Thanks, Andrew. Yeah, we're gonna jump right in because we want to make sure we get to one of the questions before before Andrew has to run. So I'm going to jump right in and and share my screen because we have the questions up here and let's see if I can let me just see which one we want to. So Kathy also had sent in her sleep study and there she is. And she spent a lot of time getting these and I took picture and we you know, we got the data up here too, so we want to cover those so what I'm gonna do that first because she's been doing sent us in a while ago, and then I will get to the question on dreams before we get to the end. of this. So let's do that way. Okay. So and if you have any NSC, there's one new question in the chat box. So if you have another question type in that and we'll see how far we get. Okay, so Kathy, do you want to remind us Do you want to come on are you minus of what the indications were? I think you were feeling like unrefreshed by sleep or what was going on?
Yeah, we had to shit. When did I do this? Um, I think it was, I think it was in this lifetime. I think it was last. I think I actually did this last fall. Okay. And I had been talking with you about, you know, my sleep pattern was horrible. And I was having like, three, like two and four. And six. I was waking up with panic attacks. And, um, and then I had you know, I have old friends who I stay with off and on and they were telling me hey, you know, you started snort because I've always said to them, they, they snore a lot. You guys need to go for sleep study. And they started saying to me, Hey, you know your snoring. And then I started catching myself during afternoon naps, because that's 71 I take an afternoon nap. Which you told me to limit to a half an hour which I've diligently done and but I was catching myself. Gasping waken myself gasp and so I went in for a sleep study. And so that's when it was it was in mid last fall, I think. Yeah.
So. So you there was some report of sleepiness, although the Epworth sleepiness scale which is what this ESS stands for, was only eight of 24 Usually we consider 10 and above significant daytime sleepiness, but because you know, there were some witness Daphne's and the snoring you know, it was worthwhile doing the study. Now, they did a full study. So this is the procedure they tell you where they put all the hookups on your head and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it was a pain in the ass. Oh, it definitely is.
I know why people don't want to do it now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they
put you know, I showed you two guys, one of the prior ones. You know, there was a picture of the app. I did the app your thing and showed you a picture of a guy with like, their wires everywhere, right? And pretty much looks like that. But you know,
it feels like that. Yeah,
yeah. But the good thing is, it really only requires you to fall asleep so that they can see what the state of physio physiological sleep looks like. What's happening in all the systems when the brain shifts into sleep. So it's not so much about the numbers per se, but as long as they're asleep there, they can get a sense of what's going on. So they talk about the results of the study. And what I do, I go immediately to the graph like I don't even want to know anything else about whatever their numbers are. And I look at the graph. So that's what we're gonna do right here. So here's the time of night across the bottom across the x axis. So this is all time of night. And this is what 1040 It started. And it ended at this is 525. So it ended at about six. Okay, yeah. Oh, it's about 1030 to 6am. Up top here, they have the Hypnic gram of what sleep they recorded. So despite taking here's a W for Wake, or for REM, and one and two and three are the stages of non REM sleep as we go deeper, okay. And so first of all, you can see took her a while to fall asleep. And that's why you know, being in a sleep lab can be a real pain in the butt but then after she falls asleep, she drops into very light sleep early on, and then gets a nice little bout of deep sleep. Now, interestingly, you get bouts of deep sleep that increase as the night progresses, which is not, which is sort of a typical, but what's really nice about this is that's a lot of deep sleep for you know, in your 70s that good deep sleep, so that's why you're probably not all that sleepy in the daytime because you're getting good restorative sleep happening here. Okay. All right. That's the good part. And you're having some pretty so REM is usually here and read and read. And you you know you're doing what REM normally does, which is extended duration as the night progresses. Okay. And if you would probably somehow maintain sleep. You know, they will probably make a noise early on. They were probably trying to get you to wake and I know these night technicians, they began to make a little bit of noise here and there, because they want us tonight to answer that and go home. But if you hadn't been disturbed here, you probably would have had a long block of REM sleep here in the morning. Okay. So that would have been fairly normal. And what's normal to is to have some wake ups. So here's a return to wakefulness and then you drop back into deep sleep and then you have a little bit of RAM. And then there's some waking happening here and not quite maintaining wakefulness. This would be a great time to go into the wild, you know from awaking induced into lucid dreaming, because you're awake you would keep yourself awake for a little bit. You notice you're awake, okay, I'm already awake. Let me keep myself up for a little bit, do a little mental activity, and then try to go back to sleep into a lucid dream. And then you had some really deep sleep here and then he came out and went into REM a little bit of a wake up and then back down into deep sleep another wake up. So overall though, then this after this room bout you had a long period of wakefulness, a little more sleep and wakefulness. So overall, that was a fair amount of wakefulness even though you had some really good deep sleep you had some wakefulness, yeah. All right. Now this is body position. So I look at that I want to make sure because especially we're looking for apnea and we'll look for snoring. I want to make sure there's supine sleep. You're on your back because that's usually the worst apnea sleep we're gonna see. And there was a significant bout of supine sleep here and here too. And finally here three. There was only a small period of REM sleep though, in supine sleep and again that is probably the combination of being on your back and having to sleep is the most likely time you're going to have sleep apnea. And so you did get a little bit of that not as much as I'd like to see. Most of your room is occurring when you're on your left side. And now if you want to believe the Buddha, you should probably be on your right side more often. But then again, you had all those wires on and you were in a lab, with people staring at you all night. It probably had some effect too.
