Hey everybody, welcome to our monthly sessions with our esteemed sleep doc, dr, Ed, Rob F, I like that. Oh, I actually saw a cool thing there. So you know what we do here. Questions are submitted, and we get to listen to Dr Ed riff on the science and medicine of sleep. So I think a couple questions were sent in advance. And then obviously, if you guys have things you want to ping his direction, this is the time and place to do all that, so you know how this rolls. And thank you so much in advance, Ed for doing this, and the show is yours. My friend,
sure. Thanks. Yeah. Looks like the usual suspects are all here, Denise and Myra, Karen Francois, Barry, Lynnea, a couple new ones. Justin, I'll say up front you, I saw your questions about 30 seconds before coming on. So you have a lot of great lucid dream questions and lucid sleep questions, which we'll hopefully either get to tonight or we'll do another whole session on lucid dreaming, because there's a ton of evidence and presentations I've done. So I could put it all back together and we'll bring it back out next time, and we might answer a couple questions up front. Let me go ahead and do my share, because we do have some questions that preceded yours. Let's see, yeah, here we go. Did I say Denise? I meant to say Denise too. Hey, Denise, you just popped up when I went over here. Okay, so this is my new Start Page. My sleepers, sleeping throughout the world, wherever they are. So the first question comes from Francois. He's been our resident of restless legs. Tester, I think he's been dealing with this for a while, and found a few things that work and many things that don't. So his latest question is, he notices when the symptoms appear during the night, he gets up and takes 30 steps with his knees raised high, not 29 or 31 Francois, and so far, it stops symptoms for the rest of the night. Why could this be effective? And clearly we know that restless legs is a circulatory issue, okay, part of the reason we have and we're looking at ferritin levels. Ferritin is what shuttles iron into, you know, across the blood brain barrier, into the brain, into the nervous system, the central nervous system. And so ferritin has to be at a certain level higher than what most docs consider normal. But if you have restless legs, that normal level has to be much higher, which it looks like Francoise is, but it's the circulation that's the major culprit. Either you're not getting enough iron into the brain, and the motor systems of the brain get all riled up and then create the symptoms in the periphery, the arms, legs, mostly legs. That's why it's really restless leg syndrome, because that's really where it shows up the most. But it can happen in the legs as well. So because it's a circulatory issue, issue, when you do movement and what he's doing, the high stepping is actually creating more circulation, rather than just taking a walk. And I recall it's funny, because people don't know necessarily what this is unless they've experienced it and all, although we know a lot more about it now, back my mother in law, who's who's long since passed on probably about 30 years ago, and just conversation around the Thanksgiving table. Said something about, oh yeah, I have no problem falling asleep. I just do a couple laps around the house, and then I go to bed, and we're like, what you do? A couple laps around what? And so, you know, further investigation. And my wife and I both were sleep specialists at the time, said, tell us about these laps you have to do before you get to sleep, that you have to do, not just that you do do. And it turns out that, you know, it's that motion that improves or increases circulation. It moves iron throughout the body, and it moves ferritin to be more active moving. Uh, iron into the brain. So whether it's one of the other, both are related to circulation. And I suspect that's what's happening, Francois. And again, your levels seem quite normal. You know 50. You want to be above 50. And my measures usually come in nanograms per milliliter, but I'm transferring to, I guess you mean milligrams per liter, which would be the same. So, yeah, so you know what. Keep doing that, you know. And I would maybe, maybe do some of that before bed. Okay, so maybe you can prevent them from coming on. Any comments, Francois, since you're here and we're talking about your stuff in front of the whole world, since it's being recorded, we need Francois, unmuted. Is that possible? Melissa, I can't do it. Alyssa,
can you hear me?
There we go. Yeah, you.
I'm sorry I can't hear you.
Can everybody else hear me? Okay, oh, that's weird. Alyssa, everybody can hear me, but you?
There we go. I think I fixed it. Would you mind repeating what you need me to do? I'm so sorry. Just
unmute. Francois, yeah, absolutely
okay. Thank
you. Sorry, Francois,
here we go.
Okay, thank you, and thank you for taking the time covering this. Dr Omani, yes, that is interesting. I find that blood circulation would be related to the distribution of iron, and that could affect the symptoms. Yeah, I was really curious about that. Why would it stop? Why it doesn't come back, or why sometimes it just comes on, you know, it's very mysterious to me, but yes, as a prevention, that's something that I could do even going to bed.
