Business Innovators Radio - Sleep Disturbance Secrets Revealed

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Nothing feels quite as nice as waking up after a great night of sleep. And on the flip side, nothing wrecks a day like not getting enough rest. Knowing that solid sleep can’t be beat, is there a way to set yourself up for sleeping success?Establishing and maintaining proper sleep habits is a key to quality sleep on a regular basis. Dr. Dan and Angela dive into the best ways to establish and support healthy sleep, why sleep is important for not just feeling well but healing well, and what to avoid that might be causing sleep disturbances throughout your day and night. Tune in today and don’t lose another minute of sleep over these health secrets that will set you up for sweet dreams.To learn more about this and other hot health topics, follow us on social media and subscribe to our WTH podcast. If you have a specific health question or would like to find out if we can help you with a personal health challenge, check out our office page or contact us at 412-369-0400/ [e-mail]. As always, our mission is to help you Get Healthy and Stay Healthy for a Lifetime!What the Health?!https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/what-the-health/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/sleep-disturbance-secrets-revealed

Welcome to What the Health, where anything health is fair game as we tackle the trends and bust the myths about health and wellness. Here are your hosts, Dr. Dan and Angela Toro. And welcome to another episode of What the Health. I am Dr. Dan here with my co-host. Angela, welcome back, guys. I'll get this out of the way. As you know at this point, we are here for informational purposes only. This is a discussion about health.

We are in no way offering individualized medical, advice always talk to your trusted health care provider before making changes to your specific health routine and with that being said we are going to discuss i consider myself a bit of an expert on this topic because i've been doing it for more than a third of my life so what are we going to be talking about today hope you've been doing it more than a third of your life oh i see what you're saying we're talking about the secret of sound sleep so i was like i hope you've been doing it every day for your whole life. Well, eight hours out of a 24-hour period.

I got you. I got you. So, yeah, so probably no secret that sleep is important, but it's also no secret that it seems to be the first thing to get sacrificed when it comes down to trying to keep up with our crazy lives. And we talk about this all the time, the kind of ever-going momentum of the world that we live in now. The hamster wheel.

The hamster wheel, exactly. But sleep is something actually that I talk with people a lot because I'll have people coming in and, you know, they're like, well, I'm doing everything right. You know, I'm changing my diet. I'm exercising. You know, I'm just, I'm not getting the results that I want. And it tends to be one of two things. And those two things tend to go hand in hand, which is they're still dealing with a lot

of chronic unresolved stress where they're not sleeping, not sleeping well, not sleeping enough. Now, real quick before, and we'll get into this. more in a little bit, but when you say chronic unresolved stress, are you talking about mental emotional, biochemical, physical? Yes. That's what I figured. Yes. And honestly, it's, you know, when you're, I tell people, you could be doing everything

right, but if you are not giving your body that time to rest and recover and heal and all of these things are happening during sleep, during good quality sleep, ultimately at the end of the day, it's going to be an uphill battle against what's going to be. on on a physiological level. So sleep is absolutely crucial. It truly is, you know, we are not robots. We can't just power down. Would be great, wouldn't it?

We just, yeah, we can't be ready to go. We're not computers. We can't just, you know, plug the charger in whenever we want throughout the day because it's a little bit low. It reminds me of the movie Elf where, what's his name, Buddy the Elf. He's like, you know, he was getting up in the morning and, you know, he had done all of this decoration in the house and his adopted parents. And they're like, did you sleep at all that night?

He's like, oh, yeah, I got a full 40 minutes. And honestly, and that's what people, some people try to do. And they try to function on that. But ultimately, sleep, whether you feel recovered or not in the morning, that's, you know, there's some other things that I think could be going on there. But your body needs that time to recharge. That is essentially your body's time of getting plugged in and recovering, especially when it comes to muscle repair and then to brain.

So you have two phases of sleep, your REM and your non-REM. And both are important. The REM is essentially where your mind is kind of, that's, you know, we think of the active, the dreaming phase. So your mind's very active, but there's a lot, again, of recovery that's happening there. But then in that non-REM stage where your mind is really truly turned off, that's deep sleep. BSD, that is where your body can now actually recover.

And it's so important, you know, if you're talking about injuries, if you're talking about illness, you know, your body needs that deep healing recovery time. If you're an athlete, that is absolutely crucial. You know, your exercise, your training is a breakdown period. You know, you're breaking down your muscles. We talk about this in our exercise progression podcast. So check that out if you're more interested in that. but exercise is essentially a breakdown period where you actually get stronger is by the recovery,

by your muscles then healing and recovering and getting stronger and getting bigger. And that all happens during that sleep time, during that deep sleep. So if you're, you know, pushing, pushing and sacrificing your sleep for your training, ultimately it's not going to have the same results that you're really looking for. Well, that's it. I mean, you know, usually talk about the physical aspect there, but also the biochemical and your immune system. It's like your immune system recovers through the sleep period. And so, you know, strengthening that immune system, people who deprive themselves of sleep, you know, okay, you can get away with maybe, you know, one night poor sleep, two nights poor sleep. But you start going longer than that. And you were really dampening, you know, your ability to fight viruses that are, you know, everywhere in our environment. I can almost call it when I'm going to get sick. Like when I'm coming off, I can tell like, usually by day four, I'm like, okay, if I don't get a good night's sleep, I'm going. I know I'm going to, because again, we're around people all day every day.

We are exposed to stuff all day every day. So it's a matter of, I'm like, I can feel it. And I think last night was that for me. I'm like, my body knew you need sleep tonight or tomorrow you're done. And I woke up this morning. I actually, I did. I slept well. And I woke up, and I'm like, okay.