Now the two most important features that I'm seeing here that talk clinically would be here arousal, every line and especially the thin lines, thicker lines mean there are several coming together. Every line is a disturbance to sleep. Not necessarily a full awakening. These are full awakenings and they differentiate the full awakening from what's a disturbance to sleep that doesn't fully awaken you. Okay? And the reason they call this fragmented sleep, because fragmented sleep can be a reason why you feel like you're not getting good sleep. You know, yeah, you might have a few awakenings. But if you're having fragmented sleep, you're gonna know you're not sleeping well. And you had a significant amount of fragmented sleep throughout the night. And it did seem a tad worse on your back than on your sides. Neither here nor there. It could be associated with apnea, but we're gonna go ahead and look at that now. So next thing they have is Oh, to set your blood oxygen. What's that doing during the night? And just on a quick glance, it's pretty darn good all night long. Yeah. Okay. Nothing much to worry about. However, and this is a fine tooth analysis. If you look at the places where there's a little dip, a little dip, little disturbance, little more thickness here, and another little dip here. They will all be associated with REM sleep. Okay. And so again, that's because you have you have your muscles are being actively inhibited. Okay, so there's a real hypotonia to all of your musculature and your respiratory muscles are also being inhibited. So there's a lot less breathing, so there's a little less breathing going on and so your blood oxygen may drop just a tad. No big deal though, because it stays well within normal limits. And we're not worried about it. I if I was really worried about apnea, though, I would begin to say, Huh, you only had a very small amount of room on your back. And when you did, you were tending towards having a little bit of apnea. For this for these purposes, not to worry I think because you did this in the lab. I'm pretty convinced you don't have any avenue to worry about
that. That's interesting because the when I noticed gasping on my back when I wake myself up during naps during the day, I'm completely on my back.
Yeah. And that's when you probably most likely would have one and it's not lasting for long and it's not a big deal because you can see for the rest of this there are a couple and right here so now these are all the avenues Central. That's really what it's more of a brain thing. And that's not really happening. That's probably an artifact not to worry. Mixed apnea. Same thing I'm not worried about obstructive is what we're looking for. And the reason they have another apnea designation here is they add up the central app news and the obstructive app use and they just call them all you know all those they can add in for a total Appiah number and apnea just means no breathing app near no breathing. Okay, obstructive, so are the ones we're more concerned about. You only had a couple here. Of course, interestingly enough, you were on your back and you were in Rome. The last one and I we had another one on your back in in Rome. So really interesting. There is one here on your side, but this this is the central apnea. So that's we're not worried about that.
So when you say and when you say interesting, what do you say? On my back in around?
Yeah, it just it just validates what your experience has been when you're taking a nap and you're laying back into RAM or maybe just being on your back but it's more likely on your back because your tongue goes back. Yeah, optimizes the airway a little bit more. But none of this is significant. There aren't any significant numbers. Obstructive hypopneas hypopneas or partial AP news. You had a couple, no big deal again. Okay, a couple more in the room, but nothing to worry about. So those numbers are really low. But now we looked down from the arousals and we looked down to the limb movements and those are off the chart. Okay, they're off the chart. There's every single line is a lake Twitch, a lot of them associated with arousal. Okay, a lot of the leg twitches are associated with arousals. And so that's what I would be most concerned about. And the brain and the body is noticing it because here's your hardware, here's your pulse and you can see lots of jumps where these things are happening and where they aren't happening. It's fairly steady here. It's steady and then you start having a few. So, you know, overall, so I look at that and I say okay, I'm gonna be concerned about the leg movements. And then I'm gonna go back and look at the leg movements. And the, I don't think he has numbers there. No, okay, so the number daily numbers they give her in the summary here. And in the summary, they have movement and I see your doc store these two periodic limb movement disorder, and periodic limb movement disorders. periodic limb movements only occurred during sleep. Restless leg syndrome occurs while you're awake. People with Restless Leg Syndrome can have periodic limb movements during sleep, which is where it becomes a sleep issue. Okay? But periodic movement disorder doesn't mean you have anything in the daytime. You don't have to have any restless legs. It's just something that happens when you're in the sleep state. And so you need to mess with that a bit. Okay, if you want to improve, I think your numbers here were 17 per hour of sleep. Okay, so that's, that's pretty significant work. And they said, I think with a arousal there was six per hour of sleep. So you know, it was a fair amount. So, you know, there are certain medications and that kind of thing. We don't need to get into that whatever she recommended. The one thing I will mention is you did look at iron because I know iron has plays a major role. In generating limb movements during sleep and your ferritin levels. This is the carrier of higher into across the blood brain barrier into the brain. And the numbers need to be at least above 50 And you will and you will weigh in in fact, you are above the range. So that was interesting. Your percent saturation was low. So there's something going on with your iron and I think I'm hoping you work something out with your physician taking a look at that. Yeah,
we we did I mean because I had my spleen ruptured last year. Right. Yeah. And I I bled out they I was when I have my near death. Experience. And that happened in October 2020. And then this test was done a year later. And I had I had to, I had two large transfusions. And nobody had tests before this, this sleep test. Nobody had retested my blood. I had it was quite clear took a while. For my hemoglobin my hematocrit come back up to normal after being in the hospital in the near death and we test and this is what what we came up with. They wanted me to do regular iron which I can't take because I have IBS just would ruin me. Constipation. And so I had a naturopathic gastroenterologist look at this and redo my blood levels. And he just said, you know, they wanted to start me on some supplemental, much more gentle, gentler iron, but when we looked at my levels over time I had my father also had a problem with too much iron. And it had to, you know, be chelating every once in a while. And so they checked that and I didn't have the inherited markers. Okay. And so they've just said you don't doesn't really look like you need the iron. I mean the issue is, is the saturation. But I can tell you definitely. Now that they pointed this out since I was little I removed I remember not being able to go to sleep unless my feet were moving. Okay, revisited that until they brought this up. And I can tell you I move a lot during the night.
Okay, okay, well, so it's all connected. You know when kids do that, usually the pediatrician will say, Oh, it's growing pains and they'll grow out of it. But, you know, it can be pretty significant because when a kid sleep is disturbed like that, which it can be, they become hyperactive. And you don't want to be putting the kid on Ritalin if it's got too much movement. Going on.
