The Dr. Hyman Show - Is Sleep More Important Than Your Diet When It Comes To Optimal Health?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. We really have a crisis of sleep in this country, and we have a crisis of poor quality sleep, and that's creating a secondary cascade of issues. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark. I know a lot of you out there are practitioners like me, helping patients heal using real food and functional medicine as your framework

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Starting point is 00:02:35 with your first purchase all you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com forward slash hyman again that's athleticgreens.com forward slash hyman to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance now let's get back to this week's episode of the doctor's pharmacy hi everybody it's dr mark hyman here welcome to a new series on the doctor's pharmacy called master, where we dive in deep into popular health topics like inflammation, autoimmune disease, brain health, sleep, and much more. And today I'm joined by my host, my guest host, good friend and business partner and host of the Drew Prod podcast, Drew Prod himself. And we're going to be talking about why sleep is so freaking

Starting point is 00:03:21 important and how the quality of our sleep dramatically impacts the quality of our overall health. Welcome, Drew. Thanks, Mark. It's a pleasure to be here. And I want to start off with a pretty powerful statement that I'll turn into a question. How much do you agree, disagree, and feel free to add in any nuances you want to that often, for many patients, sleep is more important than diet.

Starting point is 00:03:49 So take that in any direction you want to. Well, you know, I think, I mean, diet's important for sure, right? But sleep turns out is one of the most important things for regulating so many aspects of your biology and repairing and healing and regulating your mood, your brain function, your risk of heart disease, your risk of cancer, Alzheimer's. It's quite astounding how critical sleep is. And the problem is, is that 70 million Americans don't sleep well. That's a lot of people. And it's why we see this sort of plethora of sleep medications, over-the-counter prescription medications. And it's really a huge problem.

Starting point is 00:04:31 So I feel like we have to sort of face this square on because it's really degrading our health. Historically, you know, 100 years ago, we slept nine hours a night. Now we're sleeping an average of seven or less on the population basis. And that's not good. And it's driven, I think, because of this sort of over compulsiveness of our society, the sort of ever, ever present, you know, kind of flood of content coming at us. I think we have more content coming at us in one day as humans today than we had in our entire life, you know, 150 years ago. And, you know, was watching movies on Netflix later, being on your phone or screens or, you know, letting life bleed into the places where we should be bleeding at night to sleep. So we really have a crisis of

Starting point is 00:05:15 sleep in this country and we have a crisis of poor quality sleep and that's creating a secondary cascade of issues. I remember Drew reading years ago ago a book called Lights Out, which was a really interesting book about the phenomena of the light bulb and how the light bulb was responsible for so much chronic disease because rather than following the rhythms of the sun and the moon in the daily cycles, we actually would stay up late and can disrupt our circadian rhythms and end up out of balance. So I think this is a real problem. And I certainly notice for myself, if I don't maintain a certain strict set of practices around sleep, that my sleep can get very dysregulated

Starting point is 00:05:52 because of all these inputs. Yeah, it finally feels like sleep is getting the attention it deserves, largely with a lot of individuals out there really sounding the alarm, people like Matthew Walker, who you've had on your podcast before. And for many people that are listening, their diets are pretty good. But when your sleep is really off, it can hijack your entire life. So what are three things, Mark,

Starting point is 00:06:19 that you think that people can do today, starting today, that could radically improve the quality of their sleep? I mean, it's a lot, right? So I think it's one, your sleep environment. It's two, your sleep hygiene and habits. And three, it's what you're consuming. So the first is your sleep environment. Your bedroom should be dark. It should have a cool temperature, ideally 68 degrees. You should have quiet. So if you're not in a quiet or dark place, earplugs and eye shades are the way to go. Keeping cool is also really important at night. You sleep better when it's cool. So there's a chili pad and uler and sleep aid and a bunch of other technologies that actually can make you have a cool bed, which is a great

