Lab 045: Do Not Disturb Part I

It's a new year.

Happy New Year's.

My New Year's goals resolutions are to create, establish and support my boundaries at all costs, to prioritize myself over everything else, my needs, my health, my mental health, and the boundaries I need to support those things.

Happy New Year.

My New Year's resolution for twenty twenty two is to master the art of simply not giving a f twenty twenty one, I spent a lot of time, particularly when it comes to work, giving about things that caused me unwarranted stress. And for twenty twenty two, I just choose simply to not spend time doing things that I enjoy while getting things done.

Hi, doctor Whitley and doctor Sabillah, this is Brittany Curry. You know it feels like I went from with the pandemic early thirties to late thirties. I don't know what happened to my mid thirties, but in twenty twenty two, getting the sent some your podcast, but there's really no end in sight.

At the moment on COVID nineteen. I think my biggest New Year's resolution is to get grounded back in time and really be present. We've spent a lot of the past couple of years just kind of waiting for the next moment, waiting for the next thing, waiting for things to get better. But I think it's time to kind of reframe and think about how do we be present and take care of ourselves and invest in ourselves in the midst of what.

Is our current normal.

I hope that you all will continue to build and stretch and challenge the boundaries of the impact that you can have with those labs podcasts.

Atti and Zakia. My name is Chandler and calling to tell you a Manda Year's resolution, which is to continue set in boundaries for myself with friends and family about different topics that I am or am not willing to discuss. Over the past couple of years with COVID and the pandemic and everything else that's gone on, I've recognize that there are some things that I don't need to talk about with certain people, and just saying I'm not willing to talk about that with you has been really helpful

You guys, and maybe that would be.

Encouraging to someone else.

Thanks so much, Keep up the good work.

By first of all.

Happy New Year, y'all.

Do you have New Year's traditions for what you eat? I don't have any New Year's traditions about what I eat other than I want to be eating good.

That's it.

I Some folks they do black eyed peas for good luck, but me, I'm just like, give me all the good flavors for good love. Flavor is the strongest predictor for a successful year. Yes, and a sweet fizzy drink.

T T.

You got it right. Good flavors and a sweet fizzy drink are the strongest predictors for a successful twenty twenty two. Yes, and I don't know about you, but the last few years to me haven't been given what they were supposed to give.

Yes, something happened.

We need to put this whole world in rice control all the leak. So I'm ready for a clean slate at a fresh start.

Okay, me too, And so are y'all.

We just heard from some of our Dope Labs listeners at the top sharing their twenty twenty two resolutions, and we're sensing a theme. Y'all know how to set some healthy boundaries, and we love the one about not giving us a care a care at all, right, And that's why for the next few weeks, we're bringing you a series of labs all about the things we need to do in order to take good care of ourselves all

In twenty twenty two.

And you know, we're jumping off with my frenemy sleep. My friend does not get enough sleep, I think, and sleep is my very best friend. Yes, yell, are tight? I am asleep right now as I say these words. You know, we've seen a lot going on around sleep. We've seen Ariana Huffington talking about sleep and wellness. We've seen Diddy on audible talking us to sleep, all kinds of things. But what we know generally is people are complaining that they're not getting enough.

It's a tail as old as time.

Honestly, I feel like everybody talks about being tired, at least in our society, American culture, because I feel like everybody's always working, everybody's always busy.

I'm so tired, I'm so sleepy. I need more sleep. I need to lie down.

Well, guess what Everything you want to know about sleep is coming up. Let's get into the recitation, all right, So what do we know? I know sleep eludes me, but I know that it's important. Yes, I love sleeping, So I know that sleep is good because it is good to me. And I think we know that sleep has real effects on your day to day life, like it affects how your day is going to go. And I think we also know that sleep isn't just this easy come, easygo kind of thing. There are a lot

And the drown out your snoring partner, M.

I didn't say it. So what do we want to know? I think we already know that sleep is important, But how important is it?

For real?

For real?

What are the health benefits of getting good sleep?

And for some of us that aren't getting great sleep, what does that mean for our health and what is good sleep like for real? For real people saying eight hours, but some people are only sleeping six and they look just fine to me. So I want to know how much sleep do we actually need? And what are the different stages of sleep? And also are there other factors that affect sleep, so not just diet, but like social

Let's jump into the dissection.