Yeah, I think that's, you know, there's oops. I think you need to mute again while I talk, I get feedback. Okay, so I think what's really important is that there are multiple offenders that can make the restlessness worse. So, you know, we know about chocolate antihistamines, we've talked about other stuff in the past. And it may be, you know, some of that sneaking in from time to time. It may also be that you're less active at different times, and then maybe there's a combination of those, you're a little less active, but then you had a little something that maybe makes it worse. So I would keep exploring, and maybe, you know, really detailing your journal about when they come on, what was that day? Backtrack, what was that day like, you know, and see if there was anything you can put your finger on, and then slowly but surely pull away the issue and hopefully get to the bottom of it someday. Okay, all right, great. So just keep you know, keep coming on, asking the questions and telling us what's happening. We'll, we'll, we'll sort it out as best we can. All right. And then Barry had asked to review this paper. He gave me a link in his question, and basically it was a a little report that talked about, well, yes, yes, you probably can make up sleep. And so there was a link to this new study that was being presented. Now this is going to be really interesting. This is going to be really juicy, because it's almost going to be like a, okay, that Gretchen will get a we'll get to your question in a little bit. This is almost going to be like a journal study, a journal group. So when you go through graduate school, anyone who's gone through that, any of the sciences, the medical schools, you know, we read a journal and then we ask questions about it. We read an article from a journal and we ask questions about it. Like some of the questions are, are they talking about the patients you're going to see, or the people who come in your door, or is this a completely different population? So who are they identifying, who are they studying, and what does the data sound biologically plausible? Do we have a way of understanding what they're reporting? And so we go through these steps, and we try to basically tear apart the papers and then see if there's anything worth keeping, right? So in that vein, I'm going to look at this because there are a lot of reasons why I'm going to question some of this data, and hoping you're going to be able to follow along with me, it makes for an interesting exploration. So I. What these folks did was they looked at people who aren't sleeping enough during the week and regularly make up sleep on the weekends, right? And we've talked about that in the past. Yes, you know, the last few days, you can make up some of that sleep you you've lost. I've even talked about it in the nap studies, where you know if you're making up for lost sleep, then do it on the weekend. But instead of getting up, instead of sleeping in, get up and building a nap to make up that sleep. Oh my. It is now sunset. Here. Hold on one second. I don't know if you guys noticed my screen. Did it change colors for you? Just now? You may not see it. It just got really Orangey. Anybody know why, Denise? Can we unmute Denise, please?
Why did it get red? Because the sun is setting, yes,
and I have it set on my computer, sunrise to sunset, and so I need to turn that off for one second here and sacrifice my bedtime tonight in support of sleep education,
you're gonna your melatonin is gonna start to produce,
yes, but luckily, I have this red light device that's gonna hopefully build it back up again when I Get off. All right, hold on a second here, little screen here, not giving me access to my screen. Okay, settings, I'm
Oh, okay, night, light off. There's everybody I can see you sharp and clear, right now, my goodness, all right. Now, I'm just curious too. Oh, I'm way to go. Here to go. Okay, did anything brighten up for you? Did anybody notice a difference when I changed that? Yeah, okay, good, yeah. How much did it was, it's like a, you know, you can set it sunrise to sunset, and it pulls the blues out and makes your screen begin get more orange, more reddish, and it reduces the intensity. So you're allowing your melatonin to come on, which I'm not doing at the moment, but I'll hopefully fix it later. Okay, so, so the study that we had talked about making up sleep on the weekends and building in a nap in the afternoon, rather than shifting your melatonin rhythm by sleeping in but so they did this study, and what they came up with was that compensatory sleep on the weekend is associated with a reduced risk of heart disease. Okay, so that's the first thing really interesting, because we know when you're not when you don't meet your sleep need, there's an increase in cardiovascular disease, increase in heart attacks the whole nine yards. So we know you need enough sleep to get your heart working well, as well as a whole host of other things. They also did this study using UK Biobank based cohort study. The UK Biobank is the same data I'm going to present to you, which I mentioned to you in a couple of other presentations on sleep regularity, which is in direct conflict. So we'll, we'll get to how that is. But anyway, that's the data. And so what they found was that, yeah, if you made up sleep, especially if it was 90 minutes, around 90 minutes was the sweet spot that seemed to decrease your risk of heart disease. Okay? And that's all they looked at. And they looked at it around 13 years out after doing their initial study, the sleep regularity looks at it about eight years out, but so it's an abstract. So that's the first thing we're going to notice here. It may be a study, but it's only an abstract. And abstract means they've done a study. No one else has looked at it, and they're going to report it at a meeting, the European Cardiology meeting, and that's where they start getting a lot of feedback. And people will question the data. They'll ask if they did this, they did that analysis, so on, so forth. How come you came up with this data? When it's conflicting with