[40] Exploring Lucid Sleep, REM Disorders, and Improving Adult and Childhood Sleep
11:18PM Nov 19, 2024
Speakers:
Ed O'Malley
Alyssa
Keywords:
lucid sleep
sleep yoga
REM sleep
deep sleep
sleep paralysis
sleep deprivation
sleep hygiene
bedtime routine
sleep aids
stress reduction
sleep lab
sleep disorders
sleep meditation
sleep patterns
sleep improvement
All right, welcome everyone. Everybody had a link but me. I just Hi Denise, Theresa, David, George. Christie, lots of new faces. Welcome, welcome. Welcome, George. You got a question at the wire was that you who put a question in? There was somebody who said their name was George. I don't know who I Okay, well, people are still coming in. Hey, Justin, did you get my email today? Okay, good.
Uh, yeah.
Oh, people, I'm not seeing faces. I guess people are just okay. Whatever it is looks like we're a little late starting. So I just wanted to give everyone a chance to get on. Yeah. So if Yeah, nod your head, even though you're muted. Sorry. Okay, when it comes in that way, I may or may not get to it, but I did happen to see it, and I snagged it. So we'll see how far we get. Are people still coming on or
we have everybody in from the waiting room?
Okay, great. Okay, so for just mainly for the new folks. So how we definitely roll here is I will give you a bit of a presentation on the questions that came in. I like to have those questions up front because I can do a little bit of research on them. Most of the questions that came in this week or this month are relatively straightforward clinical questions, so not a lot of data is needed. So I did print them out and put them on the presentation, so we'll go through that, and then we'll open the floor for questions. Occasionally, if the person is here who submitted the question, I may say, Come on, let's explore it a little bit more deeply, because I have some questions for you in order to be able to better answer your question. Okay? And if you don't know how to use the hand function, either Alyssa can help you with that, or if you wave wildly, somebody will see you, and hopefully we'll get you on. Okay, but if your picture is not up, those disembodied voices, we might just think it's a it's a liminal dream or something, and not answer you. So come on, if you want to ask a question, and there's some in the chat, we'll get to Okay, alright, so I am going to share my screen. The first thing I'm going to do, since I'm taking a page from Andrews playbook, and that is, do self promotion here, let's see where is that presentation. It should be here. Oh, wait a minute. Let me open it up again. Here it is, okay, okay, let's see if I've gotten any better at this.
Probably not, but I
Okay. Okay, so this is, I don't know, I do this work for one Spirit, and they, apparently, they've now given me a link to my presentation. So that's the link to my presentation. Can you see this here? Can everyone see that sacred states of being? So that link on the page will stick it, maybe Alyssa will stick it for us in in the chat, so people can get the link. It'll take you here. So yeah, so we can talk about that later. I just wanted to put it up there. I never remember this. We get to the end. Half the people are gone, and I go, Oh yeah, and don't forget. So alright, so that's up there. Now let's go back to see if I can go to the home page. Yes, look at that. Okay, everybody can see that still. Yeah, yes, good. I'm going to drag you guys over here so I can see you all too. I feel like a tech wizard now. I've got naturally four screens, but three screens are working right now, and I can see everybody up there. I can see a great picture of an ear. Sure. Look at that great anatomy. All right, yeah, we have to be conscious of what we're doing with our videos. Okay, so typing is kind of small. This is from Justin. Justin proposed these questions for last session, and we wanted to do a more in depth answer to these then, so I wanted to have a chance to look at the questions and and talk about them. So this is from Justin last month. I'm a New nightclub member. I apologize for asking questions that have been covered briefly or previously, and a number of you have said that, and we're fine with going over it again. You know, we need to hear this stuff 345, times anyway. So don't worry about that. I have some questions related to lucid sleep, lucid sleep and sleep yoga, not lucid dreaming. Okay, I've recently been able to maintain awareness while falling asleep, including getting into REM and deep sleep states. So a few questions related to this, and I'm going to have some myself. But so I understand you've done some lucid sleep studies. I haven't done studies, but I reviewed the literature. Would you mind sharing what you've learned from these studies? And then later on, Justin, you asked this too, do we know much about lucid sleep from a scientific research perspective at this point? So I'm going to answer this last part first. We don't know a lot about lucid sleep, okay, but as we discuss this, you'll get that it depends on what you mean by that. But if you're talking about sleep yoga, in which you are maintaining awareness during deep sleep, then there isn't any research to my knowledge on that yet. Though Andrew is participating in research, they're trying to sort out, how do we detect awareness during deep sleep, when all of all of the tools we currently have aren't aren't sensitive enough to pick up any changes in the brain activity associated with that. And unlike proving and demonstrating that lucid dreaming occurs, there's actually an awareness that you also have activity, and the activity can be detected on a sleep study, so we can really document that, and that has been done. So I'm going to start there nothing about lucid sleep per se. However, the lucid dreaming research has documented the reality of the state as I was just mentioning it being nearly identical to the waking state activity when you're looking at brain activity in the wake state, doing some particular test activity, whatever that happens to be, and then doing the same activity during A lucid dream. Brain activity, brain areas activated all essentially identical. Okay, so what you're doing in the dream state when you're aware is pretty much what it looks like when you're awake. Stephen LaBerge has famously stated something to the effect of waking reality is dreaming without sensory constraints. Sorry, with sensory constraints. So while we're awake, we have our senses and the world sort of constraining the activities we can do, whereas lucid dreaming is waking without sensory constraints. Okay, so meaning, in the lucid dream, we don't have the restrictions of the sensory world, and we can fly. We can sense all kinds of things. We can do all kinds of activities, okay, so that's lucid dreaming. And then you go on further and say, I don't dream while maintaining awareness into sleep. So my first question is, and you want to know, what purposes do you serve? And we're going to get into that in a second. But Justin, you also set up here that you maintain awareness while falling asleep, including getting into REM and deep sleep states. So if we could unmute Justin, I want to know how you know you're getting into REM and deep sleep states. Like, did you actually show that data on your you know you were talking about your guru ring showing REM sleep or something. Can we unmute Justin? Alyssa, well, can I do that first?
