Her Discussions by Dr Faye - Sleep Expert: How to *ACTUALLY* Fix Your Sleep

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

Dr Lindsay Browning is one of the UK's leading sleep experts, holding a doctorate in insomnia from the University of Oxford.In this episode, we'll explore how to fall asleep faster, manage night shifts, and discover which sleep products are actually worth your money.What you’ll learn:⭐ How to silence a busy mind before sleep🦉 Tips to make mornings easier (even if you hate them)🌜 How to stop waking up at 3 AM⏰ 1 thing you should remove from your bedroom💤 The trick to getting deep sleep next to a snorer👀 1 essential every shift worker needsBut first, please don’t forget to subscribe and share, it really helps us to grow this podcast.Resources & links mentioned:@drbrowningsleepLinks to subscribe / follow:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/her-discussions-by-dr-faye/id1835829612Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5viLYizHD4Zy6J42iqtPRoCan 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 with someone who needs this; it might help them live a happier, healthier life. Follow us on social media or join the broadcast channel to send us your questions for our guests. I'll leave the link here: https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/?igsh=MWhuaXFweGtucTB3cA== https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/?igsh=MWhuaXFweGtucTB3cA==🛑 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 number one reason people tell me they can't sleep is because their mind won't switch off. The reason your mind is busy at night is because it's... Dr Lindsay Browning is one of the world's leading experts on sleep, having a doctorate in insomnia from the University of Oxford. But today, she's going to be on the podcast talking about the sleep products that are actually worth the money, how to turn off your brain whirring as soon as you hit the pillow, and what actually works when it comes to getting to sleep. significant, a measurable increase in road traffic accidents and heart attacks the day after the

spring clock change. Interesting. Women are more likely to have insomnia to have difficulty with sleep. For a working age adult, it's the sweet spot. The gold lock zone is somewhere between sort of... If you could just make one change that would make a massive difference to sleep, it would be that. But before we get into the conversation, please don't forget to subscribe or leave a five-star review.

It really, really helps us. keep bringing you the podcast and guests that help you live a happier, healthier life. Thank you. Hi, I'm Dr. Lindsay Browning and you're listening to Her Discussions Podcast. Dr. Lindsay, our community have sent in so many questions about insomnia, you know, getting to sleep when you're stressed. But first, what I would love to hear from you is how did you end up specialising in sleep and insomnia? What inspired you to go down that path? So I did my first degree in psychology, and then I was lucky enough to get a scholarship to Oxford to do a master's and a doctorate. So my master's was in neuroscience, and then when you're doing a doctorate, you have to pick a specialism.

And I've always been really interested in sleep. I've never been a poor sleeper per se, but it's just sleep's one of those great unknowns like space or the bottom of the sea. Yeah, what happens when we sleep? So there was a sleep clinic at Oxford, so I managed to do my doctorate there. So I spent three years studying insomnia and what causes it, how you can help treat insomnia. And as part of doing that PhD, well, defil, whatever. Sorry. No, that's all right.

Because it's weird, but in Oxford it's not called a PhD. It's called a defil, but it's the same thing. Do my doctorate for three years. Studying insomnia, I became aware of what a huge issue it was for people. You know, that people really, really struggled. They can be so depressed, so angry. anxious about it, it can cause them to quit their jobs, to be really, really not able to cope with their lives. So through my doctorate, working with those people, I realised how important it was

to go into that field, really. And this was 20 years ago that I graduated. I graduated in 2006. And back then, sleep was a inconvenience in the general, you know, people generally thought of sleep as a waste of time. People would boast about how little sleep they got, like Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, even Donald Trump in his book, he said, Anyone who sleeps for more than four hours is an idiot, basically, because you're wasting time. Whether we want to, you know, listen to Don Trump for Sleep Advice is another podcast altogether. At the time, sleep wasn't really mainstream. But because of what I've been doing, I was so interested in helping people.

So I set up my sleep practice pretty much straight away after my doctorate. And as I mentioned to you just before, I was pregnant with my daughter as I was finishing my doctorate, handed in my thesis. She was born two weeks later. and six months after that I set up trouble sleeping to help people with insomnia. So that's how I came into this world. That was 20 years ago. Gosh, it's really an early adopter because I think that there's so many, sleep is a much bigger conversation now than it must have been back then.

And I lived with a girl in medical school and she had really, really bad insomnia. And I saw how huge of an impact that had on her life. You know, life doesn't stop if you get a bad night's sleep. you can have a really awful night's sleep and you're still expected to turn up to work the next day. So I'm really excited to hear some of your practical tips on how we can improve our sleep. First of all, we're going to do a section called buy or 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 travelling, 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 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've 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 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. this or you shouldn't, it's a case of really like 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 scepter. 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 certain 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 a 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 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 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, 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 snora and I yeah very excited for that because he also gets to sleep so much quicker than me he is out like a lamp five minutes I know unless I gets to sleep before him I'm just going to have the sound of his fog horn 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 so sleepy spray. 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 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 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? Yeah, 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 the difference between a normal coffee and a decaffinated 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 decaf? 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. where 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 whizzing. 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 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'm in no way sponsored by any sunrise alarm clock companies the only by 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 light will start shining and it will become brighter and brighter and brighter 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. But 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. 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. Nice. Open your curtains or use one of these. Nice. Carms.

So that's, you know, an example of a, 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, Ashvaghanza, 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 behavioral 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 been going on for long term, I would say this is not likely statistically or scientifically proven to help. Camaramalty. So Camarral tea is. is a non-caffeinated tea drink. Personally, I detest 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 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 it's a little bit of it. So it's a little bit of So if you want to try it, absolutely do, but don't do it instead of getting proper treatment. Monster Energy. Everybody knows White Monster, Sierra Ultra. That's the OG.

