On today’s episode, Matt discusses the concept of "catch-up sleep" and explores whether it effectively compensates for sleep deprivation during the week. The study featured in the episode focused on a group of participants who experienced short sleep during the week and attempted to make up for it with longer sleep on weekends. The findings revealed that despite the extra sleep on weekends, individuals were only able to recover 25% of their sleep debt. This highlights that sleep doesn't work lik...
Jul 03, 2023•21 min•Ep. 51
MW E50 Restless Leg Syndrome Summary: Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) is a neurological condition characterized by irresistible urges to move the muscles in the legs and arms, often accompanied by crawling, tingling, or burning sensations. A common sleep disorder affecting around 5% of the population, which translates to approximately 400 million individuals worldwide, its symptoms primarily occur at night, disrupting sleep quality and leading to fatigue. RLS is linked to genetic factors and iron de...
Jun 19, 2023•25 min•Ep. 50
Today, Matt explores the fascinating realm of nightmares and the cutting-edge treatment known as Image Rehearsal Therapy (IRT). Nightmares, often associated with rapid eye movement sleep (REM sleep), can disrupt sleep quality and emotional well-being. However, IRT offers a unique approach to tackling nightmares by helping individuals envision alternative endings to their recurring dreams. By modifying and rehearsing these alternative scenarios, individuals can update their nightmare memories wit...
Jun 05, 2023•17 min•Ep. 49
In today’s episode, Matt discusses the sleep disorder known as sleep apnea, focusing on its definition, prevalence, and the dangers it poses if left untreated. Sleep apnea is a breathing-related sleep disorder, with obstructive sleep apnea being the most common form. It occurs when the airway partially or fully collapses during sleep, leading to disrupted breathing and oxygen deprivation. Sleep apnea is alarmingly prevalent, affecting an estimated 12-20% of the population worldwide, with a highe...
May 22, 2023•27 min•Ep. 48
This week, Matt introduces a new segment called "Hot Off the Press," where he covers the latest and most exciting studies in sleep science. And the topic of discussion for this first installment is a great one: excessive slumber - exploring the questions of whether one is getting enough sleep and if there is such a thing as too much sleep. Listen in today to find out if too much sleep can be harmful in the same way that too little sleep is, whether or not there may be an upper limit to the benef...
May 08, 2023•24 min•Ep. 47
Matt returns with Dr. Craig Kanapari to discuss sleep in teens and how biological and hormonal changes occur at a young age, usually around 11-13. The most clear determinant of sleep duration in a teen is wake time, and enforcing a wake time inappropriate to the teen's natural sleep period can lead to insomnia-like symptoms and create conflict. The single greatest threat to a teen's sleep schedule is early high school start times. California recently signed a law to address this, and other state...
Apr 24, 2023•31 min•Ep. 46
Today Matt’s discussion with Dr. Craig Canapari continues, delving into the major changes in sleep that a child will go through from the ages of one to ten. This includes how regularity and appropriate sleep opportunities are important for getting good sleep, and potential medical issues that can arise from not getting enough sleep, such as snoring and restless leg disorder. They also discuss when during child development it can be wise to reduce napping and switch to monophasic (single nighttim...
Apr 10, 2023•24 min•Ep. 45
Today Matt’s discussion with Dr. Craig Canapari continues, as they delve into the science behind sleep training. Together they cover what it is and when it may be an appropriate technique. Dr. Craig Canipari provides an overview of the different methods of sleep training - ranging from simple bedtime routines, to extinction (also known as cry it out) - as well as some of the historical context behind the technique, and also the controversies and alternatives. It is such a personal choice, and di...
Mar 27, 2023•27 min•Ep. 44
Today Matt begins a new series all about sleep in infants, in kids, in teenagers, and in parents. He is joined by Dr. Craig Canapari one of the world leaders in pediatric sleep medicine. Dr. Canapari has also written a fantastic book on sleep for babies, kids and parents called, It's Never Too Late to Sleep Train . Enjoy the first episode in a new series, with some show highlights below! Please note that Matt is not a medical doctor, and none of the content in this podcast should be considered m...
Mar 13, 2023•39 min•Ep. 43
On today’s episode, Matt goes beyond the if and the what type of exercise to discuss the when. Which is to say, does the timing of exercise matter when it comes to sleep improvements? Based on his experience working on insomnia, Matt would previously have recommended avoiding mid-to-late evening exercise as the resulting rise in core temperature could harm your chances for good sleep. However, it’s since been discovered that the evidence is quite the contrary, mostly allowing us to abandon the m...
