The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Why Can’t I Sleep Well?: 150 Common Sleep Questions Asked and Answered by Andrew Colsky LPC

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

Why Can't I Sleep Well?: 150 Common Sleep Questions Asked and Answered by Andrew Colsky LPC Nationalsleepcenter.com Amazon.com “Why Can’t I sleep Well? 150 Common Sleep Questions Asked and Answered" is a comprehensive book that addresses common sleep issues, providing readers with clear, accessible answers to 150 frequently asked questions. The book covers a wide range of topics, including sleep disorders like insomnia, sleep apnea, and restless leg syndrome, as well as everyday concerns such as difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or feeling tired despite a full night's rest. It delves into the science of sleep, explaining the role of circadian rhythms, the stages of sleep, and the impact of diet, exercise, and lifestyle on sleep quality. Through a straightforward question-and-answer format, the book offers practical advice on how to establish a healthy sleep routine, optimize your sleep environment, and address the psychological and physical factors that might be affecting sleep. The author, an expert in Behavioral Sleep Medicine, draws on the latest research to provide evidence-based solutions, making this book a valuable resource for anyone struggling with sleep-related problems. Whether you are looking for ways to improve your sleep hygiene, manage stress and anxiety, or understand the benefits of napping, this book is a one-stop guide for better sleep and overall well-being.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, this is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go.

These are the only things and makes it official. Welcome to the show. We certainly appreciate having you guys. As always, the Chris Fox Show is a family that loves you, but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as your family does, because, you know, they still haven't forgiven you for that time you went streaking during Thanksgiving dinner. I just made that up.

That was pretty good, huh? You know, that's on my mind, because we just had Thanksgiving dinner here in 2024. If you're watching this video on YouTube 10 years from now, don't write me. And Christmas is coming up. What better time? Our sponsor, streaking.com. No, I'm just kidding. Don't Google that.

If you want to really impress the family this Christmas. Anyway, we have an amazing young man on the show today. We're going to be talking about how to sleep better. How many of you people like this sleep thing? Are you into the sleep thing? Well, he's going to help you sleep better. And I told him he has to guarantee that we're all going to fall asleep listening to the show. No, that's

that's already happening every day anyway so because it's kind of boring i don't tell any jokes uh he's the author of his books that's all kidding people anyway i need some more sleep too why can't i sleep well 150 common sleep questions asked and answered by andrew kuls. He'll be joining us on the show, and his book came out October 4th, 2024. If you're a person like me who struggles to sleep, you know, stop starting the cocaine. That's probably a good idea. No, I'm just kidding. Don't do that, folks.

It's bad. Anyway, jokes aside, Andrew is a distinguished attorney and licensed mental health clinician i he's an attorney too what do you do he's he sues sleep to get sleep is that how it works give me a you send a cnd to the sleep department either let me sleep or i'm gonna sue you uh he's a licensed mental health clinician and is a pioneering force in the field of sleep science, behavioral therapy, and mental health advocacy. He's known widely as the sleep science guy.

And Andrew brings a unique blend of scientific rigor, therapeutic insight, and compassionate advocacy to his work, making him one of the leading voices in sleep, health, and wellness. I want to be a leading sleeper. As the host of Sleep Science Today radio show, there's a radio show for it too, and founder of National Sleep Center, Andrew's mission is clear, to democratize access to high quality sleep science and promote sleep as an essential pillar of well-being. I feel like we should have a mattress company as a sponsor for the show. Welcome to the show, Andrew.

How are you? I'm doing well, Chris. How are you today? I am excellent. Running on three and a half hours of sleep. So I'm your perfect victim or patient right now. There you go. Give us your dot coms.

Where can people find you on the interwebs? So two main places they can go. If they want to find out more about the radio show and everything related to that, it would be sleepsciencetoday.com. And if they want to learn more about the clinical practice, that would be nationalsleepcenter.com. So I would go to, do I come to your clinical practice and take a nap and all that stuff?

Yada, yada, yada. We actually, we are a behavioral sleep medicine practice. So actually all of our work is telehealth because it allows us to get access to more people than just within a you know five or ten mile radius of a particular location and also where do people have sleep problems they have them at home so we can talk to them while they're at their home about their sleep issues there you go and and uh so give us a 30 000. What's in your new book? Why can't I sleep well? Yeah, yeah. So here's the deal.

