[43] Improving sleep quality, addressing sleep disorders, and exploring the latest sleep research with Dr Ed

12:00AM Feb 12, 2025

Speakers:

Ed O'Malley

Karen Roper

Denise DeBaun

Andrea Loreto

Steve Deiss

Beatrice

Mike Dokuchic

Jude Kieda

Kate Night Club

Keywords:

sleep doctor

deep sleep

REM sleep

sleep apnea

CPAP machine

HRV

anticholinergic medications

cholinergic medications

lucid dreaming

sleep hygiene

glymphatic flow

valerian root

magnesium citrate

red light therapy

sleep tracking.

Okay, I think I'm ready.

Do you want me to stay or do you feel good?

Well, I feel good, but I also want you to stay for a moment. Let me just get everybody in. Yeah,

I can stay for like 10 minutes after, okay,

all right, that'd be great. Let me, course. Let me go to participants. I guess I Uh,

okay, admit all it's happening. We're making progress here. Look at that. It's working. Kate is here, holding my hand very capably, and it has seemed to work quite well. All right, Kate, I think, oh, and it's recording, and it's being transcribed. All right,

life is good. Heads up. You might see someone showing up, you know, in the next few minutes, and you'll get a notification. But yeah,

like Tim Hawk just came in. Okay, admit, yeah, I've done that before. Okay, cool, unless they're not nice, then I wanted

you are the gatekeeper. You get to decide

I get the power. Oh, Barry. I don't know if I should let Barry in. What's the boat? Should I let Barry? Okay, all right, so we're just figuring out some new technical things. We're good. Lighting is terrible on me, but that's the way it is, where I am right now. All good. All right. So welcome everyone to our ask to sleep doc number, who the hell knows, where we've been doing these for a while and opened it up to the general public. And so we have some new faces each week, which is great. I do have a host of questions. People were very curious this past, well, week or two, and so I'm going to jump right in, and then we will have, hopefully, if we get through that quickly enough, we'll have time for some questions and opening the floor, as we typically do. So let's see if I can get this up and running and go into display mode. Everybody see that? Okay, thumbs up, okay, and you can hear me, okay, good. All right, so over here, so I can see everyone at the same time, I like to keep an eye on the crowd, just in case there are people drifting off. Talk louder. All right, so, so the first question that came in was in Spanish, and because of Google, I'm able to address this. So I've done it here in English for the group, but I've also had it back translated in Spanish, so I'm not sure who, unless you sign it with your name, I don't say name. So whoever gave me this question, it'll be in Spanish in just a second. So my bedtime is between nine and 10. I fall asleep quickly. However, when I wake up, sometimes at 330, or 44, or 5am I get out of bed straight away, because I'm not sleepy, I wake up with energy and do some work at home. I want to know if this waking time is normal, or would it be better to try to get out of bed at 6am so if you're on, I'm going to want you to unmute, to unmute if you can answer some questions. So first, so if you're actually are you getting eight hours? Are you sleeping from nine to five? That would be eight hours. But if you're sleeping from 10 to four, well, that would only be six hours. So it would be helpful to know if you're routinely sleeping six hours or less, or routinely sleeping somewhere between six and eight, closer to eight, it sounds like you have plenty of energy, and you're up and about and all of that's good. So if you, if you are doing well and functioning well with this schedule, that's always where I start. If there's not, you know, it's the old Ann lander. She was the advice columnist years ago, and she would always say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Okay, so if your daily life is functioning well and this energy level is good for you, that's great. What I would say is that the science does speak to having as regular a schedule as possible. So over the long haul, you would like to reduce the you know, the hour difference here, to the couple of hour difference there, and try to get your schedule at a closer time or or it more regular. And the best way to start that would be at in the wake time. So if you're getting up, you know, I would say you should probably shoot for the 5am 6am would be better, only because you're going to get a better shot at getting light when you get up in the morning, and when you get that light in the morning, that's the strongest signal you can give yourself to set your circadian clock so your melatonin comes back on at about the same time each night. One of the reasons why you're falling asleep at different times may be because you're getting up and getting exposed to light at different times. So the only reason 6am is a better time than 5am is because it's closer to when we'll actually have light. And you know, it depends on where you are in the world and what season you're at, but for the most part, 6am will be closer to getting light at 5am so if you want to play with it a little bit, try staying in bed till 6am set an alarm to get you out at 6am and then go to bed when sleepy. If you're finding that you can't possibly sleep to 6am you could force yourself to stay up a little bit later. Okay, and if you stay up a bit later, you are more like, you know, 10 or 11, then you're more likely to sleep till five or six, and closer to six, you stay up at 11 to 12, you will probably sleep till six, and then you can backtrack and go to bed when you're sleepy, which should occur, you know, whatever your sleep need is, it may be around seven hours. It may be unclear whether we would know that or not. And just so, you know, it's in the recording. I had Google back translate this and my answer, obviously, I said a lot more than wasn't in Spanish. But you are welcome to ask a question, a further question, so that you could get it in Spanish. Okay? Or we you could ask Myra, Myra, you could translate if she's on. I don't see anyone saying they're on, so she's gonna have to see the recording. Okay, we're gonna go to the next one. So about a year ago, I bought in the ring due to your recommendation. I'd still like it. I'm glad you do, but I wonder about the validity of the HRV, the heart rate variability measured during the night, right? The variability rate only depends on my sleeping position, so that is incorrect. Okay, the HRV doesn't just depend on sleeping position. However, we'll go on with this, the longer I sleep supine, the higher it gets, up to 40. If I only sleep in a lateral position, my rate is around 20. I just read that upright measuring in the morning is more accurate. Why doesn't the ring do that? What do you think it varies with position? Okay, but during the daytime. One of the reasons why we don't use daytime HRV is because it varies dramatically with posture, with your stress levels, your activity levels, and so that's why most people measure it during sleep, which that score is when the system is at rest, you're in restoration mode, more of the night will be spent in the parasympathetic part of the autonomic nervous system, which is what's going to give you the highest HRV, okay, and so that's why it's typically measured during sleep. And what I would do is, you know, most of us change our position several times during the night. Don't try to sleep only on your back or only on your side. Allow yourself to sleep in a comfortable position, and that will more likely give you a representative HRV for your body and plus your age, your activity level, any illnesses, any chronic conditions, any medical conditions, medications, so many different things can affect your HRV so sleep is the best Time to measure it. Okay, and and the absolute number isn't what's important, unless it's really low or really high. Okay, so it can vary quite significantly with age. The older we get, the lower the number generally is. So that's something else to consider. You didn't mention your age in this okay? And if you're on, raise your hand or chat me up somewhere. Can I see the chat from here now? Oh yeah, there's the chat. Okay, so are there other people in the waiting room? Let's see. Yes, there are snuck in on me when I wasn't looking okay, I got them coming in. Okay. So would you please discuss the impact of anticholinergic and cholinergic medications on dream recall? It's a dream memory in general. Many over the counter prescription drugs are anticholinergic. And yes, anticholinergic medications generally disrupt sleep, and they generally suppress dream sleep, okay? And the opposite right, the exact opposite of anticholinergic are cholinergic agonists. They support acetylcholine, they keep it around longer, or they they block its breakdown. They change the way it's metabolized. Lots of different ways you can keep acetylcholine around.

