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I was really excited when I heard that she has a class on master class with master class. You can learn from the best to become your best. It's the only streaming platform where you can grow and learn with over 200 of the world's top experts for just $10 a month. An annual membership with master class gets you unlimited access to every instructor, whether you're on the phone, computer, smartphone or even listening in audio mode. Master class fits right into your lifestyle.
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I don't know if I can say this. It's so gross. The children have stolen all of my underwear. So I'm wearing a bathing suit under my clothes right now. Look at this. I'm wearing a bathing suit because it was either this or commando. So that's my life. All my underwear's gone. I'm also wearing a bra from college. Like maybe we could buy ourselves new bras one day. Let's just record. Okay, but I you guys wearing a bathing suit. This is all real what happened to me this morning.
I'm a bathing suit. I'm comfortable. Hi, everybody. Welcome to we can do hard things. Today's going to be a challenge of whether we can in fact do hard things because the hard thing we're talking about today is sleep. Yes. I'm excited. I am trepidacious. Sleep is a word that brings up a lot of feelings for me because it's been a challenge. The word sleep even makes me feel a little bit. I think it's like an achy loneliness because
I'm trying to sleep and I can't sleep and everyone's sleep and I feel so anyway, I'm going to stay here. We are going to nail this. We're going to figure out how the hell to sleep. Today we have Dr. Shelby Harris who is a psychologist and sleep specialist who treats a wide variety of sleep anxiety and depression issues. Oh, girl, you are in the right place.
She is a columnist for the New York Times. She is author of the book The Women's Guide to Overcoming Insomnia. Dr. Harris can be found on Instagram at sleep. She is a book that provides evidence based information. Oh, that's nice about sleep wellness and sleep disorders. Welcome, Dr. Shelby. Oh, thank you for having me. It is such a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Your work is focused on, quote, realistic wellness, which I just like that already. I just like adding the realistic in there.
The first question to you is how much sleep wellness is realistic for women? Is it not much? This is going to be a short episode. That is a wonderful question. And I think the problem in the field is that for years, we were very focused in sleep medicine on sleep disorders. So people would come to us when they had issues with chronic insomnia, sleep apnea, narcolepsy, whatever it might be that it was really making a big problem in their lives.
And then we still do the sleep disorder stuff. It has taken the shift in the past like five to eight years towards this wellness idea. And I think it's almost overshot the mark too much where it's giving people this idea of perfection. Yeah. I mean, there are some people out there who are giving these sleep tips.
Their wake up times must be their like routines must be two hours long. And I'm thinking who the heck has time to do this to view the light at certain ways and certain times and to do all these things that is just not realistic for many people. So it's about doing certain things to help where you feel well rested and refreshed most of the day as often as you can and trying to make little gains wherever you can so that you can then kind of work towards improving your sleep longer term.
Do you see being a woman as a pre-existing condition for not getting enough sleep? I mean, I'm just going to start this by telling you and I'm not talking shit about Craig. We laugh about this story all the time, but I'll never forget being at a little neighborhood thing when the kids were very little. I was just like dripping with them. They were probably five, three and one. And I was listening to Craig talk to our neighbors. And one of the neighbors said, how are you guys sleeping?
And Craig said, well, you know what, I'm just really lucky because Glennon just doesn't need that much sleep. Oh my god. Oh, that's what they think. Yeah. Okay. But it's interesting. You know, actually when we look at research with women, women actually need a little bit more sleep. But we're not talking hours more, but they need a little bit more sleep than men and the sleep they get when they do actually sleep because then we have insomnia and all the stuff on top of it.
It's actually deeper than men. So this idea of women don't need as much. No, it's just because we're functioning on all different levels all throughout the night 24 seven. And you said it was being a woman of preexisting condition in a way and it kind of is. So there's hormone changes. Yeah. And we see for in kids, the rates of insomnia, especially or trouble sleeping for boys and girls is exactly the same until they hit puberty. Okay. Thank you for that.
Then it starts to become an issue. And so it can be around your period. Some women will start noticing that they're either having trouble with sleep or they're excessively sleepy. The opposite can happen. Then we talk about pregnancy, trying to get pregnant. There are a lot of people who are taking various hormones for fertility issues. That can impact sleep. Then once you're pregnant, there can be sleep issues. Then the baby comes. And then if you're breastfeeding, there can be issues.
Then we didn't even talk about parimenopause and menopause. So at various stages throughout the life for women, we do notice there are a lot of sleep issues. And then you throw on top of that to other big factors. So one is that we do notice there's more anxiety and depression in some women. And then finally, there's social and psychological stress or social stress is more so. So women are often having kids later in life.
And they're working more than they had before. So there's work. They're having kids later. So they're taking care of little kids. And then there's aging parents and family that they're taking care of. So it's a nonstop kind of firestorm of hormonal, psychological and social issues that really do factor in for women. Yeah. And I've noticed I want you to take us away from this sister because I promise I'm not just going to complain this whole time. But I talked to Shelby now that I have you here.
I also recently noticed that I've always had sleep issues and we'll get to that. But the little kid time you don't sleep for 10 years. But then I've been unpleasantly surprised by the fact that then when they become teenagers, I didn't realize then they just stay up so late or stay out so late. So then you're still up half the night. We just got married seven years ago. So she stays up now with them because I'm like, you missed the early years. So now this is your time to shine.
And actually, I think it's it's really interesting because I think Glenin has lack of sleep PTSD from the time that she was, you know, dripping with kids when they were really, really young. So she becomes crazy and angry elf in the middle of the night times. If in fact she does wake up because I think she has so much anxiety around sleep. Yeah, because she missed it so much. I don't know if that's something that you found totally a thing.
It's not an actual diagnostic term. But we, I would say it's more like a sleep anxiety. And I see this because I work with women so frequently that there's a almost like I don't want to go back to where I was. Yes, I want to go back to that. And so they almost become super. I mean, not saying you are, but some women start becomes hyper focused on their wine down routines. Very rigid about I have to have my arm in a certain way that pillows have to be a certain way all these things.
