Change Your Brain Every Day - Add These Steps to Your Sleep Routine for a Major Health Boost, with Dr. Michael Breus

Episode Date: October 20, 2020

Of all the ways to improve your overall health, making adjustments to your sleep routine is one of the easiest methods that can also have the most significant results. In the second episode in a series with “The Sleep Doctor” Michael Breus, he and the Amens dive into some simple steps you can add to your sleep routine in order to make a dramatic difference in the way you feel each day. For more information on Dr. Michael Breus, visit https://thesleepdoctor.com/ Links to more information on the connection between sleep and menopause: https://thesleepdoctor.com/2018/02/20/natural-supplements-menopause-sleep/ https://thesleepdoctor.com/2018/02/13/sleep-supplements/ https://thesleepdoctor.com/2018/02/06/hormone-replacement-therapy/ https://thesleepdoctor.com/2018/01/30/managing-sleep-health-menopause/ https://thesleepdoctor.com/2018/01/23/sleep-and-menopause/ https://thesleepdoctor.com/2018/01/09/symptoms-of-menopause/ https://thesleepdoctor.com/2018/01/05/menopause-affects-sleep/

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back. We are still here with Dr. Michael Bruce talking about sleep success. And I just have to tell you, I just, I love this topic. We could go on and on and on because this is such a big issue for so many people. In the last episode, we talked about

sleep apnea, which is a huge issue for men more than women. But hormones and, you know, I mean, women go through so much, either trauma early on, then pregnancy, then, you know, PMS, then menopause. And certainly I've experienced all of those as have many of the people who follow me and send in questions to our podcast. So I want to just touch again on that if we could, Dr. Bruce. I know, like, it's funny, sleep is a whole thing. So because of like childhood trauma, and I actually know several women who have written in who have the same thing. She has like six pillows that she sleeps with. It's a habit I developed as a child. We can talk about pillows. It's sort of like it's-

A fort. A barrier. Yeah. And a fort. But that started as a child child and so that's just a habit that goes on but but i hear from women all the time i know one woman who doesn't sleep well and it actually brings on like almost a psychosis type of reaction for me i actually feel like i have the flu if i miss even one hour of sleep i just can't get through my day right and the problem

is now at this age which is where most of our listeners are, is around this age, a big majority of female listeners our age, my age, the hormone shift. I am so hot at night all the time. I just can't sleep. I mean, I'm ordering crazy cooling sheets and I've got the house set at 67 degrees. My family hates me. So, I mean, we're complicated creatures. Yes, you are. Talk a little bit about our hormones and, you know, with these things. Absolutely. So first of all, I'm glad you brought up the topic because I think

it's an important topic. I also think it's a topic that has not been talked about enough, nearly enough, especially within the wonderful world of sleep and sleep medicine. So thank you for bringing it up. I told you earlier, I've written extensively about this topic, looking at menopause, particularly for women and their sleep and that some of the many challenges that they have. So number one is we've got some good information out there for people to be able to read. I'm sending all the links, so they'll be in the show notes for sure. But let's talk about a couple of those issues that many women have from a menopausal perspective that can be important to address. The biggest one, which you mentioned, is heat, hot flashes. I've heard it called my power surge, my own personal

summer, you name it, I've heard about it, right? And so here's the thing that we always have to start looking at is vasomotor symptoms or hot flashes is what they're called more specifically, are definitely something that many women will experience. Not all women will experience it. Many women will experience it. Having the understanding of different strategies and what to do about that can actually be quite helpful aside from things like hormone therapy, replacement therapy, which is a big decision that you need to make with your doctor, understanding your background, your genetics, all of those different things.

Um, there are actually some products that are out there available, um, that are not a bad thing to think about trying. Um, interestingly enough, there are many companies that are now getting into the idea of thermoregulation and sleep, which is kind of fascinating. Remember, the sleep cycle follows the core body temperature cycle almost exactly. As our core body temperature drops, our melatonin increases. There's a crisscross effect there. And that's when we start to fall asleep. So when women turn to me and they say, Michael, I'm too hot. I'm like, we got to figure out a way to cool you down because it's literally the opposite

of what your body wants to do. I will tell you. And I'm up all night. I'm like covers on, covers off, covers on, covers off. I've got something. I've got a product for you that I want you to learn about that I think you will find quite fascinating. It wasn't originally developed for menopause, but there was a recent study done with menopausal women, and it showed tremendous effectiveness. There's a product called the Eb-Versa Cool Drift.