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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, Camelanti, 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, sugar makers of Cammeralati. 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 your clinic that people don't recognize the importance of sleep and almost like dismiss it as 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. more. They've bought a new mattress. They've bought new bedding. They've bought new pajamas. 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 as 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, Camal tea can be really helpful. But with people with insomnia, actually, if you're trying everything, then it can be, 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 makes you feel happy and relax, fantastic, do it. If you're having it because you've been convinced that 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 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 school. 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 that approach. Okay. So not looking at 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. Why am I waking 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 wake up and you'll wake up. Oh, gosh, what happens to that guy? He died. What happened to him? when you realize 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 realize 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 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 sleep, five minutes sleep, 20 minutes sleep, half an hour's sleep, and not realize that you were a sleep.

sleep 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 passed, 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 realise 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.

Final one, ear plugs. 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 you've gone to a hotel in the inner city and then there are police engines, fire engines, or you're in a hospital bed, for example, earplugs 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, 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, a 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 aeroplanes, but it's really interesting and you say that about the hypervigilant thing because my boyfriend, big snorer. And when he starts snoring, I reach over in these airplugs

that 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, it's not my, you're right, it's not my boyfriend. and it's me being in this anxious, like, agitated state. Yeah, if you have insomnia, you'll be able to hear a dripping tap three houses away. That's really, really helpful. I would love to get into some practical tips for better quality sleep. Why is sleep so important and what are the different phases of our sleep? So when we fall asleep, our body and our brain are doing,

and we can't even imagine how many different things they are doing. sleep is not, like when you turn your computer off, that's not what sleep is. Sleep is a time when your brain and your body are incredibly busy. You are regulating hormones. You are sorting your immune system. You are repairing muscles. You are when you're a child. You're physically growing.

You're storing memories. You're getting rid of memories that aren't important. It's just absolutely incredible. So people who don't get enough sleep regularly over long periods of time tend to have a higher risk of depression, anxiety, heart disease, stroke, certain types of cancer, especially hormonal cancers, dementia, diabetes, obesity, have their immune system is compromised, their memory issues. The list goes on and on and on. Because sleep is massively important. Really important thing to remember is that we can all survive on a night or two or short period of poor sleep.

If we didn't, then every new parent on the planet would have cancer and dementia and diabetes and all these terrible things. But it's if you're choosing to shorten your sleep deliberately, and that's where all the sort of scaremongering is really important. It's aimed at people who are thinking, I don't need seven or eight hour sleep. I can be fine on five. You know, and they're going to bed at one in the morning, getting up at six. They swear they're fine. It is highly unlikely that five hours sleep is enough for your body. to have the time to repair and do all those processes.

So I could talk for hours about this, but I'll just talk about one example. So when we are asleep, there's a thing called cerebrospinal fluid that physically, when you are asleep, it goes into your brain and it physically washes over your brain. And there are neuroimaging studies showing this.

You can physically see the cerebral spinal fluid washing over your brain. Now, what happens is we have a buildup of these things called amyloid. plaques, which are associated with Alzheimer's. And during this sleep phase, the cerebral spinal fluid physically washes away the amylop plaques. It's like physically spring cleaning your brain, like a maid going in with a mop and cleaning your bathroom. And people who don't get enough sleep long term tend to have a buildup of amyloplax and have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer's.

And again, going back to the sort of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, these people, they developed Alzheimer's. it's not necessarily that their lack of sleep caused Alzheimer's, but I'm sure it didn't help. They were both famously advocates of not having a lot of sleep. But if we don't get enough sleep, then what happens is your brain and your body have to make choices. Well, we've only got five hours. So that cerebro spinal fluid thing,

that'll have to wait till tomorrow, because we've got to do that we've got to repair our muscles and we've got to store these memories that we just made today, and we've got to do this other stuff. So your brain, your body, make decisions. and the cerebral spinal fluid washing, for example, gets pushed down. And a night or two of that, it's fine, just like we don't clean our bathroom every night, do we? But if you don't get enough sleep for weeks, for months, for years, you can just imagine the buildup that's going on here.

So that's what's really critical. People don't necessarily understand that five-hour sleep doesn't mean you're not missing out on vital processes. And that's where science and research has proven so strongly the association between. getting a good amount of sleep improves your overall health. And for a working age adult, it's the sweet spot, the golden lock zone, is somewhere between sort of seven to nine hours. There are people maybe six and a half to nine-ish, there or thereabouts.

If you're getting significantly less than that and you think you're fine, I really highly doubt that you actually are. Just like if you only ate junk food every single day, you would probably feel fine and you would be functioning. but I would really doubt that you are doing your body, that your body is the best. And if you changed your diet to be incredibly healthy, full of nutritious, you know, all the different foods groups that we should be having, you probably feel an awful lot better and you won't realise it at the time.

Yeah, it's amazing. I think we all have that like one friend or one person in our family who smoked, drunk, ate lots of crap, never slept. And they're used as this example of, oh, well, they're fine. But it's not, it's, you know, science is based on averages. You have to look at what is the best in a general. And you're so right, imagine if you're functioning well on five-hour sleep. Imagine how much better you were done a proper night's sleep.

And of course, sleep, it's not a guarantee that you're going to be healthy. And look at the most, there are many examples of really healthy people who get cancer or get, you know, so it's not, like you say, it's an averages game. But it's giving yourself the best fighting chance, isn't it? You were mentioned before we started recording that you're an owl rather than a lark. Yeah. So could you tell me a little bit about these, you know, the chronotypes of, you know, how we sleep. And actually, I feel that if you're a lark, you seem to function better in, like, today's sort of society.

