleep. And I haven't since I was about six years, excuse me. And I haven't since I was about nine years old. And the factors that surround the whys behind why it started at such a young age have actually come to surface for me as I've done a lot of exploration about my trauma, unpacking all the things that have happened to me throughout my life. It's all happened by doing this show. This place is so amazing guys. And my sleep over here as an adult is super complicated. And now that it is not only intertwined with my anxiety that I've had forever as we talked about all the time and trauma, but then we've added pain to it. And it is really hard to sleep when you are in pain all night long and all day long. You're exhausted from living in it all day and all you wanna do is get relief at night. And you just can't, I do it every day. I literally, in putting this episode together, I was trying to figure out the best word that I could use for what I feel about my sleep, and the word is dread. I literally dread my bed. I dread my bed at night. I dread it. And I stay up as long as I can every night watching true crime. I mean, maybe that has something to do with my sleep problems, but it's true. I stay up and watch true crime all night so that I don't have to lie there frustrated, you know? And sweaty as hell, because yay, paramenopause. Snoring spouses, snoring dogs, Dogs climbing on you, anxiety about not sleeping. Tied up into a nice little bow with the pain part of it, right? So it's time for us to eliminate this bed dread, which is now what I'm coining it, entirely and have a better relationship with sleep because I am tired of being tired and tired of looking like I'm tired. So let's get into it today. And I can guarantee that this episode is not gonna put you to sleep. So it's the only thing that's not gonna put you to sleep today. So today we're gonna chat a little bit about our biopsychology, our brains and their behavior, neurofeedback, a little bit about sleep studies and doctors and why CBT-I might not be the best fit for some of us, our new sleep technology, and much more. So without further ado, I would like to introduce you to my incredibly handsome guest today, Michael Byrne. Hello, darling. Michael Byrne (02:18.853) Hi, I'm really excited to be here. Thanks for having me on and appreciate the generous compliment there. Lyndsay Soprano (02:23.598) Well, you are. So before I get you in, so Michael is the co-founder of Bia Neuroscience, creators of revolutionary smart sleep mask designed to help you fall asleep faster, stay in restorative sleep longer and wake up energized. With over a decade in the sleep and neurotech industry, Michael has helped millions improve their nights and their days through better science-backed sleep solutions. He knows poor sleep can intensify chronic pain, guys. slow recovery and prolonged illness. That's why he spent years researching the market before launching his company, bridging neuroscience and wearable tech to give the body the rest it needs to heal, reduce inflammation. my gosh, reduce inflammation and restore that energy. All right, so I am rolling out the red carpet for you, babe. I would like to start with a little bit about how and why you got into sleep technology. And then let's take it from there. Michael Byrne (03:18.353) Yeah, the super short answer, the one sentence answer is my wife doesn't sleep well. The longer answer. Yeah. The longer answer is a bit more of a life story and I won't go the whole way back into it. But the general synopsis is I've always been curious about the why behind behavior. And that is what drove me towards Lyndsay Soprano (03:26.114) Thank you for being on the show. was nice having you. Michael Byrne (03:47.729) psychology, biopsychology, neuroscience in the first place. And from there, when I started actually working in the space, sleep was the one thing that was actually able to be applied to everyone. How people's brains react and respond is very, different across most challenges people have. Anxiety, depression, whatever it is that you're facing can look very different in your brain than it could look in my brain. But sleep, is generally pretty universal and quality sleep is unanimously either an accelerator and that acceleration can be in a downward spiral or an upward spiral but the quality of your sleep depending on which way it goes great quality sleep it's going to accelerate your life in every way terrible sleep it's going to accelerate and make things worse as well so that was what really drove me into you know kind of Lyndsay Soprano (04:19.118) Interesting. Lyndsay Soprano (04:35.086) Yeah. Michael Byrne (04:45.137) first principles here of health and sleeping such a vital part of it that I decided to really, really dive into why it happens, how it happens, and what we can do about it. Lyndsay Soprano (04:57.964) Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where we've spent, I mean, think about the sleep market, just alone. How many products we see on Insta and our email marketing and all over, I mean, everything. It's just like, we are all so incredibly sleep deprived. I mean, our society and our culture will always going, going, going, going, we've got to be better at this, we've got to be stronger at that, we've got to make more money, we've got to be better for our kids, better for our family. I mean, all of the things that drive us. and make us as wonderful as we are as people and humans also is damn near killing us at the same time. And it's hard to shut down what my family has always coined BBD, which stands for busy brain disorder. Because it's hard to shut this thing down at night. So can we get into a little bit about why all of this is, why it's so hard for us right now? Well, not just right now, but I mean, these people were out in the before, you know, we had computers and stuff. These people were hunting. for their own food and foraging in the middle of nowhere for stuff getting attacked by wild animals and they were probably sleeping just fine. What's wrong with us? What's wrong with us, Michael? Michael Byrne (05:59.559) Yes, yeah. Yeah, the crazy stat around that that I like to quote is during World War II, 1942, 11 % of people got six hours of sleep or less. So it'd qualify as sleep deprived. During World War II, 11 % of people. In 2012, the number was 44%. So it was four times as worse than during World War II. So, Lyndsay Soprano (06:23.147) my god. Michael Byrne (06:28.475) There has definitely been a change across time. What that is is very difficult to isolate, but the other strongest correlation throughout that time sequence is stress. People are reporting much higher levels of stress. There's a million different things that could be leading to that. As I was saying, mental health, it's very personalized and very unique to the individual. And the fact that it's generalized also usually means, as you were saying yourself, there's a million different ways that your sleep can be. And same thing with stress. There's a million different ways that your body can have its stress reaction enhance and prolonged, which I think is also much more common. The most obvious ones currently in modern day is more or less addiction to things in our phone. One thing that I found quite interesting is this recent theory around intentional boredom. Right now, the habit is to grab your phone. Lyndsay Soprano (07:11.15) One, in Monday is more of a addiction to things in the phone. Something that I found quite interesting is that you can theory around the intentional boredom. Michael Byrne (07:24.909) and you scroll and you find other ways to kind of get your brain to be at that semi-rested state where it's just got nothing more or less going on and it can be itself. But the problem is that it doesn't have nothing going on. It has very stimulating, very fast moving, constantly changing information being pumped into it through, you know, name your social media app or your news or whatever, what have you. Whereas, you know, even 20 years ago, you would have just kind of sat and Lyndsay Soprano (07:25.176) Right. Michael Byrne (07:54.191) watch paint dry a little bit and you would have got bored and you would have gone and done something. But that boredom was very important because that was more or less your brain saying, I'm refreshed, let's go do something. Give me a kick. And not to ramble too long here, but another really fun fact that I have is around sensory deprivation. And I'm not talking about like going to the local spa and going into a float tank. I'm talking true sensory deprivation. There's a room that was done and they've done a bunch of studies in it where Lyndsay Soprano (07:57.59) Yeah. Michael Byrne (08:23.865) It is, you see nothing, hear, well, it's so quiet in there, you can hear your organs working. That's how quiet that space is. Like true sensory deprivation, that most people start to hallucinate within 30 minutes. And the reason why that happens is your brain is constantly seeking stimulation. That's how it works, that's how it lives. Our brains operate as a microcosm of Lyndsay Soprano (08:31.579) my God, that sounds like science fiction. Holy moly. Wow. Michael Byrne (08:52.679) our planet and our world. It's essentially what, your world, it's how your brain operates. It's a neuro firing. Everything comes from the stimulation around you. And when you completely cut that off, it will start making things up so that it continues to fire and continues to be active because it's got a survival of the fittest going on there. When neurons stop firing, they do die off. So to have those, to have stimulation coming through is rewarding for the brain. And it's part of why, you know, things like social media can be so addicting is because your brain Lyndsay Soprano (09:07.598) Hmm. Michael Byrne (09:22.279) constantly crazy. And, you know, obviously we've gone a little bit too far on that side and now we're just consistently overstimulated. Lyndsay Soprano (09:31.554) Gosh, mean, my nieces and nephews the other day took a picture of them. All four of them were sitting with me outside on our couch in the backyard. We're watching a movie together, the five of us. All four of them are on their phone. And I'm like, could you guys be here now and like be here and watch the movie that you guys chose? By the way, it was a horror movie. Horror and true crime. That's what we do around here. No, but it's it's unbelievable how much we're looking down. and we're looking at our social media and you're just watching us. It's scary actually. And we're not even realize how much we're even taking in. Because you see your feed just keeps refreshing, keeps refreshing with more gross stuff in the political environment, with more gross stuff about the Kardashians. You're like, oh my God, I don't need any more gross people in my feed. I went through this whole thing. went Instagram sober for 11 weeks. then it felt really good, but it was so weird to not have that stimulation. And then I started a couple nights ago, I got back on Insta just for a hot minute and I'm like, my God, what the hell is going on here? And it was like two and a half hours later, I didn't even notice it. It went by and I was like, my God, where was I? Like it was almost like I came out of this weird space that I had, my brain had just gone super laser focused into this world that. is true and not true because, you know, a lot of the stuff that we're seeing is not necessarily true either, which is also creepy, but that's for whole other show. Michael Byrne (11:02.158) Yeah. Lyndsay Soprano (11:04.407) So when you're talking about getting a full night's sleep and the things that distract us and the things I love the intentional boredom thing, that's so smart. I'm never a bored human being at all. My sweetie is, he's always bored and I don't understand boredom at all. And so I'm like, I can't tap dance for you all that you got to figure out something to do, honey. And so that intentional boredom, that's so smart when you think about it, cause it's like, I've got to give myself some time. I got to take a beat, but we never give ourselves that time. Michael Byrne (11:21.991) You Lyndsay Soprano (11:34.072) So when it comes to getting ourselves to sleep and figuring out what's going on with each of our brains, because as you said, not every brain is the same. No brains are the same. I certainly want to donate mine to science because there's a lot going up here in this noodle that people need to understand, that's for sure. But when you're talking about neurofeedback and the universal approach to that, can you speak to us a little bit about that and the challenges that come with that? Michael Byrne (12:00.227) Yeah, yeah, there's a handful of different ways I can go about this. I'll start just high level around the basis of what neurofeedback works on. And I'll define neurofeedback in a minute here is a concept called neuroplasticity. So neuroplasticity is, you know, a brain plasticity, brain plastic, the ability for the brain to change itself. And I was alluding to that a little bit earlier of our brain being, you know, a microcosm and survival of the fittest within your neurons. Lyndsay Soprano (12:04.056) Yeah. Michael Byrne (12:28.631) So when a neuron fires, it, nutrients kind of go in and out of the cell and it becomes a bit stronger. And the more it fires, the stronger it gets. And then we start to get these freeways and highways and major roads in our brain of neural pathways that become easier and easier to fire because they're stronger. Same thing, you know, it's easier to drive down the freeway than it is to try and take the side roads through the whole process, I guess, depends where you live for that. But generally speaking, that's the intent that The same thing kind of happens in our brain. We get these pathways that are very strongly encouraged and then the other pathways die off. What neurofeedback intends to do is analyze if those pathways are actually healthy. Just because they're just because those pathways are dominant doesn't mean they're the pathway that is good for you. It's just what has happened. For whatever reason that has become the dominant pathway for you. So a lot of what especially traditional neurofeedback clinics and what they're trying to do is more of this getting your brain to diversify those options and create new channels and pathways. you know, simple example is something like a concussion where there's, you know, damage on those freeways, physical damage on those freeways, and you keep trying to drive right through this concrete block on the freeway isn't going to work. neurofeedback is kind of coaching your brain to take the farmer's road. Lyndsay Soprano (13:48.344) Yeah. Michael Byrne (13:52.592) And if you drive it enough, it'll get deeper and deeper and it'll become a stronger and stronger road. And then that can become the new freeway and that detour becomes the way around that damage. going back to providing an actual definition here. So the neurofeedback is feedback to the brain. So you measure the brain activity and then you provide feedback to the brain based on the activity you measure. So in that case, using the freeway example, right now, brain's just driving down that freeway and it's just hitting the divider and constantly doing that because it doesn't know there's another option. But once you start to, you know, kind of hold up that mirror to it of, hey, you're driving into a blockade. yeah, then it can start to create that pathway around it and work around the blockade there. And then it will reinforce that, reinforce that, reinforce that. So it gets those nutrients, gets stronger. And now you've got that new pathway. So neural feedback is feedback to the brain, essentially in a Lyndsay Soprano (14:33.462) Yeah, hello. Yeah. Michael Byrne (14:52.047) language that the brain understands using its own formal language. Lyndsay Soprano (14:55.598) It so cool. I mean, it really is. It reminds me actually to a little bit. I had this random thing with my heart and I had to have heart surgery and I had a heart ablation and my heart had created something called