And I can't make heads or tails out of, you know, if I have a cocktail or two if I stopped drinking at seven o'clock, you know, make sure I'm done by whatever, or if I don't drink anything at all. Yeah, I can't notice any way I just I well when I don't stay up late anymore anyway and I don't drink late at night, periods
well what you might notice is when you smoke pot that could make a difference in REM sleep, man, it usually does.
Well I'm like a one hit a day person, maybe.
So it depends on when they're 100 is just like the alcohol, the alcohol right before bed, that will impact your sleep, the alcohol problem, you know,
and it's not appealing to me anymore. It was 30 years ago,
a lot of things were appealing.
Yeah, I'm with you on that doctrine. Yeah.
So, so the thing is to think about the, the tracker as a relative marker of your sleep. If something's going up that's probably a good thing, something's going down, you probably did something not so good for your sleep. Okay, so put that aside. There are a couple that are good so like the ring, and again I get no feedback kickbacks from any of the devices I go on my website, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. I check their reviews that I go to the device, I check and see if they have any other data. And so get a good sense of whether or not. And to me it's the gold standard, if you compare it against a sleep study, and your numbers are good, you're good. So, who has been done against a sleep study and it's pretty good. Part of the reason why it's better at getting sleep stages is because it uses body temperature, heart rate variability and motion all together, and the algorithms they've developed work really well to tell you when you're in REM versus wake or versus like sleep differentiation to make,
can you repeat for me what you said that so and so that sound like you said, Uber's pretty good
over. Oh, you are a thank you.
Oh, okay yeah I'm clueless. Thank you.
Yeah, pretty good. And again, you know I harp it because I've been using it and I've been comparing this to this. And then I've been using some of the headbands. So there's a muse headband, which, you know, and this might be an age related thing to it may be working really well. The younger you are, the older you get, like, it does horrible for my sleep and I'm in a couple of their Beta testing things and they're trying to figure out why their algorithms do not work for my brain and I know it's reasonable brain because I get the data elsewhere so why can't they see it, I don't know. But the dream headband is the best thing out there that exists right now. There's almost one to one to sleep study,
really.
Your Dr. E M.
Thank you so much. You have been waiting months to ask you about this
so sure. Okay, sorry it took so long to get it and sorry I was late, I don't know I had 430 in my head Edie, take related thing. Okay,
I gotta get your phone number. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, I've got you know I give some webinars and another thing and every so often I'll look and see my phone go, Oh yes, I am
so sorry about that came in, Now that he thought you were sleeping.
Yeah. If I could have been let me tell you, today I could have used it, but. So, should I go to the to the questions. What, or is that is that good, Lisa, we were good on that. Okay, you did yes something to also about how to increase your RAM.
And recall. Do you recall.
So
increasing RAM. Yeah,
and actually you know what, actually, let me do this let me share a Can I share screen, Andy my load. We get comparing a couple,
a couple of slides here let me just see if I can find them. Here we go. And so I thought this might be a good place to go to this because. So a couple things. One is, you'll notice this is a basically a histogram of a night's sleep, Beginning of the night and in the night. Okay, and it's a little idealized it. The only, the only way it changes across ages is that there's nice, deep sleep we get early on in the first cycle. And then we go out of it we come back and get another nice batch of that. Well, by this age as we get into the gray hair age and I'm just gonna leave it at that. Our amount of deep sleep or down to about this, we're not getting this anymore. So we're getting. And that's just one of the aging changes that accompanies age, it's just the way it is. So, so we wake up more because things that didn't used to disturb us can now disturb us. We have more aches and pains, more medications more disorders whatever will that week, you know, healthy aging will not have all that disturbance, and the amounts we need or will be about the same as we have always needed as adults. Okay, but it just changed the ability to get it, the, the depth of sleep so we need to protect it a little bit more. But the other thing I want to show from here is REM sleep occurs closer to morning. The longest periods right that's why if you want to do the, The way the wild technique to wake and back to sleep for lucid dreaming. You want to set your alarm a couple couple three hours before typical awake time, because you want to capture one of these long REM periods, and more likely remember your dreams. So for one you want to make sure you're sleeping, your full amount. Okay, now you know that varies although on average it's about eight hours for everyone. It's what you get every night to feel fully rested and to really not be able to sleep during the day. So if that's seven and a half you that's what that is here to take for you take for you. But if you're getting less than your desired amount or your required amount, then you're cutting off REM sleep. Okay, so you're less likely to remember dreams because you're less likely to have that much REM. The other thing is you can do that technique you can attempt that technique of setting your alarm, you know, for several cycles into the night. Okay these cycles are all about 90 minutes. And so, you know, if you're getting up at seven, and instead you want to catch this route, or maybe these two routes you might you might set your alarm for for, and just wake yourself up, and then go back to sleep. You know you stay up for five or 10 minutes and again, it's so individual people, some people wake up for one minute and they can't get back to sleep so that's not going to work, but if you can get back to sleep, then you will try that. Okay. And the more you wake up during a dream state, REM state, the more likely you'll remember your REM and write it down and the more you write it down, the more you'll remember, it's this circular supportive process. Okay. And the more you regularize your sleep like if you can, you know you're going to bed at 11 and getting up at seven every day that again helps your cycles to stay in this rhythm. Okay, question.