The other thing that I realize now is that I was asleep Walker until I was probably six years old. And I don't remember getting up but my aunts and uncles told me I would come out they put me to bed. I would appear just if I go to sleep, I'd wake up and I'd be up with them talking to them for half hour and I don't remember any of it and my my family parents finally I had to put extra locks on the front door because in my sleep, I would unlock the front door and even when they put extra locks on it I stacked chairs when I was little like two and three. I stack chairs and open the front door and they would find me in the morning on the swing set. Oh my goodness, the neighbor's house and I don't remember any of
it. We can go into a whole sleep course on you
Well, I'm glad I mean, I hope things have settled down now for you and how's your sleep these days?
And well, it's okay. I mean, you know, there's just a lot of emotional stuff and when the emotional stuff hits I'm okay I'm in I took out these guys told me you know, you need to stop all your Ambien you need to stop your Soma muscle relax and you know, okay, so I'm doing melatonin. And then the melatonin helps. I I wake up I'm having I don't remember I'm not remembering my lucid dreaming. I'm having tremendous liminal dreaming, and it's pretty anxious which makes sense living in the world right now. My sleep is best if I take a half of a Xanax before it which I hate doing, but sometimes I just do it. Alright,
we'll get a move line. And hopefully we'll answer some of these questions at another time too. Okay, great. Thanks. Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to get through a whole study though. So people see how it's being reviewed. Sure. Thank you. Sure. So let's talk about this question on dreaming what evolutionary purpose does it serve? So I came in? I know we want to get edges take on this. So what and why do we forget our dreams so fast after awakening? So you know, one of the things I put up here was that clearly REM the REM stage of sleep has particular physiologic processes that it goes through, and important ones for brain or mental and emotional restoration, memory function and attaching emotional valence to memories. So you know, it's kind of the chicken or the egg too. So I don't want to say we developed it to do this, but because we do have this physiologic state that we experience, this is at least how it's being used. Now, most mammals, most animals, most mammals do have REM sleep. There are one or two that don't for the most part, most mammals do have it and most non mammals don't. And so there's something to do with this higher function. brains that we have, as we as our brains became more evolved, let's say and we started adding cortex and neocortex. REM sleep seems to have come into play evolutionarily. So and it may very well be that because we have all this cognition going on. We needed to have dream sleep. Okay. So so that's one of the least physiological reasons why we have it. And then, you know, philosophically in my mind, it gives us practice and non ordinary non physical states of being let's just jump right into it. Let's call Andrew into this conversation. He's still around.
I'm totally around. Yeah, this is a great question and it can be answered you know, on a lot of different levels in obviously you have more expertise about the kind of physiology biology behind it all. But I can make a couple conjectures and offer some ideas. But just to show you the depth and nuance of this topic is I noticed on your bookshelf, you have the Dalai Lama has conversations with Francesco Rella. Their book, actually in that very book, the Dalai Lama has asked a question this this question and he says, from a Buddhist point of view, there is no answer. So the Buddhists don't have an overt specific answer to why this has evolved philosophically. But however, with that said, there are a couple of very interesting things to least consider one is that one of the reasons we dream so this is more like, Well, okay, let me say why did it evolve? Here's one conjecture. Interesting thing that comes actually from a contribution from the Hindu tradition, where basically, they assert that of the three principles states of consciousness, waking, dreaming, deep dream sleep, that the actual more foundational state, what they call causal consciousness is actually deep dreamless sleep that that's the baseline state, which is in itself extraordinarily interesting, because that's the one that we that we would think we as the scientific Western world, is the one that we most readily dismiss. It's just like, you know, like nothing's really happening there. But on a real level, what the Hindus say that we've got a completely backwards that's actually causal consciousness, that's the foundation and then from that is a an evolutionary or in this case, the term is called literally involution. Where that consciousness is revealed in that state involves condenses. That's the reify crystallized into what we know is the dream state. So last open, the ultimate openness is that is the deep dreamless state, more contracted but still somewhat open, which is why objects appear there are slightly D reified and we use that to study things like emptiness, right. So that that is then a kind of a secondary expression of this foundational state. It evolves or involves, in this case, evolutionary descent into form. And then of course, to complete the picture it crystallizes. reifies solidifies into what we know is the Wake centric state that we almost exclusively identify with the West. And so that's interesting because then the dream state evolves actually as an expression of consciousness coming from this completely de reified, ultimate openness emptiness into fully reified, crystallized state. So this connects to things like symbol loci and the like, but again, such a big question, let the rest of it go. The other thing in terms of like, why, why we dream not so much evolutionarily, but why why we dream and I'm going to share this today because I had a very interesting conversation just two hours ago with a gentleman who clearly knows him who doesn't dream anymore. In fact, he's he maintains 24/7 awareness and I believe this guy totally, he's actually being studied in some labs. I hope to see I know the neuroscientist is doing this work I hope to actually gain access to the sleep architecture and hit the graph just to see like what's actually like what you're doing with the earlier case, like what what does his sleep architecture look like? But this guy and I believe him, he no longer dreams he no longer actually sleeps in the way we know it now. Like, how interesting is that? So therefore, from that level, and then I'll pause. We dream because we don't have full access to awareness, we still have an unconscious mind. And therefore we dream because the contents of the unconscious mind are actually expressing themselves in this intermediate dimension. So therefore, it connects in connection to the guy interviewed this morning, which by the way, we will probably release that in a week or so Dawson's work. When that eight consciousness as we call it, yogacharya tradition when that's purified that's where dreams come from. Well, that's purified, Dream stop. That's what's happened to Delson. And so this stuff is really awesomely cool. It's such a huge question. So many things to say about it, but just for the purposes of time, that's what comes to mind and we can bet it around or not, but this is your rodeo. It's not mine.
So no, I don't I love this kind of discussion, because it's almost like dreams became the samsaric version of the causal state of deep dreamless sleep, right? It's almost an intermediate state where we get caught up in but it's almost maybe it is a way we are purifying part of what's happening while we're awake.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, want to see. I'm sorry, good.
