The Livy Method Podcast - Let's Talk the Psychology of Sleep with Dr. Beverley David - Winter 2024

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

In this episode, recorded on January 30, 2024, Gina talks about the psychology of sleep with Dr. Beverley David. Dr. Beverley is a Clinical Psychologist registered with the College of Psychologists of Ontario. She also holds a Ph.D. in Sleep Research (Insomnia) and a Master's in Health Psychology.You can find the full video hosted at:https://www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodwinter2024Topics covered:Introduction to The Psychology of Sleep with Dr. BeverleyThe importance of sleep: it is 1/3 of our livesThe 4 stages of Sleep and the patterns of sleep every 90 minsGetting a good night's sleep and how that affects youCircadian rhythm and synchronized processes in the bodyHow to help your circadian rhythm?The effects of Daylight SavingsThe timing of food and how that affects your rhythm and ability to maintain your weightHormones affected by your sleep, leptin and gremlinIt takes twelve weeks to change your genes, slow and steadyAre you hungry going to bed? How does that affect your sleep?Don't be in bed when you are not sleeping and cognitive reframingReduced daylight in winter and how that can affect your sleepNever try to sleep; give up trying; sleep will come back to youEating in the evening and understanding why you don't want to wake up your digestive system before sleepEating within 12 hours of the dayThe spiral that happens when you don't prioritize sleepIf you don't sleep, what happens in the body Impulse control when sleepy and the food choices you makeThe impact of sleep on your body's ability to lose weightThe impact of continuing to not get good sleepInsomnia: When did it start? Were you like that when you were little? Perpetuating factors?Caffeine and sleepNapping: building up the sleep need versus intentional nappingUnderstanding your nap, they can be very powerfulThe dip in energy you feel in the afternoon and The Food PlanSleep Clinics with Dr. Beverley for Insomnia start in AprilHow do you know if you have insomnia? Sleep Apnea: STOP-BANG: Snoring, Tired, Observed, Pressure, BMI/weight, Age, Neck Size, GenderFind Dr. Beverley:https://www.yourpsychologycentre.ca/@drdrbeverleyTo learn more about The Livy Method, visit www.ginalivy.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Gina Livy and welcome to the Livy Method podcast. This is where you'll have access to all of the live streams from my 91 day weight loss program. With a combination of daily lives, guest expert interviews and member stories, there is something new almost every day. Miss the morning live? Want to re-listen to one of our amazing guest experts? Well, this is the place. This podcast is hosted on Acast, but it's available on all podcast platforms, including the one you're listening to right now, Spotify, Apple,

and Amazon Music. Dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton.

Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. You're going to have this ability to now reframe. Allow yourself time throughout the day to stress the fuck out. The thoughts and the feelings and the behavior cycle can start changing. The psychology of sleep. That's the conversation today. I'm so excited to get into this conversation. And I know that our members are as well. Dr. Beverly is joining me today. She is a psychologist. You have had so many amazing, insightful chats with us, but everyone wants to talk sleep so this is the first time that we're actually talking about the psychology behind sleep and I couldn't be more excited hi good morning good morning Gina how are you I'm good maybe um maybe let's go right into people

know you as Dr. Beverly psychologist helping us work through our shit let's introduce us to um dr beverly sleep researcher okay so yeah when you get into psychology something probably interests you and back in 1998 when i first started um at Loughborough University, I was drawn there because of the very famous sleep research centre that was run by lovely Dr. Jim Horne, who sadly passed away at the end of last year. So it's a very big loss to the sleep world. But he was just so pivotal to my decision to go into psychology and then I guess through the coursework and then in the end my final year project it led me into a track of sleep research so I finished you know doing a dissertation on sleep and then going into health psychology and returning to do my PhD in sleep research to