Yeah, I can't see if I can misspeak or.
Yeah, go ahead, you're thinking,
so the people at the CBD store sold me something called CB n or night, like nanotechnology you think that's BS or that has some science behind that.
So I'll preface this by saying My colleagues and I agree that the more we read about CBD, the less we know. Oh, and it's not because it isn't good or it isn't helpful or they're trying you know, it's not like the Fitbit hype. It really is true that they're discovering it, you know, every day, the different components of CBD, the different effects on sleep and every other body healing wound healing all these different effects. I'm beginning to suspect that people who tend towards insomnia, have what's called the endo cannabinoid disorder syndrome, where they have too little. Just like people have maybe too little melatonin. So, it goes up and down their brains don't respond as well. So, you know if you tend if you're tend towards that or anybody on the call tends to tend towards lots of wake ups or wake ups and not being able to return to sleep that's probably something worth exploring some of the real experts are in these stores now, particularly here in Massachusetts because it's legal. And so, the better information gets to the docks and then the docks and their patients to these places in the patients get good reports bring back good reports. So we begin to know who has the most knowledge and what seems to work the best. So, there's CB N CB D there's the variety of th C's is delta nine delta a, there's, you know, lots of stuff there different formulations 20 To 110 to 115 to one. There are gummies, there are CHEWIES there are brownies like in the old days. But there are numbers that you can trust. So there's a number they usually have that's called T AC and that stands for. I don't remember. Not an age thing, but it's, it's active cannabinoids, total active cannabinoids, and that's kind of a rough estimation of the strength of the formulation, no matter what, whether it's, you know CBD and CBD to whatever. Okay.
Have you heard of this, that the nanotechnology, I mean, does that, anything you've ever even heard of or is that,
well, they're talking about how they emulsify the material, so that it's more readily absorbed in the system. So some of that goes into the creams you could rub on for you know, joint pain and muscle pain, yeah. And some of it goes under the tongue so it's more readily absorbable bypasses the digestive system so more of it goes right into circulation. So you know there's something to that, but I can't really speak much more than that because I don't know that the studies have really shown, you know that it's actually gotten into the brain faster with the nanotechnology. But, you know, there's a, there's a huge this is one of the ways of the future, between CBD and psilocybin we're all going to be either happy. Yang, or both.
Right.
Thank you. All right, you're welcome. So someone else had asked him one of the questions and the about the sleep cycle again she wanted to know about this so just figured I'd leave it up. Just so you know we go through, roughly five, four to six cycles during a night to reach 90 minutes. We go through deep, or rather light, non REM non dream sleep first. We go into deeper non dream sleep, and that's our first bout of the deepest sleep of the night, again as we age we have less than less than that in that first cycle, we may in fact when we get down to stage two anymore. But the idea is that that's when a lot of the repair work for the body is done that's where a lot of the physical restoration is occurring, that's when most of the growth hormone is released. And that's when basically our body's repairing itself, and a lot of the brain goes offline to not offline, but off processing line so the reason why we call this slow wave sleep is because if you look at the actual eg it's going into these really big amplitude, large amplitude, slow waves, meaning less than two hertz less than one heart, some of them are are half a hertz, meaning, it takes two seconds for a whole cycle to occur. And that's because, billions of neurons are firing at the same time, turning on and turning off, and it's kind of like in a holding pattern, while the housekeeping is being done, we cycled through a couple of those and then as each time we go through them then when periods start getting longer and those deep sleep periods get shorter, so there's a converse relationship between deep non REM sleep, and deep REM sleep, such that as I was mentioning earlier, if you want your REM sleep, you want to make sure you're sleeping your full amount, whatever that is seven and a half, eight, eight and a half hours. If you get up early. If you truncate your sleep you fall asleep at the same time but you're getting up early, you are selectively depriving yourself of REM sleep. All right. I think that answers that question from the group, let me just see what the other ones were. Do we have hands raised or we have live people too.
Myra had a raised hand but I see the question just came in.
Okay you know what, let me actually go back heiresses question was a little bit more she wants to know, can you tell me more about the sleep stages, which I just did but then she has colon, alpha beta gamma and delta. Okay, what roles do you make to play. Okay. You know what, let me, let me go back to this for a minute.
Let me think about that one that one is in.
It's around here somewhere. Hold on.
Here's an to sleep presentations, and I believe it is in this one.
Yeah. Well, sort of,
let me just see if it's because I have a nice slide of showing the different frequencies of the genome, it's not in that one, but it is in one of these charges.
Ah, well, I can't find that particular one I'm looking for but I did find something similar so we'll just go with this.