other data, prior data, and so they'll have, you know, hopefully, a robust discussion about all this. So they used, it appeared to be the same biobank data that the sleep regularity study did, but it has not been peer reviewed. It has not been published except in an abstract form, which really doesn't mean anything. It's just like a newspaper saying what's coming up at the meeting. So and it hasn't been compared to conflicting data analyzes, especially with the same data, which is what peer review will do. So people familiar with all the other data out there will argue with them and say, Why did you control for and why is all that these data are also in conflict with the latest napping study data, which reports significantly worse health outcomes for regular napping greater than 30 minutes. Okay, so they're saying the best cardiovascular outcomes comes when you're napping regularly for greater than 90 minutes, and this is definitely in conflict with something that says you're going to have worse health outcomes if your naps are longer than 30 minutes. So that's one of the major issues. So Barry, I don't mean to keep you associated with this is, but this is just connecting this whole presentation, right? So this is their weekend compensatory sleep and heart disease. The main question is, can sleep, extra sleep on the weekend improve or provide heart health benefits prospective cohort study. That means they matched people who weren't napping the with the extra sleep versus people who were and they're matched for essentially, age, gender, socioeconomics and all of those things, race and all that, and prospective, meaning they studied them at one point and then they looked at them at a later point. So they're not going, they're not looking at data that was collected 10 years ago and going back and trying to do an analysis their state. Started this study 13 years ago, collected a bunch of data, and they predicted, or hoped prospectively that it would show there were heart health benefits. They looked at 90,000 UK adults. That's a huge study. Okay? You know, sometimes we have a lot of these small studies which show something, and then as soon as you do a larger group, a larger population, the data gets washed out, and you don't really see that finding. And so there was something special about this small group we did, but it doesn't really hold up in the general population. The only reason to not do large populations like this is that you can find spurious results that are only marginally significant, because you've studied so many people, something might show up, but it's probably not clinically significant or significantly relevant for the rest of the world. So those things might show up. So you look for really significant findings in order to say these are meaningful, but if you find really significant findings in large studies like this, you can bet it's fairly common and it has a strong biological underpinning. So they did a fairly similar analysis looking at back in the day. So 13 years ago, we were using actigraphs, or actigraphy before all the trackers, right? You know, I still got all my trackers on before, all the trackers, they used that data, and that data had a lot of algorithms written to really sort the difference between wake and sleep. So the data is pretty strong. Has many, many published research papers on both the data analysis and its correlation with doing, for instance, in lab sleep studies, which a lot of their trackers don't do anymore, by the way. Okay. And so in the outcome, they're looking at heart diseases, ischemic heart disease, afib, heart failure and stroke. So clearly, you know stuff that isn't good for your cardiovascular system, okay? And what they found was what I said in the beginning, that sufficient compensatory sleep on weekends is linked to a lower risk of heart disease, including all the ones they mentioned they were looking for, independent of genetic risk doesn't matter if you know heart attacks run in your family that didn't seem to affect these data. So it doesn't matter whether you're at risk or not genetically if you do your 90 minute naps on the weekend to make up what you're not getting during the week, you're going to do better and. That's this quartile down here in purple, meaning essentially the cumulative number of the percentage of cardiovascular diseases is much higher in these other quartiles, meaning they just broke up the data into four groups according to where the numbers fell, and they found that the lowest number of cardiovascular diseases of any sort were associated with the people with the greatest number of naps on the weekend lasting at least 90 minutes. Okay, that's the finding. That's their conclusion. Now again, remember, that's just an abstract it hasn't been pulled apart. It hasn't been compared to other data. And so we're going to do a little bit of that with this data here, and I'm trying to keep track of the questions, in case they're related.
Uh, good question. No, not on the Apple Watch yet. We'll get back to that. Francois, okay? So National Sleep Foundation. They have their own journal now, you know, and they're pretty bonafide organization. They have a lot of good sleep education out there. They're supported by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. So they're like, bona fide sleep expert, or source of expert sleep information, and they did a meta analysis, and what they looked at was the importance of sleep regularity. Right now, if you think about it, sleep regularity, to look at sleep regularity, there are variety of different ways, but the general idea is you're looking at having regular bedtimes, regular wake times, and so if your bed and wake times are varying, you're going to have a high sleep a low sleep regularity. If you're having regular sleep during the week, but you're adding naps on the weekend, well, that will show very different bed and wait times, right? You're having something that's very different than the day before or the two days after, for instance. So that's going to increase and make your sleep look less regular if you're