The Current - Exhausted? Sleep hacks that work — and the ones that don't

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

Getting a good night's rest can be hard. A sleep expert helps you navigate advice from mouth taping to melatonin to cognitive shuffling and more. Aric Prather, author of The Sleep Prescription: 7 Days to Unlocking Your Best Rest, on what works, what doesn't, and why we might need to reconsider our attitudes to sleep.

Hugh is a rock climber, a white supremacist, a Jewish neo-Nazi, a spam king, a crypto-billionaire, and then someone killed him. It is truly a mystery. It is truly a case of who done it. Dirtbag Climber, the story of the murder and the many lives of Jesse James. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Sleep. Sometimes it feels like none of us are getting enough of it.

We yawn, we complain, you shell out for another coffee. Now that we're midway through September, the alarm is going off every morning, bright and early, pushing you out the door into the rush of the day. It seems like everyone has advice for getting better rest from your best friend, to the people you follow on social media, to Eugene Levy. I'm your sleep daddy, and I'm here to help. you get serious about sleep. Never sacrifice bedtime for party time.

You have to lighten up with the doom scrolling. Even avatars need unplugging, dude. From a mattress company ad all over radio and YouTube this summer, that was Eugene Levy, not just a Canadian comedy icon anymore, but also apparently your sleep daddy. His hacks are pretty straightforward. But you head over to TikTok. You'll get lots of.

Less obvious sleep tips, things like mouth taping and cognitive shuffling. What are those? Do they actually work? Don't worry, we have your back. Eric Prather is a psychologist who runs a sleep clinic in California. He's the author of The Sleep Prescription, Seven Days to Unlocking Your Best Rest. Eric, good morning. Hey, good morning.

How did you sleep last night? I slept surprisingly well. But, you know, it's not always that way. I'm thankful for it. You sound surprised. You're a sleep doctor. I mean, somebody who studies sleep and you're surprised that you got a decent amount of sleep? You know, I mean, like you said, it's a busy world.

And, you know, I think we're all trying to do our best. And, you know, there are some clear ways to improve it. But it can be a roller coaster sometimes. If you talk to people about this, they will complain about how little sleep they got. As you understand it, how many of us are struggling with sleep? Yeah, you know, I mean, the data suggests that about 30% of the population is reporting difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, waking up too early, and kind of about the same percentage is getting what we would think is insufficient amounts of sleep.

So the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, other scientific bodies say that we need about seven hours to maintain optimal adult health. And so that's what we tend to say that people should shoot for, though, of course, it might vary from individual to individual. What do you hear about how people are struggling? Is it about quantity? Is it about quality? What are the complaints that you would get directed towards you?

Yeah, so I help run an insomnia clinic here. And so it's often both. I mean, people feel like they're not getting enough sleep. And a lot of it has to do with how they're feeling during the day, right? I mean, it's kind of feeling sluggish, feeling tired, not feeling your best. Their sleep often is fragmented. They wake up a lot in the middle of the night, maybe have trouble falling asleep. And as a consequence, at least feel like they're not.

getting enough sleep and can't get on with their day. And so people will turn, I mean, I mentioned social media. They will turn to any venue that offers some advice on how to get better sleep. And there are all those hacks and tips that are out there that people may not make sense of. I'm going to run some of them past you to talk about whether they work or not or if they might even make your sleep worse. I want to start with this one. Have a listen.

Did you know that taking tart cherry juice before bed is like melatonia? Make sure it's not concentrated juice. Get it to your husband, give it to your wife, take it yourself, give it to them kids, and y'all going to sleep like a baby. Thank me later. Tart cherry juice. Have you heard this? Yeah, absolutely. You know, so there, I mean, there is a little bit of science behind that. We haven't tested it rigorously. It is suggested that tart cherry juice might increase availability of serotonin or tryptophan and melatonin. And there's a little bit of evidence to support it.