Feb 27, 2023•21 min•Ep. 42
Today, Matt focuses on how the type, intensity, and duration of exercise affect its impact on sleep. A study of middle-aged adults split its active group into three subgroups: moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, high-intensity aerobic exercise, and moderate-to-intense weight/resistance training. The groups performing aerobic exercise got more beneficial sleep effects, while surprisingly, the greatest improvement was in the moderate rather than the high-intensity group. These findings replicate ...
Feb 13, 2023•26 min•Ep. 41
This week, Matt goes deeper into the relationship between sleep and exercise. More specifically, does daytime exercise change the stages and types of sleep? Deep sleep is critical for various functions, so anything that can increase it is desirable. Older adults have an inherently difficult time generating deep non-REM sleep; however, a study showed that the amount can shoot up by 40% following a day with modest exercise. Moreover, it indicated that participants’ cognitive functioning was signif...
Jan 30, 2023•22 min•Ep. 40
Does exercise have an impact on the quantity and quality of your sleep? The National Sleep Foundation's annual poll found that individuals who exercised frequently (defined as three times or more a week) reported sleeping with a higher quality than those who exercised less than once a week. Exercise has also been shown to increase the release of endorphins, which can improve mood and promote feelings of relaxation, both of which can contribute to better sleep. As with most things, moderation is ...
Jan 16, 2023•23 min•Ep. 39
Almost every species will suffer catastrophic impairment in the brain and body due to total or chronic partial long-term sleep loss—save for a small handful of befuddling cases where lack of sleep does not cause devastating impairment. While humans are the only species that deprives itself of sleep for no adaptive benefit, there are rare situations where an animal will limit or go completely without sleep. Starvation pushes aside an organism’s need for sleep to forage more widely, while the need...
Jan 02, 2023•14 min•Ep. 38
The final installment of this series focuses on what happens inside your brain during deep, non-REM sleep that allows you to fixate new memories. There are at least two mechanisms at work here. One is a process of shifting information from short to long-term memory. Each night when you go into deep non REM sleep, those long range brainwaves of deep sleep are going to be moving packets of information, from that short term, vulnerable, USB stick-like memory reservoir (the hippocampus) to the safer...
Dec 19, 2022•18 min•Ep. 37
Previously, we learned sleep is necessary before learning to prepare the brain to learn effectively. But sleep is also needed after learning to cement new information in your brain. This discovery happened in 1924 when two German researchers pitted sleep and wake against each other to see which would win out in memory-savings benefit. Their findings suggested that time spent awake can be hazardous to new memories while time spent asleep has fixating benefits. Researchers have also put REM sleep ...
Dec 05, 2022•17 min•Ep. 36
It is a fundamental truth that sleep is far more than the absence of wakefulness. It is an incredibly active state, demonstrated by the fact that numerous functions of the brain and body are restored by and depend on sufficient sleep. One of the most impressive and best-understood of these is sleep’s beneficial role in boosting learning and memory abilities. Sleep is necessary both before and after learning and it intelligently associates and interconnects new memories together, offering the abi...
Nov 21, 2022•18 min•Season 1Ep. 35
It’s been said that sleep is the new sex, and rightly so—a good night of sleep is going to do many things for the vibrancy, intimacy, and vitality of your relationship. We know that when couples are not getting sufficient sleep, they have more conflicts the next day and won’t resolve them nearly as well. This is partly because underslept couples suffer a loss of empathy for each other. However, insufficient sleep also has an effect on sex itself. Specifically, your reproductive hormones suffer, ...
Nov 07, 2022•9 min•Season 1Ep. 34
A few years ago, a survey by the Sleep Council in England found that 1 in 4 people in a couple would get up during the night and go to another room to get a good night’s sleep. Following that, a report by the National Sleep Foundation in America demonstrated that almost the same number (25%) of couples admitted to sleeping in separate bedrooms. In fact, a more recent anonymous survey found that 30%-40% of couples sleep in different beds. Part of the societal stigma (and anxiety for individuals c...
Oct 24, 2022•14 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTI) can be split into at least five core components: 1) sleep restriction therapy, 2) sleep hygiene, 3) stimulus control, 4) cognitive restructuring, and 5) relaxation therapies. Sleep restriction therapy has been shown to be one of the most effective components of CBTI. It isn’t about restricting your sleep so much as limiting the amount of time you are allowed to spend in bed, and it aims to drive up the brain’s appetite for sleep, and promote long ...