Let me Okay, thanks,
no problem.
There we go. All right, hear me okay,
yeah, can hear you fine. Thanks,
yeah, so, yeah, so, as I was mentioning last time, so I I am using an. Our ring. So I so the, so the ARIA, the REM comment is from, from the aura ring, you know, it's kind of showing that. So at first, it kind of started out with, like, very light sleep, you know, the first, first couple times. And then I started getting, kind of maintaining it longer. And our ring kind of showed, kind of through all the stages, kind of a light, Rem and deep sleep. I have, I have gotten into states where there's like sleep paralysis starts to set in.
You've noticed that you felt it?
Yeah, I felt it. And it was kind of weird at first, like it was a little, it was kind of uncomfortable, I would say. And then I didn't make I did. I mean, typically, I've kind of maintained the awareness as I'm falling asleep. And I kind of feel my, I almost feel like my, my brain and body are almost disconnected in a way. There's like, I kind of feel my body kind of going into a deeper state of rest, if that makes sense. But my brain felt pretty active, yeah. And then there was one time and that this was where it was, like, prompted the question on, like, you know, what? What do we know about this was, I, I was, I was kind of soundly asleep, and then suddenly, you know, I didn't maintain awareness into sleep. I was kind of, you know, unconsciously sleeping, and then kind of the awareness kind of just, you know, kind of came on, and then I was kind of in this aware, aware state, you know, while my body was still still asleep. So just before going deeper and deeper down this path, I just, I just kind of wanted to check in and see, you know what, what all about this so far, not that I was really worried about it, but just just kind of, you know, I didn't feel like I knew that much. Yeah,
so, well, it's interesting, because, you know, when I dug into this a bit, you know, in general, we know that the dream state, the REM state itself, everyone goes into REM during sleep. That's the physiologic state of rapid eye movement sleep. So we know, and everyone, let's just say everyone in the general normal population, there are neurologic issues and other reasons why people might not have REM. But for the most part, everyone goes, they cycle through these 90 minute cycles, deep sleep, first a little bit of REM, a little less deep sleep, a little more REM, a little less deep sleep, a little more REM. So by morning, we have a lot of REM early the night, we have very little REM early the night, we have a lot of deep sleep. End of the night, we have much less. So that's generally the normal state of things. The REM state itself, we know from a various variety of studies and REM deprivation studies, selective REM deprivation studies and so forth. That REM sleep is associated with emotional and informational content of our waking minds. We're sorting out the information we've taken in particularly the emotional content to it, and then we kind of deal with it. You know, either we deal well with it and we go on and we process it and the next day we do something different, or we may get stuck in it, and that can lead to depression. Depression is really a disorder of REM sleep, or at least, REM sleep gets disordered, and all that emotional processing doesn't take place, or doesn't take place as well. People get stuck. And in fact, when you take an antidepressant, one of the first things it does is it suppresses REM sleep completely, just about and then after a few weeks, it comes back online, and it seems to work better, at least in people who've treated their depression reasonably well, okay, but there's also this awareness of dreaming that some people have, like, you know, loads of and other people have a paucity of awareness of dreaming. So there may that also within the normal range of, let's say, biology, in a sense, human biology, or the recall. So it's either the awareness while dreaming is occurring or recalling. Dreaming. When you're waking up in the morning and you're saying, I don't remember any dreams, a lot of people say I don't dream at all. Generally, it's that they're not aware. And if they're in the sleep lab and you wake them up during REM sleep, they can then report a dream or being in the midst of a dream, maybe not as vivid as some others, but essentially, they're just not really paying much attention to it or recalling it when they awaken in the morning. But there is a an issue. To call Alex, alexidhami and alexidheimia is the lack of or severely reduced emotional awareness, emotional content in life. So, and I'm not in any way intimating, that's what's going on with you, because you have your REM sleep at different times, but with reduced emotional awareness, there's less emotion to be processed, therefore there's less dreams occurring in order to process that emotional emotional content, because there's very little of it. And it's kind of like if you ask someone who has Alex faimia, alexithymia, you know, what did you feel when you first fell in love? They really wouldn't be able to answer the question. Even though they may be married, they may have relationships, they may not really have that sense of, Well, you know, I just, you know, we we had fun together, and so we got married. I mean, love is not a feeling or an emotion to to that person. So anyway, that's a general way of saying, you know, there, there's a normal range of people who are aware of dreaming, or people who recall their dreaming, and then on one end, there's very little of it. On the other end, there could be something called Epic dreaming, in which people feel like they're dreaming all night long, and they get up the next day and they're exhausted, they're like they've been walking the streets of a city all night, or they've been, you know, doing the laundry all night long. You can imagine how that would make you feel when you get up in the morning or looking for something, and it's not here, it's not there, it's not here, it's not there. In there, like spending the whole, what feels like the whole night looking for things they can't find.