Starting point is 00:07:08 thing. The second is your sleep hygiene. You want to make sure you're not on your screens at least a few hours before bed, two or three hours. You don't want to eat late three hours before bed. You don't want to be drinking a lot of alcohol, caffeine late in the day. You want to make sure that your environment is good. Take a hot bath or take a cold dip. People are saying helps their sleep. There's a lot of simple practices and I've written lots of articles about this. I think you can link to them in the show notes about, you know, 20 things you can do to improve your sleep. And the next bit would be, you know, what you're doing in terms of your lifestyle. If you, you know, exercise late,

Starting point is 00:07:45 if you drink coffee, if you're eating alcohol, if you're eating late, all these things will disrupt your, your biorhythms. Ideally, you know, keeping your, your blue light exposure low. That's also really important at night because again, we're so exposed to artificial light, we're exposed to computers and, and that disrupts our melatonin production. So, you know, those are, those are just a few things that you should think about in terms of sleep. But the more people can focus on regular sleep with a rhythm and regular sleep hygiene and the right environment and avoiding the things that we know screw up sleep, people can often reset their sleep systems.

Starting point is 00:08:19 A lot of people don't know actually what good sleep looks like. So talk to us about what good sleep should look like or actually feel like after you've had it and contrast that with what are signs that somebody might have poor sleep quality in their life? How does it show up with how they feel? Well, you know, I'm reading a study where they looked at sharpshooters in the military like snipers. And they found that if they slept eight hours, they'd be like 99% accurate. If they slept seven hours, they would be maybe 95% accurate. If they slept six, they'd go drop down to like 60% accurate. If they're under six, they're like less than 50% accurate. So it's like crap. Uh, which is kind of astounding because these people are highly skilled people, but

Starting point is 00:09:10 it's been said that not getting adequate sleep is equivalent to being drunk or driving drunk. And I think that's true. I've, I've experienced a lot of sleep deprivation in my life because of working in the emergency room, delivering babies, working as a doctor on call. I mean, it's just the thing, right? And you get so impaired. I remember almost, you know, driving into a ramp on an exit ramp when I was falling asleep driving. So it's, it's really, really important. Quality sleep is important. So you need deep sleep. You need, you need REM sleep. And there are now kinds of sleep trackers, whether it's the Oura Ring or Fitbit or Apple Watch or other trackers to see what the quality of your sleep is. Are you waking up frequently?

Starting point is 00:09:48 Do you have interrupted sleep? Are you getting up deep sleep? Are you getting REM sleep? So you can start to look at these things and actually get a good sense of what the quality of your sleep is. But you'll feel it. I mean, if you wake up refreshed and energetic and your head's clear, you bounce out of bed, well, you're probably going to go to sleep.

Starting point is 00:10:02 If you're waking up constantly flipping and flopping, that is not going to lead to a sense of well-being and abundance and feeling good. So, you know, often your body will tell you when you don't feel good from lack of sleep and getting good sleep is really the medicine that we need. Sleep is medicine. What are the consequences of chronically not getting enough sleep? Is it just that you're tired or are there deeper issues that can have almost like permanent damage on the body? Absolutely. I mean, I think we're just recognizing the dangers of sleep deprivation in terms of its risk for chronic illness, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, depression, anxiety, mood disorders of all sorts. So it's a real thing. And I think if we don't take

Starting point is 00:10:47 it seriously, we're going to be missing the boat on a very important intervention in helping to address some of these chronic diseases that goes far beyond diet or exercise. The other thing that happens is your brain at night has a system of cleaning and repair. So you need to have the, what we call the lymphatic system working. The lymphatic system is like the lymph system of the brain. It's recently been discovered and it's so important. It really is activated at night. So if you're not sleeping at night, you're not clearing out the brain waste and you're