What advice you would give to people who maybe are owls functioning in today's society? So our chronotype, it means when we feel the most alert of the day, basically. And owl type people or evening types are people who morning is not their friend. Morning is not my friend. And as the day goes by, you start to feel a bit more alert, a bit more awake, and come the evening, you've got a second wind and we can keep going. And, you know, I could stay up every night till one, two, three, quite happily doing stuff. But the trouble is, morning doesn't change.

If you go to bed at one, two, I still have to be up at 6.45 to attend my Peloton class at seven. You know, I'm going to not get enough sleep. So for owl type people like myself, it is so important to put restrictions on yourself, to say, yes, even though I feel full of energy and I could keep going, I need to choose not to because I need to choose to be in bed by 10, half 10 so that I can get a sufficient amount of sleep to be healthy. And a bright light in the morning is really, really helpful to help regulate that and help me, anyone who's like an owl type, feel more awake straight away. So it's so important. But if you let yourself go to bed really late and sleep in at the weekends, our circadian rhythm can start to get out of whack. And larks, similarly, they do tend to get more sleep than owls

because the 9 to 5 world is geared up for larks because they can finish work at 5 and go to bed at 7, 8 if they want to. But the trouble is you can start to get out of whack with your social life. And I deal with a lot of people who are who are, sort of extreme larks and they're going to bed much earlier than they want to. And there's a sweet spot, isn't there? Between, you don't want to go to bed too late, but you don't want to go to bed too early. So with people who are larks, it's about, you know, maybe try and pushing through a little bit so that you can stay awake a little bit later in the evening, try not to let

yourself fall asleep on the sofa, especially when we get a bit older. You can, lots of older people find themselves nodding off whilst watching evening telly. And then they're awake at three, four in the morning and sometimes it's not because they have insomnia, it's because actually if you're falling asleep at seven or eight and waking up at three or four, that's plenty of sleep. You're just at the wrong time zone. So yeah, so larks and owls, it's very much about when your body naturally feels awake and alert and sleepy. And if you are an extreme, most people are somewhere in the middle. You know, I'm an I'm an owl which is kind of extreme and lots of people are larks who are an extreme. Most people in the middle. If you're an extreme, it's about maybe having a bedtime

reminder on your phone and to remind you to go to bed at this time, especially if you're an owl. And if you're a lark, to remind you, you know, I shouldn't really be going to bed yet. And if you're getting up way too early, maybe that's not helpful. If you get up every morning at five and go and walk the dog, you are going to be sleepy at eight. So we have to sort of look at that. Sierra has all the best active and outdoor brands for the super athletic stuff, like running gear for cruising up the trail. Woo!

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Right, I'm going to come on to some of the community questions. Big community question was, do we have any research on the hours of sleep women need versus men? So yes and no. There are lots of research has done on this. And typically it does look like women need a little bit more sleep than men, but we are talking about 10 to 20 minutes more, like maybe 11 minutes. It's not really a big deal. But statistically, women do probably need a little bit more sleep than men. But the trouble is we tend to, I'll say we because we're women, we tend to actually have higher incidence of sleeping problems than men.

So women are more likely to have insomnia to have difficulty with sleep. And it could be because of hormonal changes because as women, we tend to have monthly changes in our hormones. Changes in hormones when we get pregnant. Changes in our hormones when we stop being pregnant. Changes in our hormones when we go through menopause. So all these times that men don't typically have. such wild variations in their hormones, they can really affect sleep. And that's probably why women have a high incidence of poor sleep compared to men, as well as a disproportionate amount of

caring responsibilities sometimes and a lot more stressed, sometimes, especially if you're working and managing the household on being a sandwich generation where you've got young children and elderly parents. And typically, it shouldn't be this case, but typically a greater responsibility tends to fall on women in regard than men. And the more stressed we are, the more more likely we are to have difficulty with sleep because anxiety, stress and sleep don't go hand in hand really. That really neatly brings me on to another huge community question that we had, which was how to shut off the worrying mind? Yes. The worrying mind when it's almost like you get, you're tired before you get into bed, your head hits the pillow and suddenly every single thought

you've ever thought about in your entire life is there. How do you recommend people handle that? That's probably the number one reason people tell me they can't sleep is, because their mind won't switch off. And they'll say, how can I turn my mind off? Now, there are many techniques that we can talk about, which are about cognitive distraction techniques that will help to sort of make you think about something else to sort of take you away from that busy mind.

But before we talk about those, because they are good, the reality is the reason your mind is busy at night is because it has things to think about. And during the daytime, especially in today's modern world, when are we ever bored? Like when was the last time that you or I or anyone listening sat down and did nothing and was just bored? Never, we never have to. We have a device in our palm of our hand to entertain us every single second of the day,

whether you're on the train, whether you're on the loo. Like there is no time to be bored. You're watching TV, you're doing work, you're making lunch, talking about, you're busy all the time. And then, of course, when you get into bed at night, you lie down, you turn the lights off, your head hits the pillow, and your brain goes, bing, oh my goodness, thank goodness we've got some time and space to think. Let's think about all the things we did wrong today, or let's think about all the stuff we still have to do tomorrow.

