Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
How Darkness, Routine, And Science Rebuild Your Sleep with Lori Oliver
Sleepless nights don’t just steal your energy; they tax your memory, your mood, and the way every system in your body repairs itself. We sit down with Lori Oliver, a former executive who turned years of burnout into a mission to make better sleep achievable with simple, science-backed habits and a surprising piece of performance gear: a reengineered sleep mask designed for true blackout and cooling comfort.
We start with the fundamentals—why sleep governs cognition, decision-making, immune strength, and muscle recovery—and map how cortisol and melatonin should trade places across the day. From there, we dig into practical, low-friction changes that pay off fast: morning sunlight to set your circadian clock, evening light dimming to cue melatonin, device cutoffs that tame mental churn, and bedroom temperatures in the 64–67 degree range. Lori explains how her team rebuilt a century-old tool to solve two big blockers—light leaks and heat—with molded eye pockets for zero pressure and an ultrathin temperature-regulating layer. Tested with college and pro athletes and veterans navigating PTSD, the mask becomes both a functional blackout and a cue your brain learns to trust.
If you’re tired of chasing hacks and want a routine that travels, you’ll appreciate the Sleep Seven playbook—Lori’s free CBT‑I–inspired guide that turns better nights into a repeatable system. We talk behavior over pills, cues over quick fixes, and the small inputs that compound into clearer mornings and steadier days. Whether you’re a parent, a shift worker, or a high performer on the edge of burnout, these steps meet you where you are and help you take back the night, one consistent habit at a time.
If this conversation helps you, share it with a friend who needs better sleep, subscribe for more science-backed health insights, and leave a review to tell us which habit you’re adopting tonight.
use the code SLEEP25 for a 25% discount on our Inactivators Sleep Mask on our website inactiveco.com
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Well, hello, and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and today we got a very special guest. Her name is Lori Oliver. And Lori is part of a company that is the inactive company, a sleep performance brand rooted in scientific research. And uh Jill, I'm sorry, Lori works with Jill McRae, who was originally scheduled to do this podcast, and it's scrambled my brand just a little bit. But they have worked together and developed some simple actionable strategies for sustainable sleep health. And as you know, health is one of the primary pillars. I mean, sleep is one of the primary pillars of health. And Lori, let me stop talking and bring you in. And welcome to the show. It's so good to have you here. Thank you, Joe. It's great to be on. And, you know, I always like to start the show with a new guest and kind of figure out, you know, how did you come to this space? You know, not everybody um finds themselves running a company that's involved with sleep practices. In fact, probably not a lot of people at all. So why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey that brought you to all this?
SPEAKER_01:Sure, I'd be happy to. I spent 25 plus years in a variety of a career of uh corporate consulting and entrepreneurial roles. You know, I kind of did the whole work mother thing for a long time. And but I worked in different companies, um, not only in Los Angeles, but also in Atlanta, Georgia, where we're currently based. Um, worked in New York, even though I was based in Atlanta, traveled to New York for a New York-based company, and raised three children along with my husband of 33 years. And I was always exhausted. I was the insomniac, you know, and I'm of the age and generation of we'll sleep when we're dead.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:You know, it was I just thought it came with the territory, right? Like, you know, it's like, all right, well, I'm hard charging, I'm um, you know, uh high climbing professional. I was at a senior level on the executive leadership team of a company based in Atlanta called Spanks that you may or may not have heard of.
SPEAKER_02:Sure.
SPEAKER_01:The founder Sarah Blakely is one of the youngest self-made billionaires. Um, so it wasn't like I could show up at 8 a.m. and be exhausted, but that's kind of how I felt. So I was really tired of faking my way through a workday um and trying to present myself as not being exhausted when I actually was. Fortunately for me, Jill McRae, my co-founder, was also on the leadership team at Spanx, and we had been friends and had, you know, commiserated over our shared exhaust and exhaust between the two of us. Yeah, with our separate families. We drank a lot of coffee, but we also um talked, you know, we had seven kids. I have three, she has four. Um, and so we talked a lot about the overseas trips we were making and how we were going to survive them and then get back home and you know, get the kids to all the activities and manage and help manage schoolwork and those kinds of things. So we just related over strategies for how we could get better sleep or just survive as tired moms. We're doing so.
