Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #11 Good Sleep Habits and Sleep Misconceptions with Dr Guy Meadows

Episode Date: March 27, 2018

Dr Chatterjee talks to sleep expert, trained physiologist, author and co-founder of The Sleep School, Dr Guy Meadows about why our sleep habits have become increasingly important and how we can make some simple changes to improve our sleep quality. Show notes available here drchatterjee.com/guymeadows Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, my name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, medical doctor, author of The Four Pillar Plan and BBC television presenter. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people both within as well as outside the health space to hopefully inspire you as well as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier because when we feel better, we live more. Today's guest definitely would come under the category of sleep expert. He is a trained physiologist. He has a PhD in sleep disorders from Imperial College and he is co-founder of The Sleep School. It's Dr. Guy Meadows. Guy, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. Good to be here. Guy, I think, you know, what I try and do at the start of these conversations is explain to the listener how we got connected in the first place. And we have a mutual friend and someone called Gary Ward. Gary is the person who I credit for showing me the way to help me fix my chronic back problems. I think he's incredible. And it was probably about three years ago, I think, when I was filming the very first series of Doctor in's incredible. And it was probably about three years ago, I think, when I was filming the very first series of Doctor in the House and I asked Gary to help me with one of my patients. He mentioned you to me, but it's actually taken, you know,

three years to actually get together in the same room. So I'm delighted that you are here now, finally. It's a pleasure to be here. So, Guy, you're co-founder at The Sleep School. Can you tell me what is The Sleep School? The Sleep School is, I guess our mission is quite simple. It's to help people to sleep better, to live better. And that's just, that's across the board. That's school children, that's people suffering from insomnia, That's people hard at work in corporations. That's university students. So whoever you look at, at whatever age point they're in, if you can improve the amount of sleep that they're getting,

you can improve the life they're getting. And that's what we're trying to do. Well, I can't disagree with that in any way at all. I absolutely agree. I mean, this podcast is called Feel Better, Live More. I think when we feel better, we get more out of life and you are really drilling down aren't you on sleep and saying where people sleep better they live better i think one of the really interesting things is we know there are three pillars of health so you know what we eat uh how we move

um actually i've just realized you've got your four pillars hey it's fine you know i'm happy so you go for your three pillars. That's fine. I can make my argument for four pillars. But yeah, go on. Let's go with the three. That's fine. Okay. So there are three pillars of health, which are to move, to eat and to sleep.

But I guess we are now in a boom phase where we recognise that there is a wealth of amazing sleep research coming out, which tells us that sleep is the most powerful performance enhancer known to humankind. And so it's almost like we need to pay attention to sleep a little bit more if we are to eat at our best, to manage our weight and to move effectively. Yeah. I mean, you know, you mentioned three pillars three pillars and yes i talk about four pillars of health and you know you can make arguments for more than that you know the reason i i went to those four because i feel that stress is a is a huge issue these days as is sleep deprivation and i wanted to really come up with a simplistic framework for my book to to help explain to people

how they can look at their own lives. But yeah, you know what, food, movement, sleep, you know, a lack of sleep is a stress really on the body, isn't it? You know, why is it, do you think, that in 2018 we are talking more and more about sleep than arguably we ever have done in the you know in the time that i can remember you know has something changed yeah i think this is a really good point because so we've we've been you know i've been working in sleep for nearly 18 years and and certainly when i began um it was you know something we all knew was important but there just wasn't so much chatter about it you know not so much sort of media interest or sort of corporate interest or just general sort of interest within the general population. And I think it's for a number of reasons.

So the most obvious is in recent years, we've seen a rise in digital technology, and that's certainly that's sped us up. We are now connected more than we've ever been. And that's impacting the quality of our sleep, or it's even sort of shortening the amount of time that we've got available to sleep because we sort of stay up for longer being connected. But then we also, we've got this element, the fact that we are working harder than we've sort of ever done before. And so we are, we tend to be sort of the time available for sleep is less as well. And as a result of that, we also see that we've got sort of mental health issues, which are sort of at their peak right now. And so there's an intimate relationship the development of mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression, but then improving your sleep can actually treat those

conditions as well and i guess that's you know really the human body in a nutshell you know these things can work both ways you know if you're not sleeping enough you're more likely to have a whole host of problems but if you can get that sleep you can improve them as well um i my perspective on sleep comes as a gp so you know i see so many problems in my practice that in some way sleep deprivation is contributing to but you actually run a proper sleep clinic so i'm guessing pretty much everyone who comes in to the sleep school has got an issue with their sleep and is looking for solutions absolutely so i think it's a a really good place to start talking about gps because i have a huge amount of respect for you guys because you're sort of on the the front line of insomnia um you know sort of 30 of the uk suffer from insomnia and um and and most of them

will turn up on the door of the GP. Could you just define insomnia there at all? Yeah, so we can talk about transient insomnia. So everyone on the planet will experience transient insomnia. So that's a difficulty sleeping for sort of anywhere between a couple of nights to sort of a couple of weeks as a result of some sort of stressful experience. You could have a cough, a cold, result of some sort of stressful experience you know you could have a cough a cold you you know sort of you hurt yourself you could have a stress you know stressful day at work an argument with a loved one etc and that can lead to um a little a bout of sleeplessness which when the stressor is removed then sleeping patterns so that's almost an appropriate response to a stressor but you you remove the stressor, the problem goes away.