napping. So presumably, napping will give you a worse sleep regularity score, and we're looking at the importance here of sleep regularity. Okay, so now we get into really interesting things. Okay, so the first line of their discussion, right? Doing this meta analysis, they ended up including something like 290 some odd papers, okay, over the past decade, and what they come up with is this. Our review found that across a wide variety of health and performance outcomes, mortality, inflammation, cognitive performance, metabolic indicators, breastfeeding and mental health increased, sleep, timing variability, right? Worse regularity. Right was associated with adverse health and performance outcomes. Okay, simply put more variability, worse health. That was the first line of their conclusion. And you can look up the paper and see the same thing I saw. But this is the way politics and sleep works their conclusions in the abstract of that paper, you know, just the short version, just to show you what was going to be in the paper you were about to read. Says, Excuse me, consistency of sleep, onset and offset timing is important for health, safety and performance, very consistent, right with what we saw their first line of the discussion. Nonetheless, when insufficient sleep is obtained during the week, work days or the weekend, non work days, catch up sleep may be beneficial, direct conflict with their conclusions. It's just kind of like, that's why I don't have any hair left, really. It just, you know, I pulled it out reading these studies over the years. So they really just go, Well, yeah, maybe Okay, that's where they're left with napping on the weekends to make up for lost sleep. Now, I should have probably given you a caveat, and you know, at the beginning, you all have to agree that this is not medical health information, right? You have to see your doctors and all that stuff so but this is, this is why, when something comes out in the media, you you have to take it with a grain of salt, and especially if it goes against the grain of what, what's always been out there. You do take note of it, and what you do then is you hold it in one hand and you wait for more data to support it coming down the pike, because that sort of paradigm breaking information. It may hold up or it may not okay, and so that's where this is that's why they're kind of waffling at the end with their conclusions. So last month, I presented on napping, right? And you know, we talked about napping, it's the question, do we nap or do we not nap? And I was even surprised to find that the meta, meta, that meta analysis we just talked about, was done in 2023 This one's done in 2024 they reviewed all these studies, a variety of studies, including a lot of the same studies, and they came up with, there may be significant adverse cost to napping, especially habitual napping, increase the risk of several adverse health, health outcomes, including all cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, metabolic Disease, Cancer. It decreased the risk of cognitive impairment and sarcopenia age related muscle loss, so that extra sleep seems to have some benefits, but not in terms of cardiovascular and so these findings controlling for napping, duration, frequency, age, sex, BMI and follow up years, all these variables, this still showed up with adverse costs to mortality, in general, cardiovascular disease, metabolic and cancer specifically. Do we now or don't we now? Okay, let's continue. So I also presented this, I think to two months ago, sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration. Hmm, now we're going back to sleep regularity, right? So, and this is this. These are full papers, again. The first thing we looked at was just a presentation at a meeting. It hasn't been peer reviewed, and all that stuff. But I wanted to show you this data, because these guys are looking at the same data. They're looking at 60,000 of the same UK Biobank data. They they looked at these people back eight years ago, and they gave them the same accelerator, you know, same actigraphy, recording their movement and assessing sleep from that to semi objective measure, right? Because you're wearing something, and then you mark your sleep logs, and we see if they coincide. And the algorithms are pretty good at pulling out sleep from Wake, okay. And what they found was that sleep regularity was a better predictor of longevity at eight years. So if you were less regular, if you were very irregular in your sleep, which means you were having naps as well as changing your sleep and wake time, you were more likely to not be alive in eight years than if you are very regular with your schedule. Now, an important caveat there is there was longer sleep duration associated with higher sleep regularity index scores. Okay, so you had to be basically still coming pretty close to meeting your sleep need, which is on average, close to eight hours a night, on average, right. And then if you were sleeping above which longer sleep duration was associated with lower SRIs. So what they were finding was that people who slept longer for all reasons, and there are reasons, you know, there's this U shaped curve with sleep duration. People who are sleeping 10 hours and longer seem to have higher mortality, peeping with people sleeping six hours or less have higher mortality, and they're in the same relative risk of mortality. And so somewhere between six and 10 hours is that average, where we want to be, where most people are, and smack in the middle of that average would be eight hours sleep. Regularity was a significant predictor of cardiometabolic metabolic cancer and other mortality risks, and such that sleep irregularity was associated with higher cardiovascular cause of death. So you can see this is in direct conflict with the study that you know Barry pointed out, so I want to open the floor a little bit to that discussion. Any any comments about that those days? Data, those studies, are you going to start napping? Are you going to stop napping, or you're not going to change any behavior? Barry? Barry's hand is up.