Galantamine is one of the most common ones. People use cholinergic agonists. People use for lucid dreaming, enhancing lucid dreaming. So Galantamine is one of those, one that does actually, it's a cholinergic medication designed actually initially for supporting memory loss in Alzheimer's, and it is still used to a certain extent in Alzheimer's. Yeah. Beatrice, you're unmuted. You have a question. You This is yours? Yes, this is

my question. So I've been reluctant to try galentamine, because I'm a lightweight. I weigh 90 pounds, and I don't think it comes in a low dose. I haven't been able to find it. I want to start with two milligrams, and it seems to come as an eight milligram. You

can get it at four. You can get it at four online. And I added this for that reason. I know because you said you were a little concerned about it, we want some help with this. The dosage for waking memory. Support was in the eight to 24 milligram range, okay, so quite a wide range. It was usually started at eight and then titrated up over a few weeks. Okay, so it can be used at a pretty high dose without tremendous side effects. But people can have side effects too. So you're right in trying to start with a lower, lower possible dose, right? I got you there. Look for the four milligram, and if you want cut it in half, okay? And start with two. If you're adventurous and want to start with four, there's very little downside, but make sure you get the four. Don't start with the eight. That would be my recommendation. Okay? And do it, you know, again, when you don't have any any important activities scheduled for the next morning, okay, do it on the weekend. Okay, is that helpful?

Yes, thank you. Okay, sure.

All right, moving on. I don't see anyone else having questions about that. Is it okay to sleep in two cycles? I often go to sleep by nine o'clock or so, wake up around 430 stay awake for maybe an hour reading or doing some gentle work, then sleep again for an hour or so. You do your iPad work. I hope you have your blue box or sunglasses on, but hey, you go back to sleep again for an hour or so. Not a problem. Any problem with this pattern. Not at all okay. If relevant, I do take note of my REM deep light and awake sleep times via my ring. Many thanks. You folks have rings on. I still still wearing mine. That's great. Yeah, biphasic sleep is basically considered normal, and for long periods of Western history, a couple of books we've just written about this, first and second sleep were considered normal, usual. Everybody did it. So as we became more industrialized and we had electric light and not candles, that cost a lot of money back in the day, we kind of moved towards a more single bout of sleep. But I would also be interested in your data. So what is your data showing? I would expect that last hour that you're going back to sleep for probably you're having a lot of that should be rem and you'll have more of your deep sleep in that early part. But that would be interesting to see. So if you have some good data to share with us, at some point you want to come back on or even just take a couple of screenshots and post it in your question. We'll get it up online and play with that a little bit. So that's