And it just goes absolutely haywire. So yes, you can do distraction techniques to refocus your mind on other things, but the reality is we need to give ourselves time and space earlier in the day to allow. allow our brain to think. Otherwise, it's going to do it for you at two in the morning. You'll wake up at three in the morning with your mind whirring. So please, please. It's not that hard. Just get a piece of paper and a pen, ideally. But if you're like young and not as old as me, you can do it on your iPhone or whatever. And just write down wherever is on your mind during the day. Give yourself 10, 15 minutes to think. And don't do it right before bed. Some of people think it's a thing

you should do right before you get into bed, but if you do it right before bed, all those thoughts will be too fresh in your mind. So a couple of hours before bed, ideally, just give yourself a little bit of time to write down a to-do list for tomorrow or write about what's on your heart or on your mind or whatever it is, just brain dump. And then when you get into bed, your brain won't be thinking desperately, oh my goodness, we haven't thought today. Things like meditation, mindfulness, going for a walk in the forest, just taking some time to be still. All of those. things are so important because they allow us space for our mind, you think, without just constantly being distracted. So that is what absolutely everyone should do. Please, if you just do

one thing, do that. It's so important. But let's say you have done that and you get into bed and your brain is still busy. You're like, oh, so annoying. There are lots of really great techniques. So you could try cognitive shuffling is a really great one. And I love this one because it's so easy. It's, you think of a word, literally any word at all. So the one I use in my example is, often is cake, just any word. It could be ball, could be banana, anything. Let's say cake. So you just think of a word. And then I want you to think about when you're lying in bed in the dark, all the words you can think of that begin with the first letter. So in the word cake, see, cabbages, cauliflower, canada, colander. And whenever I give this example, I always get stuck

at about four, which is stupid because there are thousands of words that begin with C. So when you're lying in bed, just keep thinking until you've completely exhausted all the C words. And then you move on to the next. So in the word cake, A, all the A words. And then you've exhausted A next, that's a K. And then E. Now, this is so great because it's completely random words. They're not linked to anything. They're just, and they're firing your neurons and your brain in all different places. It's not going to make you start think about any particular train of thought because it's just all these random different words, which can be really helpful at distracting you from any worries or things that you're on the back of your mind or anxieties. And hopefully, you'll be so distracted and just thinking about

these random words that you'll fall asleep because it's late, it's dark and you fall asleep. So that's a really good one. Another sort of distraction technique is to imagine yourself in a really relaxing place. I call this visual imagery. And it's a bit more relaxing. You're on a beach. Lillian. Yeah. Absolutely. So it's about thinking of yourself in an environment where you'd feel really relaxed. Could be a beach, could be a forest. It doesn't even have to be real. It could be you sitting on the death star if you love Star. It doesn't have to be real. And to think about, okay, how would it feel to be here? What would it look like? And to think about the detail of the image. And also to think about you, what would it smell like here? What would I

hear what would I, if you imagine touching the seat that you're on or or running your hands through the sand, what would that feel like? What would the, if you're on a beach, what would the smell of the sea smell like, the taste almost of the saltiness of the air? And it's about creating this really vivid image full of using your senses that helps you to, it's so overwhelming for your brain that it helps you to really feel like you're in that situation and that you're not worrying about what you did wrong earlier or what's going to happen tomorrow. And if we're calm and relaxed and not thinking about worries, again, we're more likely to sleep. But these techniques, the cognitive shuffling and this visual imagery, they're not to make sleep happen.

This is so important because if ever anyone tries a technique to make sleep happen, invariably it won't work, because you're doing it and thinking, is it working? Has my heart changed? What's going on? You know, how much more do I have to do it for? You have to do it with the intention of just distracting yourself, biding some time. And then if you're relaxed and calm, sleep is more likely to happen. That's all we can do. It makes me think of counting sheep, but the thing is with counting sheep is it's just so associated with sleeping

that you're like, it stresses you out almost. Yeah, and it's too easy as well. You're one sheep, two. Oh my goodness, I didn't pay that gas bill, three, sheep, four. Oh, and I didn't forget my mom's birthday, five sheep. Whereas the imagery, with it being so vivid, full of your senses and detail, hopefully it's so vivid and complex that it's not allowing the space for those other thoughts.

It's also really interesting you said about the imagery because I have like a really quite vivid memory of when I was 10 or I think even younger like 8 which is kind of funny is I to get myself to sleep I was a huge Mcfly fan like huge Mcfly fan and I really fancied Tom from McFly when I was like 8 that was like my big crush and this is so embarrassing this is so embarrassing to admit but every time every night when I wanted to go to sleep I imagine that I was married to Tom from McFly when I was eight years old. always sent me to sleep. And it was almost like I knew that that was this, I don't know, like, comforting, happy place for eight-year-old Faye. And now I need to maybe like try to find my my 27-year-old finishing. I love that. Oh, the other interesting thing I was going to say is the whole idea of letting yourself be bored. My phone got stolen in London about a month ago. And I didn't have my phone for two days. I didn't have a phone for two days. And I remember the whole time thinking, there was, I did a on the bus from my flat to the bodophone shop to go get my phone. And I was sat on the bus and I was like looking at the world around me and I thought,