understand what goes on in a person who has insomnia. And it was really exciting. It was one of the longest and biggest studies ever done at the time. And so I followed people with insomnia and compared them to people without insomnia every single day for a whole year to measure everything to measure their sleep quality sleep a quantity their psychology their anxiety their um personalities do we change do we recover you know and uh what does a week look like because this these much the data that i was collecting allowed us to see patterns patterns across a week look like? Because the data that I was collecting allowed us to see patterns, patterns across a week, patterns across a month, patterns across a year. So it was really powerful. And in the end, that led to a serious interest after my first PhD, I then started my postdoc and was looking at writing cognitive behavioral therapy packages for people to improve their sleep, you know, one-to-one in groups, but also self-help, which is very effective for a lot of people as well. Wow. Okay. So you have been with us for a while now. You understand that people are trying to not just reach this finally in February weight loss goal, but make, you know, major

improvements in their health and wellness and be in tune. And obviously sleep is such a big part of that. So tomorrow we're going to have Alana McGinn join us and she's going to talk sort of sleep hygiene, right? Making sure that you are doing all the things you can to facilitate a great sleep. And then Dr. Alinka is going to join us the following day talking about sleep and, and stress and how that affects your hormones and your health and wellness. What, what, what's missing? What are you, what are you going to talk to us? What are you going to share with us today? Well, it's, it's what's going on behind the eyes, I suppose, when we are asleep. Because the first thing is always education. Like what is sleep? How does it work? What happens when it goes wrong? And how do we get it back? And sleep is that thing that is so important to us. You know,

we're supposed to sleep a third of our lives um it's very important to our survival because if mother nature had figured out a way for us to not sleep it would have happened and whereas our body can adjust to other other um deficits even fat storage you know if we anticipate a famine our body can store fat ready for for using it day. We cannot store sleep. We can't catch up on the sleep that we've lost. And so psychologists can be quite mean sometimes when we're in the research phase of trying to inform practice. What we do is we take it away. We take that thing away to start seeing what happens when this is removed. And so when I was a sleep researcher, I was very interested in what was going on in the brain waves. And so we know that sleep is not just

a static state that we just go to bed and nothing happens. We're very, very busy in the brain. And it's to teach you, I guess, when you're falling asleep, a little bit more about those stages. So probably, probably you've all heard of the sleep stages. Now there's four stages, stage one, two, three, and then REM. And they take you down deeper and deeper into the sleep. And they have a particular pattern about them. So stage one will be quite light and you'll probably notice your your head nodding and that's a very alpha wave if i was looking in the brain and as you start going deeper into stage two then you'd see theta waves and you'll also experience like spindles so some of you will think oh i remember like being in my head bopping and you know or falling asleep that's you falling down deeper into then stage three

which is called non-REM which is delta waves beautiful huge lovely delta waves which is very restorative for the brain and then REM sleep comes along and that a lot of your um a lot of the world will know it as the dreaming state because if we wake up in REM sleep, you'll probably remember your dreams. It's a very active wave. And the only way we know you're in REM sleep is we have a little electrodes on your jaw that show that you're tensing and a little electrodes beside your eyes that show that your rapid eye movement is happening. Men will have an erection and we will go into a paralysis state okay so every 90 minutes you go through all of these stages one two three two one rem and repeat repeat repeat yes sorry every 90 minutes you're repeating those stages yes and they they start to lighten as you start to get towards the end of your sleep.

Okay. Now, every bit is important. When I was first studying this, we were very interested in the deep sleep. What happens when you take deep sleep away? Verbal fluency goes out the window. Risk, impulse control. Sleep is by the brain and for the brain. It's very for that prefrontal cortex that helps you make decisions and plan and sort of time keep. Okay, so it's really important

with regards to health, because it's how we make decisions. How do we plan our day? You know, how do we pick our food? How do we plan our exercise? How do we organize the day? And if we're not organizing it very well, of course, then we get stressed, then we make different choices. And then when we're stressed, we don't sleep as well. Right. So I think this is really important for everyone that's watching or listening to this right now is that this conversation is understanding that if you're getting shitty sleep, like this is why you may be making the choices that you're making. This is maybe why you are feeling the way that you are feeling, like really understanding the psychology behind not just getting great sleep, but more importantly, not getting sleep because so many