Can you
My thing is like, I'm 77 and you know, when you hear like, increased mortality, okay, when, when do you get to an age when you've kind of beaten, you know, you're all going to die. And so, you know, when do you get and my heart, it's working, okay? You know, I don't have any of those, those. I have other problems, of course. So you know, when do you reach, when you reach the free zone, you know, like, you get six hours a night of sleep, maybe six and a half or so. I'm not and I haven't gotten dementia yet. I may be underway. So, like, did I get the lucky, you know, the lucky pillow? Or, you know, it just seems like, when they do these studies, it's like they don't they deny that we're going to die. Or they, does it seem like that? Or, you know, I may be off, but
I hear what you're saying, I hear what you're saying, and it kind of does seem like that. You know, they seem like, if you do all the right things, you're never going to die. And we know that's not true. That's what comes in the definition of mortality. We're all going to die. You're absolutely right. So the thing that so I will give you my take from this, and my take from this is we're trying to approximate what are the best behaviors in general, for for the human being as a whole? And obviously we're not going to be able to do that for the entire population. Too many cultural differences, too many geographical differences to the genetic does play a role here and there, you know. So the thing to do is, you know what makes the most logical sense? Right? Being as regular as you can in your sleep and getting as much sleep as you need. Most of these studies, because their population studies aren't really controlling for sleep. Need your sleep. Need may only be six hours right now, for your constitution, for your prior medical history, for your prior life, for your genetics. And you add it all up, and it comes out to be six hours. And I would say it's six hours if you're getting six hours every night, you're functional and sharp, and you're sending me good information, and you're picking things apart. So I think your cognitive stuff is still okay. I won't tell you when it's not, but, you know, your wife will, don't worry. So, you know, I think you're meeting your sleep need for the most part. That's what we should be striving to do. And so people I know, all the insomnia people I see in my office, you know, 99.9% of them need less than eight hours, right? And that's almost like a heresy for a sleep specialist to say you don't need eight hours, but it's a population. Mean, eight hours. There are some of us who need a little more. There's some of us who need a little bit less. We we think we need eight when we get it on one night, but we're only getting six or seven the rest of the week, and we we're making up maybe we need six and a half, but we're only getting six every night. So that eight hours isn't what we need. It's just helping us make up some of what we've lost, because we really needed six and a half every single night. Okay. Okay, so we have a lot of questions, stimulating a lot of discussion. Alyssa has one too. So let's go through the live questions, and then we'll jump back into the chats. Lynnea, did you unmute? Lynnea, Alyssa, there we go. If no one raised their hand, why you come in. Okay, go ahead. Hello,
fellow Earthlings. Yeah, I'm curious about the the big cohort that napped, um, I'm What do you think? I'm guessing they're napping. They're doing diaphragmatic breathing when they're napping, so they're relaxing, so their stress is left. You know, they're the vagus nerve goes in through that diaphragm, and that that's probably why they had a better longevity, longevity and outcome is because their stress was down, because they were like zoning out for that nap?
Well, that's possible, but they're also they're, they're, they're, vagal tone goes down when they go to sleep, too, and the vagal tone will go up if they're not meeting their sleep need. Yeah, so it may just be that they're making up for that lost sleep, and so by making up for the lost sleep, they're giving their and to support what you're saying, they're giving their hearts more rest time than they were getting during the week because they weren't sleeping long enough. So they're adding in a little more rest time for their cardiovascular system on the weekends, and that helps them have better cardiovascular outcomes. But it doesn't you know, there's still this kind of discrepancy between the larger studies saying the more regular you are, which would certainly decrease your regularity score if you're sleeping these hours during the week, and then you're sleeping these hours on the weekend, and then these hours during the week, it's going to reduce you some so jury's still out on on all of this, but yeah, I think that's why they do better, is because they're getting more sleep. But why does changing? And you know what happens too, when you when you get naps on the weekend, you're changing your exposure to light as well. Right? When you sleep in late, you're getting a later light exposure. You're getting shorter daylight exposure if you're napping during part of the day. So so there are a lot of other variables we're going to have to look at it. That's why we wanted and I was take it with a grain of salt and then continue looking at the data.
Yeah, I was curious, how many people in the room tonight take naps? I rarely do. No,
there's one regularly. The question is, regularly? Are you napping every day or every weekend? Yeah, okay. And so, is it Hamish or Hamish? You can, will I let you on mute? Yeah, it's Hamish. Hamish. Alright. So and you're still going, you're still kicking Yeah,
and, and I'm, I'm just a few years shy of Barry. I'm just 72 but I find that actually, I get up very early in the morning, relatively regularly, like four, 430 I do a practice which includes a pranayama, deep breathing and a little bit of meditation. Then I'll go back to bed at 530 and I'll sleep until seven, eight,
and then I will get up.
So I bet around the same time every night. Yeah, right, yeah. So, I mean, there is some regularity in that, plus, with the additional sleep, you're probably getting close to whatever your sleep need is, and you're meeting it because you're functional the rest of the day, right? You're not falling asleep, you're not losing your ability to focus, right? I
do get, I do get a bit dozy, like mid afternoon, or can get a bit dozy. But sometimes I sleep, sometimes I don't. I don't know. It's irregularly regular.
Okay, so, so after you pass on, will you come back and give us some of that data you you and Barry will be able to
do? Yeah, sure. You'll see us in your lucid dreams.
There we go. Okay, sounds good. Who's up next? There? Uh, Denise. And then I think, Alyssa.
Oh, Denise, let me get her muted.
Yeah, I think she's up next.