I'm sure that you and your audience and all have started to hear more in the media about sleep in general. And it's because the topic is so important. And based on new research that's continuing to go on, we're seeing how sleep impacts our mental health, our physical health, even potentially dementia and things like that. So people are really getting interested in sleep, but there's not a lot of good quality scientific based information out there. So my book is basically taking 150 of the most common questions, not only giving you the answers, but giving you all the scientific research behind it that supports the answers. Wow. There you go. Sleep is so important. It's the time. I mean, you correct me if I'm wrong, but why is sleep important? I'm just going to default to the

professional. Yeah. Well, sleep is important because that's the time when basically your body rejuvenates. It's the time when all the things in your memory kind of solidify. And one of the things that's really important that we're still learning, so we don't have all the exact answers, but one of the things is when people get into what we call stage three sleep, which is the really deep sleep, that's when our brain tends to kind of wash itself. And so when we look at some of the chemicals that are related to dementia, then that's where the brain tends to wash those chemicals out. Now,

you don't know enough about it for me to say that'll stop dementia, but we're looking at it. Can we get it to stop stupid? No, that one takes a little bit more. You got to pay extra for that one, Chris. But my understanding, and I'm a layman in the business, I'm not even in the business actually. that one takes a little bit more you got to pay extra for that one Chris but my

understanding and I'm a layman in the business I'm not even in the business actually but well I'm in the business of trying to sleep let's put but my understanding is that's when the body kind of does its repair to itself and it regenerates maybe cells and you know I don't know po you know, I don't know, poops or something. I don't know. I'm asleep, so I don't notice. Well, it does. You know, the interesting thing there is I was thinking back to myself when I was in law school, for example, I would try to stay up, you know, and burn the midnight oil to do all this reading and remember everything. And I was so tired the next day. And what I didn't realize

is that I would have been better off going to sleep because that's when my brain puts all that stuff into my memory and holds it there. But instead I thought I was going to be the hero and just stay up all night. Yeah. That way you remember stuff. But then by morning you're like, what's my name? Right. Kind of where I'm at right now. You know, it's interesting. It's interesting about all this stuff. And so how long you've been doing this now? So I've been working in the mental health field part of this since about 2015. And more and more as I got into the work that I was doing, I recognized the importance of sleep, which is, unfortunately,

they don't teach you anything at all about sleep. When you go for a mental health degree, when you go for even, you know, psychiatry, medical school, it's very rare to get most, any information about sleep. So it's really important, but nobody knows about it. Yeah. If I don't get sleep, there's murdering that will happen eventually and the judge says i can't do that anymore i get one of my ankle bracelets one of my six ankle bracelets off next week it'll be nice because i'll jingle a little i love that joke um so why did you start sleep science today yeah that's a great question. Basically, for the same reason that I wrote the book, because, you know, sleep science itself is basically relatively new. It only really started in, let's say, the 1970s, where it even became a thing. And so, there's a lot of new information

coming out, but a lot of people don't have access to the actual science, to what's really going on. Why do I have these problems? And then they go and they get onto social media and they look for how am I going to sleep better? And they get all this horrible misinformation, and then they still can't sleep well. So I said, you know what? Let's put out legitimate info for people to do better and i'll bring this up because i want to warn other people not to be as dumb as i was for 20 years but when i was an entrepreneur i had or i'm still an entrepreneur and i still have horrible ac adhd and ocd uh i think i've beaten the ocd i don't give a shit about anything anymore

but uh adhd squirrel um and so one of the ways i would kind of knock myself out at night as an I don't give a shit about anything anymore. But ADHD, squirrel. And so one of the ways I would kind of knock myself out at night as an entrepreneur to kind of get myself to bed. And I actually really, I'm kind of embarrassed to say this. I don't know why. But I actually thought it made me sleep better. But I would actually drink vodka before going to bed at nightcap. And I'm like, well, it'll make me sleep better. I'll knock my ass out and I'll sleep better. That was like the dumbest thing in the world for trying to sleep better right well yeah i mean a lot of people rely upon alcohol most of the time you hear them talk about

a glass of wine to go to bed or nowadays the cbd gummies or thc or any of these other types of things and you know they seem to be effective when you first use them. The problem is the more you use them, the less effective they become. And when you look at the science, they're really not effective at all at getting you restful sleep. There you go. It's, you know, I don't know. And so even like pot or edibles like edibles really relax

me but for some reason we were talking before the show they've kind of reached a point where they don't work on me more i just kind of lay there and kind of have like weird pseudo not sleeping dreams it's i kind of go to this weird place. Yeah, and that's, I mean, you're hitting exactly the point, is that the more you use these things, the more you need, the less effective they become. And truly, when you're looking at the science behind it, they're not really effective in the beginning either. And so you then start setting up the situation