At.

Our guest for this special two part lab is doctor Jadan Jean Louis.

My name is Jadan Jean Louis.

I'm a professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Miami at the Middle School of Medicine.

So we all know that sleep is important for our health. But how important is it for real? Yeah, our prayers are always saying go to bed so we can be big and tall and strong. Was that a trigg or is there any evidence of that?

I still feel a little bit shorter than I should be.

Sleepy is extremely important.

Supposedly one third of our lives is spent sleeping. That is, somebody who's actually sleeping eight hours to recommended sleep time. If you're not getting enough sleep or good quality sleep, what we see is that physically you're not doing well, mentally not doing well, and your quality of life is significantly impaired. Sleep is a biological necessity because almost everything we do in our daily existence is a cold by sleep.

This is stressing me out, all right, Doctor Jean Louis is coming in hot. Okay, he's not pulling any punches, y'all. So everything that we do is effected by sleep. Sleep is good for a whole host of things, so memory formation and storage. It's good for your immune system. It gives you a healthier heart because your blood pressure lowers. Why you're asleep, muscle repair, hormone regulation. Wow, that's a lot of stuff. And you know what happens when you

Sleep, high on low on sleep.

Yes, Some years ago, a college student wanted to know how long he could go without sleep. He did affect about eleven days, because some folks felt that he might actually die. So you can actually die because of lack of sleep. We've never done an experiment, ethically speaking, to to deprive people of sleep.

That was something he wanted to do for himself.

Listen, if it's not ethically sound for scientists, we shouldn't be doing it to ourselves. We shouldn't be torturing ourselves.

Right, those all nighters we were pulling.

I don't know how we did it. We should have been going to our professors and saying, excuse me, do you want me to live?

Right?

Just give me an a. I don't need to take this exam.

What doctor Jean Louis mentioned with the college student is just anecdotal. But we also know that a lack of sleep is detrimental from my studies too.

What we know is if you deprive mice of sleep for a long period of time, they actually die. Since we share a lot with them, we know we too, if we're deprived for a longer period of time, we would also die. So again, we can't say sleep has a killing anybody. We don't have any invidence with that, but we know of that in fact, long period of deprivation we lead to death.

Okay, so now we know that sleep is a biological necessity. And doctor Jean Louis said, ethically, they're not able to do studies to prove that you can die from lack of sleep, but there's pretty strong evidence that suggest that you can't live without it. You know, this is one of those things that seems obvious but also not really because in today's society, when we're juggling all these different responsibilities,

The American Academus Sleep Medicine recommends that we get about seven to eight hours of sleep as an adults.

So seven to eight hours is the optimal amount of sleep. What are the health risks if you're not typically getting that much sleep at night?

So they determine if you happen to be sleeping less than six hours or more than eight hours, sometimes more than nine hours, you are at used for significant medical come moobidities. Such as how blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovasketar disease, cancer to some degree, and if you also sleep in more than nine hours, you are also at leased for both cardiovasclar disease as well as psychiatric illness.

This is a slippery slope, so you just got to balance right at the top. Don't get too little sleep, don't get too much sleep.

Right.

I thought that. I mean, if I'm tired, I just lay down. But doctor Jean Lui is telling me, hey, girl, get up out of your sleep.

Eight is enough.

Mean, I think you sometimes get more than seven to eight. I'm often getting absolutely, I'm getting seven up to fourteen. You're getting twelve to fourteen, Yes.

Especially on the weekends. Girl, I am in that bed.

I know you say it, but I'm like, she's just you know, up and been laying back down. No, I'm like, I'll wake up, but then I will go back to sleep. But I'm ashamed to say that now after hearing what doctor Jean Luis had to say, well, maybe we should be a little worried. I'm feeling like I might be all right. Though. Here's what he says about people that are getting less sleep.

The fact that somebody may be a short sleeper. You may have a friend who sleeps about six hours or five hours. That doesn't mean that we of Cardiovaski's disease are substantially higher.

This could be a naturally born short sleeper.