This is by a company called Eb Therapeutics. So very interestingly, Dr. Eric Nofsinger, don't worry, I'll send you a link. Dr. Eric Nofsinger, who's one of the top sleep researchers in the world. I mean, this guy's science is rockstar science. He is a psychiatrist and he worked in the ER at times. And when people would come in with massive head injuries, he noticed that people would pack their heads in ice, the neuroprotective effect, right? To slow down the circulation of what's going on to be able to evaluate what's happening. And he thought he looked at that frontal activity. Um, and he said, that's rumination, right? What's the one, what's the

biggest thing that insomniacs tell me, Dr. Bruce, I can't turn off my brain, right? And so he said, I wonder what would happen if I cooled people's heads. And three and a half years later, he came out with amazing research that showed that not only can he slow down people's thinking by cooling their heads, which I know you guys are going to find pretty interesting, but they literally just published a study in the journal Sleep on menopause with this device, and it was highly, highly effective. Now, I'm going to tell you a full disclosure. I'm a spokesperson for the company now because the science was so damn good that I said, I want to tell as many people as I can about this. I personally use one now. I don't have insomnia.

And that was the weirdest part is they were like, look, if you want to try it, you're welcome to. And I put it on. I got to tell you something, Tana. I'm a good sleeper. I don't have any major sleep problems. I stuck that thing on and I woke up the next day. Not one interruption at night, by the way, which was interesting in and of itself.

You ever wake up and you're like, damn, I got a good night's sleep last night. Rarely, but yes. I felt like that when I woke up after wearing this thing. Okay. Wear it on your head. You do. You wear it on your head all night long while you are sleeping. And it keeps a constant cool temperature across your forehead. And then it varies the temperature as you go through different circadian rhythms and it will actually help you wake up or go to sleep. It's so I'm not a sports person, but I'm going to try this thing and I'm going to get back to you on it because this is just a huge issue for us. Tell us the name of it

again. Eb Therapeutics, EBB Therapeutics. E-B-B Therapeutics. It's amazing. Honestly, somebody asked me to borrow mine and I told them to go buy their own. Yeah. I'm like, dude, I'm not giving this thing up. I love it. I just spent a ridiculous amount of money buying some crazy bedding, like mattress cover sheets, comforter.

This one, I think it's like $350. I think it's $350. And it's a consumer version. Believe it or not, it used to be by prescription only. And now they have a consumer version. So that's kind of cool. Literally, no pun intended. It's a great device. I mean, I have to be like, I really didn't think it was going to work. Like I really did. Like I was like, come on guys, you're going to cool my forehead and people are going to sleep better. And I was like, dude, you could have knocked me over with a feather and you can roll over with it and all that. Okay. I mean, I look pretty goofy. Who cares? I know. I don't care. My wife's used to me looking goofy. I try out all kinds of stuff all the time. I was really impressed. So menopause in and of

itself, I really think is an issue that should be treated. Um, especially when it comes to sleep. We also know another side fact is that when you are sleep deprived, the symptoms of menopause are perceived as worse. They may be exactly the same, but you feel them worse. Because if you're feeling almost psychotic or you're feeling like you have the flu and then you tag onto that menopausal symptoms, it's going to feel miserable. And what about progesterone to help women sleep? What are your thoughts there? So progesterone has a dramatic effect on sleep. And when you have varying amounts of progesterone that go up and down in a crazy cycle, like menopause, you are absolutely going to see some massive, massive changes with

sleep. And so when you start to look at it from a strictly hormonal standpoint, what's also interesting is estrogen and testosterone, which we know is flowing around in women as well, have a pretty big effect too. And so when we're looking at these circadian cycles, what we're hoping for, unfortunately, women are not having these, is a rhythmicity or a predictability of things like with guys, it's pretty easy. I mean, our hormones have been flowing in a certain direction in a certain time for a very long, long period. And we can predict that with some

relative ease. menopause is like this whole weird ballgame. And to be fair, not a whole lot of people have studied it. That's so interesting. Let's get back to insomnia and COVID-19. Anxiety, the social isolation, the financial stress. Now, some people have loved this time and they're in reverse, that being around other people stresses them out and drains their energy. And I've had many of my patients say, this is a historically good time for them. They're more bonded to their children. They have more time because they're not fighting traffic and they're not spending so much time getting ready. Um, but then I have this other group, they can't sleep. We know depression has tripled

in the last six months. And I suspect that, um, sleep is part of that because they're being assaulted with anxiety, negative news. And then their 10 actually did really well until the social unrest triggered childhood stuff. And then uncertainty became much more of that. So talk to us about what you've been thinking about during the pandemic as it relates to sleep? Absolutely. So here's the thing is we all have the opportunity to make it through this in better shape than when we started because we have an opportunity to really look at our sleep. I will tell you with a complete abandon, sleep dramatically affects the immune system, period, end of story. Okay. During stages three and four is when you have the largest bolus of growth hormone that comes, it does all the repair, but guess what? It also helps improve killer T cell production.

