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Dan Pardi is a Ph.D candidate that researches sleep neurobiology at Stanford and University of Leiden. He is also co-founder of Dan’s Plan, an online wellness and technology company. In this podcast Rhonda and Dan discuss what the determinants of good sleep are including duration, timing and intensity,the major causes of less sleep in our society, the consequences of sleep loss including decreased purging of toxic substances from the brain, damage to neurons that signal to the brain to stay awake (and how this leads to that feeling that you need coffee in the morning), increased incidence of chronic diseases such as cancer and type 2 diabetes, cognitive and behavioral impairments, the impact on eating behaviors and weight gain. We also discuss what the optimal amount of sleep is, the importance of sleep timing, and keeping the same schedule as well as other ways to improve sleep.