how I'll share it with you, by taking screenshots and so,

yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure when you when you post the question, you could copy and paste it in there with that. Okay, okay,

thank you,

yep, and that'll be great. Okay, good. Thanks for coming on. I'm glad people are here so we can get a little more, you know, a little more in the weeds with some of this stuff. Okay, I asked in a previous session how one can increase glymphatic flow, the answer was to get better and more sleep, but that in itself, is the problem. Okay, Steve, are you out there somewhere? Why is that the problem? Are you having trouble sleeping? Are you having trouble just getting more deep sleep? You've got a ring or something that's telling you you're not getting your deep sleep. So that will be important to know, I stand by the answer you got in the last time you asked the question, exactly. Right. Okay, the best way to improve glymphatic flow is by getting more sleep. Okay. Now, glymphatic flow for everyone who's maybe not so sure that's only been discovered in the last decade, and it's the, you know, the brain has a different clearing system for all the junk that builds up because the brain is in such a tight area and there's billions of cells up there. There really isn't a lot of space to have fluid flowing through and clearing the brain out like it can do in our circulatory system, in our bodies. So what happens is the lymphatic system opens up when we're asleep, and primarily in deep sleep, but certainly minimally, if at all, when we're awake. Okay, so I had that first question, but there's also a second question here, and that is, he wants to know if there are supplements, exercises, meditations, anything else that will directly increase deep sleep, so that it increases brain clearance, so that really is a reflective of the increased glymphatic flow, okay? While awake, nope, nothing. Okay, nothing. While you're awake, as far as I'm aware, for as any of the research has shown, they really don't have anything for waking and that's because it's it's suppressed during waking because there's no room up there for it to get cleared out. Would almost like your brain would have to go on hold. Maybe in daydreaming or something, they're going to find out that there's a little bit of it happening. But maybe in meditation, they're going to find that a little bit might be happening, but for the most part, the only time they've seen it is in deep, slow wave sleep. Okay, now, can you increase deep sleep? Well, the only substance that I know of that's actually showed shown some kind of increase on a sleep study of deep sleep was valerian root. And it's interesting, because if you look at a meta analysis of valerian root and its impact on sleep, the only ones that have the really strongest effect are the ones that use the full valerian root, okay, the rhizome of the valerian like so, the herbal preparation of it, the extracts, the active agent, you know that they try to synthesize. And all of those have really mixed, mixed effects. And so in some cases, studies show yeah, some cases, they show no. The other caveat about valerian root is that you need to take it more than one night to see these improvements in slow wave sleep. So you would need to be taking it for a week or two before you experience that impact. Um, Andrea Andrea, how do you pronounce your name?

Andrea Andrea Andrea, yeah, I am Italian, even if I've been in the States for over 20 years. Anyway, and I apologize for my accent that is detailed. No, no,

no, thank you. Have to keep moving your hands, though.

So thank you very much. Thank you very much for being here. This is very, very, very instructive to me, because I just had, I mean, I bought recently, the ordering and and I discovered a couple of facts that are really surprising to me, and I wanted to and I raised my hand now, because actually it's got to do with this question, and the question before so is regarding deep sleep. Now what happened is that I sleep perfectly. I wake up completely rested, and everything works fine. But these, the ordering told me that, basically, I have almost a zero deep sleep. So what I thought, I mean, my, basically, my question is, would light sleep and REM sleep be a sort of, would it help to do the cleansing of the brain or not, and if not, is it something that I can actually work on? Going back to, to your to your answer. Here, I made my own Deep Sleep tea, actually real tea, you know, with with the herbs, so with Valeria root, chamomile hops, and I mean, as long as support, if you want, I can send you my my recipe. I have to say that I've been surprised, because it works very well, but, but still, I've got the if I don't get the tea, or if I get the tea too early, I fall asleep on the TV. And that's another thing, because I am a movie buff, so every night I stay a couple of hours at the TV. But after I bought the ring, I bought myself orange glasses. Okay, as I said, maybe, maybe, maybe it's the TV and so now it shouldn't be the TV any longer. It's not even the programming, because I don't do horror movies or anything that be. It's really upsetting. So I am a bit I am a bit confused because, for instance, I I started again taking some magnesium citrate because I go to sleep. And today, actually, I bought magnesium glycinate because I read that it's better. So I was thinking to come to combine that with my deep sleep T but so basically, my question started to be so convoluted, but my question is twofold, so one can then the fact that I wake up rested, does it means that my my brain has got flushed through other phases of this of sleep? And it's not, is there any chance for me to get more deep sleep, because I also saw that deep sleep, I mean, lack of deep sleep is related to depression, and sometimes when I wake up in the morning, even if I'm rested, after a little bit, I really feel anxious. So I don't know if it's because I've got still toxic in my head. That's my new thing. I don't know.