Wolf-Parkinson's-White syndrome and is on the left side of my heart. So they cut a hole through my heart, blah, blah. And then they went in there, they had said it, my heart almost looked like an ant farm because my heart had been making so many, had been trying so hard to create its electrical circuit over and over and over. that it ended up just giving me a heart attack at 30. And it was something that we thought was my asthma medication as a kid. And it wasn't, but it does, that's just the first thing that reminded me of it is it created, it burst down some of those walls, it created new pathways, and then my heart has been fine since then. our bodies are so fricking immaculate. My God, they're amazing, aren't they? Michael Byrne (15:45.815) Yeah, it's incredible. So much of it, if we can get out of our own way, you know? Lyndsay Soprano (15:50.336) No kidding. Yeah, we don't we take art. We take our bodies and our brains and all the organs within them. That's little as we want to hear from them, by the way, because I don't like hearing my organ instantly. My stomach went gurgle. I'm like, I could not be in a complete place where I'm hearing all my body organs. But so how does this how does this play into sleep then? Michael Byrne (16:11.015) Mm-hmm. Yeah, so for sleep, there's a handful of different ways you could look at it. A lot of the sleep struggles people face, and let's take that stress example, that correlation that we've seen across time, stress is very much an emotional experience and response. And a lot of the times, emotions get tied to certain circumstances, certain scenarios, certain situations, and that often happens, you Lyndsay Soprano (16:25.08) Mm-hmm. Michael Byrne (16:40.273) with your bed and with your bedroom, you start to associate this dread of going to sleep. That you really don't wanna be in that space because of that frustration you've had or whatever it is. And for some people, it's not even necessarily that deep. It's not even bed dread. It's just a new space for them. But for them, it's not a relaxation space. The association in their brain isn't unwinding, relaxing. Lyndsay Soprano (17:07.523) Bright. Michael Byrne (17:07.661) no form of stimulation, maybe like a bit of meditation at most, but trying to get that experience of really calming yourself down isn't the association with the bedroom. So it's hard for your brain to go down that pathway of operating at full tilts all the way down to deep sleep and full rest and recovery. Those are more or less offset ends of the spectrum there that you're asking your brain to do when you're providing zero assistance. process. Lyndsay Soprano (17:37.89) Right. Watching true crime and on our phones while we're in our bed trying to wonder why we're not falling asleep. mean that? Michael Byrne (17:44.199) or whatever it may be. I'm not here to judge. If it works for you, it works. So what we do with neurofeedback in that case is essentially guiding your brain through those processes of going 1,000 miles a minute to 900 miles, 800 miles, 700 miles and get that progression. And across time, you'll start to associate Lyndsay Soprano (17:46.85) Throw me under the bus, it's okay. Clearly it's not. Michael Byrne (18:12.335) bedroom with that sleep process if we continuously allow that cycle to happen of quieting down, relaxing, and entering those sleep stages. Going through the full sleep architecture of the various sleep stages and allowing your brain to get that recovery that it's craving. Lyndsay Soprano (18:17.774) Mm-hmm. Lyndsay Soprano (18:29.528) Well, yeah. And with that, we talk about this all the time and my parents and I have talked about it over the years, ever since I've just been an insomniac my whole life. It's like, at some point it's going to catch up with me. And 10 years ago is when I was diagnosed with a CRPS baloney. And I don't know if it has anything to do with that. There's a lot of factors that are involved with chronic illness and pain. know that it's not just one thing. I'm not completely a moron over here, but it's, It's been it's been so long now since I have had what I would call a decent night of sleep. I don't even know what that is, what it should even feel like. I don't know what I'm supposed to feel like when I wake up. I'm like, I don't know anything other than feeling like crap. And so I'm like, well, I guess this is what everybody else feels like when they wake up. You know, like I don't know anything other than this. So it's almost like a little daunting and scary for me. What's going to come out of getting sleep? Well, I know that healing and recovering will happen when I can sleep. How am I going to get better if I can't sleep? It's nuts. Michael Byrne (19:36.655) Yeah, yeah, there's a couple of things there. One of them is I consider sleep an accelerator. I can't recall if I talked about this already, so I apologize if I'm repeating, but yeah, I consider it an accelerator. you know, historically exercise and diet were kind of considered the pillars of health. Sleep is starting to be integrated in that as well. But the simplest example for me is exercise and diet. Like if have a terrible night's sleep, Lyndsay Soprano (19:48.686) No, you didn't. You didn't. Lyndsay Soprano (19:56.685) Right. Michael Byrne (20:05.263) All I want to eat is junk food. I don't want to take time to cook a meal and go through a recipe. I don't want to wait for everything to, yeah, I don't want to roast the veggies, dice them up. Give me a cookie. Yeah, you know, like that's all I want. And I don't want to go to the gym. Like I'm tired. Like I'm not going to go to the gym when I'm exhausted. Whereas when I have a great night's sleep, I've got energy. Like, yeah, I'd love, you know, what'd be awesome is creating like a healthy, nutritious meal. That would be fantastic, right? Lyndsay Soprano (20:08.672) Uh-uh. Lyndsay Soprano (20:13.774) time for this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Michael Byrne (20:32.719) And then, know what, I feel great, I'm gonna go to the gym. So it accelerates. And when it goes well, it accelerates that exercise and nutrition and creates it easier and easier to be healthier. But when you're not getting the great sleep, it's harder and harder to be healthier. And you're fighting yourself in that process and it accelerates the pathway. The same thing can be said about chronic pain. If you get a terrible night's sleep, your nervous system is on edge. You're gonna feel more pain. Well, and guess what? If you're in more pain, you're not gonna sleep as well. Lyndsay Soprano (20:56.525) Mm-hmm. Michael Byrne (21:02.617) sleep as well, you feel more pain. And then now you're stuck in this vicious cycle that is very difficult to get out of. And as you're saying, there's thousands of sleep products out there. And I think this is part of why is one, there's a million different ways to have a point in sleep. So there's tons of products for all the different methods, but also because for people, the fishbowl experience you're thinking you were describing of, well, this is all I know. Waking up for me is waking up miserable is what everyone must feel like because you can't feel someone else's experience waking up So it has a bit of this isolation isolated experience to it that you know one we're wanting to change with our company, but two is you you try Whatever some some product melatonin or black up lines you start to sleep a bit better and you feel better But your bar started so low that you went from you know, five out of 100 to seven out of 100, and proportionally, you just went up 40%. Your sleep must be amazing. And then you get used to it. And you realize, okay, you know what, I still feel kind of miserable. And that the baseline resetting happens. And now your bar is just, it's gone up a bit, which generally speaking is probably better for your health, but the emotional experience with it is still not great. And you still have the frustration because you're not truly getting that level of benefit you were actually fully seeking. Lyndsay Soprano (22:09.272) Yeah. Lyndsay