In general, though, it probably isn't going to hurt you, but it's certainly not going to solve anybody's sleep problem. All right. Here's another one that's getting a lot of attention of late. So I've been mouth taping for the past, like, two weeks, and you guys, I know you hear it all the time, but it's actually life-changing. If you're a mouth breather, I'm definitely a mouth breather when I sleep, and I started doing this, and I've been having the best, like, deep sleeps. So she says mouth taping, which, I mean, it sounds fairly straightforward. You take tape and you put it over your mouth at night to make sure you breathe through your nose. She says that's life-changing.

What do you make of that? I mean, I'm really happy for her. But, you know, I mean, mouth taping, there's growing evidence that, you know, breathing through your nose has lots of benefits, you know, increase oxygenation. Maybe you're catching any kind of dander in the air instead of it going in your mouth. and breathing through your mouth can often increase snoring and, you know, cause sore throats and things with that sort. And so there, you know, there's a good reason to think that, like, maybe mouthpaping does have carry some benefits, but it also carries some risks, particularly for people who have trouble breathing through their nose, are people that have

obstructive sleep apnea, which is a sleep disorder where we kind of cease breathing in the middle of the night, and people often have to kind of open their mouth to gas for breath. And so there is some risk that this may kind of disrupt people's sleep even more, especially if they have that condition. What does it tell you that people are so desperate for good sleep that they would put tape across their mouth while they're sleeping? It's a double-edged sword in this way. I mean, I love the fact that people are trying to invest in their sleep and they're seeking out the science and really trying to make that a pillar of their health. But in the same way, it is a little bit of desperation that people are really struggling.

and it's difficult to find kind of clear science-backed evidence-based habits to improve people's sleep. And so as a consequence, that void is filled with maybe kind of suspect solutions, and that can be troubling. In the introduction, I mentioned something called cognitive shuffling. If people haven't heard of it, here's a guy on Tech Talk who says he's a doctor. He does a lot of night shifts to explain what this is. To do cognitive shuffling, all you have to do is think of a completely random word. and then visualize the thing that that word represents. From there, think of a second word, and their third and a fourth.

They're all completely unrelated. The aim here is to give random thoughts to your brain to stop it from being anxious and allow you to get off to sleep. What do you understand about cognitive shuffling? Yeah, I mean, many people struggle with kind of an active mind when they try to go to bed, right? They get in bed, their mind is kind of filled with thoughts about work or about their life or about, you know, whatever.

and that can get in the way of falling asleep. And so this technique is really to kind of fill that space. It's not magic. You know, our brain can only focus on so many things at once. And so if you are focused on a random word and then you're kind of identifying words that start with that letter and you do it over and over and over, I mean, you're really filling that space

and it allows your brain to kind of get the rest of its needs and allow you to drift off to sleep. And so, you know, it definitely can be a powerful tool for people. I don't think it's always a one-size, It's all a solution, but, you know, it is worth trying. It's certainly not going to hurt you. And it's just another example of how distraction can be effective in helping people drift off to sleep. So has it worked?

I mean, it's interesting. I've done this before. Where I count, you go to, you pick the number 300 and you count backwards by threes. And I will find, I mean, I can get through a handful of numbers and then off I go. This might actually work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it's the exact same principle, focusing your mind. and then nature takes over, right? And the idea with cognitive shuffling is that maybe you get through a few letters, and then next thing you know, the sun's coming up and you feel refreshed. What about when nature's not enough? People will take all sorts of things,

melatonin, magnesium, gravel, of course, prescription sleep aids as well. Where do you stand on those interventions? Yeah, you know, they're not all made equal with respect to risk. So it's important to kind of consult your doctor if you're taking something. I mean, there's definitely a role for sleep medications in kind of acute settings, but they weren't designed for chronic, you know, daily use. And so that's where we can often get into trouble because what often develops is this psychological dependency on these medications that you feel like you can't sleep without them,

right? And then that takes on a life of its own. It feels like, you know, your sleep might be broken. And the only solution that you have is this pill or this supplement or what have you. And so if you're in a place where you start thinking, like, you know, if I forget this at home and I'm out, you know, sleeping over somewhere and I won't be able to sleep. I mean, that's where you really need to kind of pause and think about, okay, what are the perpetuating factors that are causing this insomnia? Because often those medications

are really just masking kind of the underlying problem. I mean, we also live in a society, and we heard this at the beginning, Eugene Levy, talking about, you know, unplugged dude. We live in a society where we are on screens all the time, right up until the moment. perhaps when we close our eyes and go to sleep. There has been talk of how long you should have between the time that you're looking at a screen and the time you want to go to sleep and that number can change.