where your body becomes reliant upon something that then doesn't work for you, and then you feel more frustrated. And my favorite thing is when people tell me well i was laying in bed trying to sleep and to this day i still don't know what that means what does trying to sleep mean does it mean that you're laying there thinking about the fact that you're not sleeping so you're getting more anxious so that you're not sleeping because you're anxious that you're not sleeping the yeah i mean sometimes it comes down not sleeping because you're anxious that you're not sleeping the yeah i mean sometimes it comes down to that because you're like sitting there going i gotta wake up four hours like idiot boy you gotta go to sleep man you know otherwise you're

gonna be cranky and poo your pants and cry all the time um the and when you were talking before we were talking during the in the green room before the show and uh you mentioned that age onset is also a thing that happens makes it harder as we grow older you would think as we grow older you know we're tired or we're just like i can't move my i can't feel my legs anymore i'm 50 uh i want to go to sleep so you just go to sleep like my dad could nap like all the fucking time so why is that so you know the the research is pretty clear on that and it shows that through our lifetime our amount of sleep needed is different so teenagers are typically going to sleep later and then need more sleep. Whereas once we hit about 40 years old, what you start to see is sleep problems creeping in, meaning that people wake up more in the middle of the night. Sometimes they wake up too early.

If you talk about women in menopause, there's specific issues that come up there. Sweats and stuff like that. Exactly exactly and then that wakes them up yeah so yeah so so really the thing that's kind of scary is that again looking at the science when we're 40 years old we don't really think that much about sleep but if we're not getting good sleep and good diet and exercise that's when the science is starting to show where these dementia issues and other things slowly start to work in the background. But you don't know it yet until 10, 20 years later. Wow. I mean, there's a lot that goes into healing the body, your gut health. I guess how important is your diet and exercise to your sleep as well?

Yeah. And that's a great question because think about it. So people start to have trouble with their sleep and they come in. Most of the time they'll go to their primary care doctor or something and say, I need a sleeping pill. Well, I get a whole diet drive on sleeping pills that they're not a good thing long term. Let's just put it that way. But the main thing is, how do you expect to improve your sleep that's progressively gotten worse over time and not do anything to improve your exercise, to improve your diet, to improve your mental health? You know, it's the whole picture because you're a whole person. You can't just separate out your sleep and and uh yeah it's what do you what do you think about some of these

technology things are they kind of foo-foo science too as well i mentioned that i have an eight sleep bed i've had one for several years i do kind of like it it's got an ai system that adjusts the heat and temperature as to um it like figures out when i go into our REM sleep and gives me reports i know there's a bunch of other stuff that's out there that people use there's there's a ton of new technologies coming out and like like everything there's pros and cons so you know obviously if you have a comfortable bed, if it's a cool environment, dark room, those types of things are all positive. So if you have technology that makes that happen, that's great. But I'll tell you one of the ones that's not so great, and it's a really popular one. And that's people start to wear the sleep trackers, whether it be an Apple watch or a Fitbit or a Garmin or whatever.

And it gives you this sleep score. And what happens is people see like, oh my God, my sleep score is 89. I need to do better. And so it creates this thing that we call orthosomnia, which is kind of like insomnia. And orthosomnia is this anxiety that you get because you're not getting a better sleep score. So you get anxious trying to not be anxious, which makes you more anxious and you get a worse sleep score. Boy, there's nothing more human nature than that, isn't there? Yep. Yep. Damn it.

I need to sleep better. I have anxiety. And then you can't sleep because you're all awake all night. One thing that one thing I guess you can answer for since you wrote a book of 150 answers and questions um what about blue light and you know there's some guy i know that uh he's had a bad habit since 2020 of saying i'm just gonna watch a couple tiktok videos and fall asleep and then four hours later the sun's up and it might look like me yeah actually that's one of the uh one of the radio uh shows that i did was all about light and sleep and the blue light actually got the opportunity to interview the the gentleman who discovered the wavelength of blue

light that actually causes us the most problems and you, you know, as we move more into like everything these days is LED lights, like even your light bulbs, right at home or LED lights these days, because they're less expensive, and they last longer all this stuff. But when you look at them, if you go into the store to buy an LED light bulb, you can buy anywhere from like, the warmer, more yellowish, orangey color, all the way up to this really bright blue, you know, shocking light. And, you know, if you're trying to stay awake,

well, blue light is part of what we see from the sun and things like that. But if you're trying to go to bed, those things throw off your circadian rhythm. So it's really important. Like I tell everybody on your mobile phone and things like that there's settings where you can change to like a night mode which reduces the blue light aspect um but clearly if you're going to go to bed and sleep well we try and get you off the screens and anything like that an hour or so before you're actually going to sleep an hour before okay it's it's helpful yeah yeah i i I I know that there's settings for this on my on my Samsung phone and I think