Well, I just want to see if he goes into REM sleep to physiologic state, you know, that's actually changed into REM sleep yet he's not
we'll see what the studies show because when when the when the preliminary data came out. The sleep scientists actually asked him, were you sleeping and he said, Yes, but he said I also maintain tested awareness, because he says according to our EEG monitor, you weren't sleeping. And that's actually because he wasn't sleeping. I mean, there was a part of his awareness that was on throughout the entire night. And that kind of stuff is awesomely cool.
It is, you know, we have this thing called they just changed that paradoxical sleep. Used to be called sleep state. misperception right. And I think I mentioned that somewhere in one of the talks, but, you know, the guy would wake up in the morning and say to me, did you get that? There was no sleep. Did you get that? And you know, me while we recorded sleep, we recorded the stages of sleep and so forth. But what I would say that someone else my colleagues is that it was ugly sleep ugly. It was really like you know, it wasn't clean it wasn't deeply you know, like the the waveforms were kind of oil jagged and, and he probably was doing the same thing. He had some awareness throughout. The sleep stages. And we know that's possible. So this is really cool. I want to
Yeah, they hope to have the studies published because they did this. They they conducted this almost six months ago. You know how long this stuff takes that they hope to have the results within a couple of weeks and hopefully I'll gain access to that. Specific write up. I know the scientist who conducted this. And so if I get it, I'll ping you a link and maybe we can share it
would be really great. Yeah.
Super cool. And then this is what shapeshifts paradigms and like, holy crap, I'm you know what was going on with people like this?
Yeah, okay. Well, great. Thank you for clicking on this. And yeah, and you notice that last line, I said here, right, stay to being one to kin to where we're eventually going. I mean, this goes into the Bardo work, you know, like it's like it you know, to me this is all connected. And somebody asked me, Why do you do this work? And I say because I want to have more facility with the non physical state.
Absolutely. Yep.
All right. Hooks. Let's go up to I think. The first is the first question that had come in, that came in on the line that you guys sent to me. So I really appreciate her. Can you talk to us about light pollution and how it adversely affects not just us but the ecosystem? So yeah, light pollution, you know? First of all, it's using energy right? We're it's getting dark out and instead of allowing the dark to put us to sleep, we use light energy. We wake up the world, we keep ourselves awake and we do stuff. So environmentally, it's not great, but it also disrupts wildlife migration, mating patterns, most creatures are light sensitive, a lot of creatures are nocturnal. And so when the lights are on, it really makes it difficult for them to do what they usually do when it's dark out. There, it's directly linked with insect declines which is really bad for the entire ecosystem of the earth in general. And it alters plant photosynthesis, you know, you plants need to have darkness and when there's likely going to be on and if you keep lights on 24/7 plants begin to get weaker. They actually get weaker because they're spending a lot of time creating sugars that they're not really using because photosynthesis is taking place, and there's no downtime. It's kinda like us. It's kind of like us when we don't when we have chronic partial sleep deprivation. We don't get restoration time we can suffer physiologically. So I got a couple of links here. So there's a link here. I'm going to give this to Alyssa when we're done and she'll figure out how to get it up. But there are links to sort of further studies and ways to go deeper into the conversation about this unless someone has any further questions on it. I'm gonna move on.
Myra has her hand up. I'm not sure if it's related to this or if you want me to unmute her. I can do that.
Myra? Yeah.
Okay, here you go. Do you guys hear
me? Yes, they were okay.
Um, I'm at the office. I should be working but I got excited when I heard that subject. So I can but I was I was going to ask you this morning. Looking in terms of data, because many good dreamers are lucid dreamers are also light dream. They go less into a deep is what I have heard, is that premise, correct to begin, so they have less of the deep, deep sleep
um, you know, I'm gonna ask Andrew a few. I don't know the data on that to suggest that they have less deep sleep overall. And certainly if you lighten you're asleep, you're more likely to to carry awareness into dream
you can say something about that. Morrow This is one reason that when you do like a three year retreat, you sleep sitting up for just this reason, because it does alter as you might suspect used to it. It does alter your sleep cycles or sleep patterns and you end up spending a lot more time in liminal spaces, phase two stages one and two. Right? And therefore, because of that lighter sleep, you have more access to kind of a hybrid state of kind of bringing consciousness into sub sub and then unconscious domains. So anecdotally, that's absolutely positively the case. In terms of hardcore stock studies, that's interesting question. I mean, I'd have to ask my sleep scientist buddies about that, whether there's real data on that or whether it's just purely anecdotal, but that's one reason we can retreat you sleep sitting up. Great.
Because yeah, the question was that I was going to say in terms of when you see your sleep or deep sleep or REM sleep, what is if there is an average or recommended kind of proportion between deep and REM and light sleep? Is that depends on each person and their needs for more than six or seven hours or is there a proportion of the whole that it should be better, more restful sleep? Maybe 20%? Or,
yeah, there are proportional numbers to a night of sleep depending on whether you have six hours or eight hours but the numbers are proportional. So yeah, it's roughly, you know, when you're young adult, it's roughly 25% Deep sleep 25% rem and then 50%, light sleep. And then some of that light sleep can be very late sleep or stage to sleep, most of it stage to sleep, but as you get older, then the amount of deep sleep actually begin to decrease. So proportionately you have less deep sleep as you get older, which is why people have more trouble when they sleep when they get older. Just because sleep is more easily disturbed things that didn't used to bother you can now break through because your sleep isn't as deep. You would think then that based on what Andrew was just saying and our thoughts about lucid dreaming, you'd have more lucid dreaming where the dream states but dream sleep seems to decline a little bit too not as much as deep sleep but it does begin to decline in the older years. 15 To 20% You know, rather than up to 2025 in the adult years.
And yeah, this is a great topic, to what degree can you associate factors of aging the deleterious factors of aging with that diminution in the dreamless sleep? I mean, how directly proportional is that?