Okay, so, um, so our deep sleep. Kind of looks like this. So the EG signals are up at the top here, not the very top, these are the channels, C three, C 40102 So C three, C four, and then a one or two or the back. So this is it during a normal sleep study this is about 30 seconds. And these are those big, slow waves so this is a big wave, another big wave. And if you look at this this is a total of two seconds so these are one cycle per second. And that's what the brain does a lot of during deep sleep, so it's like, it's gone offline all the cells are pretty much firing in synchrony the brain is doing its background activity it's housekeeping, you can look at the EKG here very steady. These are breathing channels very steady breathing going on, everything is really stable. Okay, during deep sleep. It looks dramatically different. Now just to make things curious they move the channels down here, and C three, C 40102 are now up here, but this is dramatically different the amplitude of this activity number one is greatly different, much lower, much lower amplitude. And it's very fast. You can if you look at this and actually blow it up there are a ton of little peaks in here happening. And so if you're looking for the cycles here, the cycles of much faster. Many more waves per second. So that's what beta activity is anything about 14 cycles per second would be beta activity, and that's what you have right now as you're looking at this presentation, Unless you're starting to get a little drowsy. And then you're probably having a few data waves thrown in a little faster than delta, but not quite there, it's certainly not as fast as beta activity, but there are some other slow wave you can see a couple of little peaks here. So this is some of that VEDA activity. And it's interesting because it usually does occur around eye movements. So this looks like waking activity except it's internal waking activity. Right. When you're in dream sleep, the information that you're creating a story about derives from the thalamus from the inside of your brain, and all the information you took in during the day starts playing back and forth and likely was talking about memory and all that stuff is happening, partly in deep sleep partly in REM sleep a lot more in REM sleep because in REM sleep, we're processing the information we took in during the day, we're processing the emotional valence associated with all of Valence associated with how salient, the material was. That's the stuff that's going to stick. Now, in REM sleep, that's what the EG does, if you look at the eye channels. There are rapid eye movements right you know we know that's how we define REM sleep, one of the ways we define it with the rapid eye movements to moving back and forth. There's low amplitude fast activity with a few theta burst in the EG, and they put sensors on your chin, unless you have a beard like I do then they stick them here somewhere, and you get muscle activity muscle tone and the muscle tone signal here is just about the lowest of the night. In fact, you can see here in deep sleep, it's really low because there's no movement in the body is very relaxed, but you can see this is a rough line here, can everybody see that there's like, it's like a scratchy line you know it's not a solid line like this one here. So that muscle activity that's the lowest muscle activity because we're not moving, we're not doing anything, but in REM sleep, muscle activity is actively inhibited, So what's even lower, lowest of the night. There's a little burst here because there's probably a little bit of an arousal here I'm not going to go into that. But what this is highlighting here are these rapid eye movements, they go in the opposite direction, which is really kind of cool. So these you go, this is going up as it goes down. Here's another little one that's going down it just goes up. This is going down, as this goes up, this one's going down as this goes up. And the reason they go down and up. Okay, this is really cool. I can't see you by so I can't tell if you're staying with me or you're half asleep but I'm going to talk about it anyway.
The retina at the back of the eye. During one of my presentations I talked about, that's where the cells that are detecting, you know, vision, of course, but light. Okay, that's where light comes in and turns on a melatonin and turns off and melatonin does all that well the retinas, are at the back of the eye. So when we're looking straight ahead. The eye channels one they usually put one just above and one just below. If you're having a sleep study done. And what happens is, if you have these two channels here, they're gonna see equal amount of electrical activity with no excursions, while the eyes are looking straight ahead. But as soon as the eyes move in synchrony one channel is picking up the back of the eye, right, this one, which is where the retina is, and that's going to give you a negative signal, because the retinas where the neurons of the eyes are, and when they fire. They cells depolarize just like in the brain, so they have a negative signal. So the center here is going to see a negative signal, the center here is going to see the front of the other eye, which is positive the cornea is positive, relative to the retina. So everybody just learned something today right so as the eyes go back and forth like this, the eye channels that are recording that electrical activity are going to be going up and down depending on what part of the eye, they're seeing. Cool stuff. Now, he asked about the amygdala and the amygdala is not doing any more or less than it does while you're awake, if you're in one of those nightmares, it's gonna, you're gonna have a lot of activation in the amygdala, it's not going to show up necessarily in this activity, but the amygdala deals with fear. Okay. And so if you're afraid in your dream, it's going to look just like you're afraid when you're awake. Okay so that is the home of fear, but it doesn't show up necessarily on the scalp it's deeper, much deeper in the brain, so it doesn't show up really as electrical activity because that's kind of washed out by all the cortical activity we have up top. Alright, so I think that's enough for that question. Shall we take. And certainly you know if you guys have questions about what I'm presenting here please speak up. Where should we go now and the chat back to the questions that you want to do,
oh yeah, we can go back to the document, you've got it up.
Okay. I do get good at that. Now, I may not be able this from Barry, I may not be able to make the live webinar but I will listen to the recording the transcript, any of the tech devices from this article worth getting. Thanks in advance. So, the, the short answer is no.
Let's see if I can share that too. You know, there's so many of these.
