The Lucas Rockwood Show

You close your blackout curtains, flip your phone to airplane mode, and crawl into bed with all the best intentions to get 7.5 hours of sleep—and then your monkey mind starts peeling bananas.

Work deadlines stream through your mind, the next episode of your current favorite series beckons, and for no good reason, you’re dying to see what your friends are posting on Instagram. Thirty minutes pass, and more of the same. You’re now worried you’ll have raccoon eyes at the office meeting in the morning, but that thought just makes things worse. You finally fall asleep at 2:00 am and manage just four hours of sleep. Sound familiar?

Many people overcome this by drinking half a bottle of red wine, puffing on a CBD vape pen, or popping an Ambien—but these are all Band-Aids. The underlying problem has not been solved. You’ve got a sleep problem, and it needs to be fixed.  


Sleep expert Dr. Guy Leschziner dedicates his work to the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders, and he’s my guest on this week’s show. 

Listen & Learn

  • Why 50% of your sleep tendencies are likely inherited 
  • How to intelligently use sleep apps and other consumer tracking devices 
  • Why REM sleep is not fully understood and can even be problematic 
  • How sleep problems and mental health are very much a chicken and egg problem
  • How to know when to get professional medical help 

Links & Resources


About Our Guest
Guy is the clinical lead for the Sleep Disorders Centre at Guy's Hospital, which is one of Europe's largest sleep units. He is also Reader in Neurology at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London. His new book The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience and the Secret World of Sleep is available now.

Nutritional Tip of the Week:

Apples vs Oranges

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Direct download: 383_-_Nocturnal_Brain_with_Dr_Guy_Leschziner.mp3
Category:Health -- posted at: 12:20pm CET

I said goodbye to my grandfather when I was 8 years old. He had his first heart attack, and my mom was convinced he didn’t have long to live. Turns out he had many, many years ahead of him. Unfortunately, he was riddled with recurring heart problems, Parkinson’s, and a whole host of medical challenges. He lived a long life, but not a healthy one. His rapid decline shook my family, turned my mother into a health fanatic, and she passed the bug onto me. 


I wish I could say that pleasure and dreams of excellence motivate me, but it’s pain and fear that drive most of the big moves in my life. “I don’t want to end up in a rocking chair watching Wheel of Fortune,” gets me to my yoga mat much more often than “I want to glow with radiant energy.” I wish I chased carrots, but mostly, I run from the stick. What about you?

My guest on this week’s show is a medical doctor who has dedicated most of his work to trying to unravel the complex challenge that is the #1 killer in the world: heart disease. 

Listen & Learn: 

  • How medical advances treating heart disease are largely responsible for extended life expectancy 
  • Why Lipitor is one of the most prescribed drugs in the world
  • How your choices and health goals might shift if you planned to live past 100 in a healthy state
  • Healthspan vs. lifespan: What matters most? 
  • What the “heart-healthy” 1980s got right and what we got wrong

Links & Resources: 

ABOUT OUR GUEST

 Physician, writer, and clinical researcher Haider Warraich is the author of the new book, State of the Heart - Exploring the History, Science and Future of Cardiac Disease that we’ll be talking about today. He writes for the New York Times but also contributes to the Guardian, the Atlantic, the LA Times and the Boston Globe. He completed internal medicine and cardiology training at Harvard Medical School and Duke University. Haider has appeared on CNN, Fox, CBS, PBS, and shows like Fresh Air, The Diane Rehm Show, The World, Marketplace and the BBC World Service.

Nutritional Tip of the Week:

  • Garlic and feeling bad

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Direct download: 382_-_The_State_of_the_Heart_with_Haider_Warraich.mp3
Category:Health -- posted at: 3:46pm CET

Would you survive if you had to grow or forage your own food for an entire year? Would you eat roadkill, wild yam, coconuts, and acorn grubs? Rob Greenfield is finishing up 365 days straight growing and gathering (from the ‘wild’) as his own food. Rob is an adventurer, environmental activist, humanitarian, and a guy on a mission to create a more sustainable and just world.