People also will say, well, it doesn't really matter because that's the world that we live in. Should we get off the screen before bedtime? I mean, I think it really sort of depends, which I appreciate is kind of unsatisfying. But I think we really need to remember that we're not kind of a laptop computer. Our brain doesn't just shut down at our whim. And so, you know, really ensuring that you have this transition time to relax and get ready for sleep is important.

And some people use screens for that. I mean, the concern has always been recently around blue light exposure and that that impacts the brain and decreases melatonin production. and this may get in the way of our sleep. And while that is true, to some extent, and maybe more true for some, you know, the content that we are consuming on, say, social media, the doom scrolling that Eugene Levy described, you know, those kind of things are really arousing to our brain. I mean, in some ways, it's really rewarding. And so you get kind of this dopamine hit that might keep you aroused, or, you know,

it might increase anxiety. And those things really work against us in our own. our ability to let go and go to sleep. And so if the content that people are consuming is alerting, then that probably isn't in the right direction for having a good night's sleep. I mean, the other part of this is that we think differently about sleep now because we have more information about how we're sleeping. Before, if you didn't get enough sleep, you knew that because you woke up and you were

exhausted and cranky and miserable. Now you can look at your phone, which tells you from your watch, that this is how much sleep you got, but also what kind of sleep you got. You can wear the ring that will give you even more information. Do you think those devices that give us data on sleep, are they helpful? Are they harmful? Are there something in between? I think there's somewhere in between.

You know, I think it is amazing kind of the technological advancements that we have around sleep monitoring. And I think they're often part of the reason that people have become more and more interested in their sleep because we can measure it for so long. It was kind of magical, and it still is to some extent. But we are learning a lot. And at the individual level, people can begin to identify patterns in their sleep that might be meaningful. You know, you take, you know, wearing a device and the impact of, say, drinking alcohol close to bedtime. I mean, you see that almost immediately in the signals.

And so, you know, people can do experiments to better understand what things work for them, what might support their sleep. But, you know, also there is some risk. I mean, there's a lot of data. People can get wrapped up in it. In fact, several years ago now, there was a condition coined orthosomnia, which is an insomnia that develops because of wearable devices because people get so anxious about their sleep. I mean, not a day goes by where someone doesn't come into my clinic with, say, their Apple data and, you know, they're losing their mind over kind of what they do or do not have in their sleep data.

So all of that is really relevant and, you know, should be taken with caution, you know, depending on how anxious you are about your sleep. What kind of person takes on the law? Can they ever really know what they're getting into? A really tough-looking guy came up to us and said, are you part of this gay case? My family started getting death threats. I wasn't able to go outside alone anymore.

I'm Phelan Johnson, host of See You in Court, a new podcast about the cases that changed Canada. and the ordinary people who made history. This is David and Goliath we have here. Find and follow. See you in court wherever you get your podcasts. What should we do with that? Because, again, many of us have those devices, but a lot of us have no idea what the difference between core sleep is

and deep sleep and what have you. And yet the device will show you that you didn't get nearly as much of this sleep as that sleep. That's right. I mean, you know, oftentimes it's left up to the consumer to me. make sense of it. You know, I mean, I think it is something that is becoming more and more routine to share with your medical team if you have one. You know, I think turning to accredited sleep scientists can help. I think this is where we often get into some trouble with social media is that there are people out there, you know, maybe with just, you know, enough information or

expertise to be dangerous. And it can impact a whole lot of people, I think for now, especially around kind of the measurement of sleep architecture, which is what you're describing, kind of core or deep or REM sleep, the devices are getting better and better all the time in being able to kind of accurately collect that information. But I wouldn't put a whole bunch of stock in that for now. And also, you know, it is a little bit challenging because we don't have a lot of like clear interventions, say, to increase deep sleep. There's not a magic bullet for that either. And so, you know, with the exception of, you know, sleep deprivation, which we know the next night increases deep sleep. And maybe at some extent, you know, high intensity exercise can also increase deep sleep.