There's so many of these documents, sorry, devices that are coming out that even the American Academy of Sleep Medicine can't stay on top of them all, but again, what I said earlier really does work for, for the so here's the article that Barry was talking about. And I'll name a couple of them just to go through some things. But, you generally want to look up the device you want to look to see if there's any published research, you want to look at the conclusions of the published research because some of these people publish research that says he has a device doesn't work that well. Yeah. They say there's scientific evidence and they have it on their website so you really have to look at it, look at the conclusions. The abstract usually tells you enough. But, and then if there are no published papers you look for the reviews just like Amazon reviews can be can be helpful. They could also be stuffed you know like stuffing the voting box and all that, they stuffed these reviews, so you really if you're going to really seriously think about something. Look through it pretty closely. If there's no published research, you know, it's probably not worth it now. In general there are smart beds. There are mattresses
coerce you.
Okay, well let's just talk about those for a minute so the beds. The beds and the mattresses. They have devices that because of your movement and because of their sensitivity. Some of them I kind of wonder about like the why things is a Wi Fi connected mat that goes under your mattress, you know, if you've got a matches. One of those real pillow topper ones you know that's about yay big. I can't see how you can get all this information from that, they say they do, There are no published data. So, you know, buyer beware. On the other hand, there are some devices that go under the sheet. Those make sense to me, you can roll around on them, they'll pick up body temperature heart rate. Some of them claiming to be able to do heart rate variability, which you can lose you have a heart rate. A good, accurate heart rate measure you can get that some of them claim to get sleep stages, same caveat I gave earlier, I wouldn't believe it. Unless there's a published study that says they compare to sleep study, and you know had reasonably similar numbers. But having said that matters is good, you know you want to be changing your mattress every eight to 10 years, they're making them better and better. There are mattresses that have you know like the, this, the sleep IQ, this one is this the one sleep IQ, one of these. I don't know where that went. But sleep IQ is one of the air mattresses, and then you can have a different set of a different softness on one side or the other depending on your bed partner. And you can change the temperature of that you know so there are various things you can do there are chilli pads, which you can sleep on which cool you down and seem to help some people sleep better. So it really depends on your comfort level and whether or not that's even an issue for you, you know, I wouldn't be getting any of these devices to know if my sleep is doing what it's supposed to do if I'm already sleeping pretty well, I'm already doing my dream sleep I'm already getting some Dream Yoga and things are working well. You don't need to get these to see if you can make it work any better, you know, if your day is good, you're functioning throughout the day, you know your mood is good and you have a pleasant mood you're a nice person to be around. You're not cranky and irritable, you stay awake all day you're fairly alert you fairly accomplished what you would like to, and you're able to get to bed at a reasonable time and not look up and see that it's 1230 and you meant to get to bed at 11 if all that's working for you, then none of these devices really useful, they're not really helpful. It's only when you're having some difficulty or you start doing something differently like maybe you start doing yoga, and you realize you're waking up more. So we have a question that we'll get to about that, then you might want to fall, you know, find some way of monitoring what helps that or what makes it better, then you might consider these but again, the only things I'm considering was this ring, and the dream headband right now until there's more data available. A lot of these. So these are headphones by Bose you know Bose is a great sound company they know what they're doing and they have a lot of their devices screen out noises screen out low frequency sounds like snoring, which can be really helpful if you have a snoring bed partner, but you have to sleep with things in your ears that aren't soft like earplugs, and so can you sleep with earbuds in your ears all night. Some people can some people can't. If you have to 15 Want to find out, Go for it.
But nothing, and what they're saying is, some of you say they don't completely cancel out external noises. So the hardest thing about external noises, is their intermittency. Right. And it's that sharp sound on the background of quiet, that will wake up most any brain. And that's an important arousal feature that keeps us safe, you know, when we were sleeping outside in nature and some animal was coming close and we cracked on a branch boom we would be up and out of here. So that's kind of built into our nervous systems and we're it's almost reflexive and sound like that, we'll get through the thalamus, and right to the cortex, so come in from the outside and let you know something has just happened. So sound machines are your best bet for that kind of thing. It doesn't require anything in your ears, it could be near the bed. Pink sound is better than white noise. Brown sound, a couple of different ones you know play them and see which one you like, but that constant sound can screen out most of those intermittent or abrupt sounds that could wake you up. And so again, you know you need to try what's going to work for you. This doc, this device and the dodo is a silent metronome of light. Why on earth would they have picked a blue light to shine on the ceiling is beyond me, but apparently they got enough complaints that people that they, they say, down here and while blue light from screens has been shown to suppress melatonin secretion which affects their light signal is too weak to create this effect, really, why are you even going with blue, and it makes no sense. But in any way, what it's trying to do is give you something to focus on and slow your breathing so you breathe in and out with its motion, and it starts at like 12 to 16, and it slowly brings down the frequency of breathing basically helping you do a little pranayama before sleep. And so, if you can do that on your own do that on your own, you know, I don't, I don't see much need for a device like this. Um, yeah. And then there are the alarms that bounce all around the room to make sure you get up. This one is a. It gives you a task, what do you tell, oh yeah, Alami sets up creative scenarios where you can only silence the alarm by completing a designated mission. Just what you want to do when you first wake up in the morning. You might have to solve five math questions take a photo. I mean, if you need this kind of intensity to wake up in the morning, you are probably not sleeping enough, and you need to go to bed earlier. Okay. Nuff said. Okay, so that was most of them so, Barry. The short answer is no, none of these are going to really be helpful unless you want to spend a lot of money on a nice new bed that could, you know, improve your sleep but not because of the reasons they're suggesting that's because it's more comfortable. Alright let's shut that one down. Um, I think there's only one more question.