So just to clarify my experience real quick, on the on the dream side, so I definitely have, I definitely do have dreams and stuff, but, but only when I'm, I guess, kind of go into the unconscious sleep. So I'm not main, like, I'm not a maintaining awareness all the time in my sleep. And it's been, it's pretty recently that I've, I've started to have that awareness, specifically when I, when I do, maintain the awareness into sleep. You know, dreams don't come on at that point in time. It's more like I'm just aware of, you know, I'm aware that I'm, you know, my body is kind of asleep, and I, I'm kind of a somewhat aware of like, I can hear stuff around the room, like, if there's a fan or something, yeah, aware of the surroundings, but my body's kind of in the sleep state, and I don't, I don't transition into a dream state while I'm maintaining so, so
no images, no vivid colors or any happenings, no activities yet. Okay, that's fine. So so so to explore and go a little deeper. When people have done sleep studies in these folks, they found that there's increased REM episodes, but they're interrupted, they're short, they're brief, they're interrupted. There's a lot of light sleep, and there's decreased deep sleep. And so it's interesting, because these findings are pretty similar in people who have epic dreaming. So at both ends of the spectrum, what we think is happening is that sleep is much lighter, and that's why, and that's why, to me, it sort of translates back to what you were describing is that there's an awareness of, you know, you're holding on to your awareness as you're drifting into sleep and so and what would be abnormal for most people is to drift into REM sleep. Although people do have what's called hypnagogia, or hypnagogic states in which you're drifting into sleep, and you may have images and little dream lets but you're not officially going into a dream, and then that passes, and you drop into deeper sleep and forget all about it. Okay? And there are different states of hypnagogia. Hypnagogia is when you're falling asleep. Hypnopompic is when you're waking up. And people can have that at both ends, including other features of dream sleep, which would be sleep paralysis, so you can awaken in the morning, and that's more likely to occur in the morning. And I imagine you're shaking your head, that's when it's more likely to happen for you. Yeah. Well, as far as, yeah,
I guess as far as the awareness, sometimes I'll wake in the morning go back to sleep. It's easier to maintain the awareness then. But as far as, sorry, I was kind of taken because I was, I was listening to what you were saying, but
this. Paralysis. Would that be more likely in the morning or the
sleep paralysis? Actually that kind of set in, I would say, later in the evening, but if I kind of maintained awareness for a few hours, yeah, but it doesn't happen too often.
Yeah, so it's what you know. Essentially, what's happening is there's awareness of but still being in the REM state, the rapid eye movement state, because during that physiologic state, your muscles, your anti gravity muscles, all of your muscles, except for your diaphragm, essentially in your eyes, eye muscles are paralyzed. So if you have awareness or awakened during that, to some extent, you're going to go, Am I dead? Because, like, you know, you're awake, but nothing moves. Nothing's working. What's going on? What happened? Did I slip into the Bardo, you know? Yeah, that's what probably that is. But at any rate, what's really interesting is I've just, I've just about finished Andrew's new book, and so that goes to this next slide. And you said, Are there any risks to be generally aware of with lucid sleep? Are there any functions of sleep we miss out and where we're maintaining awareness while sleeping. And you really need to get Andrew's new book. I'm mindful. Now, what? I think that's the name of it, and we're pretty close to it. You got it there? I see Denise is reaching over see if she can find them. There it is. I'm mindful. Now, what? Yeah, that is right. I did have it right. Thank you. That's his new book, and there's a great chapter on, you know, tying together liminal dreaming, lucid dreaming, Dream Yoga, sleep yoga and Bardo yoga, almost as a continuum, because as one progresses along the the path these sort of subsume and increase, you know, include and then transcend each of these states, liminal dreaming, it doesn't it sounds like it could be what you're doing a lot of that that's maintaining awareness into sleep, but not necessarily maintaining it during deep sleep. That's more like liminal dreaming in the sense that it just means you're transitioning your awareness from one state to another, and, in this case, from the waking state to the sleep state. So anyway, it's a great read. It'll give you more insight into what, maybe, at least in part, what you're experiencing. Okay,
yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, it's, it's been, been hard to find much literature on the on the sleep yoga specifically. So yeah, and
just to end your uh, overall, this has been a positive experience, maintaining awareness and to sleep over. I feel like there's such limited information on it, right? I'm trying to learn more, especially as I'm starting to extend my time and lucid sleep, you've come to the right place. Okay, there's a ton of information in the nightclub on the website. A lot of the people you're seeing here are nearer, not right? They're the ones who explore the night experiences, including lucid dreaming, Dream Yoga, sleep yoga, all these things. So you're in the right place. Keep poking around, you're going to get lots of answers and and then you're going to have way more questions than you probably do now. That's just the way it goes. Well, that's great. Well,
thank you so much. Appreciate it.