And when you are sleep deprived, one of the things that goes down almost immediately is killer T cell production. And that is what we need to fight infection and virus. So if you want to make it through this without getting COVID, number one, get your sleep. That's a lot. That's very easy for me to say, but not so easy for many people to do. There are some very simple guidelines that literally everybody could follow that will help ensure that they're getting better sleep. Step number one, wake up at the same time every damn day. Okay. I don't care if you don't have to commute, wake up at what your normal time would have been. If you normally woke up at six 30, why are you rolling out of bed at seven 38 o'clock?

Because you can just throw on a, you know, a picture on your zoom and then, uh, you know, only be audio and not ever even get your day started that's not what our bodies need our bodies need reference points our bodies need structure our bodies need criteria and when we have those everything seems to work better so the number one recommendation that i have for people that unfortunately they haven't been following is continue to wake up at your same normal wake-up time and do it on the weekends. Having that circadian consistency has everything to do with all of the different aspects of your circadian system that could be affected by COVID. So moodiness, depression, anxiety, all of those are affected if you have an irregular sleep schedule. So that's number one.

Number two, give yourself a media diet 90 minutes before bed. You do not need to know anything about politics, anything about COVID, anything about anything 90 minutes before bed. Because all it does is set off all this autonomic arousal. You get pissed off. And guess what? You can't fall asleep when you're pissed off. That was the most effective thing I did. Stop watching the news. I grab headlines. I don't watch the news. Yeah. It's just not effective to do it in the evenings before bed. I would also argue that now is arguably the most stressful time that anybody has ever had. Right. I mean, other than Holocaust, you know, survivors, you know, we're in a situation where impending doom is changing every other day and the level

of stress that that's having on all of us. And it's a different kind of stress too, guys. You know, I mean, as you know, it's not just like, oh, there's traffic in LA today or, oh, I'm disappointed. I didn't, this didn't happen. It's like, well, what if somebody I love gets sick? Like, what if they, what could they die from this? What's going on? So completely different levels of stress. And that's causing a tremendous difficulty in not only falling asleep and staying asleep. And then people are doing two things that are even worse. They're drinking a tremendous amount of caffeine and they're drinking a lot of alcohol and those two have dramatic, dramatic effects on our sleep.

Right. And so when we think about caffeine, um, one of the things that we all have got to understand is caffeine has a half-life of between six and eight hours. So when we drink it, we need to make sure that it's out of our system before we go to sleep, or at least half of it is out of our system. Now, I guarantee you that you've got some listeners out there and here's what they're thinking. Sleep doctor, he's going to tell me I can't drink caffeine after like 2pm or something crazy like that. He doesn't know I can have a cup of coffee with my dinner and I can fall right to sleep. That might be true. But if I stuck electrodes on your head, and I looked at the quality of the sleep that you were getting while your brain was running around on caffeine, I can assure you it is not good.

It is not good quality sleep because caffeine directly knocks out stages three and four, at least lowers it. And we know that it can have some pretty definite effects on REM sleep. Alcohol is an even bigger problem because here's what's happening. People are stressed. They can't sleep. They don't know what to do. Alcohol is the number one sleep aid in the world. More people use alcohol to force themselves to sleep than any other substance out there.

To be clear, there's a really big difference between going to sleep and passing out. So we try to make sure that nobody's in the passing out stage and people are in the go to sleep stage. So I've got a strategy for you. I don't, I like scotch and I like a good beer every once in a while. So here's what I tell people. It takes the average human one hour to digest one alcoholic beverage. So if you want to have a glass of wine with dinner, go for it. Have a glass of water. After that, remember alcohol is a diuretic and our bodies function much better hydrated when we sleep than dehydrated when we sleep and wait one hour. If you have two glasses of wine, have two glasses of water and wait two hours. If you decide to go for the third glass, that's when things have a

tendency to get a little weird when it comes to sleep. Number one, we've seen with women in particular, when they hit that third drink, they actually get energized. They don't get sleepy. So that's not a good thing. And with men, not only do they get energized, but they can also get aggressive, which again is not the situation that you want to be having at home. Doesn't it affect blood sugar as well? It does. And so blood sugar is a really interesting thing that we talk about when we look at middle of the night awakenings, right? And so how many of you have ever had the experience

where, and we don't have to raise your hand, but you passed out, right? From drinking too close to your normal bedtime and you woke up at like four o'clock in the morning, you're completely drenched in sweat. You walk over into the bathroom, you go to the bathroom and then you're wide awake for the rest of the night. What's going on there, Michael?