It's fairly directly proportional. It's one of the reasons why that proportion changes and so they can be more fragmented sleep more disturbed sleep. But if sleep is protected, you know, recognizing that that's going to happen and you wear earplugs, you have noise machines, you have blackout key, you know, and shades and all, then you're asleep should remain about the same, though you'll have less proportion proportionate, deep sleep. So you need to protect it more as you get older, essentially. So old
that too, because my thing like Yeah, last night was one of those nights because I knew I'm sorry, my last night was one of those nights that I knew that I was I was dreaming like the whole time it was a light sleep but very restful. It's like was full of awareness to the point that I get up and it took me like an hour to know whether I was sleeping or I was still not sleeping, which because I do these exercises happens frequently. But when I look at my proportion, it was a lot more of that airplane, what I call when I'm sitting in an airplane sleep like the sitting up. So I remember when they when you were talking about people that are weird sometimes once wakes up in the in the morning, it's like I work all night. I mean, I feel like I've been doing all this activity all night. And then I began to I begin to have the flashes. If I don't feel bad because I'm used to that I'm always been a light sleeper since I was a very young child, but I sleep more seven to eight hours at least. I mean, last night I had like 30% of deep sleep and then everything was like that and i i was just aware of everything that happened to the point that I don't remember sometimes I have to ask myself did I dream that didn't happen?
That's probably happening there. And you in the three year retreat because you do get into those states they begin to blend into each other. I I'm really curious about what kind of restoration is taking place as deep sleep decreases. That's the one I really want to know and I don't know how to really assess that. I mean, including this guy who they studied in the in the by the neuroscientists and you did they do daytime study following the nighttime study to see what his daytime look like? Like there's clear states of it'll be sleepy or not during the day ability to maintain wakefulness during the day. You know, I'm curious about that, too.
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I know they did the battery of tests. I don't know how much the sleep scientists studied. The kind of diurnal questions that you're referring to. He was engaged and other types of studies during the day that were somewhat separate. So they ran a separate several different kind of streams of investigations with him, so I don't I don't know the details of that. It'd be very interesting to see what what along those lines. Yeah. Cool.
Okay. Yeah. Thank you. You got it. Okay. So, here we're all experimenters here. Okay, now the question Oh, yeah. And so Richard in the chat said here in Florida when it is turtle nesting time along the shoreline all lights are required to be turned off or they will not nest. Absolutely true. Mexico is in Mexico, same thing. You know, these guys become really avid about protecting the nesting turtles given that we have messed them up so much as it is and they really Yeah, the lighter you legally you cannot have them on after a certain hour because it really disrupts nesting. Okay
one last little kind of philosophical thing around this because this is this is a great question such a big one. Hope it's okay by barge in again. Yeah, I've always maintain that. It's actually you know, the Hindu and Buddhist tradition talks about the Kali Yuga. The Dark Age. I've already my position on that is the Dark Age officially started with the advent of artificial light, which is somehow appropriate, right because then you're violating the natural curfew of the night, which is interiority and paying homage to where nature's taking you and so to me, are we're actually addicted. We're all light junkies. We're addicted to artificial light where we're always drawn out and away from ourselves. With artificial light. So this particular question is colossal, not only in terms of implications for bio ecosystems, but for the insidious. That's the other thing that makes the Kali Yuga. So the dark age so dark is it's insidious manifestation that every time you don't even know you're being afflicted by this virus, and so to me, hats off to Thomas Edison. But again, quite literally, wherever you find light, you will find shadows. So here's a literal application. With the advent of artificial light, we find the shadow of the onset of the Dark Age in my opinion. So anyway, you know, just my rant.
No, it's a good way. I have a book here and I don't know if I can put my hands on it. It's by the guy out who works with Andrew Weil at the University of Arizona. He writes a lot about the night and sleep and the dream state Oh, and making you know, that picture of the sacred and making your your bedroom like a sacred room, you know, like almost like an altar like you're walking into a church. He'll talk about that and talking about making your sleep sacred time of the night and to protect it and all of that and he has a chapter He opens the book with a chapter. And he's describing this guy and he's saying, he's anxious. He's like, add before they added the designation for add, and he did this and he did that and he had to take medications, drink coffee. And at the end, he goes, guess who this was, and it was Thomas Edison. So you know, he was like, he wasn't. Yeah. And he was
the one who basically completely dissed sleep. He said it was just like a pretty much a waste of human existence. Right. Well, you don't snooze, you
lose. Yeah, yeah. That's what we're learning. Okay, I'll go stay close. All right. So let's talk about biphasic sleep. Someone was asking about okay, what's the difference between biphasic and fall polyphasic. Is it the same thing biphasic is basically two bouts right and, and you know, all the latest data, a couple of books came out about we used to have in fact, prior to electric lights we used to provide two bouts of sleep one would be after dinner. Basically, we'd come in after sunset, have dinner, and then go to bed. And we sleep for first sleep for a couple hours, a couple of cycles, couple three hours, and then we'd get up and we'd be active for a while maybe just meditative or quietly active but we'd be up for a while, and then return to sleep for the second night of this second bout of sleep of the night and then get up with Dawn. And this was considered perfectly normal and hardly even noticed, but mentioned in some of the literature of the time. So that would be more like biphasic sleep. The second way you might have biphasic sleep is sleeping in a block at night but maybe not your full seven, eight hours, maybe only six hours. And then taking a nap in the afternoon. Okay, two periods of sleep. polyphasic sleep just begins to really separate that out and divide it out into multiple bouts of sleep. And that can be 20 to 30 minute naps with a four to three four hour block at night. It could be multiple periods throughout the daytime. Supposedly, this is what Edison did. This is what several other you know inventors did back in the day and people who've tried it and most of the resource suggests that it's not an easy thing to do. And most people can't really can't really maintain it for any length of time. Because they get sleep deprived eventually the around the clock around the world sailors though found ways you know like there are certain certain cadre of people who could do this. And they found ways to sleep a portion of every hour during their 24/7 around the clock sailing because they couldn't sleep for more than that and be safe on the on the ocean. And so, but anyone who train themselves to do this would almost quickly revert back once the race was over, you know, like and they weren't in training. They would go back to reasonable sleep and they could have