Starting point is 00:11:16 going to have a brain full of sludge and waste products that are metabolic waste and toxins. So it's so important for that particular reason too, to make sure you have adequate good sleep. I know there's a little bit of controversy around this and a lot of different opinions, but from your perspective, how many hours of sleep should we be shooting for in the evening? I mean, it's very individual. Some people do fine on six hours. Some people need nine hours and you need to find out what your number is. Everybody's different, but the amount of sleep where you can feel good and energetic and your quality of sleep is deep. I mean, if you sleep six and a half hours and it's like, you know, a ton of deep sleep, a ton of REM and really reparative, and that might be enough for some people. Other people might need nine. I need

Starting point is 00:11:54 about eight or nine. I love if I can get it, but it really makes you feel much more vibrant and healthy and functional. So I think, you know, it's certainly more than, than seven ideally, and probably between seven to nine hours is a good amount. And again, as I said before, you know, the last century about half of us, I mean, sorry about the average age of the average number of hours of sleep a night was like nine hours. Now it's seven or less. All right. Next question. What are commonly overlooked issues that drive poor sleep? Unexpected things, things that people may not know that expand on that first list that you gave us when we were opening the episode. Yeah. I mean, I think people don't

Starting point is 00:12:39 understand the role of their overall pattern of being and living. So first thing is when you wake up, you should get 20 minutes of sunlight without sunglasses on because it resets your pineal gland, which makes melatonin, regulates your circadian rhythm. So we want to keep our circadian rhythms in balance. The second thing is, you know, our diet plays a huge role. And particularly, you know, if we're eating a diet that's, you know, high in starch and carbohydrate, we're having fluctuations in blood sugar, we may actually even at night get hypoglycemia, and that can really disturb our sleep. We can get night sweats. You know, men often get night sweats too, but that's often usually low sugar,

Starting point is 00:13:18 and then the cortisol spikes, and you get a spike in sugar in the morning. So that's a real problem. I think the other thing is, you know, people are probably consuming a lot of alcohol, caffeine, sugar, all these disturbed sleep, chronic stress. You know, if you're not actually discharging stress, a lot of people go to bed tired and wired and a lot of people have adrenal issues. So they're pushing so hard in their life that they actually don't have a chance to reset and relax their nervous system. And that leads to incredible amounts of cortisol production, cortisol disturbed sleep. I mean, if you take prednisone for whatever reason, it's going to mess up your sleep. So stress plays a huge role. Exercise, I mean, you don't want to exercise too late in a

Starting point is 00:13:58 day. That can often activate you. So there are, you know, a lot of things that can drive poor sleep. Lack lack of magnesium which is common in the country if we don't eat magnesium in the forms of grains and beans greens sorry greens and beans nuts and seeds that we end up with magnesium deficiency which affects about 45 percent of the population and people don't sleep well when they have low magnesium it can be irritable cause irritability and tension and stress And then plus caffeine and chronic stress and smoking. A lot of other things will cause magnesium depletion. So you want to make sure you're getting plenty of magnesium.

Starting point is 00:14:31 Talk about sleep in your life. What are the things that now at the age that you're at and your schedule, what are the things that throw your sleep off? And what are the effects that you notice in your performance the next day when your sleep is thrown off? No, yeah. I mean, it's huge. I mean, if I'm traveling, you know, I'm trying to stay in one place longer, but it depends on the bed and the pillows, the sound, the noise, the temperature.

Starting point is 00:15:00 I mean, I can get messed up. And given all the years of screwing with my schedule and sort of staying up all night, I definitely have sleep issues. But I've learned how to actually mitigate them by, you know, making sure I do a bedtime wind down ritual, making sure I take my bedtime supplements like magnesium, a little melatonin. And if I don't get a quality sleep, I notice in the next day I can't focus. I can't think. My brain is distracted.

Starting point is 00:15:25 It's hard for me to be present with other people. It's hard for me to feel motivated to do anything. I know I get a little depressed. But it's not, I know I'm not depressed. I just know it's the sleep. I got sleep. So I think, you know, very attentive to sleep. But I think, you know, sometimes it's hard, you know, when you're out with friends and you're traveling or on vacation.