people are, you know, my sleep is disruptive. I have a hard time getting to sleep. I wake up in the middle of the night, like everyone's so excited about this conversation. So when we have these follow-up conversations with Alana, for example, tomorrow in regards to sleep hygiene and with Dr. Alinka talking about the health impacts of stress and sleep as well, this is kind of a backstory on that. You, you really want to get into this and really understand what's happening. Like you said, in the brain and how getting a good night's sleep affects you. And more importantly, how not getting the sleep that you need affects you as well. So I just, I just wanted to provide that clarity because I think that, you know, I don't want to have a surface conversation here. I want to, this is such an amazing opportunity to really understand what is going on

when you're dragging your tired ass around all day long. Okay. And help get you insight into what you need to do to get that better sleep as well. Okay. Sorry. Just need to say that. Powerful. You know, we are humans and we run on something called a circadian rhythm now circadian is a latin word circa means about um circadian means about 24 hours so we're running on a cycle and every cell in our body has a clock now this is very different to our biological ticking clock this is our time keeping in our body and it's run by something, well, the hypothalamus is in the back of the brain here. And it's governing everything, our sleepiness, our hunger, our feeling full, our energy, our attention. And it's right here. And what we know about that clock

is daylight is really important because we've got to think about caveman time. We didn't have an alarm clock. We didn't have artificial light. Modern day is messing up our circadian rhythm. Even having 24 hour restaurants is messing up our system because we're starting to all act like shift workers. All of us. us and shift work is has been coined, like in 2007, the World Health Organization has labeled it as a carcinogenic, it's a very dangerous thing to do to be a shift worker, because it's so dangerous for our body clock to be changing, changing, changing. Okay, so what where our clock begins is the minute we wake up and see natural light. It goes into our retina.

Our retina goes into our brain. Penal gland feels it. That clock, it's called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. It's a fancy word, but it's just the clock starts. Okay. And that's the start of saying it's morning. I am now going to turn on everything. I'm going to turn on my pituitary gland. I'm going to turn on my adrenal gland. I am awake. I am energized. Okay. And so that, interestingly, is what then times your production of melatonin is suppressed, we put that away for a while. But every hour then that we're awake,

we're accumulating a need for sleep. Okay, about half an hour for every hour that we're awake, we are needing to now plan to sleep. And so we've got two processes, a circadian rhythm that's going constantly. And that would be, you know, when people feel if you've got a strong circadian rhythm that's going constantly, and that would be, you know, when people feel, if you've got a strong circadian rhythm, you tend to be hungry at the same time. You feel energized at the same time. You feel sleepy at the same time. So there's tests we can do. How strong is your circadian rhythm or how wonky is it? And if it's wonky, we can do things to try and retrain it eat at the same time exercise at the

same time hydrate at the same time then we've got this other process of sleep called the sort of accumulation of wakefulness the longer you're awake you're building this sleep need okay so you're building it building it building it building it, building it. And that's also related to adenosine, which is masked if we have coffee. So we're getting more and more and more and more tired. When we take sleep, I could see you drinking your coffee. It's okay, we'll talk about coffee. And then we replenish. So we hope that these two processes are synchronized. So when they're not synchronized, that's when we will have experienced jet lag, where we arrive at a destination and our circadian rhythm says, you know, we should be awake. Our temperature is up because our temperature is circadian. Our temperature goes up to wake us up and our temperature needs to go down to put us asleep. It's about half a degree. So that's why we say make your room cold 18 and a half degrees because we have to hibernate. We're helping our circadian rhythm. Okay, that's why we use the light. We have bright light in the morning. And as we go into the evening, we're turning the lights down so that we can signal nighttime is approaching.

So that funny feeling of a jet lag happens to a lot of us now because of something called social jet lag. We stay up later on the weekend. We shift ourselves too much. And one hour difference takes us about one hour, one day to repair. So we know, think of the biggest experiment of all, 1.5 billion people experience daylight savings. Now the day after we lose an hour, heart attacks go up, car accidents go up and suicides go up. It's in the data, it's in the hospital data. In spring, when we get an hour back, everything goes back. There's a nice decrease in heart attacks, there's a decrease in car accidents, and there's a decrease in suicide.