That little tickle of my throat. throat that was there yesterday, gone, you know, just, you know, feeling a little bit more relaxed, a little more energized than I had been the past couple days. Well, we talk about it in another podcast in terms of listening to the body. And I remember last week, I just had, I had a week. We were supposed to do this last week. I was just so lethargic last week and I could not pinpoint it. And the only thing that it really came down to is I think my body was fighting off a virus. And, you know, again, it's just some clinical. You know, you know, not like you're testing for anything, but it's just like you feel, I just completely wiped.

And I hadn't felt that tired in a long time. And I'm like, what the heck is going on? And I, I mean, I think over the weekend, I slept. I took, oh, I took two days back to back. I took two, three hour naps on Saturday and Sunday. And it's like, I do nap. We'll get into that later in the episode. But I'm not three hours. And so, you know, listening to your body, if you do get a little bit behind and do have a couple days or a bad week where you know you're just you know going going going you know sometimes taking the weekend or you know hey calling off a day of work or something like because you need to recover uh will go a long way rather than pushing through because those are the people those are the cases right where you get like okay I'm just going to keep pushing and it's like okay you get sick

and then get sicker and then maybe you feel a little bit better but then it's like it's and it's just a ongoing cycle of, you know, this you never fully recover from, you know, whatever illness your body is fighting because you're constantly in the state of immune suppression. Yeah, I tell people all the time, there's a reason you feel tired when you're sick. That's, you know, that is your body telling you what it needs. Lay down. There's a, there's a reason, same reason that you kind of crave soup and things like that. Your body's telling you, like, I want fluids. I want, you know, I don't want a lot of, I don't need the big heavy meal. Yeah, the salts minerals. Yeah. So it's like, listen to that. If you were extremely exhausted, instead of, you know, chugging your fifth energy drink of the day, try sleep.

And yeah, like you said, with the naps, absolutely. I mean, if it's, you know, I'll find those times where there's times, I'll go, I'm like, I'm going to lay down and see, see what happens. And there's times where I'm like, okay, I've laid here for an hour and not, I'm going to get back up. And there's times where it's, you know, my alarm's going off three hours later. I'm like, what happens? I was like, okay, obviously I need it. that. So giving your body that, you know, that opportunity to do that because ultimately, you know, like you said, we all have poor nights of sleep here and there. We all have those weeks where just, you know, things are crazy. Yes. So, you know, in the short term, sleep deprivation is going to make you feel tired, lethargic. It's going to affect your, you know, your ability to concentrate. Yeah. So, you know, people talk about driving sleep deprived is equivalent to driving drunk. And that's really important. especially if you're in a job where you do a lot of driving,

that unfortunately those are sometimes the jobs that aren't getting a lot of time to get good quality of sleep. So you really want to make sure that, you know, if you're driving for a living or, you know, driving, you know, you're a parent driving your kids around, you know, you really want to make sure that you're not sacrificing that sleep. And I know it's hard to find the time when you're, you know, working a weird schedule or working around kids schedules. But, you know, that chronic, that not even chronic short term sleep, deprivation can really affect you cognitively.

So you really want to make sure that you're being aware of that. You know, if you do have to drive, you know, and you haven't had a great night's sleep, if you have somebody to swap off with, swap off regularly, take breaks, you know, it makes sure that you're, you know, not getting stuck in that, you know, kind of long, zoned out period because it really can, I mean, it can just, it can hit you like that. Especially at night. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. All of a sudden, and you hear it all the time, people fall asleep at the wheel. and I don't know what happened. And it's like, well, your body decided this is what it needed. And that's, you know, unfortunately just it happens. And that's, it's very, it affects your ability to concentrate. So same thing.

And again, it's such a catch-22 because, you know, people stress all the time, you know, think of students studying for tests and exams or, you know, adults were preparing for a big presentation or something at work. So what do you do? You stay up all night preparing. Well, that's probably one of the worst things you could do because then you're going to be less kind of cognitively prepared the next day. So I remember in college, people people would be pulling all-nighters. I'm like, I'm going to bed. Like what? I'm going to bed.

Because I just, I have never been able to pull an all-nighter. My body, I do not function without sleep. I know. Yes, I know. I know. Sorry. No, we had a couple, you know, a couple big, you know, we would have a couple big exams in chiropractic school. I never did it in undergrad, but graduate school, It was, you know, there would be nights when I was like, okay, 9 o'clock, the pot of coffee is going on. And it's like, we are planning to stay up, you know, until we, you know, pack the information. Now, again, we always did. You know, we would find time like, okay, you know, we would hit that 2, 3 a.m. And it's like, nope, I got to go lay down for six hours.

Because again, that's the time where all that information you packed in actually gets stored as memories. So there's, so those are the bad examples of our sleep, you know, disturbances or disorder. So let's talk about what does healthy sleep actually look like? What do we have to do to achieve healthy sleep? What do you know, how do we define healthy sleep? Yeah. And I mean, I feel like, and again, you'll hear people be like, oh, I can function on X amount, Y amount, yeah.

But it seems like, you know, seven to nine seems to be, that's been pretty consistent in the letter. Yeah. So you hear eight hours and that's where that number comes from. And we're talking about adults because kids, yeah, we're, yeah, way, wait. And that's a whole other issue where I don't think kids are getting nearly enough sleep anymore. And that could be a whole other. Well, yeah. I mean, there's some schools across the nation that are pushing for elementary schools to, you know, go later, you know, start more like during high school, you know, time or even high school students to start later.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm going to say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. school does start a little bit later, but yeah, allowing them to sleep in. But then, you know, then the argument always is, well, those high school students, they're just going to stay up later, right? So, you know, again, that's just getting into the whole parenting thing, you know, a whole other topic there.

