Change Your Brain Every Day - The Surprising Thing Sleeping Does To Your Brain

Episode Date: July 25, 2017

A recent study was published on the accuracy of soldiers at the firing range based on the amount of sleep they had gotten the previous night. The surprising results indicate just how crucial it is to get enough sleep at night. Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen discuss ways to improve the quality of your sleep, so you can function better during the day.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives

for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the 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 nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Hey, everybody. Today, we're going to talk about one of the most important topics that we ever talk about, and that's sleep. I love sleep.

Actually, it seems like the older I get, the more I like to go to sleep. But it is just critical. And I think actually it's not the older I get, the more I love sleep. It's the more research I read about sleep. Yeah, when I met you, you stayed up really late and you thought I was going to be this party girl.

And I've never been able to stay up late. So we had like these little adjustment things we had to do. And you started going to bed earlier. Only one or two. Well, it's because you went to bed earlier. Right. Yeah, I can't do it. I just can't do it.

Motivation. Yeah. When you sleep, and this is actually new information your brain cleans or washes itself from the trash that builds up during the day and i remember a number of years ago when i read that study uh and saw a ted talk on it that i was telling Chloe about it. And she was eight at the time. And so Chloe went into you and said, Mommy, I have to go to bed because I have to wash my brain. Right.

And then you came into my office. I was like, what is she talking about? And you go, what is she talking about? It's so critical to your human functioning. So we have done a number of podcasts on the importance of sleep and how important it is and why you need to do this because of cleaning your brain. So we want you to listen to those for sure. And what we really want to touch on today, though, is we want to point out just why it's important because sleep deprivation, like what is the impact on cognitive performance? We want to talk about that and how

seasons, what are some of the things that affect your brain? Like change of seasons and why is heat, you know, like how does the temperature change affect your sleep? So if you're, because we know so many of you struggle with sleep, you've got medications or hormones or all these things that are affecting your sleep. We get these calls and emails and all these things every single day. So we've done a number of podcasts on those. Please go listen to those, but we want to talk about some of the science right now on the impact. Let's start with sleep deprivation. The impact of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance. Tell them about the study with the soldiers.

Let's start there. Remember the soldiers at the range? So soldiers who had seven hours of sleep were 98% accurate on the range. Sort of reminds me of you and Chloe. Right. So we like to go to the range. You might as well put it out there. I love going the range and i have found this to be true um if i don't sleep i'm not i'm actually a really good shot but when i go to the range and i have not slept i'm

not that great soldiers who got only six hours so listen to this between seven and six, they were only 50% accurate on the range. That's crazy. One hour difference decreased their performance by 50%. Remarkable. And those who only got five hours, it was 28%. Yep. And those who got less than four hours were only 15% accurate. Dangerous.

Dangerous. Not getting enough sleep is associated with way more accidents. In fact, sleep deprivation is equivalent to driving drunk. It's amazing. In fact, I think it's more dangerous. Yeah, it's more dangerous. They have more problems with their weight because when you don't sleep,

you have less blood flow to your brain, which means you're not going to supervise your decisions as well. And you have more marital problems because you tend to say the first thing that comes to your mind rather than thinking about how what you say will come out. And I remember, it's probably why I'm still not married to my first wife. She said, how does this skirt make me look? And I said, sort of like the back of a school bus.

Yeah, who says that? You're one of the most thoughtful people I know. Every now and then you have this slip up where you say something really bizarre. But mostly you're really thoughtful. And I cannot imagine you saying, were you in residency then? I think I was.

Okay, residents get no sleep, right. And it didn't go over well um so you have to be careful and i know when i take an overnight flight or um i don't get sleep the patient had an emergency or something i'm even that more cautious the next day. So I don't make mistakes. So interesting. So as a very high performance person, most of the things I've done and do in my life are pretty high performance like karate. And I notice I get hurt more, right? When I don't sleep, if I'm not, if I haven't slept well, I don't perform as well I get hurt more

don't do well at the range as a nice you nurse I would be scared I took myself off of the night shift and told him I can't do it because I was afraid I was going to hurt somebody right I was a trauma nurse last thing I want to do is hurt another person because I've not slept well but according to this really interesting study from the Department of Psychology at the University of Turku, Finland, interestingly, they say that women generally, it still affects their brain in a very negative way, but they generally cope with sleep deprivation