So one hour change is really impactful for our body. Okay, so we want to know this and we want to think, okay, when we do that, what happens? We're playing catch up all day. Okay. Our appetite now is off. Here's an interesting fact though, especially for your program, is the timing of food, or actually I should even say the timing of calories. Yes, the light that hits our eye turns on the clock for for sleep and energy but what we've also realized is what we put in our mouth coordinates with that clock to tell our stomach and our tummy and our digestive juices and our gastric tract when to produce a like like all of the juices. So the first thing that has a calorie is the break of the fast,

break fast, okay, breakfast. So you can drink water and that's not going to break the fast, but the minute you even have a coffee that might have milk in it, that's the break of the fast. And that's going to tell your tummy and talk to the clock that I am now ready for the day. So we don't want to mess around too much with timing, which is why your program is so lovely. It's setting out, let's feed our body here. Let's feed our body here. Let's keep ourselves knowing when we're going to anticipate energy. Energy in allows us to do things. And then let's try, the data shows that if we can keep us our, it's called time restricted eating, if we can keep eating within 12 hours, we're more likely to maintain good,

healthy weights. If we keep eating into the night, the brain goes, what? More calories? Oh, I now have to stop what I was doing. I was about to start to regenerate. I was about to start rest and digest what I need to eat again. And so it offsets us. And so we want to try our best to let it know when it's going to happen and try not to eat outside of those 12 hours. If you start, if you break the fast at eight, you want to have had your last calorie intake around 8pm. Yeah, I mean, this is so huge. That's breakfast. It's breaking the fast, right? Like, this is where I think intermittent fasting is like this, the fact that it's come mainstream as a diet has fucked everything up, because everyone's thinking, fasting, dieting,

all of that. But really, the way our bodies are, are, are designed is that when it gets dark outside, again, with the light you're waking up and then when it gets dark outside, your body starts that melatonin production. And then if you go to eat late in the evening, cause you're awake, cause you are on devices, watching TV, do all that. It's very disruptive. You're disrupting that wind down process where your body goes into that repair and rebuilds and does all the things. And then the next day, this is why breakfast is so beneficial. Sure, you can skip it. But you know, even that starting with your lemon water, apple cider vinegar, right, you have that breakfast, you're breaking the fast, you are turning your body on, you are like, Okay, let's go time to

get going. And that gets your body going as opposed to this not eating slow mo kind of like your body just kind of, you know, waking up type of thing. God, I love this conversation. These signals are really important. They really anchor us to know because even if we don't have breakfast an hour later, our body quite quickly will go, okay, I'm going to do something else then I'm going to take my energy. So, but then go okay now i am eating an hour later because it's the weekend it's going what okay hold on i've got to you know adjust and so it's really tricky we want to stop eating so haphazardly okay and then there's other things that are going to be working against us if we have poor sleep if we're if our sleep duration is not good also two very important hormones that are very involved in our sleep

leptin and i can't even think of the second they uh it's like gremlin or something i can't even remember it's not coming to me yes they stop they they get really wonked up yes the hunger home and i'm for hunger hormone and i'm full hormone and so they start going wonky so everything relies on regularity and that my professor um i'd kevin morgan who was my insomnia press he always said regularity is the key you know it's the guardian of sleep you, it's the guardian of sleep. You know, it's the guardian of everything. It's the guardian of health. You know, try and eat in a pattern, try and exercise in a pattern, try and hydrate in a pattern. And your body then can anticipate where we're at, what we're doing. Yeah. And this is what people have been doing now in the last

few weeks, kind of establishing that routine. And then gradually, we make changes to that routine to get more in tune to the body's needs. Because eating six times a day is not normal. You have your migrating motor complex that kicks in in between meals and snacks. But in order to get to that place where you are actually in tune with when to eat, what to eat, how much to eat, you have to reestablish that routine. And you have to help the body calm down from the stress of not just the routine and the changes that you're making now but all the stuff you put your body through before the starving the depriving the lack of sleep the lack of movement lack of sun like all of it right so this is where we're kind of pulling it all together okay Okay. Ah, love this. And your program is perfectly timed because it takes 12