SPEAKER_00:This is very organic in its origin. You guys were just trying to figure out a personal problem.
SPEAKER_01:100%. And you know, what better way to start a company than to come from a problem you personally experienced? And and most what we found out when we dug into it was um a lot of people share it's really an epidemic. Insomnia in itself is uh epidemic proportions, uh, pre-COVID, post-COVID, you name it. So 60 million Americans suffer from sleep disorders and don't get the required seven to nine hours of sleep per night. And once we started digging into the science around sleep, it was really amazing to find out about how sleep really could be with some science packed, if you will, um without prescription drugs, you know, and without necessarily super expensive mattresses and things like that, but it could be behaviorally relearned and improved, and people could see significant um improvement in their health as well.
SPEAKER_00:So you've opened up a bunch of doors here that I want to start exploring. So I've done a couple of episodes just specifically on sleep and just really its importance. Um as you said, insomnia is really an epidemic, and the consequences are pretty dramatic. You want to get into a little bit about some of the problems that people face when they're not getting enough sleep. I mean, you know, even things so like maybe obscure as you know, your brain has a system that cleans itself at night that if it doesn't get into a deep rim sleep, it doesn't do it.
SPEAKER_01:That's exactly right. That's and that and it clearly sleep, you're exactly right. And sleep really affects every single system in your body. And people think that they're just laying there, so it can't be productive, but it is cleansing your entire brain while you sleep, which stabilizes your mood, it consolidates memories, it helps you learn, it helps you make better decisions, it really is regulating your brain while you sleep. It also sleeps every one of your other systems, your digestive system is working. You are regenerating muscles while you sleep, your body is recovering while you sleep. So everything is literally going through a cleansing and recovery and rejuvenation process just while you're sleeping.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. It's like your body has two shifts. When it's awake, it functions on a you know, prefrontal cortex level where you're you're telling you're telling your body what to do and it's doing the best it can. But when you're sleeping, you're not thinking about anything. Um, well, you're dreaming, whatever, if you are really sleeping, but your body goes into automatic mode and really just starts reorganizing, putting itself back together. Um, you know, autophagy takes place where your body clears out sick and dying cells, and your telomeres are affected, which is um really the the end of the genetic code that says you're gonna live longer or you're gonna live less long. And uh all of these things, you know, like you said, your digestive system. Um, I'm I'm certain diet probably has something to do with this, and when you eat and what you're eating when you eat it, and um, you know, so there really could be it would be difficult for there to be a more important pillar of health than sleep. You know, we talk about diet, exercise, motion, stress, but sleep is right there in that, you know, top five.
SPEAKER_01:You could argue it is the foundation of health. I mean, it really it truly is, um, because nothing else does affect absolutely every single system. And also, sleep is the one thing that you can't cheat. You know, you can't, yeah, you can't fake sleep, right? You can't find a quick fix cheat for it.
SPEAKER_00:You can't just lay there with your eyes closed. No. While your mind is racing, and you know, you can rest your body, rest your muscles, I guess. I mean, it's not it's not without any merit, but it certainly is not going to give you the things that you need from sleep. Right.
SPEAKER_01:To really optimize, you have to allow your body to go through the cycles of the circadian rhythm, as I'm sure you know, to get all the different levels of sleep, because it is things like deep sleep or REM sleep that really truly start to affect some of the factors I suggested earlier, like consolidation of memories and stabilization of mood. So, you know, these are the reasons we call ourselves a sleep performance company, to tell you the truth, Joe, because we want people to focus on the fact that sleep is foundational not only for long-term health, but also your health the next day. How you know it's it's we're talking about tomorrow, next week, and the next decade of your lives are impacted by the way you sleep every single night.