Yeah, no, no, you would know it that way. And you sound pretty coherent to me, so I don't think there's a lot of dimension going on. So I think you're doing okay there. But so a couple of things. One is, you know, we know these devices, and I've got all my devices, you know, we know they aren't entirely accurate, no, of course,

yeah, you may

be having some deep sleep and in those periods early in the night, unless, of course, did you notice a difference when you did your sleep, your your tea? Any increase in deep sleep at all?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, on the ring.

Okay,

actually amazing. It was something from two to 15%

Oh, wow, yeah, okay, so, so then you don't need to be asking me anything. Keep drinking the tea.

Okay, okay, perfect,

yeah, yeah. So it may be more that you're stabilizing your sleep. So like chamomile and hops, for instance, they reduce anxiety, they reduce nervousness, so they calm the nervous system. And so by being more calm, like being all of the things you do to improve your ability to sleep, everything from no caffeine, late, you know, exercise, regular schedule, getting light, all of those things improve your sleep by stabilizing it. And the more stable your sleep is, the more likely you will get deep sleep. Okay, so, yeah, I would keep doing that, and yeah, and then you may experiment a little bit, but find out whatever increases your relaxation without falling asleep, watching your movies, yeah, will probably deepen your sleep. Thank you

very much. Thanks. Great

question, really,

can I follow up on this question? Uh,

sure. This was

my question. I have severe sleep apnea, and I've been on a CPAP machine for about 1520, years. The CPAP machine reports lots of ah eyes, and the iPhone reports very, very low, deep sleep few minutes, occasionally get up to almost an hour, but usually it's 10 to 15 minutes at most. And that's the reason for the question. I'm trying to figure out what I can do to increase that. So your answer here in red on this pass over the question seems to be the most relevant to the question. But can you trust the ahi measures coming out of ResMed CPAP machines?

Yes, way more than you can coming out of the watch. Okay, so I would believe what's on the ResMed machine. Do you have a variable pressure device, an auto set? Yeah, yes. Is it set to a certain pressure range, yes. Can that pressure range be extended? Yes,

I

would do that. Because if you're having AIS, meaning you're having events on whatever that restricted pressure range is, it means it's not enough. And I wouldn't just do it on my own. I would go back to your doc, who was ever monitoring you, and say, Look, having all these events, what's the AI giving you? What's the number? It's

varies between five and 45 oh yeah, out of range.

Oh yeah. That's how that's I mean, five is where we diagnose apnea. So you're getting okay. So you got to go back to who's ever, you know, your caregiver here for the CPAP. And what you probably need to do is raise the lower level as well as the upper level. Because what happens sometimes is that low level is like four centimeters, usually, and then they have some other level, like, you know, 868, 1012, something. And what happens is, if you allow the pressure to drop all the way to four after a breath, then you are more likely for your airway to close down, and now it's going to take a lot of pressure before it opens up again, and so you may have an event by the time you know, or a couple of events before it gets up to a high enough pressure to keep you from having the apneas and the hypopneas. Okay? So you really need to get that looked at you. You should never have numbers higher than five to 10. And that just means something still isn't quite right. The mask isn't fitting well, or, you know something?

Yeah, it's it puts you at risk for a lot of bad things. If you can't get that

absolutely you want to get that taken care of before you mess with any of these other things. Don't worry about this other stuff, Steve, take care of the mask and the machine. Get the pressure right. Get your numbers down. Know that the machine is treating you well. You're getting long term, you're not having apneas, and then see what your sleep is like. And then you can still work on some of these, if you want to try some valerian root or some magnesium glycinate, you know. Thank you. Okay, sure, sure. Yeah, good questions, though, you know, like it brought out other questions for others. So keep your questions coming. That's good. Oh yeah. Denise got her finger up. Her whole hand up in that finger too. Go for it.

Hi, Ed, I don't like to promote, but I love people with our rings and people who could measure. We do great. Andrea, you may not know about the company that I'm CEO of, we have a red light therapy that you put by the side of your bed. Doctor Ed O'Malley knows about it. It's very simple. We love people with our rings because we, or anybody that has a sleep tracker, it does great with improving deep sleep. So if you'd like to try it, I would be more than happy to send you one, because I love people that can show improvement, because they have, they have data. I love this and so, Dr Ed, I'm sorry to intervene, but we do great with deep sleep numbers. And so I just wanted to offer it out I can't hear you, yeah, of course.

I mean, if, if, if you, if you can send me one, that will be great. I'll be happy to try it, and

I'll send you my I'll put my email in, perfect, yeah,

yeah, I appreciate. I copy, so put it in the chat wherever, and just keep

me informed on the improvement because, of

course, for me, particularly,

since you're having a specific issue, you can watch. Well, is that right with you? Dr, Ed, I hope you don't mind.

