Change Your Brain Every Day - How to Determine the Hours of Sleep You Need Each Night, with Dr. Michael Breus

Episode Date: October 22, 2020

One of the common questions we get asked is about the optimal hours of sleep needed each night. Unfortunately, there’s no right or wrong answer, as the amount varies from person to person. So how many hours do YOU need? In this fourth and final episode in a series with sleep doctor Michael Breus, he and the Amens give you a strategy to determine your nightly sleep target, as well as additional sleep tips to help you get the most out of your nights. For more information on Dr. Michael Breus, visit https://thesleepdoctor.com/  

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. And I mean, I got to tell you, I am learning so much about sleep. We are just having such a good time.

This is fascinating. And in this episode, we're going to answer your questions. We've got some amazing questions. We asked you for them. You sent them. And so Dr. Michael Bruce, our expert today is going to help us answer these questions. Welcome back, Dr. Bruce. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Absolutely. I'm just, I'm sitting here like dumbfounded with all the information I'm learning. It's been amazing. So let's talk about this. The first question is what could cause patients to lose sleep during the COVID-19 pandemic? I think you kind of answered that. But if there's anything more specific you want to touch on, now would be the time. Well, I think we talked about it.

But just in summary, I think that we've got too much media going on. And so that's causing a significant amount of stress in people. I think people need to make sure that they are maintaining their wake-up time. Even if you want to go to bed at a variable time, I don't think I care as much as if you just have a consistent wake-up time. Remember, caffeine is not your friend right now. A little bit is okay, but don't go overboard. And you really want to try to avoid alcohol too close to bedtime. I think those are the big things that we need to make sure that people know and move, move, move. You've got to have movement. We recover. Sleep is recovery. And if we don't have anything to recover from, it makes it kind of tough. I love that. What's the ideal

number of hours of sleep? You know, I wish that was an easy question to answer. Yeah. It's weird because he's golden at seven hours. If he wakes me up with seven hours, I'm not a nice person for the rest of the day. Like I know I need eight to eight and a half. Yeah. I would argue that it's different for everybody. Yeah. Um, and, and, and everybody can actually find their sleep need, um, if they want it. Right. And so there's an easy formula that you can do it. Number one, you learn your chronotype. I tell you exactly when to sleep, but if you don't want to do that, that's okay too. The average sleep cycle is 90 minutes long, right? The average person has five

of these cycles. Five times 90 is 450 minutes divided by 60 is 7.5 hours. So let's get one thing straight. Eight hours is a myth. I mean, the math doesn't even work, right? Like it just doesn't make sense, but here's what you can do with the math. Let's say that you normally wake up at six 30 count backwards, seven and a half hours. That puts your bedtime at 11 o'clock. It doesn't get much simpler than that. Go to bed at 11. If you wake up five minutes before your alarm at like 625, guess what? You figured out your sleep schedule. If you still require alarm after five or seven days, go to bed 15 minutes earlier. The goal here is to be able to wake up roughly five minutes

before your alarm goes off. Now, let's say you say to me, Michael, I went to bed at 11 and I woke up at 530, not 630. Well, then go to bed about an hour later. What will happen is you'll figure out where your kind of swim lane is for sleep. And it may or may not be identical to your partner. That has everything to do with gender, age, medical condition. There's a million reasons why you and your partner may or may not have the exact same sleep schedule. You need to have the right amount and quality of sleep for you as an individual. So does that mean six hours is okay? Yeah. Because there's actually some imaging studies

that suggest if you get less than seven hours, you have less blood flow. I'm very worried about people who only get four hours of sleep at night that are tweeting in the middle of the night. Okay, let's not go there. But I heard that Churchill only got four hours of sleep at night, but ended up with dementia toward the end of his life. And Margaret Thatcher, same thing. And so there's some people that say, I can do four hours and I'm just fine. Is that really too, given that your brain cleans and washes itself, perhaps it's not getting enough time. So here's what's interesting. There are actually genetically short sleepers. It's a syndrome. We

call it short sleeper syndrome. And there are people whose bodies will literally only allow them to sleep four hours a night. Some people say those people hit the genetic lottery and they have now 20 hours in their day to do. And to be clear, they sleep four hours and they function just like you and me. They're perfectly fine. Not a big issue. This is an incredibly small percentage of the population. We're talking less than a quarter of 1%. Okay. And so while you may try to aspire to having less sleep in your life, what I would argue

is what you really want is good quality sleep. It's not about shortening the amount of sleep. It's about increasing the quality of sleep. And then what actually happens is your amount shortens by itself. Let me give you an example of what happened to me and my sleep. So about six years ago,

