Yeah, you're the co host so you're, you're good to go. Sanjay Thank you. I think the other thing that's worth remembering also it is is the vast majority of our listeners. Come on, after the fact you know because a lot of people can't break away during the middle of the day so these archive, things get a lot of listens as well so
it's true. Okay. All right, there we go already.
Okay here we go. Do you want to bring us in.
Oh sure, I thought we would have Andrew bring us in but hey everybody welcome back. Hopefully everybody whose face is not showing is not sleeping in the background, then you're going to come on, because our favorite host Andrew is here so let's come on and wave and say hi and do the geeky thing which is I think kind of cool to reminds us all we are human, we do need connection, and at some point we will have that again, hopefully, in this century. Welcome, welcome everyone. So, I have a little bit to talk about but I'm gonna wait until Andrew gets a chance to jump in and say hi and then and then we'll go off on a few things about sleep, and I hope you have some questions about what you need to improve sleep or just what you want to know about sleep. Hey Andrew.
Hey, thank you for joining us. Thanks Andy for hosting thank you everybody for showing up. I really don't have a ton to say I'm just here, like the rest of you to listen and learn from, from Mr. Ed.
Okay, okay, so this is going to date anybody here right. How many people listening, remember that, oh geez Okay How many remember the series Mr ad right there we go, or worse, of course of course and less
funny, but anyway, on that lofty elevated note. I hand it off to my dear friend, Ed, go for it.
Thanks Andrew. So, we didn't have any questions that came in just yet. I'm going to put out a little bit like I usually I love to share. I love to have little props, and my props, generally are PowerPoints, I'm going to throw a couple of slides up, but certainly be thinking about your questions and, you know, to me, the goal of this is to provide whatever information you need to get the best possible sleep, you can get, because without the best possible sleep doing sleep yoga and Dream Yoga and that stuff we love to do, just makes it more difficult, makes it more difficult to have so anyway let me start by sharing this screen, and once I it's jokes, it's just a couple of slides here as you can see, let me start with the first one. And then certainly you can raise your hands to come in and talk or you can pop in on the chat box or however you want to do it. And Andy is in charge he will get you in one way or another. Thanks, Andy. So you'll, you may remember the slide it's been in a couple of my presentations but I want to start here today because, while our bedrooms don't necessarily look like this. This goal of creating a sacred sleep environment is something that we should all be considering. Because when the environment looks more like this. We end up with not necessarily sacred sweep, but messy sleep. And so we want to clean the place up a little bit we want to have. Just what really supports sweep and you know, maybe a candle or two is not a bad idea but soft light, you know, and just in a way you want to honor the bedroom as the place where you know you. We have our meditation spaces, right where we put up, you know, a couple of our deities that are important to us where we have our sacred texts that we read from where we have the bell that, you know signals to beginning and end of meditation, our meditations. So we want to make the bedroom, like our meditation rooms, there should be no reason why they don't look the same, you know, your teenagers room. We're not going to worry about the act a little kid's room, we're not going to worry about that. But the adults room, the adult room needs to really honor the fact that we're doing something special with sleep. Now you may also remember this from a couple of presentations. So this one I'm going to refer on Andrew, even though he's in the background somewhere. Because, you know I present this. You remember like this talks about sleep pressure that's a major effect of being awake all day and then we have our alertness pressure that offsets that so we stay more like fairly wakeful during the day. Right. And then I talk about this wild and crazy factor the unmanageable factor to some extent, which is the arousal and stress we get exposed to, unless we have cats prancing prancing around. Nice Eric that was a nice, it was perfectly time to actually you know stress. Bring out the cat. But you know, we need to find ways to manage this and one of the ways I talked about is, you know, the TM way the transcendental meditation, they came up with twice a day, tape, taking time to do their 20 minute meditations, which would bring down their arousal level. And then of course, we go back into the same crazy world particularly today we've got delta variants and we have a lot more Greek letters to go through yet I'm afraid so. There may be more, but we're just dealing with living in Western society and there's a lot of stuff we need to deal with. And so we can drop that level we go back into the same world but if we do it another time we're at a much lower level at bedtime so instead of it being high wakefulness at bedtime, it's a little bit lower. And then I also talk about. I've got this great tool. Neurofeedback other biofeedback tools can work, where we begin to reduce our reactivity to the world. So it's not just that we're dropping the acute level, but over time we're reducing how we respond to the world. And you know, this is what those meditations will do over time as well. So that at bedtime, we have a much more manageable arousal level. And