You're quite welcome. Okay, next question up is about symptoms of REM sleep behavior disorder. I don't call the name associated with if. And probably a good thing going forward is if you put your first name on the questions, then I can address you and know if you're on. We don't have to you don't have to be on. You don't have to publicly identify who you are. If these symptoms are you know, you don't want the rest of the world to know it that's fine, but if you would like me to address you directly, then you can put your first name at least associated with the questions. Okay, so REM sleep behavior disorder. I'm practicing lucid dreaming the last few years, and since a few months, I've been waking up screaming or kicking my legs. My husband wakes up also. I imagine he would it might be diagnosed as RBD. I am not sure yet, but the symptoms look like it, and they do look like it to me too, just from what your description is right here, is there any relationship between lucid dreaming and RBD like symptoms? There's no direct relationship between the two, but you really need to get this evaluated. Okay? You don't want to mess around with RBD, so you want to be certain of the diagnosis, you need a clinical in lab sleep study. Do not settle for a home study that will not tell you anything. Okay? I mean, it'll tell you maybe you don't have sleep apnea, but that's not. What you want to know. You want to know are there symptoms of clinical REM, sleep behavior disorder, RBD, okay, because there are a lot of other attendant neurologic issues that can go with that. So you want your early diagnosis and management. Okay, I've included a link to a paper written, or actually an article written in spirituality and health. So this is someone who contacted me to, you know, explore these ideas about RBD, and what about lucid dreaming and Dream Yoga and all of these things, because she's a Tibetan meditator, and she developed symptoms and then was recently diagnosed with RBD, unequivocally, she is working with a Tibetan doctor, Tibetan Medicine doctor who's helping her, you know, take the right herbs and so forth, and her and her, her Rinpoche, a Tibetan Lama, who's, he's, named in the article. I think his name is pan up. I think Barry knows him. They are slowly developing particular dream yoga practices that they hope will prove therapeutic and reduce the frequency of the episodes and the intensity of the episodes. I will add one more piece to this. So there's no direct link, but you may be able to use some of that lucid dreaming to actually make things better. No guarantees there, but certainly find out if you definitely have the diagnosis, and then begin figuring out what to do about it. I'm working with someone who, you know, I'm just offering I do this type of neurofeedback, which can be really helpful. It helps the brain kind of write itself. We don't direct it in any particular way. We give it information, and the brain sorts itself out. And so I'm seeing him and his partner, I'm seeing both, and they are they're both getting sessions with me, but he is reported, and his wife has also reported because she's in the same bed now, and she wasn't able to be in the same bed when we started sessions that the intensity of the symptoms have have come down during the neurofeedback. So that's another potential avenue to follow up on. It's not a cure, but the frequency of nightmares and the frequency of the events have decreased. He also has PTSD, so there's other stuff going on. But anyway, okay, so that's the RBD. If you hear and want to come on, that's fine. Otherwise, I'm going to take a quick look at the chat and see if there's a question related to that, not just yet. Okay. Okay. Let me just continue with the questions so that we'll have time to get to the next Okay. Here's a couple of questions, so I'm going to kind of skip the PROLOG here. Basically coming from addiction research suggesting that, you know, not sleeping well may be one of the causes of leading to addiction down the road. And so this person wants to know about, what can we do? First of all, what's the most common issue with sleep in adults, for example, overthinking or stress affecting their desire to be alone with their thoughts at night. And the most common sleep complaint by far is insomnia, and it's generally it can be due to many underlying issues. And the first thing we always want to do is rule out underlying medical or psychiatric issues, psychological issues. But even with all that's ruled out, it's still the most common complaint, the most common disorder we see, and most of it is associated with an inability to manage daytime stress, not necessarily your your daily or typical stress, but Maybe overwhelming stress, or, you know, overwhelming issues around life, you know, family, all kinds of issues, but essentially, yes, that is the most common sleep disorder in adults. And then what are some early childhood interventions or techniques you believe that could make a large impact on sleep hygiene? So certainly for children, what is critically important is a bedtime routine incredibly helpful for children to generate a positive quiet period leading into sleep. Right? The kids are bouncing off the walls all day long. You want to start winding down that activity, and so when you have a. Routine already, as soon as you know, and young parents begin to learn this pretty soon. Otherwise, nighttime can be real, real challenging, almost traumatic. And so what you want to be able to do is say, Okay, it's time to get on pajamas. Bucha, we can read a story. And they go, Oh, great, because already they're recognizing I'm going to have a story read to me when I'm quiet and snuggled in bed. And it's not that they're preparing for bed and they have to stop their activity and stop all the fun they're having and go to bed, but instead, they're going to have a new, quiet, comfortable, fun, enjoyable time with one of the parents, right? So they get that signal already, it's time to wind down, to brush their teeth, get on the jammies, and then mommy or daddy reads them a bedtime story. What could be a better experience at night, at the end of a fun day? Right? But this practice is also hugely helpful for adults. Right? Look at all the apps that are out there that provide guided sleep meditations or soundscapes. Right? To wind you down, many blatantly describe these as bedtime stories, and there are some great apps and some great bedtime stories. And people tell me all the time. They just listen. They never get to the end of the story. They're falling asleep. So those of you who are on who also wrote and asked about, how do I get back to sleep, or how do I get to sleep, these are some suggestions for you as well. Secondly, secondly, the regularity of bedtime and wake time schedules. So the impact, the biological impact, of not natural light exposure, supports their internal physiologic state. When they get bright light at night, their brains wake up. So you don't want the bright light at night. You want the red lights. You can talk to Denise, she'll guide you right on the red light stuff. But also in the morning, you want them out and about. You want them up and out so that they get good, strong light. In the morning, their brains get turned on by the light. Their internal rhythm gets set to turn off for a kid, 1617, hours 1718, hours later. Sorry, 12, 1314, hours later for the children. Little bit more for the adults, but essentially, you want that rhythm, and you want it as regular as possible. Again, light in the morning, no light at night. And then finally, ensuring sufficient sleep on a regular basis is critical for children, so that they're adequately prepared for the world we enter. Okay, if they're being chronically sleep deprived by too many activities, too much homework, too irregular schedule, then they are. You are guaranteeing they will have anxiety disorders as adults and or depression, just the way it works. So you want to give them their full the full amount of sleep that's required for each child, and
recognize that all of the growth hormone, all of their muscles and bones that are growing also rely on getting enough sleep. So you really don't want to be reducing or crimping the sleep style of your children. You want them have you want them to have regular schedules, regular bedtime routines and adequate sleep so that they're fully restored for this crazy world we're moving into. All right? To see anything associated with that.