Here's the problem. It's like you anesthetized yourself. It's like you took a needle, you stuck it into your arm, you then went to sleep, and then the needle comes out, and then you woke up. Your body wasn't expecting to be anesthetized by alcohol. And so when it wakes up, it's basically back to where you started drinking in your circadian rhythm. And so of course you're not, if you started drinking at, let's say six o'clock at night, your body would never want to go to bed at six o'clock at night. So it's like you pause. It's like, exactly. That's so fascinating, right? So you just got to be careful, right? You got to be thoughtful about using these substances. So do I have coffee? Occasionally, to be honest with you, I don't need it. I have this level of energy no matter what I'm doing because I sleep really, really well.

Well, I think if people slept well, they wouldn't be as drawn to drinking, having so much caffeine and alcohol. Because they're sleep deprived. It's a vicious circle. And then alcohol to set them down. But if they could get that. Did you have the third thing? So the first thing is wake up at the same time every day. Yes. The second thing was give yourself a media diet.

And the third thing was kill the caffeine and the alcohol. Right. So the specific ideas with caffeine and alcohol are very straightforward. Actually, I can put it all together in a five-step plan. Can I do that for you? Yes. Let's do it.

Our listeners would love that. Step number one is to wake up on one specific time. Whatever that time is, if it's 6.30, if it's 7, I don't care. You pick it and stick it. Seven days a week. Step number one, one wake-up time. Step number two, stop caffeine by 2 p.m. If you stop by 2 p.m., that means that you've got eight hours before

average bedtime, around 10 o'clock, to get that caffeine out of you. Step number three is stop alcohol three hours before bed. That gives you the two drinks plus a little bit of wiggle room in case you're a little bit close to your bedtime. Step number four has to do with exercise. I'm a huge, huge fan of exercise, and movement is helpful. That's the other thing that nobody's doing during COVID, Daniel, is nobody's moving. And you know what? Sleep is recovery. If we have nothing to recover from, we don't sleep well. So everybody needs to be moving, moving, moving, but you don't want to move too close to bedtime. So step number four is stop exercise four hours before bed. And step number five has to do with wake-ups.

So wake-ups are big, big, big for me because I want to wake up with energy and excitement and be mindful of my day. So there's two things that I do when I wake up. I drink 20 ounces of water and I get 15 minutes of sunlight every morning. So I walk outside and I do this weird thing. I walk outside with my dog and I take off my shoes

and I put my feet on the earth. I don't have a lot of data. I do this weird thing. I walk outside with my dog and I take off my shoes and I put my feet on the earth. I don't have a lot of data. I go watch my hummingbirds and I like walk through the grass and yeah. And I just breathe and I just give myself a positive intention for the day. And I say, Hey, I'm a lucky guy. Things are going to go well today. I had a great night's sleep. I'm ready. And that's, that's kind of what I do in the morning. 20 minutes of sunshine in the morning and 20 ounces of water. That's correct. Yeah. When I make my smoothie, I make them really thin because I add a ton of water to it,

because it's one of the best times for me to add that extra- And if it's winter, because we're getting into fall now, and you can't go outside and put your feet on the ground because it's frozen. That's where the bright light therapy lamp. Exactly. So I love your therapy light. I told you about it before, and that would be what I would recommend for people during the winter months, right? On the fall, especially if you live like in the Northeast. I mean, let's be fair, guys, I live in Los Angeles. Actually, I live in Manhattan beach, which is even better than Los Angeles. So I get all the sunlight I could possibly want. But if you live in like upstate New York or Wisconsin or, you know,

all of these fun places, it's not so much sunlight up there. And so I really love that light therapy that you guys are using with people to be able to use in the morning times to supplement. And there's also data now to show that if you're depressed and sleep deprived, light therapy actually works even better than just light therapy for just people who are sleep deprived. So helpful. All right. When we come back, we are going to talk more about dreams and nightmares with Dr. Michael Bruce. I took the chronotype test. So chronoquiz.com. I'm a bear. So maybe that's the best one to be what a bear is. And you can go to chronoquiz.com. Simple. It's fun. It'll give you a great report.

And Michael's got lots of books. And his website is thesleepdoctor.com. Stay with us. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain healthy supplements from BrainMD, you can use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full

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