I wanted to add this because I think this is an underrated way of managing the stress, we deal with in our daily lives. So, if we find time, not just once or twice, but multiple times during the day to do these one breath meditations or a couple of breaths who are extending it for just a couple of minutes. During the day, we may never allow stress to get up to that point to where we have to reduce our reactivity to it, we may keep it at a much more manageable level, because we're not allowing it to really build to where we have to drop it down. We're going to keep it at a level that doesn't, you know, run away from us, so that we're finding ways to really be in the day, without stress having to be managed directly. Although this is a direct way of managing it. So I'm going to put this out there as a challenge for this next month to those online and those listening after the fact to, and I know you know it was mentioned that before people maybe have tried this and done the one breath meditations with the one sip, but really make an effort for the next couple of weeks to as often as you can remember to just stop for the moment as soon as you remember, it's kind of like you know the prompts for Am I dreaming or am I awake, same general idea, but when you do that if you're doing that well and that's happening multiple times. Take a 123 breath meditation, at the same time, really deep breath, really drop your arousal level. Notice, Abide in awareness. In that moment, and then go about your day to remember again and do it again and again and again and again as many times as you remember, as soon as you remember, even the one breath is enough to interrupt whatever is building up, and it'll be great for you guys to come back on next week and report the effects of doing these multiple one press meditations during our day. All right, that's all I had to present today I didn't want to overwhelm anything and you know a lot of this material is there for you to revisit and revisit it's it's recorded and saved and all of that. And as I mentioned last time, I want to hear back from you folks as to what is working, or what is not working, or what was working but is no longer working or any which way around it because here's your chance to get some of the biology about sleep to get some of the, what we current, the current sciences around sleep. I try to stay pretty current with everything that's out there. Occasionally Andrew and I are shooting back papers to each other. Hey, have you seen this. Yeah, but no I haven't seen that one oh good thanks you know and I've seen this one. So we're trying to stay really current with what we know and what we've learned, and that's really where this multiple one breath meditation idea about reducing arousal level comes from. Yeah, so, love to open the floor. Do we have people who would like to come on. Do we have questions in the chat box.
There's a question in the chat.
Okay, I have a question what do you recommend for someone who suffers from tinnitus. Tinnitus or tinnitus. They say it both ways so your choice. For those of you who don't know that's like the ringing in the ears, generally it's in both ears. Sometimes it's only in one. And when you focus on it, it can be really loud and annoying, and especially when you're trying to be quiet and maybe trying to do a meditation or trying to get ready for sleep and the sound seems to be overwhelming. You know, first of all, it's almost like anything else, when something like this occurs that comes out of the ordinary or is not something that usually happens, you want to do the medical workup, you want to make sure you don't have multiple ear infections, you don't have sinus infections. You want to make sure you don't have, you know, damage to the ear drums for some reason or other, there are physical causes of tinnitus. But if you've ruled all that out, and you've made sure there really isn't anything and the doctors saying there isn't really anything they can do, Because there aren't really a lot of cures for it, then you need to find a way to actually be okay with it. Because almost anyone I know who's had it hasn't found a way hasn't found a way to diminish the sound, but has found a way to diminish the impact of the sound. And so even with neurofeedback, for instance, I know a number of people who've done Neurofeedback for tinnitus and what they will tell you is, at some point, they stop noticing. But if you ask them, Is it still there, and they pay attention for that moment, they will still hear it and they will still hear it to the same level of intensity, as it always has been, but they no longer notice it. They learn to screen it out. And so that may be the best anyone can offer, unless of course there is some physical reason that has contributed to it. Okay, hope that's helpful. Evelyn if you want to come on and talk about what you've tried or what, what's worked for you or what hasn't worked what you've tried and hasn't worked. Can you describe the neurofeedback. Yeah, well the neurofeedback is a special form of biofeedback, which is putting on any kind of biological signal that you connect to some other signal can make you make you more aware of that signal. So for instance, the example I always use is someone who's really stressed out, but probably have a lot of tension on the front talus muscle here in the forehead. And if you put sensors, if you say to the guy Hey, just relax, they'll be like, yeah right, you know, what am I doing here if I could just relax I wouldn't. So, so you put on some sensors, and you hook it up to a tone generator, such that high activity, high stress would create a high tone. And that high tone, his feedback about the high tension here, and what you say to the person is, Hey, see if you can lower the tone. And then what what do you mean loads well I don't know you know maybe breathe a little more deeply, maybe think about something that's really pleasant or enjoyable, you know, being at the beach or whatever it is for you, and see if the tone goes down, and so they start playing with a few ideas and they notice when they deep breathe or when they think of that beautiful place, the tone goes down, and I say okay what are you doing, and then they describe what to do more of that. And they do more of that, and they learn to reduce the tension. Okay, so by making yourself aware of this through some other mechanism, you can then change it indirectly to what, what you'd like to change. So Neurofeedback goes a step further and says hey, if we look at the same guy with a lot of tension in his front house muscle, there'll be certain patterns of brain activity that reflect that same tension. And so then we can feed back that information, we can feed back that noisy brain activity in a way that then allows the person to change that activity, thereby reducing the arousal level or whatever it is we're trying to reduce
at I brought on I unmuted Evelyn I think she had a follow up.
Okay, great.
Evelyn, are you there.
Yes, thank you very much. Thank you and I've had tinnitus from car accidents and there doesn't seem to be anything in terms of treatment. And so 10 years ago I started sleeping on the couch watching television, because I couldn't sleep in bed, and I couldn't sleep with just sound. I seem to need a visual distraction as well. So I got it I got into that terrible habit. Move the TV into my bedroom. So one of the, the, I have anxiety now about not being able to sleep because I do still work. And I wonder if you could tell me the specific feet feedback Neurofeedback name for this work, so I can look for it I'm in Canada and I don't know what or who to approach.