SPEAKER_00:And and I think that I'd I'd like to get into kind of the fundamentals before we get into like your protocols, because it's important for people to understand really what's at stake here. Um, you know, you talk about the different levels of sleep, and you know, some people um they sleep, but they wake up every 10 minutes, or everything wakes them up, or you know, they sleep with one eye open, they're like, you know, sort of asleep, or they're asleep, but never really like I know lots of people say, I don't dream. And I'm like, well, you probably do, you don't remember it. But you know, there's all these different sort of categories of sleepers, and the reality is like you need to go through all of these levels. Um, I always think that like when you're going into sleep, there's that I don't know that I don't know the terminology of everything. Like I said, my brain's a little scrambled, but just as you're falling asleep, there's that really um sublime, blissful state that you just sort of float away in and you want to stay there like forever, you know? It's like a meditative state, and and then you drift off and you go into wherever. Um, what's what why don't you explain the levels of sleep and and maybe their importance a little bit?
SPEAKER_01:Well, there's there's four levels, and basically I think two, and you know, we always say we are not sleep doctors, and you probably have had sleep doctors on your show. Um, so I don't want to parade as a doctor, but uh you know, we all know that there are four levels, and two are lighter levels of sleep and two are deeper sleep. And really, as you're, you know, you're beginning to when you let me start at the morning. When you wake up in the morning, your level of a hormone called cortisol increases. And that's really what gets you kind of excited and and stimulated to address everything that happens during the waking hours, during the day. What's happening, especially in our society now, is rather than at night, automatically, when especially when it begins to get dark outside, evolutionarily, that is when the body, that was the signal for the body to wind down and go to sleep.
SPEAKER_00:When it goes down, we go to sleep. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:That's right. Well, now with this fast-paced society, you know, our cortisol just continues to rage even as it gets dark. So we have to really focus more on stimulating melatonin or this parasympathetic kind of state to um get the melatonin part of the cycle started. So if you can get your body, get rid of all of the uh raging thoughts through your mind, um, and really begin to calm your body into, like you said, the meditative state that really does induce sleep, your body will naturally begin to produce melatonin. Don't have to take a supplement necessarily, and and it's probably, you know, it when you have if you have to, you have to, but it's probably not something you want to do over time. In fact, there's new research that shows that you know, habitual melatonin supplementation.
SPEAKER_00:That uh takes the place of a naturally intestine created hormone or or or enzyme or substance, your body is like, oh, I guess I don't have to make that anymore because it's always here. Exactly. You always I always tell people, you know, that supplements can be great for a purpose, you know, for a reason or a season, but certainly not a lifetime. We agree, we totally agree.
SPEAKER_01:So I guess my point is that to get into the first um part of sleep, you really, if you do have a high cortisol, if you're prone to high cortisol lifestyle, like Jill and I both were, you know, if you're sort of addicted to that run, that race of the day, then you really do need to um do some things consistently to calm your body down so that you can get into a light stage of sleep. Um, and and there are a lot of ways that you can do that.
SPEAKER_00:So your company, uh why don't you tell us a little bit about it and how it works? I I'm sort of visualizing a lot of different possible models, but I don't have any idea really how it works. So if I'm curious, I'm sure all the listeners are as well. Um, so somebody comes to you, what what what do they knock on a door? Do they come to a website? What how do they how do they find you and what do they, you know, how does it work?
SPEAKER_01:We built a website, it's inactiveco.com, and that is how most consumers uh reach us. We had a lot, so we started by developing a product that we thought would be science-backed, it would be um, it would address kind of the um most important factors that you need to help you get more sleep. The first being complete darkness, which is what your body and brain need to signal this mellow beginning of the melatonin production, and also pretty uh difficult for a lot of people.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, you know, there's all these habits we have, and most of them involve lights, and a lot of them involve blue light, which is apparently not real good. And you know, dark blackout curtains aren't something that you know you see in a lot of homes. So, so how does somebody come about you know a dark place?