Starting point is 00:15:42 It's a little tricky. But mostly I'm pretty good about getting to bed by 10 9 30 10 sometimes a little bit later and try to sleep you know read a little bit i have a i have a light which is a reading light that's a kind of an amber light that has no blue light and it's kind of leave the light bulb on on the bed so i try to calm down from the light i have blue blocker glasses at night I use. That really helps. And so that all benefits me. Talk to us about how conventional medicine typically treats poor sleep when a patient is going through it and contrast that with

Starting point is 00:16:20 functional medicine and how a functional medicine doctor would look at addressing poor sleep quality with a patient. So from a traditional medical point of view, I mean, there are reasons for people's lack of sleep that a conventional doctor will look at, whether it's sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, there's sleep studies that doctors do that can be very revealing. A lot of people have undiagnosed sleep apnea. At the Ultra Wellness Center, we now have a home sleep study kit, which allows people to kind of get tested and do it at home, which is great. However, you know, often there's really very little to do from a conventional perspective, other than, you know, direct recognized basic sleep hygiene. And then there's a CBT sort of

Starting point is 00:17:02 approach, cognitive behavioral therapy, which helps people deal with sort of the mental aspects of insomnia. And that can be very effective. Cleveland Clinic has an online program called SomRest, which is available. So there's a lot of really useful conventional approaches to help people reset their sleep. However, there may be a lot of other causes from a functional medicine perspective for sleep disruption. The traditional medicine just says, oh, do therapy or take these sleep pills or practice better sleep hygiene. But they don't really say, well, why is your sleep disturbed in the first place? This is why we're so effective in functional

Starting point is 00:17:34 medicine because we don't want to know just what you have, insomnia. We don't know why. Why are you not sleeping? Is it because your thyroid's not working? Is it because you have chronic stress and adrenal burnout? Is it because you have low magnesium? Is it because your microbiome is inflamed and causing inflammation in your brain? Is it because you might be hypothyroid, which can cause a little bit of sleep disruption? Or is it because, you know, you have a bad sleep environment or because your sleep habits are terrible? Or because, you know, we go through all the underlying root causes. And then we address those, whatever they might be. You know, it's amazing to me, Drew, I never would have thought this was the thing, but when we put

Starting point is 00:18:12 people on the 10 day detox diet, when we put people on elimination diet and get rid of, you know, processed food, sugar, dairy, gluten, grains, et cetera, it's amazing how many people report, oh, my sleep got so much better. I'm sleeping so much deeply. I feel so much better. I'm like, well, wow, I don't know about that. But I think what happens is there's inflammation of the brain and inflammation will interrupt sleep. And when you start to live an anti-inflammatory life, you actually will end up with a much better sleep quality. A little anecdote is that my dad, many years ago, when we put him on a version of the 10-day detox and he had been eating bread his whole life because he grew up vegetarian and still was a vegetarian when he was doing the

Starting point is 00:18:53 program. One interesting thing that he noticed is that when he had cut bread out of his diet, he noticed this chronic back pain that he had at night that would make it harder for him to fall asleep went away because the inflammation went away and that then made it easier for him to fall asleep and so he got a better night's rest there you go yeah talk to us about another uh patient and a case study um that you can think of where sleep was the missing link that allowed them to get into a better state of health. Anything that comes to mind? Well, I have two. One was this guy who was very smart, editor of a major, major sort of Sunday kind of magazine newspaper. I mean, you would all know what it was. And, you know, his team was like, he's just falling asleep all day in the office. I'm like, it's terrible. He's not, he's not able to function well. It's annoying.