Okay, so, um, so we'll start the left first and we'll go backwards a little bit so NeurOptimal and e u r o or any you are in an optimal well one word NeurOptimal. There's a website com, there's find a trainer function on it, and they have people all over the world, and in Canada as well. We're in Canada you too on the West Coast, West Coast, there are people on the West Coast. The people will actually run the company are in Victoria, actually Oh, cool, thank you so there's, yeah. So there are people in that general area, but you know that that terrible habit now of having a TV in the bedroom. I don't say it's terrible at all because, if that's what works for you, then go ahead and do it. Okay. The problem with forcing in association with something, is that if you then go somewhere else and you don't have that thing, then you might be in trouble trying to fall asleep because you don't have that thing, but there's probably nowhere, at least in Western society, you can go where there isn't a TV somewhere. So, these days you just bring along your own tablet your own laptop and so you have, you've got something. So, you know, if you need that on to sleep I don't see a problem with that per se. Are you finding that problematic in some way.
No, my concern was, if it interferes with the ability to get into lucid dreaming, and I did actually this morning have an experience of lucid dreaming. But I'm concerned about the content of what I'm watching interfering with the content of my mind in terms of what I want to achieve in the dream state.
Well curiously, was your lucid dream related to what was going on on the TV. I don't know because by the time I became conscious. Something else was playing. Yeah, okay. Well, I mean, you know, I guess it's a valid concern, but, you know, I, it's not. Do you have it up like really loudly like you're sitting there watching TV, and you're sleeping, kind of at a lower level right yeah yeah I wouldn't worry too much about it, you know if it's the tool that helps you stay asleep, I would, I would do that. The one question of course is when you have commercials on commercials always go to a higher decibel level. So if you could keep the TV to like a movie, you know, movies or cable channels you know that kind of, so that they probably constant.
Well thank you very much, that's very helpful to think that it's not that big a problem.
Yeah, not at all i, and I even say that look, if you already have a TV in the bedroom. I don't care if you take it out or not, as long as whatever you're doing helps you sleep and that's that's what I want to see happen so good. All right, good luck, let us know.
We can bring in ERIC next to the last question.
Okay, great. Eric, you, you need to bring your cat into, you know,
now it's funny that you mentioned that she's very recently developed an annoying habit of waking me up in the morning and just going and mowing and mowing and so it's been a few days and so I have to, we have to unlearn that habit because it's,
yeah, yeah. Well one of the possibilities, too, is to get earplugs. Sure I do have a couple of them I should just start doing that too. Yeah, yeah, she may stop doing it if you use the earplugs and there's just no response. He's telling her where to go. Okay. I've heard a lot of different complaints about sleep. Okay. What's up, I know you've tried a bunch of wearables, have you used the whoop. W H O P. Oh yeah, I have not used that. But as far as a device that you put in the bed. That looks like it has pretty good data with sleep studies, but it's something that you have to get in, put in your bed right it's math and all of that. Like,
is there a mat I might just be the wrist, or maybe there's levels, I don't know, but my understanding. Yeah, it was yeah just like a little wrist wearable.
Yeah I think it's more than the wrist, I think there's a piece, you have to put in the bed as well and then it feeds information back and forth. But, yeah, yeah. You know that's probably a reasonably good one but again I think there's more to it than just being wearable. As far as wearables go I still haven't seen anything, improve on the aura ring, or the headband. The Dream headband.
Yeah. Okay, that's what I thought I think I remember you saying the aura was really good. It's funny, The I'm speaking to a lot of college coaches right now and they all seem to know what, because they have a lot of their like, they have partnerships with a bunch of professional sports leagues. And so, I was gonna do like a personal experiment with I just signed up for it last night. That's why I don't know like the details of how the how the wearable works but wanted to do like two months of just trying to get as much sleep efficiency and as much of a recovery score for the next day, for physical activity and then for two months, optimized for lucid dreaming, so doing like a wake back to bed or you know maybe some more broken periods of sleep during the night. And then for the last two months, go back to trying to, to just optimize that sleep score or sleep efficiency. And yeah, I just wanted to see if you have any thoughts on that or I literally just thought of it yesterday so if you how I might go about doing that.
Well I think that's a great way of doing it is to is optimizing sleep first. Because you do really want to have that great foundation of sleep before you start messing with it, and maybe losing some. But one thing I would do is I would add, if you have any other devices if you have a Fitbit or ring. Put it on at the same time it's not going to really change, you know what's happening. It's not going to affect your sleep and in any way and you may get comparable measures. Be nice to see what they look like across the same timeframe for sure. Yeah, no, that sounds like a great idea. I'd love to see the data when you're done. I'll look at the whoop again too and see the hoop and see what I know I've looked at it a while ago but I haven't looked at it since. So, I'll check into it again too. Oh yeah, sounds good. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yep. All right, sounds good, Eric. Thanks, keep us all updated. Great. All right, Andy you're directing us, where am I going now.