The person who asked this question let me know that they had to hop off a little early, but they would like to talk a little bit more next week or not. Next week, excuse me, next session when they're able to join live.
Okay, okay, that's fine. That's great. Did I get the right question here? Okay, oops. There we go. I think this is the right next one. Okay, yes. Next question is, I often wake up in the middle of the night. And again, George, you were almost on the same question here, I wake up in the middle of the night, can take anywhere from 30 minutes and three hours to get back to sleep, which can turn into a very truncated night, if I awaken at four and I'm still awake at 630 when it's almost time to get up. My question is, is there a way you know of to keep from waking in the middle of the night? Nope. There is no way, unless you want to take good, strong drugs every night or have your partner whack you with a mallet to keep you asleep all night. We all wake up during the night, so that's the first thing, or go back to sleep more easily once one does. Yes, there's. Lot we can do there. I only drink a couple of two of green tea in the morning, so caffeine isn't the culprit, and I've long ago learned not to stress about it or get upset. So I mostly use the time to do practices or meditate. Okay, that might be some secondary gain too, especially if you haven't done your meditation during the day and you're awake in the middle of the night, it's good time to do it, but what you do in the daytime is really important for how you sleep at night. Okay, we kind of dissociate those two and don't recognize how important our daytime activity is. So are you active during the daytime? Do you stimulate body and mind every day, regularly? Do you have a bedtime routine that you use every night? Are you actually sleepy at bedtime? Or do you go to bed because the clock says it's bedtime? How long have you routinely slept at night over the years? Is this something new, something that's just developed in the past few years, or has it always been the case? And how many hours have you typically gotten? Do you get six hours a night most nights? That's what you've always been doing. And now you're trying to get more, because, you know, we need eight hours a night, right? Wrong? We'll get into that. And how well do you function in the daytime? Now, I can imagine, when you're only getting two or three at night, that's not going to be great, but if you're getting somewhere between five and six for several nights, are you functioning well during the day? Are you sleeping and falling asleep, you know, at your desk or in front of the TV? Okay, so I'm not sure if you're here, but maybe George will get you to kick in on this in a little bit. Okay, second question is, if I don't get back to sleep and end up with only four to six hours total, would an afternoon nap make up for mitigate some of the effects of lost sleep? Yeah, an afternoon can certainly supplement or replace some of that lost nocturnal sleep, but it's really important to not have it steal some of your nocturnal sleep pressure for the next night. These can become vicious cycles, right? You don't sleep well. At night, you take a nap, the nap goes a little long. Now you have less sleep pressure at bedtime. Takes you longer to fall asleep, or you fall asleep, and then you wake up and you awake for even longer during the night. Okay, so naps can supplement, but you want to make sure they are a supplement. They're not a replacement for the nocturnal sleep. Oh, good. And this is George, right. This is your question. I'm an early riser in the morning, even before dawn arrives, I try to eat early enough during the day, not drinking anti caffeinated beverages. Always end up not being able to go to bed till midnight. What can I do to maximize more sleep? Time again, I want to know, do you need more sleep time or do you just think you need more sleep time? So let's jump into this, and then we'll go to the chat questions. So let's unmute George and as the other person who asked the question, the other question here about the sleep, total sleeping, not seeing a hand or a face. Okay, alright, so George, let's go with you. You're going to be our surrogate for people who are complaining about too long to fall asleep or get to sleep and not able to get back to sleep, or only getting four or five six hours,
right? Well, I can start by saying,
Hold on a second. I can barely hear you. Let me turn up my volume.
How's that? That
big? Hold on one second here. Let me stop my share. It'll be easier to see things. Oh, I am pretty maxed out. Let me try this.
Yeah, that's pretty loud. All right, I'll try one other thing. Hold on a second.
Maybe if you turn the captions on at the bottom, that might help. It's kind of quiet for me too.
Yeah. Where are the where are the captions?
Um, they're at the bottom. You may have to click on More, and then it says captions. I've got more.
Me, yeah, I don't
see actions,
because there are more No No, all right, well, let me try one more thing. Hold on speaker. I. Okay, go ahead. Now.