And then if they wake up in the middle of the night, you know, you're breathing too loud. Why do you do these things? And then it's this focus on anything that could be a potential threat to their sleep. So it's almost too rigid for some people. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have a fix for that? Okay. We'll get to that. Let's go for it. We promise not to eat this as marriage therapy. Go ahead. Well, all of that is basically like a survival instinct. Right?
If you are deprived, then you are like, this is a threat to my health and survival. I would love to dig into that because I think a lot of us think sleep is about not being tired when you're awake. And that sleep is for the purpose of not being tired. But evolution doesn't give a shit about us being tired. Evolution cares about our body's restoration and preservation.
Because all of those things you just discussed about like hormones. Okay. So when we're 11, we get our period suddenly first surprise you're fucked up now. Same with pregnancy, same with babies, same with Perry, men and pause and men and pause. So we're just on this hamster wheel of constantly being screwed up and we learn to live with that. But we really need to take account of it's not just about us being miserable and tired.
Can you say the things that happen during sleep about keeping us well and alive? And the bad things that happen to our health when we don't get it because it's bigger than not being tired. Yeah. And I think what you were just saying about sleep being a function to help us be not tired and not being sleepy during the day is such an important thing.
I have patients that are taking all these sleep aids not that it's a dissler bad thing if you have tried other things that's not working. But I have patients taking things and they're so sleepy during the day because of these sedating medications. Then like, what's the point? You're sleeping at night just so you turn your brain off. But if it's not helping to improve the quality of your life, is it really doing that much at this point?
Do you think they're using it just to avoid the scared loneliness? Potentially some people do. They just almost rather put myself out and skip over that scary lonely part of trying to fall asleep and feel like shit all the time then deal with that. So you don't have to be with the thoughts or whatever it is that this feeling that it brings you back to. But sleep is that thing that I always say we talk a lot about the pillars of health in our society, diet, exercise, sleep being one of them.
So I want to argue that sleep is the bedrock for health more so than being another pillar because what we find is when it comes to all the areas of functioning really sleep is the thing that keeps things going. So when we think about our memory, our mood, our quality of life overall, we think about cardiovascular risk. We think about diabetes, metabolic syndrome, how we heal from exercise, from the daily stresses of life.
It's super important for cognition, mental growth and physical growth. It really does inform so many things that we're doing in our lives. And if you're just focusing on, say diet and exercise to kind of live a healthier life and you're not focusing on sleep or at least trying to improve whatever sleep you have, then you're missing out on a big component of that because it's definitely going to impact all these other things.
Even things like sleep gets missed a lot when people are in treatment, let's say for depression and anxiety or even any medical issues. If you're not sleeping well, we know when it comes to outcomes for depression and anxiety treatment, especially that sleep helps to bolster those other treatments.
So I argue for some people that if you're feeling depression, anxiety and you're having trouble with your sleep, let's walk around your sleep first because it might actually give you better benefits with some of the other treatments that you're doing in your life. That's interesting. I just think it's so important because so we live in such a hyper productive in order to value anything. Yes. I have to know how I'm going to net out on it.
I think just understanding our bodies of like when you are sleeping in certain types of sleep, your body is actually mending the cells, like you are repairing yourself. It's like putting your computer to sleep and it runs the updates, like that is time that is productive and necessary for yourself to be asleep. And also there's like this huge correlation with people who don't get enough sleep do not have the same level of those like super cancer fighting things in our body.
Besides people who do get sleep, it is doing a thing y'all you need it. So it's always a fine line, right? Because we don't want to fear monger either because I'm running with you. Oh, my little advanced cancer fighting things. I think sleep is an important thing, but we have to also think about are we taking some of these things that we're finding and we're making it so broad in general.
I like to say you're going to get cancer because you're not sleeping or you're definitely going to get Alzheimer's, which is one of the things. Yes, they are, they definitely put us at greater risk, but it doesn't necessarily mean that other things you're not doing in life or doing aren't going to, you know, it kind of mixes together. But there are things like your immunity to certain things.
We do find that people who are sleep deprived even after one night might have more of a risk of getting a cold or might end up longer term developing certain kinds of cancer. So for example, people who work shift work aren't getting enough sleep. Some people who work shifts really struggle with that. We know that there's higher rates, for example, breast cancer, and we see those rates, but it's not all cancers.
So you have to be careful with that, but there are things that not getting enough sleep definitely impacts. So there's another thing. So when you go to sleep at night, we cycle through different stages of sleep. You have deep sleep, light sleep, and then you awaken, and the different stages are we call it stage three, which is this deep sleep. And then there's this middle level stage two that happens for a good 65% of the night or so.
And then we cycle with REM sleep throughout the night too. So a lot of people will say, I've got to get that deep sleep all night long. But the reality is you should actually have different percentages of the different stages throughout the night. So REM sleep is really important for emotion processing. We find that, for example, teenagers talking about teens in that late night, when they have to get up early to go to school, they, you're cutting off a lot of that REM sleep.
So a lot of that emotion processing that teens really need just to get through and to develop that's being cut off with early school start times for some of these districts. So we should let our kids sleep. We should let our teenagers sleep. Next time your kids are being an asshole, just send them back to bed. Yes, you need to get more room. And then the other thing is like that deep sleep. That's when you are repairing your muscles from exercise.
That's when kids tend to grow more. So it's really it's a smattering of different stages throughout the night as opposed to being focused on. You have to get more REM sleep or deep sleep or whatever it might be. It feels like such a beautiful focus that you're doing this. It just feels like in the world of women's health and wellness. Why is there no not a lot of focus here, but all of our focus on diet and exercise because those things are tied to how a woman appears.
Yes, they're tied to our worth and shit she can buy. Right. And sleep is about how we are actually how we are, which the world cares a lot less about. Yeah, yeah, there's the idea of you have to just kind of fake it for years on end. And then at some point kids are whatever will be will be grown and then you'll have time and you'll make it up later. But you know, and I also hear people say, well, you sleep when you're dead.
Oh, my dad is the same. That might happen sooner if you're going to sleep to pry yourself for years on end. But then like I was saying at the beginning, there's this kind of overshooting the mark of you have to be perfect with it seven nights a week. And I think for some people that actually makes their sleep anxiety worse that they're now actually getting less sleep because they're so worried about. You know, the perfection's the enemy of good.
