Her Discussions by Dr Faye - A Sleep Expert Reveals How to Fix Your Sleep (For Good) | Mini Episode

Episode Date: May 14, 2026

Would a sleep expert buy these?Every Thursday, we’re sharing the Buy or Bye Bye segment from one of your favourite Her Discussions episodes - a breakdown of what actually works for your health. This week, we're revisiting our episode with Dr Lindsay Browning, one of the UK's leading sleep experts, holding a doctorate in insomnia from the University of Oxford.In the full episode, we discuss:⭐ How to silence a busy mind before sleep 🦉 Tips to make mornings easier (even if you hate them) 🌜 How to stop waking up at 3AM ⏰ 1 thing you should remove from your bedroom 💤 The trick to getting deep sleep next to a snorer 👀 1 essential every shift worker needsListen to the full podcast here:Spotify: ⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/episode/6vAEjKq1xCjbW9aUJTCLCf?si=A42YrJNdScaR0OI8hjwS6Q YouTube: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH5VAf__TgAPlease don’t forget to subscribe - it really helps us grow the podcast.Resources & links mentioned:https://www.instagram.com/drbrowningsleep/Can I ask you a BIG favour? 💙Please leave a review or rating. It helps us grow the podcast and bring you more amazing guests.Share this with someone who wants to protect their brain, boost focus, or live smarter, it might help them feel more energized and confident.Follow us on social media or join the broadcast channel to send us your questions for our guests:Podcast Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/herdiscussionspod/⁠⁠Broadcast channel: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/⁠⁠ 🛑 Disclaimers & legal:This podcast is for educational / informational purposes only and does not constitute medical, legal, or financial advice. All opinions are those of the speaker(s).

The Madamy Holmes bike for brain health supporting Baycrest returns on May 31st for its fifth anniversary with a new start and finish at the Aga Khan Museum. Join thousands of cyclists as we take over the DVP and Gardner Expressway in support of dementia research and brain health. Riders of all abilities are welcome and both regular bikes and e-bikes can participate. Bring your friends, family or corporate team and make an impact. Register today at bikeforbrainhealth.ca. We're going to do a section called bye or bye bye-bye. Okay. I am going to show you some products and I would like to know whether you would buy these products or say goodbye to them.

We have eye masks. Okay. I think with a lot of these answers, it's going to be a depends why you use them for. So eye masks can be fantastic. If you are traveling, going to a hotel, going camping somewhere, going somewhere where you can't control the light levels, eye mask can be fantastic. I have an eye mask. I'll use it on a plane.

I'll take it with me if I'm going on holiday and I don't know if the curtains are going to be any good but it's not part of my every single night routine so I think an eye mask it's really dependent on your sleeping environment so yeah buy if you're if you don't have great curtains yes don't worry about it if your curtains are great that's a beautifully nuanced answer because sometimes I you know when you're fed this information on social media like

you should be using an eye mask I would use an eye mask in between working night shifts but then absolutely Brilliant, but then I think because I maybe saw on social media that they were brilliant and I tried to use it as a regular thing. And I just found it so overstimulating. It did not work for me at all. It's so powerful just having someone who's an expert to just say, do you know what? It's not a case of you should be doing this or you shouldn't. It's a case of really assessing what works for you. Yeah. And for absolutely, for shift workers, and they're an absolute must for sleeping during the day because it's light. So yeah, definitely. Fabulous. Next. mouth tape. So this has been asked to talk about a lot over the last couple of years. So mouth taping is for people who don't know if you lived in a hole for two years. But basically it's about

taping your mouth shut during the night to force yourself to breathe through your nose. Now, as it's sort of generic and it's been publicised a lot, when TikTok viral, that everyone should mouth tape. I'm an absolute no for that because it is dangerous potentially. It has potential for causing harm. Because if the reason you're breathing through your mouth during the night, which isn't arguably as good as breathing through your nose for sure, and breathing through your mouth can cause you to snore, can cause dry mouth, this kind of thing. But there might be a reason for that because maybe your nose is blocked. Maybe you have a deviated sceptor. Maybe there's something wrong with your ability to breathe through your nose. Maybe it's allergies. So just simply blocking your

mouth shut to force yourself to breathe through a nose that maybe can't allow air to flow, means that you might wake up choking, you might wake up unable to breathe. So mouth taping, especially ones which allow some air to go through. So there are some sort of mouth tapes that you put just across the middle of your mouth so you can still allow air to go sort of out the sides are better than the full mouth tape. But if you're sure that your breathing is not impaired, that your nose is fine, you don't have sleep apnea, that nothing's going on. Mouth taping isn't the end of the world, but it definitely is something you should make sure that you're able to do. It's not buy, I would say do not buy. That's really, really helpful. Thank you. Next.