I decided that I was gonna lock and load on my Wolf's chronotype schedule and I was just gonna follow it and do exactly what the data said I should do. I was going to bed at midnight. I was waking up around 7.30 naturally. I figured that was great. Within six months, I started waking up by myself, 7.15. Didn't really think much about it. Another six months went by. Now I'm waking up at seven o'clock. Guys, I wake up at 6.15 now. I still go to bed at midnight. My sleep is so consistent and I track my sleep with

my ring. My sleep is so consistent. I get all the sleep I need. I get all the stage three, four sleep. I get all the REM sleep. What's happened is my body has become more efficient because of the consistency of my sleep. So when people have inconsistent schedules, you require more sleep to just get some of the good stuff in there. But when you're consistent, you don't go for it. So I think that that's why I need more sleep than he does. Because I mean, if a door opens in the middle of the night, I'm like out of bed, you know, I've got a weapon. I'm like looking for it. It's like crazy. So I'm always like on the lookout for something. But because of that, and I mean, if there's any light, if there's any sound, I wake up.

I think it takes me longer to get to sleep. So I wonder if he needs less sleep because literally he climbs in bed, gone. He's out. No, that's not true. So here's- Play puzzles. Yeah, but then he's out.

And when he's out, he's then out. So here's the good news is no couple that I have ever met has more than one insomniac in the couple because they drive each other too damn crazy. Right. And so he's always going to be a good sleeper. Right. We're going to work on you and you're going to continue to be pissed off that he's always the good sleeper. Is that why I need more sleep? Because I feel like I start to finally get good sleep sometime around four o'clock in the morning or five o'clock in the morning. Yeah. All right. Honestly, there's a likelihood that you could

be going to bed too early. Um, and we would want to compact your sleep and there might be some supplementation that we could help you with. Oh, I take a lot of supplements that we could help you. Okay. Two more questions. I know you're going to ask one of our questions. What about sleep trackers? Do you like sleep cycle? Do you like Fitbit? Do you like the Oura Rings? What do you want? Yeah. So I'm going to tell you what I like, but I want to be very clear that I was recently asked to be on the clinical advisory board for Oura Ring. And I do wear one. To be clear, I've been wearing one much longer than before they came to me and started talking to me. I've been involved in sleep tracking than before they came to me and started talking to me.

I've been involved in sleep tracking with multiple companies over the years. And here's what I can tell you. Nobody is good. Okay. Everybody has issues. And here's why. Sleep is a complicated process. Look, if you were tracking steps, it's my daughter can, that's a math equation.

Okay. That's a calculus. What's the length of my leg? What's my stride? How long am I going? How many steps did I take? That's an easy thing to, for a device to measure. But with sleep, how do you create the score? Is it how quickly you fall asleep? Is it how quickly you get to REM sleep? Is it how much deep sleep? Is it number of awakening? Is it the length of awakenings? I could go on for a week with all of these different variables. So the prop, there's multiple issues with sleep trackers that are out there. Number one, nobody has the same definition. Can you believe that?

Nobody has said, this is how we all should define light sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep. So what I get on my aura ring could be different from your whoop strap, could be different from your sleep cycle. So the definitions have not been there. What do I do, Michael? How do I make heads or tails of it? Is it even worthwhile for me to get a tracker? Yes, it is. And I'm going to tell you exactly how to use it. Don't look at the absolute data. Look at the relative data. Okay. So if I look at my aura ring and it says, Michael, you only got four minutes of deep sleep. I don't care because I know I didn't get only four minutes of deep sleep. I don't care because I know I didn't get only four minutes of deep sleep. And if every night it tells me that I only get four minutes, then I'm probably good

because honestly, there's no way that that happens. But if I get four minutes, one night, 700 minutes the next night and 37 minutes the next night, I want to know the Delta. I want to know the change. And that's when I want to look in and see what's going on. So you're looking for patterns. Exactly. I'm looking for patterns and on. So you're looking for patterns. Exactly. I'm looking for patterns and changes. I'm not looking for, oh my gosh, I only got 12% REM and my body needs 16%. That is a game nobody is going to win. Okay.