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Can we talk about that sleeping anxiety because this is something I had never heard you talk about how the gold standard like all the research shows that cognitive behavioral therapy is the gold standard for treating insomnia. Which is fascinating to me because the way you speak about it makes it seem to me like it's a lot mental that insomnia is basically sleep problems that are caused by anxiety about sleep problems in some ways.
I know that's a crazy over simplification but can you talk us through that is all of this or a portion of all of these problems that we face are they essentially an oversimplified anxiety disorder like in a way because if cognitive behavioral therapy is going to help you with it suggests it's not a purely physiological thing that is arbitrarily assigned to you.
Right it's a little multifaceted and when we talk about cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia CBT I for the insomnia part currently as we're recording this now there's a big uproar in Europe right now in England because the new standards for menopause care have come out.
And one of the recommendations they have in there is CBT and people are saying well then you're saying all of menopause issues are all in their head and that therapy is going to fix it all and I think there's a big misnomer there so when it comes to insomnia treatment with CBT there's a piece of it that we might the cognitive part we might work with some people on that perfection that anxiety like if I'm only going to bed for seven hours I have to fall asleep fast because I need to get those seven hours otherwise XYZ won't happen or will happen tomorrow and I won't be able to function.
That's a piece of it for some people but for other people there are learned behaviors I'll sometimes say it's becomes an issue of common sense where they're going to bed either too early or they're trying to sleep in a lot of parents aren't able to sleep in but if they can or get the ability to or they take a nap and then some people start using alcohol or they'll use certain over the counter medications or prescription
meds or I don't know TTC whatever it might be to help them sleep that some of those behaviors or what they're doing in bed in the middle of the night maybe on their phones those are all things that are actually worsening it so sometimes it can be more of an anxiety issue for some people it's literally just no matter how hard I try I can't sleep more than four hours a night so it's
changing some of the bed times and wake times and some of the behaviors they're doing where it's really not as much cognitively focused.
Okay, that's helpful. So it is the dovetailing of the cognitive with the behavioral is where the magic happens exactly that cognitive piece I feel like happens in people like I don't suffer from insomnia thank you baby Jesus but I still have that thing where if I'm not falling asleep I do that in my head I'm like okay yeah so seven hours has now become six oh god now it's five oh god now it's for now I'm up for the rest of the night because I'm counting down and I'm so happy I'm not going to sleep.
I'm counting down and I'm so fixated on what I'm not doing yes it's like gone now mental math mental math at night the clock is just not good I always tell people get rid of your clock or at least have it so for an alarm but turn it around because looking at the clock just adds an extra level of kind of someone's watching me and I've got extra pressure and it's not going to make the time pass any different it's not going to change the outcome of the night all it can do is really make you put more pressure on yourself and when you put more pressure on yourself you get more pressure on yourself.
You get more tense and that actually is what can worsen sleep for a lot of people so it's some of the behavioral stuff and then it's also looking at you know if you ever notice that if you have a bad night it's not always a disaster the next day.
Yeah and then sometimes when you have a good night you still feel crummy the next day so it's not always a perfect prediction of what's going to happen either but we automatically go to the worst possible outcome at two in the morning which doesn't help.
Yeah, would there any other surprising findings to you in that new study that just came out about well it's not it's just the recommendations are all pretty good I mean they're pretty along the lines of what we have here in North America and it was just a draft it hasn't been finalized yet but the outcry of so many very well known menopause physicians saying therapy shouldn't be one of the recommendations I don't understand hormones work for a lot of people but they don't work for everyone so why not give another evidence space.
That we have actually good data on evidence based option to help people sleep better and help with their mood but people are just you know it was all in your head and then there's the stigma of going to therapy right and I don't for insomnia stuff I see people typically two to eight sessions that's generally what I do and it's not even weekly so people often thing to when they hear therapy or CBT they think this is going to be something that's months if not years on end when you think of therapy it's a very very short term thing.
So what do you do that's most helpful like if someone's listening right now and they can't get to CBT therapy for many reasons what is most helpful for somebody who's suffering from insomnia besides the get rid of your phone I need something besides get rid of your phone and caffeine and boost I don't right just just something else.
So okay so that's actually a really good point going in that you're bringing up is that sleep hygiene so one of my colleagues Rachel Maimber always talks about sleep hygiene which I love she says it's like dental hygiene so you're going to brush and floss every single day and that will help prevent a cavity but it doesn't are you doctor Shelby are you going to floss every day try.
But the idea is that it helps prevent insomnia but if you do like limiting the caffeine limiting screens all that sort of stuff but once you get a cavity a you're not going to stop brushing but you can't really brush a cavity away correct like you can't same thing with sleep hygiene so you want to limit alcohol limit the caffeine close to bed like all that stuff is goods the goods sleep habits but once it now tips from once in a while about night to routinely have a lot of time to do that.
So you're going to do routinely having bad nights no amount of like limiting screens is going to necessarily help fix that problem and that's the thing that gets put out there more often than not in the media and in books a lot of people like well you have to limit this and do this and that's actually not evidence based care for insomnia so when you're asking what do we do so sleep hygiene is important but it's not going to solve a problem like if you're drinking a two liter bottle of soda before bed that's got caffeine good luck I mean you got to fix those things but one of the biggest things I use is that you're going to have to do that.
But one of the biggest things I usually say to people is limit the time in bed and come up with a more consistent sleep wake time it's not perfect but do it as often as you can five nights a week if you're only sleeping let's just be generous here you're sleeping six and a half hours a night but you're in bed for eight hours maybe limit yourself to about seven hours it's more about quality over quantity because we get very fix it on that you have to get seven or eight hours a night or else all these things are going to happen I'd rather someone at first start getting six hours where they're falling asleep a little fast.
Falling asleep a little faster and fall back asleep faster than in bed for eight hours with kind of chunks throughout the night so limit and then trying to try and be a little bit more consistent with the bed and wake time.