Anyway, so for adults. Seven to nine hours for adults, that's pretty typical. I was, you know, you know, looking up really quick the difference between men and women, because interestingly enough, it does seem like once you get into like your 30s and 40s, you know, men on average tend to need a little bit less sleep compared to women, which I think is very interesting. But I think this is just from experience, from clinical experience of talking to my patients. I think on average, I feel like women have a harder time going to sleep and staying asleep than men. Now, again, I have seen both. Men and women struggle significantly with sleep depending on a case-by-case basis.

But I do think on average, I think women tend to have a harder time going to sleep. staying asleep, I think a lot of it has to do with the overburdened. Yes, the prefrontal cortex. The overburdened caregiver. Exactly. The checklist, the never-ending checklist to do list. And, you know, I get, did I take care of things? I turn up coffee pot off. Did I start to dishwasher? Did I get that project done for work? Did I get that project done for work? Oh, I could have added this or this. It's like, shot it off. Oh, trust me. We wish we could. Again, as a man, I am very grateful that I have the ability to close it down. And I always, I half jokingly say to my wife, if our kids' health and, you know, long-term stability was dependent on, you know, my lack of sleep, they would not have survived to this point.

So thank God my wife can handle a lack of sleep much better than I can. Because, yeah, my body, I think much like you, you say, like you. We're tired people. Yeah, we're tired people. We're tired people. Was that from our father? We had gotten up, gone to church one morning, on Sunday morning, come home, he's napping on the couch. And mom, like, you have been awake for two hours.

How are you possibly to the point that you need a nap? We're a tired people. We're all over sleeping or just him. And I think about that all the time because it's very true. Yeah, see, I'm the type of person that I can just shut it down anywhere, anytime, you know. It can be late morning, early afternoon. It's, you know, bedtime, whatever. And it's like, okay, heads on the pillow.

I'm done. But before, yeah, for the average person, so that's 7 to 9 hours. So to best, and again, everyone's going to be different. But there are some certain, there are certain things that are going to be beneficial for everybody to help maintain that. And one of the biggest things we hear about is maintaining a routine, a sleep, wake, routine, which is probably honestly one of the hardest in this, because the nine to five doesn't exist anymore. And, you know, it's just we do.

We live in this sort of kind of 24-hour world. A lot of people are working with people, you know, in different parts of the world or working different shifts. So, but ultimately, the best you can do with going to bed the same time every night, waking up the same time. Yeah. Within an hour, within an hour, they say, you know, so it's like if you're consistent bedtime is 10 o'clock.

Like, you know, within an hour plus or minus, you know, that should be consistently. That should be the time. And again, if you get into a routine of that, your body will tell you, oh, yeah, okay, it's time that, you know, we're starting to shut things down, you know, maybe you're watching a little TV. We'll get into that. And then at the weekend, maybe you're reading or watching a little TV. And it's like, you find yourself, you know, like, okay, it's time to shut it off and,

you know, and lay down. And some people continue to try to read or continue to keep the TV on. And it's like just shut it off. And with maintain a routine, I also talk with people a lot too. That doesn't just mean the time you go to bed, but what you're doing, what you're doing leading up to that time. So again, you know, making sure you're kind of having, you know, we think about brushing teeth before bed.

That's kind of part of that bedtime routine. The more of a routine you can have at night, the more it's mentally preparing your body and your mind that, okay, it's bedtime. So that could be, you know, again, kind of the hygiene part of it, you know, brushing teeth, washing your face, showing, whatever it is you do at night as far as hygiene. And then it could be, you know, if you do prayer or meditation, if you do, you know, if you do like to read, you know, making sure you're doing it at the same. So is that, are you reading in bed or you read on the couch and then going to bed?

But kind of staying, keeping that same routine so that your body learns, okay, we're doing, you know, these three, four things and that it's time to shut down. And the more of that routine you can have, you think about kids, you know, we do it with kids. okay brush your teeth then we're going to read a story and we go to bed but somehow we get to adulthood and it's just

well we feel like we have the freedom to do whatever we want and it's like well I want to stay out yeah we go go go go and then go to bed why can't I sleep because you didn't give yourself that wind down

period so that's yeah with that routine that's really important and then what was next on well so I think in in terms of the time you know you mentioned the hygiene the other important thing in terms of just a habitual routine,

but also the research is very clear on the temperature that you sleep in. And I find this significant. My sleep over, you know, fall, winter, early spring is significantly better than summertime because I'm, you know, I don't know about you, but I'm very anal about energy bills. And I like to not turn the A. Yes, I like to not turn the AC on. you know until it is absolutely now I don't like humidity and that again

that's all majorly impact sleep but you know again I'm going to really push it in terms of the AC now that works great in the winter because I can let the house be 58 60 degrees some people are like dear God like what do you do but it's like I keep the house at 60 in here right now yeah yeah I keep the house at 60 degrees

over the you know when it's heat season I have to put it up to 63 for others in the house but I keep it you know and my wife calls me a heat miser which is fine but but again it's like it's a lot easier to put a blanket on but it is also very healthy when you are going to bed um you know that 60 to 67 degrees is pretty clear in the research that um your body is much more comfortable because your body your body temperature naturally falls overnight so it's going to be more comfortable with an ambient temperature lower than you know what it is during