weeks to gradually change our genes, the effect on our genes. Like it starts happening and because our environment is strong, it's going to be, you know, communicating to our DNA. This is what it is. This is so it can be so slow and steady. It starts going, okay, I get it now. I get it. I know the math. Yes. And that's what we're trying to do. Get the body to make change, but in the least stressful way. So routine is really important. And 12 weeks is exactly why each program is 91 days. And it's expected that you're going to do another round, another round, another round until you reach your goal. You start and then you end. And then each time you have an opportunity to level up. Okay. A couple of things then. Um, I mean, someone's talking about how does going to bed

hungry impact your sleep, but you shouldn't be hungry when following the Libby method. That's the whole thing. You're eating breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, snack dinner. So if you're hungry going to bed, you're either skipping meals and snacks or you are not making your food choices nutrient rich or you are not eating enough meaning eating dissatisfaction with each meal and snack so the body has no natural need to be eating something late at night especially if you've eaten all day long yes and and it might be the classic classical conditioning so remember classical conditioning is pavlov's dogs for anybody that can't remember that it's that brilliant experiment that pavlov was was it wasn't nice studying on dogs and when he would go and open the cupboard and open the

bag for the the food the dogs salivate. Now salivation is a physical reaction. It's automatic. They haven't said, I know I'll produce saliva. It's happening because they're anticipating food. And what he realized was this is very predictable. The bag of food equals saliva. The bag of food equals saliva. Then he paired the bag of food with a bell. I'm going to ring the bell just before the bag of food is presented then he paired the bag of food with a bell i'm going to ring the bell just before the bag of food is presented ring it keep on doing it for a few days and then of course we all know if we own pets that just opening that cupboard down runs elvis or down runs rocky the cat because they're anticipating food now unfortunately, is very, well, most of our behaviors are so classically conditioned.

If we have associated bed with hunger, or bed with worry, or bed with, you know, churning through the whole day, that's going to be classically conditioned. So some people will happily fall asleep on their sofa downstairs, take themselves upstairs to bed and then their brain is on or their hangers on because that's where they've done that behavior. So it's about slowly extinguishing it. It's about not being in bed if we're not asleep and it's about not worrying in bed. If we've noticed we're worrying, we want to get up and worry somewhere else. Or just like even the eating example, we would set aside worry time. We'd set aside a time during the day to think, let's think through those things that are going to be swirling in my mind tonight. And that's called cognitive reframing. So that's a very important part of CBTI that we we address our um there's

like four parts behavioral part cognitive part what are we thinking the educational part relaxation and then the sleep hygiene bit so it's you're very right people might think I'm hungry but it might be because they that's that's where they've always taken food or they're in a habit of eating at that time. So their body is going to go feed me, feed me please. So it's slow and steady. Yeah. And it's like a, it's like a, that trigger, right? To like, you know, Grey's Anatomy, I want sour cumin on chips and wine. Um, you mentioned, um, you were talking like daylight and then darkness. So what's happening, you know, right now, especially in the wintertime, I mean, this is what happens.

We were talking yesterday on the live about how losing weight in the wintertime is different because your body's in this hibernation mode, right? You don't want salads and fruit. You want heavier, heartier carbs, fatty meats, soups and stews, warm foods, your, your vitamin D levels are dropping. This is why you've got to keep those vitamin D levels up. But what's happening in you know, when it's when it's like dark at four o'clock. So we want to know it and we want to plan we want to know get out in this in the bright light, you know, go out through open your curtains and let the natural light hit your eyes. We want to be out. We want to be moving because even in overcast, even in cloud,

you know, we've got cloud today in the lovely light snow. It's coming through. Sunlight is coming through and it's it's it's going into the retina, go to the penile gland, telling the suprachiasmatic nucleus it is daytime. And then we want to think, okay, let's be mindful of our lighting in the evening. You know, me sitting in front of this computer would not be ideal because it's going to tell, it's going to confuse my melatonin. It's going to say, hang on, I was starting to produce melatonin because it was seemingly approaching nighttime, but now she's put these bright lights on. Okay. And that can happen with our phones or our tablets or our screens. It is not responsible for as much as we often thought it did, but it really is going to affect us if we're poor sleepers. You know, we know that there's really good sleepers that can do anything

and it doesn't seem to budge them you know but if we're fragile sleepers we want to be mindful of the things just to support it having said that I also don't want to have poor sleepers overthink it because one of the classic things that happen is we become hyper vigilant everything is about sleep I must have the eye must have the noise maker i must have the weighted blanket and now we've overdone it okay because if we ask a good sleeper how do you do it they don't know it's just automatic automaticity is the key okay that's another part of cbti paradoxical intention will tell you never try to sleep if you you try to sleep, it's going to run faster away from you.

