Adam Torres and Michael Breus discuss the Milken Institute Global Conference.
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Show Notes:
Listen to Milken Institute Global Conference coverage. In this episode, Adam Torres and Michael Breus, Founder & Sleep Doctor at The Sleep Doctor, explore The Sleep Doctor and the Milken Institute Global Conference.
About Michael Breus
Michael J. Breus, Ph.D., is both a double boarded Clinical Psychologist and a Clinical Sleep Specialist. He has the distinction of also being a Diplomate of the American Board of Sleep Medicine and a Fellow of The American Academy of Sleep Medicine. He is one of only 168 people in the world to have passed the Sleep Medical Speciality board without going to Medical School. Dr. Breus was named the Top Sleep Specialist in California by Reader’s Digest, and one of the 10 most influential people in sleep. Dr. Breus is the author of 5 non-fiction books with his newest (2025) titled Sleep, Drink, Breathe: Wellness is too complicated. This book gives an easy-to-follow 3-week program to teach everyone how these 3 simple biobehaviors are the foundation for wellness. Dr. Breus has supplied his expertise with both consulting and as a sleep educator (spokesperson) to brands such as Hastens, Purple Mattress, OURA Ring, CALM Princess Cruise lines, Six Senses Hotel and Spa, Advil PM, Breathe Rite, Crowne Plaza Hotels, Merck (Belsomra), BOSE, iHome, and many more. Dr. Breus lectures all over the world for organizations such as YPO (Young Presidents Organization), AT&T (10 times), on stage for Tony Robbins (Unleash the Power), hospitals and medical centers, financial organizations, product companies and many more. Dr. Breus has been in private practice as a sleep doctor for nearly 25 years and currently lives in Hermosa Beach CA.
About The Sleep Doctor
Sleep Doctor is a sleep health company on a mission to help an increasingly tired world live healthier, happier, and thriving lives through the revitalizing power of sleep. Sleep Doctor meticulously creates and curates scientifically backed direct-to-consumer sleep product essentials that solve sleep challenges and improve well-being. Founded by Dr. Michael Breus in 2008, Sleep Doctor, through its family of sites and brands (SleepDoctor.com, SleepFoundation.org, SleepApnea.org), empowers millions of consumers annually to better understand the science of their sleep, make informed product decisions, and build health-transforming sleep habits.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so did I have Michael Bruce on the line and he’s founder of the Sleep?
Doctor, and he is also a sleep doctor. Go go figure. And we’re gonna talk about his work. We’re gonna talk about some of what he’s up to. He is did a, keynote over at the Milken Global Conference right before Deepak Chopra came up. And this particular interview will be part of our Milken Global Conference Milken Institute Global Conference 2025 series where we bring together some of the top thought leaders that attended the conference.
And so, first off, Michael, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. You know, I’ve been fortunate enough to speak at Milken. This is my third or fourth year, and I always have such a great time. First of all, it’s crazy because I, always want to go and see, you know, half the people that are speaking when I’m speaking.
Yeah. always seems to happen ’cause there’s always such an amazing portfolio of people. But I just wanted to, you know, say to all of those out there who got a chance to attend Milken or who are associated with Milken. It’s been wonderful. To be a part of that crowd. Yeah. Now you’ve, been multiple times as you said now for us as a media outlet, we’ve covered it now, I think this is our fourth year, one of the two.
I, I might be slipping my memory here, but that being said, and we, we’ve accumulated quite a few interviews and catalog. From the conference, and I’m biased. To me, it’s like my Super Bowl every year of going to, and it’s in our backyard in Beverly Hills, and it’s like, I, you know, all the thought leaders, all the newest and everything always comes to me, so to speak during that year or during that particular time.
And it’s like, it’s Brain Candy is another guest. Mentioned to me mm-hmm. What keeps you coming back? and why is this such a special? Obviously you go to many conferences, I’m guessing, and you in, your work. I do. And showing your, your work, what keeps you coming back, and why do you feel it’s so special?
So the thing about Milken that I like is it’s a business conference and I’m a sleek doctor, right? And they want me to come. Like that just shows the innovative thinking that’s going on there. What I like so much about Milken is that it’s not just about business, it’s about your life and your lifestyle.
Let’s be fair. They recognized a long time ago, I was very fortunate I got a chance to meet Michael Milken and speak with him directly. and he gets it. Like everything you do, you do better with a good night’s sleep. And I think Milken is one of the few conferences, business only conferences that has has been able to recognize that.
And, and it’s just, again, it’s been a thrill to be able to work with them. I, think so too. And like I said, it’s just, it’s just a lot of fun too, like the programming, the pavilion, it’s on and on the events afterwards. Oh my gosh, it’s fun. We threw a couple of events at our company and a reception and some other things.