But, you know, until we have, like, clear ways to intervene, I wouldn't put a whole bunch into that. If you're feeling okay during the day, your body knows what to do. And quality of sleep when we talk about the architecture can certainly vary from night to night. Tell me about some of the things that do work. If people, I'd read somewhere that 30% of Americans live with insomnia. There are a lot of people who perhaps don't identify as insomniacs, but they wake up in the middle of the night and they're frustrated and furious because they can't get enough sleep. They can't get back to sleep.

What habits do work to get somebody a decent night's sleep? So there are kind of a list of things that people can do to get their sleep back on track. This is all sort of distilled from what's called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, CBTI, which is known to be the gold standard first-line treatment for anyone who's dealing with insomnia. And it's without medications because the biology of our sleep is fairly clear. And so these techniques help try to leverage that biology to get people sleeping. So when people come to my clinic, the first thing that I have people do is standardize their wake-up time. So get up at the same time seven days a week. This should be something that you can do with an alarm, make it consistent.

this is it helps and train your circadian rhythm. And then it also helps kind of regulate what's called your sleep drive, which is something that kind of builds up throughout the day and increases your sleepiness as you're awake. The next thing is, you know, ensuring that you have a strong wind-down routine. So again, we want to make sure that people can transition to bedtime. And these rituals can be really powerful in kind of telling your body what comes next. You know, your brain is working kind of overtime trying to understand our environment. And so knowing how to make these changes in our body are really important. And so this can be, you know, giving yourself an hour, do something for yourself, do something that calms you down, you know, turn down the lights, make sure that your sleep environment is well supported.

And then, you know, when people are having kind of consistent bad nights, one of the things that often is really powerful is actually moving your bedtime a little bit later. And this feels kind of counterintuitive because you want sleep so badly, but it actually really increases your sleep drive or it called your homeostatic sleep drive that's need for sleep and often can kind of lead to more sleep consolidation. And then the final thing that I think is really important and is really often at the foundation of insomnia is people spend in a lot of time in bed not sleeping. The bed we say is for sleep or sex. And, you know, if you're having lots of nights of kind of tossy and turning and, you know, you're in bed awake for, say, more than 30 minutes, it might make sense to get out of bed and wind down until you feel sleepy again and then return to bed because what often occurs is that when people are having bad nights of sleep, they'll tell me things like, you know, I was feeling really sleepy, and then I got in bed and my brain woke up. And that's what's called a cognitive arousal. And that is brought on by kind of all these bad nights that your bed itself has kind of become a trick. for insomnia. And so trying to break that relationship and repair it with the feeling of

sleepiness, over time can ensure that the bed again becomes this supportive, sleep-inducing trigger. Are you a fan of napping? You know, napping is a tool. And so there's certain cultures that certainly nap, but I think the important thing is you can only make so much sleep. And so, you know, if people nap during the day and you know you want to keep it short you don't want to you know maybe 20 30 minutes at the most you know you can't expect that your sleep is going to be the same at night right and so i think as long as people don't get anxious about that napping can be really helpful in increasing alertness um but you also want to think about uh if someone's a habitual naper

why are they napping is it because you're getting poor night asleep sometimes people have underlined illnesses and that's your body telling you to nap and all those things are are important in considering what a nap means, but, you know, on the surface, it is a tool and it can be really helpful, particularly for people who can't get the sleep they need. So, you know, shift workers, for example, or, you know, people that have kind of weird environmental reasons that they need to nap. And so, you know, I think that that's important to be able to give people the grace to do that if they need it. But it speaks to, I mean, the fact that what you do during the day will influence how you sleep at night, right? Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know,