I literally do not remember the last time I did this. I do not remember the last time I took a bus journey and I didn't have this noise in my phone, noise in my head, like check my phone. And I remember thinking when I was without my phone for two days, I remember thinking, Faye, you need to reduce your screen time. You need to make more time to be intentionally bored because of these. incredible mental health impacts of just letting your mind exist without just trying to fill it. Yeah. And then I got my phone back and that all went out the window. How would you say in,

not just during the day, but at night time, the digital world impacts people sleep? It really does. That's a critical thing. So having your phone next to the bed that you're going to reach for if you're, oh, I haven't quite fallen asleep yet. I'll just check my message. I'll just check on social media. I'll just do this. It's, a little bit like the checking the time, but it's even worse because you check it. And then unlike the time when you've just checked it and you're thinking about, oh gosh, it's been quite a long time, with your phone, you start scrolling. And those apps, TikTok, Snapchat, like everything, they are designed to keep you in those apps. People spend millions, if not billions of dollars

to make these apps as addictive as possible. So you're in bed because you couldn't say, sleep, you grab your phone, and then before you know, oh my gosh, an hour's gone by, an hour and a half gone by, and I've been scrolling for all this time. You might think, well, my mind was busy and I couldn't sleep, so this is better, but it's not, it's again, it's just blocking, it's not allowing your brain to do anything. So please don't reach for your phone once it's bedtime. Using your phone before bed with the whole blue light thing, it's maybe not as damaging as it was perceived to be. But once bedtime is hit, once you've got your perceived or I need to be in bed by half 10, you need to not be on your phone from half 10 until your alarm goes off. It is, if you could

just make one change that would make a massive difference to your sleep, it would be that. And if you're someone who isn't great at making resolutions and sticking to them, then don't have your phone next to your bed. You know, I have to have my phone in my room because I've got kids, one of whom is, you know, left the house. I need to be able to be contacted. So I'm not going to put my phone downstairs. I'm not even going to put my phone outside the room, but it's not right there to be grabbed at the second of,

oh gosh, I haven't slept within five minutes. I'll just go back on my phone. Just don't reach for it in the middle of the night. It's not going to be helpful. It's going to keep you awake. It's going to distract you from sleep. And it's going to not allow your brain to do anything that's really helpful for your mental health or your physical health. Yeah.

With so many more community questions, but first, we've got a section. called real or real, which is basically where I'm going to show you a short video that's from social media. And I would love to know your opinions on whether it is real. It's been a long day, as you're probably going to be able to tell, I'm so tired, but I have the hardest time sleeping ever since I've been pregnant. I don't know what it is. So I asked my midwife, and she told me to make this tart cherry magnesium locktail, and I've also seen it all over TikTok. I've actually been drinking it, and I feel like it's been helping. And Lucky's by,

So I'm gonna make both of us one tonight. He's never had one. So, okay, so I usually start with my magnesium. I do one scoop. I'm gonna do one scoop here. One scoop there. Then I put some tart cherry juice in. About this much. I give that a really good mix. You stop it over there. You cannot open bottles. Try it. I will try it. I will try it. See, you're having trouble too. Okay, well, that was quick. Thanks, Sunny. Put some ice in it.

I don't like that much ice. I'm tired. Then I just top it with some sparkling water. Sometimes I do a soda, but today we're just going to do this. There we go. The Sleepy Girl Mocktail. What are your thoughts on that? Well, that one wasn't nearly as,

OTT or some of them that I've seen. So, okay, the elements of it. Tart cherry juice. There have been some thoughts and a few mild studies that have shown a little bit that it might be helpful for sleep because it contains melatonin, natural melatonin. But the effect is negligible, like really, really small. But it's full of vitamins, nutrients. It's not a bad thing. But again, if you are having tart cherry juice, instead of speaking to a professional about really fixing your sleep problem, it's not going to be helpful. But the magnesium, so again, magnesium is everywhere as a supplement. Now, if you have a magnesium deficiency and then you take magnesium, your sleep is likely to improve because when we have a magnesium deficiency, we're not able to

sleep so well. So magnesium has then been sort of taken as some kind of sleep super wonder supplement, but it's really not. There is minimal evidence that it's helpful for sleep. unless you have a deficiency. So just taking more and more and more magnesium thinking that's going to magically fix your sleep is not helpful. In her example, I'm not sure what the quantities were, but I've seen some examples of the Sleepy Girl Mocktail when they have a huge amount of magnesium way more than you need. And that can cause tummy upsets. It can be bad if somebody has diabetes. There are certain conditions that when actually taking magnesium supplements can be quite bad for you. So basically the sleepy gum octal that she had, tart cherry juice, it's unlikely to make your sleep worse, but equally there's no science to show it's probably going to do anything significant to help your sleep.

And magnesium, what I would suggest is that you, if you're really struggling with your sleep, speak to your doctor and see if you have some deficiencies because if you have an iron deficiency, a magnesium deficiency, any kind of deficiency that could be perpetuating your sleeping problem. And in which case you should get that resolved. but just telling everyone to blanket take magnesium supplements, especially if it's from the point of view of somebody just trying to sell supplements, which is where the whole sleep and business industry is really difficult because I feel so sad for people who are just hemorrhaging money on all these things and be told, oh, this will help your sleep, this will help your sleep. But the reality is none of those things are really scientifically going to help your sleep. What you need to do is to stop being so anxious before bed.

You need to fix your sleep behaviours, go to bed at a reasonable time, a regular, you know, regular sort of bedtime and getting up every day at the same time. Make sure you're getting outside, getting bright light, getting exercise, and that you're really addressing those intrusive thoughts and anxieties and stress about sleep. And no amount of supplements is really going to balance all that really scientifically grounded, evidence-based good stuff that you really should be doing. It takes us away from the core issue, doesn't it? It can be quite distracting.

Yeah, but of course, if you're watching TikTok, it's much more, oh, great, I can just grab this melatonin supplement or magnesium supplement that is linked in this person's bio and, oh, that'll magically fix my sleep rather than doing the actual stuff that is really going to help. And if you're really struggling, that's what makes me so sad because people are desperate.