That's not how we get sleep. We have to give up trying and we want to read a book or we want to listen to our audible and sleep will come back to us. You know, think of it as a dove. If you just leave the dove be, it'll stay. If you look or concentrate at the dove, it's going to fly away. It's so elusive. Sleep will just, so we don't want to try. And even with our little ones, I don't tell Leo, you know, try to go to sleep. I'll say, let's say night-night to every part of our body. Night-night eyes, night-night nose, night-night lips.

And I'll do a body scan of just night night just rest rest your body and so I never say try because the trying is counterintuitive that's effort and sleep is not effortful okay it's like anything if we want to have a you know raging orgasm it's very hard if you try it I must have one I must have one you know it's not gonna work you know I guess that's the psychology behind it right yeah we're stressing ourselves out about stressing out about not getting enough sleep um so what happens then when when you're eating like when do we eat at night like what's you know obviously we want to eat as early in the evening as possible but when it's dark so early in the winter time like try and think of the 12 hours as a nice

marker because it makes it eat we want to do stuff that's easy for us so think okay if i've eaten if i've broken my fast at around eight i want to try and have finished calorie intake by eight at night and and then you know you can still have your water but you want to be mindful thereafter and it might take you a little while but just slowly bring it closer because now you know the why you're like ah i'm waking up my digestive system and it's going to expect it tomorrow night and you know my body needs to have a chance to to restore and rejuvenate. So I want to give it a chance. So instead of thinking you're not allowed, or I'm going to deprive myself, it's knowing the why it's thinking, okay, I understand this now. Yes. I think that that's the whole point of these conversations

to me, when you have that deeper level of understanding, it makes all the difference. And this is why, you know, as we, the winter program is rolling into spring, the days are getting longer, you know, definitely gets makes it a lot easier for us to do the things that we need to do, because we have more time to do them as well. That's why this the spring summer program so effective as well. I do want to mention so if you get up, you know, if you eat at eight, you know, try to finish eating around eight, if you are skipping breakfast breakfast and then you're thinking, well, I have my first, I skip breakfast and I eat at 10 so I can push back 10 into the night. No, because if you're having your lemon water, you're having your coffee, you know, that's still breaking the fast and getting that digestive system going. And you still don't want to be eating that late into the night. So that's just uh just to give you a little guideline yes good it's a good a good guideline um and we've got to know we've got to know if we get better sleep by not demanding it's doing so much at bedtime like you know if we've just eaten it's going to be busy digesting, we're going to be more likely

to have fragmented sleep or indigestion, then it starts the spiral again, because our glucose control instantly changes when we have poor sleep. So now we're already if we're having shorter sleep, more likely and at a higher risk of diabetes, that the list is scary. That's the trouble. And I don't want to list what happens, but we just want to prioritize sleep because when it's not there, our whole body starts to suffer. You know, it's... New year, new me. Season is here. And honestly, we're already over it. Enter Felix, the healthcare company helping Canadians take a different approach to weight loss this year. Weight loss is more than just diet and exercise. It can be about tackling genetics, hormones, metabolism.

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In what way? Let's talk about that. Because it's like I used to talk about water and talk to people about the benefits of hydration. And then I realized it wasn't really having the impact. Then I started showing people the impact of dehydration. And people were like, oh, shit, I actually need to be more concerned about dehydration health wise than I do drinking too much water at the end of the day. So can we talk about that? Like what's happening when you're consistently not getting enough sleep? You talked about glucose production. You know, Dr. Link is going to talk about your hormones and how your hormones are affected when you're not getting enough sleep. Like it actually is really affecting