Okay, you can go back to the chat. There's a question from Laura. And then there's a question from Tim.
Okay, great. Laura says, Could you tell us anything about long COVID and related insomnia I seem to be having that. That's unfortunate. I used to get tired and fall asleep by midnight or even earlier now you often feel unable to sleep, and even going deep into the night. I do notice this is compounded when I'm caught up in some kind of stress like engaging in online discussion about getting the vaccine with vaccine resistant relatives, any tips. Yes, stop those discussions, they will not be productive, you're not going to convince anyone it's not the data that they're convinced by, unfortunately. But, you know, going back to the long COVID emulated insomnia. Part of the problem with the law and COVID is its effects on fatigue, it's increasing fatigue. So the body, and you can come on or you can type in again whether you're experiencing, fatigue, the fatigue generates less sleepiness, less drive to sleep. Remember the graph you know this sleep pressure that happens across a day, there's less of that when people are fatigued or. And I don't know that for sure in long COVID But I'm assuming because that's what we see in chronic fatigue, that's what we see in fibromyalgia, there's less drive to sleep because the daytime activity isn't generating cognitive activity to the same level it was before, or even physical activity to the same level it was before. So, my suggestion would be in any way you can generate more activity, you know, if you're wearing a Fitbit or something you know if you can increase the steps or the activity level, you know, not dramatically just but just trying to do more activity than you have been that may help help to sleep at night. When I'm caught up in some kind of stress yeah and then of course you know stress really drains the system. So, you know, it's like stress is adding to the fatigue, stress is not allowing the brain to cognate as well as it does, without stress. So instead of it being able to generate byproducts that produce sleepiness, there'll be less of that when there's more stress around too. So, you know, change the habits, a little bit see if you can get a little more active seating get out in nature a little bit more. See if you can reduce these discussions. And, you know, one of the things I recommend people do. And this is just a generic way of being in the world is in one of your meditations or maybe in several of your meditations, ask, what is it that you're here to do, not what we should be doing and you know of course we all should be taking shorter showers and driving electric cars and eating organically and not eating meat, Right, but that's not helpful for the individual, what's helpful for the individual, is to ask, what is yours to do, what can you do that will better your world, because whatever you can do to better your world, it will better the world around you. Okay, so, you know, I know it feels like we should be out there, you know, protesting the environment and protesting this and getting rid of the people who should you know I mean like, what may happen is, you know, selective. Well, let's not go there. Try to do what's going to work for you. Okay, take care of yourself, self care is not is not a luxury, it's a necessity. And we can't take care of the rest of the world if we're not taking care of ourselves. So start there. Okay. And then if you're getting sleep better and you have all that energy and you want to go online and argue with people go for it, you know, but make sure it's something you want to do, that's going to make your life better, and one that's going to enable you to make others lives better. That's my two cents on that. All right, um, oh thanks Andy for putting up a couple of links there. Great. And then there's a question from Susan Should I just go on to the chat.
Oh yeah, definitely go to Susan and then I send you tunes next.
Okay, great. Have a deal. Susan says I haven't had a daily mindful practice, practicing long sit to move through sensations and restless boredom to improve sleep experience. Okay. When remembered dreams appear to be crazy reruns of daily impressions. Lacking color or vividness intention to remember dreams has helped sometimes it seems as if there is just thinking, without any visualizations. Any suggestion to bring color and vividness to dreams. If you're there soon. It'd be great to come on and have dialogue about this. Practicing long sit to move through sensations are you saying and restless boredom. Are you, are you saying you're spending like hours meditating during the day, are you reducing your overall activity your overall exposure to different experiences in your daily activity. Because if that's the case, then that might be what your dreams are reflecting back to you, that there's not a lot of variability, there's not a lot of activity, there's not a lot of color in your daytime, and therefore your dreams will be less colorful, and that comment about just thinking without any visualizations, you know, what are you doing in your, in your sits, you know, you're, you're trying to not have any visualizations not have any sensations, you may be thinking more than you than you would like but. Okay, you're on. Okay.
Yes, um, I haven't been able to remember dreams for a long time so really working on the practice of the intention does help. But dreams have never been vivid, or colorful. Sometimes nightmares here and there but mostly just just black and white kind of dull just maybe about what's ever happened during the day or during the week, something I've seen on TV or. So there's no, there's no color vividness, and the, the long SIDS is maybe trying recently up to over an hour of sitting and just working through, you know, the restless boredom that comes up and just being able to stay in that presence. But yeah pretty much stay in pretty quiet, it's things have slowed down, especially with the whole COVID thing, but never really had any vivid colorful dreams that I, that can be recalled.
Did you notice any change with COVID in the quality of the dreams.
Probably not. Not remembering dreams. I think there's more of a non remembering, unless, unless, whatever I learned recently through this class is is to have that intention to remember and try to remind all during the day, this is a dream this is a dream. And so, you know, just I know it's not going to come immediately and I know, it's just going to take time and just, just keep just keep doing it, but I hear people talk about other dreams of color and there's just no color.
