Somnology (SLEEP) Part One Encore with Dr. W. Chris Winter

for all the love and sport. Thank you for just keeping us in your big brains in your hearts. Okay, Sleep, Oh hey, it's your little step brother who tries to trade you their calcified banana flavor now and later is for your Mini Reese's peanut butter cups. And you're like, little dude, step all the way off. That's not how life works. Ali, board back for another episode of Ologies. So this is coming out in October. So let's get deep into something that happens usually in the dead of night.

If you're lucky, Sleep, you do it every day or night probably, and it should be an exercise in comfort and restoration and flirting with Death's hotter friendlier twin. But just looking at the word sleep probably made your bewels drop with dread because you know you're screwing it up a little bit. We kind of all are so in the next two episodes. That's right, Part two with your Questions comes out next week. We are gonna go head to head with the Sandman, but first let's get ready

for bed. A little business. First things first, Happy happy birthday to my amazing mom Nancy Ward, who's so funny and so smart and inspiring and accepts me even though I swear like filth on this podcast. She also gave me the best care for insomnia. It has never failed me. We don't talk about it in part one of this Sleep episode, so you're gonna have to wait until part two next week. But it is an actual life saver. I can't wait to tell you Happy birthday.

That all helps get the show in others' ears. And very often you make my day with your nice words in the reviews. So like a sucubus, I pluck one every week to read from the bunch, And this week Teapath says ten out of ten would look like a complete nutjob scream crying and laughter about sharks in my car again, So thank you, please continue Tepath to do that. And thanks to everyone who left reviews that I savored individually over a cup of herbal tea this week. I

just appreciate them so much. Okay, somnology very much a thing. It's the study of how we sleep. And I looked up the etymology of it just after I wrote that intro and Holly smokes you guys. Somness is the Roman god of sleep and yes, the brother of death. I had no idea when I wrote that a few minutes ago, so there you go. Also, Somnos probably a remake of the Greek myth of Hypnos, who was the Greek god of sleep, also the half brother of Thanatos death. So

Hypnos lived in a dark grotto in the underworld. What a bachelor, but was kind of a helper of humans. He was a good dude. His dad was Darkness and his mother was nix or night, and even Zeus was afraid of her. Zeus was like, damn, lady, you're kind of a bitch. But I respect that. And so somnology is the study of the god that comes in darkness to incapacitate and recharge us, and it seems to vex us more and more. So, Yes, we have cars and antibiotics,

but when it comes to sleep, we're kind of boning ourselves. Fam. So in this two parter episode, I'm determined to help fix your sleep, And by your I mean are I appall my own friends physicians, I appall my own fitbit with my poor sleep habits, and as a result, I sometimes forget which month it is, and I have eaten more stickers on produce than you need to know about. So you're gonna learn the difference between deep sleep, light sleep,

rem sleep. What aspects of sleep hygiene are important, The root of insomnia how much sleep you really need, if you should go somewhere to get wires taped to your head while a stranger watches you, and how to help the molecular janitors that live in your skull. This guest has been called the sleep Whisperer and works with professional athletes and normies alike to perform better and to remedy their sleep issues. He has literally written the book on sleep.

It's called The Sleep Solution. Why Your Sleep Is Broken and How to Fix It. He's based in Virginia. He's the owner of the Charlottesville Neurology and Sleep Medicine Clinic. So we scheduled this interview months in advance for a time he was going to be in southern California to

give a talk. We met up at a hotel and I barraged him with so many questions that he was held physically captive answering them for me for close to two hours, and I was like, yes, double episode, So get cozy, zip up your onesies, and get ready for part one with the gently southern voiced dulcimer wisdom of neurologist and somnologist doctor William Chris Winter. You are a neurologist. But you're also a somnologist, correct because you study sleep?

be a doctor. I didn't really want to be a sleep doctor or neurologist, but I started doing research in sleep just to get beer money and biology credit hours as an undergraduate.

So I would go to medical school during the day and then at night I would run these studies. One of them was and so this is when I first started interacting with real human subjects. One was the idea of if you pull all night, or and stay up all night, or if you have a night where your sleep is fragmented, like being on call or something of that nature. How was that? No, No, No, it's d no, Yeah, I'm sure it is. I've heard all about you. You've

got a lot going on. Worried about you, Ali. So so the question was, how is that affecting our brain's blood flow in the morning. So we would bring my A lot of these were my friends. There were medical students who were looking for a little bit of money, and I would say, hey, you should come do the sleep study. So the sleep study consisted of three nights. The first night you would sleep normally. The second night you would not sleep at all. The third night we

would fragment your sleep. And the way we did that was we had these little C three po alarms that made this unbelievably grating sound that right away.