I work with people who have quit their jobs, their sleep is so bad, whose lives are literally on hold, they are so depressed, they are so not coping. And to tell them that, oh, well, you should have a sleepy girl mocktail, that's the solution, is really sad because it's not going to help. This community question was, what are the effects of night shifts? And do you have any advice for people shifting between night and day work shifts? Sure. I do a lot of work with the police and lots of pilots and things about this very issue. So our circadian rhythm is our biolidian rhythm is our biolid. or 24 hour clock. And it helps our body to know what time it is. And we can't shift that very

easily day by day. And that's why we get jet lag. And even why when the clocks change in October and March, just by one hour, there is a significant, a measurable increase in road traffic accidents and heart attacks the day after the spring clock change, for example. Interesting. You can see it. Because even that one hour makes a difference. So when people are changing their bedtime, wake time by significantly more than that, either because of social things, they're staying up late on a Friday, Saturday and sleeping in and then going to bed early Sunday, or they're doing shift work, it's going to have consequences. But of course, we don't all live in this perfect bubble world where we can all go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time. And if you're a new parent

or if you're a shift worker, it's tough. You know, you have to just adapt. So it's about making the most of it. If you are a shift worker, the really important things are getting bright light exposure when you want to be awake. So if you want to, you know, stay awake, get outside, get bright light exposure, or even use artificial light to do that. And on the reverse of that, if you're finishing a shift and you want to go to bed,

you want to be avoiding light. So if you're coming home from a shift and it's six, seven in the morning, the sun's up in the summer. It's going to be really bright outside. You don't want to see that sunshine or it's going to make it hard if you to go to sleep when you get home. So I recommend that we, you wear a hat. We wear sunglasses on the way home. Now this is if you're using public transport. If you are driving yourself home, you need to stay awake to not have a car accident. Using public transport is recommended after a night shift because you're more likely to have a car accident, but let's say that if you're driving,

you don't wear sunglasses and make it more likely you fall asleep. But if you're not, wear sunglasses. When you get home, don't open all the curtains. You know, keep the lights dim because it's your evening. And the advice about we want to make our evening sort of like dark, you know, dim the lighting, that kind of thing is so that we can help that melatonin secretion that helps us to fall asleep.

That's what we want to do. And with night shift workers who come home need to sleep during the day. That's where eye masks, earplugs, maybe a white noise machine might be really helpful to help mask the disruptive sounds from outside. But also really important is having a pre-sleep routine. And I mentioned that earlier about I have a pre-sleep routine. I have a cup of sleepy tea and I use a pillow spray. I read a book. These are things I do before bed every night. And I do them before bed whether I'm a home, whether I'm working abroad, wherever I am. Shift workers, it's really helpful to do a similar thing before you go to sleep.

So that whenever you go to sleep, you always have a cup of sleepy tea, a caramel tea, you use a pillow spray, you read a book, you have a bath, you do some relaxing yoga, whatever it is that you find nice and helpful for you. And it doesn't mean that, just like I said, I hate the taste of caramel milk tea, like that's not going to work for me.

But whatever works for you, if you find something that you can consistently do before sleep, During the week, you know, when you're working 9 to 5 versus when you're working night shifts, if you do that same thing before you go to bed, it will help to psychologically make your brain think, oh, bedtime is coming. So that's really helpful. But also carving out time, and this is another key thing for shift workers, have a conversation with your family. Because a lot of times I find that shift workers, they feel like they need to sleep from 9 a.m. till 3 p.m. say, but the Amazon delivery is coming.

Or the old little Johnny needs a parent to go to the parent teacher meeting. And before you know it, you're doing everything during the day as well. And nine to five workers aren't expected to answer the door at two in the morning. So if you are a shift worker, talk to your family and help to protect a block of sleep that is protected. And put a note on your, a sticky note on your door to say, mom is sleeping until 3pm. So that the family know not to disturb you and that you're not there to answer the door

to do those extra jobs that might be given. Because I find that that's really, really common. I don't know about you when you were doing shift work. Yeah, yeah, no. My boyfriend was brilliant, to be fair, he'd try and protect me. And it was really, really good. But I have vivid memories.

My mum's a nurse. And I have memories of when she'd do a night shift. And she'd sleep on the top floor in the guest bedroom well away from everyone. And my dad would be like, mum's come back from a night shift. everyone needs to shut the hell up. Like, everyone needs to be quiet, you know?

And yeah, and especially for women as well, it's like so many of these responsibilities end up falling on women and remembering, yeah, you're not expected to pick the kids up from school if at 2 a.m. in the morning. Like, okay, we've got another community question that is, why am I so tired even if I take energy supplements or I've slept for 10 hours? Can you sleep too much?

Negative health consequences associated with sleeping a lot and a little. So that sort of Goldilocks zone sleep I talked about, sort of six and a half, seven hours, seven to nine hours for working age adults is the sweet spot. And people who sleep a lot more than that or a lot less than that tend to be unhealthy. Now, people who sleep a lot more than that, it's probably not that sleeping more than that makes you sick. It's much more likely that you're sleeping for a lot more than that because either the sleep quality you're getting is not good enough or there's something wrong. like you have an illness. The most common reason for people sleeping a lot and still feeling tired is sleep apnea. So sleep apnea is, I'm sure you know, but is a breathing disorder where people repeatedly

stop breathing during the night due to a blocked airway, if it's obstructive sleep apnea, which is where your tongue might fall back into the back of your throat or your throat itself, especially if you're a little bit overweight, might collapse on itself and block the airway. people who have sleep apnea might have symptoms of loud snoring and then they'll have pauses in their breathing at night where the snoring stops and the partner might go oh thank goodness you know they've stopped they've stopped snoring hooray but they're not breathing and then after about a minute the oxygen content in your blood starts to decrease so much because you're not breathing but your body goes oh we're not breathing and it wakes you up

with a big gasp of breath and you go back to sleep again now if you have sleep apnea these awakenings can happen hundreds of times in the night massively disrupting your sleep quality, but you won't remember any of the awakenings. So you'll go to bed at 10, wake up at 7, 8 o'clock in the morning and think, wow, I slept for 10 hours, but I feel exhausted still. And so for me, if somebody says, I sleep for 10 hours, but I'm still tired, immediately I ask them, you know, do you snore? Do you have symptoms of sleep apnea? It could also be an issue with thyroid, like thyroid deficiency can cause chronic fatigue or chronic you feeling really tired.