What's your life like I mean are you are you do you get very stressed or do you have a stressful life at all or. Yeah, it has been stressful. Okay. Do you do anything exciting. So you'd have to reveal personal stuff I'm just trying to get a sense of, not really, not right now. No. All right, here's an experiment for you to do over the next couple of weeks. Okay, do something really exciting and colfo get out in the world. You don't have to be around all these other people to do this. Okay, unless you want to go ride a roller coaster or do something real, you know, do something out of your wheelhouse, to get something really striking really exciting, really careful. And then notice your dreams over the next couple of nights after you do that, okay, and you may need to do a couple of these things, okay over a few days a week, maybe two, and just see if there's any change in the quality of those dreams. Okay, keep your intention up and we'll do all the rest of course, you Yeah, and I would never tell anybody not to meditate, but I would add on, do some, get some activity to get some really juice. Okay and see what happens. Okay, thank you very much. Sure, sure. All right. I'm back to chat. Yes sir. Who's coming on okay chat Hi Jim. I've heard it said that the sleep we get before midnight is better than the sleep after that time. Okay, my first response there is what happens if you don't have a clock. Okay, think about that for a moment. Where does that idea come from. Is that true or not. Thanks for the great information you give us. Absolutely. You know, there's a lot to be said there but it isn't necessarily. There's not a lot of science behind that. Okay. Because what's one person's Midnight is a completely different time for another person. There are people who are morning people there are people who are night people. So the morning people will have a different one night for them it's the sleep they get by 11 o'clock. It's the sleep they get for the night people asleep they get by two in the morning. Okay, so it's not necessarily that there's a specific clock time, but there are differences for the different circadian circadian groupings of people where you fall on that line, are you more of a night person you're more of a night owl, then, going to bed early for you won't really be useful because you'll be waking up, many more times during the night, than if you go to bed later. According to your circadian clock. So the circadian clock is what's most important. Okay. And you know, Probably. I think the numbers are something like 80% of us are neither morning people nor night people, we're kind of in the middle somewhere you know we lean maybe one way or the other way. So for us, maybe closer to midnight we might be getting better sleep before rather than after, but it's not that direct and it's not that. It's not that validated by any kind of science that I'm aware of. Okay. But I do think it comes from, you know, back in the days when there weren't electric lights. People would then sleep. Generally, earlier, and they would be up, you know, at the crack of dawn to milk the cows or plant the seeds or whatever that was. Whereas today we're much more all over the place, and some people will argue that that's because we don't get our sleep by midnight and it really has more to do with life in 21st century Western society than it does with what time we're actually going to bed and getting our sleep. Okay. Hope that helps. And you go more chats or wherever yeah just
scroll through the chat NO raised hands at the moment. Okay,
fatigue, absolutely yes from Laura Okay yeah, Laura. Yeah, so for you, you know, slowly but surely if you can be a little more active. That may very well help from, from ano, Dr Nieto who teaches on Dream Yoga says stress contributes to black and white dreams. So perhaps look into that for vividness try Galantamine or work with visualization practices, great suggestions. Yeah, thanks, about the Galantamine that's, you know to co energic agonists, so the colon ergic system is what's active when we're awake and doing things and it's also what comes back online when we're trying to dream. so, that activation may give us more sort of cognitive activity during the dream state. Excellent. Okay. For Richard, I am 77 and have been into have been having intimate insomnia for over three years 3am big wake up. Tried most over the counter offerings and finally given to accepting use of prescription. A stands Alam one milligram to begin sometimes one milligram at 3am Now of course you know I can't make medical recommendations so I'm going to take this more generically. I have studied many authors work for example, Dr. Bruce, and others, and nothing suggested is working, I think I think I am getting cognitive decline issues because of poor sleep and door effect of the prescription use have tried other prescriptions and CBD no good. All right. Alright, we're gonna have to parse this one out a bit. So before, three years ago, Richard, what was your sweep like, Like, that's where I would start. Okay. Why did suddenly 3am become the big wake up. Did you always wake up, but returned to sleep, or did you begin to. You just started noticing you are awake at 3am and being unable to return to sleep. Are you awake for a really long period of time. Is that why you're trying to use medications to get yourself back to sleep, because you're awake too long.