Did I have my hand up
by accident? He probably, I guess I don't saw her hand, you moved him with that part of my screen that you were, oh,
sorry about that. I didn't intentionally do it, but I do have a comment, I mean, for me in reviewing your studies and the little bit that I know about sleep, and it just seems that the regularity trumps everything across the board, that most people are consistent about sleep, regularity being the most important thing. And it's conceivable that napping, whether it's not having the daylight during the day or the is adds to some irregularity, possibly, and that would seem to me, maybe what causes it not to be so great. I don't know about napping or whatever. I read a lot about it. What's interesting to me is that the question I have around it is, Why and how did it become so trendy and popular in the last couple of years, how did this pop up as the thing to do? And I don't know. I can tell because
people became so chronically sleep deprived that they finally had to start taking naps to make up for what they thought they were functioning well, i. Don't need five a night. I only need four, you know, and I'm up and working. And I think people began to realize, like, I think Ariana Huffington started the the the move towards getting more sleep, and sleep is important. And then some of these CEOs decided that, you know what, if I just take a short nap, I'll be sharp again, you know? Yeah, I think it's just part of the recognizing sleep is really important, and what you say is true, regularity is really important. I wonder, you know, when you put the two together, if making up sleep, but making it up regularly with your meeting your sleep need you know, if it adds to and meet your sleep need that might be the sweet spot for both. You know, I grew up napping. I all through college and graduate school. When I graduated my my graduate student class gave me a cot for my present. I mean, it was like, actually, it was like, Thank you, because they recognized I napped every day, you know, and then I So, who knows?
Who knows you're in the right business? Yeah,
apparently I ended up in the right business. Yes. Francois, can we unmute? Francois?
Yes. I just wanted to clarify one thing about those studies to make sure I understand correctly. So when they say that longer naps are associated with increased health issues, they're not saying that the longer naps themselves are the cause, but rather the underlying reasons for sleeping longer, or the real cause of the of these health issues. So you, for example, if you take long naps, it's probably because you have, you have other health issues, and those are the real cause behind the health problems. It's not that the the longer nap itself that is causing a problem, right? Do I understand correctly? Yeah,
yeah. It may be the analog of the fact that you're not sleeping in us, creating all the other issues for the most part. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you got it right? Yeah. It's not just taking the naps. It's what you're the reason you need to take those naps that creates the other health problems. Yeah, Alyssa had a question, and she's been so patiently waiting and monitoring our stuff. Go ahead, Alyssa, jump in. Did
you get the question from Franco about the Apple Watch? I just want to make sure everybody, oh, the new feature the Apple Watch to measure? Yeah,
I haven't seen that yet. No, I haven't seen that. I'll talk about it next time. Now, I'll take a look. Okay, perfect. Yeah, yeah. I
was just curious. Why some if somebody has an EEG, then they have, like, the paper says that you're required to have two less hours of sleep. Does it really affect things? Or what are they looking for with that?
Say the first part, again, when somebody
has an EEG done, the paper that I got says I need to sleep two hours less than I would normally sleep. Okay, I'm just curious why. Because
when, when the neurologist is doing that, they're looking for the the presence of seizure activity, and one of the greatest causes of seizure activity is sleep deprivation. So they're kind, they know they're disturbing your brain, and they're saying, we're going to stress your brain, just like we do the cardiac stress test, they put you on a on a treadmill, and they look at your EKG to see when your heart stress, does it do weird stuff, and is there a problem? Same thing with the EEG, they're stressing you by forcing you to sleep less, so that you come in sleep deprived. And if there's any instability in your EEG, it's going to show up, then interesting. Thank you. Makes sense, sure, sure. That's why we need our sleep. I mean, it goes across the board. And I think I've said this before, and I'm going to say it again, when I give the talk to I do Grand Rounds, two positions. I always get some one of the docs who will probably the one who was just snoring, and then he'll raise his hand at the end of the talk and go, you know, when somebody says something affects everything and you need it for everything, I kind of get suspect. Are we talking placebo here? I'm like, you know, we sleep in order to restore, repair, replace everything we use up when we're active and awake, you know what's what's so hard to understand about that. So of course, it's going to affect every single physiological system we have. The one that's going to break is the one that's weakest in you for whatever reason, whether it's genetics or whether it's your upbringing. Who knows. But you. It will ultimately affect every single one of our systems. It's just the way it goes. Um, let's see, wait a minute, whoa, there's a lot in the chat. Oh my, what's going on?
We're just letting you know about their naps. There was one question,
right, right. Okay, few times a week. And you know, the ordering gives you better ratings with naps. Yes, you're right. The naps, the ratings go up. They're beginning to give you also a consistency measure. I think it's so the whoop and the ring now both have a consistency measure in your sleep data, so they're also looking at that, and I haven't noticed yet whether or not the nap would actually subtract from that data. So Myra, take a look at that if you're throwing in a few naps. See what see if that number goes down, it's on the sleep page itself. So it's interesting. So they're getting this sense about the regularity, but it's not clear yet how it's actually going to come out. I
uh, when I can't stay awake in the afternoon, not often. I've never liked having to take a nap. Okay, then you're probably okay. I take a nap every day, 20 minutes daily, pretty much. Okay, all right, so, and then Eric has a question. I have a question with the regularity. Can't seem to raise my hand. Are you still here? Where are you? Eric, yeah, hey, I'm here. Okay, that's it. Hey, look at that. Your hand. That's right, I can actually, I didn't know you know that there is a function in reactions that you can click, and it says you can click on recognize hand gestures, so if you're doing this, so Yeah, put up and say, Oh, he's asking the question,
interesting. Yeah, I'm on, like, my browser on my phones. I don't know, I couldn't, I couldn't navigate it, but there's probably a way. Yeah, I was curious. You know, obviously, like that regularly, that regularity piece goes away if you're sleeping like four hours a night, like, where's the where's the line where, you know, you say that regularity is more important than sleep duration. Yeah, duration. At what point does that fall apart? Where it's like you're you need to sleep more and regularity is less important.