Okay, how's that? How's that? No, wow, no, not at all. Can barely
hear you. Is that for everyone, everyone's having a hard time hearing George, yeah, I
definitely, definitely am. George,
go. Do you know where the audio is, go into your audio setting and test your speaker and microphone and see if see how far out you could turn up your audio a bit in the test you
have you, can you test it? You know how to
test it. I'm testing it now, actually, oh,
that's a little better.
Okay, how's that?
That's a little better. If there should be a, you know, a speaker and show you a volume line,
you can actually to the top. Yeah, it's all the way up to the top.
Okay, you're better. Okay, we can hear you now though. Okay, that's good. Okay, so tell us the story.
Well, right now, I'm pretty much spending a lot of my time being a caregiver for an elderly person, and I'm finding that it's disturbing my my sleep patterns. Usually, I try to get to bed by 10, and then when I'm wake and wake up, you know, with at least seven or eight hours sleep. But with everything that's been going on lately, I get up very, very early in the morning. I have plenty of energy. I practically spring out of bed and get everything that, you know, everything outside, done by noon time. So and like I said, I don't really drink much as far as caffeinated beverages goes, and I usually try to get my dinner done by three o'clock. So it's not that I'm over fed or anything. And so,
you know, but your thought doesn't sound like you're sleepy at bedtime. You see, you're trying to go to bed at 10, but you're not really sleepy, but
I'm not really sleepy, so I end up staying up for two or three hours until, you know, two hours till midnight or so, and I still feel like I'm not getting enough sleep. I just cannot go to sleep. It's either the heat in the room or something that's not allowing me to go to sleep, or, you know, I try, you know,
getting seven to eight hours. She said, you're getting,
I'm trying to get seven to eight hours, but, but it just, my system just seems to want to wake up at six o'clock in the morning. It's just like, it's like an automatic alarm clock.
Well, there are a few things that could be going on. One is, is there a light in your room in the morning? Does
the light come No, there isn't. Because now that we're, we've changed, you know, we're getting into the fall season. It's very, very dark
here to be, but it used to be, right? Yeah. And so, you know, you're, you're, you're really adapting to that. Do you have a clock that you can see at six o'clock in the morning? Or can you tell by the light coming in that it's morning.
I can usually tell, usually by the by what's coming in through the windows, if it's pitch,
whatever
coming in through your eyelids in the morning,
coming in through Yeah. So you know, you've just really become adapted to waking up at first life, and that's what your clock is doing. You know, that's just the way.
But then what I find is like in the afternoon, if, like you said, if I'm in front of a TV set, I may doze off for an hour by watching the TV, but then I come right back and I'm fully, fully awake again. I have all this energy still to burn. Yeah, it's
alright. So no TV in the middle afternoon. That's going to be the most likely time you fall asleep. That is, in fact, the time you need to be taking a walk, going out and playing some pickleball, doing some activity. Okay, don't allow yourself to sleep during your day. You want that extra sleep pressure at night, okay? And what you want to do about the morning is, believe it or not, I'm going to suggest you set an alarm.
Oh, all right, okay. And if you
want to, if you're not falling asleep till you know, you go, maybe 12, one o'clock in the morning, right? Is what you're saying. Two o'clock maybe,
yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just, I feel very uncomfortable. I'm kind of like, all over the bed, and I can't get comfortable. Yeah? But yeah, you're probably,
you're, you're, you're a lot of things going on. But what I would do is set it along for roughly seven o'clock. You want to break that 6am thing. Set it along for seven. Hide the clock. Okay? Yeah, when and if you wake up, your only job is to turn over and go back to sleep. Since lightning may still be coming in, you want to, can you use eye shades or put or put up blackout curtains?
Okay, yeah, yeah, no light single whatsoever.
Okay, yeah, you're going to be active during the day and you're not going
to nap. Usually, I am active during the day. If I was at home, which I'm not right now, I would be out cycling early in the morning and and,
you know, yeah, but no, it's not just in the morning. It's that minute at the new time that, yeah, okay, that's the time that your system will take some sleep and steal it from the night coming. Okay, right? So you want to you want to move through that be more active. You want to be active in the evening. Your day isn't over till about seven or eight o'clock, right, right, right? And so that's when you can start winding down and doing quieter activities and so forth. Okay, okay. And you want to make sure you're meditating during the day, or you're doing some kind of relaxation exercise, just not during that falling asleep period
of time. If I was back, if I was back home, I would be doing a a yoga class or some kind of a meditation class. Hold
it online, do something online, then you're not home. You're not you don't have your regular pattern, pull something in on YouTube or whatever. Do your yoga. That would be a great activity to do. Okay, call up myRA.
Okay. MyRA
is our Yoga expert, our yoga guru, right there. She's right there on my screen, right under you on my screen.
Oh, okay, alright,
yeah, and she holds my she holds yoga. She does yoga. Nidra, what a great idea, actually, yeah, yeah. Okay. Really good practice for you in the evening, really quiet you down. All right, so try those things out. Feel free to come back with more questions next month. Okay, okay,
all right. Thank you. Sure.
Myra's hand is raised, saying, What are you doing, giving out my name, Myra, please. Oh, just quickly.
What happened there? New aura ring. Are you getting it? And
what's new? I Yeah, it's another 300 bucks. At least, at least, yeah, right, right for the black one, I only get the black one. I don't care about platinum or gold or any other you know, like,
yeah. But what's new with that? I mean, I got tempted immediately. I do not know whether there is anything new that you know about yet.