Yeah, no, we should. I want you to take, get, to get some of those numbers and bring them here, you know, show us the increase. Are you saying selectively increased deep sleep? Yeah. We

see a lot of people with it. Well, we see improvements overall in the aura school,

right, right, that I'm aware of, but I haven't heard specifically for deep sleep. Yeah,

yeah. I mean, even you were looking at the numbers that that editor did, whatever you were like, you actually focused on the deep sleep. Of course,

of course we do.

So it'd be, I would be, would be great to just have him use it, and we could see together how it improves, and you have to use it every night. I'll send you my email. Get in touch with me, and I will get and I hope we can improve it for you. That would be,

thank you very

much, or a ring, or because it also work with an eye, watching an iPhone,

anything, anything where it doesn't, you know, it's you don't need a device. But, and I'm you know is if as long as you can it works with people who don't have any devices and they go to sleep, but people who measure can actually see the improvement. I'd be happy to send you one just so that you can measure it yourself. I mean, we're here to help people. Doctor Ed, knows I'm here to help people, so, yeah,

but Steve's case is going to take care of the apnea first. I wouldn't even attempt it yet.

Yeah, we don't even go near that, as you know. Dr Ed, but if you can measure deep sleep and get an improvement, we'd be very happy. Yeah,

good. Any all sleep.

REM sleep, all of it. All right, I'll put my email in the chat, and wants to, can get in touch with me?

Sounds good. Beatrice, did you have a question?

Sure. Andrew Huberman, sleep cocktail, so we have to buy all those supplements separately, or they come all together. Well,

first, I should say, I know, you know, I was just answering a question. I don't, I don't have any experience with it, and I don't say yay or nay, either way. You know, the valerian mood, I know of this I just got from him, because they're, you know, these are things that can help sleep, but they're mainly not deep sleep, per se. They're just increasing sleep. That's a lot of supplement to take. It is

so, you know, there are some, I think he probably put it together now. And, you know, like a one bottle kind of thing. You'd have to go to his website and see what he's got. Okay, a lot of actually, if you go on Amazon now, a lot of them will say Huberman thing, and you'll have a bunch of them. You know, soon as somebody says these things work, you get 15 companies making them. So, you know, my my advice always is to do all the behavioral stuff you can do first, and then if you need some support your life, it's pretty, you know, intense. There's a lot going on. You know, you're watching the news. You know, it's enough to keep anybody up. So you want to do what you can to support yourself before adding something into the mix, which, you know, some of the stuff, we just don't know what the long term effects are, right? We used to advertise, hey, take some Ambien, you know. And now we're like, oh, yeah, Ambien can cause dementia down the road. Oh, maybe we shouldn't be using that, you know. So you know, before we take a bunch of supplements and whatnot, I would definitely work on your sleep, work on your patterning, and do all that that you can. Mike, I'm going to get this off the screen too.

Oh, good. Just

tuning in to find out what's going on, right? I'm new to this group,

okay? But

on the other hand, I've been going solo, and it's really refreshing to see I've got the Samsung ring, Samsung watch I've been tracking for a long time. Okay, waking up at 3am is so inspiring. It's wonderful. My dreams are healing. Dreams. I'm on such a spiritual path. It's all healing. I read lucid dreaming in 85 when it first came out. Stephen Lebrun highlighted it, and I like back around page 179, he's saying, this is just the beginning, you know, in the future. And I go here I am in the future. It's not in 85 anymore. I'm turning 80 this summer, and my dreams are marvelous. They're healing, they're spiritual. I am getting so much information pouring in, it's disorienting, because I feel like I'm alone, and so even this little brief intro of just sitting here watching is going, Wow. Who can I talk to that I can relate to about this with some without sounding like a nut job about all my imaginary friends in my happy place. I app after lunch. Sometimes I don't know if my ring or my watch picks it up that shows me I'm in light sleep, like from 1230 to one, and actually from one to 130 I'm taking notes. I'm reflecting back on the information that's given me. I regard this as my inbox. At 3am I get the most beautiful messages, inspiration. Then I hit liminal space between 456, we'll start emailing poetry comes all kinds of great stuff comes in and at times, if I'm really up too much, I will jump into bed. I think five this morning, I jumped back into bed at 615. Slept Oh, seven came back up. But one of the things that I'm interested about is brain chemistry. Because even my afternoon, that's my head feels so nice. I think I don't know if this is a dopamine rush, but I know my brain chemistry is changing. I get so chilled. Also on the electronic side, I use a muse electronic headband feedback at my levels. I it my 10 minute Muse sessions seem like an hour, but I get a lot of feedback on, you know, whether I'm in theta or a gamma and even that is, like, totally new for me as to, you know, what's happening with my brain waves. So I got a whole, whole mess of questions there. I'll just leave that there for now. You're in

a good you're in a good place, you know, nightclub. There's a lot of information already out there. You know, Andrew's had this thing together for years now, there are lucid dreaming. He's got his book out, Dream Yoga. Do you know about Dream Yoga? Have you gone a little bit further?