That was about the eight hour mark they found, or 7.8 hours. So when you're sleeping less than that, or more than that, you're definitely going to it's going to interact with your regularity. Even if you're regularly sleeping less than that, your mortality is going to go up, unfortunately. But again, that's not taking into consideration your individual sleep need, right? It's population four hours a night, because you got a new baby, right? And then you, you know, you get a four hour nap in a day. You know, that's not going to be there forever, but as long as you're keeping it fairly regular, and who is going to be regular with a newborn, it just doesn't work, you know, so, but it's not your whole life. It's going to be for a couple years. And then finally, the kid's going to be doing the right thing and sleeping at night, and, you know, you're going to go back to overworking and overcompensating and all that stuff. So Right? Plenty of time to, you know, have a regular sleep again, but it's also plenty of time to regularize your sleep. So again, these are long terms, okay, over, over the long haul, I see, yeah, Barry commented, so many retirees in an aging population. Yeah, you know, the mean ages. Well, for that 90,000 was 55 so that's not necessarily an aged population. But then again, you know it does include, you know, for the average to be 55 there is fair number of people, probably in their 60s and 70s, but not all. So you know, just as many people in their 30s and 40s. Andrew, in his dream yoga zoom, mentioned the oura ring. What do you think about its use? Oh, yeah, we've been anyone who's been on here long term. I've had mine for going on six years now. Denise has hers. Few other people have theirs. Andrew, I think he bit the bullet and got one probably a year ago or so. If you haven't been on. And often enough, I have several devices. I stopped wearing my Fitbit because it died on me. I'm waiting to get it replaced, but I have my Apple watch, I have my whoop and I have my OA ring. And it's not because toy junkie, although my wife might argue with you about that. But it's because people, all my patients, come in with something different. They want to know what these things say. And so I can say, you know, I can say confidently with really objective data that every day, I get different numbers from every device. And so that's a great place to start and say, oh, okay, so they're not entirely accurate. They don't entirely agree, but they're generally in the ballpark. And so change with time. Change when you do something different and this stuff changes, that's more important than anything. It's relatively accurate for you. You just have to figure out what that relativity is, what that relationship is. Okay? I posted it twice so wouldn't get overlooked. Okay? Gretchen, we got it. If there's more you need about that, come on and raise your hand. Yoga. Nidra, as good as a nap. Whoo, I don't know. Myra, what do you think? What would you say? I'm going to throw that one to myRA, our resident expert on yoga, Nidra, can we Mayra, you're still muted? Can we unmute Myra, please?
Of course.
Let's see. There
we go. Got it? Yep,
yeah. Well, there's a lot of I'm very skeptical. Sometimes it's like, you know, when you have any kind of pain and they don't know what to do with you, they tell you to take a yoga class. But actually, with a good with a good yoga nidra, if you get your body to relax enough to change in terms of the brain waves, they say that as that Yogi sleep, where they say that an hour of those is equivalent of four hours a real sleep, I do not know about that math, um, but the truth is that if your body relaxes to a level, then you feel their friend. You feel more relaxed. But there are some people that after yoga and Indra, they cannot sleep right away, yeah. Um, so it depends on the body. So there's a lot of data regarding the yogi sleep and being in those liminal states, but it would be, I think, person to person, there is a lot of science. There's a lot of doctors that now recommend that is something has become really trending, and so I like it more to explore, explore the liminal states, and just to play with meditation during those during those times. But is it equivalent of a nap? There's some people that get really excited and there's some people that relax to the point that they fall asleep. Yeah. So it depends what you can maintain,
yeah. And I think you're right about that in terms of, you know, the data I've looked at and presented before on, you know, the sleep of yogis that they actually seem to need less because of their deep meditations and their deep, you know, yoga nidras And what have you that, yes, I I would not have, probably 10 years ago, I would not have agreed to that, that yoga nidra is as good as an app. But I'm thinking more now that it very, very well may possibly be, can I say
it also could bring, also a sharpness. It gets you to that creative state where anything is possible. And, I mean, it can be really magical. But they said equivalent, I think is something to experiment with. Yeah,