entire night. And the funny thing was, all my friends would make these big arrangements for the sleep deprivation night, but for the fragmented night. They're like, so I get to sleep, right, I'm like, yes, you do. But as soon as you fall asleep, you'll sleep for a little while. Then we're gonna wake you up, but you can go right back to sleep. After that. They would make arrangements

for that. They were a mess after those studies. One guy actually woke up and walked out of the sleep center with all the wires hooked to him and it was trying to get into his car. He had no idea what he was doing. Another person actually got up and went to the bathroom hooked up with everything. It. It was just they were absolutely hysterical. And what we found was it was much more dangerous from a blood flow perspective to have fragmented sleep than it was to

actually to stay up. In fact, when you stood, when you stayed up all night and never slept for the first few hours of the morning, your brain blood flow was really happening. It was really so I think that's that sort of the background and you pull an a lighter for a test. The next day, you feel kind of euphoric for a while, and then you.

getting some sleep over here. So I felt really guilty by that, even though I would often kind of, you know, nod off as we were talking. And the guilt really started from the birth of my daughter. At one point, I fell asleep during life and my wife said, did you just fall asleep? I said, And this is what I said. I was so sleep deprived from being a medical student. I said something like, I just didn't know

it was going to take this long. Oh sorry, those are those words that leave your mouth and you're trying to grab them as they leave to shove back in your face. And so I think that part of the guilt stem from that comment.

sleep deprivation models where you take something. You know, they used to put these little mice on these rotating platforms over water, and if they fall asleep, the platform would rotate and push them into the water, which he really didn't like. And so you found that after a very short period of time, there's a lot of brain dysregulation that starts to happen, particularly with the brain. It's regulation

of our cardiovascular system. Our body temperature gets really screwed up, we have difficulty fighting infection, and generally organisms die fairly quickly with sleep deprivation. So I don't know that we necessarily know exactly what it is, but it's a very important thing. For sort of re establishing balance within our body throughout organ systems, and you know, every organism does it,

they do it differently. You know some fish that have to continue to always swim, they'll sleep one half their brain and then the other at other times, and really fascinating things like that. But it's this very preserved process that you know, kind of allows us to sort of reset and go word about our day. But to answer that definitively, I don't think anybody really can, which is shocking, is something, like you said, so basic that we don't really know why we do it.

stages of sleep were kind of elusive to me. Can you go through the different stages of sleep really quick? And when they happen to in absolutely or the day?

the different stages. About ninety minutes after we fall asleep, if we're on a schedule and relatively well rested, we'll have dream or rem sleep. So rem sleep, rapid eye movement sleep, and dream sleep are the same thing. So generally at nine minutes after you fall asleep, I have your first dream. It's a very short dream, typically very fragile.

So if you're in an uncomfortable situation and a lot of anxiet in your life, you're sleeping in a bad hotel, you may drop that first cycle quite a bit, and then every hour to hour and a half we'll have another cycle of dreaming, usually last somewhere between twenty five to forty five minutes, and those get longer and longer the night goes on.

the ends? They're short for non rem sleep, So all stages of sleep that aren't rem are called non rem which is like if you had four kids and you just named the best, most interesting one, Jeremy, and then all the rest were just like non Jeremy one, non Jeremy two, that one's non Jeremy three. Like sure, they all have their place in this family. Your life wouldn't be the same without them, you know. But they're not as interesting as Jeremy. So think of light sleep as

your day to day shoe. Nothing fancy, but it works. Now another kind of shoe in your sleep closet. Let's say, the ug of the shoes is deep sleep now also called slow waves sleep or delta sleep or if for being an asshole M three not rem three. This stage of deep sleep happens more at the beginning of the night, and during this deep sleep stage, our bodies repair and they heal themselves. We release human growth hormone, which is

dope for free, no shady prescription necessary. And the more of this deep sleep we get those first few hours in bed, usually around twenty five percent of the night, the more chipper and refreshed and not sleepy or groggy or crawling toward a triple espresso we feel.

bit longer cycle of dreaming. So as the night goes on, we're having bigger, bigger cycles of dreaming, smaller cycles of deep sleep. So if you cut the night in half, and I often ask this question to patience, if you're having difficulty with your sleep, do you feel like the first half your night's better or the second half, And depending on their answer, the first half is predominantly deep sleep,

the second half is predominantly rem sleep. So you can get a little bit of a sense of what might be going on with somebody's sleep, and in terms of the function of it, deep sleep is what makes us feel rested. So if somebody's nodding off listening to your podcast, or fall asleep at a stop light or in church or wherever you like to fall asleep, you can you know very quickly that person did not get enough deep sleep, either because they didn't get enough sleep or there's something

inhibiting their deep sleep. And then remsleep has a lot more to do with focus, concentration, mood, even pain perception. So it's a little bit more of a finesse sort of situation, which is probably why it's second in the night. Your brain really needs the deep sleep to make the motor go to find the food to get through your day. The second half the night it's a little bit more detail oriented.