better than men. Now, I find that interesting since you always think of men being soldiers, right? But why would women- But women take care of babies. Now, I find that interesting since you always think of men being soldiers, right? But why would women take care of babies? Oh, interesting. Women's brains are remodeled as they go through pregnancy. And so many women will talk about pregnancy dementia. But what really happens is the tracks in their brain change when they have a baby. And so they're more able to tolerate stress. They're more able to be up in the middle of the night. Now, what this says specifically is that in terms of cognitive performance, they endure

prolonged wakefulness better, but they recover slower. So that's really interesting, isn't it? Well, that's why if your wife has a baby, you want to do everything you can to protect her sleep because she's just going to be happier and nicer. Interesting. So do men tolerate stress better though? No. No. Interesting. Well, you know, women suffer. I'm just getting ready to publish a new paper. It's the largest brain imaging study ever. We'll have to do some podcasts on it. It's, we looked at the difference between male and female brains on 46,034 scans. And the difference was crazy.

Female brains are more active uh in most areas of the brain especially the prefrontal cortex but also the limbic brain that means women um generally have better decision making but with their emotional brain being more active they're also more vulnerable to anxiety and depression okay and so they're going to get that they have twice the level of anxiety twice the level of depression that is important to check and balance to learn how to deal with it they actually was one study from from Montreal that showed women had 52% less serotonin than men. And serotonin is an inhibitory neurotransmitter. It calms things down in the brain. And without that, something bad happens.

They spin on it. No. More than. Absolutely not. More than men. That's why you may hear about it 47 times. Or why like it's like I'm the NSA has got nothing on me when

it comes to security. So yeah. So it's a check and valid system. So men have certain strengths. Women have certain strengths. Yes. I am here with the end of the world. Even though I don't really feel the end of the world most days, you remind me of it frequently. That's because you don't have to worry about it because I take care of you. So yes.

I'm so grateful. Yeah. Most of the time. All right. So what can we do? So just, you know, we've really gone through this in a lot of our other podcasts as far as strategies for sleep. But I would say probably identifying what your challenges are, right? And then going through a checklist of what you might be able to start strategizing, what you might be able to do to counteract some of these things that are affecting your sleep i mean night shift is one of the worst things i see it as super simple three things brain

envy you got to care about your sleep avoid things that hurt it so caffeine and i know for me even chocolate at night it makes it harder for me to sleep. We have this new recipe, the crunchy chocolate mint thins. And they were so good. I had like three of them. And I was up an hour later. Oh, so that, yeah. And my brain was just like buzzing. So knowing that about yourself is really good.

So knowing that. So avoid anything that hurts it. Light, noise, negative thoughts. In fact, if you have bad thoughts at bedtime, journal them. Get them out of your head. Journaling. Journaling is really good. So helpful.

And then talk back to them and we teach you how to do that. Alcohol. A lot of times people say, well, it puts me to sleep. I know. But the problem is it suppresses brain activity. But then three hours later, your brain will rebound up and wake you up in the middle of the night. However, some of the sleepy time teas are fabulous.

So some of those are really calming, really relaxing. So like chamomile. So there's lavender chamomile. There's if you really want some. If you're not one of those people who has bad, wacky dreams with valerian, valerian teas can be amazing. Paromi tea. There's a bunch of them.

You just go to the tea section and there's a whole section on nighttime, sleepy time teas. For me, they're so powerful that if I combine that with my magnesium and melatonin, fabulous. And then find a couple of strategies. Like I love where I'm not a video game person or anything like that. But the one thing I do like before I go to bed, I'm a word game freak because it shuts my brain off. If I do that for 15 minutes before bed, it just it's almost like a hypnotic thing. It just puts me kind of out, you know, then do my prayer and meditation. I'm gone.

So hypnosis can also be really powerful. Right. Do a whole podcast on hypnosis can also be really powerful right do a whole podcast on hypnosis it's so powerful um and so i was just talking um to a colleague of mine about a patient who had a parkinsonian tremor and he couldn't sleep and he said would you give me a sleeping pill and i said sure but can I hypnotize you first? And when I put him in a trance, his tremor went away before he went to sleep. It's amazing.

I love hypnosis. So hypnosis can also be really powerful. We want you to have sleep envy. Take care of your sleep. Turn off your gadgets at night. That's really critical. Make it a priority and your brain will be so much better. Stay with us. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. We have a special gift for you. It's an opportunity to win an evaluation at the Amen Clinics. All you have

to do is subscribe to this podcast, leave a review, and rate us on iTunes. To learn more about Amen Clinics and the work we do, go to amenclinics.com. You can also learn about our nutraceutical products at brainmdhealth.com. Thanks for listening.