Change Your Brain Every Day - The Surprising Reasons You Can’t Get to Sleep, with Dr. Shane Creado

Episode Date: June 1, 2020

The amount of sleep we get every night plays a huge role in our overall health and mood. Just getting a couple hours less sleep than needed can cause major problems in the long run. What’s worse is many people have no idea why they have trouble sleeping in the first place. In this episode, sleep expert Dr. Shane Creado helps us identify the biggest sleep stealers that rob us of a good night’s 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, everybody. We are so excited to have Dr. Shane Criotto on, and just think of this as sleep week. Dr. Criotto is a psychiatrist. He's a sleep specialist. He works in our clinic in Chicago,

north of Chicago. We love him. He and I collaborate on lots of patients. He's super smart, very articulate. And his new book, Peak Sleep Performance, the cutting edge sleep science that will guarantee a competitive advantage. Shane, welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Thank you so much for having me. And I just want to say, Daniel, that you inspired me to start writing books. When I first joined Amy Clinics, you said you got to write a book on sleep. And so it's finally here. So thank you for this opportunity. Right.

And you said, well, there are so many books on sleep. What do I have that's different? You're also a sports medicine psychiatrist. And, you know, we went to an NBA game together, and we talked to one of my favorite NBA players, Kyle Korver, and just how important sleep is to performance, but it's just not athletic performance. It's work performance. It's life performance. And whenever anybody asks me about my routine during the pandemic, I always start the night before and how I get ready for bed. That is so true. And it goes from everything from sports performance to work performance to brain

health, which is what we do here at Amen Clinics. And as you rightly said in the Bright Minds Protocol, sleep is a pillar of brain health. And if we don't optimize our sleep, our brain health really can't get to the next level of functioning. So this book will hopefully focus on sleep, not just for athletes, but for everybody. This book has all the tools needed for everyone to have access to the sleep skills used by elite athletes that everyone can implement today. So let's start by talking about what hurts our sleep. What is going on in our society especially right now like i think we need to really discuss about what's happening during the pandemic and how that's disrupting i mean like chronic fear right this thing i call it the global amygdala hijacking right we have a global amygdala i think it's really important to really address the current situation.

And things are going to be different going forward. Absolutely. So we know that there's already been a sleep pandemic in a way because insomnia has been so widespread. Add to it anxiety, stress, fear, things that are out of our control. It's going to magnify the problem because sleeping is the most vulnerable thing we do. And if we're in danger mode, and that in our brain scans as well,

if we are in danger mode, if we're anxious, then it's just we're not going to be able to fall asleep. Our brain will not let us sleep because we are hardwired to protect ourselves. And that means staying awake or being light sleepers, which will in turn sabotage our ability to deal with stress once again, which sets up a vicious cycle. A lot of people are talking about their pandemic nightmares. There's a difference between nightmare disorder, which is severe, and general nightmares. In fact, studies have shown that nightmares can actually be protective. They prime the brain to respond to terrifying situations. And they've seen people

respond quicker to strange, scary situations when they have had nightmares on and off. Unfortunately, if you're in danger mode, your brain tends to do things in its sleep, like dreams that you experienced during the day. So you'll have scarier dreams, you'll have nightmares. If you're anxious, you won't get enough sleep. So your brain will compensate by getting more dream sleep, which will actually fuel more nightmares. So yes, people are saying... I'm sorry, does anger affect your sleep the same way as anxiety or is it different? It's very similar because anxiety or danger mode can result in us going to fight or flight

mode. And so the fight mode is the anger component to that danger response. That's so interesting. Because people, I see people so angry right now. And so I just wonder how that's. So it's a way to manage the stress people are smoking pot we had a hysterical interaction with my dad before he died he got into my mother's best last conversation ever recorded gummies she got

into her hemp gum she didn't tell tell anyone she was taking hemp gummies. But you didn't know you were only supposed to have one. People are resorting to marijuana. They're resorting to hemp gummies. They're resorting to alcohol or sugar before bed. How do those things impact sleep? Those things will adversely affect your sleep because the sugar crash comes along eventually. Now, in my athlete population, if it's the night before a big game, we can talk about foods like tryptophan, foods filled with GABA, high-carb foods. Slow carbs can help you sleep better. But if you're eating sugar throughout the day, if you're in danger mode, if you're using

marijuana, that's going to set you up for failure in the long term because those are really going to interfere with your rhythms, your biological rhythms. It's really simple when you break it down in terms of the evidence-based strategies to optimize your sleep. You need to synchronize your circadian rhythm or the melatonin and cortisol balance, and you need to synchronize your sleep needs, your sleep thirst, or your homeostatic drive. Once they're in sync, you'll be able to fall asleep when you want to, wake up when you want to.