maybe a little bit of polyphasic but not at 20 to 30 minute naps. And so there's a good link here to Sleep Foundation. See foundation.org is a good place for a lot of lay descriptions of sleep issues and what to do and what not to do. And so they talk a little bit about that. The other place where it can be really helpful is in shift work. So people who have to do shift work may have several bouts of sleep, not just at night. But during the day as well. Okay. Okay, so we have one more one more question. Oops, where is it? Here it is. Okay. Darn it. Sorry about that. There thanks again. Okay. Oops. Let go with this mouse here. It's doing its own thing. So my 12 year old daughter has wigged out sleep patterns. She's often tired at school. What can I do to help her do the same sleep hygiene rules apply? to kids? So the answering the last question first is yes, sleep hygiene is the same for children. It does you do need to respect their increased total sleep time needs though. And make sure they're they're meeting those needs. But anyone tired at school and tired is really codeword for a sleepy, okay. They need to be taken seriously as it will affect their learning and ultimately their health. If they're not getting enough sleep at night, we need to know why. Now unfortunately, you know
females go into hormonal changes pubertal changes quicker than boys do than the males do. And so at 12 There's a good chance she's already shifting into that adolescent pattern of delayed sleep phase syndrome. Which is not really disorder for them because it's natural for the adolescents to shift into a delayed sleep phase. Their melatonin rhythm shifts later, yet they still need roughly the same amount of sleep hours and they're also starting school early which then then restricts their ability to get that full night's sleep so so you really need to take it seriously see what's going on. Are they having trouble falling asleep when they used to go to bed at nine now they're having trouble falling asleep at 10 Maybe they're not falling asleep till 11 And that's why they're sleepy because they're up at six or seven to make the school bus for school. You want to make sure of what's going on what's changing, and then go see the pediatrician. And talk about their sleep and see what's happening
there's also a link here to see foundation.org About so you can just go to that that site and search for teen sleep and it's tween and teen sleep essentially because it happens in middle school and somewhere generally around seventh grade, right around seventh graders when we first see the changes and we see it in and girls first and then boys but seventh eighth grade that's when it's happening by high school they've shifted completely and it becomes really difficult to get the sleep they need without starting schools later and that's still you know what's happening. California passed a law now that No school can stop before 830. And it's going to spread because it just makes sense. You know, it makes sense. We're sleep depriving our kids to start school early. Makes no sense. All right, other questions or any questions about any of this? I think I got all the questions that were presented earlier and then there was one oh clearly says I'm doing a sleep study with Kaiser at home with gear they will give me just a bracelet and a finger thing. That's Kaiser for you. Well, I mean, okay, that was a little facetious on me, they they're probably giving you something that measures
I can't think of a term but they actually look at Pulse, periodic pulse, something or other, but they're looking at respiratory rate as it determines changes in pulse rate pulse pressure something or other. So they measure it from the wrist and they get your blood oxygen from your finger. And that's why that's it's very simple. Severe apnea will show up. Moderate apnea will show up because that changes the physiology of circulation pretty dramatically. But that's about it. So that all it won't give you a heck of a lot more. So if they say it's perfectly normal and yet you have some sleep complaints. I would not stop there. I would say and a good sleep doc won't stop there. If you have complaints and the study is negative. They'll want to go deeper. They'll do what Kathy did. They'll put you in the lab to do all the hookups. And you'll be cussing us both out for having to do that. But you'll get much better information about what's really going on. Sure. Okay. And there was
another question that came in. He really had one here.
Oh, that was clearly as I thought. Yeah. Also about what
the aspects of dreams that we do remember. I don't think we I don't think we address that there.
We know we're sorry. As far as turtles go back down until hawk has a long diatribe there. We'll have to get to that. Okay, hold on. What that we do remember it? We just come back during the day so even over weeks went by test Was it okay? Yeah. And I'm sure you want to kick in on that end to Andrew. But certainly, you know, one of the things I said that REM sleep is important for is attaching attaching emotional valence to what we recall, and that's why we need more REM sleep when we're more stressed as well. Okay. It helps us deal with the world, the stuff that really bothers us. And so how do we deal with that? How do we look at that through images we create so that we can then process it in some way that makes sense to us. Okay, more to that, Andrew that you want to know.
Not necessarily. Yeah. Well, is that okay? Do you have a follow up with that, Billy?
Can we get Quilly unmuted?
Well, I just would say that, everyone now and then I'll have a dream that has images that follow me around after I've had it that make no sense but you know, and they could be part of another dream. At that, you know, I really relate to the dream, you can almost feel it disappearing. But then there's these other images that don't disappear. Why not?
Well, you know, you can I mean, you do a lot of this work anyway, so you can go into meditation and converse with the image. Beautiful. Why are you here? What do you need to? I mean, there's a whole pattern of a whole class of dream work, in which you ask each of the images, what are they there, and then you act as if you are the dream image and you speak for the Dream image and you can get some pretty interesting information. That's perfect.
It also reminds me of this story that Bob Thurman always talks about I think he got it from Dr. Nida. I'm sharing it more because it's so bloody cute. Two story where again, I don't know if it was Dr. Neat or somebody else but Dr. Anita, the sleep doc Tibetan physician or Dream Yoga guy. So this guy keeps having this this nightmare right? And this this demon keeps remember it keeps chasing, chasing chasing a little bit like the recurring thing you know, there's chasing, chasing and at a certain point, the guy the guy has enough lucidity. This is like this is priceless, right? He stops in the dream. He's lucid. He turns around, and he says Why do you keep chasing me? And the dream figure says I don't know it's your dream. That is just bloody perfect. But that roleplaying thing Yeah, that's a great suggestion. Engage engage that artifact. Because you know sometimes my experience clearly what these can do is it can often represent a repressed, rejected aspect again, I'm just guessing. You know, that is coming back for reintegration haunt haunting you in a certain way. It's like when we refuse parts of our experience. It's like throwing a boomerang is going to come back one way or the other for integration, wholeness, healing. And sometimes it's like with recurring dreams or I can't say for sure, but maybe an image like this. This is part of maybe a boomerang that you throw. It's coming back, holding healing or whatever. And so engaging in it like this very interesting to explore, because then perhaps you can dissipate it through the investigation itself. And it's maybe just calling out saying, hey, you need to pay a little bit more attention to this aspect of your being something like that. Yeah. Okay.