Soprano (22:28.098) Yeah, and I mean, you're triggered easier. You're on edge far more. People piss you off far more. You're like, God, what the hell is wrong with you today? know, like, just that stuff. And like, we've talked about this a little bit, but we've been under construction in our home for almost two years now, and I have had it. Like, this house is filled with so many people all day long, every day, and I've got dogs barking and like... Michael Byrne (22:36.901) Yeah. Lyndsay Soprano (22:53.496) Compressors going off and they started a little mini fire thing. And so the fire alarms went off yesterday and they went off again today. And it's just been like all that constant noise and all the constant stress that's in your living environment. It's like, my God. And I can feel it in my body. Like every noise, every little tink, every vacuum, every sound, every paint stroke. It's like, my gosh, just get out of my space so that I can finally nest in here. and I can set up this beautiful space for me to be able to rest and relax and get into where I want to be, which is this relaxed state where I can start to truly heal because my body's just absolutely pooped out by the end of the day. And I go, go, go, go, go. And I still have this bitching personality all day too and I don't know how it happens. But it's literally me mind over mattering it all day long. You know, and this show absolutely gives me the most energy on the planet because I get to meet people like you and have conversations like this. And it leads more towards healing for myself and for our audience and for you as well. And it's just, it's such a neat thing to be able to talk about it. But why are we so, why are we so, why are we surrounded with so many challenges? I know we're, we do our sleep studies, we have our sleep doctors, we've got our CBTI, we've got all of the things, right? Why are all of these things failing us? Michael Byrne (24:11.503) Yeah, that is a great question. Lyndsay Soprano (24:15.886) and three bagillion supplements. Michael Byrne (24:17.671) Yeah. So I'm trying to think of how long of an answer I want to give you here. In terms of understanding sleep, it is quite new. Using the exercise and diet examples, know, exercise wasn't very well understood, you know, 150 years ago. But throughout the Industrial Revolution, we stopped doing, know, majority of us did jobs that were physical labor in some form or another. And we more and more moved into the office and we started to realize, you know, permanently sitting isn't healthy. Hey, maybe we should move our bodies. And we started to understand exercise a bit more. And similar thing with diet, with globalization of the food chain. We used to just eat from whatever farms were available around you because you didn't have access to, you know, corn from Peru and grapes from Italy. Like that just wasn't plausible at all. Lyndsay Soprano (25:12.14) Yeah, you're not getting the goat cheese from the goat that's right there across from you. Like when I go to my Italy. Yeah. Michael Byrne (25:15.143) Exactly, you ate what was accessible. Yeah. But what is accessible has changed drastically. And with that, we started to understand diet quite a bit more because of over accessible information on that side. And with sleep, it wasn't until about the 70s until the real first sleep study happened. So it's more or less as a research field, 50 years old, five zero, that's quite young. And now, Lyndsay Soprano (25:43.702) Ja, no Ken. Michael Byrne (25:45.095) Fortunately, it came at a time with technology absolutely booming and neuroscience booming, so we're getting a very accelerated understanding of what's happening with our sleep. But with that being said, our understanding is still very vague and not well understood. So that, think, actually just part of the problem is the ambiguity. We don't have answers. We're working on getting those answers, but we don't know the answers. So our solutions are very much you know, kind of like putting their finger up to the wind and going with what we're using the best we can for the information we have, but the information we have is limited. there is, you know, one of the major challenges is getting quality data that is viable and usable. I think that would be a nice transition to the next part is historically in the scientific world, studies were almost always done on males for a handful of reasons, but the Lyndsay Soprano (26:18.604) Yeah, yeah, exactly. Michael Byrne (26:44.579) most generous one being is that the hormone cycles are much milder in men, so it was easier to reduce variables. However, as I said, the most generous way of describing it. But with that being said, there's obviously a lot of resource rich data that was missed in that process because understanding our hormones were not Lyndsay Soprano (26:54.798) The man strikes again. Michael Byrne (27:13.617) properly studied in the process either. By isolating and removing that variable, you don't understand it. And on top of that, sleep issues are predominantly female, especially around things like insomnia. So I think that's also been an even further detriment to our understanding of sleep and understanding of building a solution that actually works for people. that was, know, when we were starting this company, we spent two years interviewing doctors, researchers, technicians themselves, experts, and of course, working in the space for quite a while talking to customers and watching my wife throughout the experience as well has definitely been incredibly insightful to where the gaps are. And to finally get to the answer to your question of why aren't solutions working, I think it's because they're generally very scientifically driven, which tend to be single faceted solutions. because they've isolated all these variables. know, they've taken, take all of these things out and in these unique scenarios, here's a medical solution that will help you if you fit this niche. But the problem is that niche usually only applies to a very small percentage of the population. And then on the other side of things, it's being generalized too heavily where, hey, take a melatonin supplement and it's going to fix all of your sleep issues when Lyndsay Soprano (28:23.662) Mm-hmm. Michael Byrne (28:40.423) It could not be the issue of melatonin at all. It could be a different type of stress issue. It could be pain. It could be a hundred other different things. It could be your sleep environment. be your association with it. There's so many different things that could be going on that we're kind of over-specifying or over-generalizing. And we wanted to build something that was a multifaceted tool in the first place. Lyndsay Soprano (28:51.95) Yeah. Michael Byrne (29:06.552) It didn't just address one thing, it's looking at 10 different ways in previous sleep. Combining it all into one thing so you don't have to try and tweak and adjust 10 different things before bed each night and try 20 different products to find the 10 that kind of helps. And have it all in one spot, simple, easy to use, just press the power button and let it do its thing. Lyndsay Soprano (29:28.238) It's amazing, because it's true, like literally the drawers next to my bedside have more damn sleep things in it. I've got more rubs and creams and sprays and spritzes and smells and masks and... Michael Byrne (29:43.579) Yeah. Lyndsay Soprano (29:43.734) massage stuff and pills and supplements and I'm just gummies. just like, I am so tired of spending money on stuff. that doesn't work. And B, I'm kind of like at night now I'm like, well, I'm just gonna try that, try that, try that. Let's hope for the best. It's just a tchotchke of things that I put in my body sometimes at night when I'm super, super tired. like, I'll take anything right now to just get a good night's sleep. And then what happens when I end up doing that? I ended up feeling like absolute shit the next morning because I'd rather feel like the kind of shit I'm used to waking up feeling like because I know how to handle that. I can't handle that other