they're called I thought I saw it the other day there was a there's think but I do know that man if I if I'm if I go to sleep and you know I wake up to hit the restroom I'm 56 that's about 20 times a night I could have sworn there was something in maybe there's some different area on the iPhone they call it night mode I believe on this on the Android it depends on the phone there's an eye comfort shield that's on here i don't know if that does what uh it does but i think that's designed a little bit but uh um but uh what was it going on about see i've only had three and a half you were you were talking about waking in

the middle of the night and oh yeah if i look at my phone like if i wake in the middle of night and oh yeah I look at my phone like if I wake in the night I go look at my phone wolf that boom that brain is like we're on baby yeah don't even bother trying about sleep what about that I just got some new humidifiers for the house and one in my bedroom has got one of those red lights the lights it's supposed to supposed to melatonin, I think. Is that what it is? Well, look, so there's a lot of things. Melatonin is tied into your circadian rhythm. Your circadian rhythm is tied into the light that's around you.

So there's a lot of pieces that go on. But generally, rule of thumb, the darker your room, the better. So if you have any kind of thing, and this is the challenge, because everything you have has one of those little tiny LED lights to tell you the power is going to it, until you put it in a dark room at night and it lights up the whole room. So I tell people either remove all those things from your room or get some black electrical tape or something and put it over those things.

You want a dark, dark room. Room darkeningening shades you don't want to be able to see anything if you can avoid you want soul-sucking darkness of space basically you do you do you want a black hole paint or something i know there's a paint that they have that is like so black it absorbs so much light that like you can't even see my room I've seen a paint cars and like that I've seen a paint cars and like rooms youtubers have gone and paint rooms with it you go in and you start losing perspective because it's there's no light it's it's light basically Wow first seven marriages I don't know what that's about uh what are some other things

we haven't discussed you want to tease out on the book and and that well you know the the point is that as we start to learn more about sleep there's a lot of common sleep disorders that people have so you talk about insomnia you talk about nightmares. You talk about sleep apnea. And these things are really important to treat, and there are treatments for them, but people sometimes don't think to treat them like apnea, for example. Well, they're asleep when it's happening, so they don't recognize that it's happening. But for some reason, they wake up and they're always tired during the day and they don't know why and if you don't treat sleep apnea that gives real damage to your cardiovascular system um also it gives real damage to your to your marriage if you're sleeping with someone

and they're tired of hearing you snore and gasp for air all night and then they want to sleep in another room so there's a lot of a lot of sleep issues yeah the i've i've had that movie i think i had a girlfriend punching once in the sleep quit snoring uh because i snore like a bear evidently it's so sleep dabney is the thing i always tease people that do the surgery and have the darth vader mask i always call it and it's interesting to me a lot of them don't seem to sleep well either i've even had a friend who had the surgical 30 000 thing put in his chest that's supposed to be an old yeah and he doesn't sleep for doesn't work for him

for some reason uh yeah maybe you know why well so number one there's different types of sleep apnea there's obstructive sleep apnea which basically means that your airway kind of collapses when you're sleeping so you can't get the air in choking out my uh girlfriend now don't do that folks right that's when i'm choking someone to death because i'm sick of it that that's kind of what your body is doing to you it's choking choking you. So that's your instructive. Then there's central sleep apnea. My body's trying to kill me. Right. But central sleep apnea is more of a nervous, tied to the nerves and all, but basically still, it means that you are having symptoms throughout the night where you stop breathing. And then your body finally recognizes

hey i need air i need air i mean it goes and you get this big gasp of air because your body's about to shut down if it doesn't get it and then of course that can wake you up maybe not fully wake you up but you never get restful sleep because you never get into that stage three sleep which is where you get your rest and so the the good news is these days, you know, you talk about the CPAP machine, which is the machine next to your bed. It's got a hose tied to your face and a mask and all that. A lot of people don't like that, and a lot of them don't use it. But there are other devices out there now. There's dental devices, which is basically something you put in your mouth, and it kind of pulls your lower jaw forward, which helps to open the airway.

That works for some people. Do those really work? For some people, it does, mostly for the less severe cases. We had a guy on the show that does that, and he indicated that, you know, I have TMJ, and I've had it all my life. And he indicated that that's one of the problems with having TMJ or developing TAG is you're grinding at night or you're doing something at night with your jaw and breathing and, and so that I could help. And I just kind of went, well, that's an interesting story you got there. But that's, that's only one of the other, of the other treatments.