so that's a job. Just go to the office to watch baby's dream and he's like, hey, look at that. Maybe there's like a rapid eye movement stage of sleep. And they're like, well, boy, howdy hot dang, there is. So in this state our brain is as active as when we're awake. And REM sleep, they think is supposed to help with memory and concentration and also mood. Now,

if you're like, what's up with Rim the band? If that's confused you, you're not alone because up until about five minutes ago, I wasn't sure if it was called REM or Rim sleep. I had no idea, and I would just never say it out loud. Michael Stipe just flipped to the dictionary, added periods between the letters and confused us all for decades. So the band is Rim, the sleep is rem. This would not have happened if Rim had stuck to their original name, which was Jars

of Piss. That's a true story. So the dress shoes takes care of memory and mood, and it happens for about twenty five percent of the night. Now, the cushy, comfy ug deep sleep or N three also twenty five percent of the night, repairs your bod and keeps you from feeling sleepy. So yes, that light sleep is the majority of the night in fifty percent, But like, what does it do? And then what is happening during light sleep?

as being wakefulness. And we all do that. I mean, my wife would sit down on the couch and put on Property Brothers. Got that show. It's the same episode every time. It's there's no shocker here. You know, they're gonna get thousands of dollars worth of renovation for like six hundred bucks. And I don't know what places they are living in, Okiddy, I love, Probably good for you guys. I mean, this is just jealousy talking. Come out here, have a look at your pool. She sits down to watch,

you know, Property Brothers. Shall fall asleep. I'll grab the remote, flip it over to the Dodgers game, and after twenty minutes you'll wake up and say, why'd you do that? I was watching that show. I'm like, no, you weren't. You were sound asleep because I was not asleep. I know everything that's going on. Then she'll flip it back over to the properties. Now it's new property, brothers, new couple,

and she's so proud. She will not admit the fact that that is not the couple you were looking at before. It's at the little rancher that they're renovating. We're all like the coastal, you know whatever. So yeah, so we all have that perceptive. But some people, particularly they have a lot of anxiety, can really misperceive that fifty percent of our night is being wakefulness. So these are the people who often tell you, oh, gosh, you know, for the last six weeks, I've not been able to sleep,

and you can sleep an hour or two. But when you look at them, they don't look particularly impaired. And that's a problem we often refer to as paradoxical insomnia. It's just not the problem that often they think they have.

be more after the break. But each episode we donate to a cause, and this week is going to miloma dot org. The International Maloma Foundation is dedicated to improving the quality of life of myloma patients while working toward prevention and a cure. And my dad was diagnosed with multiple maloma in twenty thirteen. My uncle passed away from it as well, and the IMF has been just a lighthouse,

beacon of hope and research and info and support. So if someone you know has maloma, which is a blood cancer, you can listen to the hematology episode with doctor Brian Durry. And there's also an uncut version on my website that has more patient specific info. So thank you sponsors for making that donation possible, and thanks to everyone at the IMF for everything they do.

And I just told you I fell asleep during coldbirth and my first my first daughter, you know, intercourse, during your own wedding. Like, there's really some interesting things that people fall asleep doing.

I once snoozed at a gothic industrial club while Skinny Puppy was blasting all Well sober now patron Saint of Podcasts Ologies, editor Stephen Ray Morris texted me while I was writing this to tell me that he fell asleep standing up once at Disneyland as an employee, which is the most Stephen Ray Morris story I have ever heard. Now it's all cute and fun until you get the bill. Sleep deprivation bumps up the risk of us screwing up,

and it has an economic wallop. You ready for this, fifty billion dollars yearly in the United States just from like sleepy, sleepy Oopsie daisies now is for car accidents. It's estimated that six thousand people could die annually just because of drowsy driving. So staying on your couch when you're not up to party is literally saving lives because trust me, even a skinny puppy soundtrack might not be enough to keep you alert.

think that as we've moved forward, two things have happened. One, we've put a lot of barriers in front of our sleep, including podcasts that they're like, gosh, I should stop now, but I'm going to listen to one more episode of this awesome podcast Alley's put together, and then I'll go to bed. You know, thanks, But y'all.

prioritizing our sleep. I think a lot of people want to do the right thing, they're just incapable of doing it because of all these barriers in front of us.

pretty well for the night. And as for insomnia, incredibly rare, so much so that they didn't even have a word for it in any of their languages. So how can this change your life now? The researchers think that the sleep patterns have less to do with sunlight and more to do with temperature, which is tightly controlled in her houses.