It was just, just a lot of fun meeting people from all around the world. So Great stuff there. Let’s spend some time getting into what you’re doing over at your company, the Sleep Doctor. So first off our sleep doctor, first off, maybe tell us a little bit more about what you do. So at Sleep Doctor, or actually it’s sleep doctor.com or the sleep doctor.com.
We’re a website that is really about content about clinical and clinically relevant content. And so all of the content that we produce, obviously it has to do with sleep and sleep disorders. So what’s nice is you can go there and you can learn about sleep if you have questions about sleep, or you can actually learn about diagnosable disorders.
Also, we actually do believe it or not. Reviews of products. So we do mattress reviews, pillow reviews, sheet reviews. So we actually run all this stuff through fairly rigorous scientific testing. The way I tell people is if you thought, if you thought like if WebMD met consumer reports and all they talked about was sleep.
That would be the sleep doctor. what trends in sleep are you following interesting that you do? Product reviews. I think that’s really cool. What kind of trends or tech or like what are you following? What’s interesting in your world? I. It’s such a great question and thank you for asking it.
So here’s what I’ll tell you. So since COVID, we’ve basically had a revolution in the sleep medicine world really? So it used to be that you, oh, it’s crazy, dude. Mm-hmm. It used to be that if you wanted to go, like let’s say you met with your doctor and they said, Hey, you’re snoring. I think you might have sleep apnea.
Yeah. We need to do a sleep study on you. First of all, it takes three to five weeks just to get in because the laboratories only have four to six beds. I mean, imagine, you know, trying to get a hotel room at a hotel that only has four beds a night, right? Mm-hmm. Not so easy to do. So first of all, there’s a big delay.
Then second of all you have to go in and then we would glue. Glue, 27 electrodes all over your head. We put these two belts across your chest. There’d be video cameras on you. There’d be a, a strange person, you know, that doesn’t sound like a comfortable sleep first of all. Right? Exactly. You, you know what I’m talking about.
So here’s what’s so fascinating is since COVID, all of that has changed because nobody wanted to go into a laboratory and sleep in the same bed as anybody else, right? Oh, that makes. Everything is now portable. So one of the great advancements that we’ve got going on over at Sleep Doctor is if you go to the website and you go on there, if you go to sleep doctor.com/dr.
Mike. You can actually get a sleep test done for you. Listen to this dude. This is crazy. And so you click the button and then you get on a calendar, and then you do a Teladoc medicine appointment with one of our doctors, which is actually great ’cause you don’t have to get up and go all the way across town and park and deal with all the, it literally everything is done via Zoom.
If they decide that you need a sleep study, they push a button. The study is mailed to your home. So then you receive it in the mail. You open up the box. It’s either a ring or a wristband that you put on you. Push the green light that says Go. You go to sleep, you wake up, you push the red light that says Stop the information, jumps over to your phone via Bluetooth, goes up into the cloud.
You are then meeting 24 hours later with the same doctor that you met with before who now has your study results and can give you your results within 72 hours. Dude, what used to look takes six weeks to do. We can do in like six days. It’s unbelievable. Wow. Wow. And what has this meant for the patients?
Like, gimme, gimme some numbers. Like how many people have had this done? Like what kind of like, gimme some metrics here ’cause like, oh yeah. This is, it’s just, you know, helping people. ’cause what I know, what I do know is I’ve known, so I, thankfully, I think my superpower is I can sleep so I can, I can fall asleep.
That’s, I don’t, and I’m, I’m not bragging for anybody else that clicked on this and they’re like, oh my gosh. This guy’s bragging. ’cause you can see we can’t, that’s why we clicked on it and that’s why we’re listening to this. I, I don’t mean in disrespect, but I can sleep in a, but I can sleep anywhere. So anyway, my point being is that I do narcolepsy.
I, if I do, it’s a blessing. ’cause when I need to shut it off, I at least I at least have access to the switch, so I’m good. Gotcha, brother. I gotcha. That being said I do have friends and some family that have suffered and I know that can be debilitating, especially over time because it kind, not claiming that I’m the expert.
You can obviously elaborate on this, but I do know from my experience on at least third party. That like, it, compounds over time, like, and you may not even notice it. It does sense that that feeling that you have is normal and what I found is that you find new normals of low and it really is just like this cycle.
You Yes. That’s a great, great way of putting it. Can you tell me like, like some of the impact this has had? Yeah. So first of all, let’s talk about the numbers. Mm-hmm. So how many people out there probably need a sleep study? Do we think that have, for example, sleep apnea? Yeah. Well, believe it or not, in for men, we’re looking at somewhere between eight and 12%.