There's in some cases there's surgical treatments. In some cases, people opt for the Inspire, which is kind of like a little pacemaker looking device. You've got new devices out that instead of pushing air into you, which is what a CPAP does, it actually, you it's in your mouth instead of over your nose and mouth and it pulls air out of you thus keeping the system open. So there's a lot of different technology coming out. We were talking about technology before. So there's how it's improving. My, my, uh, my first six marriages were sucking air out of me and money too. I bet to pay extra for that. Yeah. Uh uh we change the number every time that's what makes it fun um what was the question i had for you so this this darth vader fuckery actually

works for some people i guess huh if if used as prescribed it actually does work i actually have one myself and it took a little bit of getting used to, but now if I don't use it, I can't really sleep well. Did you have your tonsils or whatever they remove? There's like some surgery, you know, they remove stuff. I think it's a little bit or something. Well, there's different, there's different surgeries. There's removing tonsils. Sometimes the whole idea is to remove any obstructions in your throat and in your airway. Some people have like fatty tissue inside that is obstructing, so they'll remove that.

So there's a lot of different surgeries depending on the individual's situation. Mine's just a steak or something. And I imagine eating before bed is pretty bad. I mean, I've had times where I've gone to bed and there's just some gut rot in my gut that's just not having a good time. Yeah, yeah. Now, we tell people to have your last full meal at least an hour before bed, if not more. And the other thing is we remind people don't drink a lot of liquid just before you get into bed because now you're going to start to get up all night to go use the bathroom. Yeah. Have you, have you, have you in your clinical studies

and helping people, is there any way to try and reduce those pee breaks other than what you just mentioned? Well, so, so yeah, there's a couple of things. Number one, obviously not drinking a whole lot before you get into bed, but number two, think about what you're drinking. If you're drinking, and we obviously don't want you drinking caffeine prior to bed, but if you're drinking coffee, tea, things that are diuretics, they're going to be pulling water out of your body throughout the night. So you're better off with just plain water. So, yeah, there's different things you can do. But as you get older, expect you're going to get up a couple times a night.

And the older you get, probably the more times. And if you're a woman after menopause, probably more times. Wow. That would explain what my mom goes through because my mom's 82. And I think we have the same complaint because we both get up a lot. And I try to drink water a lot. Let me ask you about this because this has been a thing that sometimes I'm worried about shit that I'm having a heart attack in the middle of the night. I think it's the restless leg syndrome where it's like somebody almost sends a lightning bolt through my leg.

Is that restless leg syndrome? Is that what that is or am I having a serious stroke? so there's a lot of things that can be going on there one thing is called um hypnic jerks another thing yeah we've got restless leg syndrome we've got um nocturnal panic attacks we've got um there's a lot of different things that have some similarities but they're all different in certain ways, too. I have this thing where, I mean, it feels like literally electric shock will go up my leg or something. And I almost sleep out of freaking bed. And I'm wondering if I'm going into some sort of like 20 to call 911.

It's not generally no that's that's probably just you know a hypnic jerk or something like that where your your muscles you know and your nerves are just sort of saying to you hey you're getting old and we're going to remind you about it oh thanks like i needed more memos like i needed more memos can we just stick with the birthday thanks let me mr legs um so let's talk about some of the things that you guys do i guess at your clinic is that correct yeah yeah so you know i think this is something that's important for your audience to understand there are sleep doctors, meaning medical doctors that have sleep clinics,

and then there's behavioral sleep medicine, which is more from the mental health side. So what's the difference? The difference is medical doctors will run like a sleep clinic where they'll have a sleep study. You go in overnight and they hook all these wires and machines to you and they study you and, you know, determine what's going on. Medical doctors will prescribe the sleeping pills and the medications that are only supposed to be used short term in almost all cases. But people tend to use for a very long time to their detriment, in my personal

opinion. When you get to the mental health side, there's a lot of treatments. It's called like insomnia is a big issue that people will come with. And there's the gold standard treatment, according to all the science and all the research is called CBT-I, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia. And it's a very specific process you go through to take a person who's having trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking too early, and they're up throughout the night, and their sleep is all fragmented. And it brings it back together where they get a solid night of restful sleep over a period of a couple weeks. We kind of get them retrained and they, it's amazing to see it when it works. Now it works about 70, 75% of the time, not 100% of the time.

So that's one thing. You get people with nightmares that wake them up and it's just this recurring thing that's just scaring them and waking them up. So we've got a treatment for nightmares. You know, there's a lot of different sleep treatments that are available that don't require medications and are more effective than the medications, according to the science. There you go. Sounds like my first five marriages in the last nine months. I don't know why. This is the callback joke of the show, please.

