Joe Rogan, Dana White love Gary Brecka. So I asked him to fix my awful sleep habits.

What do Joe Rogan, Steve Harvey and Dana White all have in common?

Other than fame and fortune, they've all touted Gary Brecka, a self-described "biohacker" who hosts The Ultimate Human Podcast on optimizing health.

Brecka is a prominent, though controversial, figure in the wellness space. He's rubbed shoulders with many big names − including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Kendall Jenner. He also has a massive audience − 2.9 million followers on Instagram, 1.2 million on TikTok and over 1 million YouTube subscribers. He's also drawn criticism for sharing health information that experts have said is inaccurate.

One area that Brecka coaches A-listers on is sleep. And, as skeptical as I am of Brecka, sleep is something I'll try pretty much anything to improve. My sleep hygiene has been a mess since I was a kid. A habitual night owl, I've always thrived in the wee morning hours. But over time, these tendencies have taken their toll. I never quite feel rested during the day and rely heavily on caffeine because of it.

Could following Brecka's advice change that? Or would it make no difference? I was determined to find out.

"We all know sleep is important," Brecka says. "I would be as bold as to say that sleep is our human superpower."

'It's about feeling safe in your body.'

Sleep seems simple. What's there to get wrong? Well, according to Brecka, a lot.

"If I asked a hundred people in a room, 'What do you do to go to sleep?' Most people will say, 'What do you mean, Gary?'" he says. "We actually don't have a plan to go to sleep. We don't have a sleep routine, what I call sleep hygiene. And so we have a routine to get our kids to school in the morning. We've got a routine for our exercise. We've got a routine that we do at our job. But we don't have a good sleep routine."

According to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 30% of Americans aren't getting enough sleep. And a good night's sleep can make or break how one feels during the day. So, how does one up their sleep game? Brecka recommends the following tips to start, which are aligned with mainstream sleep advice.

1. Keep your sleep and wake times consistent. "The timing of when you go to bed and when you wake up is critically important to getting good sleep," Brecka says. "The more in sync we are with this biological clock, the better everything runs."
2. Don't work where you sleep. "If you do your emails on your laptop in your bed, your brain will start to associate your bed with efficiency," Brecka says. The same goes for scrolling social media, watching TV or getting into arguments with your significant other. "We don't want it to be a place of entertaining. We don't want it to be a place of conflict. ... We want it to be an area of respite."
3. No screens in bed. In fact, avoid using your phone or laptop in bed entirely. "The unpredictability of the information coming out of these devices raises our cortisol, and it also raises our fight or flight neurotransmitters, puts us in awakened state," Brecka says.
4. Keep your bedroom as dark as possible. "The darker the room, the better your sleep," Brecka says. "You'd be shocked at how little ... light it takes to raise cortisol."
5. Make your bedroom cooler than you think. "Sixty-eight to 69 degrees Fahrenheit, quite cold, is the best temperature for us to sleep in," Brecka says.
6. Don't eat close to bedtime. "If you eat within two hours of bedtime, you will have some disruption to your sleep," Brecka says.
7. Do some breath work in bed. If you find your mind racing, Brecka recommends a breathing exercise. "It's simply a long, slow inhale through the nose, followed by a pause and a very long exhale out through your mouth, through an imaginary straw," he says. "I have never made it to 10 breaths, not once."

Overall, Brecka says, the key to falling asleep is feeling safe.

"Falling asleep is not about being tired," he says. "It's about feeling safe in your body."

'Paralysis of analysis'

After my interview with Brecka, it was time to put his sleep tips to the test.

I decided to break out my old WHOOP wristband to track my sleep. All wearables have their shortcomings when it comes to accuracy. But Brecka says he uses WHOOP for his own sleep tracking, so I figure I'll use it too.

The first night, I did my typical sleep routine, sloppy habits and all, so I could get a baseline. Whoop scored this night of sleep at 85%. Not as bad as I thought, but not great.

Then, it was time to lock in. During the day, I worked in a different room. I unplugged any clocks or electronics that could give off light. I set my thermostat to exactly 68 degrees Fahrenheit before bed. I did the breath work Brecka recommended. I even threw in some ashwagandha supplements before bed for good measure − something Brecka recommends over melatonin.

The next day, my sleep score hit 88% − an improvement, albeit a modest one. The day after, it shot up to 99%. Woah.

I could feel the difference too. Placebo or not, I felt more awake and less stressed − a sort of alert calmness − during the day. It was new for me.

I continued Brecka's protocol for a week, continuing to score in the mid-to-high 90s.

During my last night, however, I had a bit of a, well, wakeup call about whether sleep tracking is really right for me. I got into bed at 11 p.m., but I felt unusually restless. I was ruminating about my sleep score − so badly wanting to knock it out of the park, especially on the last night of my week-long challenge. I didn't end up falling asleep until midnight. My desire to "do well" at sleep, ironically, kept me tossing and turning way past my bedtime.

Brecka warned me this could happen.

"You can get paralysis of analysis with a wearable, where, for some people, they create sleep anxiety," he says. "If you're one of those people that's hyper-vigilant, that really focuses in on all of this data, and you actually feel anxiousness or anxiety around missing your sleep score and not getting enough REM, not getting enough deep sleep, that's going to be more detrimental to you in the long term."

Unfortunately, I am one of those people. Which means that, moving forward, I'll be taking off the WHOOP and continuing these practices, but without sweating the numbers.

This, Brecka says, should finally put my sleep anxiety to bed. I hope he's right.