side. And that's where my bed dread comes from because I'm like, well, what's the lesser of two evils here? I'm going to be able to do what I'm used to doing, which has been highly successful, highly functional, like, you know, all the things show up. Michael Byrne (30:18.567) Yeah. Lyndsay Soprano (30:36.15) every day and no matter what, unless I'm in the bloody hospital and other than that, I show up and I do life like this every day. But if I take something new or funky and I did the other night a couple nights ago and I woke up and I'm like, I am a zombie face. I have no idea how anybody does this. This is nuts. So taking, pulling my drawers out and dumping them in the trash, right? Which is what I want to be able to do. Let's talk about the technology of your company and this mass now. Just as a complete sidebar, guys, how I found this guy was a couple years ago, I ended up being an early investor because I was like, ooh, new sleep mask, I'm in. So I donated whatever the heck money I did. I don't even remember now. And a couple hundred bucks or something. And then I get these random founders updates about what's going on. And then it kind of went dark for a while. And I was like, I wonder what's happening right now. So I started doing some more research and then I started getting another bunch of emails and then I reached out to this character. Talk to me about your technology, what this mask is all about, because I actually want to know more about it myself. As an investor in your company, good sir. I want to know more about it for sure. And so do our listeners. Michael Byrne (31:46.454) Yeah. Yeah, I'll start. I'll start very high level and then let's dive in. So from what we built is a smart sleep mask that measures and improves the entire sleep cycle. So it's not just falling asleep, staying asleep or waking up. It's every aspect of that. So simple explanation, you put on the mask, turn it on. You'll start to hear music play. This music was designed by neuroscientists. It's going to help guide your brain into a relaxed state. We can dive into that in a little bit. Lyndsay Soprano (31:50.584) Yeah, yeah. Michael Byrne (32:15.217) There's a coaching aspect so that your brain learns across time. So the more you use it, the better it will get and it'll help you fall asleep. So it's getting your brain to unwind, to relax, to associate, know, create those associations with the bedroom as well, but to just kind of override and let your brain go into that relaxed state. Once you fall asleep, a quiet sound, but it does continue to work. So throughout the night, it is still going to continue to work throughout that entire night to help you stay asleep, but also to help make sure you get that proper sleep architecture. so that you're going through all the different stages of sleep, so you're getting that right amount of recovery. And then as you approach your alarm, so whatever you set your alarm for is 7 a.m., 6.30, the music's gonna start to change. It's gonna become a bit more energizing, it's gonna start to pull you out. And one thing we've been able to do demos around town and at different trade shows, and the most liked aspect of the experience was actually as that's going, there's also a sunrise inside the mask. So because it's a sleep mask, we have tech inside there. We worked with optical engineers on this to mimic a sunrise inside the mask. that way, one, it's giving cues to your body, like, hey, sun is rising, it's time to wake up. Helps with things like jet lag and shift work as well. But two, it's just a very pleasant way to wake up, of just having this glowing sunrise right inside the mask. You don't have to move a muscle, get the sunrise right there. We're going to add affirmations into that too, so optional affirmations. Lyndsay Soprano (33:39.678) Wow. Michael Byrne (33:40.849) So just hear something positive first thing, so that way you can start the day. Lyndsay Soprano (33:43.694) Cool. That is so amazing. I'm clapping right now for those of you that aren't watching. Well, because I, so I sleep with a mask. It's just a, from a company called Drowsy and it's just like a silk mask and it fricking makes me hot and sweaty on top of everything else. But I do have like anxiety if it falls off in the middle of the night and I find it, it's either like wrapped around my arm or it's under a pillow. And I have six of them in my sleep drawers. So I always can go grab for another one when I can't find it. And I love the sunset thing because nothing's worse than when I wake up and I take the mask off and we wake up very early in our household. So like 3, 15, 4 o'clock in the morning. So I don't get the sunrise, right? And neither does my sweetie. He doesn't get it until after he's already done his show in the morning. And so that is incredible. How does that work when you're a shift worker, for example, where you do have these early mornings where you're like, our bodies aren't supposed to be really waking up to a sunset at 3 o'clock in the morning. How does that work? Michael Byrne (34:42.959) Yeah, your body will adjust based on the stimulation it receives. So if you're waking up at three and going to bed quite early, the sun set before you go to sleep will actually, especially if you fully experience it, you don't put yourself in a windowless room, but if you experience that sunset, it does change your hormones inside your body to kind of skew, okay, sun's going down, that's time for us to go lie down and we'll start that process. Lyndsay Soprano (34:56.386) Yes. Yeah. Lyndsay Soprano (35:09.902) Mmm. Michael Byrne (35:11.633) Sunrises do a very similar thing of, okay, the day is starting, it's time to wake up, time to get the hormones moving and energize. So if you don't get that right away when you wake up, it's just a tougher way to wake up. It's harder to get out of bed, it's harder to get the energy moving, and then you're kind of fighting against that to start your day. And there's quite a bit of research on the first thing you hear during the day, how much it actually impacts your mood throughout the day. That's part of why we wanna do affirmations, but. Lyndsay Soprano (35:24.781) Yeah. Lyndsay Soprano (35:38.062) Mm. Michael Byrne (35:40.219) How you start the day is gonna have a big, your first step is a pretty big step. And we wanna make sure that first step you take every day is a pleasant. Lyndsay Soprano (35:45.24) for sure. Lyndsay Soprano (35:50.318) That's so incredible because we talk about with him and he's, I think I mentioned to you, but he's absolutely addicted to Ambien. And because he's always nervous that he's not gonna be able to get to sleep and that he's not gonna be able to wake up and he's not gonna be able to do his show because his show is him. It's just, it's part of his ego, it's part of who he is. And his circadian rhythms are just like, that's what it is. This guy's steak sandwiches at 5.45 in the morning. I'm like, what is going on here? Are you a truck driver? What's happening? Are we at Denny's? Michael Byrne (36:15.015) You Lyndsay Soprano (36:15.99) And so he has such a different way of his morning than I do. And in the morning, especially when I haven't had sleep and my brain is processing, even though I'm not up yet, like doing the things with him that early, I'm still up because I've been up mostly the whole night anyway. But I'm still up, I'm in bed and I'm having a conversation with Thelma and Louise, which are my left and right legs. And I'm just talking them like, all right, this is how we're gonna do this day. We've got to get up, we got to do the grind. It's gonna suck for the first like two to three hours, but you're gonna make it. And the second I come downstairs, he starts yapping about whatever, because he's already been doing a show for three hours, he's in talk radio. And it's like, holy moly, I need more time to adjust and let my body, apparently my hormones are already fired up before they're even ready to. And that's amazing. I didn't even realize how important that was, the sunset and the sunrise at all, outside of it's