Exactly. So we're not, in that 30% statistic, we're not talking about transient insomnia. No, no. So what we're talking about there is we're talking about chronic insomnia or persistent insomnia. And so the clinical definition, if you want it, is sort of suggest that you're experiencing either a difficulty falling asleep, maintaining sleep, waking up too early, you know, or experiencing unrefreshing sleep for a period greater than three months, and where it's beginning to impact your day to day living, your ability to sort of perform at work, to, you know, communicate, to relate with others, etc. And my sort of definition of it is chronic

insomnia often becomes the worry about not sleeping. The more you worry about not sleeping, the less you sleep, and the less you sleep, the more you worry, and you go around in a vicious circle. And that's generally what causes people to turn up at your door. Yeah. And I guess, you know, certainly if I look back to maybe 10 years ago, you know, it was pretty common for sleeping pills to be handed out. I guess it still is today. There really, I don't think, was that much awareness, certainly from my recollection, about a, how damaging sleeping pills can be to some people in terms of, you know, there's lots of associations now with other chronic diseases, you know, by

taking sleeping pills. And I know we're trying to tease out that research at the moment in terms of what that actually means. But you are seeing people with insomnia. And I think your clinic has got a rather unique approach, hasn't it, to dealing with chronic insomnia. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Sure. And it's directly related to the drug therapy that you were mentioning there. One of the things that I recognised a long time ago was that actually the options available to insomniacs was very limited. If you went to your GP, you know, sort of 90% of people generally were going to be prescribed, after a while, prescribed some sort of sleep medication,

whether it be a hypnotic or something like that. And the problem was is that that was sort of a short term sort of solution. And but a lot of the people, you know, sort of then became caught on them, trapped on them, and then found they were reliant on them and couldn't come off. And so it didn't actually solve the problem. And so what I began to investigate was the sort of the more non drug behavioral treatments. And so at the time time the major treatment out there was cognitive behavior therapy or cbti and um i began using that and um i guess one of the things i noticed is that it wasn't as effective as i wanted it to be and or as my clients wanted it to be and that's why i began to um investigate things like mindfulness which back then you know sort of

mindfulness was one of those things where the only place you could find it in london was at a your local buddhist center yeah despite the fact that you didn't have to be you know sort of be a buddhist to do it it was the only place where you could it's quite niche wasn't it it was incredibly niche and but i uh started to use it in my own life and wow this is really powerful this could really help people this is a completely different way of approaching the sort of the typical psychophysiological sort of vicious cycle that people get stuck in with insomnia. And so I began to apply these kind of more mindful type approaches. And that then led me on to discovering something called acceptance and commitment therapy, which is a newer form of

behavioral therapy of CBT. And I began to sort of pioneered its use for chronic insomnia. Wow. I'm interested in a few things from what you just said, Guy. One of them is that you're a hardcore scientist. And what was that like when you came across mindfulness and thought about using it? Was part of you sceptical at all or had you read some compelling research? High levels of scepticism, absolutely. I mean, if you imagine back then the basis, the way in which we sort of thought about thoughts or sort of discomfort in general was we wanted to get rid of it.

So we did everything that we could. So if you had negative thoughts, you challenged them, you created sort of alternative and balanced ones to sort of push them aside. Or if you had anxiety, you sort of, you did a bit of deep breathing to try and get rid of it. And suddenly mindfulness changed the sort of the way in which we were talking about this because it said, well, actually, why don't we sit with it? Why don't we allow it to be there? And acceptance and commitment therapy is what I call, it's like mindfulness on steroids. Because what it does is it really connects people.

