The Dr. Hyman Show - How To Stay Asleep And Sleep More Deeply

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health and Pique. Not only does poor sleep make you less productive and uncomfortably tired, but it can also wreak havoc on your hormones and health. Yet so many patients tell me they often find themselves awake between 1:00 am and 4:00 am. There are many factors that can contribute to sleep issues, but the two most common culprits threatening your sleep-wake cycles are unregulated blood sugar levels (or poor nutrition status) and chronic stress. In today’s episode of my series I’m calling Health Bites, I talk all about sleep and my top tips for what you can do to stay asleep and sleep more deeply.  This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health and Pique. Rupa Health is a place where Functional Medicine practitioners can access more than 2,000 specialty lab tests from over 35 labs like DUTCH, Vibrant America, Genova, and Great Plains. You can check out a free, live demo with a Q&A or create an account at RupaHealth.com. Right now you can take advantage of Pique’s limited-time special offer on your first month's supply of Sun Goddess Matcha. Just head over to piquelife.com/farmacy for 15% off plus free shipping on your first month’s supply. Here are more details from our interview (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): Symptoms of unbalanced cortisol (4:38 / 1:06)  Melatonin production in the body (5:55 / 3:21)  How stress affects sleep-wake cycles (6:49 / 4:13)  Strategies to optimize nutrition to handle stress effectively and get high-quality sleep throughout the whole night (7:55 / 5:15)  Mentioned in this episode 10-Day Detox Diet

Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. If your cortisol is high in the afternoon or high in the evening, you might feel tired and wired. You want to sleep, but you can't. Or you might fall asleep because you're really tired, and then you wake up in the middle of the night. Hi everyone, it's Dr. Mark. As a functional medicine doctor looking at hormones, organic acids, nutrient levels, inflammatory factors, gut bacteria, and so many other internal variables, it helps me find the most effective path to health and healing for my patients.

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going to rupahealth.com. That's R-U-P-A health.com. I've recently found a new drink that fits into my pegan diet, and it's honestly something I always look forward to when I need a nourishing pick-me-up. It's Sun Goddess Matcha Green Tea from Peak. It's the best tasting, smoothest mixing matcha I ever tried. I'm sure you heard me talk a lot about using food as medicine and matcha is a great example of this. It's full of polyphenols, which are essentially powerful plant chemicals that are good for your gut bugs. They're great for detoxification, for cancer prevention, and so many great antioxidants that support better aging, a balanced blood sugar digestion, and a good immune system. I love blending the Sun Goddess matcha powder with some hemp or oat milk

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Peak Sun Goddess Matcha actually contains more theanine chlorophyll because they shade their matcha plants 35% longer than other brands. I really do feel awake and focused and balanced after enjoying my matcha every morning. Right now, you can take advantage of their limited time plants 35% longer than other brands. I really do feel awake and focused and balanced after enjoying my matcha every morning. Right now, you can take advantage of their limited time special offer on your first month's supply of Peak Sun Goddess Matcha. Just head over to peaklife.com forward slash pharmacist. That's P-I-Q-U-E-L-I-F-E.com slash pharmacy F-A-R-M-A-C-Y for 15% off and free shipping on your first month's supply. You won't find a better deal anywhere. Now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's

Pharmacy. Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. That's pharmacy with an F in place for conversations that matter. And today I'm bringing you a health bite to improve your health because taking small steps every day can lead to significant change over time. And today we're going to talk about sleep and not just sleep problems in general, but why we may wake up between one and four in the morning and how you can fix that. Because a lot of times people have restless sleep, they wake up with a little night, they wake up at night, they can't go back to sleep, and it really affects the quality of your health, their life, and everything else. So sleep is critical to our health, to longevity, to our mental health, to basically every physiological function we have, and it really is important to fix it. So let's

talk about what you can do to stay asleep and to sleep more deeply. So we know that poor sleep makes us less productive. It makes us tired, hard to focus. Basically, having sleep deprivation is basically equivalent to being drunk in terms of your performance. You know, I read a study once where there were snipers who were excellent shots and that they had eight hours sleep. They were like 100 percent accurate. If they had seven hours sleep, they were like 95 percent accurate. If they had seven hours sleep, they were like 95% accurate. If they had six hours sleep, they were like 70% accurate. And if they were like less than six hours sleep, they were basically like 50%. It's like almost a hit and miss. So not good. Even when you're an expert in something,