the day. So, yeah, so that temperature is so, so important. Now, again, I'm not advocating for us to crank up the AC in the summertime to 60, you know, 65 degrees. I can't even imagine. That's what I keep telling my significant other. I'm like, hey, you can suffer all winter, but I'll be the one suffering in the summer. You can have a nice and toasty in here, and I'll be the one complaining all summers. Yeah. And you think about it. Like if you wake up and you know, you do have like too many covers on and you wake up in a sweat. Like, you know, that's, that's a signal that your body doesn't like warmer temperatures, you know, when it's sleeping. You know, if you've ever had too much. The one foot out. That's right. Just the one foot out of the car. Absolutely. It's that's that

temperature regulation. And that kind of goes along with one of my points was to, it seems obvious, but to make sure that you're sleeping in a comfortable environment. So now you'll see a lot of mattresses and pillows being advertised as actually having those cooling property. We got to try out some of them. You have a friend that works at a furniture store. And it is. It's really amazing how far technology has come as far as mattresses. And so they actually have these ones now that kind of help, again, kind of help with that balance of your body temperature.

So finding, you know, what's comfortable. for you. So maybe if, again, if you and your, you know, significant other don't agree on the room temperature, well, maybe if you're someone who runs warm like we do, if you can get a pillow that helps with the cooling or a, or have separate blankets. Yeah, let them, oh yeah, we do double, yeah, we do double blankets in the winter because, and that's, yeah, so exactly,

doing what you need to do to kind of be comfortable is, it seems so simple, but it really does make a big difference as far as being able to fall asleep and then stay asleep because if you're not in a comfortable position, you might fall asleep, but then you're going to, we all have those nights where I'm pretty sure that's what happened to me. You wake up and you fell asleep in a weird position and you're like, oh man,

now I can't get back to sleep because I got a kink in my neck or shoulder. So, little things like that. And then we have a whole podcast on sleep posture. Yeah, check that out. Yeah, check that one out for sure. But yeah, so the habitualness of the time,

the temperature and the hygiene are very, very important. But I think also one of the big things that I find, and I know you see this too, is, you know, what do I do? For those people who have a difficult time falling asleep, it's because they're not physically exhausting their body throughout the day. So the exercise is so incredibly important when it comes to wearing the body out physically. And again, we're... And not just exercise. I would even argue physical activity. Physical activity, yes, agree.

So. And again, I think that, you know, I think that's one. advantage we talk about like what I do as a chiropractor I'm on my feet all day long I'm running around I don't sit down yeah if I sit down for five minutes it's wonderful but like you know I'm constantly running back and forth through the office and it's like most desk job most you know jobs nowadays they're in front of a computer and we are you know genetically evolved designed to move you know we're designed to hunter gatherers to you know be working outside in the garden to be hunting to be, you know, to be out in nature and we just don't get that level of activity anymore.

So one of the first things that we always talk to people about is exercise or activity. Like, go be active. Go get out, especially this time of year. Now we're spring coming in the summertime in a month or two. It's like, go get out in the sun. Yeah, go get out in the fresh air, especially when it's cool air. Yeah. It's like, because that, you know, you see it in children, right?

They get out the cool air and it's like, it wipes some out. It does the same thing for adults too. It's like, go get out. in the air, it makes a huge difference. Yeah, moving your body so, because again, remember, sleep is that recovery phase. Well, if you never really. If you didn't push the body, it doesn't have anything to recover. Then that could be part of the issue.

Your body's like, well, I don't need to go into deep sleep. You didn't do anything. I don't need to recover. So there. Go disenfranchise. Yeah, there is something to. And again, with that, again, as far as coming with a routine, you want to be careful with doing very high, strenuous activity too close to bed.

So it's finding that fine line. you know, say within two hours or so, and again, I'm not saying like, don't go for a walk in the evening. I'm talking about your like high intensity exercise. Yeah, because again, it is a, it's a short term. It actually will increase your energy levels. So you want to make sure you give it enough time to do that, but then go into that rest recovery phase. So I think we talk about a little bit more in the exercise one as well. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

But again, it's like just move, are you moving the body regularly? That's the first thing that I ask people, you know, if they're having a hard. time sleeping, you know, are you, are you physically wearing your body down on a daily basis? And I talk to people about that as far as adding that into the nighttime routine as well, doing some gentle stretching, doing some yoga, doing, you know, just again, some deep breathing, something, deep breathing, something physically to, again, tell the body, okay, this is, this is time. This is, you know, we're getting ready for that rest and unwind time. It makes a, yeah, makes a huge difference. I mean, I know, I definitely sleep back.

on the days that I'm busy physically running around versus the days that are more mentally taxing and less. Yeah. So absolutely finding those, yeah, finding that time to be active throughout the day, getting to the gym, getting out for a walk, doing what you need to do to be tired at the end of the day. So there's some things that the habitualness, they exercise being outside. Those are some things that you should be doing to establish healthy sleep patterns. But what about some things that we should be avoiding or, you know,

limiting in terms of being able to, you know, to get into that healthy sleep state. And I think one of the biggest things that we've run into nowadays is the screen time. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we live in front of screens. And we know that that blue light really directly affects your body's natural cortisol, melatonin cycle. And ultimately, limiting that as much as you can throughout the day, which can mean I use to laugh at them, those amber glasses that help cut down on the blue light. But man, they make a big difference. If you're, you know, kind of feeling that chronic fatigue, feeling getting headaches

throughout the day, staring at a screen. And now a lot of the electronics now have the settings, too, that you can limit the blue light. So we either having them on those low light settings or having the glasses that help cut down on that are going to help significantly, especially if you're looking at screens once it's become nighttime. Yes. Yes. Having that contrast, I always used to, I mean, I think it was mom that was always like we're watching TV in a dark room would come in and turn a light on. And I was like, who cares? Like, what if there's life from the TV and how is I've gotten, you know, probably the age she was then.