SPEAKER_01:Well, so enter the sleep mask, which sounds so simple, it is a 100-year-old product, right? And that is what where we started. I mean, and what was interesting about it, it wasn't too dissimilar from what the founder of Spanx, Sarah Blakely, did with the girdle, an old dopey product that she reinvented.
SPEAKER_00:So we decided we would take the sleep mask and we would innovate it, given everything we know in product development, textiles, innovation, etc., and address the problems for number one, allowing any wearer to achieve 100% darkness, no matter the shape of their head, the size and shape of their features, you know, giving them an ergonomic, easily accessible solution to achieve that critical complete darkness no matter where they work, with a home, travel, wherever, hospital, generally not super expensive, they're not technologically bound, so you're not gonna have to worry about batteries and and uh you know rebooting the darn thing or whatever. You know, it's just a device that helps you get dark.
SPEAKER_01:And guess what? It works. Yeah, and we we started, we tested it uh initially. We thought who is our best audience to really um adopt this as an actual piece of performance equipment, if you will. And so we went to um professional and college athletes to start, and we tested with them and got their feedback, and then we went to Emory University in Atlanta, has an association with the Wounded Warriors Veterans Program. Oh, nice, and we participated in an IRB study, research study with them and had um reactions and input from military veterans around does this really help you? And you know, what we did was we molded our mask slightly. We have soft foam, so it's not a stiff mask, okay, not a flimsy mask that just doesn't provide any darkness. So it's a molded foam, and we actually curved the eye pockets and and made them concave so that you can open and close your eyes underneath. All right. Does a lot of things for military veterans, what we found out is especially those that suffer from PTSD, they were more likely to adopt a sleep mask if they could kind of find themselves in time and space, even if their eyes are covered. So if they can open and close their eyes, and then of course, you have a lot of uh people with long eyelashes or lots of uh beauty-related reasons to have but so we we just built a mask that could address those factors, so it simply was a tool that not only functionally could fit to achieve this um complete darkness, it also addressed the second most important factor, which was temperature regulation. We we added a very thin layer of internal temperature regulation material that's used at NASA and a lot of um high-end sports equipment that kind of helps to keep your face temperature slightly regulated or cooler as you go through your circadian rhythm and it begins to rise and get hotter. This can help keep you cooler. It also helps the problem that we heard from our testers, and that was they're so hot when they sleep, you know. So this mask keeps you nice and cool. And um, so you know, it was, and then on a physical level level, you know, kind of like Pavlov's dog, you begin to make an association psychologically with the mask and sleep. Okay, your brain is saying, it's I'm putting on a mask. Not only can you not see to get on your phone or have another getting distraction, right? Just that association of mask on, sleep, time to sleep, yeah. Yeah, so so we can and it was you know, we could we charge$45 for it. So most people can't afford it, yeah, yeah. And take it with them wherever they go.
SPEAKER_00:So somebody goes and gets your mask, and I don't know. Um, they're still struggling to sleep because of I don't know, maybe they eat donuts before they go to sleep, or maybe they live in a place where there's a train that keeps going by, or you know, there's other other factors at play beyond just the darkness.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. So we're not trying to say the sleep mask is the silver bullet, the one solution. We think that the it's kind of the centerpiece of a routine that really the wearer has to establish on their own. Sleep routines, sleep warmups, as we call them, sleep hygiene, is very individualized. And so just like you can customize the mask to your face, we encourage people to customize their routine to what works for them. Now, there are a few tips that work for everybody that everybody should be incorporating into their day, such as getting morning sunlight into your eyes as you wake up in the morning. You can actually start setting yourself up for a great night's sleep first thing in the morning by getting natural sunlight in your eyes. Um, in the evening, again, to light before you go to total darkness, you know, with or without a sleep mask, you should start lowering the level of lights in your house. You know, even if you're watching TV at night to kind of calm down, turn your lamps off or your lights off, like just begin to sit in a little bit darker environment, which will help just relax your body, begin to turn off your brain, and then obviously 30 minutes to an hour before you actually go to sleep, all devices should be off. There should be no blue light coming into your eyes, which will help you get a better night's sleep. Besides that, you know, creating a sleep cave, a place where you're comfortable, your your bed is really used only for sleeping and not for eating or wrestling with you know your pets.