And sometimes it's kind of weird but sometimes it goes if you're someone who tends to have a very busy brain if you spend a little less time in bed you might fall asleep a little faster because you're going to bed later and you might fall back asleep faster because your body is learning that has less time in bed so that you actually get into a deeper sleep once you fall back asleep.
Whenever I hear the sleep thing and people are just like just stop drinking caffeine it makes me feel like it's equivalent to you know people giving women financial advice where they're like just stop having your latte. No matter what a woman's problem is the answer is just stop drinking coffee like it's the one thing that we live for that keeps us going.
It's like when I was an elementary school I would come to the clinic and be like my stomach hurts and I'd be like here's your ice pack it's like stop drinking coffee is the like here's your ice pack for women you know but really when I have historically been laying in bed it's because I feel like I've the weight of the world in my brain.
Like everyone it feels like other people could sleep because they're not spinning the mental load of the entire world is there some parts of this like sleep problem yeah that is about gender inequality.
Oh a huge piece of it huge piece and I think that's also what's getting missed as well and in the kind of discussion I think there are a lot of men out there who are writing about sleep who don't necessarily have the same perspective not to say that it's not a valid perspective on their end but it doesn't speak to a lot of people and it doesn't speak to a lot of the patients that I work with.
I think the spinning brain and that that kind of mental load that a lot of women take on it's very hard to let go of in the middle of the night there are things that we try to do meditation being one thing not in the middle of the night I actually have people meditate during the day to help get a little bit better at recognizing when because sometimes people get so deep in the hole of doing it in the middle of the night it's hard for them to recognize that they started going in the hole.
If you can just kind of start to be a little bit better at saying nope not now that's for tomorrow. By doing daytime meditation can make it a little bit easier to softly kind of change the focus it's just finding five minutes during the day for some people can be really a challenge.
If I were a psychologist if I was a marriage therapist I know everyone's trying to figure out how do we actually transfer the mental load like people have finally figured out that you know it's not fair and a couple for one person to be carrying all the mental load.
But everyone's trying to figure out then how do we actually pass half of it over I would suggest that every time the person who carries the mental load is trying to fall asleep and they're thinking of all the things that they just constantly wake up the other person and then they go also this and then they that the person's like oh that's our mental and they keep going also this just like all night forever until the mental load is evenly distributed.
So that would work correct I think that's part of it it feels so overwhelming to carry it and then 2x overwhelming to get it out of your head and to make the invisible visible and so I think that's a really good strategy actually I do.
I do. Glenn it doesn't just have to be at night I think yes any time putting in the extra work at the beginning to make that invisible visible I mean if you have a whiteboard house huge white have a piece of paper on the refrigerator every time that something comes to you you're writing it down you can create a shared reminder and notes app on your phones that you literally have a tally of shit.
Yeah it's the best I haven't done it with Glenn it yet I've just started to do the reminder app myself I just scream things from the basement and also don't forget but that's a big thing I'm a huge fan of just to do this or things that have to get done and I love the shared app to I like we use various different apps for that sort of thing with with families and with couples because it helps to share that load but also to do list in general can be something like what has to get down.
Tomorrow because these are other things that we think about prioritizing right what has to get done tomorrow what would we like to get done tomorrow what do others want us to do tomorrow like to really think about it and really get a little bit granular with it so that it's not just spinning and well but just share it a bit I wouldn't recommend waking up the other person
because then you're both going to suffer within saw me and then that's not going to go unless they're non-compliant yes if they're non-compliant that's what they get all right there you go you're spinning with me brother this is why it's not a fact it gives it a home it doesn't have to swirl in my head because now it lives on that list that will exist tomorrow yes similarly like the reason the meditation is happening during the day you say is to build that muscle yeah so that when it comes up at night and you can remind it
it's okay love you're doing such a great job carrying all the things thank you for that and also that thing you just said it exists already in that list we're thank you for reminding now I'm going to write it down on that list and now you can go in the cloud bubble and float away I get that that makes sense to me because that is a skill that has to be practiced like I buy because during the day when I'm
meditating I am learning how everything can be ridiculous and there can be so many things going on to do and I still am able to put that aside yes for this time that is a skill that is required for sleep that you can practice in meditation because more so with women but not always some people come to me they just say I can't turn the volume down on my brain it's just out of it you know to attend it feels like it's
like it's an 11 so it's just they can't turn it down and that's where meditation really is useful and a lot of people use meditation they'll use like these apps and they'll listen to someone that's talking very quietly and then they'll try to fall asleep to it and that's fine for some people but you're not actually meditated that you're not getting the skills like going to the gym and doing like a bench press and falling asleep in the middle of it you're not getting the
work out of it so doing that work during the day will make it easier to soften in the middle of the night because the stakes are just they feel so much higher in the middle of the night so do it in a lower pressure environment during the day and it can actually really really help but it's the sort of thing where you know some people will be like limit caffeine okay stop you might notice a difference
after two days meditation unfortunately doesn't work that fast yeah they have to be patient with it to put the work in it's for days yeah for days I would know but seriously how long I usually tell people when it comes to the sleep stuff I usually tell them to really commit to it for a good month at least okay it's it's a skill and you know in the thing too is that some people I have so many patients that just want to learn meditation from the apps that are out there
like 10 minutes long and I'm like why are you doing 10 minutes like and the goal is not to focus the whole time the goal is recognizing when your brains wondering yes and saying back on track back on track so a minute yeah don't do 10 and then slowly build yourself up to whatever you have time for you know people say what's the
amount of time to meditate for it's whatever you have the ability to do because it shouldn't be adding extra stress to your life but I would argue if you cannot find 5 minutes in your day to meditate and to just sit and even be with your breath then we need to really think about where you're losing that time and other parts during your day
meditation is like sleep workout yeah so I'm a huge proponent of sleep I have all the gadgets and gizmos of funny and I've tracked my sleep I've been doing it for years and I find it to be like super helpful because I've been tracking so much of my bodily heart rates etc for 20 years and what's interesting for you every day that you meditate you have a good night sleep I hate to freaking admit that that is probably right but I'm sure that's probably
interesting because like you're kind of a pose and I don't think that the sleep tracking devices are for everybody yeah and I totally agree and understand that but I I kind of track your sleep I know you don't I don't want to know the scores though because I feel like I'm too impressionable so if my scores as you're not ready for the world I'll be like oh I'm down out yeah but I think what my I guess my question is especially