But because people are resorting to marijuana throughout the day, gummies, they're going to feel hungrier. They're going to have the munchies. They're going to resort to unhealthy foods. They're not exercising. Structure and routines have fallen off. That will disrupt your sleep. So daytime routines are as important as nighttime routines.

People talk about sleep hygiene, having a to-do or a worry list a few hours before bedtime, having fixed wake-up time. Those are all well and good. But if you are doing things to sabotage your rhythms during the day, it will impact your nighttime sleep. So let's talk about wine for one second because people always talk about this, how I have a glass of wine to sleep at night. But I noticed that if I have just a tiny bit of wine on occasion,

it doesn't really disrupt my sleep very much. I have it earlier than, you know, before I go to bed, not right before bed. Um, but if I drink very, if I have like a larger glass of wine,

I don't drink very much, but that definitely disrupts my sleep. So how much is there, is there an amount that like, can people drink? Cause people are going to ask, they always ask how much is there? Is there an amount that like, can people drink? Because people are going to ask, they always ask, how much can I have? I've never prescribed alcohol to anyone. All right, let me rephrase it. How much can I get away with?

Well, people say wine has some benefits because of the resveratrol in the skin of grapes. So you could always have resveratrol for helping with those grapes. So you could always have resveratrol for helping with those benefits. I don't think that's why they're really having it. Exactly. So I would say if someone wants to have an occasional glass of wine, then that's okay.

If you don't have any liver or other severe brain health issues, but you need to, as you rightly said, have it a few hours before bedtime. Right. Sure, a nightcap will help you fall asleep easier because it's a depressant to your nervous system. But a few hours later, when your brain is going through a withdrawal, since it's out of your system, your brain will

wake up in the middle of the night. So a lot of people say, but it helps me fall asleep, and I don't know why I'm waking up at three in the morning. It's precisely the alcohol that can be contributing there. Right. Also alcohol. And it's a diuretic. It is a diuretic. So you're going to wake up in the middle of the night, go to the bathroom. It'll be harder for you to fall asleep because now your brain is not just awake. It's also going through mild anxiety in a way in the brain's receptors in terms of withdrawing from that alcohol. And alcohol can worsen sleep apnea. It makes your muscles relax. Right. And you made a really good point about getting up and going to the bathroom. I even noticed that I changed my supplement routine because I take a ton of supplements. I was taking it right before bed. Well, that meant I had to drink a ton of water

right before bed. And that was really disrupting my sleep. So just changing some of those things can be helpful too, I think. Yes. Well, Shane helped us create our supplement, Put Me to Sleep, which we're really excited about at BrainMD. But before we have to finish our first podcast, let's talk about a couple of other sleep disruptors. What do you think about caffeine? Caffeine will disrupt your sleep because it's a stimulant, so it's going to keep your mind alert, but it doesn't mean that you're going to get away with it in the long term because your sleep debt will catch up with you. That's one thing. The other thing is you might need more and more caffeine because tolerance may build up. You may start off with a couple of cups in the morning every day. And before you know it, the next month, you may need

three or four cups just to keep going. So if you feel you need a stimulant like caffeine to keep you up, you're obviously not getting sufficient sleep. I've said this before. Each one's brain needs different amounts of sleep. If you're getting six hours of sleep, but your brain needs eight hours of sleep, then you're running on fumes because every week you lose 14 hours of sleep. So I'm not a fan of caffeine. There's other ways to be more alert, like better sleep, better quantity and quality of sleep. I have a question. So is it like, it seems like some people are more affected by cutting their sleep short, even if it's by a small amount. I know if I sleep a half hour less, just a half hour less, I need like eight and a half hours. But if I sleep like a half an hour less than I,

than I know before I'm ready to wake up, I feel sick. I mean, does, I mean, it seems like sleep affects people differently. You'll just like sludge through it. But I literally feel almost like there's something wrong with me. Something's, I'm coming down with something. Is that common? Yes. It's more common than you think. And people don't realize it's directly connected to their sleep. Well, I'm crabby all the time.

I wake up with a morning headache. Sometimes I don't want to talk to my wife in the morning. I'm a little slow getting started. And those little clues to me that they're not getting the optimal sleep that their brain needs. So you'll pick up on this. Other people who have inflammatory conditions or elite sports people, they know the difference. In fact, the 30-minute sleep extension studies have been done at Stanford. And they found that even 30 minutes more sleep, even if the athlete is getting what they think is enough sleep,

you can boost your basketball shooting accuracy by 9.2%. It's all in my head. It's all in my head. When we come back, we're going to talk more about the things that disrupt your sleep, but also the things that help your sleep. 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

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