Sleep gummies. So it depends what the sleep gummies contain. So obviously you can buy, we're right now, we're in the UK, where melatonin is not something you're able to buy over the counter. But there are many sleep gummies available all over the world, which contain things like magnesium, yeah, melatonin, all sorts of things. So as a general rule, no supplements have been proven to be really, really helpful for insomnia for sleep. There are lots of supplements that have the potential to help a little bit, but especially if you have a deficiency. This is the key message. If you are deficient in magnesium, then a magnesium supplement is going to be helpful.

Just like if you have an iron deficiency or a vitamin D deficiency or any kind of deficiency, If you bring that deficiency up to a level of normality, you're going to feel better. You're going to have more energy. You're going to sleep better. Everything is going to be better. That doesn't mean to say that having more of something is just going to magically make you better. So sleep gummies, they tend to contain ingredients that are, you know, not pharmaceutical. So probably not the end of the world.

And maybe in the short term, they might help, especially if you've got some kind of deficiency. But if you become reliant on them night after night, they can cause a sort of, psychological dependency on them and then you'll find that maybe you can't sleep without them. So again, sleep gummies, generally speaking, no, because there are much better ways of resolving sleeping issues that don't require you to supplement. And I'm very excited to come on to those ways that we can get better sleep. Nasal strips. Okay, that's another great question.

So these work, if you don't know, by, they sort of go over the edge, over the top of your nose. And when you put them on, they sort of constrict or constrict. So they open up the nasal passage. So these can be really helpful if you do have a nasal blockage, like congestion or deviated septum. They're obviously not going to completely fix that, but they can help to forcibly open up your airway through your nose. So if somebody is snoring,

then using nasal strips can sometimes help to open the airway to reduce the snoring because you're allowing yourself to breathe. So again, if you snore, these might be a great thing to try. to speak to your doctor, make sure that you've got, you know, that you're fixing any real issues, but they're unlikely to make things worse. But if you don't snore and your breathing is fine, nasal strips aren't going to do anything. But yeah, my husband, bless him, he sometimes snores, and sometimes nasal strips help him to not snore so much because they open the nasal passages. I'm really excited to come on to snoring because my boyfriend is also a snorer. And I, yeah,

I'm very excited for that because he also gets to sleep so much quicker than me. He is out like a lamp at five minutes. I know unless I get to sleep before him, I'm just going to have the sound of his foghorn snoring in my ear. That's normally why I can't get to sleep. And we had a lot of community questions about sleeping with a partner and then the partner, you know, maybe not them snoring or, you know. So that's, I'm very excited for that. Sleep spray. So sleepy sprays. So these are sort of pillow sprays typically.

You can also get them for your body that contain essential oils like lavender, camomile. and typically there'll be a pillow spray so you spray them on your pillow before you get into bed. Now I, every single night use a pillow spray. I use a sleepy spray. Not because I have insomnia and this will be a magical cure for that, but because it's lovely smell.

It's part of my regular pre-sleep routine. So a little bit like going back to the eye mask we talked about before. If you do anything before bed every single night, you can start to psychologically associate using that thing with sleeping better. So if it's a little bit of, a positive thing, like a lovely lavender pillow spray that I use, that it makes my brain think,

oh, this is the smell we have before sleep. Oh, sleep is coming soon. And it's not for everybody and you might not like the certain smells. But if I go away and I travel a lot, I'll take the pillow spray with me to a hotel because then when I spray it on the pillow in the hotel, it makes it feel more like home. Similarly, you could take your pillow with you from home. Or if you use an eye mask, take that with you. So yes, it can. It can. It can. It can. It be a great part of a consistent pre-sleep routine, but there's nothing that if you have chronic insomnia, there is no evidence whatsoever that a pillow spray is going to suddenly improve or magically fix that insomnia. It's like Pavlov's stock, isn't it? You're ringing the bell.