SPEAKER_00:Oh brain rotting days, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yes. So, so just keeping that sacred space so that it is also in association with sleep. And then temperature, you know, if your your sleeping environment should be 67 degrees or even slightly cooler, 64 to 67. Um, and and that will help you sleep better as well. And then if it's a a cup of tea or hot water, or if it's meditation, or if it's listening to a podcast that tells bedtime stories, you know, other things people kind of find helpful, great, but consistency is important. Trying one thing at a time is helpful. And going to bed and waking up at the same times every day and every night is also helpful.
SPEAKER_00:So, do you have a resource for people, whether it's um consulting or some sort of a book or video or, you know, like you're gonna run into all these different people with all these different sleep problems. And like you said, it's individual, you know, just like cancer or any other injury. You gotta find your way to your health. It's not like the same thing works for everybody, that maybe the same things work for a lot of people, but there are groups of people and and different resources, and there's a lot of tools in the box that could work.
SPEAKER_01:We provide a sleep seven playbook for free on our website, um, which is our take on developing a sleep routine. It's based on cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, which is the most effective um process and tool for getting better sleep. Um, it's based on also habit forming, so adopting a positive habit. We incorporated things like that. So, what you'll see are seven steps ranging from visual visualizing um good sleep to affirmations, etc. So we've consolidated that into seven easy steps. So I encourage people, listeners, to go to our website inactivecode.com and check out the sleep seven playbook um to begin with.
SPEAKER_00:Fantastic. Um so is there anything else that you want to share about your company beyond the sleep mask and the advice?
SPEAKER_01:We're women-owned. We are on a mission to solve problems that actually need solving. We think that um sleep is critical. And we also come to organizations. We work with um the NFL, for example, and the NFL Players Association, and we go to teams um, or we've gone, we'll go to the first responders, to firefighters, to police officers, and give sleep briefings that really kind of help coach people to a better sleep understanding and lifestyle. So we're available to do that, and please reach out to us through our website. We'd love to hear from anybody.
SPEAKER_00:Fantastic. Well, Lori, we're running low on time, but um, I always like to give our guests a chance to sort of wrap their thoughts up. And is there a sort of a parting shot that you'd like to leave our listeners with?
SPEAKER_01:I think every life is important, but we, like you said, have to take control of our health best we can. And sleep is the one critical place where we can control our sleep. We were all born knowing how to sleep, and we can reteach ourselves to do so. So make sure you get those seven, at least a minimum of seven hours of sleep every single night.
SPEAKER_00:Beautiful. And once again, how does somebody get a hold of you or find your company?
SPEAKER_01:Please come to inactiveco.com and check us out and or email us at sleep at inactiveco.com.
SPEAKER_00:Beautiful. Well, Lori, I always like to offer our guests, you know, we had a great conversation. Um, as things develop or anything changes, and you'd like to come back and share some more information. I always leave that door open. I thought that this was very uh interesting and insightful. So I'd certainly like to keep that door open for you.
SPEAKER_01:I appreciate that. Definitely would love to do that.
SPEAKER_00:Beautiful. Well, I want to thank you for joining us today, and I'm looking forward to checking your site out a little bit myself. All right.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks so much, Joe. You take care.
SPEAKER_00:All right. Well, this has been another episode of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Grumbine, and I want to thank all of our listeners for making the show possible. And we will see you next time.