I just blasted through Ryan heard okay as he was being interviewed by Andrew. Andrew is so impressed with this guy that, oh, okay, 10 bucks blasted through it and all the things that he recommends. I'm probably doing eight or nine of the 10 things. Yeah, so this is my next phase of evolving into this is to tune in and find out what this is about. Sleep doctor has many meetings, but I'm kind of liking, though, what I'm finding, yeah,

yeah, yeah, no. So you're in a good place. You know, there's a lot going on here. There are other books that Andrea has written that go well beyond where Ryan heard has gone. So I would certainly read Dream Yoga. That's a great start, because lucid dreaming is a great place to begin, but there's so much more that can be done, and it is a spiritual journey. So yeah, you're in the right place. So start there, and then you'll really get some interesting questions too. Excellent. Thank

you. Thank you

for kicking in. Great. All right, so this is the last question that's come in, and then we can open up for any other questions that are coming in in the chat. Let's just see. Okay, so this is Francoise update on his journey with Restless Leg Syndrome. So I don't know if you recall, but he's trying a lot of different things. And he started a low dose of Gabapentin. Gabapentin, you can go up to a couple of grams of the stuff, 2000 you know, so it goes. But even at this low dose, you're getting some pretty good effects and and I'm giving you that in the beginning, because that's where I'm going to end up. Okay, so if you I mean, if you have some symptomatic issues still, or you have some side effects, you may take that into question, but this is not the way to go. Okay, non anemic. Restless Leg suffers with ferritin levels this high, with transfer on this high, you have not only normal brain iron, but you have normal brain metabolism. So the whole system is working well, giving it an infusion, like blasting an eye, a normally functioning iron system with a whole dose of this is just not a good idea and asking for trouble, not done, not recommended. It's safe. It's that much, that much you have, because I'm getting feedback. The guidelines are for people who have either anemia or their system, isn't you know, they don't have high enough turn or ferritin. Okay, so, but in this case, you've got your system, your iron systems, functioning well, and there can be other causes. So you know, we don't have all the answers for that, but Gabapentin is one of the safest, least side effect profile medications you can use it kind of mimics a GABA in the brain. GABA is a normal substance in the brain. You'll be get it from foods, you know, acids. So it's, it's, it's one of the better ones. And I think right now, if that's working for you, keep using it, you can go up a couple 100, couple I've seen it as high as, again, like I said, 2000 milligrams, so with very little side effect. It's not metabolized by the liver. It goes through your kidneys. Neurologists have joked that if you save your pee, you'll save yourself some money. You just let it dry out. Don't do that. Um, do that, but it so, you know, most of it comes out in that system, which is just basically making your kidneys do what they're supposed to do and keep your liver safe. So, okay, I think that's the best answer we have for that one. Okay, I'm glad to hear you're finding some relief, at least finally, yeah, yeah, good. All right, so we have gotten through questions and some discussion. Do we have questions from participants? Further questions, are there any interesting findings, somebody should give Mike an Hoover ring and see if you get the same numbers as the Samsung. Yeah, you know the I went to another presentation in ASM they're really they're they're flummoxed by all of the devices that are out there and the changes that are occurring within these devices. Their algorithms keep being updated, keep changing. But overall, you know, the ring is still holding its own. It's up there in the 70% accuracy range. I can't, you know, argue with it too much. It does read meditation as sleep. Okay, all right, Myra, I see her smiling, yes, but you know, that's probably, it's, it's interesting because before the rings and all these devices we used to have actigraphy, and actigraphy is basically now built in, like, it's like a kindergarten measure for all these devices we now have. But it was what we used in the beginning to record movement or not. And so movement meant you were awake, no movement meant you were asleep. And they were pretty gross measures, but then they got more refined. And you know, like the speed of the movement, the acceleration rate of movements, the orientation of the movement. They were using gyroscopes in these actigraphs, and they had algorithms that basically differentiated sleep and wake and deep sleep, from light sleep and all that. But the one population, and that was great for circadian rhythm disorders, for instance, because you can use it over days to weeks. But the one population, we really wanted it to work for the insomnia population, it had a major fault. And the major fault was, if you laid there quietly and didn't move a muscle, it would record you as being asleep. And most Insomniac lay quietly without moving a muscle, hoping that by doing that they're going to get to sleep. And so it overestimates sleep in the one population we want it to be more accurate, and now it seems that devices have inherited that to some extent, because they read meditation as sleep generally. Jude has her hand raised, hey, Jude, go for it.