Wow. That’s literally like one in six guys. That’s a lot. So you might be walking around not knowing it and just thinking that that drain feeling that they feel is normal. Exactly. Exactly. And, and by the way, this is only $200 and if, and if $200 is, budgetarily difficult, which by the way, it can be. It’s usually covered by insurance.
Wow. So that’s the best part, is like, there’s none of this, oh, I’m doing this weird test that nobody’s heard about. Every doctor in the country knows what a sleep study is. Now, many of them don’t know that it’s in this, you know, abbreviated format that can now be sent to your home. Yeah. But it’s absolutely possible.
Now, what can we diagnose? Well, we can diagnose sleep apnea, several different kinds of sleep apnea, several other sleep disorders. In fact, here’s what’s also good is for those of people who don’t sleep well. Right. So you were just commenting about how there are people out there who have a hard time falling asleep or staying asleep.
If they already have a hard time falling asleep, can you imagine how terrible it would be if they came into my lab and I had the glue 27 electrodes to them? What is that called? White coat? White coat syndrome, or I don’t know what it’s called. What is that called? When. Is that any? Well, when people get anxious and they’re in the doctor’s office, it’s called White coat hypertension, which means your blood pressure raises when somebody with a white coat enters into the room.
Now here, what, what we’re talking about is just uncomfortable situation, and so again, better to test your sleep in your home. Environment. Mm-hmm. Where we know what all of the things are and people sleep better. So once again, if we’re looking, it’s a better benchmark, right? Because if you’re sleeping in your bed, sleeping in your bed, it’s your benchmark of wherever you’re at right this moment.
That’s great. That’s exactly how you want to think about it. Totally. Exactly how you want to think about it. So when we look at this, then we start to look at insomnia. How many people out there have insomnia? At any given moment, 10% of the population has chronic insomnia, but one in three people, one in three, have got difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep.
So these numbers are tremendous, tremendous numbers. Now the real question becomes how do I get solid information so I can get myself diagnosed and get myself treated? That’s why we created sleep doctor.com is basically for people to go, I review most of the information myself. We have a board. Mm-hmm. Of doctors who have got other specialties within sleep, like pediatric sleep specialists or neurology sleep specialist.
I happen to be a psychology. Sleep specialists. So I, my area of specialty within sleep has to do with mental health, like anxiety and depression and things of that nature. So the goal is for people to come to the site and be able to find products, information, and services that they know they can trust, that are actually, you know, doing what it says they’re gonna do.
And all based in real science. Take me back in time here, when you were, you know, picking a specialty, when you were thinking about like what’s, what’s next? How, how’d you land on sleep? So it was so serendipitous. I had never even dreamed I was gonna go in to sleep. Yeah. I’ll tell you. Don’t tell me you couldn’t fall asleep when you went down this rabbit.
That’s too, that’s too movie like that. No, I did gimme the real story. I’m joking. Nope, nope, nope. I’m not, I’m not one of those guys. People always ask that. They’re like, yeah. How did you become sleep, doctor? Do you have, did you have a sleep problem? No, I did not have a sleep problem. Mm-hmm. Here’s what happened.
I was at the University of Georgia and I was studying. Sports psychology and the best internship program that, so once you finish your PhD, you then spend a year in like a residency internship program similar to what an MD does in order to practice what you’ve been learning for the past four years.
So I wanted to go to this special program for sports psychology, but it turned out that it was full. On the sports psychology side, but they had an opening in a sleep division, and so I figured if I got into the sleep division, I would just transfer once I got there because if you’re not gonna let me in through the front door, that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna be in your program.
It just means that you haven’t figured out yet that I’m going to be in your program. So I signed myself up as a sleep guy. First day I got there, raised my hand. I said, Hey, how do I transfer? They said, we have a feeling you might want to do this. You have to stay for the first six months in sleep and then from there you can go to any other part of the program.
I said, how tough could this be? So I started in sleep, Adam, by the third day, I absolutely fell in love with clinical sleep medicine and I knew I was never gonna change my path. Dude, I help people like this. It’s unbelievable how quickly when you can identify a sleep disorder and get somebody a medication, a treatment protocol, talk therapy, whatever it happens to be.
Here’s the bottom line. When you change somebody’s sleep, you change their life. And that’s just cool. And so that’s why I became a sleep doctor. Wow, that’s what a story, and I mean, I think it’s something that what, I’m gonna paraphrase this and I’m gonna mess it up, but it was something like in the past, like entrepreneurs and, you know, really high performers, they were, they used, we used to have this thought process around the less sleep, the better.
It was almost like a macho thing, right? I sleep five hours, I sleep four hours, I don’t need totally this or that. And now totally, it becomes the ultimate luxury. It’s like if you can get eight hours or plus, like people, I, I, I love to hear people bragging about that because you know, you can be high performing, you can earn lots of money, you can do other things, but if you, you’re not sleeping, if your quality of living’s terrible, if your health is terrible.