Starting point is 00:19:58 He'll fall asleep at meetings. I'm like, well, tell me about your life. He says, well, I drink, you know, 12 Cokes a day and have 12 cups of coffee a day. I'm like, oh, okay. Well, maybe caffeine is a problem. So we got him off the caffeine and we put him on an anti-inflammatory diet and it was amazing. He just completely turned around and was able to, you know, be able to function again. There's another case. I remember a young, well, not young, he was about a 50 year old. He's young to me now, but 50 seems very young to me. It's all relative. And he was a lawyer and I'm like, well, tell me how you're doing. He's like, well, I want to lose weight. I'm kind of overweight and he had a big belly and prediabetes. And I'm like, well, tell me about your life. And

Starting point is 00:20:43 he says, well, no, I said and well you know I said you sleep okay well yeah but um you know during the day I use a stand-up desk this is before stand-up desk where you must thing and because if I sit down I'll fall asleep while I'm working and I'm like wow okay you probably have sleep apnea so I said let's test you for sleep apnea and he sure enough had sleep apnea we put him on a CPAP machine you for sleep apnea. And he sure enough had sleep apnea. We put him on a CPAP machine, which is a breathing machine to sort of stop CPAP. He literally lost 50 pounds just like that and felt so much better. And, you know, we corrected his underlying issues around sleep and metabolic health. The thing is, if you don't sleep, you also crave carbohydrates,

Starting point is 00:21:21 you crave sugar, you crave, you know, all the junk that's going to make you gain weight. And we know this even from studies on young, healthy adult college males who were not overweight when they deprived them of two hours sleep a night compared to the control group, the ones that had the two hour sleep deprivation ended up having higher levels of ghrelin, which makes you hungry and PYY was lower, which is the appetite-suppressing hormone. And so they had hormonal changes that made them crave more carbohydrates, eat more food, be hungrier, gain more weight. And so really the key to often healthy metabolism and weight is actually sleeping. A lot of people at night notice that their mind is running and it just won't get quiet and that impacts their sleep. I know you have a lot of experience with meditation and different protocols that you've used either personally or recommended to people in the past.

Starting point is 00:22:16 But is there something that you could suggest that those individuals could try when it comes to winding down at night and getting ready for bed? Absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, when you think about it, it's kind of silly. We're like, go, go, go. We're answering emails at 11 o'clock at night. We're looking at our screens. We're engaged in all kinds of stressful, emotional, psychological things with our work or whatever. And then we're like, okay, lights out, boom, go to sleep.

Starting point is 00:22:38 And people are exhausted, but they often fall asleep and then often wake up frequently because they got the stress hormones going in their body. So I think really having a sleep ritual at night is so important for me. It's, it's very important. I get off screens at least a couple hours before bed. I, I often will take a hot bath, uh, with Epsom salt and lavender, which calms my nervous system down. I'll put the little kind of amber light that has no, it's like a reading light that has no blue light, turn all the other lights off. I'll read a little bit in bed and the reading and the calming down just calms it down. The other thing I can do often is I'll write a little before bed. So I'll literally dump out what's ever in my head. I'll just write it all out and I'll just completely

Starting point is 00:23:17 purge anything that is a negative thought pattern in my head or my worries for tomorrow, what happened that day, whatever, whatever. And I just try to let go. And the other thing you can do is a little yoga stretching before bed, a little deep breathing exercises before bed, get a little massage before bed, you know, all those things can help. You know, if you're a partner, you can rub each other's feet. That's a very relaxing thing to do.

Starting point is 00:23:43 I have a Theragun. I'll often use that to kind of relax my muscles and nervous system. You have to find out what's right for you, but it really requires some level of decompressing and unwinding before you get into bed. Because if you just plop into bed after running a hundred miles an hour, it's like, you're not going to fall asleep or you'll fall asleep because you're exhausted and then you wake up because you're under chronic stress. You chatted about this earlier, but talk about your morning routine and how crucial it is for you to set up your circadian rhythm for the rest of the day. What are the things that you do that you found work well in the morning

Starting point is 00:24:21 that end up helping you have better sleep at night? I mean, I think the key is, you know, I tend to meditate in the morning for 20 minutes. I'll have a cup of tea or maybe I'll have coffee and I'll do a little journaling and writing and just sort of get myself grounded for the day. And then I'll often try to take a walk or be outside in sunlight for 20 minutes without sunglasses on to reset my circadian rhythms. And then I'll have a very low-starred sugar breakfast, mostly protein and fat. You know, there are avocados, eggs, and olive oil. Or I'll have a protein shake that I make with fat in it. And that really helps me sort of set up my system for the day so I'm not craving the wrong food, so I'm not going off the reservation, and I'm actually keeping my system in balance.