It does not match outdoor temperatures by design. One article I read recommended sleeping in a room that was sixty to seventy three degrees fahrenheit, which could help you get more restorative sleep, it's more natural. So this is, I guess, just another reason to bundle up, turn the heater down a scosh, maybe keep a window open. I mean, as a person who sleeps like shit and also turns hotel room thermostats up to eighty degrees, I feel personally called out.

I feel attacked by myself, and I know this is still I feel like this is still such a basic question. But what is the big difference, like in brain waves or whatever, when we are awake and talking and functioning and like dodging things coming at our heads. But then the difference between that when we were stone cold out?

to eat. So sleep is kind of like that. We can really enhance our drive to sleep. And one of the things I always tell people is it sleep always wins. I mean, if you push yourself hard enough and get yourself sleepy enough. It's not something that you really have a lot of control over. And you're right. It can happen in the blink of an eye when you're driving down the road, which is why a lot of people come to our clinic after there's been some sort of

car accident. I was driving back from the concert. I felt okay, and the next thing I know, I was in a median or I was in the oncoming lane of traffic. So sleep can sleep, Sleep happens. We're not in danger of not sleeping. I think that for a lot of when you look at sleep in terms of the wavelengs like you're talking about. What's interesting is when you look at somebody's brain activity when they're awake, it

looks very different from somebody who's in deep sleep. Deep sleep, you can see this sort of the consciousness part of your brain taking a back seat to the more primitive parts of the brain we share like with an earthworm, so we have these big slow waves, which is why some people called deep sleep slow wave sleep. You know, consciousness is really suspended. You know, your brain is really

taking care of much more primitive aspects of itself. But when you look at rem sleep, it's almost impossible to discern the brain activity video of somebody dreaming versus the brain activity of somebody who's awake. Really, yes, which is why it's really interesting. People say, you know, with rem sleep or deep sleep, they could not be more different. In fact, one of the only ways you can tell that somebody's dreaming if you're just looking at their brain

is to look at their muscle tone. Because when we dream, we're paralyzed. So it's obvious from looking at a videotape. Oh, she's dreaming and she's awake. That's that's pretty obvious. But to purely look at the brain's activity, it's very difficult to discern, and not to mention there's eye movements, so these very unusual, bold eye movements that happen when we're

dreaming that we don't see when we're awake. But really that muscle tone is the biggest way we differentiate somebody electrographically as to whether or not they're sleeping or they're awake, which is fascinating. So when you dream you're taking the test naked and it was a test you didn't know you were going to have, and your friends like, we're going to take our test and you're enrolled in the class, i'mic god, and even this is my recurring dream. You know,

you're sitting there taking a test or whatever. You're being chased by wolves or whatever you like to dream about. You actually can't move when those things are happening, nor can we really regulate our body temperature, which is kind of interesting too.

under eyelids. At that point, they would wake somebody up and say what's going on, and the person would wake up and say, oh my god, I was taking the test naked, you know, or whatever their thing was. So that's how they determined that, oh, wow, looks like when these eyes are moving, your people are dreaming. But they realize very quickly that every other muscle pretty much was not, except for a tiny little muscle in the ear. There's

a tiny little muscle in the voice box. Our diaphragms work so we can breathe, and then our sphincters work so we don't have so much clean up the next day, but outside of that, everything voluntary is completely shut down. So sleep PROAUSS is what you're referring to is when people experience this, they experience a recovery of consciousness before

that paralysis has a chance to go away. Oh so what happen happens is you said you go to bed, and usually it's happening during stressful times in your life, and when you wake up, you hear the alarm clock going off, but you're powerless to move to turn it off. It can often feel like something's like on your chest, like sitting on you. It can be a terrifying experience. It usually only lasts about, you know, thirty seconds, a

minute maybe, and then it passes. But for a lot of people who have those kind of fluctuating lifestyles and difficult schedules, they can feel it a lot. It is a classic sign of narcolepsies. If you get it a lot and you're excessively sleepy, it could be a sign to that. And interestingly, predominantly, like in the Southern African American community, they often talk about something called the witch

riding you, which is awesome. It's invisible witch but I didn't even know that was So if you look at if you look at antiquity, and one of the cool things about sleep is this awesome intersection between science and mythology. If you look at sleep and there's this idea of the witch riding you say, they would think that a witch was literally sitting on your chest when you slept at night writing you.

to drink margs with and go to the disco. Just a side note, So this next acide was written and recorded in twenty eighteen, before I had read some great twenty twenty discourse on language and favoring the word black capitalized please instead of African American. And also before I learned that the term Caucasian is rooted in some deep racism,

and now we just say white. So this next decide again from twenty eighteen, I was directly quoting stats from a two thousand and five study before these language updates. I'm leaving it in so that we can all learn this. Okay, carry on twenty eighteen episode. Now, as an Italian from northern California, I'd never heard of this very common Southern United States colloquialism about a witch writing your back. But