Now I don't know if that's necessarily the case for me, but I'm glad that that is an option. All Right, we're going to take a break, but when we get back, we're talking about the different stages of sleep. We're back. We're taking a deep dive on sleep in two parts next week. We're going to keep talking to our guests, doctor Jardin, Jean Louis about environmental factors that affect sleep, sleep disorders, and what we've all been waiting for tips

As we are awake, as we are having a conversation. Now, the brain is producing what we call beta waves. Bida really is fast frequency, low voltage that allows us to be conscious. It allows us to respond to stimuli because this kind of activity in the brain allows us to process information. So therefore, if I call your name, that's the stimulus, you're going to be able to respond to it.

When you start to feel groggy and lay down, after about ten minutes, your brain starts producing alpha waves.

This is stage one of sleep.

Alf Our waves are lower frequency and the voltage of the amplitude begins to go a little bit higher. When you're producing al Fibrijsippi means I made a transition phase between wakefulness and stage one. I'm not asleep yet because if I call your name, you can respond most.

Of the time.

This is one of my favorite parts going to sleep. I like to feel sleepy, like When I feel sleepy like that, I need to just lay flat right away, and then as you begin to fall asleep, the alpha waves your brain is produced and transition into a different shape to stata waves.

Again, the frequency is dropping and the amplitude is going up and up and up.

Stage one sleep, most people can still respond.

If your sleep isn't disrupted, then you may move from stage one to stage two, which is when we move into deeper sleep.

Two things happen doing stage two sleep. We produce what we call K complexes and sleep spindles.

Now these are not physical things that we're producing, but they are characterizations of the the way your brain activity looks when observed during sleep, and these both happen during nrim or non rapid eye movement. Sleep experts are still working on understanding the significance and purpose of sleep spindles and why their frequency and form can vary from person to person. And recently there was a study trying to understand if sleep spindles could potentially be inherited parents giving

Sleep again.

If you are not disturbing any way whatsoever, then you could get into the deepest stage of sleep, which we call delta sleep.

Delta sleep is also called stage three sleep, my favorite part. I don't know who I am, what's up, what's down? Somebody wakes me up. I'm terrified because I don't know where I am.

When you have in delta sleep, the amplitude is really high and the frequency is very low. The deepest stage of sleep is what the doctors usually recommend you get if you happen to be injured. When the doctor says, I really want you to get bed west, what they are saying is they want you to get a lot of deep sleep or delta sleep.

So first you're awake and your brain's making beta waves. Then you go to stage one and that's alpha waves. Stage two is data and that's where you have those K complexes and sleep spindles. Stage three is delta TT's favorite, and stage four is rim which we haven't talked about yet, but that's rapid eye movement sleep.

I love im sleep because that's when we are all dreaming. Every person who has a good night slip should experience about four to five dream episodes. So essentially, every ninety minutes or so, we have one dream episode, and then as you get litter and litter through the night or in the early morning hours, we tend to have more dream episodes.

During rem sleep.

Our body might not be moving, but our brain is active. Baby, I don't know if I can recall when I wake up how many dreams that I've had. How do we know if we're having four to five dreams? I don't know, but I feel like I'm counting my dreams like this. Sometimes I start out and we're all in a boat, and then I opened a door in a boat and we're all in a room and it's a party from my third grade classroom. That's a separate dream. Every time I move through a different portal, new dream.

Can you remember all the portals?

It's like different scenes, and sometimes it's just morph and sometimes people don't have faces, but I know who they are. That happens to me too, or they'll have a completely different face, and I'm like, that is I know that's your TT exactly. I know exactly who it is, and I'm calling them by that name, but they don't look like that person at all. I need to be journal in my dreams because I want to know what's in

Oh my god.

So if I have nightmares or anything bad, I don't tell people before I eat. Have you ever solved a problem or like, had something that was just heavy on your heart that you were dealing with in real life and then you go into the dream world and you come back and you got to answer or a solution. I don't think with like social things, but I think yes.

But problems that I have with people, no, they're still not about.