Do you have a schedule that allows you to be awake in the middle of the night for a couple of hours, and then sleep in in the morning. So what is your sleep, if, if you if you monitor your sleep around the 24 hour period if you recorded that. How much sleep would you beginning, is it any different now than it was before the big 3am wakeups, because that's a different story. It may be that you're now dividing your sleep into two periods, and there's a lot of evidence for that in the past, before the electric lights and all that. And we all do actually wake up. Most of us. In fact, every single one of us, wakes up multiple times every single night, we all wake up. The difference between good sleepers and Poor Sleepers is that the good sleepers. Turn over. Go back to sleep and erased the wake ups. But if I have monitors on you. I'll see them. If you're wearing the dream headband, We'll see those wakeups they're brief and you fall back asleep. The difference with someone who has insomnia, is that they notice they're awake and then that activation wakes them up even more. And if, especially if it's been happening multiple times. Now it becomes an issue, and that issue is what maintains the activation and the wakefulness. And then that becomes the problem because we don't know what else to do with it. One of the things I recommend when people tell me the precise time they wake up at night is to ditch the clock. The clock is not your friend. It is not reminding you how much sleep you've gotten it's reminding you that you're awake again with insomnia at three o'clock in the morning. And that's not helpful. So when you wake up at night if it's 11 o'clock or 430 that can make a difference as to whether you fall back asleep or not. If you notice it's 3am. You're gonna be awake again because you know, that's what happens. And so you kind of have to dissociate what's happening from actual clock time, and sort of reduce the arousal content, the arousal impact of knowing what time it is during the night, now stands, Lam is a, you know it's in the best benzodiazepine family. And what that, you know, most of the benzodiazepines in general have three functions. One of them is to make you sleepy, perhaps, but they all have different proportions of those three functions one is to help you be a little sleepy. One is to reduce anxiety and the third is a muscle relaxant. All that class of medications all have all three of them. And some of them have more of one function than the other. So, it may be that there's additional anxiety in your life for the past three years, you know like something like life just got more stressful or, you know, things started happening. And so if that's the case you want to kind of get to the source of what's been increasing your anxiety or what's been increasing the stress in your life. So I would go backwards to what was going on three years ago, what changed maybe there was some medical issue maybe there was some concern, maybe there was loss of a loved one. So you kind of want to sort through that and see if there's anything there. The cognitive decline issues, you know, there, there's a lot of that I've even said it that you know when you don't sleep the sleep you need. You are now at greater risk for insomnia for Alzheimer's or other dementias as we get older. The key to key take home about that those studies is that when you're not getting the sleep, you need. It's almost only in people who are chronically sleep depriving themselves, not people who need less sleep, overall.
Okay, so maybe really clear about that. If you need seven hours a night and you're getting seven hours but you're trying to get eight, you're not going to get cognitive decline because you're only sleeping seven hours. As long as you're meeting your individual sleep need cognitive decline will not be an issue from not getting eight hours of sleep a night. Okay, so you need to know what your sleep quota is, what is it for you and the way I usually say to do that is you know take a week or two and especially if you're retired and not working. Allow yourself to sleep ad lib. And by the end of that second week or week and a half, you'll be feeling alert during the day and then look back and see how much sleep you're getting at night. That's your sleep me. Okay. And then if you get that more or less every night. No dementia issues related to sleep. Okay. Yes, there's evidence that taking benzodiazepines are particularly Ambien, which is not a benzo but close packs closely like it for prolonged periods of time can produce some cognitive decline. That is true. So it depends on how long term you're talking about, then you should have that discussion with your primary care physician, but you should sort out what you think is contributing to the insomnia first where did it come from, what started what happened, you know you want the chicken or the egg you want to know what came first in this case. And so three years ago you were doing relatively well. And then something started making it worse. You need to sort that out. Okay, that'll be really important to do because that's what you want to address, not whether you need something to get to sleep at 3am or not. I hope that's helpful. And by the way the one last thing I'll say about CBD. You, no one has tried CBD. Everyone has tried some formulation of CBD, there are hundreds, if not 1000s of different formulations of CBD. Not to mention, whether or not there's any THC in those as a colleague of mine has already said, the more I read about CBD and THC, the less I know there's just so much out there, and the science is only really beginning to be done enough in a way that we can really begin to speak to it. So would that be better for you than a static lamb, probably does CBD require THC to work probably small doses of THC seem to really produce a much greater impact on sleep than CBD alone. Their CBD nine CBD, you know there's there's CBN. Now, there are so many compounds in the marijuana plants that it's really hard to sort out what is doing what. In general, there's the sativa variation that things come from. There's the Indika is the other major pot plant sort of species, there's a TV. And there's intercoast TV is mostly the head trip, the hallucinations Indika is more of the body trip, the more quieting the body down, relaxing the body, so if you're mixing, if you have a CBD with some Indika strain of THC they'll probably be better for you than sativa strain. Those are some generalities that are coming out of the research right now. There was one other thing I was going to say about that. Oh yeah there's tears. Even formulations that are called they're these called bedtime Betty's, not because they put you to bed but because Betty was the person who designed it. She has a company. And it's funny, You know I live in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. We're a town of 7000 people. We have over seven parts stores, and it's recreationally available. So I've got everything you could possibly want here you know you can come visit my office, we'll get you to sleep but you may have to try a few things. But the reason I say that is there's one, only one of the stores carries these bedtime Betty's and they're always out, that's always assigned to me that they work, that that least that formulation works bedtime berries are I think five milligrams of THC, and