Now there's a few more.
Okay, okay. All right, so I can't know where that is. Okay, from Meredith i Hi, Dr. Mayo I really enjoyed session one, my question is this when trying to do Dream Yoga okay yeah, resting my mind on anything in bed, or before getting into bed visualizations mantras even prayers for recalling dreams or asking for help and attaining lucidity will simply wake me up. These things make me extremely calm not nervous tense fearful, but not at all sleepy. This often lasts, literally, all night long, no sleep at all. A state I cannot change through meditation study exercise reading etc. I've worked with possible fear of dissolution dissolution as agile cause it for quite some time no improvement. So basically, this makes it difficult for me to do Dream Yoga practice. Any suggestions would be helpful. Okay so let's
let me go back to the so a motor within a few there and want to come on and that would be great but, you know, when I presented this, the slides, I think so. So there are a couple things here. One is, like I mentioned earlier when we were talking about the cannabinoids. It may be that you know you have some organic tendency that makes it easier for you to become aroused physiologically aroused, that isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just that you're, You're on that end of the spectrum, whereas other people need a lot of outside stimulation to be be fully alert and arouse you may need very little, and it's just too much if it comes in too fast or too much, so you really need to work on that and and that's reflected in the level of sympathetic fight or flight activation versus parasympathetic deep relaxation, and there's always a balance. And so physiologically, your balance might be like this, you know, you don't have a strong parasympathetic system. And so that's what you're going to have to work on, to push this up so this comes down. Okay. So, a good starting place.
What just happened.
I don't know. Let's see if I can do that again, jumped right out of there. We're ready to make it fullscreen Okay, everybody can see sleep pressure up here. So, this goes back to my initial presentations. These are the four main systems that drive our ability to be awake or asleep, and especially if you're talking about it doesn't seem to have to do with fear, or additional tension, it's just your baseline level of arousal I'm calling it physiological arousal, your cortisol system all of that is working up here and making it difficult to bring down. Okay. And so any stimulation that comes in, brings you right back up here and it may keep you awake. So you have to find ways to build up your sleep pressure. Make sure your circadian drive is as regular as you can make it, that means getting exposed to light in the morning, roughly the same time every day, bar none, weekends, holidays, keep that aligned. And then, your reticular activating system that's sort of one of the, one of the culprits in your higher than usual, let's say physiological arousal and your emotional arousal states all need to be able to be brought down on a regular basis. Now, yeah I guess married it's not here and the we haven't seen her show up right. I'd like to know, okay,
I'm here. Hi.
Oh, great, I'm glad you're on. So, so tell me a little bit about, you know you've tried meditation you're doing. Are you good at meditation can you do meditation or it's just not possible and that's one reason why it may not be working, and some of the other things you've tried.
No, I'm a longtime meditator meditator. I've been meditating for for many years. I keep a dream journal, I'm fairly good at remembering my dreams, maybe not as good as I used to be when I was younger, but I'm okay. Um, I have had one lucid dream, or maybe it was a hypnopompic dream I'm not sure, but that was about a year ago, so that was a while of a while ago. And what happens is when I get into this state of wakefulness, I mean it's very calm, except that after the whole night long. I'm not so calm anymore. And then I you know one time, I kind of get worried about it happening again and sort of, I know that this is a cycle that I break into but I can, I can get into that state. On a second and third and fourth and fifth night. Very very easily and so it makes me very hesitant to want to do this practice. Although I really really wanted to this practice. So I'm that's the balance that I'm that I'm in,
and you have been able to do lucid dreaming itself just not getting any deeper or you can't have lucid dreams at all or.
I had one one lucid dream, I've had one lucid dream, and maybe about 15 months ago.
Okay, okay, and you are you remembering dreams and writing them down and that kind of thing or not even that.
No, I'm writing them down. Yes.
And what happens. So you weren't writing them down in the morning, or when you wake up during the night.
No, I have to write them down when I wake up during the night, because the becomes so fragmented, in the morning that I don't remember them with any clarity,
and then are you able to go back to sleep after you've written down your dreams.
Usually, I mean sometimes, sometimes I do judge about may well maybe that was the. That one wasn't very important and I let it go. Okay, so you know because it does cost a little bit to to write them down.
Okay. And what is that pattern like you're saying you don't want this to go into 234 or five days of being up all night. So how often, when you've been trying to like dual monitors something to remember your dreams. How often have you done that, and then how long has that been lasting like once a week, and then last for a few days. Once a month in Alaska for a few days, tell me more.