Next, decaf coffee. Brilliant. So 20 years ago, when I graduated, decaf coffee, to be fair, was disgusting. It really was. It was horrible. But nowadays, I will challenge people to be able to tell a difference between a normal coffee and a decaffeinated coffee. So caffeine, I'm sure we can talk about this in more detail, but caffeine isn't really sleep's friend. So why not replace your afternoon coffee with a decath? And then you take the caffeine away. So yeah, decaf coffee. It's the one thing you've said that is an absolute yes. Nice. Yes, do that. Brilliant. Drowsy antihistamines. Okay, so these are used a lot in certain branded, you know, over the counter, pre-sleep, medicine for people who are not sleeping well. So they help you to feel more drowsy. When you have a cold

and you can get the day and night medication, the nighttime medication will contain the sort of antihistamine element because it helps you to be more drowsy. If you are having poor sleep in the short term, for some reason, maybe you're going on an overnight flight somewhere, maybe you've got a cold, maybe you've got a short term thing. Taking a drowsy antihistamine will make you feel a little bit more groggy and might make it a little bit easier for sleep to happen on that night. It's not the end of the world. But again, as a solution to chronic insomnia to long-term ongoing sleeping problems, it's not going to be helpful because you're going to start to become tolerant to it. It'll stop working as well. And again, you'll start to be to have an unhelpful psychological dependence on it. My own example of

using them say when I've been jet lagged. And then I remember when I first started working as a doctor and I was just so unbelievably anxious when I got into bed after like an on-call shift, you know, your mind is whizzen. And I remember taking the amp because I thought, oh, this worked when I was jet-lacked and I was trying to reset, you know, for a couple of days, whatever. And it just absolutely did not help when I was super, because I think, I guess, and I'm so interested to hear all the psychological techniques. Because I think it really does also boil down to the reason, like, I'd imagine that you're not sleeping.

because mine was my brain would not shut off. Absolutely. And we can talk about that in absolute detail for sure. Nice. Sunrise alarms. Okay. Now actually, I am a massive fan of these. I am in no way sponsored by any Sunrise Alarm Club companies. The only buy-bye, the only negative for them, in my opinion, is that they're so expensive. Yeah.

If they were cheap, I would tell everyone to get one. But the reality is we do, we have a much better ability to wake up more easily, to feel more alert to basically bright sunshine helps to suppress melatonin so it makes you feel less sleepy and more awake and it's so critical for our circadian rhythm which helps our body to know what time it is so a sunrise alarm clock for people who don't know is basically an alarm clock that not only is it a sound an audible alarm but typically before your alarm goes off say 20 minutes before the a light will start shining and it will become brighter and brighter and brighter and so that when your alarm goes off, already your room is incredibly bright. They mimic sunrise,

natural sunrise, which helps especially teenagers, people who are struggling to wake up in the morning, like owl type chronotypes, people who are late evening people. Sunrise alarm clocks can be really fantastic at helping you to wake up. If you are sleeping with an eye mask, this is pointless, pretty much, because with an eye mask, you can't see the light anyway. But if you're not sleeping with an eye mask, then even with your eyes closed, if you close your eyes right now and move your head from side to side, you can sense light even through closed eyelids. So when we have closed eyelids, we are able to sense light. So even when we're asleep, when it starts getting brighter, it's helping us to wake up a little bit more easily so that when the alarm does

go off, we're already a little bit nearer waking up because of the light. So and yeah, so I'm a big, big fan, but they are very expensive. So if you aren't made of money, another option is to simply open your curtains or go outside when you wake up and you will get pretty much the same effect. So you don't need to spend all this money but yeah, because you can literally just go outside and outside is free or open your curtains. So yeah, at least open your curtains or use one of these. Nice. Carms. So that's, you know, an example of a sort of a generic sleep supplement thing.

I think it contains Valerian root. there isn't any strong science that your sleep is going to be particularly improved by any supplement, whether it be Valerian root, ashergansa, any of these things. Really, as we'll, I'm sure we'll talk about, the solution to fixing your sleep is much more about behavioural changes and cognitive changes, getting rid of that anxiety. So, yeah, I don't think it's unnecessary. if you're having, like I said before, a blip in your sleep, you're going through something and you just want something to feel like you're doing something about it and it's relatively

inexpensive and it's not going to do you probably any harm, then you could try it. But if you're really struggling and your problems being going on for long term, I would say this is not likely statistically or scientifically proven to help. Caramil tea. So Camarale tea is a non-caffeinated tea drink. Personally, I detect. the smell of camomile. Fine. I get gifted a lot of sleepy teas. Now there is one sleepy tea that I absolutely love.

I won't necessarily talk about it now. I'm not sponsored by them either, but I love it. But basically, sleepy teas are any kind of herbal drinks before bed that typically contain lavender, camomile, lemon balm, all sorts of nice smelling fragrances. You have before bed and they, in theory, will help you feel more relaxed. Now, again, there is no science that any of these are going to dramatically help with your sleep. But I have a sleepy tea before bed every single night. I take it on holiday with me.