The acceptance part is recognising that actually sometimes in life, trying to control the discomfort that you've got often just makes it worse. So, you know, for an insomniac trying to get rid of the thoughts in the middle of the night just causes them to come in stronger and they bring their friends in with them as well you know trying to get rid of the anxious feelings just it's it becomes an impossible task people are going well i can't sleep unless my mind is calm and i feel anxious which just never happens no it's a self-fulfilling prophecy for many people who can't sleep isn't it because then they wake up and it's very common for people to wake up at 3 30 or 4 o'clock in the morning

and whatever the reason for them to wake up is i think because sometimes i feel there is a biological reason there is something maybe a blood sugar is crashing at that point and that's a stress to the body and therefore they wake up. I think, you know, waking up at that time does induce a certain level of anxiety. And I think a lot of people feel, oh, it's anxiety that's waking me up, which may be true in some cases. But in other cases, I found that either it's the caffeine wearing off or the alcohol wearing off. And then you wake up at that time and then you become anxious. hole wearing off and then you wake up at that time and then you become anxious so is your is your strategy to help people get to sleep or is it to help them sleep through the night or is it both it's both and i just want to come on in on that point that you said there because something that

the listeners might find really sort of helpful and interesting um it and this is you know when i started talking about the physiology to people around sleep it suddenly you know the levels of anxiety just dropped because and so a simple fact is to recognize that as you know we sleep in cycles so these cycles are an hour and a half to two hours long which means that sort of every hour and a half we've you know we've kind of evolved to come up and check for danger. If you imagine 40,000 years ago, you were lying on the sort of plains of Africa, you went down for an eight-hour kip, chances are you weren't going to wake up alive.

It was a dangerous sort of world. And so we believe that we sort of evolved to sleep in these small chunks in order to be able to check for danger, which means that every sort of hour and a half to two hours, you've got these momentary gaps where at best we might sort of change position, we might have a bit of a moan and a groan and then slip beautifully back into the next cycle. But for many of us, we might just become briefly aware,

briefly alert for that moment and our thinking might kick in. And if you've got a, you know, a busy day the next day, if you've got, you know, a test, an exam, well, then our thinking mind just loves to go, oh, let's worry about that. And suddenly it means that that space is filled with sort of racing mind and suddenly we get pushed away from sleep. You know, just hearing that guy, I think it's going to be, it's fascinating for me. I imagine for people listening who struggle with sleep, you know, that's pretty reassuring to hear that, isn't it? You know, you must, I'm guessing that's the feedback you get. It's just, oh, I didn't realize, you know.

So I guess the follow-up question then is, is it a myth that we should be able to go into bed at whatever time we choose let's say 10 30 in the evening and sleep eight hours through without actually you know and the next thing you know it's 6 30 in the morning and you're up you know is that a myth i know some people can do that but is that something we should be striving for absolutely not so wow and the reason why uh because in my book but basically saying that we should be you know you put your head on the pillow and then you should be completely unconscious for you know until sort of whatever time you need to get up it just sets the bar so high and it also it does uh the sort of the you know the physiology a disservice the fact that you know we have lots

of you know sleep is an incredibly active phase phase. We are constantly sort of going through these cycles. We, you know, just the natural biological process of needing to go to the toilet in the night, you know, that needs to happen. And it's perfectly normal. So you will get those people who are incredibly annoying, whereby, yes, they will sleep right through. But for the vast majority of us, and certainly as we begin to get a little bit older, it becomes harder and harder to tie those cycles together.

And so that means you do have these sort of moments of wakefulness. But the crucial thing is what you do in that time. Because nowadays, people get busy. You know, the first thing they do is they check their phone. And so instantly, we've got light stimulation, signaling to the brain that, hey, inhibit melatonin, the sleep-prom the sleep promoting hormone activate cortisol the day's begun you know let alone the cognitive stimulation of suddenly going actually i think i'll check facebook and write

some witty facebook reply etc so suddenly our own behavioral actions are pushing us further and further away i mean if you know last night i broke one of my own rules um which is a rule that i rarely break these days but i did last night because i do have a battery powered alarm clock right but it had run out of gas and i had to get an early train i had to get a 430 alarms when i had to come down on an early train to london um and so I use my phone as my alarm. Which again, I know it's a bad idea. You know, well, when I say it's a bad idea, I think it's much better to keep your phone outside your bedroom as a rule.

And I woke up, I can't remember what time it was, but you know, when it's there, you do look at it. You just like, what time is it? Am I near alarm time? Should I just stay up and get ready? Or I think it was about two in the morning or something. But you do feel a bit stimulated when you have looked at that phone and I'm feeling it today. And I think that really, I know about this and I rarely do it,

but each time I don't do it and I feel an effect, I think I'm educating myself more and more that actually it's very important. Do you see smartphones in the bedroom as a problem? Absolutely. So we have a number of different sides to what we do. So we will go in and work with, we have a clinic and we run workshops for chronic insomniacs and and and for those guys um you know most of them are are sort of uh have the best sleep hygiene ever right so they're following all the rules yeah if anything it's too much they're a little obsessive and i can talk about that sort of a little bit later but the vast majority of us so we also have a professional program where we go into organizations. And for the general population, most of us have our phones in our bedrooms and it's disturbing the quality of our sleep.