I did do a little further research. Now, according to one two thousand and five study, recurrent sleep paralysis was reported by twenty three percent of African American volunteers in the study, but only six percent of Caucasian volunteers, and it can be linked to panic disorder. So what causes

panic disorder? The study states that significantly more early life stressors were reported by African Americans than Caucasians, and it went on to say that higher levels of psychosocial stressors, including racism and a culturation, may contribute to the higher

rates of sleep paralysis experienced by African Americans. So just another reminder that privilege is sneak, and scientists are wonderful for turning over rocks and looking at this stuff because the solutions might not be right under our literal noses.

sitting on top of people's chests. Is one called the nightmare, and that was the thought that this thing was sitting on you, which is why you felt the weight. But it was actually the paralysis all the muscles in between your ribs making your rib cage less easy to expand when you breathe, so it felt like weight on you. Which is really interesting.

and when we sleep vice versa. Now sleep paralysis is the wake and the sleep switch being turned on at the same time.

So that's kind of how sleep, you know, sleep and wakefulness. As we are awake and talking, we're a cumulating chemicals that are making that sleep bucket wanting to tip over more and more, which is why we are a lot sleepier at eleven PM than maybe eleven am.

went on to the next topic. And I remember sitting there thinking, wait a minute, the most important organ of our brain, our body does not have it, this dantor system. So it turns out that he and science was wrong. This fantastic researcher in Maryland, she discovered it. And I'm blanking on her name right now. Netterguard, I believe is her name.

this waste removal system effect. So the question becomes what waste product are we removing. We are removing a product called beta amyloid, which is exactly what you said, the constituent of plaque in Alzheimer's disease. So if you have

a busy schedule, you don't value sleep. And it's interesting because I'm getting the sense from you, reading about you and learning more about you, is that you kind of look at people and two different on a scale of the horrible insomnia patient, can't sleep, tries like crazy, desperate for sleep, dread's going to bed at night, and then you've got sort of you the alley the neurosurgeon, which is the person who's like, you know, if I can get two hours of sleep, I'm pretty good. We want

you to be in the middle. What we want you to find as you started getting into your thirties and forties, that middle ground of just because I can do it, probably doesn't mean I should.

brain's clean up crew get to work. Now, what exactly what other things are we cleaning out other than the plaques?

of a rabid athletic fan. But what I like about athletes, when you study it and you improve their sleep, we can immediately measure how well they're doing. So I've never seen the alley baseball card. You know how she doing, Oh, twenty fourteen was a good year for her. She you know, she batted this, she ran this, she scored this many runs, you know. So we're all doing things that require performance athletes, we just tend to measure it more. Right, So when

you actually get an individual to restrict their sleep. So we don't do a lot of sleep deprivation experiments anymore because they're kind of difficult and inhumane and frankly somewhat dangerous. But even if you just restrict sleep, those things, to me are much more meaningful. I think most people believe that if you stay up all night, you don't work that well the next day. But what if you got four or five hours of sleep for several days in a row.

they have better ideas. It's just amazing. They even lose weight. I mean, so the idea that difficulties in sleep is not affecting some part of your body is probably not true.

that the relationship works oppositely. I think that individuals who are depressed and who have difficulty with mood disturbance, their their disorder is creating a lot of sleep disturbances as well as the sleep disturbances helping to facilitate the disorder. I mean, it's very unusual to find somebody who has significant insomnia who doesn't have some degree of anxiety, and insomnia theory would tell you that step one in terms of developing insomnia is you have a predisposition to it.

You're a type A, You've got a lot on your plate and you know, type A is a good thing. I mean, I want my surgeon, who's got to take the tomb around of my brain, to be very type A. I don't want the oh, well, you know, we'll get to it when we get to it. You know, I'm I'm gonna follow the dead this summer and you know,

hockey sock flip flop, Doc Johnson. I don't want that person who sleep when we got the I want, you know, the really you know kind of you know, focused, hyper focused type A attention to detail person managing my finances and doing my surgeries whatnot. So that type A tendency makes the world around you successful. People have it. When they start to apply that that type A to the insomnia,

it becomes a real problem. So I think that you know, individuals who are struggling with mood disturbance, I think it's important to understand and have an open mind to it working in both ways. Some people will resist, Oh, I don't have depression, doctor win or I'm not anxious. It's just my sleep is really messed up. And they may

be right. But I think it's also okay to sort of open yourself up to the idea that maybe this is also playing a causet role in it too, so there's a huge connection between those two things.

