Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | Do This Every Day to Boost Your Energy and Improve Your Sleep | Dr Roger Seheult #401

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

There’s a simple, free habit that you can do every morning to improve your health, boost your productivity and improve your sleep. Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests.   Today’s clip is from episode 242 of the podcast with California based medical doctor, Roger Seheult. In this clip, he shares why getting the right light at the right times is so important for our circadian rhythms, our health and the quantity and quality of our sleep. Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/242 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk   DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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forward slash live more, they are giving my listeners a very special offer, a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first order. See all details at drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Today's clip is from episode 242 of the podcast with Dr. Roger Schwelt. In this clip, he shares why getting the right light at the right time is so important for our circadian rhythms, our health, and the quantity and quality of our sleep. rhythms, our health, and the quantity and quality of our sleep. We are just now finding out in the last 20, 30 years now, in terms of research,

that if people don't get enough sleep, the processes in their body are just not going to be completed that need to happen. There are certain times of the day for each individual person that are best for sleep. And that's based on something called the circadian rhythm. Circadian rhythms is something that's controlled in the brain in a tiny little nucleus called the suprachiasmatic nucleus that controls all of the little clocks in all of the cells of your body. It's sort of the master clock. Scientists don't know why it is exactly why we sleep in general, but we certainly are becoming much more aware of what happens if we don't get that sleep. There was a study that was done a number of years ago, and it always seems to be done, these kind of studies on college students, because I think

they're the ones willing to do this. So what they did was they had them do something that they probably are already doing anyway, right? They're in college. So they had them pull all-nighter, but it's basically what students do right before a test. They'll pull an all-nighter, they'll cram as much information into their brain as possible. And they measured hundreds of different proteins and blood tests and things of that nature after they did this quote unquote all-nighter. And it's very interesting because the circadian rhythm that I'm talking about is not only something that regulates sleep, but as I mentioned, it's in every, basically every cell of your body and tells your body when to produce things and when not to produce things. And generally proteins have this circadian rhythm of production. And what was

amazing is proteins that were not just regular proteins that are involved in the everyday aspect of your life. Some of them were, but some of them were very, very important. Glucose regulation that may have an impact on diabetes. Immune proteins that are involved with fighting cancer. All of these things were completely put out of whack by just pulling one all-nighter. Now, let me tell you what probably the most common problem is with circadian rhythms. Circadian rhythms, which, as I mentioned, are regulated in this super chiasmatic nucleus of the brain, get inputs from various different aspects of your life. These are what we call zeitgebers. There are things that you do in your life that tell your brain what part of the day it is. And

this could be food, it could be social interaction, but the most powerful input to your brain is light. And nothing has changed probably more dramatically in the human being in the last 100, 200 years is the input of light into the human body with the advent of electricity, light bulbs, media screens, all of these sorts of things. We have dramatically changed the amount of light coming into our eyes at specific parts of the day. You know, it used to be that if you wanted to have light in your eyes after sunset, you had to light a candle or you had to start a fire. These were things that were, you know, pretty involved. Now it's just a flip of a switch. And the problem is, is that because of our culture, we're getting a lot of light exposure in our eyes.

And as a result of that, it's telling our brain when we're seeing bright light at night, that it's actually still day. And so what that does is it delays, it pushes back, it causes our circadian rhythm to think that it's actually earlier in the day, and therefore we won't sleep until later on. And so instead of going to sleep, perhaps maybe at nine or 10 or eight or nine, because we're exposing our eyes to bright light, we're now not ready for sleep until much later in the evening. Now, of course, it would be great if we could just sleep in later, but the demands of our culture, the demands of the day require us to get up at a certain set point on an alarm clock. And so one of the first things that I would mention at low hanging fruit is that many people's

circadian rhythms are delayed. And as a result of that, they're trying to go to bed and not going to bed late. And as a result of that is we're seeing that sleep time. So we're talking about quantity right now. Sleep time is sufficiently or severely reduced. If you were to go to the United Kingdom's Sleep Association, I know in the United States where I work, we have the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, and it will show you for specific ages, what is the recommended number of hours of sleep that you should get. And for adults, number of hours of sleep that you should get. And for adults, it's seven to eight hours at the minimum of sleep per night. And so let's think of a scenario here. Let's take probably a very common scenario where somebody goes to bed at 11 o'clock at night, but they've got to get up at six in the morning because they've got to get to work. So they go to bed at 11. Maybe they don't

fall asleep till about 1130 or so. And so they're getting up at six. So they're getting less than the seven hours of sleep on a regular basis. What could they do to make sure that they are going to bed at 10? Well, we already know that if they go to bed at 10 and their circadian rhythm is not ready for sleep till 1130, they're going to be spending an hour and a half in bed, concerned about their insomnia, getting anxiety, and it may turn into a bigger problem. So why can't we just simply tell the clock and turn the clock back as if you will, from 11 o'clock to 10 o'clock, there are things that we can do to actually shift that circadian rhythm. And a lot of that involves light. And this is really a major area of research is how light affects not only chronobiology or the circadian rhythm, but also affects our well-being, our mood, all sorts of things. Yeah.