Everywhere I go, I always before bed have a cup of this particular sleepy tea. Not because it's scientifically proven to help sleep, but it's part of my pre-sleep routine. And the reality is, if you do something every day before bed, it helps you to associate that with sleep. and also it's a warm drink which is nice and relaxing. The warm drink helps you to feel just like having a warm bath before bed. If you have a warm drink, then as you start to cool down from the warmth of the bath or the drink a little bit, it kind of mimics the drop in temperature that we have as we are falling asleep. Because as we fall asleep, just before sleep, our core body temperature drops by about a degree.

We need to start getting cooler. That's why we need cool bedrooms. So if you have a warm bath or a warm drink before bed, it can kind of help to mimic that process. But the great thing is, a cup of caramel tea before bed can be a brilliant thing to do. It's a much better choice than a caffeinated cup of tea or a caffeinated coffee. So, yeah, but there's nothing, there are little bits of evidence that suggests that camille or lavender might be helpful, but it's not overwhelming evidence as yet, but it's absolutely not going to hurt you. So if you want to try it, absolutely do.

but don't do it instead of getting proper treatment. I think there's a huge shift I've found in social media of people look into social media to solve medical issues rather than look into professionals and I think there is that danger of, yeah, Cammeralty, my boyfriend, I don't know if we're watching a series and we're on our last episode, he'll turn to me and be like, show I'm going to make us a Cammeralty and you're right,

it's like that switch in my brain of like, okay, wind down time now, you know? and would that that does help me as someone who doesn't suffer from insomnia but maybe sometimes has you know struggles to sleep it's a medical problem and i think especially as women often we really minimize things do you find in in your clinic that people don't recognize the importance of sleep and almost like dismiss it is not that big an issue well the people who come to see me in my clinic who are struggling the complete opposite people who come and see me they have bought every single thing that you've just shown me and more they've bought a new mattress they've bought new bedding, they've bought new pyjamas, they've changed their curtains, they've bought a new pillow, they've bought every single brand of Camalty on the market, they've brought every single brand of pillow spray. They've spent hundreds, if not thousands of pounds on products to help their sleep. But the reality is it's about lifestyle changes. The way to be healthy is to exercise regularly and to eat a diet full of great nutritious food. The way to be healthy isn't, oh well this pill here is the solution to your health. And then if you have this pill, you don't need

to exercise, you don't need to eat healthily, you don't need to see your friends and socialise. All you have to do is have this pill. But it's easier to be sold, oh, this pill will solve everything or this particular tea or this particular thing. That doesn't mean to say that that pill isn't good in some way, but it's not instead of fixing the real problems. So yeah, Camalti can be really helpful. But with people with insomnia, actually, if you're trying everything, then it can start to do the opposite because you'll have that tea that you've bought because it needs to fix your sleep

and you're having the tea and you're like, oh, it really needs to fix my sleep and if I don't sleep well tonight, I'm going to struggle tomorrow at work and actually it can start to backfire and be triggering anxiety instead of triggering relaxation. So as long as you're having it because you like the taste of it and it and it makes you feel happy and relaxed,

fantastic, do it. If you're having it because you've been convinced it it's going to fix your sleeping problem, it's probably not going to. It's really interesting you say that about people who have insomnia are trying every different thing. Two points on that, I wonder how much money they wasted before actually going to see a professional.

And I think that is sometimes what social media leads us to. Taking things into our own hands and telling us a product is going to fix something rather than someone who's got expertise and, you know, who has dealt with, you know, hundreds of people with the same issues. The pressure that we seem to put on ourselves when we buy these different products because I did a YouTube video where I decided every night I was going to try a different sleep thing, sleep modification of some different sort.

One day it was like mindfulness before bed, another day, something else to see how good I could get my sleep score and my wearable. I did find different tweaks did really help my sleep score. But then the last night, I put pressure on myself and I said, I'm going to try everything and I'm going to see if I can get my highest sleep score. and it was my worst night's sleep because I had put so much pressure on this one night and I didn't sleep until 2 in the morning

because I was lying in bed like go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep and I couldn't do it. And that's insomnia. You know, you previously said about sleep is you don't advocate for looking at the clock because I think we've all experienced that where we need to get sleep. I've got a busy day tomorrow.