time to wake up. Interesting, very interesting. Michael Byrne (37:13.423) Yeah. Yeah. Lyndsay Soprano (37:15.214) All right, keep going. Michael Byrne (37:17.479) Yeah, so that's the sunrise, sunset side in terms of like the falling asleep side and what we're doing there. So I mentioned we have this music that you hear that kind of guides your brain to a relaxed state. It's a technique called brain entrainment, but the way it works is the music has been engineered and designed to mimic brain states. And what I mean by that is, you know, the active hearing right now, you know, whoever's listening to this, you're hearing it through some form of speaker. Lyndsay Soprano (37:23.256) Yeah. Michael Byrne (37:46.405) almost always through air conduction, which means there's a speaker that is moving in a pattern that creates sound waves through the air, travels through your ear canal, moves some bones in your ear that move liquid inside a part of your ear called your cochlea. Inside there, there's some tiny little hairs that will send neural signals down into your brain. And that is how you're hearing my voice right now. That's why it has different reverberations than your best friend or whoever you're listening to, the changes in how our voices move, changes how those hairs inside your ear move and changes how neurons fire inside your brain. So what we did is engineered the music so that it moves those things so that way when it fires in your brain, it's actually mimicking a brain state. So, you know, if your brain's going a thousand miles a minute, we're playing audio that's like 900 miles a minute. So, but the act of hearing the music is getting your brain to fire at that. Lyndsay Soprano (38:27.234) Hmm. Michael Byrne (38:46.247) pattern. And what we do is we measure throughout this process as well. You know, we talking before about the need for quality data and how, you know, we haven't gone all the way down that path. can jump back to that one. But we measure everything as it's happening as well. So we can see you start to relax. We can see you go from a thousand and nine fifty to nine hundred. As you're doing that, our music is adapting with you and it's going quieter and quieter and quieter and adjusting. So that way. Lyndsay Soprano (38:46.956) Hmm. Lyndsay Soprano (38:54.285) Yeah. Lyndsay Soprano (39:09.716) Whoa, that's so cool. Michael Byrne (39:13.827) It's continuously guiding you to that relaxed state. And actually as you start to fall asleep, it just quiets down, but it will continue to do that so that you go from a thousand miles a minute to a mile a minute and your brain is starting to relax and recover. It will continue to work throughout that night because there's a lot of research on the different stages of sleep. So I'll quickly hammer through these. There's stage one. That stage you feel conscious. You're aware of your thoughts. but they're a bit disjointed and your brain starts to fire in a bit more of a rhythmic pattern than it does when it's awake. Stage two is a bit more of an accelerated version of that. They're often grouped together. Stage one, stage two are often called light sleep. Then there's deep sleep or stage three. That is when your brain starts to fire very rhythmically and actually a fluid starts to pump through your brain. And that fluid is essentially garbage trucks cleaning out all the dead neurons that I was referring to before, dead dendrites. dead cells that are not being used. It's just kind of flushing all of those out and getting rid of them. That's an important thing to note for NAPs. If we want to dive into NAPs, we'll come back to that too. And then there's REM sleep, which is typically where you have dreams. So those are the different stages of sleep. And a lot of people don't get much REM or stage three sleep. And a lot of that is due to just high stress, as I was mentioning before, that the brain stays on a higher level of alert, that it's kind of on edge, that it's not allowing itself to get into those more vulnerable states. because typically during REM, your body is paralyzed and typically stage three sleep, your brain is just so deep asleep, you don't really wake up as much. So those are more vulnerable states from the most rudimentary evolutionary perspective. So our brains are sensitive to going into those states and will allow your brain to get into those states because no tiger is gonna be jumping through your window in your 12th floor apartment. You're fine, you can sleep. Lyndsay Soprano (40:50.542) You're good. We're not gonna have any, know, Jack the Ripper's coming in. I've got to, I just have to drop my true crime in here. I mean, I don't know what else to do. Lock your doors, ladies. Michael Byrne (41:09.543) Just lock your doors, but yeah, yeah. Lyndsay Soprano (41:18.254) don't have to lock my door because I've never been REM. my goodness. Well, and it's interesting actually, since you mentioned naps, I would like to talk about that since we're just here about it because I have started to randomly just get so tired in the middle of my day, like two, three o'clock. And I know everyone's like, it's two, three o'clock. Everybody wants a cup of coffee or whatever. I don't drink caffeine at all, which is amazing considering my energy level, right? I do not drink caffeine. So how I have, again, Michael Byrne (41:20.89) Yeah Lyndsay Soprano (41:46.198) donate my brain to medical science because I don't get it. But I've just started to nap and but it feels like I'm crashing and burning and I can go down real fast lately and then I come up and I don't necessarily feel fairly rejuvenated. I feel like my god I need to sleep longer and I know this is probably a one-off situation people like myself who are just incredibly sleep deprived but Michael Byrne (42:06.672) Thank Lyndsay Soprano (42:12.946) Can we talk about the benefits of napping? Because I know everyone's like, if you get a quick 20 minutes, you're good to go. And everybody's got their own theory on it. So if you could nap that out for us. Michael Byrne (42:18.14) Hmm. Michael Byrne (42:23.155) Yes, math of the nap. There's generally two negative experiences with napping. One is what you're describing where you're not getting sufficient rest and that's generally sleep deprivation. I wouldn't put that on napping in particular. It's just your brain was starting to relax and didn't get to have that whole experience and it's creating it, it's needing it. It's referred to as sleep drive, the drive that Lyndsay Soprano (42:25.678) Mouth and out. Lyndsay Soprano (42:38.839) Yeah. Lyndsay Soprano (42:48.503) Right. Yeah. Michael Byrne (42:52.645) your body has to sleep. Your body's having it, it's just not getting it. So that's one of the negative experiences with napping is, well, crap, did that actually help? Because I just feel worse. And I guess if you wanted to try and objectively measure sleep in terms of numbers and minutes, sure, it might have helped. But if it's giving you a terrible experience throughout the day, did it really? I would debate that. The other negative experience people have with naps is around Lyndsay Soprano (42:55.266) Mm-hmm. Lyndsay Soprano (43:15.907) Yeah. Michael Byrne (43:22.599) waking up and feeling groggy in that moment. And typically what's happening in those is that you're going through, you went down to nap and you went through stage one sleep, stage two, and then you went into stage three. And then you're waking up when your body hasn't had enough time to really flush all those fluids out of your brain. So those fluids started to pump in and they started, know, the garbage rates started and then you wake up and the garbage trucks are all over the road and you're not feeling. Lyndsay Soprano (43:49.307) They're being towed off by a tow truck. Yeah, yeah. Michael Byrne (43:51.743) Exactly. Yeah. So you don't feel great. Things haven't properly had the ability to go through that whole cycle. Your brain's full of fluid that it's not normally used to having when in a conscious state. So you feel crappy. It was part of what we designed for our, we