Guys, just run with it. Yeah, that's really interesting. What do you feel about melatonin there's this you know i try and take that before bed and i mean that sounds like it sounds like what you've referred to a lot of these so-called you know drugs or enhancements or stuff they're might be good for short term but for long term your body kind of probably adjusts to them it says yeah whatever yeah so i mean melaton is a great, great question because a lot of people, you know, rely on it. So let me tell you about melatonin. So we've got prescription sleep medications that you're going to get from the MD. And then we've got these over the counter things

in the U S melatonin is available over the counter. Now, in reality, your body, you know, if you were going to take melatonin, you really only need about Now, in reality, your body, you know, if you're going to take melatonin, you really only need about 0.5 milligrams. But when you go into the drugstore, you find 5 milligram and 10 milligram capsules or, you know, medicines for melatonin. The challenge with melatonin is if you start taking melatonin, the concern is that your body that naturally makes melatonin may stop naturally making it because it's already there. It doesn't need to make it because you're taking these supplements. But then you get hooked on these supplements.

And the reality is melatonin is part of that sort of circadian rhythm where when it gets dark outside, your body produces melatonin, which tells your body it's time to kind of go to sleep and rest. And then as the light comes up, the melatonin reduces and you become more awake. So we use melatonin sparingly. But in those cases where, for example, you've got a post 50 year old woman who's waking a lot in the middle of the night. Right. So we may use melatonin as a supplement to help reduce some of that or certain other circadian rhythm disorders. Maybe we'll use that, but I actually have one right here. I've got circadian rhythm disorders are based on light. This is a light box. It looks like a little iPad, but it gives you a certain type of light that helps to adjust your circadian

rhythms. So, you you know everything is sort of individualized you have to know what the patient is actually dealing with and you have to come up with treatment that's right for their situation hmm there you go so uh it sounds like you know you they have to basically come to you and you kind of help assess what's going wrong in their life what their issues are all that sort of good stuff. And it just depends case by case, right? Is that the analogy? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, when someone comes to me, the very first thing that I'm going to do is this very lengthy assessment because I want to find out what sleep problems are going on, if any. I want to know about co-occurring disorders. I want to know what they've been doing about it. Maybe they're on meds. Maybe they're not. Maybe they're taking medications for something else that causes sleep problems.

There's so many variables. This is why you need a professional to be able to review this. You can't just go online and look it up because it's a lot more complicated than a simple black-white type of answer. Yeah, it sounds like. And so can you do people have to come to the clinic or can this be done over the internet, Zoom calls, things of that nature? It's all telehealth because it's just questions, you know, analysis of the situation that's going on. There's not anything that I could do if they were sitting in front of me that I can't do if they're sitting in front of me on the computer. Wow.

There you go. So you can get help, man. We should, we should, I mean, this sounds like a great business to be in because everybody I know suffers from sleep issues right now. You know, they either have the sleep apnea dealio thingy deal or they're like um you know i mean there's a lot of stress in today's world a lot of you know inflation and problems and politics and you know yeah meth and you know all these things that keep people awake and uh people are just trying to you know survive well you know it there's a there's a

shortage out there of sleep professionals and the reason there's a shortage is because number one the whole sleep industry is new number two they don't teach people about sleep issues when they're in training for mental health or physical health occupations. And so it takes someone to say, hey, I want to go learn this stuff myself so that I can treat these patients. And it takes a lot of work. You don't just read an article and then start treating sleep. You've got to learn what's going on. And it takes time and it takes effort.

There you go. It's pretty interesting. And so how do they onboard with you how do they reach out how do they find out more so most people will just go to our website which is um the uh nationalsleepcenter.com and there's a contact form there and they fill it out and then we give them a call we talk to them about the their situation um you know, and again, that's why I put out. So, you know, the radio show Sleep Science Today, it's on UK Health Radio Network. Now, that's out of the United Kingdom, but they broadcast to 54 English-speaking countries,

and about a third of the listeners come from the U.S. But once the show goes out, a week later, it goes up on my youtube channel it goes up on all the different podcast networks so it's it's readily available and that's another way that people find out about us because they start to learn about issues that may be impacting them or a family member or something else and then they can you know again get back to our website and reach out to us that way oh and on the website it says six weeks to a restful sleep. How does that work? So generally, when you're talking about insomnia, like I was talking about before in the CBT-I treatment, generally within six weeks of treatment, if you have chronic insomnia,

you're going to start to see a major change. Now I've had patients literally in four weeks, they were doing great. I've had other patients that it could be twice that time. Everyone is unique and individual, but in general, the science says about six to eight weeks for CBTI is what you need to be able to make the change. There you go. Yeah, six weeks, and you can sleep better after that. What is the, I guess as long as we're here, what is the optimum time for sleep? Is it seven hours, eight hours, or 24 hours? It's a fantastic question.