Listen & Learn: 

  • Why our current food systems are broken
  • How extremes can plant seeds for moderate ideas that make more sense
  • Why mono-crops and siloed thinking have a lot in common 
  • How our planet will look and feel with 9 billion people on it 

Links & Resources: 

ABOUT OUR GUEST


Rob Greenfield is an adventurer, environmental activist, humanitarian, and a guy on a mission to create a sustainable and just world. He dumper-dived into more than two thousand dumpsters across the United States, cycled across the USA three times, wore all his own garbage as clothing for 30 days, and spent the past year growing and foraging his own food. Rob walks his talk.

Nutritional Tip of the Week:

  • Hydration

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Direct download: 381_-_A_Year_Spent_Growing__Foraging_Your_Own_Food_with_Rob_Greenfield.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:30pm CET

“Inhale fresh, life-giving oxygen… exhale toxic, dead carbon dioxide,” said my yoga teacher. I’ve heard some variation of this hundreds of times in classes. Oxygen is good, carbon dioxide is bad. In with the good, out with the bad. Right? 

As it turns out, this kindergarten understanding of breathing physiology is wrong. Most of us could really benefit from more CO2 because it opens up your air passageways, relaxes smooth muscle tissues, and allows for greater absorption of oxygen. Lack of CO2 actually leads to a lack of oxygen. Confused yet? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. 

On this week’s show, we’ll set the record straight and help you understand why slow breathing boosts CO2, and why that’s a good thing. 

Listen & Learn:  

  • The CO2 paradox: why you need carbon dioxide to actually absorb oxygen
  • Why 4-6 liters of air per minute is what we need but most people breathe 2x that much 
  • How over-breathing reduces (not increases) oxygen levels
  • Why over-breathing and mouth breathing is associated with dozens of neurological disorders and diseases 
  • How to slow down your breath 

Links & Resources: 

ABOUT OUR GUEST 

Dr. Artour Rahkimov has been teaching the Buteyko method and breath retraining to thousands of students for more than 17 years. He was trained by Ludmila Buteyko and Dr. Andrey Novoh-zhilov, MD, the Chief Physician of the Buteyko Clinic in Moscow. Dr. Artour trained numerous breathing practitioners in the US, Germany and Denmark.

Nutritional Tip of the Week:

  • Why bread makes me sick

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Direct download: 380_-_CO2_is_Your_Friend_with_Dr._Artour_Rahkimov.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:24am CET

People often compare the human body to a car, but this is a bad analogy (unless it’s a Tesla) because your body doesn’t contain a combustion engine. You’re electric, my friend, and your nerves are in the driver’s seat. One electrical stimulus makes you anxious, another makes you calm; mostly, you’re an out-of-control cross-fire of signals that kicks you around energetically and emotionally throughout the day.

To know your nerves, you must know the vagus nerve. It’s the master controller of the parasympathetic branch of your autonomic nervous system - and it’s more complex than simply “rest and digest.” Let’s deep dive into the polyvagal theory on this week’s show. 

Listen & Learn: 

  • How to better understand your body’s nervous system responses
  • The importance of the vagus nerve for stress modulation 
  • How to deal with triggers and embrace and appreciate glimmers
  • The polyvagal theory explained
  • Ventral vagal complex: readiness to connect
  • Dorsal vagal complex: collapse and freeze

Links & Resources: 

ABOUT OUR GUEST 

Deb is a clinician, consultant, lecturer, and coordinator of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium in the Kinsey Institute. Her work is based on the Polyvagal Theory to understand and resolve the impact of trauma, understand the autonomic nervous system, and move into states of protection and connection. She is the author of the book The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy available on Amazon or through her website.

Nutritional Tip of the Week:

  • Organic vs conventional

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Direct download: 379_-_Know_Your_Nerves_-_Polyvagal_Theory_with_Deb_Dana.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:14pm CET

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