Look at the clock. If I go to sleep now, I'm only going to get six hours sleep. If I go to sleep now, I'm only going to get five hours sleep. Yeah, tell me more about about that. approach. Okay. So not looking at a clock in the night is really, if you're listening to this, just stop having a clock that you can see in your room. And if you're wearing a clock on your wrist, like a wearable sleep tracker thing that shows you the time, just turn that ability to

see the time off for a few reasons. So first of all, if you're struggling to sleep, when you're lying there, every time your time passes, you think, how long has it been now? And it almost motivates you to wake up to check the time again. Whereas if you didn't have the time there, your brain wouldn't be thinking, oh, should we check the time? Should we not? Yeah, we should. And then when you do check the time, it's only going to succeed in making you more anxious and frustrated and start doing those mental calculations of, like you said, how long has it's been, if I fall asleep right now, how much sleep will I get till morning? Or if you've had some sleep, you'll wake up and think, oh, it's three o'clock again, while I wake up exactly at this time

every morning and that means it's only this much time till I have to get up for work. So it's not helpful. And secondly, and this is really common in insomnia, people tend to significantly underestimate how much sleep they're getting in bed because just think about when you're watching TV in the evening, you might nod off on the sofa a little bit. And then you'll come, you'll wake up and you think, oh, gosh, what happens to that guy? He died. He died. High happened to him. When you realise you fell asleep because you missed some of the TV. Or if you're in a meeting and you start to get drowsing, your head nods, you realise and you sort of pull your head back up and you sort of have a jerking sensation, you know, gosh, I just nearly nodded off there

because your body was starting to relax. Or if you dream, you know, if you're, if you were lying down, you're like, oh my goodness, I was just dreaming that I was in the mountains climbing down. You know you were asleep because you were dreaming. However, a lot of sleep, when you're in bed, lying there in the dark, you're in your bed lying there in the dark, you're not going to miss anything because there's no TV, there's nothing to miss. Your head won't nod anywhere because you're physically lying down flat on a bed. And unless you're having a dream at that moment, you won't remember having dreaming sleep. So you could have a minute's sleep, five minutes sleep, 20 minutes sleep, half an hour's sleep, and not realize that you were asleep when you're lying in bed.

And when you have insomnia, you'll check the time. It's one in the morning. Lie there for a bit. Check the time again. It's half one. I still haven't fallen asleep. Lie there. Check the time again.

It's half two. Goodness. It didn't feel like an hour or two past, but it must have been because I don't remember sleeping. And you start to tell yourself that you've been lying there for all this time, which again, increases the anxiety, increases the frustration. but really you might have been having lots of little bits of sleep, just like the nodding off in front of the TV or nodding off in that boring meeting. But you don't realize it because you keep checking the time.

And every time you check the time, you just think you've been awake that whole time. So that's why it's so important to not check the time. Set your alarm for the morning. And if your alarm's going off, it's morning. Get up. If it's not, it's not morning. You don't have to worry what time it is.

Yeah. Could AI help you do more of what you love? Workday is the AI platform for HR and finance that actually knows your business. We help you handle the have-to-dos so you can focus on the can't-wait-to-dos. It's a new workday. Final one, earplugs. So this is like the eye masks. If you are a shift worker, if you're sleeping in a tent, if you're sleeping, if we've gone to a hotel in the inner city and then there are police engines or fire engines, or you're in a hospital bed, for example.

plugs can be a great way of, you know, quietening that external noise that's going to disrupt your sleep. But if you are in a quiet house, in a normal residential street, earplugs are unlikely to be necessary because it's already quiet enough. And often people, when they start to develop insomnia, they'll have been with their partner for 10 years. And their partner's breathing has never been a problem. But now they have insomnia and they're not sleeping. their partner's breathing is the most annoying sound you've ever heard in your life. And they're like, oh my goodness, it's just so frustrating. And you might turn to earplugs to get rid of that noise or the clicking of the heating

coming on. Again, you're like, oh, it's so annoying. And it's not really that those sounds are the problem. It's the fact that you're so anxious and frustrated about not sleeping, but you're hypervigilant, you're super aware of these sounds. In which case, earplugs aren't really the solution. It's fixing that anxiety. So earplugs, if you're somewhere really noisy, especially in the short term, great fan of that.

For every day just trying to fix your insomnia, it's that you're not fixing the real problem. I love my earflugs for when I was doing shift work as well for sleeping in the day. Love them for airplanes, but it's really interesting you say that about the hypervigilant thing because my boyfriend, big snorer. And when he starts snoring, I reach over in these air plugs I absolutely adore in other situations. And I put them in, super comfy, love them. I put them in and all I can hear is my heartbeat. And I've heard that from a couple of my friends as well

because when you're in that hypervigilant state, you're probably your heart isn't slowing down so that you can sleep. And it's not my, you're right, it's not my boyfriend. It's me being in this anxious, like I just say a state. Yeah, if you have insomnia, you'll be able to hear a dripping tap three houses away. Thank you for listening. If you would like to hear the full episode with even more jam-packed knowledge, then just click the link in the description.