you can't function when you're tired. So next to sort of nutrition exercise, and maybe even before it, someone argues sleep may be the fundamental foundation of health and disease prevention and even weight control. So why is it so important? How does sleep dysfunction lead to changes? Well, there's a very important hormone called cortisol, which is your stress hormone. And it helps when it's imbalanced to go up in the morning to get you energetic and focused and do the things you need to do for the day. And at night, it's supposed to go down and you're supposed to calm down and relax. And a lot of people have an inversion where their cortisol is low in the morning, they can't get out of bed. And at night,

they're tired and wired. Sound familiar? I bet you have some big experience that I certainly have at different moments in my life. When you get down in bed, you're exhausted, but you can't fall asleep because you're just wired. And that's to do with your adrenal glands. And they're designed to keep things in balance to regulate your weight, to moderate your stress response, to control blood sugar, regulate inflammation, and regulate sleep and wake cycles. So when we're constantly in a state of stress, we're actually often struggling with sleep because of the way in which it affects our sleep. So when you're, think about it, when your cortisol is high, you're running from a tiger, you're in danger, you don't want to be sleeping, you want to be alert. And that's the problem. So if your cortisol levels are balanced

and they're high in the morning and then low at night and your blood sugar stays even, we'll talk about why that's important. Because fluctuations in blood sugar often will cause midnight or middle of the night wakening. But when your cortisol and your body stress response are balanced, then your pineal gland produces something called melatonin that pulses really strong in the afternoon and the evening, which gets you ready for sleep and lets your cortisol drop off. And then you can feel calm and go to sleep at night and feel sleepy. And if you're healthy and balanced in your circadian rhythms and your cortisol melatonin cycles, you'll be fine. But if your cortisol is high in the afternoon or high in the evening, you might feel tired and wired. You want to sleep, but you can't.

Or you might fall asleep because you're really tired. And then you wake up in the middle of the night, like between 1 and 4. And that happens when you sort of go, go, go, go, go, do your email. You're working, working, working and busy. And then you go to bed and you're like, and then you fall asleep because you're exhausted. But you end up waking up because your body is still in a stress state. There's still high levels of cortisol. So how does stress affect your sleep-wake cycles? Well, it works in a lot of different ways. Psychological stress can be a big factor, right? Worries about family, work, money, physical stresses, lack of exercise is a stress,

believe it or not, too much screen time, junk food, toxic lifestyles, hormonal imbalances, environmental toxins. All these drive increased inflammation, increased brain inflammation, and also increased cortisol. Because by the way, you know this, that when you eat sugar or starch, your body responds by jerking up the adrenaline and cortisol levels. So literally eating sugar is a stressful experience to your body. Even if you're getting pleasure and you don't think it's stressful and you're meditating while you're eating sugar, you're still going to have high cortisol and high adrenaline. So what are the things that are the two most common things that are screwing up your sleep

wake cycles? one of the things that are the two most common things that are screwing up your sleep-wake cycles it's probably blood sugar imbalances and spikes and crashes in blood sugar and chronic stress so what should you do to optimize nutrition so you can regulate your stress hormones through food and lifestyle and how do you deal with actually regulating sleep throughout the whole night and get high quality sleep so first thing thing is our bodies, whether we like it or not, are biological organisms and they run in circadian rhythms and they need to be balanced. So you have to live in rhythm. And I experienced the dangers of not being in rhythm when I worked in the emergency room. I would sometimes work a seven in the morning till five at night shift. Then I'd work a 2 in the afternoon until a 2 in the morning shift. Then I'd work an 11 o'clock at night to a 7 in the morning shift.