talking about insomnia and some sort of sleep anxiety would you recommend sleep devices or aids in this way to those kinds of folks because I do think that the world is trying to sell us I buy into it it really helps me personally and the personality that I am but would you recommend that to like patients that come in that you see no so seriously that's by my colleague Kaleigh Glaser Baron who coined the term orthosomnia years ago it's like a legit thing that I see in my practice all
the time it's that people will I when I someone's coming to see me I am old school like I have a paper sleep diary that I've been using for over 20 years now in my practice and I just want someone not to look at the clock just to guesstimate that's all I want so how do you think you slept how many hours do you think you
were up for last night and some people will not even pay attention to that and just send me there like ring or watch data that's it and I said no no no I don't want that because then like you are saying but I mean you're very impressionable so even if you think you slept okay if some watch tells you you didn't or you didn't get a certain stagia sleep which we even know that those trackers are good for amount of sleep but not so great for staging as we like and
compares to a sleep study it still can make you then put extra stress on you but that being said I think the trackers are wonderful for people who just have a curiosity or the flip side who just don't make sleep a priority they could sleep fine or sleep
more but they're burned in the candle both ends are they're up watching TV all night or they're having a lot of alcohol and they just want to see what the actual data says where they might be able to make changes but a lot of times the changes that it's
recommending for someone with insomnia aren't things that are going to help it typically for a lot of people so it just makes the focus on it worse so I would actually say get a paper sleep diary I have one on my website you can get them consensus sleep diary you can
get them anywhere online everyone in my book just paper and pencil right love try to meditate during the day and then wake up in the how do I think I slept last night and that can be your data it doesn't have to be human yeah it feels human I would like to
keep this thing that I'm wanting to make my let to be more human I would like to keep that human I would like to avoid finding myself in a sleep cult yeah and like once again looking at numbers and buying things and like waking up and now I'm in sleep rehab
because I'm addicted to sleep whatever like I mean I'm kind of joking but not really like when you say wellness can be just another freaking fundamentalist religion yeah agreed and I think you know there's something to be said for the fact that we were able to sleep for many years before
any of these trackers right I'm curious so just by listening to you knowing that women are having harder time sleeping than men for all of these reasons it feels like there has to be some underlying issue or some thing that we haven't researched yet is there more research being done now that will uncover I don't know silver bullet sort of fix for what issues we see with women sleeping in some is one of those things where it really can vary
based on the person so with women specifically talk about right women in like taking on too much I was nine months pregnant when I signed my book deal because I was like oh I'll have time to write it I'm returning it's my second I know what I'm doing stupid so like sleep when the baby sleeps you're just going to write when the baby rights
I mean she's right we all do these things right I should I should have known better but I didn't so yeah I think when I was writing the book in 2015 there was not that much research being done on women in sleep there were a few studies out looking at CBT for insomnia is one treatment for women who were going through primal pause and some modifications for women who had just had babies or during pregnancy but there really wasn't much so they're starting to research it more
look at different ways whether there's been more research coming out with kind of a mindfulness based approach to insomnia so kind of building on the CBT stuff but using more mindfulness there's been more stuff now looking at hormones for women at various stages it's just been an area we're looking at sex differences hasn't been something that they've done very much unfortunately
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We're also looking a lot of couples sleep to there's some really great researchers out there who are looking at when should you sleep together versus when should you actually just say we've done everything we can should we just sleep a part at this point to kind of values
the sleep divorce situation yeah you talked about sleep divorce and i'll tell you to set you up that this is a very personal thing for us that we are really struggling with this yeah like i think that sleep is probably our biggest now it is challenge we just I just want to tell you what we do we have a bed we have a bed right on my so far so good good like every night i have a fan that is like blasting in my face for the noise and the whatever i have ear plugs that i put in my ear i have
I'm asking that i put over my i feel like i'm like an a robot that's like shutting herself down like one sense at a time Abby on her side has this white noise that is so loud that it so we have two white noises going we zigzag which means every night we're like are you zigzagging or my head is at the foot of the bed or we keep our foot our heads at different sides of the zigzag yeah well why do you do that yeah because then the snoring will be further from my head
oh okay it's very emotional like we don't want to be in separate beds because that feels so scary that feels like the beginning of something or like it's a slippery slope and Abby feels really strongly about not yeah but it's very hard like every night for someone who already has a hard time going to sleep worrying about snoring the actual snoring the worrying about the snoring being probably worse than the actual snoring yes i have a lazy tongue
so i'm trying to sort that out i'm working out my tongue one night therapy and stuff yeah i mean one night she had tape over her mouth like she's tried every tick-tock answer she's taped her mouth shut so i'm like good night yeah just for folks who think that Glennon is like instituting abuse with the tape over the mouth this is like a thing mouth breathing versus the nose breathing nose breathing is way preferable to the mouth breathing
this is not the tape was my idea let's not mount up with any of this i do a bunch of things so so where do i start so the mouth taping thing i don't you like in sleep medicine more standard care we don't recommend it
right off the bat because unless you have been fully evaluated because a lot of people are doing that and they have sleep apnea or some sort of like subthreshold or upper airway resistance issue they're actually not helping the problem and could be making it even worse so we always say you have to get evaluated potentially do a sleep study which can be at home a lot of times it doesn't have to be in a lab so people often think they have to get wired up right off the bat they don't so we always
try to do that first but like if someone snoring a lot at night i want to make sure that that person has been evaluated and they're doing everything that they can to try and help with the snoring that's that's going to help not hurt but then the other side of it is also sometimes like you were sanglins that sometimes you might be more sensitive to the idea of it being an actual issue than it actually is an issue so sometimes there's more of an underlying insomnia that if we just get you sleeping
a little bit deeper and having fewer awakenings in the middle of night sometimes working on that person's insomnia can make them sleep through those issues a little bit more and then if you've both worked on those issues and you've really done as much as you can that's when that idea of
sleep divorce so my my colleague Wendy Troxel has done a lot of research over the past 10 15 years in this area and it really what we do find is that when people are making a she calls it and I love this term a sleep alliance because that's not a matter i hate that's not so much better oh it's
terrible sleep divorce because it just has that connotation that it's going to ruin your marriage when when in research we actually find and just working with patients it actually brings them closer together because you're valuing one another's health and if you allow for fair and separate