doctor Winter, is anxiety. Now, there are secondary causes like pain that doesn't allow you to fall asleep, and those have to be addressed as a pain issue rather than a sleep issue. But primarily insomnia is an anxiety issue. Now, my personal issue with sleep, if we're gonna get confessional, is I learned this recently. It's called sleep avoidance or sleep procrastination. This is when you're tired and you need to sleep, but you just keep delaying it, either watching

movies or scrolling or working or reading. Now, there are a few causes of this. One might be workaholism and not being able to admit that the day is done HEMP, or it could be loneliness and scrolling helps you feel connected to others. Also, I do that, or even a busy day tending to a lot of people can leave you needing alone time and staying up well passed. What is prudent is the only way for some people to get it, So hypnos is like, yo, this is why

I hang out in a cave in hades. Nobody bucks me. So what are better sleep habits? The CDC has some hot tips. Centers for Disease Control, who apparently considers not sleeping enough kind of a disease, says, be consistent. Go to bed at the same time each night, including weekends, if you can make sure that your bedroom is quiet, dark and relaxing and at a comfortable temperature. We've learned colder is better. Who knew? Remove TVs, computers, smartphones from

the bedroom. The CDC says to throw them into the simmering caldera of a volcano if you have one. Also, avoid big meals and caffeine and booze before bedtime. We all kind of know that we're supposed to do those things. I'm trying to shift the way I'm thinking about sleep to thinking of it as a free thing you can do to make your brain sharper and your skin glowier

and your future sure less addled with disease. So if sleep hygiene were a thing you could buy and just not do, we would all be so pumped for it, we would Amazon prime this shit out of it. But really it's just a behavior, so we have to see value in the behavior. How much does sleep hygiene affect how much you actually sleep? Like, when you have to prescribe sleep hygiene, what do you tell people to do?

its ability to solve a problem twenty percent. So I would say of the people out there who are struggling with their sleep, that twenty percent of people, if they did something related to sleep hygiene, could make their problem, you know, much better, or solve it. And what I mean by that too, is also the idea that it's sort of like knee pain. If you're a runner, you know, my knees starting to hurt. So what you're gonna do.

You'll take some ibuprofen. Maybe you'll buy a brace at CVS, You'll ice it, You'll take a couple of days off you're running. Well, you know, if you're doing all those things and still hearing this clicking sound and having this excruciating pain in your knee, eventually you're going to say, I don't know that this is within my ability to solve. You go see a specialist, they do an MRI. You've got a big piece of carlt sticking into your joint. So to me, that's sort of the sleep hygiene is.

We sort of have this message out there that every one of your sleep problems is solvable if you just get the right mattress and the right pajamas, and the right noise machine and the your ear plugs and those are all fine. I just think that for about the other eighty percent of people, it's very anxiety provoking that you've invested in the five thousand dollars mattress. You've got Tom Brady's you know, special pajamas that he wears, and

my god, he's a quarterback married to a model. So it's got to work without the sleep where I don't really feel like I would be able to achieve the things that I have done it, you know, and you got all this stuff going on and it's not working. I think that creates a lot of anxiety, sort of like where I'm hopeless, like nothing work. I've read twenty different books, which is why I didn't put a lot of sleep hygiene in my book, just because I thought,

I think we all know these things. Now it's kind of getting to the point of common knowledge.

even strange to be kind of neutral about sleep. I mean, be neutral about brushing your teeth, but sleep, oh, it's the best thing in the world to get in bed, and you know whatnot And so I think that we need to cultivate that attitude, but understand that it has its limitations.

I think I talk about this in the book. My parents like redid their basement. When I was growing up, we had this like unfinished basement. They finished it themselves and kind of did it, you know, outside the you know the law. I think, you know. So one of the bedrooms, the bedroom down there, has no way to get out, so it's like surrounded by earth on two sides and there's a door, but there's zero window. It

is incredibly dark, incredibly quiet, and incredibly cool. And I remember going there like well, I would come in for like college breaks and falling asleep in there and waking up at noon, you know, and being like, well, what time is it, Like where have you been? You know. So even the smallest little bit of light coming in through a door or underneath a blind can really impair our sleep.

evolved to do that. Like I, you know, I don't necessarily feel the urge to do other things, like let's sit in the same chare, honey and eat this from the same plate. You know, it's okay to be like you sit over there and eat your thing. I'll eat over here. There's a lot of things we do separately. You do it over there, I'll do my thing over here.