As soon as that starts to get a little bit dark, I'm like, oh, let's turn a light on. Because again, that real contrast of a completely dark room and then that real bright, real bright blue light is very, yeah, can really affect you. Fect your eyes, affect your, affect your sleep. Yeah, so really, you know, screens ideally should be shut off, you know, it's an hour or two before bedtime. But, you know, again, coming back to personal experience, some people, it doesn't affect as much. Like, I can, my wife and I would watch, you know, we watch TV before bed, and it does not seem to affect our ability to fall asleep. So, you know, so again, if you notice that that is something that impacts you, then, yes, it turned a screen off.

And definitely the phones, the phones should really be in a completely different room. You know, I know a lot of people use them for alarms. But it's like, you know, if you've got notifications or something set and that's dinging, it's like, you know, someone could, you know, text message you or an email comes through all times of the night anymore. It's like that should not be disturbing you or waking you up because every time it dings, even if you don't fully come out of, you know, a deep sleep, you might never be getting into a deep sleep because of those notifications coming through on your phone.

So, yeah. So, yeah. set, you know, you can set a, like, the do not disturb settings. Yeah, playing setting. And again, if you're, you know, again, if you're a caregiver for somebody, maybe you're worried about your parents calling or you've grown kids, I get that. So you can set for certain people to be able to call, like the calls would come through,

but then you're not getting, you know, a ding every time. Or turn off the notifications. I know I turn off so I don't get dings every time I get a notification on social media or email, you know, just getting the, making sure the important things are coming through. Yeah. And then again, yeah, if, um, You know, that can come down to finding part of your routine or finding a comfort level is, you know, using some kind of white noise machine or I know I sleep better when we're at that time of year we can have the fan on. Yeah, windows open.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So finding some kind of, you know, white noise because then your mind kind of can focus in on that. And then it doesn't hear every other little little thing going on around you. That can really help as well. But yeah, those screen, yeah, definitely limiting that screen time.

Yeah. Yeah. And again, you can just type in blue light glasses. So if you are someone that's really, you know, does seem to be impacted by the light or you're in front of the computer all day long, you can just, I mean, again, you can get them on Amazon. You can get them anywhere nowadays in blue light glasses. And again, they tend to be a yellowish color. And what they're doing is they are reflecting the blue light.

So it's only letting through, you know, certain rays on the, on the spectrum, the light spectrum. So you're not getting that stimulation, you know, like the daylight, you know. So, yeah, the screens definitely check that. So other things that you should be limiting, you know, the fun ones, food, caffeine and alcohol. We can kind of tell you probably hit all of these at once. Yeah. Caffeine, hopefully is obvious. Yeah.

You shouldn't be drinking. Yeah, right before bad. Yeah, exactly. And even so much as, you know, afternoon for, you know, again, especially, that's why I talk to people, too, if they're saying they're kind of consistently having trouble falling asleep. Yeah, when's your last coffee? Yeah. And, you know, just cutting that back to new, you know, cutting out anything in the afternoon and seeing if that makes a difference.

And most people will be like, oh, yeah, wow, I noticed a big difference. So we don't think about it because in theory, caffeine, you know, kind of peaks within an hour and it's sort of out of your system within a couple hours. But the effect that it has can last well past that, especially on sleep. So, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, avoiding those stimulants too close to bed, absolutely. Yeah. So definitely, you know.

And again, if you're having, you know, if you're the type of person, oh, yeah, I drink all my coffee before noon, but you're having four or five cups. Then, yeah. Like, you know, that that can wear on. I actually read that the half-life of coffee, half-life of caffeine is four to six hours. So that means really, you know, after six hours, it's only halfway out of your system. So again, a lot of that has to do with other fluid intake and your activity level. So just like with alcohol and other stuff, you know, it, you know, it, you know, metabolically how quickly and how efficiently your body can get rid of it depends person to person.

But yeah, it can last a while. So really trying to limit that amount of caffeine very, very important. Alcohol on the flip side. A lot of people think, well, what alcohol is a depression. I'll have a miccap. Yeah, and again, you know, one or two drinks. We've talked about this in terms of our, you know, the blue zones and the aging and, you know, and, you know, how long people are living.

And, you know, there's actually been big correlations of people who, you know, groups of people who have one to two drinks a day, you know, they tend to live the longest, at least in terms of the research that's out there. But, you know, one to two drinks is much different than, oh, I'm going to drink three to five to pass out. Yes. And then what happens is either through, you know, detox, the alcohol is coming out. Your liver is going through a dump. You know, you're sweating because of, you know, the toxicity. And, you know, so you'll tend to fall asleep more quickly with alcohol, but you get a much poorer quality of sleep. You won't go into that deep sleep.

Correct. So after three to four hours, after your body is starting to dump and detox from the alcohol, you actually, you know, and we've all done this. Well, many people have done this before where it's like, okay, you've had way too much to drink. You pass out, but then it's like, you're up in the middle of the night and now you can't fall back to sleep. Yeah. And it's like, I don't understand. I drink so much. I can't.