Whether that's through checking the time, whether it's through actively sort of getting involved with it when you can't sleep. Or it's just the sort of knowledge that your entire life is sort of sat there at your fingertips. Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? I've got so many questions i want to ask you guys the first one to start with there is what you know you see these chronic insomniacs do any of them have what i would call a primary sleep disorder such as obstructive sleep apnea that need treating or do most of the people you see um are they you know i don't i'm not sure what term you would use to describe them um you know i i strongly believe

that the majority of sleep issues that i see are in some way driven by our our modern lifestyles and we tend to be many of us tend to be doing something in our everyday lives that we don't realise is impacting our ability to sleep at night. Has that been your experience as well? So I think this is really a good place to sort of, again, come back to chronic insomnia and understand what it is. Sure. So I think you're absolutely right.

For the vast majority of us, as a result of the way we're living our lives, it's impacting on the quality of our sleep. So certainly if were to um you know sort of eat better move better get more light and do all of these basic things we would just have much better quality sleep and you know we would notice it the next day you know we'd be more attentive we'd be more focused we'd be have be able to recall memory you know easier you know sort of we'd be in have a better mood yeah so all of that thing is absolutely right but for the chronic insomniac it's about understanding what that is so coming back to the night time um we were talking about you know sort of um it's perfectly normal to sort of wake up but what happens for chronic insomniacs is it becomes

a learned condition um and and so there's a it's there's a rather fancy term called a transformation of stimulus function. Now, what that basically means is the way in which people relate to the nighttime changes. So let's just, let's do an experiment. Imagine that I'm giving, I've given you an apple, okay? And you're holding that apple and it's the... I presume you like apples. I love apples. Great. OK, so it's the best apple ever for you. You know, it's the right colour, it's the right size, it's the right type, you know,

and you're probably beginning to salivate just at the thought of being able to bite into this apple. You know, and you've got tonnes of past experience knowing how good apples are going to be, etc., and you're hungry. But then just as you're about to bite into it, you notice a small sort of worm poking its head out of a little hole on the side now as a result of that suddenly the function of the apple has changed you know and if the experience was sort of

uh bad enough for you you might go i'm never going to eat apples again well this is what begins to happen with chronic insomnia so you take a sort sort of a normal sleeper and then they begin to experience poor sleep as a result of some sort of stressful arguments at work or with a loved one, let's say. And suddenly it sows the seed of doubt in their trust about their natural ability to sleep. Suddenly their mind goes, I hope that doesn't happen again tonight because that wasn't very nice. And so suddenly their threat detecting partecting part of their brain, their amygdala, has sort of begun to kick in. And so suddenly the relationship which might have existed before, which was I'm moving towards the bedroom,

all of the sleepy cues are kicking off, I put my head on the pillow and I'm falling asleep. For our clients, what it is, is they could be sat downstairs feeling sleepy, but as soon as they move towards the bedroom, their heart begins to pound, their mind begins to race. And this is what we call conditioned bedtime arousal or nighttime arousal. Some insomniacs can fall asleep fine.

2 a.m., they wake up and their brain is sort of going, where's the danger? Where's the bear? And that can feel incredibly scary because the heart is racing, they're feeling panic, they're feeling anxious and so that's got very little about the way in which they're living their lifestyle but more about this this um learned psychological uh habit that's formed around their relationship with nighttime waking and is that where your uh sort of unique form of therapy kicks in it's to really help with that side of things exactly so what uh what acts or acceptance commitment therapy does is rather paradoxically teach people to lean

towards the discomfort so so what we mean by that is we teach people to get to know the thoughts rather than trying to get rid of them because it's weirdly it's not the thoughts and the feelings which are the problem it's our reaction to them it's our desperation to try and get rid of them often we're caught in such a tug of war with them that that's actually what keeps our wakefulness fueled reminds me a little bit about meditation mindfulness in the sense that you know and this is certainly me when i started meditating you know i've got a slight a type personality and it was you know i didn't clear my mind today this is incredibly frustrating you know

why didn't i why did that thought come in you know i need to get better at it but as you do it more and you you educate yourself more about it you understand that actually it's that awareness and and accepting that yes that thought has come in but you know last week i wasn't aware that that thought came in so at least now i'm aware of it and yeah it is um leaning into it and accepting it rather than trying to shut it down because that you know when we're consciously trying to control this stuff too much it's paradoxically it just almost creates a new problem doesn't it exactly exactly i always use the metaphor it's like you wouldn't try to put a fire out with petrol but when you're trying to get rid of your own thoughts and own emotions it could be likened to trying to put a fire out with petrol because it's your amygdala which is generating all the fears the fears you know if i don't sleep i won't be able to cope tomorrow you know if i

don't sleep i'll look and feel awful now if you try to sort of block those suppress them you you all you're signaling to your amygdala is that, wow, we are in danger. We need to ramp up even more. And so it generates more anxiety, more fear, etc. So do people self-refer themselves to you? So they recognize they've got a sleep problem, and then they think, OK, I'm going to go to the sleep school and go on one of these courses. Is that generally how it works? Generally, we sort of have a lot of material on our website and people can sort of, they recognise that they're sort of in the place to cut,

they're in need of us because I have this sort of saying that if you ask a normal sleeper what they do to sleep, what will they say? I don't know. Exactly. They'll go, you know, they shrug their shoulders, I don't know, you know. But if you ask an insomniac, they'll give you a list as long as their arm. And this is where I mentioned about the sort of the slightly obsessive nature that when we can't solve, you know, humans are great problem solvers. And so we, which we use every day brilliantly to go about our everyday life.