two milligrams of melatonin, they haven't mixed. And I think, and this I don't have really good evidence for it yet but I really think the reason they're so effective. When you take melatonin and I've mentioned this before taking the liquid version of it, or at least the segmental under the tongue sublingual rather under the tongue, the tablets that melt in your mouth, are much more effective than anything you can take and swallow, and that's because anything you take and swallow has to go through the digestive system. A lot of the melatonin is broken down and used as other serotonin metabolites in the body, and so only maybe 20% actually gets to your brain. If you take it in the mouth and you digest it in the mouth, that goes right into your circulation and goes right to the brain, much more quicker acting much more effective and much more active. So the bedtime Betty's are choose, so you're chewing the THC that's going right in and you're chewing the melatonin that's going right in. Yes, some will get swallowed, but most of it's going right in. And I think that's why they're so effective. Okay, I think I've probably said enough about that so there is some really, really good research coming out, looking at the end oak cannabinoid system. So we actually have receptors in our brain. There's a whole system of receptors that respond to the active ingredients in the pot plan. Okay, just like we have receptors for suicide and so there's something about the plant world that speaks to the human world, we are part of nature after all and these things do have impacts, and they have been used for 1000s of years by other indigenous tribes, you know, so like, there are systems in the brain that will respond to these and I think any of those are going to be better than any particular prescribed medication, Only because you're getting more of the whole plant in some of these formulations, and most of the medications that big farmer puts out are these singular chemicals that don't have all the surrounding ones that might mediate the negative side effects that we typically see with pharmacological preparations. So that's my take on that. All right. More questions in it where are we, I don't see any more. Oh gosh 13 new messages whoa haven't scroll down. Okay. I'll bet Barry Medicare pays for Glen to me, that's good to know I didn't know that either wants to start hitting them up. Not much of a problem before 3am Amateur pub before three years ago from Richard has resulted in very low energy during the day, of course, it sounds like you're not even making up that sleep. If your energy is low. I would go back to that three year ago Mark, you know, somewhere in a few months around when that issue began, and just see if you can source out anything that might have contributed something in changing your lifestyle, your habits, your diet, your weight, medical issues medications, you really need to sort through all that, you know, I like to say that insomnia is not a disorder. It's a complaint. And until you rule out all the reasons for that potential complaint. It may not be a disorder. Now once you've ruled out everything and there's some unknown cause, then we can call it, chronic insomnia disorder, and that's what's in the, you know, in the books and all that. But before you get to that point you really need to rule out what's, what's changed what's contributing to it and see if you can get that to fix.
Okay Oh it does not matter to me for the time in the clock time it is sometimes 130 and sometimes four. I have no anxiety in my life other than poor sleep no other medical issues. Well if you want to try something. Richard, since you, you're on and you're here and I'm talking I'll give you one thing to suggest, so hide the clock, and I want you to go to bed. Two hours later than you typically go to bed, whatever time that is right now. Starting tonight. Hide the clock. Go to bed. Two hours later than you typically go don't see a clock when you wake up and just allow yourself to go back to sleep, no matter what time it is put up dark shade so you don't know where and I I shade, so you don't know when it's morning. Okay when light doesn't come in and use your plugs to block out any surrounding noises that may be waking you up. Okay, those are two basic three basic really approaches, but go into bed, two hours later will increase your sleep pressure. And that should help you move through some of the wake up. Okay melatonin for sleep at time, Eddie's it's bedtime, Should be bedtime Betty's not Eddie's. I have nothing to do with it. It should be bedtime Betty's. I've tried to MacOS sleep spray for melatonin did not work. Try another liquid melatonin under the tongue. Works for me, the melatonin for sleep with CBD to app stream drops. Okay, so there's some good stuff in the take the links out of the chat box and try a few of these things out and see what else typically go to bed at 10pm I use eye coverings and Darko and use blue light blockers in the evening. Good, go to bed at midnight tonight. Okay, go to bed at midnight and keep everything else the same. Okay, and let us know how it goes, you can email me, there's my email anywhere, I think it's somewhere, I think it's on the, even on the presentations it's somewhere. You can put it in the box if you want, edit your optimal nature calm. That way you know it's sleep related, and let me know how it goes. Okay, but do it for a couple of nights which you're doing let's see what happens. Maybe we can work on this in the background. Okay, great. Anything else, we have more questions, any more. Bedtime berries. There we go. Oh, Were at ground. Yeah, they come, they come for like 20 bucks for 10 I think he did 10 of these chews or something like that I don't know why would I know that right you know but I like to know what people are trying with their testing and And truth be told, I have tried them, if you're going to try them, they come in those 5 million cut in half, try a half first. I find a there's great hangover melatonin generally leaves me with a hangover, so I don't use it I typically sleep okay, but I want to know what people are experiencing, particularly if they're safe things, I'm not going to, I'm not going to try some of the heavier duty, former pharmacological preparations. But, yeah, you know, and the downside it's funny you know if this stuff was made legal 20 3040 years ago, man, life would have been great, but it wasn't. And now I want to be aware I don't want to be zoned out, you know I don't you know I want to be lucid. I don't want to be zoned out. So, yeah, such as life. Interesting, isn't it. Well, I'm happy to stay on for a little bit, unless, no one has any questions I've put everybody to sleep or at least put you into a, into a one breath meditation.