Yeah. My question is, my aura ring usually shows that the shortest time of REM light sleep or deep sleep is deep sleep, deep sleep has the least amount. Is that? What's normal? Or should I be concerned about that? No,

that's, you know, it's relatively especially as we get older. You know, every decade we lose a few percent of deep sleep. So, you know, all of us with gray hair here, we're just dealing with what we can get. But you know, as Andrea said, we can get up to 15 you can actually help the aging. You get between 15 and 20% but again, are Is it recording deep sleep in you, or is it missing some of it? So that's why I say those numbers are a little fuzzy. But if you take care of your sleep and you do the things that are going to support good sleep, and you're feeling well rested and functional all day, you're not falling asleep in inadvertent times, then whatever deep sleep you're getting is your deep sleep? Thank you. It's back again. Go for it. Yeah, here

I am sorry. So if I, if I have, if I am deeply, deeply relaxed. Okay, so let's say I'm watching TV and I'm really, relaxed, sure, I am sure that I don't that I didn't fall asleep, but my ordering records it as deep sleep. Would it count actually as deep sleep or or is not, because I'm not actually sleeping. So would I have all the benefit of the washing and so on or not. I mean, well,

you won't have all the benefit if it's not truly deep sleep. And you think you're not sleeping, but you know it's late at night. It's the time your brain is ready to go into deep sleep. You're really quiet and you're watching a movie. Now, if you can tell me you didn't miss any scenes in that movie. You knew exactly what was going on when you open your eyes again, then I could say, okay, maybe you are awake, but chances are you may have drifted into deep sleep, and that can happen in a short time in that circadian time frame. Right? The brain is not only ready to go to sleep, but that's the first stage we go into. We drift right through light sleep into deep sleep, yeah, because we want to get that restoration right up front. So, you know, I for you, I would say, especially if it's been an increase, it's probably countable. And if it's deep sleep, it's definitely washing your brain. Thank

you. Thank you very much. You're welcome.

It's the result of good sleep, hygiene, cleaning that brain. Other questions, there's another one in the chat. Let's see what's that okay? For us, I should say there's something I came across when I was doing some of this research for the deep sleep stuff, which is really interesting. I hadn't been aware of it. There a couple labs have been using, you know, the spectral analysis, it's like you see those color grabbed one of those. I think I finished that quickly, but let me take a look. Maybe, maybe I could pop it open real quick. Let me just see if I can find it that they've begun to differentiate deep sleep into two sub components, and those components are what they've high, what they call low deep sleep and high deep sleep. And the difference is high deep sleep is what we would typically score deep sleep back in the day, of one to three hertz, so anything lower than four hertz would be considered deep sleep. But back in the day when we were recording deep sleep, the low filter settings would generally some would even set them at one. But when you looked at what the range was, it was always a quarter. It was a half a hertz to four, Hertz, anything in that range would be considered slow wave, sleep, deep sleep, slower waves, but below point five, Hertz, they've been finding around point one to point two, hertz waveforms that are occurring within the deep sleep, and they're sorting out what that has to do with various other changes we've seen deep sleep, like maybe the low deep sleep is what's creating the brainwashing more so than the one to three hertz deep sleep. Who knows? You know, the more we look, the more we find, right? Let me just see if I can. Where did I see it in deep sleep, deep sleep. Here it is, deep sleep. Here's the paper, like, this is one of the papers,

and you put a reference in the chat,

yeah, if I have I can, yeah, yeah, this is it. Okay. Hold on a second. Let me see if I can. I

I see if I can just drag over the whole paper blows all this sort of stuff out. Oh, I know what I could do. Maybe I could just bring it back here and just share.

Tim hawk has asked the question, and I'm going to answer it while I'm doing this, is it true that we can actually dream in other sleep stages, other than REM? And the short answer is yes, but the longer answer is sure. Share? Why share screen?

Share this over here? I think so. The short answer is, yes, you can, you can dream if I wake, if you're in a sleep lab and I see you're in deep sleep, it is possible for you to be awakened and then to say something like, oh, yeah, there was, if I asked you what was going on, you could say, Oh, there's this vague notion I was in a space where it was kind of dark. Something was going on, but I'm not sure what. Okay, so there's a paucity of descriptors. It's not vivid, it's not imaginative. There's no color, there's no activity, but there's a vague recollection that something was going on in the mind. So you can get that in non REM, all the different stages of non REM sleep, but they're just not rich, like the reports you're going to get in dream sleep. Okay, all right. So can we all see this? These little peaks here, down here. Let me blow this up a little more. Let's do that. Okay, so can we see? You see the colors of this band here? Everybody see that? Give me some thumbs up. No, you can't see it. Yes, some can. Mike. You can see the color here.

The computer.

What was so somebody talked to me. Tell me what you're seeing,

the list of things on your computer, the like a no article, just the list of addresses. Oh, there it is.

There it is, okay, good, okay, yeah, just, I don't know why, but Okay, so this is the paper, and what they're looking at here is, if you look on the left, move you people over here. Hold on. Okay, and let me blow that up even more. How's that? Okay? So if you look on like the y axis here on the left, you can see my cursor and

somewhere, and I can change My cursor, but I can't figure Okay.