You know, you used it to get on a train to come here this morning, etc. But we try to apply the same methodology to come here this morning etc um but we try to apply the same methodology to chronic insomnia and so we start doing lots of things so i often say that my clients their their bedside table is like a sort of a cemetery to all of the past techniques you know they'll have you know sort of an array of cds you know lavender pills you know etc eye masks eye masks you know ear plugs you know sort of everything and you know and their bedrooms they got this you know they're a homage to sort of perfection you know they're gaffer taping the the the sort of the the red led lights and stuff it's you know they are the sort

of the best bedrooms in the world but the problem is is that creates a sleeping flexibility because suddenly they're going well i can't sleep unless you unless, you know, I do X, Y and Z, unless I take this. So suddenly, you know, and a real sort of eye opener for many of my clients is when they let's say they go away. They go to stay with family or they go on holiday and they forget their sort of paraphernalia, their sleep aids. And that just spins them into a state of anxiety. And they realize, wow, I'm now reliant on these. All of these things have stolen a bit of anxiety and they realize wow i'm now reliant on these all of these things have stolen a bit of their trust in their own natural ability to sleep and they uh and and that's and it's and they're now reliant on them to use so what we do is we

teach people to come off all of that and to sleep naturally and there's something really quite key in what you just said guy for me which is our natural ability to sleep because you know i fundamentally believe that the majority of us are born with that innate natural ability to sleep and somewhere along the way i fully appreciate that some people can develop primary sleep disorders which might require different treatments but but for many of us, we untrain that natural ability that we had probably when we were a kid. Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. I often say that everyone who comes into our clinic has become very good at sleeping badly. Yeah. And the great thing about sleep is that it's a learned habit, which you can train yourself to be better at it. So we have people who come to us

who've, you know, they've been sleeping, you know, two or three hours for, you know, four or five decades, but they can still learn to be better sleepers. Wow. And that's the phenomenal thing. They've just got themselves into a bad habit. And it's about applying these, we have a sort of a five-step process whereby the first step is discover. You discover all of the things which you could be doing which could be getting in the way the next one is accept which is the mindfulness principles that we spoke about that sort of being able to notice uh the thoughts that you have that are showing up and then the next one which i really love is is you know which a lot of

our clients call the bonkers phase is the welcome phase this is where you truly learn to welcome your your discomfort and your insomnia and a lot of you know my hardened clients is going you want me to welcome insomnia this thing's ruining my life you know are you crazy and but the reality is is because most of them are fighting it and and you can ask them you know i can sort of flippantly ask them you know so how's that going for you? You know, for the last decade. Well, actually, not very good. So, well, if it's not working, how about we try something different? How about we learn to welcome it in a more playful way?

Wow. I mean, this is so incredibly needed, isn't it? You know, more ways to help the general public to sleep better. Because as you said, right at the top, and I think many people are now starting to become aware of, although probably not enough, I would say the general population, I don't think is necessarily aware of how detrimental sleep deprivation is. And I'm, I'm conscious also that by saying that some people will panic. So I need to be very careful because, you know, for people who can't sleep, you know, hearing that sleep deprivation is associated with, you know, Alzheimer's and

type 2 diabetes can almost make the problem worse. And it can be a bit tricky to get that message out there without scaring people. I mean, shall I tell you how we get around this? Please do. Yeah, absolutely. Because if you could, if you can imagine, you know, we will run a workshop and we'll have 20, 30, you know, sort of chronic insomniacs in there and all of them guaranteed will, will, you know, sort of have or have had the thought, you know, sort of what's this doing to my health? And unfortunately, whilst I get excited by the fact that we're in this sort of boom phase of scientific sleep research,

it's a nightmare for the clients because every sort of Sunday supplement they open, it says, you know, suddenly, oh, if you're not sleeping, it's going to lead to diabetes or Alzheimer's or heart disease, etc. But the crucial thing to recognize is that we know that sleep's important. thing to recognize is that um we know that sleep's important okay so sleep is fundamentally important but it's it's how those individuals are responding to those thoughts and that's what we we teach them to transform they the way they relate to the thoughts so they recognize that just because they're having thoughts doesn't mean that they need to follow them um that doesn't mean they need to believe them you know a good example of this is you know if you ask a uh if a normal sleeper wakes up at three and uh they have to be up at six what what's that what do you think they say