Why can't I stay asleep? Well, that's because your body is literally detoxing from the alcohol. So, yeah, I mean, alcohol one to two, you know, that's, you know, for some people, great. And it makes a big difference. But like, if you're drinking too many throughout the day, it has a big impact on your son, quality of sleep. Yeah. And even having those one to two too close to bedtime can affect, can even just affect, again, the quality. So just, again, something to consider if you're having one to two with dinner or right

after dinner and you still have a couple hours before you go to bed, you're giving your body that time to process the alcohol before you go to bed versus having that one, you know, one or two going to bed and now your body's trying to deal with all that while you're trying to fall asleep. So again, it's giving your body that time to actually do what it needs to do. It has the ability, you know, a healthy body, a healthy liver has the ability to process one or two drinks. You just have to give it the opportunity to do it.

And then it's the same thing for food there too. Yeah, exactly. You know, a lot of people. And again, this goes back to sky. You know, there are some nights that I don't get home until 8 o'clock at night. Yeah, like last night we're eating dinner. Yeah, you know, so I'm eating dinner and it's like, well, you know, you should not really, ideally, you should not eat your last bite of food.

And this is dinner and snacks. Your last bite of food ideally should be two to three hours before you're ready to go to sleep. So if you're eating dinner at, you know, if you have a bedtime at 10 o'clock, 7 o'clock should, you know, 8 o'clock in the house of the latest should really be your cutoff for eating. And this not doesn't just go to sleep, but also a huge impact on weight loss. So people who are struggling with weight, that's a whole other podcast. That's the biggest thing I noticed with. Yeah.

It's like if I look, when I'm really trying to monitor my weight, I have to cut out that. I have to make sure I'm cutting off my eating at a certain time. I think that's one of the misconceptions too because a lot of people think like, oh yeah, you digest your food overnight. No, your digestive system really shuts down significantly overnight. Because your body's trying to do all the other things we're talking about with the mind and the muscle. And the immune system. Yeah. It's trying to work to do other things, not digest your food.

So that's why it's so important that, you know, eating, cutting your eating off, taking a nice walk, you know, before, after dinner. And then if you do have, if you are in a situation where you have to eat later, make it a later meal. Make it something that's more easily digestible. So don't sit down and eat a four-course meal two hour. Yeah. We shouldn't be eating, you know, Thanksgiving dinner two hours before bed because that's a lot of food to have to process versus, you know, if you eat a night, you know, lighter, you know. And that's why they actually say, you know, dinner should be your smallest meal of the day. Yeah.

And that's what, you know, a lot of cultures, you know, Europeans, India, your big meals. Your big meals are the mid-afternoon. Yeah. So, yes, I mean, that very, very important with the food. And that kind of leads into some of the disorders. And I can tell you, I've struggled with this in the past where if I notice that I'm eating too much closer, you know, to the end of the night, reflux is one of the most acid reflux is, you know, it can be common throughout any time of the day. But, you know, let's say you eat a big meal. Okay.

So now your stomach is bloating. And now, boom, you're ready to pass out. Well, immediately you're laying down. So first of all, now gravity is working against you because, you know, now all that food that is sitting and bloating in your stomach is pushing right back. to the esophagus, you know, the tube that goes from the mouth down of the stomach. So now you're feeling all that acid that's just sitting in there. And then again, that's uncomfortable. So if your body's uncomfortable, it's not going to get into a deep, a deep healthy sleep.

So that's one of the most common things, disorders that can lead to sleep challenges as well. It just has to do with timing. A lot of times has to do with what you're eating, but many times the timing of the of what you're eating. So that's big impact there in terms of, you know, food and timing of that with that. Other disorders that can lead to, you know, sleep challenges. Restless leg syndrome is a big one. You know, the tingling, the numbness, the cramping of the legs.

Just, again, literally feeling restless because you just, your legs don't feel comfortable. Really, the research is very limited or honest. unclear as to why it happens. I know we've talked about this before, kind of like fibromyalgia. I think it's just such a, you know, a lame diagnosis. We can't figure out what it's happening. We don't know why, but your nerves are just, you know,

your nerves are excited and, you know, you have all this mismetaging and, you know, dysfunction in your nervous system. We don't know why, so we're just going to throw, oh, your legs can't settle down, so we're going to call it restless leg syndrome. Like, you know, we have seen from a chiropractic perspective, getting the spine and the nervous system to calm down, that can have a huge impact. But there can be a number of reasons why your legs won't calm down, but that has a big impact on sleep. I think many times, again, it comes back to activity, strength, muscle memory.

Are you wearing down the muscles throughout your day enough to be able to get good healthy sleep? Lack of minerals, lack of magnesium can cause, you know, rest of. leg. So that's another disorder dysfunction that can cause interruptions to your sleep quality. And then a big one that people talk about a lot, sleep apnea. So that's literally where your body, you get into a position where, you know, it can be the tissues in the back of the throat close down and you're not, you literally stop breathing. Apnea is literally stopping the breathing. during your sleep. So, and you hear this, it typically is very, very,

um, commonly associated with people who are overweight. Um, and, you know, position does have an impact on it. But, you know,

you know, you'll see someone, uh, you know, uh, you know, in, uh, in the, uh,

in the, in the, uh, in their, they're breathing real heavy. They're snoring real heavy. And then all of a sudden, it's like, uh,

yeah, and then, you know, 20, say, and again, it can be serious to where it can be 20, 30 seconds to where the body is incomplete, you know, a rest of breathing.

And then again, you know, your brain is not going to let you stop breathing. So it's going to force you to take a deep, you know, deep, deep breath in. But the quality of those breaths are very, very poor. And then again, because of the stopping and starting and breathing, not getting into a good rhythm, that alone has a big impact on your ability to get into a good sleep cycle. So sleep apnea is a big one. There are machines, but again, everyone I've talked to that has a sleep apnea machine, you know. It doesn't seem to be big fans.