Oct 10, 2022•27 min•Ep. 32
Very understandably, many insomnia patients try to self-medicate their condition with varied “sleep aids”. The tragedy us that most of them not only fail to help but actually make insomnia worse. Most common among these is alcohol, which hurts your sleep in at least three different ways: 1) it sedates your brain, rather than generating naturalistic sleep 2) it increases the frequency of nighttime awakenings and makes it harder to fall back to sleep, and 3) it inhibits REM sleep. THC also inhibit...
Sep 26, 2022•22 min•Ep. 31
Some of the first neurological-related discoveries about insomnia were made by placing healthy sleepers or patients with insomnia inside brain scanners, and measuring changes in the activity in different parts of the brain as they tried to fall asleep. In the good sleepers, three main regions of the brain started to shut down at sleep: 1) emotion-related regions, 2) basic alertness-generating regions, and 3) the sensory awareness gate of the brain. There were also changes in the functional conne...
Sep 12, 2022•20 min•Ep. 30
Today’s episode focuses on changes within the bodies of people suffering from insomnia. Almost all forms of chronic insomnia come with a significant psychological component, namely emotional distress and anxiety. This starts a Rolodex of anxiety spinning once you turn off the lights. This leads to rumination and catastrophizing, which will thwart any hopes of a good night’s sleep. Since psychological stress is one of the principal triggers of chronic primary insomnia, researchers went in search ...
Aug 29, 2022•23 min•Ep. 29
Today’s episode takes two questions as its subject: first, why does someone develop insomnia, and second, what adds gasoline to the sleep-disorder fire of insomnia and only makes it rage more powerfully? These are two very complex questions, but through lots of great science and wonderful scientists, we now have a conceptual model explaining how you may find yourself falling into the pit of insomnia. This is called the “3-Ps” model, and it consists of a three-step knock-on cascade of factors tha...
Aug 15, 2022•15 min•Ep. 28
There is no quick test that can determine insomnia. Instead, the diagnosis of clinical insomnia disorder is based on a set of clinical assessment and interviews. These center on three core features: 1) difficulties falling asleep, 2) difficulty staying asleep, or 3) waking up and not feeling refreshed by your sleep. Furthermore, to receive the diagnosis, you often have to be experiencing these things at least three nights per week; and having these issues for three straight months. One meta-anal...
Aug 01, 2022•16 min•Ep. 27
Today’s episode is the first in a 7-part series on insomnia. Matt starts with a calming reality—insomnia isn’t a single bad night or a string of bad nights of sleep. In the US, epidemiological studies have suggested that insomnia disorder is as prevalent as the obesity epidemic: around 10-15% of the population suffer from clinical-grade insomnia, making it the most common sleep disorder. Indeed, one out of every two people will experience insomnia during their lifetime. It is therefore very like...
Jul 18, 2022•20 min•Ep. 26
Today’s episode focuses on optimising your sleep. It’s designed for people who don’t have clinical insomnia but would like to fine-tune their sleep. Matt goes over five conventional tips, and five unconventional tips that may be new to you. The first tip is regularity—going to bed and waking up at the same time every day. Your brain has its own master 24-hour clock, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which expects regularity. Second is temperature—your brain and body need to drop their temperature for...
Jul 04, 2022•20 min•Ep. 25
Matt is back this week with his recurring series, ‘Sleep is Bloody Remarkable’. Today’s episode is all about why we are unique when it comes to sleep. When we compare our sleep to that of all other primates, humans stand out in two ways. First, we spend far less time asleep, and second, and in bloody remarkable 😂 contrast, humans get more than double the amount of REM sleep. Unlike many other primates, we humans are exclusively ground (or bed!) sleepers. In contrast, primates usually sleep arbo...
Jun 20, 2022•13 min•Ep. 24
In this episode, Matt goes deeper into his exploration of lucid dreaming. He tells us all about studies demonstrating that lucid dreamers can wake from dream sleep on command, demonstrating control over intention in their dreams, and even bring themselves to orgasm in dream sleep! Matt tells us about two leading methods for developing the skill of lucid dreaming. The first is Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams, which involves the creation of a conscious, deliberate intention to remember that one...
Jun 06, 2022•16 min•Ep. 23
In part five of his series on dreams, Matt discusses what lucid dreaming is and how it was scientifically proven to be real. We define lucid dreaming as the moment when an individual becomes aware they are dreaming. Historically, the concept of lucid dreaming was considered a scientific scam. First, to claim that people can gain conscious control over a normally unconscious process injects a heavy dose of ludicrous into the already preposterous experience we call dreaming. Second, how could any ...
May 23, 2022•14 min•Ep. 22