Even in our bathrooms have two different things sometimes, you know, you you know, so I do think it's funny that we've evolved to kind of create this thing that we need to sleep in the same bed. And maybe it was evolutionary that, you know, houses were small, you were

conserving heat or things of that nature like that. But you know, I think that you can love somebody intensely and not be in the same bed with them, or you know, what I always tell people is some things that's a little bit more palatable for some couples is let's pick Thursday. Thursday will be the day we watch Handmaid's Tale, but then we sleep separately so we can consider what that means in terms of our society independent of one another, and over breakfast we'll talk about the

episode and how we feel about it. I was asleep before. That's how we let it happen, yeah, or whatever, So so that way there's no guilt. It's like, oh, it's Thursday night, We're going to sleep separately, and it's kind of fun to get back together on Friday night, you know, kind of thing. So when I was on call as a doctor, I would always sleep in the basement in a guest bedroom that had a window by the way, and I know my wife was secretly thrilled when I

would not be there. You know, you can stretch out and somebody's ether not moaning or pagers going off and whatnot. So I think it's okay. I mean, if somebody says, look, I really like sleeping with my partner, I don't want to sleep away from him or her, that's perfectly fine. But I think it's also it's you are we are capable of loving buddy and not be in the same mattress.

or want to be with them. And ohife hates me being anywhere near her at night and for some reason kind of gravitate over to her side of the bed and she's like, get away. You know, I just don't want that. And I don't mean I don't think. I don't think it means she doesn't love me. But you know, I think that people just need to sleep and do what's right for their sleep and not necessarily have some you know, guy breathing and hanging over top of you know, I think it's probably a good thing.

and I think that's great. I think it's a bad idea when somebody says I went to bed last night, I was really upset about a decision on the voice, and I can't believe they sent her home because she's so much better than that guy who's saying dock of the bay. For God's sakes, he got through seeing doc of the bed. I don't believe it, and she completely reworked that Christina or anyway digressing. So you're really upset about that thing, and you go to bed and it

takes you three hours to fall asleep. You know, you were up all night because of that. You can't believe the decision. And then you take a nap the next day because you couldn't sleep last night. Now you had the opportunity to sleep, but for whatever reason, your brain decided he didn't want to. I think that's a dangerous path to go down. You see that a lot with retired people. There's no kids in the house anymore. I love old people. They can get up at three o'clock

in the morning if they want to. They can go to bed at six o'clock after McNeil lair if they want to. They can do whatever the hell they want to. They've earned it, for God's sakes. But the problem is when they have no sort of constraints on their sleep. If they have a bad night, but they just sleep in or take a massive four hour nap, right, you know, at five o'clock in the afternoon, And now it's eleven o'clock, they want to go to bed, they can't, another frustrated,

and so the cycle sort of begins. So I think napping is great. Try to keep it relatively short, twenty twenty five, thirty minutes closer to the beginning of the day, so we're adding on to last night, not subtracting from the upcoming night. And I think naps are great. I mean, it's such a such a wonderful thing to you know, kind of sleep at a time when you're not supposed to. And I think it's also interesting to pay attention to

how you fall asleep when you nap. Meaning I've got a lot of people who it takes the four hours to fall asleep at night, and they feel completely dependent on sleeping pills. But they'll say things like, I was, you know, sitting there the other day and it's hard for me to you know, I come in from church, I'm so exhausted, I take a nap. And I always ask them, well, what what pill do you take to take your nap after church? And look at you like, oh, I don't take a pill, then well, why do you

think if you're able to fall asleep after church? But you're not able to fall asleep eleven o'clock when you want to go to bed. And it's always interesting the answers they give you, you know, because we think of nap as being this sort of extra credit. You know, teacher gives you some problems, and the last two problems on the test to extra credit. Well, I've got some time. I'll do it, no pressure, and you to get those right, cause it's like if you get them, great, if you don't,

it's not that big a deal. It's extra credit. Naps sort of like our sleep extra credit. You know, it's bonus sleep. But boy, you know, the final exam is our sleep at night. We got to sleep now, like we want to kind of get out of that place. So that's a good place.

Should you just try to keep a journal next to your bed, Like, what's the best way to figure out if you're getting enough?

you're not getting enough sleep. There's something wrong with it. So I think all those modalities that you mentioned sleep diaries fitbit tracker. I'm wearing one that's made by Nokia, which I think is outstanding because it uses movement and some heart rate variability. All those things are great. You just need to understand sort of what they're built to do and what they're not built to do. But they're a great way. All of these things do such a

good job of keeping us honest about our sleep. I mean, I would go around tell people I'd get seven hours sleep at night, go bed around eleven o'clock, get up around six, which is such a lie. Like when I started wearing these, I wore several trackers on my arm for a month to see which ones were good and not so good, And then I did a sleep study of myself, and then last night wearing all of them to see how they compare to the actual sleep study.