Okay, I've tried I've tried this maybe five or six times over the course of the last year or so, year and a half that I've been listening to Andrew, and every time I do it the first time, I just kept doing it and doing it I was probably a little bit too tight at it as Andrew says, not too high to lose. And so it lasted for maybe three weeks, and I had to take asleep ages to get back into sleeping and I just let it go because it was just too, too much, and it seems like every time I start again I'm going to get my confidence up I've been practicing the day I do practice lucid for the losery form. And I've had, okay I can do this, I'll just try it very gently and boom I'm back into that wakeful thing, and it's okay you know as they're saying it's becoming a sort of psychological barrier in addition to whatever physiological problem there might be,
and what else or you. No one else. What's your sleep pattern like are you going to bed at the same time you're getting up at the same time, let's. Well, about ready to start again try it again. Okay.
Before pandemic pandemic started, I had to get up at four in the morning every morning in order to get to work on time. So that was kind of miserable because that means getting to bed by eight and that's like virtually impossible. And so I was probably pretty sleep deprived and so that's why I thought, Ah, now I can rest and this is really wonderful. So I it's easier to get to bed earlier I get to bed, probably around nine, I get up around six between five and six, sometimes with an alarm, you know, because I like to meditate in the morning because if it doesn't happen in the morning, it doesn't happen. But that's, that's my plan that's been my plan for the last 12 since last March. Okay,
so you want to regularize that schedule so I would pick the five or the six whatever you're going to whatever is going to serve you, to get up, okay, you know, that varies a little bit because of the summer we're getting more light in the morning, in fact, Dawn is like a 5/31 legs and five, give or take, so you may be seeing light around five o'clock time anyway. So, to ensure this is going to work right now, at least I would say set it for five. Hmm, wait until you're really sleepy. And then stay up an hour later. All right. Okay, so not nine to five, that's gonna give yourself eight hours you want to cut that back to about seven. Okay, okay, notice when you're sleepy like Are you sleepy if you're getting up at five. Are you sleepy at nine. Well,
you know Yeah. Sleep isn't seven probably.
Okay, so make sure you, you become active in the evening, you're doing some activity, because the activity generates more sleepiness. Okay. It keeps you from falling asleep inadvertently when you're trying to do it. And then you want to really be putzing around, you know, paring the socks folding the laundry for that last hour before you go to bed so you want to be like dead tired, and then climb in. Okay, okay, you want to hear that alarm in the morning, you want to do that for a week running. Okay, if you're getting into bed at like 10 and getting up at five, and you're hearing the alarm, that's what's actually waking you up for a week solid, then give this a trial. Okay, again, of doing the simplest monitor or whatever you can to even just give yourself a little nudge about lucid dreaming tonight, or wait and see how that works, you're going to have to sneak up on this, and you want to stack the deck in your favor so stacking the deck is increasing the sleep pressure. Okay, the circadian, you want to lock that in, you want that time always be 5am 5am, and you get up and you get out, you get into late, make sure you're getting late and do all that, okay, and then you know that you know napping during the day.
No, no napping during the day I'm not a very good Napper anyway now I live in Mexico and so a key here, it's probably not like dental seven between 630 and seven even in summer.
Oh really.
Yeah, it's there we go and daylight savings time but it's sort of like 13 hours one way or the other, because we're so close to the equator I'm so much closer. So how
far 30 Is your 630 Right.
Yeah,
exactly
right. I think so. So
it's really it's weird like we're 530 is my 430. We're not we're on Central time.
Right, okay, we know the words because you didn't have daylight savings time you're on Central time, or you aren't Central Time.
central time anyway but they do Daylight Savings Time for political reasons down here I mean it's really not a useful tool, but that's the way things are. Also it when it's, There's no real light until between 630 and seven. But even, even in the dead of summer,
so why don't you, why don't you shoot for that time then maybe not the earlier time, because you want to kind of time it when there is light so you get a nice strong signal, so maybe 630 Except the alarm not 530 Maybe make it 630 And then that means, probably to bed later. Okay,
okay, so to bed by 11 ish, ish.