Then I'd work an 8 in the morning to an 8 in the morning shift, 24-hour shift. I was all over the place. And my whole system became dysregulated. And ultimately, it led to chronic fatigue syndrome and a bunch of other stuff. My system just kind of collapsed because I was pushing through all these circadian rhythms, which have to be in balance for you to be healthy. And whether we like it or not, you know, we tend to do a lot better from our health perspective. If we go to bed at the same time, if we wake at the same time, if we eat at the same time, our bodies are designed like that. So you want to make sure that you actually

don't eat before bed because that's the worst thing you can do. But you need to make sure that you actually don't eat before bed because that's the worst thing you can do, but you need to make sure you're having meals during a regular time space. So don't eat three hours before bed. Don't eat a heavy meal before bed because I guarantee you that'll screw up your sleep. Also carbohydrates. I think if you want to actually eat some starchy things like sweet potatoes or some more starchy foods and you can handle it metabolically, make sure you do it at night because the serotonin levels go up and it helps with sleep when you have your carbohydrates. But still don't eat white flour, sugar, processed, all that processed food.

Also, not eating enough is stressful. If your body's not getting enough food, it's also considered a stress. Now, you can do time-restricted eating and you can sort of narrow the window in which you eat for longevity purposes and so on. But you also want to make sure you're getting enough food and not actually starving because that will increase cortisol and you'll wake in the middle of the night. Now, if you want to lose weight, you can use what I think is probably the most effective treatment i've ever found which is the 10-day detox diet it helped people lose 120 130 200 pounds it's like a gastric bypass without the pain of surgery vomiting and malnutrition um another thing you can do is is

get stuff out of your head write your worries down at night. So get a little piece of paper or journal or maybe in your phone. Write down all your worries, what you have to do. Your day should be organized for the next day. Free up your mind so you can actually let go of things and go into a deep, restful sleep. Next, you can try a number of supplements and things that I found very helpful. Magnesium is super important. It's the relaxation mineral. It helps regulate the stress response, helps to regulate cortisol, helps relax your muscles. I recommend two to 400, even more of magnesium glycinate before bed. Glycine also helps with sleep. So you can use glycine and you can use that to help relax the nervous system and your

muscles. Next, try some melatonin. Mellow out with a little melatonin. You can use half to up to two to three milligrams of melatonin at night. And that can often help you reset your circadian rhythms, particularly with travel. Also, ashwagandha is an Ayurvedic herb that can be really powerful for resetting cortisol. I use a product called Cortisol Manager, which helps at night to reduce the stress response and improve sleep quality. Also, make sure, as I said, to

get in rhythm, you know, where you can sleep at the same time. Try to go to sleep before 10. That's the best sleep you can have is before midnight, believe it or not. So get in bed by 10, try to be asleep shortly thereafter, 11 at the latest, and try to wake up at the same time every day also make your bedroom completely sleep uh supportive for example make sure you have eye shades or blackout shades on your windows or eye shades on your eyes earplugs if it's noisy make sure you you really take care of creating a carefully controlled environment next is caffeine you know some is tolerated okay and metabolize others don't so i encourage you to sort of maybe stop after breakfast, coffee, don't have coffee throughout the day. That's particularly important. If you're still struggling,

I would probably just stop coffee and caffeine altogether. Alcohol definitely screws up sleep. So if you want to sleep well and you're not sleeping well, quit alcohol, just get off it. It can interrupt sleep and creates poor sleep quality. Also, sunlight is basically great medicine. You know what I mean? Sunlight, I'm going to go to sleep. No, but 20 minutes of sunlight in the morning without sunglasses on, outdoors, not behind a window,

has a big effect on your circadian rhythm. So we are photobiomodulating organisms. The light affects us. It regulates our biology. And it's important to make sure you have a good 20 minutes of light exposure in the morning. So those are some simple tips that you can do to help sleep issues. Often, by the way, at night, if you're having a crash and hot flashes at night and night sweats, that can often be low sugar. And so that's really important to balance your insulin and blood sugar. And I've written a lot about that, like the 10-day detox diet is a great

way to do that. Now, if you're still having trouble sleeping, there are many other reasons. It could be inflammation from food sensitivities. It could be thyroid issues. It could be menopausal stuff. It could be toxins, heavy metals, depression, many things, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue. Make sure you work with a functional medicine doctor, but check it out. And I hope that was helpful for you. That was it for today's Health Byte on sleep. If you love this podcast, share it with your friends and family. Leave a comment. Have you figured out how to pack your sleep? We'd love to know. And we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey, everybody. It's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving

this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays.

Nothing else, I promise. And all you do is go to drhyman.com forward slash pics to sign up. That's drhyman.com forward slash pics, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter. And I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger, longer. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only.

This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a Practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed

healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.