And the thing I learned the most about that process was what a liar I was about my own sleep, you know, and not even knowing that. I'm not deceiving people intentionally. It's just that, yes, ideally I would like to go about eleven to get up at six, but my son swims, so he's got to get driven to

the pool early. Or Stephen Colbert looks really funny, So I'm watching some of his monologue and by the time you get the dog put away and I get some water and kind of get things, turn the lights out from my wife's fallen asleep on the couch, check on the kids. Oh god, check one more email, and you see what's going on here. It's closer to midnight or

even later sometimes. So I think those things do a very nice job of kind of keeping us honest about how much sleep are we really getting, And I think that can be a very valuable first step in terms of solving a problem. But I do think that there's a lot of questions you can know do you sleep well at home versus your girlfriend's place. Do you sleep better after a bunch of beers because you feel like

you do versus when you don't drink? And I think you know, posing a question to something like a fitbit can be really interesting. I'm really on an exercise kick. Look how my sleep looks now versus a few weeks ago before I started. Oh wow, it looks a lot more efficient. Or I seem to have more deep sleep,

or I fall asleep a lot faster. Generally, they work best when you're comparing data to itself, like your own data pre this sky, I'm dating post this sky, I'm dating pre this supplement, I'm taking post That's where it tends to work its best, I think.

to restless leg syndrome to sleep at me. There's a lot of things that happen at night that can't impair our ability to sleep.

we'll do sleep study to confirm it. Or sadly, in twenty eighteen, a lot of times this study is done because that's the only way you can get insurance to pay for something. They won't take the expert's word for it. They want proof that this person has narcillabsey. They want prove this person has restless like syndrome, even though clearly

from their story that's exactly what's going on. So not everybody who has a sleep problem needs a sleep study, And of the people who need sleep studies, many of them can be done in your own home with these little simple devices. So don't let that be a stopper in terms of getting help. But you know, when they're necessary, they can be incredibly helpful.

a bouquet of wires taped to your face. So if you want to start small, you can jot down the hours you sleep, of course, or you can try a sleep tracker. I bought my fitbit at bed, Bath and Beyond with one of those twenty percent off coupons that my neighbor left near the mailboxes for a week, and it's been a nice gaze into the underworld of my sleep issues. Now. Tune in next week for Part two, which features more remedies to your sleep issues. Patrons rode

in with over two hundred questions. We got to as many as we could. We covered sleeping pills, supplements, genetic factors in sleep, blue light making, good habits, stick alcohol to get you drowsy, sleepwalking, sleep talking, the best positions for snoozing, and of course my mom birthday girl, Nancy Ward's magic cure for insomnia that I use all the time when I've had too much caffeine or at seven, but I have to go to sleep to get out

for the airport. So all of that is next week, so make sure to come back the extra hour or so for part two. Could add years back onto your life now. Meanwhile, doctor Chris Winter is at sports sleep doc on Twitter and his book is called The Sleep Solution, Why Your Sleep is Broken and How to Fix It. And he also has a kid's sleep book that came out in twenty twenty one called The Rested Child. Why You're tired, wired, or irritable child may have a sleep

disorder and how to help. So just fyi, that's another book he's got. Now. You can follow Ologies at ologies on Twitter and Instagram. I'm Ali Ward with one L on Twitter and Instagram too. You can get a comfy ologies T shirt to sleep in at ologismerch dot com. Thank you Shannon Feltas and Bonnie Judge for so many great designs that are up. You can join the Ologies podcast Facebook group, which is just a haven for benevolent and curious nerds on Facebook. I love each and every

one of you in there. Thank you. Eric Talbert for admitting. Thank you to editor Stephen Ray Morris for losing sleep piecing this all together. Each week a Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote and performed the theme music. And now at the end of each episode, I tell you a secret, and this is part life hack in part you. But okay, so sleep masks always annoy me. They fall off, the velcrow gets stuck in my buffalo hair. And so a few years ago I started using a sock. You

take a knee high sock. Might have all been worn on my feet before. I just don't care. I wash them anyway. Take a knee high and you pin it in a big loop like a snake eating its bud. Put a safety pin in it, and then you pop that thing on your head and it stays all night. It is weird if you begin dating someone and you're like, good night, I'm putting this old sock on my face now. So if you're crafty, you could probably artfully sew it together. If you don't have knee socks, invest in a pair

wear them on your face. Bonus, if you lose one, you have a spare, and they're very machine washable. If you do this, please take a photo for me and tag it hashtag ology sock face. I promise to post one. Also also Hi, It's twenty twenty two. Ali Ward again, just saying thank you for bearing with these Encore episodes. The last couple weeks of my life have been maybe the hardest. On Friday, if you've been following along with what's been on with my family, my dad had emergency

brain surgery for a brain tumor. He also has some long tumors and some of the things that are not great. And on Friday, my dad's oncologists made the call that it is time for treatment to stop, and so we're just starting a hospice and which is why I'm whispering at my sister's dining room table. So while you listen to these Encore episodes, just know that you're just letting me have some of the most the most precious time of our lives. So we are spending time as a

family and just hanging out. And thank you for that, for being so patient and supportive and all that, and thank you for everyone who's been sending me sweet messages. Okay, go get some sleep. Okay, just go get some sleep.