you beyond just dragging your ass around and being tired all day. Yes, you you a lot of it is intuitive, you can you can probably guess it, you can see it, if you don't sleep, you're going to be stressed, cortisol is up, inflammation is up, therefore pain will increase. We know pain and sleep have a bidirectional relationship. If we're in pain, it's very hard to sleep and if we're not sleeping we experience more pain so an experiment would be to sleep deprive you and then see how much pain you can tolerate and of course we can't tolerate as much as why it's a torture it's used to torture people sleep sleep deprivation um what happens to our glucose control is we're not able to absorb insulin the absorption of insulin starts to change and then that's really difficult is we're not able to absorb insulin the absorption of insulin starts to change

and then that's really difficult because we're not absorbing the energy and then when we look at our blood sugar levels it's really really high and then we're going to be on the slippery slope to obesity now we also know that if we're not sleeping well our perception of our ability to have energy we're not going to feel energy, we're not going to feel like moving, we're not going to feel like exercising. So now we have a behavioral or a lifestyle choice coming in as well. So we've got this, the biology changing, but also we've got our what we do in the day changing. Now we might not be going out for a walk not be moving our body maybe not socializing because when we are sleep deprived especially if we're losing REM sleep that's our social

sort of ability to dance and be um uh feel good emotional regulation so we might not go out as much or we might not um feel like we're doing as well in work. I developed this questionnaire called the Occupational Impact of Sleep Questionnaire. So we even feel like we perform worse at work when we're not sleeping well. So then all of this is going to have an impact on our body. You know, because if we're not enjoying work, then we're not feeling good. We're not hanging out with our friends. We start to just hibernate more. We start to slow down and then there goes our regularity. Now we might, you know,

reach for the crisps or we might miss going for our walk or we might stay up late because now we're more inclined to keep watching Netflix, you know, because it's very hard to break. When our sleepy brain is on, it's why Vegas works, you know, we have very little impulse control, okay? We're going to be more reactive. We're going to say, okay, just one more episode of Grey's Anatomy, just one more bowl of crisps, you know, because our brain is so sleepy. It's going to make all the wrong decisions. And so when I was at Loughborough, they teamed up with the, at the time, it's called the Eating Disorders Clinic, and they sleep deprived the students for 48 hours. And then they watched, they watched what happens.

And so they would have sort of betting games a little bit like monopoly or and they would bet their money and then they would watch what food they ate so there would be the healthy options sort of scattered in there and also the higher you know carbohydrate and the fatty more fatty foods and of course a sleepy brain reaches for that so the the salt, the heavy carbohydrates, so we start overloading on that. Then we feel sluggish, then we don't move. So what's happening is a huge amount. Our biology is changing on the inside, but our outside world is also changing because we're not turning up as we would have been. I hope that the people listening are having a massive aha moment here where they're like, Oh, maybe my having that cookie or having this thing is not willpower at

all. It's the fact that I, I don't get great sleep and that's what's causing this my sensitivity to to insulin and in the sense of you know your your your um your your insulin is what your body secretes because i you know i'm mindful people may not be you know up on all of these terms when you take in foods to allow your body to use the energy from those foods and um you know insulin a people, insulin resistance, want to blame on weight issues and how that factors. And we're going to get into that more with Dr. Link on Friday. But I hope that there's a lot of people having a lot of aha moments that their struggle with weight, a lot of that is not in the in, you know, what they're eating and when following the food plan, that their key can really be in managing their either sleep, and their stress. And this is why we have such a

huge emphasis on that this week. This is such a huge, important conversation because it just affects everything. It affects how your body is actually functioning, how your brain is functioning, the decisions that you're making, the mood that you're in, I would imagine is affected as well with your sleep. So when you're thinking, oh my God, I'm so frustrated and I'm this and I'm that. And a big part of that is just, you are trying to focus on doing these things, prioritize yourself with the program, make these good choices for yourself and realizing it's hard. Meanwhile, not associating the fact that you're not sleeping well. Yeah.