You know, everybody hears, oh, you need eight hours of sleep, eight hours of sleep, eight hours of sleep. Well, the reality is, like we were talking about before, number one, depending on your age, there's going to be different amounts of sleep you need. Like we said, teenagers. You mentioned menopausal women have more issues, right? Yeah. Well, really, you know, obviously little babies, they sleep a whole lot more, right? And then teenagers tend to have a lot of sleep need.

And then as you get older, why do we have things like the blue plate special and all those things? Because as we get older, we tend to go to bed earlier and wake earlier, but we also tend to sleep less or we get up in the night more often. So it changes throughout our lives. And then on top of that, everybody's system is different. So there's six-hour sleepers and there's nine-hour sleepers. Really? And neither one is right or wrong. It depends on your particular system.

So people can get away with that, huh? You know, I think I heard about a certain politician who would sleep four hours a day or he claimed to sleep only four hours a night but i know he has an adderall problem uh but i mean can you survive on four hours of sleep anybody if someone comes to me and they tell me oh i haven't slept in nights or only sleep four hours a night, immediately, my thought is that that's just not possible. What's happening is you may think you're only sleeping four hours and you're not aware of it, or you may be sleeping four hours, but then throughout the day, you're catching micro naps or other things. I've had plenty of patients who come to me and they tell me that, oh man,

I only slept, I didn't sleep at all, you know, the last three nights or whatever. And then we dig into it. It's like, you know, I remember what I'm saying. You have to be sleeping somewhere because your body won't function. You will die if you're not sleeping, but your body's not going to let you die. So it's going to sleep. And then he says, well, you know, it is funny. Sometimes I'll sit down on the couch to watch a TV show.

And I remember the show starting. And next thing I know, the ending credits are rolling. Well, because you were napping. That's where you're getting your sleep. So yes, you're going to get the sleep just like your body's going to breathe. And you can hold your breath and try to hold it as long as you can. But at some point, your body's going to breathe regardless, right? Same thing with sleep. You're going to sleep. You may not get restful, consistent sleep, but you're going to get sleep somehow. Hopefully not sleep you're going to sleep you may not get restful consistent sleep but you're going to get sleep somehow hopefully not when you're behind the wheel of the car that happens too definitely that's uh i actually i actually blinked and fell asleep for a quick

second this uh sunday night i was at a light and i was coming home from an event and for some reason I was having trouble staying awake. I think I was running on four hours of sleep. And this has never happened to me. I don't think I've ever blinked driving a car in, I don't know, 20 years or something. Maybe when I was young or something. I think I did fall asleep when I was traveling one time. And that was kind of crazy. when I was traveling one time and that was kind of crazy but I was really young but yeah I was at the light and suddenly I just I went into a dream state I was sitting there and I didn't feel that tired I've

had times where I'm yawning and I just can't stop yawning or I'll be nodding and I'll jerk my head to try and stay awake and then finally I just pull over and get a five-hour energy or something but I thought I was doing okay and then I just blanked at the light and there was no one behind me to wake me up and if I would have stayed kind of in I went into a dream state like I went right in and and I woke up in the car in front of me had passed through the light and was I don't know about 20 yards down through the light. And what really kind of scared me was if I had gone into some sort of deeper sleep and pulled my foot off the brake, I would have rolled right into this state highway. And, you know, let's see, you know, probably not anything. Well, people don't realize that sleepy driving is just as dangerous, if not more dangerous than driving under the influence of alcohol or some other substance.

And people don't think about it because it's like, well, I didn't drink anything. I didn't take anything. I'm just tired. Well, you know, but then you get these micro-sleeps, and just like you said, you end up not stopping at a light or rolling into an intersection or, you know, all sorts of things happen. And sleepy driving is something that we're not totally aware of because it doesn't get as much press as drunk driving does, but it's pretty much just as dangerous. Wow. There you go. Well, I kind of found that out. I've been driving for about 30 minutes, and I kept like,

you know, you should just pull off and grab a 5-hour energy. I usually keep a 5-hour energy in my bag, and I don't know, it's the freakiest thing that's ever happened to me in a long time. I was like, holy crap, you know, there it is. So I'm going to be a little more watching for that. But, yeah, I've been struggling with sleep for late. I go on periods. Like sometimes I'm just doing eight hours of sleep and I'm doing fine and I'll keep a schedule.