I have a quick question for you Dr. Ed. Okay, so, yes. So I recently started napping. More napping now, I never really napped before, because I also have cows in the morning that I have to milk so I've been waking up early and trying to find time to sleep. That was a joke but I and Jenna find time to sleep. More throughout the day so the other day I took a nap for about an hour, and I woke up, but I was so groggy and I just I really didn't feel good for a while. And then today I took a nap for like 15 minutes. And I think I felt a little bit more rested, but I wasn't even sure I was basically just kind of meditating and doing like a red lotus practice that and who's taught us. So yeah. Can you say a little bit about, and I think you've probably said this in the past but just for a refresher for me, like what would you say about ideal nap times, or just any advice you can give me as I'm on my napping journey.
Well, okay, so these are, so you've described what what are the two major potential issues with napping or one of them is if you nap for a longer period if you go beyond the half an hour you start pushing 45 minutes to an hour. Your brain is going to drop into deep non REM sleep, and we actually have a term for that, which is sleep inertia. So when you wake that brain up from deep non REM sleep, it's going to tend to stay asleep unless you really push it. And that's what happens, you're going to be groggy for a while. Sometimes it happens to people on Saturday morning they, they go back to sleep and then they get up to go and I go back to sleep I feel I can't even get up and move, and that's because the brain is still wanting to be in deep non REM sleep, but then later in that day you will be as alert and even more alert than you would have been if you hadn't taken the hour, because it's made up for some loss sleep, you generally can't sleep an hour during the day unless you've cut your sleep, from the night by some comparable amount or the last few nights, right. So, you can do that though you can break you asleep up and take naps during the day, but either you're going to need to do the hour and a half to a full sleep cycle, because then your brain is going to be waking itself up again, and then allow yourself to wake up at that point, or set an alarm for 90 minutes. If you haven't slept 90 minutes stay in for the 90, as long as you're making up for lost sleep, then you will go through and come out the other end and be sharp and ready to go. If you're not making up for lost sleep or you don't really owe the bank, a lot of sleep, then a 15 or 20 minute nap is excellent. It can refresh the brain, it can recharge you. And it won't allow you to get too deep, so that you won't get that groggy feeling okay make sense.
Definitely. So when, when we say like 15 to 20 minute nap. It's not like we're actually entering a deep sleep, it's just more like a restful state.
Okay, that makes sense. And it is sleep. It really is sleep. It's just that it's not deep sleep. So and that's why it's refreshing and. And the other thing I would add about it too is if you want to do it during that circadian dip time during the day you know the mid afternoon time. That would be the ideal time to get especially if you're making up for lost sleep, but if people aren't good nappers or good sleepers during the day, that would be a great time to practice it because your brains already dropped a couple of notches anyway. And it'll be easier to drift into sleep at that time.
Thank you.
Sure and great. I see there's one chat I don't know, I'll take a quick look what sticks down anything to say about being cooked. So Amanda says anything to say about being put to sleep as like an anesthetic. Um, well, it is still sleep in the sense that it takes your brain offline so you're not creating more sleep need because you're you're out to lunch middle way. Um, some anesthetics are more like sleep than others, some are not like sleep at all and don't give you the same restoration that normal sleep would for the early studies that looked at, you know, this whole thing with dementia, and the build up of of beta amyloid protein and tau proteins that are associated with Alzheimer's, and that if we can chronically sleep deprived ourselves, those substances stay around and contribute to dementia later on when they did that under an anesthesia and I don't remember which one they did see the clearance of those two culprits that lead to dementia, they didn't see that same clearance that we see in sleep. So, at least under that anaesthetic it looked a lot like deep sleep. I can't say much more than that because there are a whole variety of anesthetics. But that's probably the closest to normal sleep that you can get would be in an anesthetic, but it's not going to give you the cycles of sleep, it's not going to give you the going down into deep sleep and then up into REM and then down to deep sleep again, it's just going to knock you into deep sleep and leave you there, pretty much for the long term, the time of action of the anesthetic doesn't give you that variation and some of the other functions that sleep does, for instance, it won't support your memory. If anything, it may impact negatively impact your memory for the events right before you go into anesthesia. Which isn't a bad thing when you're having surgery. You know you don't want to remember all that stress and everything right after. But yeah, so that's what I can say about that,
answered the chat. Yep. Yeah, no hands raised. Going once. Going twice. Okay, all you, great sleepers out there. Good luck sleeping until the next time we meet, good luck, doing your dream yoga. What are we up to is Angela still here, we have to like, stage three or four or four now I think right
yeah we're, we're starting stage four. Yeah, during yoga.
And that's, let's see, we went through the, oh it's the manifestation we're changing the manifestation right changing a flower pot into a desk, kind of thing, right. Yeah, okay. So, sleep well so you can do that well, and we'll see you next month.
Okay, I'll let everyone on mute just to say goodbye, And yeah, tomorrow we have a virtual hangout same time so you can make it. Bring your questions and thanks so much doctor and we appreciate you so much.
Glad to be of service and anyone who loves sleep they're loving to talk to you. So, yeah,