if they wake up at three and they need to be up at six yeah when you say enormously someone who doesn't have any issues they probably don't think anything off it they just maybe they might look at the watch see the time and just put the head down again and they're just they probably don't give it much thought it's three but they and and i certainly know that you know sort of i i will go uh you know oh great you know i've got three more hours this is wonderful you know okay three more hours of not running around you know sort of it's almost like it although you might do that naturally is almost like a reframing of that uh well i guess that's just just sort of, in my experience, you know, if you ask a normal sleeper, that's just this sort of very normal response. But if you ask an insomniac, you know, sort of at that moment, what goes through their mind, it's typically, you know, oh, no.

Terror. Terror. I've only got three hours. I'm never going to fall back to sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a disaster. This is going to be awful. But it's recognizing that, you know, our brain is designed to worry. You know, we have around 50 or 60,000 thoughts a day, of which we believe 70 percent are

problem solving or worrisome. You know, I'm a huge fan of worry because without worrying, we wouldn't be here today. Our ancestors worried so that they could keep us alive. But just because our brain worries doesn't mean you have to buy into all of it and it's it's understanding the difference between having thoughts and buying into them i really like this because it's for me it's quite a fresh way to approach it um it's yeah it's recognizing that a lot of these thoughts are what we do as humans and they're the things that have maybe kept us alive and evolved us over over hundreds of thousands if not millions of

years but somewhere along the line and you can apply this to all kinds of things such as food and movement and and you know all these anxiety the anxiety and stress rates that are going through the roof on some level it's about that that that sort of mismatch between the environment in which we have evolved to the modern environment where actually most of us well for many of us we are quite safe and actually a lot of the worry is unnecessary now and it's causing problems in this modern environment you know sort of that's kind of where I go with it in my head yeah absolutely and and I mean I uh you know I've I sort of practice what I preach I you know sort of heavily invested you know sort of in acceptance and commitment therapy I meditate every day etc and it's it's been one of the sort of the the

fundamental transformations in my life, because, you know, I know that you've got a couple of sort of young kids, I've got young kids as well. And, you know, what was fascinating about having kids was suddenly, it just gave my brain a whole new arena to worry. Oh, tell me about it. Constant, it's just constant. And, you know, so being able to have that sort of observational stance, standing in a standing point, I was to go, wow, look at you guys. Where did you all come from? You're like a whole new plethora of sort of, you know, worry making. to try and go, well, I've got a choice here. I can spend my time sort of worrying, you know, sort of how I'm going to be a dad, or I can spend my time just being a dad.

You know, sort of, you know, there's the lovely phrase, jump and build your wings on the way down. I'm trying to sort of approach it in that way, rather than sort of going, you know, over-analysing, worrying about everything, every sort of way in which I do it. It's never ending, is it? It's never ending. You never get to the end of that list because it just it just keeps going and and the beautiful thing is that you know that the mind just soaks up the world that we live in as a sort of one you know it's it's

just a constant uh endless possibility for for worry so it's it's you know and it's exhausting and that's what can keep you awake in the middle of the night so being able to take a step back from it can help you just to sort of to to to one you know stop overstimulating your amygdala to to help you move into a state of quiet wakefulness and send that signal to your brain that hey do you know what we're safe it's all right we can sleep you mentioned that the practice has been transformational for you and it makes me think where did this interest in sleep come from have you had issues yourself in the past so that that's a a great question so one of the um the the the challenges or the ironies behind doing sleep research is you're obviously spending your entire time up watching other people sleep or at least doing attempting sleep, etc.

So, you know, for all of the shift workers out there, you know, I completely understand, you know, because basically I spent a good few years of my life doing shift work and working in the night and then attempting to sleep in the day. And of course, I fell into all of the typical traps, you know, sort of trying to burn the candle at both ends, trying to sort of go and do, you know, sort of daytime stuff when actually I should be committing to sleep. But plus also, I just really struggled to sleep in the day. So as a result of that, my circadian rhythm got shot to pieces and I began to experience bouts of insomnia. And but what was really interesting is I noticed that, you know, as I became more involved with insomniacs, is I was following a similar pattern whereby I was struggling to try and make

myself sleep. But sleep's this natural biological process that doesn't, you don't need anything to do. So suddenly we're doing lots of things to try and achieve something that requires nothing to do. And, you know, one of the biggest light bulb moments for me was my clients would come in and they would be um you know i was awake all night uh struggling with with you know to get to sleep and i was like okay yeah what what happened then they go yeah and then i fell asleep at 6 a.m i was like well what happened at 6 a.m and they said well i went sodded i don't care anymore i give up and then my alarm went off and you know obviously for them it was incredibly frustrating but this was at around the time that i was beginning this

journey of mindfulness and i went wow you know this this sodded element is what i think we call letting go yeah i think that's what sort of in the eastern world at the time is this concept of acceptance and so i then began my journey of acceptance because to us if i can figure out what people do in that moment and sort of be able to put that into a program then we can transform the way uh we approach insomnia so guy the the sleep school offers services for you know the lay public and people who are struggling with their sleep and you've got courses and programs available for them. But you also go and speak to businesses as well. And I'm interested in that.