Anything that recurs. It's recurring for a reason. Unless it was what you had for dinner last night. That's a different story. All right. So so at the very beginning, there was a question that had come in about any ideas about dealing with snoring other than different rooms. Also having breaking trouble breaking the habit of waking up after five hours. Being worked for a while and listening to something and going back to sleep. Is it detrimental to health solely podcast? Sorry, I'm reading it to myself out loud to you only hearing half of it. Alright. So first of all about snoring, you know, sound machines, and earplugs. Those are the only other possibilities I can think of. If the person doesn't want to evaluate their snoring and do something for it and that's all you have at your option to go to another room use a sound machine are earplugs. They can raise the bed somewhat, if that's a possibility because that will help reduce snoring because it keeps the tongue from falling back as much creating a smaller airway and a greater vibration which means greater snoring. So those are the only possibilities I can think of they're in the habit of waking up after five hours. First of all, you wake after five hours because there's a clock there to reinforce that it's five hours after you went to sleep. Okay, so if the clock isn't there, and you awaken, you turn over and go back to sleep instead that might dissipate the pattern. Okay? On the other hand, it's also a great time to work on your dream state you know, you're awake, okay? You're a little mentally you're doing something and you're, why not use it for do the dream work that you're you're on this site, you're talking about dreams, you're talking about awareness. This is a great example if you're waking up already, you know I have a big drink of water before I go to sleep at night to ensure I'm gonna wake up before the alarm in the morning and they come back and I do my practices. It's not detrimental to help to wake up and be awake for a while and go back to sleep. By the way I didn't mention but in that link I linked it to the paper about the the biphasic and polyphasic sleep. There's a great paper in which they studied Muslims who they do a five day five prayer five times a day prayer. And the first prayer usually starts before dawn. They're supposed to wake up the owl before dawn and do the first prayer of the day. And so these guys got the bright idea to study Muslims because they sort of segregated themselves this population into biphasic and polyphasic. All kinds of different schedules. And the bottom line was no matter what schedule they had used, as long as they were getting roughly the seven and a half, eight hours they needed per 24 hours. There was no sleepiness. They were perfectly healthy and perfectly restored and perfectly refreshed. So as long as you're getting your sleep, whether you're up half the night or not, as long as you're getting your sleep per 24 hours, you're going to be fine. perfectly healthy. Okay. Okay, there's a live question What time is it? So hold on one second peaches. Let me see there's one that's been hanging out from Tim in the chatbox and then we'll take a live question. So Tim is just had hip surgery he's in significant discomfort. Yes, sleep cycles have been majorly disrupted. Absolutely. I seem to be only able to sleep about an hour and a half and then need to get up hour and a half. There's your sleep cycle, need to get up to either use the bathroom or to move my body into a different position. Needless to say, this is leaving me pretty exhausted. So I seem to have almost no dreams and find it very difficult to get more than one to two sleep cycles sequentially. I'm doing the best I can with this at the time but just wanted to ask you if you have any suggestions or ideas
Yeah, so you know when we're in pain, when we've had something like surgery, asleep, we just have to recognize sleep is not going to be normal. It's not going to be complete, and it's going to be easily disturbed because pain will awaken us. needing to move the body will awaken us. But what you can know is that as long as you're allowing yourself to sleep when you can, and you're doing whatever you can to stay out of your own way. Which means, you know, when you wake up if it's during the night, you want to get a little more of that sleep so you don't want to wake yourself up too much at night and you do want to have things that are quieting maybe some some you know, guided meditations, things that might help guide you back to sleep using some binaural beats or some of those CDs that help your brain Calm down, maybe some music. And then during the day you can be a little more alert when you have those awakenings and you need to move and do something a little more activating. Don't forget if you're not doing a lot of movement and you're not doing a lot of activation of your mind. You're not generating as much sleepiness as you normally would. So, we generate sleepiness by using our minds cognition activation by being involved in the world. And that's creating some sleepiness that we then satisfy at night. If you're not engaging as much with the world during the day, then there's probably less drive to sleep. So you might want to try engaging yourself more during the day during your day wake ups. You know, start pulling out some good stuff to read, you know, go on, go on the website, you know, start doing stuff you don't normally have time to do and read up on this. Read up on that challenge yourself. And that'll help distract you from pain as well. And it may keep you from awake a little bit longer during the day. So that you'll sleep a little bit more at night. That's all I can say there. All right, Beatrice and raised.
Yes, I'd like to go back to the snoring question. I don't know if you've addressed the mouth taping idea of James Nesta and Patrick McEwan. But for people who don't have serious sleep apnea, they suggest that the mouth taping can really help and, and I did it for six months. I'm not a snore but I love doing it and I felt like it was very beneficial and not at all dangerous. So I wonder what but do you feel about it?
Why did you stop?
Because I felt like I had accomplished that I was much more aware of breathing through my nose rather than my mouth and during the day and at night. So I felt like it was good training.