An iron deficiency can make you feel really tired during the day. So if you are sleeping for more than sufficient amount of time and still feeling tired, we need to look at what's going on there because there's probably something wrong. Now that's not the same as sleep inertia, which is that feeling of groginess upon waking. Now, we have sleep, different kinds of sleep. We have light sleep, deep sleep and REM sleep. and we sleep in things or sleep cycles. So approximately every hour and half or so through the night,

we'll go through light sleep, deep sleep, back through light sleep and into REM sleep. And then the next sleep cycle will start. And it's kind of like waves or imagine a roller coaster. Now if you wake up from the middle of a sleep cycle, you'll be in deeper sleep. And if you wake up from deeper sleep, you will have a thing called sleep inertia, which means your body doesn't want you to wake up in the middle of,

of a sleep cycle. It wants you to finish the whole thing. So if you wake up in the middle, because your alarm goes off or your kids woken you up, you might wake up and feel really groggy and disorientated. And these sleep cycles, they continue forever. So you might have slept for seven hours, say, and you wake up to your alarm and you feel great. But then you think, oh, actually, I don't need to wake up right now. I'll go back to sleep. And you go back to sleep for half an hour. And then you'll go back into the next sleep cycle. And then the second time you wake up, half an hour later, you might be in the middle of a sleep cycle. And then when you wake up, you'll feel worse. You'll feel more tired. And loads of people say, oh, I slept too much.

I ruined it. I should have got up half an hour ago because I felt good then and now I feel groggy. It's not that you've ruined anything. It's just that you've woken up with sleep inertia. And sleep inertia should dissipate. It should go away within maybe 10, 15, 20 minutes approximately. So if you wake up and you feel really tired, but then within 20 minutes, you've had a couple of a tea and a piece of toast and you feel fine. Don't worry about that. That's normal. But if that tiredness continues through the day, then we have to be looking at, okay, why are you still feeling tired? Especially if you've had at least nine hours sleep. If you're sleeping for more than that and still feeling tired, you need to speak to a professional to find out what's going on there

because something's not right. When you were talking about sleep inertia, that was really interesting because I was very lucky. One of my best Christmas presents I've ever got was the sunrise alarm and it's been with me from the whole way through medical school. I've got it the same one now. I always found that I'd set my sunrise alarm to say 40 minutes, so it gradually lit up the room for 40 minutes. And what I began to find is some mornings I'd wake up, you know, 10 minutes before my alarm,

some mornings I might wake up 30 minutes before my alarm. And I felt like that was quite a good. I avoided the sleep inertia because it was almost like I was woken up at the lightest point. that makes sense with the science. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But there's no, because some people say

that you can get sleep trackers and things that sense where you are in your sleep cycle and they will deliberately try to wake you up when you're in between sleep cycles so that you don't have sleep inertia. But I'm really not a fan of that. And I'll explain why. So if your alarm is set for 7am

because you have to be awake at 7 for work, but you've got this sleep tracker thing and it realizes that at 6.30, you'll be in lightest part of sleep, but by seven, you'll have gone into the next sleep cycle. So if you wake up at seven, you'll have some sleep inertia. What it will do is we'll wake up a half-past six. Now, you've just lost half an hour's sleep.

So I'm really not a fan of that because, yes, you'll wake up, and at the moment you wake up, you'll feel more alert. But the point is, you missed out on half an hour's sleep. And whether you woke up and felt groggy or woke up and felt alert at that moment, within 10, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, you'll feel fine anyway. So it's really important to me

that people just get up and unless you need to be on it, unless you're waking up and you need to be on, which I have done sometimes, you have to be on live TV, you know, within 20 minutes, in which case I want to avoid sleep inertia for that point. But if you're a normal person who doesn't have something you have to do

within half an hour of waking up, then allow yourself to get more sleep because again, getting seven to nine hours sleep helps us to be healthier. And if we're missing out on that, because we're focusing so much on avoiding sleep inertia, actually we might be doing ourselves some damage. I would love to get your opinions on something that's a little bit controversial. Melatonin. Where do you stand on melatonin? So in the UK, you can't buy melatonin over the counter. It's, you know, you have to get it prescribed. In other countries, that's not the same case. So I have lots of clients who have traveled

and have melatonin that they bought from elsewhere. Now, there is the idea that because melatonin is our sort of sleep timing hormone, it tells our body that it's time for sleep. It can be, melatonin can be really helpful if you have a sleep timing issue. Now, that is jet lag or maybe not necessarily shift work because you can get a groggy hangover effect with melatonin, but so let's just talk about jet lag. If you're traveling across time zones, melatonin can be really helpful at helping your body shift to this new time zone. But there is, it's not really hugely effective for insomnia.