sleep environments so it's not like one person's getting relegated to the couch and has a hard line of sleep you have separate areas that you sleep in where you're comfortable but you spend time having intimacy you do whatever you want to do to to cuddle or whatever have sex before bed
that's the time that's really key and then when it's actually time to roll over and go to sleep you go to your separate environments and some people it's not even just the snoring or moving a lot at night or whatever it might be some people have just different sleep schedules that they like some
people are night out and the others are an early bird and it can cause more resentment in the relationship so if you make an alliance and a plan together it can really actually help people in the long run but I always encourage people you know to try various things first and it can also be
I would I would if you haven't done it see about in your house sleeping apart a few days here and there and right do you still sleep as well go on and do you still wake up and listen for sleep no like when we do sleep in different places we sleep really well she sleeps so much better
because she's so the most thoughtful person on earth so she's constantly worried about me and like she's waking up herself up constantly jamming a pillow under my jaw to close my mouth yeah I'm it's I like the sleep alliance phrasey I like I'm like such a fear of abandonment person
and so it feels like such a scary process to even begin with but just listening to her talk makes me feel like maybe you're just like a sleep alone kind of person 100% I'm a sleep alone kind of person some people are some people are okay and then another another way that some people
instead of making this hard and fast world that we're going to sleep separate or we'll sleep together it could be just a few days a week like you can have a schedule so you know that this might be a little bit of an easier night for me versus another night but then you feel like you've
kind of met in the middle a little bit but it really it come up with a plan together can really make it a lot more freeing and let go of some of the resentment that some couples feel this is very interesting when she's talking and saying the sleep alliance thing and I can feel in my body
like you listening to her and shifting your thoughts about it the relief it's bringing me is so real when we watch the crown and Queen Elizabeth goes to her own bed and then she just tucks herself in at night and then the king leaves I'm like so jealous of Queen Elizabeth yeah it's
that idea you know I mean I love that show but it's the idea of like sleeping together is the benchmark of a relationship in some weird way and it what we didn't always sleep together either right there were many new it's a new news phenomenon it's a new phenomenon people slept together
often because of just limited resources or for because of heat right when you think about many hundreds of years ago and then it was considered to be almost something that people who had a lot of wealth would sleep apart because they had the extra rooms they had the extra space and they
would do that and then sleeping together has now become this thing again of you know that's the benchmark of where you are in relationship but there are plenty of couples that are not happy that are sleeping together and there are plenty of couples that are super happy that are sleeping apart
and I think there's also this idea and psychology that's not necessarily always practicing evidence based medicine where we just say you have to sleep together like I've had debates with old supervisors and graduate training who said you have to have your your couples sleep together and
I would say why based on what and what I was saying early we know from the research that if you make an alliance and you choose to sleep apart on whatever that means few nights a week whatever it actually can bring people closer together I would say this I am happy to explore this route
but one thing that would feel important to me is to for me not to be the one that always left totally like that I got to sleep in bed a couple of nights that's funny I don't even picture that way when I picture it not that I've ever pictured it Dr. Shelby but if I were to have pictured it
I always picture myself not being in there that's weird I know maybe I always feel like I'm the one who wouldn't meet it so I would but I don't just so you know I don't picture it that way yeah we also have a French bulldog which is also very snory so me and honey get I didn't bring her up to Dr. Shelby because I don't want anyone telling us not to sleep with honey and I know that's the first most obvious thing is a mixed bag like I grew up with dogs like yeah it's if you're pet if you
love it your pet your pet is not causing any issues for you in the melanchine you're not bothered by it fine but bulldogs bulldogs sleep at the end snoring bulldogs if it's causing an issue for you and you really want to do something better than you gotta think about that she's only going to be alive for like five more years so I'm just like this is like my little baby years so I tried taping her mouth I actually have to put my finger in her mouth to like move her tongue around a little bit
oh you both have lazy tongues we do I don't want to not talk about revenge scrolling because this is something my sister does I don't know do you still do this is see is this a thing for you revenge bedtune what is revenge I changed my habits it's a revenge nighttime procrastination
where you're stealing your day back out of resentment that you have no part of your day that is just yours and using it to scroll at night for several years and feel really shitty about yourself after yeah is that what a lot of us are doing because that would a lot of us are doing that right we
feel like yeah only time we have talk about the crown right like I gave us what three episodes it was very hard for me to like stop watching those three episodes and go to bed because I got sucked into it so revenge bedtime procrastination is it's a newer term for an age old problem like I
wrote about it in my book I called it mom saw me because it was a woman's kind of book but it's an issue that we've had for years and the idea is that you're so busy during the day that you just want to steal back some time for yourself before going to bed and it's a hard thing for some people
to overcome but I do we do know that if you're really sleep depriving yourself more times than not than you're spinning the wheels more often during the day you're actually less effective at doing the things you need to do during the day but then you feel like you need to steal back even more time
at night so I encourage people one of the simplest tips that I encourage people to do is if you're watching shows like I did and I hadn't turned it off on my phone here it's like on Netflix or any of the auto stream or the streaming services they usually have like auto play so if you turn off
that function it makes you make a conscious decision as to whether you're gonna then go into the next episode of the crown or you're just gonna let it automatically start for you because then once it's already started you're sucked in so something simple like that to just give you that little
slice to say okay do I am I choosing sleep or am I choosing to actually just watch another show that I really like and I think it's like once in a while doing these things is fine if you've had a really hard day and you're up really late you're doing a million things like right now with all the activities for my kids like a lot of us are just sucked into all that stuff that once in a while it's nice to get home and to just catch up on something and just kind of taking a rest yeah just don't
make it make it the exception not the normal people it's also think about what are you consuming like some people are just like doom scrolling on their phone all night long that's helpful so putting like an alarm on your phone there are even apps for some people really struggle with it there are apps that will shut everything off on your phone and that can be really effective for some people so you really have to be thoughtful about how you're consuming the media I like that just something
that shuts it all down after your bedtime like you you have lost your privileges yeah make decisions about this stuff but I do caution because some of that stuff will use a password and then I'll have like someone give the password that they don't know to like a significant other and then it creates
this tension where like you have you know you're the one who can unlock my phone and I don't do that don't go down that road yeah do you know my solution to that which I found very helpful is because I agree with you it's not just the amount of minutes or hours you're doing it it's the substance