No, it's not because you have this big mask that goes over your face. The machine is making noise. I know they've gotten better over the years, but yeah, that's. And there are also now smaller devices that, you know, dentists and, you know, doctors are recommending to actually, like, wear in the mouth to help, you know, lift your jaw a certain way or, you know, hold your tissues. certain way. Again, I haven't dove in enough to those different products to see what is working for people, what isn't. But at the end of the day, you know, position has a big impact on sleep apnea. And again, your weight. So making sure that you are, you know, you're trying to get to a healthy weight. Sleeping on your back versus side, you know, if you're sleeping on your side,

you have much less of a chance of the tissues of the back of the throat closing down the windpipe, you know, versus sleeping on the back. So those are those are some other things in terms of the disorders that can disrupt the sleep. Well, and it's interesting that you mentioned weight because that's actually another big one that comes with sleep deprivation. So sleep is, it directly affects our hormone levels. And the one that people think about all the time is cortisol. So it gets deemed, quote unquote, the stress hormone. But also is very important with the sleep wake cycle. So essentially it's cortisol and melatonin, work hand in hands or cortisol spikes in the morning.

It's the one that makes you kind of, when you kind of feel that on those lovely occasions, we get to wake up naturally, not to the sound of the alarm you want to throw across the room. When you have that feeling when you just kind of wake up, that's the result of that cortisol. spike and then throughout the day that's going to shift cortisol will come down and it goes up and down but ultimately it's going to start coming down throughout the day melatonum's going to go up that's what makes you have that nice calming relaxing getting ready for bed and then ultimately helps you sleep so when we're chronically stressed or chronically sleep deprived cortisol is going to be unnaturally high and there's also a lot of the other things we talked about the screen the excessive

screen time effects that that's why all of these things ultimately are going to throw your sleep off They all go hand in hand. Yeah. And then when we're sleep deprived, there's two other hormones that directly affect our hunger, which is ghrelin and leptin. Those are also going to be affected. So generally, grelin makes us feel hungry. And then leptin makes us feel satiated, essentially very simple terms.

So when we're sleep deprived, grelin increases and leptin decreases. So essentially, we're feeling hungry all the time. And I'm sure everyone's experienced this after like a real bad. night of sleep, you kind of have like the munchies all day. You just, you don't know why. You just want to keep eating. Your body's trying to feed itself energy, right? Yeah. Because you're, you're sleep deprived. So you have low energy so that your body is, you know, it's looking for calories. It's looking for energy. And that's, yeah, because those hormones have been disrupted. So no matter how much you eat, that leptin is still not going to come back up to tell you that you're

satiated. And again, the stuff that you're craving is going to be the quick energy sources. Sugar, the refined carbohydrate, you're not craving a salad on those days. You're craving that stuff that's going to give you that quick burst of energy. So those, and then those things over time, you figure if you're in that kind of chronic state of poor sleep, chronic state of sleep deprivation, you're kind of constantly in that snacking mode. That can easily lead to overeating, excess eating. It's just going to, you know, fuel a sugar addiction. So all that stuff goes hand in hand. So really, you know, again, that's why I talk to people when they're, like, I'm doing every everything right and I'm not losing weight. You know, it's like, well, we got to come back to looking at

ultimately, you know, what's what's going on with your body, what's going on with your hormones, because if those are out of whack, you're right. You could, you could be, you know, doing what you're supposed to be doing. And it just takes time. It's, you can't look at, you know, if you're, if you're coming off of this chronic state of, you know, being unhealthy, it's going to take time and they all work together. You know, we mentioned the diet, the exercise and the sleep. all of them are going to help each other. And it just takes time to, you know, make sure that they're all working together and not getting frustrated and really being conscious after a bad night's sleep,

being aware, okay, I'm not really hungry. I'm just, I had a bad night sleep, stay on with my eating plan. You know, don't let myself fall victim to the, oh, I had a poor night sleep. So now I'm just going to chuck caffeine and eat crap all day long to keep myself going. Yeah, and that's, again, that awareness. And you bring up a great point as to why, you know, again, we work with people over, you know, the long term, you know, six, 12, 18 months and beyond. And I always tell people when they come in, it's like, you know, we're building a relationship. You know, I want us to work together.

And, again, if we can help you get healthy, then, you know, my hope is that you'll stick around so we help you stay healthy for the rest of your life for you and your family. You know, and again, it just goes so much in contradiction of, you know, our current, you know, sick care system where it's like you go and you see your doctor, I have this going on, here's this medication, and you're out the door. Yeah, you don't want to have to see your doctor regularly because that's associated with something's wrong. Correct. Correct. And that's why we call ourselves we're wellness providers. Yeah, truly health promoters because, you know, we're facilitators, right? We are just helping you learn and do what is going to facilitate your body naturally getting healthy, designed to heal. You know, that's what we...

So much a write a book. So much you're a write a book on that. So, you know, that's where we talk about this a long term because so many people when they're coming in, you know, it's not that they have one thing going on. You know, they are literally, their body is the Titanic and it is heading towards the iceberg. I tell people, I can't stop that and turn you on a dime. You know, we have to first slow the momentum. And so a lot of times when people are starting care in our office, you know, they might, you know, come in for one thing. And, you know, they, you know, maybe a symptom or something amplifies for a little bit as their body is just starting to slow going down the path of illness.