So what does that look like when a patient comes in to see you and you want to change their light exposure, or you want to alter it a little bit to help shift their rhythm you mentioned i think in our last conversation we spoke about light in the morning and i guess at the moment as humans we we don't get enough light in the daytime we're inside and we get too much in the evening so what are some of those sort of practical things that you say to your patients to help them change that? So most patients that I see in my clinic don't have a problem with falling asleep too early. They have a problem with falling asleep too late.

And the reason is, as you mentioned, is we get far too much light in the evening and not enough light in the morning. And that's important because light in the morning advances the circadian rhythm, meaning that you'll go to bed earlier. You'll feel like you'll want to go to bed at 10 as opposed to 11 because your circadian rhythm is becoming more advanced. It's coming earlier in the day, whereas night or exposure of light at night is going to do the opposite. It's going to delay your circadian rhythm. Think about this from a teleological standpoint. If your brain is seeing light late at night, you're telling your brain it's still daytime. I need to adjust my rhythm later. Whereas the other is if you're seeing light in the day

early, you're saying, oh, wow, the day has already started. I need to advance my circadian rhythm so I can be in sync with the day. And so this is already wired into your brain. All you need to do is just apply the appropriate stimulus. So what does this mean? This means getting up in the morning. The first thing that you want to do when you get up in the morning is turn on the lights as brightly as you can. Any lights in the house, anywhere where you are, make sure that things are bright, make sure the curtains are open. If you can even go outside, even on a cloudy day, there's probably more light outside than there is inside the house. And so going outside, exposing your eyes to bright light. I know that some of us who live at higher latitudes

this time of year may not have a lot of light and that's still going outside. If it's dark outside, then turning on the lights inside the house in that situation would be important. The converse is also true. So when you get home at night, turning down the lights, using that option of having dimmers is really nice. And turning down the lights as low as you can while still being safe is going to help move your circadian rhythm in a number of ways to make it earlier. And so you're going to bed earlier at night, you're getting more sleep, and you're still able to get up in the morning, get to your job and have a productive day. Yeah, no, I love it, Roger. So, so clear, so practical. And I think it really highlights something that many people don't think about,

really highlights something that many people don't think about the idea that what you do first thing in the morning can absolutely influence the quality of your sleep that night when you're going to feel sleepy that night often we think about sleep purely in those one or two hours before bed don't we whereas this is beautifully demonstrating that a good night's sleep starts the minute you wake up. Exactly. And so let's sort of work backwards and look at a full case here, just briefly. Imagine somebody that has no idea about what's going on, has no idea about this. They're just basically going along with what the societal pressures are. They have a job and they are under a lot of stress. This describes a lot of people

today. They have to get up at six o'clock in the morning. They've got to get to work. They go to work. They come home. They have kids they have to do their homework with. They've got bills they have to pay. They may have some work that they are still working on. And so they leave the lights on. It's bright at night and they are doing their work. They're getting up to about 10 or 11. They do this for a number of weeks. And what's happened during that time is they've shifted their circadian rhythm later as a result of this.

So now they don't feel tired until 11 or 12 o'clock at night. They're not getting enough sleep. They feel tired. And they say, you know what? I'm not getting enough sleep. I need to go to bed earlier. So they make a point of trying to go to bed earlier. So they make a point of trying to go to bed at nine or 10 at night. But because their circadian rhythm is not in link

with that, they've now caused the situation where they're going to bed, they're not able to fall asleep, they're becoming more anxious about it, their anxiety levels go up, and they can't fall asleep. And this is sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. And so what we have to do, this is what I do as a sleep physician, is I look at all of this and I say, okay, this is what we're going to do. You're not going to go to bed until 11 o'clock at night, because that's when you're going to sleep. I decatastrophize, I take away the anxiety. And then I ask them to do this light stimulation where they're exposing their eyes to bright light in the morning. They're not exposing their eyes to bright light at night. We shift the circadian rhythm back. Now they're exposing their eyes to bright light in the morning. They're not exposing their eyes to bright light at night.

We shift the circadian rhythm back. Now they're getting plenty of sleep. They feel better. They're more productive. And we've just basically done stuff that they had no idea that they were doing this to themselves. By consciously pushing back against the societal pressures and making sure that we're protecting those areas, we can maintain homeostasis and high productivity and having good sleep.

Yeah. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. And if you want more, why not go back and listen to the original full conversation with my guest. If you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my bite-sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five. And each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles or books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about,

exciting research I've come across, and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small yet powerful dose of feel-good to get you ready for the weekend. You can sign up for it free of charge at drchatterjee.com forward slash Friday Five. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.