Do you think business is starting to recognize the problems and therefore the cost to them of having sleep deprived employees. Absolutely. So, and this is an emerging area. So it was back in 2008 that we actually did our first sort of sleep education seminar for businesses. And that was quite sort of unique back then. It was actually an advertising agency, which they'd done an internal well-being survey. And they said, sleep's coming up as a real problem. You know, they're very stressed. Could you come in and help?

And so we went in and helped. And then over the years, it just, you know, what was a trickle suddenly became a torrent. And suddenly, because organisations are becoming more stressed. Right now, mental health, poor mental health within the workplace is at its worst. And there's a huge awareness factor around this. And sleep is that linchpin to enabling us to have good mental health. When we are sleep deprived, it knocks out the prefrontal cortex, that front part of the brain,

which helps to rationalize manage the the limbic system our emotional center yeah you mentioned the amygdala before that's almost the almost the opposite isn't it to the prefrontal cortex exactly yeah it's i was rational versus um you know emotional i guess in some ways i i like to describe it as our sort of 24-hour sort of threat detecting tasmanian devil kind of part of our brain it's the bit that's sort of always on the lookout for for danger yeah and um and so the the within the workplace um they're recognizing that there's suddenly this vicious cycle because people are are you know are getting more stressed they're

experiencing more anxiety more depression etc and that's leading to more poor sleep. And actually, the more poor sleep they experience, they go around in a circle. Because like you said, the beautiful thing that we're understanding now is that sleep, it's not just a symptom of poor mental health. It's a trigger. Many of us describe it now as a canary down the mine. Poor sleep is becoming an early warning signal that actually stress, anxiety, burnout, they're on their way. Yeah, absolutely.

And so there's also the other side that employers are recognising that actually sleep has an impact on an individual's ability to perform. Yeah. You know, and that's not just to sort of be mentally and emotionally sort of stable, but that's actually fundamental to their ability to lead, to communicate. But it's also their ability to be focused and attentive. Everything, every sort of high order executive skill begins with attention. Yeah. And we know that when you are sleep deprived, so for example, if you've been awake for more than 17 hours, it has the equivalent impact on our ability to focus as having a blood alcohol level of 5%,

which is the legal limit. It's incredible that, isn't it? Yeah. I think that's a statistic we need to sort of hammer home to the public more because I think you really get it then. Yeah. Really get it. And it's not like we would you know it's it's you know the funny thing that's for me is that if you were to wake up and have a few pints and then go to work that would be considered to be sort of outrageous and yet it's perfectly normal to be sleep deprived and turn up to work when actually the impact on our cognitive performance is very similar so companies are getting in touch with you now to come in and actually talk to them about how they can improve the sleep uh health let's say off their

employees from you know i think you said 2008 was the first time you went into a company is that right so what 10 years ago are there common things that you find employers are are doing or the the environment at work is is is set up in such a way that it's that it's impacting those individuals and those employees and their ability to sleep in the evening are there are there common things that you see across the board absolutely so i think that one of the um the easiest ways to explain this is to talk about how we've set up our professional programme. So whilst, you know, we're the sleep school, so, you know, sort of we focus on the sleep, but what we're crucially aware of is that there are three sort of obvious time points during the day in which you can excel, but which are all interconnected.

And so, for example, you know, how an individual performs during the day, i.e. how they manage their stress, impacts how well they sleep at night. So what we'll seek to do is, you know, give the employees tools to manage daytime stress because of the knock-on effects. And then the next area, and this is the sort of the new kid on the block, but super exciting, lots of great research being done, et cetera. And this is our ability to detach at the end of the day, you know, as a result of just work demands, self-induced pressure, or just sort of technology these days, many of us just aren't actually disconnecting. We're not detaching. And we now know that's fundamental, not only to sleep, but actually to recharging the sort of the human brain. It's kind of like getting home at the end of the day and really engaging with your family, with your friends, with your kids, doing something of real value.

It's kind of like taking a work brain and plugging it in. And if you think about it, Guy, you know, we go on a, well, not even on an evolutionary level i'd say just in the very near past there was a time pre-smartphones pre-email it's not that long ago whereby a loss of the workforce would finish their jobs let's say at five o'clock or 5 30 make the journey home you know and that was it they were done with work until the next morning. There was no, there wasn't even, you could not access work emails because they didn't exist. So there was a natural stop point. There was a natural switch off point, which frankly, technology has blurred that line, being kind, it's obliterated that line actually.