If your sleeping problem is caused by getting into bed and feeling anxious, frustrated, you're really not sleeping well and you're really annoyed about it. Melatonin is unlikely to help with that. But of course, people turn to it because people are desperate. There are some caveats to that. If you are a bit older, so on the NHS, if you're over 55, you can get prescribed melatonin because as we get older, our melatonin production may start to decrease a little bit. And actually, maybe your sleeping issue might be because you're not producing quite enough melatonin. And also, some people with ADHD and autism, there can be neurological differences.

So sometimes, especially some children with ADHD or autism, they can find sleep really, really difficult. and that can be because they're not producing or not secreting melatonin at the right kind of time. And for them, melatonin that can be prescribed on the NHS by a doctor can be really helpful. But for people who are younger than 55 and don't have a sleep timing issue, they just have a normal insomnia, melatonin is unlikely to be the solution for that. Do we have research on how it impacts on natural protection of melatonin? take melatonin? So some studies have found that when we take melatonin supplements, and for example, in America, and I'm American, not that you can tell from my thick American accent, but in America,

for example, more is more. You know, you go to a pharmacy and you can buy a thousand paracetamol. They'll have, they have lots of melatonin, and bigger is better in America. So basically, people are persuaded that you should buy the biggest supplement you can. So when you buy melatonin, you can get it in 5 milligrams or 10 milligrams or 15 milligrams. But research, some research has found that actually, if we take melatonin at far greater quantities than our body naturally produces, it's maybe not quite as effective. So 2.5 milligrams is more in line with what we naturally secrete, which is a very small amount. And you'll struggle if you went to America and bought melatonin to find 2.5 milligrams. So I think they tend to start from sort of five because again it's that more is more.

And if you have a huge amount, it's just overloading your system a lot. And you might find that you have quite a big hangover effect from that melatonin and feel really groggy later in the day. And if you're a parent of young children, you may not want to have something that makes you feel so sedated or so unconscious or so sleepy. You maybe want to be able to be woken up in the middle of the night to attend to, to that baby. So metatone isn't the enemy. It's a hormone that we'd actually produce. And for some people, it can be very helpful. But the amount that we take and the timing of it and who takes are all things that we need to take into account. That really nicely actually brings on to another community question that we had for new parents. So you have mentioned a couple of times,

you know, being a new parent is a sleep deprivation state in itself. Tips on managing sleep hygiene when you are a parent with toddlers and newborns. Okay. So often people will develop a real problem with their sleep when they have a new baby because not only is their sleep being disrupted and you know, a new baby, you have these sleep cycles and you might be woken up in the middle of a sleep cycle and it's really hard. So not only are you is your sleep being disrupted by a newborn who's waking up through the night to need to be fed, but then suddenly you might discover a sense of urgency or pressure on yourself thinking, I have to go back to sleep quickly because the baby's going to be awake again in a couple of hours. So I need to fall asleep right now.

And that anxiety about needing to fall asleep, that's where all of insomnia stems from. Because when we are stressed or anxious, it's harder to sleep. Because when we were cavemen, if we thought some kind of problem like wild animals outside or a physical problem, a caveman, trying to attack you or you felt threatened, you can't go to sleep because you need to be awake to defend yourself. So when we feel any kind of anxiety stress doesn't have to be a physical threat because most of us nowadays aren't faced with thankfully physical threats every day. But we have financial stresses. We have health stresses. We have the stress of, oh my goodness, I have to fall asleep soon because the baby will wake up. Your body is stressed. And if it's stressed, it's much

harder to fall asleep. So the more pressure you put on yourself to fall asleep quickly, and that's similar to shift worker sometimes I think I must fall asleep now because my shift's going to start, the harder it is to fall asleep. I'm a sleep expert. This is my job. I'm literally a you know, this is my entire job. If you took a gun to my head and said, right, Lindsay, you've got to fall asleep right now or I will shoot you. There is literally nothing I could do to fall asleep right now. And I am a world leading sleep expert because the stress, some pressure of needing to fall asleep on command, it's impossible. So new parents need to just let that go a little bit, just calm down. You can't force yourself to fall asleep on command.

And if you do take a while to fall back to sleep again and then your baby wakes you up and you've had almost no sleep, it's really not great. It feels awful, but it's not forever. You know, it's a short period of time relatively. Just try to reduce the amount of of things that you're trying to achieve during your day. You know, someone gave me it slightly, slightly off topic, someone gave me the best tip when I was a new parent. They said, have an ironing board or a hoover out. Whenever someone comes to visit you,

say, oh, I was just about to do the hoovering. And then they'll be like, oh, I could do that for you. So you can get those little bits of help just from, you know, just there. But yeah, if you're a new parent, take the pressure off needing to fall asleep quickly. and accept that you're going to be sleep deprived for a while and that that isn't the end of the world and all the advice about everyone has to sleep 7 to 9 hours

and if you don't then you're going to have all these health problems it's about consistent short sleep it's about almost intentionally depriving yourself we are all able to manage on less sleep in the short term just like we aren't able to cook amazing nutritious meals when we're a new parent or when we're really stressed but that's okay in the short term your baby will start sleeping through and sleeping better and you'll be okay. Nap when you're able to nap, maybe go to bed earlier than you would do so that you're sleeping more. You've got more opportunity to sleep when you have a new baby.

And if you're lucky enough to be with a partner, do shifts. One of you do the first three, four hours and the other one do the next three, four hours. So you at least get one block of sleep. And even if your sleep is very broken as a parent, it's still sleep. it still counts. It's not quite the same, but it's still okay. So just cut yourself some slack. Maybe your roots won't be done. Maybe your house isn't going to be immaculate. Maybe you're going to look a bit tired. But it's okay. You've got this beautiful baby. You'll forget all this in six, nine months and it'll be better.