of what you're consuming it's like if I'm and then I've seen three horrendous crises that have happened and people and now I'm thinking about those people who happen and and it's so what I have switched it to but I like my little treat Alice and our team would call it a TR I really like a
little TR at the night that's just for me and so I have switched it to now I do the New York Times game section but I intentionally don't subscribe to the you can have as many games as you want because then I'd be doing 15 wordles so now I just do there's like you know the little mini daily
cross crossword the wordal thing the connections wonderful the whatever the one where you make the words in the box and that takes me like I don't know however many minutes that takes me and I'm like well it's all gone now goodnight moon that's amazing how long does it take you how long does it take
you I don't know only on Sundays or is that every day every day it's like a matter of it's like great good at games really it takes me just a couple of minutes for me I would get more frustrated so like it's a little trial and error too people always ask like what's the ideal
wind down time word the thing that I should be doing is like if Vigorys based on every single person yeah so if games and puzzles do it for you and you don't get sucked into it and you can have a nice limit for yourself all for it yeah it's fine what works for you to me that sounds like let
me just real quick give myself five more problems before I go to bed yeah and you know so in social media that's giving you 27,000 more problems because now you're about to decide my kitchen look like shit and her and why are those people dying and what can we do about it and what is that you know
it's all problem but I think what we're talking about here too not even just revenge bedtime stuff but it's really about to like people villainize the blue light it's not great but it's not as bad of an issue as everyone makes it sound like so you want to try and stay away from your
phones and your screens within like ideally an hour before bed but I mean the reality is that I want to go on my phone once in a while and so you have to be thoughtful about what you're consuming I stay away from social media I stay away from like when all these things are I mean there's always
bad stuff going on the world but I try to be thoughtful about saying okay is this gonna change what I'm learning about right now is it still going to be an issue in the morning that I can learn about yeah try to be thoughtful like I have all these 20 year olds that want to watch the
office right now right before bed or a friend those two shows yeah it's great it's it's Creek it's not gonna upset you it's not the abaking show I love abaking show you guys what do you guys look at on social media my social media she she has pictures of videos I've got
what that's the real answer that's the way to answer folks to all of our life problems you asked about the silver bullet what is the algorithm media what is the algorithm we're them feeding you yeah exactly like I'm watching like these inspiring stories yeah because you're a genius it's
it's the rich get richer and the anxious get more anxious because of algorithms like if you are an anxious person you are looking at things that bring you anxiety and then your entire algorithm is things that make you if you're folks look see getting yourself in I seek good I know you seek
fainting goats and shit I love the fainting goats oh my god yoga uh those are my faves or puppy yoga get out of here okay I need to start looking at that so I can feed the algorithm yeah just look at like one or two of those videos early on in your session like three times in a row and then it just sets you up for success I mean like we're saying I'm having interest on fainting goats yeah I mean between like sleep stuff insomnia and whatever all their sleep stuff and like great British bakeoff
kind of video yeah yeah yeah so be thoughtful about like if your feed is not giving you that stuff it's probably not and the problem with social media is it's meant to be addictive so it's just scrolling endlessly so it's not actually giving you like a stoppoint because it wants you on
there longer so you have to be thoughtful about that too yeah everybody who has a phone right now just speak into it highland mini cows oh my god you guys the cows highland mini cows if we had one extra room in this house we would own a highland mini cow live to see what we do with your sleep
to have a wild animal in your house oh my god I want to farm I would love to get to some super practical things for people in the last period here where obviously if you have insomnia yeah you are aware of it there isn't getting around this but what are like the three ways that people
would be able to notice signs in their lives if you're just not getting enough sleep yeah like how would you notice it in your life so is it enough not getting enough sleep because of a sleep disorder and then one other thing we didn't even mention is like sleep apnea and women gets under diagnosed
and misdiagnosed so often and things like restless legs during pregnancy and perimenopause I have that terribly myself like these things just get missed because there's this idea that you have to be this older man who's overweight and you know snoring really loud and women it's not usually snoring
really loud that's happening so there's a lot of these things that can really influence sleep so if you're not getting enough sleep is it because of you burning the candle and not getting enough or is it something else that's getting in the way so that's always the first thing that I like people to
try and figure out if you're doing everything you can and it's just not working that's when you want to go see a sleep specialist for sure there's other things though could be signs that you're not getting enough sleep and you're just not making time for it or you're not making it a priority
and that could be one of the biggest things is like how fast do you fall asleep at night and this is something that usually surprises most people but it should take you at least five minutes or so to fall asleep I can't believe people can fall asleep in five minutes that's insanity that's so
jealous she's saying at least at least five minutes so a lot of people I work with will say well my significant other the minute that my bed partner heads their head hits the pillow they're out cold that actually is not always a great thing it should take a few minutes to fall asleep because that
would suggest they're not getting enough sleep or the quality of it's not great are you always sleeping in more than two hours on the days off that you can or on the weekends if you're doing that then that suggests that you probably need more sleep so those are two of the bigger signs that
I like to have people kind of point to yeah I'm amazing my sleep latency that's a word for the time that takes you to fall asleep sometimes it's 30 minutes you believe like you're like you can tell when I go into my sleep breath I actually give Glennon like a 45 minute head start so she goes
to sleep and I sit on my phone for 45 minutes she watches Calvities Highland Calvary videos and then I'll go to sleep sometimes she hasn't even fallen asleep yet but it sometimes takes me 30 minutes so it's like yeah I think you also have like sleep jealousy I do yeah I've sleep bitterness sleep
jealousy sleep anxiety what about menopause like the night sweats what the hell is that like and also did you just say restless leg syndrome is part of yeah man because my legs can't help it more yeah during that time I we see it a lot during pregnancy and we see it a lot more during just hormonal
changes in women so that is something and I've noticed like I'm I've gotten deeper into paramanopause my legs are just on fire some nights and it can make it harder for you to fall asleep and it doesn't have to be the name can be a misnomer so it doesn't have to be just your legs it can
be your limbs so it can be your arms like some people just feel their trunks like they're just restless and the only way you feel better is by getting up and moving around sometimes it's as simple as it just an iron deficiency and getting tested for that can really help and then you
take supplements if your doctor's okay with it and then sometimes there are other treatments that we'll do but it's it gets missed a lot in women in women and women I think often just are told you're just anxious of course you're just hormone don't worry about it but there are actually legit issues that can be treated so what were you asking about paramanopause in general?