Okay. Anyway, so if you look over here on the left, it's frequency. Right, it's Hertz. And here's the one hertz, if you can see my cursor here, one hertz and three Hertz range. So the one hertz and three Hertz range is in red here, and red is the highest level of activity. So here's the scale. So when there's a lot of activity, it's in the red, you know, just like when you're seeing, you know, a weather map going by, right when in the when it's really intense stuff, it's usually in red, and when it's dark blue or light blue, it's lighter. Okay, so this is light rain, meaning light activity. So in red here, you can see there's a big burst of activity here. And then they can translate that into these dots that represent the frequency, either in the one to three. They're like here, they're clustering here. And then there is below that, in this point to range, this stuff happening down here. And then if they convert that into a hypnogram, like we're used to looking at Wake, Rem, light, sleep, high, and now they have high and low, deep. So they broken it, broken it into two categories. So you can see, there's the high, deep, which is what we normally always call deep sleep. But then there's a period in which it goes into this really low activity. And that low activity is point two hertz, point two cycles per second. Okay, so that means it takes almost five seconds to have a full wave. One, hertz would be one full wave in one second. Three, hertz would be three waves in one second, point two, takes a long time before you even have a full wave. And so there's something else going on in the brain that was always masked, either by how we recorded it or how we look for deep sleep. Now, it's not that there isn't this point to mixed in there too, but it really comes out when you when you separate out the frequency bands. And it's really interesting. There's other things that happen with it, for instance. So this is getting into, this is getting into the weeds. We're like in the deep weeds. You're going to need a brush hog to get out of this stuff. Okay, but the galvanic skin response, you could actually see an increase in this during these same periods of the really low that's what this EDA is. It's the galvanic skin response that you see only associated, it seems, with this low, deep sleep, low slow wave sleep. And that's really interesting, because the galvanic skin response mainly tells us when we're emotionally aroused in some way when our palms start to sweat. You know, it's something that happens during the daytime, but it seems to be associated differently during sleep, and it may have to be it may be associated with when we sweat, for instance, during sleep. It's also been shown to occasionally happen during dream sleep, when someone's having an emotional dream, like when you're being chased or something in your dream and you're really frightened by it, or you're really aroused, then you may be sweating physically in your body. Maybe it's associated with hot flashes and women going through menopause, you know, we don't. It's just an interesting finding. And so this is really, like, hot off the presses, new stuff. So when somebody asks you about deep sleep, you can be a real expert now and say, Well, are you talking about the one to three hertz or the below? You know, the point two words, be specific, please. So I just thought I'd throw it in. We had a little bit of time. And you know, I enjoy doing these because I'm always I learned something too, and I have to dig deep into the literature, and I'll find something that I hadn't seen before, or some of the new data that's coming out. And you know, that question about the lymphatic system, maybe we'll find out down the road that there are ways to solicit it during the during the day, during working activity? Doesn't seem likely, but who knows. Maybe we can find it happen during deep meditation. Maybe in for passionate meditation versus focused meditation, right? Maybe, who knows? So anyway, I think the bottom line is good. Sleep still requires us to be part of the natural world, right? Get outside in the morning. Get some good sunlight. Get out during the day. Get out during that sunset period. Teach your brain. This is morning, this is night. You know, get that rhythm going. Don't eat too close to bedtime. But the alcohol is now verboten. No alcohol, caffeine, you know, one two in the afternoon. That's about all we can deal with. The older we get, the longer it lasts. Don't eat too close to bed. Exercise every several times a week. Get up at the same time every day, if you can do it. Yeah. So, yeah, well, unless there's any further questions, I think we're pretty much at the end of our hour. I used to love you guys. Used to let anybody listen to NPR, the car guys. You know the brothers. I forget them. Car Talk. And these two guys are just, I mean, they, you know, two brothers, and they were just, you know, Riff back and forth. And they were hilarious, but they were, they were pretty smart mechanics. They were out of Boston, so they had that great park in the car accent and and they'd get to the end and they'd say, Well, looks like you've wasted another perfectly good hour listening to us Babylon. So time to sign off. All right. Well, thank you for sending in your questions. Click and Clack. Barry, yes, click and clack. The what Brother step? What was their last name? Barry, you got it the Click and Clack brothers, they call themselves. I can't remember anyway, tap it. Maybe

maglia see I think.

Okay, okay, yeah, Italian name, yeah, magliocity. Thank you, Stephanie. All right, so listen to some of the old shows. I'm sure you can find it online. All right, see you all next month. Keep the questions coming and yeah, we'll have some fun. Thank you,

sweet,

teams. Everyone.

A few people have just texted me about he like email me so I can get back to you email me, like that'll be easier. Okay, thank you. Sorry.

Thank you. It's been amazing. Oh,

good, good. All right, everybody. See you next time. Okay. Take care.