Yeah, yeah. So now you breathe more through your nose and you to through your mouth. So yeah, in the first place, right? It's, it's it can be very helpful for people who breathe through their mouths, which is most of what snore is do I first want to know, do we have sleep apnea that we have to deal with? Taping the mouth won't necessarily reduce the apnea because some some noise somewhere the apnea may be occurring anywhere in the upper airway. There can be reason for obstruction, restriction and collapse of the upper airway. So if I hold your nose while you're trying to sleep, that may be enough to restrict airflow and cause a collapse down here. Same with when I do that, there may not be enough air through in the air that's coming through is so forceful because it's now it's like squeezing a hose down. The water comes out faster. So the airflow is coming through faster creating either more irritation or greater pressure that the airway has to fight against to stay open. And so may actually contribute to collapse and an apnea. So I want to make sure apnea was addressed first. And then as long as that was the problem and taken care of then Yeah, certainly. It's something that people do they learn to open their mouth maybe because they had a call they had some nasal polyps, they had some nasal congestion. The other thing about of that mouth opening that mouth breathing, when people have severe apnea, that's one of the reasons they learned to open their mouths during during sleep, because they can't get enough air and they're trying to get more air and then they opening their mouths but it doesn't really necessarily help and when they use CPAP even if they just use a nasal mask. At first they may still open their mouths and that's a problem. With CPAP because then the air is blowing through some of it comes out the mouth and you don't get the full pressure back here where you need it. But what happens is, once they're getting some air in and it's going through their airway, their mouths begin to close, because it no longer needs to supplement breathing. Because now they're getting full air in the airway staying open. So what you're talking about is a learned pattern. And yes, you can unlearn it. Taping the mouth can help you unlearn it, just make sure that there if there's apnea present, it may still be present. If you take the mouth and may even be worse. So you want to make sure you're not making things worse before you make things better. Long answers.
It's more complicated than I expected. And by the way, I just want to say so people know it's a very small piece of tape and it's surgical tape, and it comes off very easily just
Yeah, yeah, that's the only kind of tape I would use with all this hair. It would be very painful if I was using duct tape, which I've heard people do. I know. I know people with with. Again, when they first started using CPAP their mouths wouldn't close. So they just started taping them close before they realized they could use surgical tape. And they swear by it, you know, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Like okay, they're never gonna grow a beard or mustache. Okay, that's fine. You know, whatever works. So thank you. You're welcome. Thanks for contributing. Any other questions? We this is a rich session today we've covered a lot of ground. Oh, here's a no I tried this with a snore Alan snoring is music to my ears. It loves me to sleep. How do we spoon him and eventually when snoring would come I would automatically feel blessed. Oh, that's beautiful. And hopefully, you know that definitely works for some people. For some people, the CPAP machine the sound of the CPAP machine now works. So yeah, it can be one of those you just fall asleep.
Can I ask you a question? Surely, Sir, have you seen the CPAP machines? That don't make any noise?
The latest ones are really quiet.
That's my husband got one and it doesn't make any noise. I thought that it would keep me up worse than the snoring but it is. I can't even tell he has it on. Cool.
Nice. Yeah, they used to the early machines. They were worse than the snoring some some foreigners would complain but now they're really quiet so yeah.
Good quiet. It has like an app where he like grades his sleep for him or those accurate
um, they're much more accurate. They're relatively accurate because what they're doing is you're sending a pulse up, you know, wherever whatever the mask is, is sending a pulse up and by whatever is reflected back, they can determine how open or closed the airway is. So yeah, it is impressive. That's how they've created the variable pressure devices that basically vary the pressure across the night based on need, right because some people need it more in their back or in RAM. They the pressure goes up and then when they turn to their side the pressure goes down. So yeah,
they can tell like when something happens because it just shoots up air and then it scares him.
Yeah, well that machine so it's still a machine. And if he can do that it means machine isn't quite fast enough because when you're awake when you're when you're at least awake in the brain. There's muscle tone restored, and your airway is definitely open. So the fact that it's shooting air and means it was shooting air in because there was an apnea before he woke up and then he woke up, but it didn't catch the apnea. So he's getting it well awake.
super interesting.
Yeah. But he should definitely do follow up. After you know a few weeks on it is Doc should see the data make sure he's his numbers are low. And because it may be adjusted sometimes they need to have a basement level set so they can usually range the entire range. And that's what they usually send you home on. And then when you look at the data, you see oh, you know this guy staying in this range up here. And if you let it store too low, he begins having apneas and then by the time he catches up, he's already had a bunch. So it may be that the basement needs to be higher.
Okay. Yeah. In July so, yeah,
okay. So good. And yeah, he mentioned the dairy thing we were talking about before,
okay, so I don't know that there's a bunch of you were here last week I had come on and asked about my son who is grinding his teeth so much that the top two teeth are completely gone. And so he has had really bad asthma since he was about two years old. He's been on inhaled steroids. I mean, we've had liquid steroids, you name it, and we actually about a month or so ago, I think actually right after this last session, we cut out dairy from his diet completely. And as of his last lung function test. In March, he was at an 89 lung function and prior to that we were in like the low 50s So cutting out dairy has completely changed his lung function. I mean, we're not on inhaled steroids. He doesn't take any, like preventative medicine, which is humongous. For us. It's just I was telling Dr. Ed before everybody came on, but it's so interesting that making such a small change for us had such a huge impact on him.
Yeah, yeah. So no one you know, kids should not be suffering. They should not be suffering. And if they're complaining about their sleep or anything is happening that seems abnormal. Don't let the pediatrician say, oh, it's normal, or it's growing pains, you know, get it evaluated, go to a pediatric sleep guy if you really have to, I think as I was recommending that if things didn't work to get him evaluated, but that's great.
It's amazing. Yeah.
Yeah. So good. Good. Well, so we're pretty much at an end I guess for today. And hopefully we'll be back on the same what is it the first Wednesday of the month?
third Wednesday of the month.
Okay, whatever Wednesday, it's always really. Oh, no, it's the second one. The second Wednesday, because we weren't the first let me let me just check something while I'm here just to make sure my my calendar so so the next one would be Neo will be the eighth winner because there's the first is the first Wednesday.
Yes, that's what I have. It is the eighth and I'm here.
Alright, so if I don't see you sooner, I'll see y'all there. Thank you. Great. Welcome. questions today.