Starting point is 00:25:04 All right, Mark. wrong food, so I'm not going off the reservation and I'm actually keeping my system in balance. All right, Mark, this is the part of the episode where we go to some questions from our community. And let's jump in with the first one. Is going to bed at the same time every night important? How do you discover what sleep timeframe is right for your body? Yeah. I mean, historically we used to go to bed with the sun, wake up with the sun. That's probably a good thing, you know? And I think you have into the light bulb and work schedules. It's just, it's kind of screwed us up. So historically, you know, if you really want to look at proper sleep hygiene and the way to set up a good sleep rhythm is to go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time every day. And generally the sleep you get before midnight is

Starting point is 00:25:51 much better. So I would say 10 is at least 10, maybe 9.30 in a bed, sleep by 10, get up at 6, 6.30. That will often help you sleep much better, sleep much deeper than if you sort of stay up till one or two in the morning. But there are, there are people who are, whose circadian rhythms are shifted and they may, they may do better as night people versus morning people. That's okay. But in general, I think it's really key to sort of establish a good morning routine to get yourself set up for a good night's sleep the rest of the day. All right. Next question. Is there a particular reason that we wake up intermittently as we age? And there's two sub questions underneath it, which are, is it normal to wake up and go to

Starting point is 00:26:32 the bathroom every night? And the second question, what should I do if I'm going to bed early and still suffering from frequent wake-ups throughout the evening? So this is all a question around waking up at night, especially at increasing as we age. So as we age, a bunch of things happen, right? We tend to have more belly fat. We tend to have loss of muscle. And when that happens, you get higher levels of insulin, more fluctuations in blood sugar and lower growth hormone. And the reason that kids sleep so much and babies sleep so much is they have huge amounts of growth hormone. But when you lose muscle, you lose growth hormone and you get higher cortisol and you get higher insulin. Cortisol will prevent you from sleeping. So when you lower growth hormone and raise cortisol

Starting point is 00:27:13 and through the aging process, you will actually have disrupted sleep. The reason that we do that is because we just don't, we're not active enough. Our diets aren't good. And so we're eating a high sugar diet. We're not weight training and strength training. But the truth is at any age, you can maintain your muscle mass. I'm very, I'm now I have way more muscle mass than I did 10 years ago or 20 years ago. And it's possible if you know what to do. So I'm very focused on maintaining my muscle mass, which helps growth hormone, which helps my testosterone, helps cortisol stay low. Very, very important. I think if people are waking up frequently, even if they go to bed on time, there may be something else going on. There

Starting point is 00:27:50 may be metabolic issues around blood sugar. There may be chronic stress that's not really being fully addressed. There may be other factors that cause frequent wakening. As far as urinating at night, it depends on when you drink, how late you drink, how much you drink, if you have a prostate issue or not, if you have, you know, irritable bladder or not. Normally people can go through the night without peeing. Sometimes you get up once to go pee, it's not terrible. People can go back to sleep. So I think, but if you're going a lot more than that, it's worth getting checked out because you could have, you know, a prostate enlargement if you're a man or cystitis if you're a woman. And it's good to make sure you get that check because unless you're, you know, if you're getting up two, it's good to make sure you get that check because unless you're,