yeah. Justin, are you still here? Justin, yeah, yeah. We're going to, you know what I'm going to do. I'm going to, I thought I was looking for my notebook. My notebooks here somewhere. I'm going to take a note to next time we're going to do we're going to do all the sleep meditation and sleep impacts will include yoga, Nidra, lucid dreaming, sleep awareness, while what you know going directly into sleep with awareness, because there is a lot of data out There now there's, not as much on going directly into sleep with awareness, but I'd say that's the closest thing to yoga, Nidra, that we have, because that's what's happening. If you get deep enough, you actually may be in the sleep state, like you were saying, like there are people who actually fall asleep, which I think is different than what we're talking about here. Myra, right, that you're actually your your physiologic state. And there are ways to measure this. Your physiologic state is changing to almost indistinguishable from sleep. And so I would think, you know, yeah, you're going again. Sorry, yeah. Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, I've been, I have the aura ring as well, so I've been using that to track because I wasn't really sure, am I? Am I sleeping? Am I? Because I, when I first started it, and it's only been going for a couple of months, I would say, when I had started having some success with it, probably tried for about a year, but I have noticed that I can kind of get into kind of REM and deep sleep, you know, as reported by the aura ring, kind of maintaining that awareness. And does that follow your perception that, in other words, when you've drifted into a dream from the Wake state, your ring will show you were in REM for that period. I've never had a dream while I'm doing it. So I've actually never had a lucid dream, but I've, I've started having lucid sleep. Okay, okay, so I know that's not the normal entry. And I was actually trying to do the lucid I was trying, I was prepping for lucid dreaming, and I happen just to go into lucid sleep, yeah, you know, it'd be great. So for this, for next month, why don't you record some of that data that you have, like, what's your heart rate variability doing? You know? What are the other measures you can get from the ring during those naps? See what? See what it'll give you? Okay, I can sort of match that up with what happens during sleep. And, yeah, we'll get have some fun with that. Yeah, okay, yeah, sounds great. And Myra, you were saying something more. Sorry. You were you were muted.
Yeah, I gotta mute that sometimes when we meditate, remember that in that retreat that you said, I My eyes are open, I'm completely aware, and my ring is recording that I'm sleeping. And you said, Well, you may be sleeping. I said, No, I was not sleeping. I was aware. And it happens sometimes I'm even teaching the yoga nidra and for is it 40 minutes? Sometimes it's 2430 minutes, the rain puts me like I'm sleeping. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. So it's just the rates
and the data that is collecting, but I'm talking
your physic. Well, look, there are people who hear themselves snore, right? Liminal state, right? So these states aren't as cut and dried as we like to make them out to be. We like to make them out to be cut and dried because we're doing studies, and we want to say this guy was asleep and this guy wasn't, and so we can, you know, but and then we're realizing that there's a lot more variability. There's a lot more nuance than we've ever known. And this would be great to pick up. We'll pick it up next time. Great discussion. Juicy, Andrew, hopefully you'll be here next month. Andrew, you're still here. He thought he might have to leave early, so he's been doing some work on the liminal state too. And actually, he was just up doing some lucid dreaming with that group up in Montreal, I think at McGill. Is it McGill? And I forget where the same group that came to Tenzin wangyu and rinpoche's place when we were doing their sleep yoga and Dream Yoga, and so he went up to their lab and got a few Nusa dreams in. But he's also working with people doing Sleep, sleep awareness, you know, drifting into sleep while you're aware, and finding ways to somehow measure that, right? Because that's a tough one, and we may need qualitative measures to really show some of those differences. Okay, uh oh, there's a couple more Denise that a recent sleep is. Our Lord said that the ring is about 70% accurate, but it is consistent in the 70s accuracy from night to night. Yeah, the best sleep studies are only 80 85% so you know, it's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And does it count as a nap if I fall asleep around 9pm trying to stay awake to watch the 10 o'clock evening news? That's a problem, right there. Who's trying to watch the 10 o'clock evening news? Karen, that's no no. That's a no no, right? Get it in the morning, that junk will still be there. Okay, you're allowed to watch the debate tonight, though. I think we're all going to be doing a little bit of that, right? Yeah, okay, boy, I hope we I hope next month we're not all going, Oh no, we'll do well. We'll do well, okay, yeah, you know, it's interesting. I'd like you to keep track of what your dreams are like on those nights you do wake up and watch the recorded news and then go to sleep. I. People, okay, yeah, six new messages. Could you also address self hypnosis? Yeah, I will throw that in hypnagogia. That's all going to be in the meditation, sleep, liminal states, lucid dreaming, sleep, sleep awareness the whole nine yards. Maybe we'll carry it over two months. We'll see where we get all right, fun and games. Glad to see everyone, but it may be, you know what, I'm going to really try to get that in, because I'm thinking we're going to open this up to the general public, and there may be a lot more people there. Andrew thought it might happen by the next by this one, but it's not quite there. It may happen by the next one. It may not happen till the one after that. So hopefully we'll have our cohort, we can really discuss these questions. Otherwise, we're probably going to go back to square one, because there'll be a lot of fresh people asking basic questions. So we'll see. Okay, all right, thanks for the great participation. Participation tonight. Yeah, let's go have some fun. And yeah, watch the circus. Okay,