It's not rocket science, but, you know, the opportunity to improve your sleep starts as soon as you wake up. And that's why waking up the same time is so key. But, yeah, I mean, certainly, like, the way that you manage your stress, the substances that you consume, all of those sorts of things play a role in this 24-hour life that we have. So, you know, treating yourself well and doing the things you need to do to support your night will give you what you need to have a better day. Why should I stick my head in the freezer? oh that never ends uh yeah so i i had so in this book uh that i wrote um i use that as an example as an alternative to uh napping uh and so you know people are trying to increase their alertness and so there's some data that suggests that kind of cold exposure kind of activates your sympathetic

nervous system and can kind of get you going you know and so that that was a kind of a cheeky option to get people to stave off napping, particularly if they're trying to help their sleep, right? I mean, the people I meet with, they're trying to fix their sleep. And so in that case, like, napping is something that we suggest against because it impacts your night. Alternatively, you could do, like, a brisk walk in the afternoon, and that also will give you the benefits, particularly if you don't have a freezer available. And does exercise, I mean, just a couple more things on this, does exercise and when you exercise, does that impact how you sleep?

I'd heard that you shouldn't do a strenuous workout within like a couple of hours before you want to go to sleep, but that if you work out during the day, then you actually might have a better sleep later on. That's right. Firstly, one of the functions of sleep is restoration. And so if you exercise vigorously, you're going to need more restoration. And so that might lead to a more consolidated or different sleep experience. I think for some people, if they work out strenuously too close to bedtime, you know, their nervous system is all ramped up, and it can be really hard to kind of bring it back down and get to sleep. You know, alternatively, though, and I'm sure some of the listeners will say this as well,

that sometimes when people do workouts really close to bedtime, it kind of wears them out, and then they go to sleep really fast. And so it is a little bit more individualized like that, but in general, I think for most people, if you do something really high intensity near bedtime, your body takes some time to cool down. And so that can certainly impact people's ability to drift off. The sleep industry is a big industry, right? And it's not just a mattress company paying Eugene Levy a bag of money to advertise its product.

But I'd read somewhere that the global sleep industry is like $100 billion every year. You have all these different hacks, but also we understand that productivity and health are impacted as well. Are we thinking differently about sleep? sleep now? Because there used to be a time when the captains of the universe would brag that they got, I can operate on three hours sleep. I don't need more than three. It feels like that's over and done with in some ways. I gosh, I wish it was over and done with. I think, I think that's true. I think, you know, the sleep industry, my cynical view is that, you know, some of the reason that people are so interested in sleep is because this industry has been created. And so now there's

all these products that we hear about sleep. And that's alluring. I do like to think that kind of the collective consciousness around sleep has been changing and shifting towards sleep is really fundamental for health. And that's all good news. But, you know, as we've already discussed, I mean, for some people, it's kind of pushed them into this area of anxiety or optimization and trying to fix their sleep or gamify their sleep and or hack it. And, you know, that can often be a dangerous path. But, you know, overall, I'm thrilled with the changes that people are making about their sleep, the way that we're thinking about it. And I think that the future is bright for this field. So, you know, admittedly, there's a lot that we still have to learn. So for somebody

just finally who comes to your office and they, you look at them and you know that they're not sleeping, but they will tell you that they're losing their mind because they're not getting enough sleep. And they worry that they'll never get enough sleep and that they'll never sleep well again. What do you say to them? I say that, you know, one, I completely understand. And it's really scary. You know, when people begin to have insomnia, it feels like everything is broken. I think of sleep is kind of the glue that holds our life together. And so, you know, first about kind of meeting them where they are. But the good news is that, you know, we're built to sleep. Sleep has kind of been conserved across millennia, across all the species that we've ever studied, do something that looks

like sleep. And so it's really built into us. And so despite all the trouble that people have had, there are ways to improve it. It doesn't happen overnight, you know, in the same way that insomnia doesn't just develop overnight, at least not chronic insomnia. And so I'm really hopeful that, you know, there are these behavioral techniques that put in place kind of like a recipe can get people moving in the right direction. And hopefully that gives people a little bit of confidence or hope. And that's just as important as we move forward. Eric, thank you very much for this. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Eric Prather is a sleep scientist, the author of The Sleep Prescription, Seven Days to Unlocking Your Best Rest. He was in San Francisco. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.