Well when they go to their doctors yeah okay so right now they've listened to this hour they feel like there's something that should be done or couldn't be done about their sleep issues what do they say to their doctors so that they're not just dismissed as anxious women yeah
you're the expert on yourself you know if there is a change or if it just doesn't feel as if your sleep doesn't feel restorative if you're feeling like you're just not getting enough sleep and you're dragging through the day you are the person who knows yourself best and if your doctor
doesn't ask you simple questions like well what time are you going to bed what time are you waking up what happens in the middle of the night do you snore if they're not asking you any of those questions and they're just quick to say it's anxiety or just write you a prescription I would urge
you to find a different doctor who's going to take it seriously because we have so many wonderful treatments for sleep disorders whether it's behavioral medications psychiatric when it comes to anxiety there are so many areas hormone treatments there are so many areas that we have that you
should not suffer in silence and that's what I think a lot of women are doing it's starting to change but you shouldn't have to fight to get a sleep study if you think you're snoring or you're having any pauses and you're breathing throughout the night and you're falling asleep. In terms of blood work or genetic methylation tests like do you recommend any kind of testing
for anybody who's having any sleep disorder issues? When it comes to like some of the genetic tests there's not so much that we would do with it that would be any different than if we know that you have a sleep disorder so the kind of gold standard for most people is if you feel like something is
off you would go and sleep a sleep specialist and if it's say they suspect any sort of apnea or thrashing in the middle of the night then they're going to do a sleep study a sleep study will usually give us most of the information that we need based on it can be other things there can be like when behavior disorder people acting out their dreams in the middle and not even knowing it.
So a sleep study is usually the thing that will tell us and like I was saying there are depending upon the issue that you're presenting with sometimes it can be a simple home sleep study I mean people are really scared to go to a sleep center but some of the sleep centers like here in New York
there's a few sleep centers that use something called a watchpad which is wonderful it's literally a watch with a pulse ox on it and that's the the general sleep study it's looking more at your breathing but if we think that there's more going on then you might have to sleep in a lab that has
like an EEG on it and other stuff so we can look at it on a more holistic scale. I have a question and it is you've mentioned how like this eight hour thing gets drilled into us so much that it gives us anxiety is it true that each person has their sleep need that is specific to them that is it
true that some people they're optimal amount of sleep for their function is five hours and other people it's 11 hours and if that's true how do we find out what that number is with a number what I need yeah so that yes I can't remember what colleague of mine says this but they say it's
like sleep need is like shoe size so everyone has a different shoe size but we all tend to vary or kind of congregate around similar kind of areas that's where that's seven to nine comes from that's why people say eight is because it's literally in between seven to nine most people
between seven to nine but that being said there's some people that do a little bit better with less there's some people who do better and need more like I actually am closer to eight and a half sometimes even nine hours and my husband needs less than I do to really feel he can't even sleep
more if he tries now to figure out what that number is there's two different ways that I recommend people to do it one is a little bit easier than the other but one way that's really great is if you have a week off and you don't have to get up for any reason you don't have like you can go on
a vacation or do whatever in your house go to bed at your usual time and this is where a paper sleep tracker is great so you go to bed at your usual time and then you go to sleep and you just record the time that you naturally wake up without an alarm clock in the morning and do that for
ideally a week and then look at days four five six seven and see what you were naturally getting on those days the first few days we usually use as a throwaway because you're probably a little sleep deprived that you're catching up so average it out four five six seven those days that's
probably if you felt well rested and refreshed most of the day you have a dip here and there that's probably your sleep need the other way to do is to kind of come up with your routine that you're already doing and then every few days increase either your wake time or your bedtime by
about five ten minutes and then when you start to notice things fall apart that's probably where you got a little too greedy and you kind of go back to whatever the number was and that's probably your sleep need cool so I was listening to my friend Adrienne Marie Brown talking on her podcast
recently and she was talking about her sister and she said her that whenever she thinks about her sister or any of the women in her life that she loves so much her blessing or wish from them is always just let her rest just more sleep just let her sleep let her sleep and I actually turned it
off and just like sat with that for a minute because that is so true like that's what we want for each other it means so much it's literal it's a metaphor it's everything so much but that is my wish for everyone listening to the podcast right now all of you I just wish you more sleep and more
rest and I thank you doctor Shelby for being part of the sleep revolution for pure old women thank you for this hour you can do hard things and we'll see you back here next time bye if this podcast means something to you it would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take
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Alison shot Dina Kleiner and Bill Schultz I give you Tish Melton and Bradley Carlisle to believe that I'm the one for me and because I mine I walk the line my This is they've never been To be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home Through the joy and pain That our lives bring
We can do a heartache I hit rock bottom it felt like A brand new star I'm not the problem sometimes Things fall apart And I continue to believe The best people are free And it took some time But I'm finally fine Because we're adventurers And heartbreak's a map A final destination with that
We stopped asking directions So places they've never been To be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home Through the joy and pain That our lives bring We can do a heartache This is the end of the day We're all in the same place We're all in the same place
We're all in the same place We're all in the same place This world finished our hours And heartbreak's a map We might get lost But we're only left And we stopped asking directions So places they've never been To be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home Through the joy and pain That our lives bring We can do a heartache Yeah, we can do a heartache Yeah, we can do a heartache