have a power nap function. We call it a power nap because when we try and keep it to 20 to 30 minutes, if you're going past that, just call it a small sleep. But we do 20 or 30 minutes and the objective there is to keep you at stage two sleep the deepest. So that guidance that I was referring to before, instead of guiding you through the whole sleep architecture, we're gonna encourage your brain to stay in that later stages of sleep of stage one, stage two. So that way when you set a 30 minute nap, 10 minutes before, things become more energizing, lights start coming on inside the mask to wake you up. It's waking you up from not as deep of a sleep and it's preventing you from getting that grogginess. do get that quick 20 minute refresher. And when you have a great nap experience like that, yeah, they're pretty amazing. And I absolutely love being able to take those during the day. If I can find 15, 20 minutes, it's an amazing experience. Lyndsay Soprano (44:59.278) Well, I think it's interesting that we have to find 15 to 20 minutes also. That's part of the problem. If I could find 15 minutes to actually rest my brain for a hot minute, it'd be great. it's, you know, my parents have always had problems with sleep. My spouse has, I never call him spouse. That is weird. I am sleep deprived. Michael Byrne (45:03.095) Yeah, yeah, that's the statement in itself. Yeah. Yeah. Lyndsay Soprano (45:22.22) My sweetie has problems with sleep. That's why he eats ambient like Skittles. you know, it's we're all we're all doing all the things to try to get a better night's sleep. And this technology is so interesting. So when it comes to going to bed at night, though, like for a full night, not just a little nap. How long does it take? You put the explain a little bit about how like the process. I want to go to bed now. Now, what do I do? Michael Byrne (45:37.563) Mm-hmm. Michael Byrne (45:44.997) Yeah, like with the mask. Yeah, so, yes, yeah. So, that one is actually a side note. There's some studies showing that it helps with memory formation. And if you smell it overnight, especially during REM, it actually increases memory consolidation. Lyndsay Soprano (45:47.35) Yeah. Cause I know what I do. Lyndsay Soprano (45:53.41) Lots of lavender. Lyndsay Soprano (46:09.07) Well, great, I'm doing one good thing at night. Michael Byrne (46:14.279) So yeah, put on, you know, grab the BSC mask, you put it on. You've got a pre-programmed sleep routine if you've got your alarm or whatever, you just power it on and let it go or otherwise set your alarm. We're going to sort of pick up the activity of what's going on inside your brain and the music will adapt and adjust to that. So, you know, if you're already exhausted, the music's going to start in a more relaxed state and guide you even further so you fall asleep faster. Lyndsay Soprano (46:41.696) It already just knows that? Michael Byrne (46:43.668) It'll know it within a millisecond of putting it on. Lyndsay Soprano (46:45.378) Holy crap, like you're not just like I'm pooped in an app or anything like it literally reads how tired you are. You have to have me have this thing and give you data. I'm not even kidding. This is gonna be amazing. You're like, how is this girl even functioning? I'm a walking zombie. Michael Byrne (46:51.719) You were measuring. Yeah, imagine sprint. Michael Byrne (47:05.031) Yeah, it measures brain activity exactly. During COVID times with the temperature guns, we essentially miniaturize that and put it on there too. So we have temperature, we have movement and head positioning, which I'm actually quite excited for head positioning, because if you wake up with like neck pain or what have you, we can actually start to isolate certain sleeping positions that impact that. And then we also have a microphone in there for Lyndsay Soprano (47:08.289) Wow. Lyndsay Soprano (47:26.508) Yeah, yeah. Lyndsay Soprano (47:30.574) Wow. Michael Byrne (47:34.341) know, cell cues for breathing, also interruptions, snoring, what have you, so we can detect all of those. All of those all operate on device without a signal. So we have an incredibly powerful chip on here, AI capabilities, that can all operate independently. So no Bluetooth, no Wi-Fi, it does it all on its own. And because that, it's also much faster and why it can operate on a millisecond basis, because it doesn't need to package that information, Bluetooth it to your phone, phone says, okay, based on this data, this is what you need to do to adjust the audio. Lyndsay Soprano (48:03.766) Right, yeah. Michael Byrne (48:04.7) It just instant happens right there on device. Lyndsay Soprano (48:09.048) So cool. It is so cool. And like you were talking earlier about like, we were talking about neurofeedback and I've mentioned to you on our meet and greet about how I just started doing ketamine, right? And doing neuroplasticity. So I'm learning about a little bit more about ketamine. And one of the things that the ketamine thing is there's an app and I have to turn on the thing and I have to do that. But it does guide me through. the entire experience of in it. And it's, I've got certain music that's playing and I've got like all the vocals that start in the beginning that kind of guide me into where I'm going. And then the medicine kicks in and then I go into a little mini K-hole and I'm listening to music, but I'm still aware of what's going on around me mostly. But I come, but I end up coming out of it almost like way more energized than I feel like I should be. It's so weird. And I don't know the side, the side, you did a couple of sidebars. So just did one. But how fast it happens and having to use an app and having to go into it and physically going through that process when all I'm trying to do is just sit there and like get into the zone and I'm worried about like, did I do the chime right? Did I do the thing right? You know, all of those things, get in the way. All these tools get in the way of me actually trying to do what I'm trying to actually do here. And this is just incredible. I didn't even know it was gonna be so cool when I invested in your company. Michael Byrne (49:13.831) Hmm. Yes. Lyndsay Soprano (49:29.614) It really truly is and you guys have done so much. How long ago did you start this company? Michael Byrne (49:36.295) It's been four and a half years. We've been building the product for nearly three years now on the actual like physically building. It's four and a half, years, five years ago now that we launched, we did that couple of years of initial building and researching and what's the best way to measure? What's the best way to improve? How are people going to respond to that? A lot of what we do is also called passive. know passive neurofeedback, a lot of it doesn't require conscious action. It's just, Lyndsay Soprano (49:42.392) Hmm. Yeah. Lyndsay Soprano (50:04.227) Sure. Michael Byrne (50:05.445) All you need to do is listen and just let your brain do what it's going to do and we'll take it from there. So a lot of those details just took a ton of time and research and we still haven't fully launched. We'll be launching early next year, very final stages here. We were talking a little bit about this earlier, like where we're at. Just as we cross over a million lines of code in just the firmware side of the product. So it is an incredibly complex product. Lyndsay Soprano (50:14.606) Sure. Lyndsay Soprano (50:23.576) Yeah. Michael Byrne (50:33.415) We've finalized design, so we're getting those manufactured currently as well. So we can do some internal testing because we have very high standards. We're not a medical product, we're general consumer, but we're following medical design practices to make it as safe as possible, make sure we're meeting the most, the highest possible standards for the product to get it made and get it produced. So with that, we've got a bunch of internal testing, then we go to third party testing and Lyndsay Soprano (50:48.042) interesting. Michael Byrne (51:03.341) and certifications and then one final beta test and then full launch. Lyndsay