No, because the blended constantly looking for answers. All of this stuff we've been exposed to for all of our lives in the back of our mind somehow see onefore calls it the self conscious mind. There we have all the answers while we are away producing bid our way. We can't get that in deep sleep, bowl and sleep we do have access to that.

Now, the question is what are the trends? How are there is everybody getting deep sleep? Who's not getting good sleep? I want to know.

We looked at data for about forty years, going back to nineteen seventy six. We saw that between black and white there's a huged the economy in terms of how much sleep you are getting.

In a twenty fifteen study, scientists found that Latino and Latina or Latin X or Latine, as well as black people reported getting less than six hours of sleep on average per night.

It looks like the gap between black and white is getting wider over time, which would be very lovely because short sleep is a predictor or cardio basketball disease.

So sleepduation is very important.

And there's a major health implications when you consider that. And so not only is there a difference in total hours, doctor Jean Luis's there's a disparity when it comes to getting certain stages of sleep, and that can have serious effects on your health.

If you look at the data, so on average, black folks compared to white sleep about thirty to forty five minutes less, which means you're getting a less amount of slower sleep.

And that slow wave sleep is happening during stages two and three.

Doing slower sleep, your blood pressure is supposed to dip. If it does not, we call this nocturnal have blood pressure or nocturnal hypertension.

A lot of African American, of Black.

Folks have high levels of high blood pressure, high level of hypertension. Well, it is in part due to the fact that we are getting enough delta sleep. Delta sleep is extremely important for dementia. We are learning that the whole system, which you call it the glymphatic system, that's the system in the brain that washes out all the taxins will accumulate during the day.

That's amyloid proteins. Those are the structures that they look for when they're scanning to see if you are developing Alzheimer's or dementia. And so you get protein built up and there are these toxins and things and they can aggregate, and you get this protein aggregation. You can imagine you're less likely to get aggregation if these things are cleared from your system. And that's what the glymphatic system does when you sleep, is clearing those toxins. It's connected to

These bodies are amazing, amazing.

Bruh.

Why can't I feel that happening, that washing over my brain because you're in delta sleep, girl.

I'm gonna try and wake up quick one day and catch it.

And part of what the brain is washing out are these protein precursors that if they don't get removed, they can become toxic. Amyloid beta or A beta and tau.

There are two particular toxin which we call abida and tau. Those two proteins are the indices when we see them in the brain that somebody has a highlight clut of developing ASA's dementia.

Studies have shown that people of color not only spend less time on average in deep sleep, they also take longer to fall asleep and they wake up more during the night.

All of this leads to less time.

In that sweet spot, the deep sleep zone, which is really crucial for all of the health reasons we discussed earlier. So we've covered quite a bit of ground so far. We've talked about the importance of sleep and how it's connected to so many different systems. We've talked about how many hours of sleep we really should be getting t

I've got a lot of questions about that.

But we also realize that there are sleep deficits in different communities, and so we have sleep disparities as well. And so one of the things that we've talked about in some earlier episodes, which I think is important here, is understanding that when we say things like, oh, people of color get less sleep and they're more likely to wake up in the night, that is not just because the melanin in their skin makes them wake up. There

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For it to get here because it's just so funny.

She has a little tr on, she has a little pearl necklace on and like a black gown. That's how she should be dressed. That's how she presents. At least she does present with that level of class. I would like to say she does, and I mean that's what she would like to believe. So that's pet Creatives dot Com.

It's a great gift.

I don't even know what the outfits are, but there's lots of different temblaces you can use. They work very quickly. The customer service was great and I can't look at that picture anymore because I'm going to start crying.

It's very funny to me.

That's it for Lab forty five. Are you getting enough sleep? Is it good quality sleep? Call us at two zero two five six seven seven zero two eight and tell us what you thought about this lab, or you can give us an idea for a lab we should do this semester. We want to hear from you. That's two zero two five six seven seven zero two eight. And don't forget there's so much more for you to dig

Dope Labs is a Spotify original production from Mega O Media Group. Producers are Jenny Ratlitmast and Lydia Smith of Way Runner Studios. Editing and sound design by Rob Smerciak.

Your worries don't put you to sleep. Sometimes I have so many worries and I'd be like, they just put me right back down. I was like, I don't do none of this. Check out of Dart