So we can now check our work emails in the evening we can check them on a saturday on a sunday um and yeah i i can i can see how that would be a huge thing when you go and talk to employees about that disconnect piece yeah was there a third one there yeah and so then the third one is sleep sleep the third one is we we we teach people teach people all of the essential tools that they need to be able to achieve good quality sleep, but also get enough quantity of sleep as well. Yeah, incredible guy. It is that important, sleep, isn't it?

But it's interesting to me that that sort of three-pronged program in companies, only the final one is actually about sleep and and that really goes back to this whole idea that the body is interconnected and you you know and and i've you know you know yes i talk about food movement sleep and relaxation but i talk about they all impact each other you know you can get on that train wherever you want and it will lead you to the others because they're all connected you know you change one thing you have the opportunity to change everything um so so going you've it's the sleep school where can people uh find the sleep school or you know the things that you write about or your courses where where can they find you the

easiest place to go is to the the sleep school.org and there you can find out you know everything that you need to about our approach to chronic insomnia. You know, sort of being able to book a one-to-one clinic with a sleep doctor, being able to attend a workshop. But one of the great things about the workshop is, you know, sort of people will attend and they'll realize that they're not the only ones. Because they're like, there's a cathartic experience. That has value, doesn't it? Yeah. That has value.

And then, but we've also recently, last year we um launched our entire program digitally as well so we now have an online platform so people can uh watch get the whole sort of five-step process but in in short um short form video content so they can watch it in their own fantastic so what you know what i'll do guys we're in the show notes at the bottom of the podcast on my website we will pop links to all these things so people can find it really easily absolutely guy one of the reasons i do this podcast is to empower as many people as possible to become the architects of their own health and i always like where possible to leave the listener with something that they can reflect on or think about uh hopefully something simple and actionable that they might be able to put into their own life introduce into their own life immediately great have you got some top tips

for the listeners sure so i think uh absolutely how long have we got? Should we stick to four? Four. Okay. So what I'll try to do there is mix them up for the general population and for the sort of the insomniacs as well. So I think the first one is possibly the most basic, but it's really needed. And that's make sleep a priority in your life. I couldn't agree more. It is the most powerful performance enhancer. It impacts every biological process. If you are truly passionate about improving your health, then just make sure you get a little bit more sleep. Set a go-to-bed alarm to help you. We're not talking much, just 15, 30 minutes and we can notice an impact. So that would be the first one. The second one is, again, echoing a lot of what you say, sort of live a lifestyle which helps to facilitate better sleep.

So I'll sneakily sort of include a few in here. So just manage your caffeine intake. So, you know, sort of having two or three cups knocking on the head by midday or something like that you know get outside uh expose yourself to natural light ideally sort of uh bright light 10 a.m in the morning 10 minutes of that light and that will help to not only give you that sort of a boost to wake you up in the morning but also help to synchronize your body clock and help you sleep better in the night as well sure and then, you know, we've been talking a lot, be just be mindful, you know, sort of allow yourself some time to notice, take perspective on the content that's

showing up in your mind, the thoughts, emotions, sort of physical sensations, etc. And perhaps, you know, not believe everything that your mind says to you, allow it to pass and become more of a sort of a noticer and witnesser and then you know for the chronic insomniacs it's uh let go of the struggle you know it's that it's that endless struggle to try and get rid of their sleep which causes them to experience more sleeplessness and and the you know i mentioned about the the acceptance part of acceptance commitment therapy is about you know leaning into the discomfort But then the valued part is so important. Many of my clients will go, I can't live my life until I get rid of my insomnia.

Well, the result is they just never get around to living their lives. So actually, you know, I know it's hard, but start living your life with your insomnia. OK, that doesn't mean you need to run a marathon. You may have plans to. OK, that doesn't mean you need to run a marathon. You may have plans. But just going for a walk around the block is it means that you're you're moving towards that thing of value, that sort of health value. But whilst, you know, experiencing insomnia and the more you begin to do that, what happens is that you start to resent insomnia less and the less you resent it, the less struggle there is. The more you sleep, the more you sleep, the more you live. And you start entering a new sort of cycle rather than the vicious cycle. Guy, fascinating conversation. You've certainly given me a lot to think about. I'm sure the listener would have found that

incredibly insightful and how we can sleep better and live more. Guy, good luck with everything. I'm sure many people might be in contact now to actually check out your programs and see what you've got to offer because it sounds like there's some really valuable tools there for people to improve their sleep which is going to improve their well-being um guy thank you very much for your time today and maybe we can do this again in the future brilliant thank you very much that's the end of this week's Feel Better Live More podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And I really hope you found the conversation useful, but also enjoyable. If you're not already, I'd highly recommend that you subscribe to this podcast so that you can be notified when the

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