Oh, I was just reading about it. There are a couple of new things. I we, I think they're adding in sleep need, like the whoop does, generating a sleep need score for you so and they're also, of course, building an AI, like all of them, are now trying to get a better sense of what your sleep need is, and what your sleep based on what your activity level is, the amount of prior sleep you've gotten, what your HIV is telling them, and then coming up with new recommendations for what you need to sleep. I'll look a little bit more into it. I'm not going to get it just yet, but I'll look more into it and see what I can add to next month. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, too many divide. In fact, my my Fitbit broken, you know, slowly getting around to replacing that. I may or may not. You know, I'm using my watch, my ring and the whoop right now, and they still won't give me different data. But, you know, it's just the way it goes.
What is the percentage I find it? Sometimes it's looking maybe 15 to 20% sometimes in different between the numbers. But
it can be that much. Can be that much, you know. And, you know, yeah, but, but they're still generally in the ballpark, you know, like my, if I get more sleep the next night, then they all will show more sleep. They'll still show different amounts, but they'll all show a bit more. What they can be dramatically different on are the stages. I mean, there are, like, they can be, you know, no deep sleep in one device and an hour and a half in the other device, you know. So the REMS usually aren't too bad. The wake time is, you know, sometimes it's REM, sometimes it's wake, but deep sleep is a little disconcerting when they can't quite nail that down, you know, I. Oh, so thanks, you got it. Thanks for coming on. We have someone the iPhone and hand raised. We have no name, but we have an iPhone. Melissa, can you see who that is? He's got his hand raised. I Yes, hello, Stephan, is here, Stefan. Hey, Stefan, how are you good?
How are you good? Thanks, wonderful. And we could hear you louder before somehow you, you know, like your volume went down. But anyway, I'm also have trouble since January that I'm sleeping mostly only four hours, and if I go to bed at 12 o'clock, I wake up also I can near four o'clock. And now it even got worse, and sometimes when I had higher stress level, I woke up after two hours, and I cannot fall asleep. I'm twisting and turning. So I tried all kinds of natural remedial I tried melatonin and Valerian and all kinds of sleep aids, like more natural ones, they don't really help. And I don't know, do you have experience with kundalini awakening. I had a full blown kundalini awakening nine years ago, and after that, it started that I only would sleep four hours. But
let me interrupt you, what kind of awakening you had? Oh, Kundalini. Kundalini. That was the word I didn't get. Okay, kundalini awakening. And after that, your sleep has changed dramatically, is
what dramatically it was for nine years, like basically four hours often, but it was perfectly fine. I would wake up at work, I do something, but I could fall asleep later again, but since January, I can't, and then I can come on my one hand and my five finger so often I was able to fall asleep again. Yeah, there is stress. There is a there is enormous stress, even some knee traumatic experience, I would say, in general, in during in regards to relationship issues. And I wonder, What can I do? Does a sleep lab make sense? I mean, I'm pretty sure it's stress, but Does it still make sense, as you said at the beginning, to check out any other medical conditions, or could there be any other neurological issue, or is it most likely a matter of stress reduction? Okay, so
the answer would be yes, and right. So to be sure, go ahead and go to your, you know, medical care and, you know, get evaluated. Make sure there's nothing else going on that might be causing since it does seem, you know, time limited to when you had your relationship and stress issues. You know, things blew up, and that can create a lot of disturbance. That's a perfectly normal response to a difficult time in life, whatever that happens to be, whether it's grief, whether it's relationship, whether it's a change in position, a change of job, all that. So stress reduction can be very helpful, but it's not just a singular event. It needs to be something that you do regularly now, and so are you, you know, taking care of like, is there residual emotional distress from the initial event, or has that now you figured out how it, you know, fits in your life, and you're leaving that and it's not there.
I try to get away from the situation, but it's still coming up. It's still stressing me. I tried first sessions of psychotherapy. I mean, I studied social psychology myself. I meditated. 35 years. I have a lot of experience, but so far, I'm still looking for a solution.
Okay, okay, well, until you find one, you may experience your sleep related issues just by your hesitation. When I said, Has this been resolved? It obviously hasn't, and it's obviously still contributing, right? You know it's still, it hasn't found a place so it's and the way it's letting you know that is by disturbing your sleep,
okay, but I mean, new things are coming up, even other things through this trouble, they pointed to, ah, there were other issues before, long before, and now, because of this situation, they become more at the surface, and I become more aware of them. Um. The question is one medical doctor, he described me some regular sleeping pills. I was not really a fan of them. I took them for six nights. Yes, I slept well, but then I stopped them, and it says already on the paper that it might have a reverse effect. The night after I slept only two hours when I stopped, and then the second night, even zero hours, yeah, so, yeah, high price. And then the other doctor prescribed antidepressants. They say they're known for a side effect of having sleep, like this, serotonin or the SSR, yeah. So haven't taken them and hasn't.