Starting point is 00:28:26 you know, if you're getting up two, three, four times a night to go pee, that's a problem. All right, next question. Can a person catch up, so to speak, from a previous night of poor sleep? I think yes and no. I mean, I think, you know, people anecdotally will say, look, I didn't sleep six hours and I sleep 10 the next day, I feel better. So I think people will feel better. But, but the, the basic medical opinion is that, no, you really can't catch up on lost sleep. You've got to just keep, you know, sleeping and then putting sleep in the bank and, and actually, you know, over time you'll, you'll feel better, but you really have to make sure you're, you're not, um, creating a lot of sleep debt and that you're actually sleeping more when you need to but

Starting point is 00:29:06 realize that that's sort of not necessarily going to fix all the sleep that you've had so you know it's not great to say well i'm just going to step and you know six hours a night or five hours a night during the week and i'll sleep 10 hours on the weekend it doesn't work like that all right next question does dr hyman use a sleep tracker? And if so, which one? Well, you know, I use a lot because I'm kind of skeptical about these things because, you know, you do three different sleep trackers, you get three different results. You know, so I use, for example, Oura Ring. I use a app on my phone called Sleep Cycle. There's something called Sleep Watch that's with my Apple Watch. And, you you know i kind of amused at how how variable they are and i and how i don't i don't really know how accurate

Starting point is 00:29:50 they are i think the aura ring is probably the most accurate and measures heart rate variability it measures uh ram sleep deep sleep breathing and so forth movement so there's benefits to it um and it'll give you a sense of what's happening like for example i know that for example i don't have not been drinking alcohol much at all. And the other night I had, you know, somebody order a bottle of wine at the table and had a glass and maybe I had a glass and a half of white wine with dinner. And I noticed the next, that night that my, my heart rate didn't lower, my temperature didn't lower, that my sleep was more disrupted. And I'm like, ooh, is it really worth it? I don't really know if it's worth it.

Starting point is 00:30:23 I don't really like drinking that much. And, you know, I prioritize my sleep. So it's, it's a really important thing. Does Dr. Hyman have any tips for moms to help maintain their health while enduring sleep deprivation? I mean, yes. Uh, have a good partner who can spell you to get some more sleep. Take a nap when your baby's napping. That's what I recommend. And do the best you can to take care of yourself within all of it. Because, you know, your quality of parenting is regulated by the quality of your energy and your presence in your family. And if you're sleep deprived,

Starting point is 00:31:06 you're not going to be a very good company and able to really function at a high level. So prioritizing sleep is important and figuring out the support you can get at night, whether it's your spouse or your partner, um, to help spell you and getting naps when your baby's napping and taking that time is really important. Uh, but it, it is a tough period. And I encourage people to sort of, you know, do the best they can, but know it passes. your baby's napping and taking that time is really important. But it is a tough period. And I encourage people to sort of, you know, do the best they can, but know it passes.

Starting point is 00:31:30 All right. Next question, which is actually about napping. Do you practice napping? Are there some days where you will embrace napping? And any recommendations for people who find napping difficult to do? Yeah, I mean, I used to nap pretty well. Lately, I just can't nap so well. If I'm really tired, I might be able to nap.

Starting point is 00:31:53 And napping is fine to do. I think it's fine if you like to nap. I think it can be, you know, you don't want to overdo it. 20 minutes, half an hour. If you sleep for long periods of time, it can make you really groggy and it can affect your nighttime sleep. But I think that people who feel like they can and want a nap, it's so fine. And I think, you know, people can often just go down and they wake up 20 minutes later and they're refreshed. And I think that's a very good thing. I tend to meditate. For me, meditating is like taking a three-hour nap

Starting point is 00:32:19 sometimes. Like I just close my eyes for 20 minutes, I wake up completely refreshed. All right, supplements and sleep aids. There's a few questions about them. Are there any supplements that you recommend? What are your thoughts about melatonin or other things that people might be using at night to help them get better sleep? Yeah. So there are a lot of things you can do to help improve sleep through supplementation. So magnesium is my first go-to. A lot of people are low on magnesium and that can cause insomnia. I think melatonin, anywhere from half a milligram to up to three milligrams, can be a great adjunct to sleep.