And then, you know, so once we finally get the ship to stop, now we can put it in reverse and actually start building and regaining health and well-being. And you're right, that just, that takes time. And so reestablishing a healthy sleep pattern, it could take, you know, six, 12 months to really get yourself into a healthy sleep routine. So don't give up on it. It's not like, oh, I'm going to do this for one week and to get back on track. I mean, if you have years and years and years of poor patterns, you know, poor unhealthy patterns, it's going to take months to recuperate. You know, one of the easiest ways we say in the office, for every year that your body has been in a state of, decline or degeneration or poor health patterning plan for about a month of recovery.

So if you've been heading down the path for two decades, plan on two years to get your body back to healthy. So that just kind of gives you a little bit of an idea of a timeline there. So you mentioned medications. You know, we talked briefly about that. I'm not going to list. There's a number of medications. You can literally just Google it. You know, Google medications that affect sleep.

and if you happen to be on one of them, and you know, you're having sleep challenges, you know, talk to your trusted health professional and see if it's something that maybe you could, you know, tweak or, you know, even just change the time of when you're taking it to see if it makes a difference. And finally, I want to bring this up. We mentioned it really quick.

Naping. Okay? What are your thoughts on napping, Angela? I love napping. Me too. Don't tell me I'm not allowed to have my naps. No, that one that's very interesting. Because again, you know, getting, you know, getting prepared for this episode and everything.

Again, I find myself a bit of an expert on sleep and napping because I do. I love to nap. I don't do it every day. But I do, you know, I will find a couple days a week. I will take either a 20 minute, you know, maybe I find a time on the weekend where, you know, I'll crash for, you know, an hour and a half for two hours. I love it. The research is very mixed on it. Yeah, I've heard.

Yeah. eggs. I'm not right. Healthy eggs are bad for you. Yeah, it's the same thing, napping. But I, again, going back to the underlying, you know, research on it, you know, they find that people who nap more, some research says that you're at a higher risk of heart attack, of stroke, of these other, you know, diseases.

But again, you know, looking at it from a holistic perspective, are those people, do they have the illness already. Yeah. Are they? And is that illness of high blood pressure or, you know, poor quality sleep or medication is that causing them to have poor quality sleep? And so now they're being forced to nap throughout the day because of that poor quality sleep.

So you have to, which one came first? Exactly. Yeah. You know, the chicken are they gnawing? Because they're unhealthy or are they unhealthy? Yeah, because they're napping. Exactly. And, you know, I would argue from a clinical experience that it's more like, you know,

that they're napping because they're already unhealthy. So the nap is the sign that unhealthiness is there, but you can look at it from the other way. If you are wearing your body down, you know, again, you work out at a very high level and, you know, you get up early in the morning, you work out. So by the time you hit that midday, it's like, okay, I need the rest for a little bit. I like my siesta. And again, there's a lot of research on cultures that do nap that,

do show very improved qualities of health. You know, they have less stress, less heart attack. So, again, it's mixed research. I'm not going to sit here and argue, you know, you shouldn't take a nap. I think, again, I would say that if you are getting a solid seven to nine hours and, you know, you are eating healthfully, you might not feel the need for a, for a nap. But if you do have a night or two of, you know, maybe mixed sleep, poor quality of sleep, you know, you might feel the need a little bit more. And I think it comes down to your schedule, too.

So, again, I mean, I didn't use to nap when I was working a 9 to 5. But now with our, like on our long days, I mean, it's, you know, again, my day is starting at 6 a.m. And go until 7 p.m. But we have that little break over lunch. So it's like, I'm not going to make it, you know, 11 hours just go. And it's not even so much for the, for that sometimes it's just that mental. It's just that chance to literally turn off your mind for a minute and just, you know. Because again, you know, as a woman, if I'm awake, I'm doing something.

It's, there's no just sit and relax. So it's sometimes for me, it's just my opportunity to say, okay, this is, yeah, this is my 20, 30 minutes to just. And I don't always fall asleep, but usually I try to use my lunch. I'll eat, you know, and I'll always set that alarm just in case. And I'd say probably more often than not, if I let myself actually sit on the couch, I'll doze off for probably 20 minutes or so. But yeah, it is. It's just sort of that giving yourself that time to do what you need to do to have the energy to get through the rest of your day.

Yeah. Yeah. So again, you know, as a health professional, I'm not going to argue one way or another. I say if, you know, you are feeling the need for a nap and you feel better after you take the nap, then most likely your body needed it and it is probably healthy for you. You know, and again, as long, you also have to consider time of it too. If you're, you know, if you're on a weekend taking a nap, you know, four o'clock and sleeping to seven, that's probably going to impact your sleep. But if you're looking at like, hey, I'm going to take a nap from 1 to 2.30.

Yeah. Or if you're getting home from work and napping on the couch a couple hours before bed. Yeah, that's going to impact it. So, yeah, time and length have a big impact there. But, yeah, as always, if you have questions, feel free to reach out. You know, if any of this sounded, you know, resonated with you. you have more questions on the topic. You can always reach us at Toro-T-U-R-O-Family chiropractic.com.

You know, you can email us, you can contact us. And again, we always appreciate questions. That's one thing. I think we're going to start adding to the podcast as questions and do a question and answer session at each one because, you know, we're getting more questions in the office. I'm like, what about this? What about this?

So, you know, we're really going to start to, you know, increase that, you know, in terms of being able to answer the questions that are out there. So with that being said, thank you guys so much for tuning in. I'm Angela. And I am Dr. Dan with another episode of What the Health. We'll see you next time. See you next time. You've been listening to What the Health with Dr. Dan and Angela Toro, brought to you by Toro family chiropractic. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.com.com.