All right. What about supplements and sleep? Yeah. So every single time that I talk to a patient, there's four different things that I want to know are up to what I call par levels. Magnesium. Yes. Melatonin. Yes. Iron and vitamin D. All four of those have been shown to have dramatic, dramatic effects on sleep. So the very first thing that I do when I get a new client or I'm working with somebody is I'm like, let's get bloods done and let's figure this out. Magnesium

is one of those things that absolutely helps calm people down. Something that I recommend people taking in the evenings. Vitamin D is actually a circadian pacemaker and it actually is an energy provider. So I ask people to take that in the mornings. By the way, a simple side note, I think it's something like 95% of people who have died from COVID are vitamin D deficient. So everybody out there, go buy some damn vitamin D and start taking it. And then iron specifically more on the female side than on the male side, because I'm always looking for restless leg syndrome, anemia, things like that, that can be going on to affect sleep. And then of course,

melatonin production. So I'm 52 years old and my melatonin is starting to decline. That's one of the things that can happen at age 52 years old. So am I going to, I'm considering taking a melatonin supplement if I were to need it. But to be fair, I sleep great. Like I fall asleep exactly at the same time every night. I wake up at the same time every day. So I really don't need any melatonin in my system, even though I do know that it's starting to decline. Now, if over the next year, two years, three years, all of a sudden my schedule starts shifting like crazy, well then yeah, it might make sense. So from a melatonin perspective, I only supplement melatonin in my patients who are a little bit older and who have circadian rhythm issues or using it for jet lag.

There is one group of people that I do use melatonin in that's different than any other group. And those are autistic children. I am not a fan of melatonin in anybody under the age of 18. Remember everyone, melatonin is a hormone. Okay. This is not something to fool around with. It's not like a mineral or a vitamin. This is a hormone and hormones have dramatic, dramatic effects. It also depends when you take it, how much you take. There's a whole idea behind how to take melatonin effectively and whether or not you need it. I've written a blog about it. Actually, I've written three blogs about it and we'll put those in the show notes as well. Awesome. So I agree with everything you just said. I love all of those. I mean, I have a whole sleep cocktail. Melatonin and magnesium are my go-to. How much melatonin do you take?

How much is three now? Three of ours? Restful sleep. Time release, yeah. It's about a milligram. About a milligram? Okay, good. Yeah, because you really want it to be somewhere between a half and one and a half milligrams. So many people are taking three, five, 10 milligrams. Yeah. It's terrible. I get a hangover. Um, but so that really helps me, but it needs to be time released for me. Otherwise I wake up. But the one thing that really helped me, um, because of COVID and then also the menopause thing, my, my brain got busy and. And I never thought that I would like

GABA. Taking a little bit of GABA in the evenings, like settled my brain down. So much nicer. I say no, so much less. We just produced our 15th public television special. And we did this one together because of Tana's book. And when I write the scripts and she criticizes them. Well, I have a critical mind, but I find myself saying no so much less. The level of cooperation was so much better. I love it. So I call Gaia- I'm a critical, I'm an ICU nurse. Of course I have critical thinking. I'm just, that's how I talk. Well, I mean, so first of all,

dolphins are critical thinkers. That's just who they are. That's part of who she is, that she's always going to be that. You love that about her, but there are days when it probably isn't so much. I get it, right? But GABA are the brakes of the brain.

Right. I love using GABA with people. When we have good GABA, Pharma GABA in particular, I happen to like quite a bit. And that seems to work well with patients. My son takes GABA for anxiety and finds it to be highly effective. And my daughter too. Yeah. So I mean, there's things out there that can be very effective from a supplement standpoint. Arguably the most studied herb is actually valerian. You know, some people find it.

I like it. People say it gives them weird dreams, but I like it. Yeah. It's stinky though. It smells terrible. It's stinky. That's the problem. Yeah.

I think that's the biggest problem. We have valerian and sometimes people complain about it. Michael, you have just been a joy. So much good. I feel like there's, we just go on. We should have you back. I'd love to come back. On your podcast.

Thank you. Yeah, I think we're getting close to 10 million downloads for the Brain Warriors Way podcast. So people can learn more about your work, the sleepdo doctor.com. Take the go to chrono quiz.com fun Tana and I actually took a while we were doing this. So if you saw me looking down, I wasn't answering email. And Michael's got books, the power of, I think is your latest book. You can catch them on Dr. Oz or The Doctors. We're just great that we've become friends and a big fan of you and your work and

thrilled to introduce you to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. So for those listening, what did you learn? I have all these notes on my phone. Write them down. Post them. Take a picture of it. Post them on any of your social media sites. Hashtag Brain Warriors Way podcast. Also, hashtag the sleep doctor.

And share this information because when you sleep, your brain and your life is better. So good. Thank you so much. Thank you, Michael. Absolutely. Thank you guys. And just one quick shout out to all of your guys, sweet dreams and the sleep talk. Thank you so much. Bye-bye. Bye now. 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 evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.