So, you know, we can't, we can't really do that, you know, like a medical evaluation. Okay, sure. But what I would say is the information you want to take from your experiences are as follows, when you took the sleep meds and you said, Okay, I slept fine. How much sleep were you getting after the fourth or fifth night of taking the sleep medication? Was it eight hours a night, or was it more like six? Like six to seven? Yeah, yeah. More like six. Okay, so for
me, because before I had only four or even three, yeah,
got it, got it. But what I'm saying is your maximum, what you should be shooting for is only six for the time being. Okay, shoot for six. Second. Thing is the sleep meds, yeah, most of them are going to be either addictive or you begin to develop tolerance. There are several of the antidepressants that don't do that they're not addictive and they don't build up tolerance, okay, and there are some that are more sedating than others. So what I would suggest is you do go to the sleep center and have them evaluate you, and then have them make recommendations as to whether you need a sleep antidepressant, and get a sedating one, and work with them on both getting better sleep habits as well as ruling out anything disturbing sleep that's organic, as well as treating you know, psychotherapy wasn't enough, so you might need some medication, but I understand you don't want to have something that you're going to get addicted to and have to use every night, and then, yes, there will be rebound. If you do it like that with the sleep Med, but not necessarily with the antidepressants, because they are longer acting. There's less rebound with them, and you taper them slowly, so you need to get a handle on whatever that distressing part of life is, and the presence can continue. Therapy can help. And when that comes down, you'll notice your sleep will start to improve. And then you can start backing off, because it's a it. This is another vicious cycle in the wrong direction, right? The less sleep you get, the more the less likely your brain is able to process the information and the stress and the emotional stuff, and so it just keeps feeding itself. So you want to break that cycle, so sometimes we're going to bite the bullet and just take a medicine or take a therapy or take or whatever we need to get over the hump. And then over the hump you go back to your good, natural approaches.
Do you also offer one on one consultations? Or
I? Do I do outside of this? You've you can my email up there somewhere, Alyssa, you can put my email in the box. I'm happy to follow up with you if you'd like,
okay, great, yeah, would be good. And the last point quickly these is SSRIs, are they not addictive? Or are they addictive, or
they're not addictive? No. The benzodiazepines and most sleep aids, even the non benzo, benzo, like sleep aids can be, they may not be as physically addictive, but they'll become psychologically addictive if you only need to use them occasionally. I always say, that's fine, but it's when you're needing to use them every night or every other night indefinitely, that becomes problematic,
yeah, but the benzo ones are addictive, huh?
Yeah, yeah,
I can. I can feel it like physically and psychologically. If you get a good night and you stop and you don't, wow,
yeah, okay, some of the newer ones can be better too. So we, we can take it offline. You can email me and you know, but I do want you to get in your your local, you know, healthcare network, and get signed up with a sleep center and start that process. Okay, okay, great.
Thank you so much.
You're quite welcome. All right, any quick questions, my advice. Am still down. I'm sorry about that. Is it still down? Yeah, no, you're okay. Oh, I'm okay, okay. I kind of switched in between just to try to get George Okay.
Barry, would like the link to the Tibetan meditator that you were talking about earlier. Is there a link for that person?
You know what? I can take it out of the presentation. Where was it? Where it is it?
Okay? Think I've got it. Okay in the chat. You got it Perry, um,
okay. Oh, wow, a bunch. Okay, okay, I can use reaction, opposition, behavior, disorder. Was that a question from Christy? Oh, let's see. Can you put the link in the Tibetan Medicare? Okay, we got that. And what sleep mask do you recommend? Whatever one works. Karen, I'm being facetious. I kind of like the ones that it's called Bucky. They have like, almost like, frog eyes, so they're off your eyes. And I like so I can even lay, you know, I sleep on my side at this side, to see if you're paying attention, on my right side, and it doesn't push into my eyes. So I like those. They're called Bucky. I told I know, I get them on Amazon, but I would try a few, you know, see what works. Go to top line though. Get, you know, don't get the cheapo cheapos, because they're all going to be uncomfortable yoga. Neither is the first Tuesday of each month, okay, George, you got that first Tuesday of the month. We've just passed this one, but you can go in and they're recorded, right? Myra, so they're recorded in nightclub. Okay, so figure out where they are. Part that part I can't help you with. I found something that works very well. Lane says, and it's a simple combination of two amino acids and melatonin, l theanine five, HTP and melatonin. Yes, they are all. They're all precursors to melatonin, and they're all precursors to serotonin. They're all related. And that works for you, Elaine, but not necessarily for everyone. The key is that it's chewable and kicks in 30 minutes after you chew it. The one I use is, okay, that's great. You know what I always tell people is that if you're going to use something like a sleep aid, like melatonin, you want to get something that's going to dissolve in the mouth, and that's what you're getting most of by chewing it, because by dissolving it in the mouth, it goes into your circulation and avoids going through the digestive system. By the time it goes to the digestive system, it takes 45 minutes become active. It gets broken down. Two thirds of it's lost anyway, and by the time it finally gets to your brain, it's barely recognizable as what it was that you swallowed in the first place. So yeah, in the mouth is a much better way of taking anything, especially the natural ones. Oh, okay, Christina, we're good on that question. Okay, great. We're a little bit over but any other last minute questions. This was a great session, lots of information, hopefully helpful to people. Get your questions in early. Try to get them in before the day of, because then the day of, I'm putting them all in a presentation, and if you get them to me before the day of, it's a lot easier for me to really dig in and get some of the research on and if it's something I'm not so familiar with, all right, it's been a good one. Look forward to seeing everybody next month. Take care, everyone. Thank you. Okay, you're quite welcome. The person who asked about more EU friendly times. These are all recorded, so you can go and check out the recordings. Oh yeah, if you can find them, they're in there somewhere. All right, take care. Everyone