Yeah, and you're so since your day just got longer, you need to treat it that way. You can't, you know have nine o'clock rolls around, you go, oh gosh, I got to stay up to him, What am I going to do for two hours. Okay, you already have planned it out while you're sharp and you have things lined up to do. Okay, you're doing this longer, okay, maybe you'll do the meditation in the evening, because you'll be getting up a little bit later, you know, You know, see what that does. So, with this little bit increased asleep pressure, you did. If all else fails, I was going to bring these other things in let me see which way do I want to go, I want to go that way. Okay, I want to recommend other potential technologies, you know, you're doing this, you're doing your meditation whatever maybe that's bringing you down somewhat, but maybe feedback, you can tell, oh, I'm not as down deep as I thought I was okay. And for you, a great way to do that would be heart rate variability. Heart rate variability is a direct measure of parasympathetic drive. It's really a measure of the balance of two, but as it goes up it's trying to encourage you to increase your parasympathetic drive which is that deep relaxation. Okay, okay. And HeartMath has one of them, I mean there are other biofeedback devices you could probably get him through. And some seem to be even coming on the phone, although I don't know how good they are just yet, but Heart Math online it's like 100 110 120 for these different versions of it, I have. They plug into your iPhone there why there are wireless versions. And then there are handheld versions. And what you do is you clip it to your ear it picks up your pulse. It's measuring your heart rate variability, And it's letting you know, through feedback of a tone or color on screen like you can close your eyes and just listen for the tone, or you can watch the screen and see when the colors change. Okay. And it has four different levels of parasympathetic deepening. So the first level so people don't get frustrated and throw it out the window. Okay, so if you are kind of just even hitting it a little bit, it will give you feedback you're in that range. When you're getting that 80% of the time, then it's just time to go to level two, which means you have to go even deeper, to get the green light and to get the green tone or whatever, okay, and then so on and so forth. So, it might be really, this is the kind of biofeedback or the kind of feedback that could be really helpful to someone who's trying to understand what's going on physiologically inside. Okay.
During the day,
yes you would use it during the day you would not use it at night at all for the for the foreseeable future. Until you're getting up into those higher levels, and you know that your parasympathetic system is being activated very quickly, very easily. Okay, so that's a great tool for that. And I would heartily recommend it for anyone who feels like they're on that insomnia side of things where their nervous systems are a little too chill a little too anxious to to activate it. Okay, so that might be a great tool, go to heartmath.com I guess that's their store, read up on it, you know, think about it. They've done a lot of research on this and so it's a good, good to I recommend it to a lot of my insomnia patients in between the neurofeedback sessions. And then of course there's always neurofeedback. What I like about heart rate variability is that it's giving you direct conscious feedback, you know what you're feeling like, when it tells you you're dropping down and you kind of get this nice little synchrony going, or do you oscillate you're going like, oh yeah, feeling, and it's choppy. Oh, and I'm feeling. Whoa, I've never felt like that before you know like meditation isn't as deep as it needs to be to drop down your physiological arousal level.
Okay,
so this will help you figure that out. And if that fails or failed, and you can't get beyond level one. Then, you know, call me, send me a text or an email and I'll find Neurofeedback providers in your area, because that you can get neurofeedback, which goes to the source of a lot of stuff happening in the body. And there are types, one of the types I use in which you don't have to do anything. So, for you, it's like you don't have to do anything to be to our house to get to sleep or do any of these practices right afternoon and drop your level of arousal your internal arousal, without having to do anything, then it makes it easier when you try to employ things like heart rate variability, makes it easy to do. Okay, okay. So there's all that. Alright,
well thank you so much, I'm so glad to talk to somebody about this in a concrete manner I really really appreciate your help. Thank you.
You're quite welcome. Yeah, it's a lot of knowledge, you know, We don't have the knowledge we need sometimes so until now.
Yeah. Great,
thank you. You're welcome. Okay, um, Harold. Do you think magnesium supplements are a good sleep aid, they are a reported benefit for anxiety and relaxation thanks Harold. And the short answer there is yes. Magnesium is a great support calcium and magnesium. Even better are great supports for sleep, particularly if your diet is deficient in any way with those minerals. So they're really important for sleep a lot of things are important for sleep, Having a good well balanced diet, eating your veggies will most likely ensure especially your green leaf ease will most likely ensure you're getting enough magnesium, but if you feel like your sleep isn't as good as it can be. These are fairly harmless supplements to try, try them out for a couple of weeks and see if it improves your, your sleep. Okay. And then we have live feed is that today is that what you're saying to me. Okay. Hi, Doctor. Someone I know has a strong family background of insomnia, and is also dealing with chronic back pain she says she's exhausted and does not know what to do. Do you have any suggestions for her situation. So she's one of those insomnia type people who have that higher level of arousal, I was just spending a lot of time talking about. So everything I said up until this point is relevant for her to find ways to really lower her parasympathetic drive, heart rate variability. I mean if she's already, you know, on that side of the scale, heart rate variability is a great way to go to start giving her feedback about when she's bringing it down, because this might be running in the background all the time for her. It can also help somewhat with back pain indirectly, because part of the part of the reason we exacerbate pain is when we feel the pain we tense up. And so anything that helps us not tense up, will also reduce some of the pain we're dealing with. So I would start with that I would start with some type of biofeedback, preferably around heart rate variability that she does not at night, but during the day. Okay, well these recommendations are not to use at night, until and if they're well practiced during the day. Okay, you want to get good at this, you want to get good at it working for you, so that if you have one of those nights, you can maybe just start deep breathing or put on your device, and with a couple of breaths, you're dropping into that state and so you could overcome whatever arousal is built up, but if you're not well practiced at it yet and you're doing it at night, then you're going to have a performance issue and you're going to go. This breathing isn't working, why can I slow it down, it doesn't work at all Why would, so you really need to have it practiced. Okay, so most of the stuff you want to do during the day, you want to be getting your own feedback that whatever you're doing whatever practice you're employing the device you're using is helping you drop your arousal level, and then once it does that routinely or like with the Heart Math device, you know, once you're able to get to level two and level three. Yeah, you could certainly apply it at sleep if you having one of those nights and the days been two activating that may help you then get to sleep medication, free right Tim any again anyone here who would like to clarify or get more information, come on. Myra stop. Okay. Hi. My question is about sleep disorders and Parkinson. Is there data as to off times of the medicines and insomnia.