And now it’s basically saying that you’re inefficient. You gotta see that you’re, maybe you’re trading your life for money, but that trade off isn’t what it was once thought to be. It’s like, you know, thinking about ai, thinking about technology, thinking about other ways to be, you know, as productive as possible, but in less hours.
It’s basically now almost a bragging right of like how many hours you sleep. So it’s kind of like, I’m like, man, if I’m following your career, you’re on the right side of the bed. Michael pun intended, I was.
Absolutely brought it up. Absolutely. I tried. It was a stretch. No, I mean, I thought it was good. I thought it was good. I think it landed well, thank you. Thank you. Absolutely, absolutely. Look, at the end of the day, sleep turns out to be a big deal. Yeah. And you know, I tell people all the time, look, you can’t fool mother nature.
Okay? Your body needs a certain amount of sleep, depending upon your age, like period on your gender, depending upon your stress level, period. Full stop. It might change over time, but you still need to get it. Mm-hmm. And there is no substitute for sleep. Caffeine is not a substitute for sleep. Mm-hmm. At the end of the day, if you wanna work well, you want to be successful and you want to perform right.
Sleep is really kind of where it’s at. I, actually heard Gary v Gary Vaynerchuk, if you, you follow him? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And he, one of the things he said is he said the new success. Is seven hours of sleep. Yeah. That’s the new success. I’m like, right on brother. He, he, and what I like about his content too is he’s usually ahead of the trend.
Like if you would’ve asked him that question 10 years ago, that is not what he would’ve necessarily said. But he’s, when, when he learns something new, he, he shares it. And I like that he’s super authentic in his journey. So I’m a big fan of what he’s doing. Yeah. Yeah, I am as well. I am as well. Speaking of caffeine, you’re, you’re gonna laugh at this.
Mm-hmm. Michael, speaking of caffeine, I can’t let this one go. ’cause you mentioned caffeine isn’t so and I, I gotta give him a shout out ’cause it’s hilarious. Guess who I’m interviewing next? Now? You’re, you’ll never guess. So I’ll, I’ll just tell you. Gentleman’s name is Leonard Light. George George.
No. Leonard Lightfoot. And you said caffeine. So his name is Leonard Lightfoot and he’s the CFO of Black Coffee Company. And he’s the one that sponsored the coffee, his coffee at the Milken Global conference. So I gotta tell him about this. That’s awesome. That’s the universe. Come on. Partnerships.
Sleeping in the coffee. That is gonna happen. Funny, funny. Couldn’t make that up. I could not make that up. Well, and look, here’s the thing, it’s not like I don’t like coffee. I enjoy, enjoy coffee every once in a course, of course. But at the end of the day, people have to understand caffeine is a halflife of between six and eight hours.
Yeah. So I’ll tell you, I was just, I just got back from Belgium where I was giving a lecture and I was actually one of the gentlemen who I met with beforehand owns a coffee roasting company. Right. And he said to me, terrible. What is it? We you attract costume coffee people? Unbelievable, bro.
Unbelievable. Go ahead, go ahead. I can’t. So, so I’m, I’m talking with him and I said, you know, help me understand how much coffee do you drink in a day? And he said, well, you know, we have to, we, we are a roaster, so we have to con we’re testing, we’re taste testing it all the time. We’re doing this, we’re doing this, doing this.
I said, gimme a number. He said, I don’t know, maybe seven, eight cups a day. Okay, so I said, wow. I said, are we talking like four ounce cups or are we talking like 12 ounce cups? And he is like, oh no, the big ones, right? I’m like, okay. Whoa. So if you, if you do the math on this, caffeine is a halflife of eight hours.
So if he stops drinking caffeine by 2:00 PM eight hours later, 50% of the caffeine would be out of his system, which means. He would still have roughly four cups of coffee in that he had his, his body would think that he just drank as he’s going to bed. Right. So it’s, about volume, but it’s also about timing.
When you drink your coffee, when you stop your coffee and how much coffee you have, that’s a formula that you have to really think about. So what I tell people is, limit yourself to two cups a day, finish by 2:00 PM and you should be just fine. Awesome. Michael, this has been a lot of fun having you on the show today and really enjoyed learning more about your work as a sleep doctor and at the sleep doctor.
That being said, you mentioned the website once. I want you to leave it again and also let our, my audience know how they can follow up, how they can digest the content and how they can learn more. So here’s the best way to find me is www.thesleepdoctor.com/dr. Mike, just D-R-M-I-K-E. Wonderful.
And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put the links in the show notes, so you can just click on ’em and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show.
Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Michael, thanks again for coming on the show. Thanks for having me, man. Wishing everybody out there sweet dreams.