Soprano (51:08.686) Oh my gosh, I'm so excited for you. And I'm excited for our listeners and myself as well. Can you tell, I know what it looks like and I know what it, the whole, I haven't worn it, but I've seen it. Can you talk a little bit about like, is it bulky? How does it fit? A little bit about that because I know with me, I like, I put my beats on at night when I can't sleep. I, well, that's when I can't sleep. I put my beats on so I can at least listen to some meditation and so I can listen, but I can't lay on my right side and I can't lay on my left. Like it's so uncomfortable because it. Michael Byrne (51:32.291) Thank Lyndsay Soprano (51:36.183) It's heavy. It's bulky. Like both of us are wearing these things right now. Like what is the experience for the end user in that regard? Michael Byrne (51:40.423) Yes. Michael Byrne (51:44.145) Yeah, so the mask itself, we've had two separate tracks, more or less, or three. There's the coding, there's the electronics, and then there's a mask. The mask, we spent over two years on the design. We were very meticulous on this. For us, if it's not comfortable, it's not viable. And we've spent a ton of time on that. Things like the type of foam we use, the layers of the foam, how those layers align. Lyndsay Soprano (51:54.177) Mm-hmm. Lyndsay Soprano (52:04.664) Mm-hmm. Michael Byrne (52:12.743) We looked at over 15,000 face scans to make sure it's going to be comfortable on people's faces, as well as, you you're talking about ear pressure, that also dictated some of the electronics design. So we use conduction speakers, so they're bone conduction, so they go through the bones rather than through the air. So because of that, there's no hard parts over your ears. All the electronics sit right here, so as long as you don't sleep, you know, nose down into your pillow. Lyndsay Soprano (52:16.706) Whoa. Michael Byrne (52:41.863) you're not going to feel them. You won't even know they're there. So yeah, I spent a ton of time on that. The mask, generally speaking, is a bit bulkier. That was a conscious decision. When we were testing the different types of comfort, what we found is when you went thinner, you created pressure points. Even when it's super soft, if you've got a thin part, the only part where you can really truly be thin is kind of like tucked behind the ear, because it's not the point of pressure. It's the point of pressure is on your ear. Lyndsay Soprano (52:43.758) Wow, that's so cool. Michael Byrne (53:11.769) generally one on the bulkier side so that way when you do lie down it's more like lying on a pillow than it is like lying on part of your sleep mask. So we made it a little bit thicker for the purpose of Lyndsay Soprano (53:22.51) That's awesome. Yeah, because it does look real pillow-esque, if you will, versus hardware-esque, which is what all of these would... Because I've tried the gamut of things and it looks, yeah, it just looks like a pillow on your face, but with all of this amazing technology. cannot believe... I'm still like back at the whole millisecond thing of what it's telling you your brain is doing. That is absolutely amazing. I'm so proud of you guys. I am because it's so neat to be... Michael Byrne (53:29.137) Yes. Michael Byrne (53:48.071) Yeah, thank you, thank you. Lyndsay Soprano (53:52.61) to be in a space, well, and thank you for doing this too, because this is a space that is so incredibly just completely bombarded with so much noise in the sleep space. And we're all looking for a better night's sleep. And my goodness, this is definitely a better approach than what most of us are doing here. So, okay, so it's coming out very soon. Michael Byrne (54:04.241) Yes. Lyndsay Soprano (54:17.934) Where can we go to find out a little bit more about you and your partner and co-founder and online? And he's also on Insta and LinkedIn and all the things too. But what is the best place for everybody to go and learn more about this product? Michael Byrne (54:33.031) Our website is definitely the best place to go. We have a science page, we have a how it works page. There's a about us if you wanted to dive into the company. We have all of that available and we post updates right now on the product development every couple of weeks. So if you're on the email list, you'll get it in your email inbox, but it also goes on our website. So you can see the whole history. You can see way, way back as how things have progressed and changed as well. And that's all on our website. So it's just getbia.com. getbia.com. Everything is readily available for you right there on the website. Lyndsay Soprano (55:11.854) I love it. And where did you come up with the name for this product? Michael Byrne (55:14.811) Yeah, we did actually, so that was a bit of a fun story. We did change our name initially. We were focused a bit of a different path. As I was mentioning, we did a lot on that customer discovery, product discovery. We surveyed a couple thousand people on the naming process. And what we found is in the sleep space, if you did something like whatever, counting sheep as a name, that was one of the responses. Yeah, I either hate it or I love it. And it was so polarizing. Lyndsay Soprano (55:39.192) You my gosh. Wow, yeah. Michael Byrne (55:43.911) And you know, we tried things like Astral where it was like a little bit removed, but it was a very similar thing. People either loved it or hated it. Via was like right down the middle and meant nothing to anyone. And because sleep is such an emotionally connected thing, we wanted to decide what our brand meant to someone and what that emotional connection was. And that's how we chose that name. When we initially came up with it, we were looking at What are we trying to do with the product? And generally what we're trying to do is empower people, give them the ability to be at their best. We see sleep as that accelerator to do so. looking at various forms of Greek mythology, Bo is a sister goddess of Nike, goddess of power, goddess of empowerment. that's how it came to be. Lyndsay Soprano (56:33.272) Well, okay, so everybody's gonna be a goddess. This is amazing. Get goddess. Michael Byrne (56:36.007) Yeah. Lyndsay Soprano (56:39.726) I'll take it. I'll take it. my gosh. Well, thank you so much for being here. This has been eye-opening for me in a lot of places, even though I had this conversation a little bit with you, this has definitely been far more than our meet and greet. And I really appreciate it. As long as I've been following you and watching all of your stuff, it's really neat to see how far you've come and to have you here in this space and to help all of us that aren't sleeping. How do you sleep by the way? Michael Byrne (57:01.233) I'm pretty good. I mean, I've got an aide. I've got some support, so I'm in a bit of a better space. I still have my bad nights here and there. Yeah. Lyndsay Soprano (57:05.934) Yeah. Sure, I mean, we all do. can't all have a zinger every night of our life, but I had to kind of like throw that at you. Michael Byrne (57:14.983) Yes. Lyndsay Soprano (57:19.426) Well, his long-term mission is to give you a full night's sleep and half of the time and I will take it, that is for sure. Thank you again so much for being here with me and all of us here to help us in this space. been really wonderful to get to know you a little bit more. So I appreciate your time today. Michael Byrne (57:36.475) Yeah, likewise. Thanks so much for having me on. That was fun. Lyndsay Soprano (57:38.272) Of course. Thank you so much. You are exclusively invited to share this restful no more dread of the bed bed beat. She's speak, Lindsay. You are exclusively invited to share this restful no more dread of the bed VIP pain journey together. Let's get to the heart of how to kill with you by my side. Please follow the pain game podcast wherever you digest your podcast content. We will be there. visit us at thepangamepodcast.com and follow us on all the socials. Thanks for listening, my little VIPs. Catch you on the other sleep side. Do do do. Michael Byrne (58:17.319) Thank