Is there data as to off times. Myra I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at when you mean by off time he mean times, you can go back down on the medications. Because the medications are causing side effects or something, or I'm not sure if you're here if you're not here Myra we might have to hold that question until next time I'm just not sure.
Yeah I messaged her she was on earlier, but I think she had to hop off. She comes back on, I'll let you know.
Okay, great. All right. Show me. Can you give a good estimate of how much time is good for rem and deep sleep. And how about HRV scores. Oh, someone there who's already into a heart rate variability. Most of the devices have they're sort of their own algorithms. But for the most part, you know, if, if I remember where and if you put something in here so for the, for the next one that I do, I could do one on, on heart rate variability and I can show some of the ways we look at this, but there's a spectral analysis, that can be done of heart rate variability, and it falls within a certain like like that, the different levels that I talked about with Heart Math that show you're getting more selectively in the parasympathetic range of things. You can look at a spectral analysis of heart rate variability, and there's a really fine window in which it's all almost perfect. And that's when you're in coherence with the rest of the rhythms of your body. And so, in terms of overall numbers. The ones you will see for instance on the ring or other devices. Those are all based on particular algorithms. So, it depends on what number, they're, they're presenting what the range is, but they the same programs will give you a range for your gender and your age, channel age group. So there are some numbers that are considered within the normal range for the amount of Heart Rate Variability you have during sleep as well as during the day. And that does vary with age, just because our hearts get a little, a little crankier as we get older, and they don't work quite as well. So yeah, so maybe I'll do a whole presentation on that because I think it's, it's good to have this feedback to know some, you know when I first started with heart rate variability, I was like yeah man, I'm a meditator I'm down there, I'm good. I put this thing on, and it kept kicking me out and sending me into the red you know I'm like wait a minute. No, I'm done. And so it lets you know before you know that you're drifting off into worries or stress or whatever else is going on. So it's a great tool for that because it can, it catches you, before you go down the garden path and you're 15 thoughts down the road, and then you realize oh well I got to come back. So it helps sharpen the meditation helps sharpen your internal state. So maybe that would be more helpful. There was another part to that was the other part. Oh, how much time is good for rem and deep sleep. Again, if you're taking it from one of these devices don't believe it. Okay. But in general, based on sleep studies based on sleep studies done every decade of life. The amount is roughly 5% or less light, non REM sleep. Okay. 50%, give or take a few percent in stage two, or sustained sleep, it's a little deeper than lights then stage one sleep light sleep. And then, what most of the devices are calling deep sleep, that should be 25%. When we're younger, and maybe it drops to about 20% When we're a little bit older. So our stage to sleep you know like when we're younger, is like 45% when we're older 55% that captures some of that deeper sleep, and the REM sleep is about 25% and that can drop a couple of percent as we get older, a lot of those earliest studies that said, sleep did this or did that as we age, weren't really clean studies, they included everyone including tons of people who had sleep apnea and tons of people who had other disorders that were causing them to be sleeping. And those other disorders were because it was unhealthy aging or non healthy aging. And when you pull out all of that, and you get really clean about the data and you look at each decade of life. There isn't a lot of change from about 40 on to 80. So, that sleep wants to be about the same total amount of roughly the same percentages with the exception that deep sleep to some extent decreases with, with each decade, a few percent with each decade. All right.
What do you think Eddie, we covered the waterfront.
I think the waterfront has been covered. Okay,
sorry about that coming in a little bit late, I will make sure maybe I'll come a little bit early next next time. You know, I was coming out I'm like at 20 After it's probably time we can talk a little bit about what I'm going to do and I come on and I'm saying,
I was gonna surprise you, I had some sleep music playing in the background so you're Come on I had to sleep music only Andrew got to hear it and he said I was putting him to sleep so I turned it off.
Alright, well he's probably he's been traveling all over the place. He's probably got a little jetlag right. Yeah, yeah okay well I'm glad I could come on and get have a great discussion and some lengthy discussions. And I'm glad to get a plug in for the biofeedback devices you know they can be really helpful. I think with our world being so intense, these days, particularly with the pandemic and, you know, at least we have a little, as Andrew would say who less disturbance in the political realms, although it still seems to be kicking up a little bit people trying to create noise, where there isn't any. Yeah, there's a lot of stressors in our world, so we need to we need to be protective of our physiological arousal of our parasympathetic systems, and really make sure they're working as well as we can, we can get them to work so. And on that note, I'll see you all next time or one of these things. Thank you guys.
Thanks so much, Dr.
Ed. All right, you're welcome.
Deepak, thanks everyone for coming. Sure. Did he go so fast. Yeah, See, everyone.