Starting point is 00:32:54 There's other amino acids like GABA derivatives and theanine from green tea that can also help. There's adaptogenic things like ashwagandha, rhodiola. There's other herbs that can help as well. Valerian, passionflower, magnolia, all these, lemon, lemon balm. All these can be very helpful for sleep. So I encourage people to try different things. People should not probably use chronic sleep aids like benzodiazepines or Ambien. Occasional is fine. Like if you're traveling and you want to sleep

Starting point is 00:33:30 on a plane, I'll use it, but really rarely, rarely. And I think it's important for people to sort of know that these can cause long-term cognitive issues. It can cause long-term health consequences. Not getting sleep is also a problem. So, you know, it's a kind of a fine line to figure that out, but I encourage people to sort of try some of these alternative things. And I think, you know, I wrote an article years ago about like the 20 tips on how to get better sleep, including a lot of the supplements, the doses, where to get them and so forth. Also, we have a sleep masterclass that we created and people can access that. I think it's free, right, Drew? So people can just get to the Sleep Masterclass

Starting point is 00:34:05 and learn more about what to take and what to do and how to regulate their sleep. It's really important. Fantastic. What about CBD? Do you like it? And who would you recommend or not recommend try using it? Well, CBD is a derivative of the marijuana plant.

Starting point is 00:34:23 And people are using a combination of CBD or CBD plus THC which is basically pot and that can be very effective and I you know often when many other things don't work people can take you know capsules or tablets or even smoke vapor or actual you know a marijuana cigarette and that that can actually help with regulating sleep and help getting people to sleep, deep sleep. It helps relax them, decrease anxiety. And I found that very helpful as well. So I think there's room for that as a therapeutic tool. And there are questions about what's the long-term consequences of CBD, THC on the brain. But in the meantime, I think it's a very simple, easy intervention that you can do that can help with mitigating a lot of sleep issues.

Starting point is 00:35:06 And I recommend it to none of my patients. It can be very effective. It doesn't work for everybody, but it can be very, very good. So Mark, that was great. Those are all our community questions. Take us through the conclusion of today's episode, maybe even some recaps that the audience can walk away with. Yeah, so number one, I think that sleep is incredibly important.

Starting point is 00:35:24 It's not just an annoying loss of time. And I encourage people to create a very comfortable sleep environment, get the right mattress. I love, for example, the mattress that is from SleepAid or the one that's from Essentia mattresses, which is a latex foam. And that's so important. Get the right pillows, make sure you have darkened shades for your room, Make sure you have earplugs and eye shades so you can lock out sound and light. Make sure you don't have a lot of EMFs in your room. Don't leave your phone plugged in. Maybe you want to unplug Wi-Fi at night. That can make a big difference. Make sure you don't eat three hours before bed, that you wake up in the morning, get bright sunlight exposure, try to take extra magnesium, a little melatonin, try unwinding decompression at night,

Starting point is 00:36:11 watch out for alcohol, caffeine, just comments and stuff. If you think you have a serious sleep problem, you might want to sleep study, look for restless leg syndrome or sleep apnea. That can be very helpful. So, you know, we know a lot about sleep. Matthew Walker wrote a good book about why we sleep. There's many other books about sleep. So I think it's important for people to actually focus on the things that we know now that can help them re-regulate their sleep. Um, so, you know, sleep is critical and I think people underestimate the value of sleep and its importance and the importance of focusing on creating quality deep sleep. So that's it for this week's masterclass. If you like this episode, please share with your friends and family on social media. Leave a comment. Have you hacked your sleep? Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll see you next week on The Doctor's Pharmacy.

Starting point is 00:37:02 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 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.

Starting point is 00:37:36 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,S, 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

Starting point is 00:38:09 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.

The Dr. Hyman Show - Is Sleep More Important Than Your Diet When It Comes To Optimal Health?

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