And then sometimes I go on this weird sort of vampire thing where i'll you know i don't have a wife and kids and i lived in vegas for a long time in vegas you almost live like a vampire at night because you know you go grocery shopping at 10 p.m because number one you can and number two it's hot as fuck during the day yeah everybody's out at night trying to be cool and get shit done and uh so i've i've had those things and uh yeah um i don't know but this book is going to be definitely paramount i've got it on my amazon cart right now and i think everyone should check it out and then of course reach out to you and i know you have a free consultation on your website as well is that correct yeah yeah people can call us and we'll talk to them and do, you know, like a 15 minute

consultation with them and try and get a sense of what's going on and tell them whether it's something we can help them with or not. And, you know, the good news is, like I said, number one, a lot of people don't recognize the sleep problems that they can have. And number two, they don't know that there's help that's available for a lot of the sleep problems. There you go. Yeah, and you've answered so many questions. Like, you are the source of everything. I try to read a lot and learn a lot. I'm going to refer you.

I know the guy who knows everything about sleep. I wouldn't say that. He's a sleep god. I've had the best sleep. I wouldn't say that. He's a sleep god. I've had the best professors, I'll tell you that. I really have learned a lot. There you go. Well, I'm trying to learn a lot, mainly just for sleep. But, you know, you're right about the lights in the room.

So, you know, the new humidifierifier puts off a light it's got a screen there's long times where i used to wonder what this weird blue light was across the room from me and i i couldn't figure out what was going on i'd wake up in the middle and i'm like are there aliens in the room and it was it was like this little tiny light on one of those uh special plugs it was designed to have a usb port on it that you plug into your your normal plug and had a little tiny light and i never really noticed it but i would wake up looking at it going what's going on uh is this the antiprobe time pdd here um that's another reason i was sleep well as i'm always worried about him sneaking up on me

well that one we don't have a cure for but but the little lights we do because well the justice department took care of that cure but but it it is truly amazing and i i encourage your audience to think about this if if they wake up at night and their room is not totally dark look at the light source and you'll find one of those teeny little LED lights like you're describing. It's amazing how bright they make your room. And that's why you got to cover them with tape or get rid of them. Yeah. Well, there you go. Final thoughts as we go out.

Tell people how they can onboard with you, where they can pick up the book, the dot coms and all that good stuff. Great. Great. Yeah. So the book is Why Can't I Sleep Well? It's available on Amazon. You can find it there. If you want to listen to the radio show, just go to sleep science today dot com. And we've got links to the you can see us, you know, on YouTube or you can hear us on UK Health Radio or several different podcasts. All the links are there there and if you're looking for help with sleep from a

clinical perspective you can go to NationalSleepCenter.com and contact us there through that form on the website and we will get back to you and talk to you like that like I said a free consult initially and see if we can help you out there you go well this should be very interesting. I'm definitely going to order it up and find out more about you and probably refer my mother and everybody I know. Like I said, I got a lot of, I got a, I got one friend who had the inspire put in and he just thinks that was a

waste of money for at least him personally. And I'm just like, God, you had a surgery to put that in. Like you have something inside your body that isn't natural, and it doesn't work either? Yeah, that's hard when you do something and then it doesn't work. I mean, it does work for a lot of people, but then there's a lot of people that it's not right for. That's why I said all these sleep treatments are so individualized.

Yeah. I also put something in my body that didn't work at a Diddy party, but don't do that, folks. The jokes. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show, and hopefully you will help me solve all my problems, Andrew, at least the sleep ones. There's an infinite number of the rest, so, you know,

just one off the list that I can. Although eventually, you know, I'll be doing the big sleep, and I guess I won't be waking up from that. Yeah, we don't have a treatment for that one yet. See if you can look into that. I got my lab. You know, we're working on it. Working on it.

There you go. All right. Well, thank you very much. We certainly appreciate it. Thank you very much, Andrew, for coming to the show. Thanks, Chris. I appreciate your time. Thank you you and thank you for yours and your knowledge sir order up the book where we're fine books are sold folks

why can't I sleep well 150 common questions asked and answered you know I've been the funnier title if you said why can't I sleep well damn it and that's the that's the second book. I, why can't I sleep? Well, still dammit. Anyway. Uh, thanks for tuning into my own. It's go to good reads.com. For just Christmas, linkedin.com for chest Christmas, Christmas one, the

tick tock and all this crazy place in it. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. There you go. And I should have us out. Great show.