Being a big, big reason behind that. One of the interesting parts of my study was when we sleep deprive people, we would give them a test the next day. And one of them was something called the Tower of Hanoi or Tower of London, some people call it. And it's a task. The only way you can win is to take a step back. Okay. It's one of these sort of, you've got to get all of these things onto this run. But people that are sleepy will not take the step back. They push, they're like perseverantly. They're like, no, I'm going to do it this way. I'm going to do it this way. Or they're all or nothing. Okay. I'm going to give up. So I'm going to do it this way or they're all or nothing okay I'm going to give up so we've got sleep is powerful for that so if we give ourselves more sleep we're

probably more able to say okay so that's all right I missed that but I'm going to get back on track because we're able to take the step back and think okay reset reset restart I'm okay and of course that emotional regulation piece if we haven't got sleep, then we're going to be very quick to our internal critic. I'm this, I'm that, or it's their fault, it's the world's fault. You know, they've done this to me, and not be able to see, okay, you know, it's even impossible to use our language, our prefrontal cortex, the left side that's in charge of language. If I gave you a verbal fluency test after a sleep deprived night, you know, we all have that like word finding like, oh my goodness, I can't find my words. That's how hard it is. So it's a scramble so we can't even talk nicely to ourselves when we're sleepy and because you can't bank sleep you can't make up for sleep that you've lost what is then the impact of continually not getting a great night's it's not good it's a you it's a you shape that too much like too much and the

data would say probably when we're looking at too much sleep it's probably because somebody's not well remember there's going to probably be a lot of people that are not well that are in bed all the time sleeping and too little the you the other is going to be mortality and morbidity. Our life will be shorter. It's just a fact. Dementia, Alzheimer's, heart attacks, all the bad stuff come quicker. So we want to look after our sleep and we want to think it really matters. It is the pillar of health. It's at the center of everything.

If we go without sleep, we will die. And so we want to get on top of health. It's at the center of everything. If we go without sleep, we will die. And so we want to get on top of it. And we want to think, what are we doing that perpetuates it? So you've all heard me talk about the five Ps. Well, to make it simple for insomnia, it's three Ps. What are you presenting with insomnia? Why? Or we'll talk about sleep apnea and restless leg syndrome and other other sleep disorders when did it start precipitating factor somebody might say actually it started during covid or it started when i had my first baby or it started when i had my hysterectomy when did it start um um were you like that when you were a little person you know were you always a fragile sleeper because we know that people are very different, identical twins, and we can have a good sleeper

and a poor sleeper. So what were we like? And then perpetuating factors of what are we doing that keeps it poor? Okay, so it might have been years ago that we had our babies, or it could have been years ago when that thing happened. But what's happened? And that's often the behavioral things, but also the cognitive things, behavioral things, things like starting to rely on coffee, or thinking that CBD is going to help or not going to work out because you are too tired. All of these things are going to impact. And then cognitively, you're going to start thinking differently about sleep. I must sleep. I must get into bed. If I don't sleep, I'm not going to function. And of course,

cognitive activation is not going to help you sleep. Then we'll start blaming everything on our sleep. So we've got to start adjusting our beliefs about sleep and think it's okay, let's just gently look at this and let's get it back. And I should remind, that remind me to tell people, be careful of caffeine. Caffeine is potent. It's like, you know, it's a psychoactive stimulant, you know, it has got a half-life of about six or seven hours. That means it stays in your body at half-life for six or seven hours, and a quarter-life of about 12 hours. This is the easier way to say it. So if you have your last coffee at 12 o'clock midday, at 12 o'clock midnight, you've still got a quarter of that coffee in you. So that would be like

waking up in bed at midnight and drinking a quarter of your Starbucks. Okay, so it lasts a long time. Now, some of us have different genes that can metabolize it slightly differently and faster, but it's potent. And when we wake up, when we've got caffeine in our body, because that adenosine hasn't been able to leave, we wake up groggy. We wake up feeling like we didn't sleep well. And what do we do when that happens? We reach for more coffee. So it's a vicious cycle. So we want to be thinking,

how can we learn and how can we just incorporate some of these good lessons, regularity being the most important for our sleep. Just mindful of time. So what do we do? Do we try to catch a nap in the afternoon? I know, again, we're going to be talking all week. We're going to be sharing some tips on trying to make sure you're facilitating great sleep. We're just starting this conversation today, right? We're going to be facilitating it all week long.

But do we still work out even when we're not tired? Do we take a nap mid afternoon? Like do we just power through our day trying to get more tired for the night? Or do we be like, I'm tired today, so I'm going to do nothing and then try to catch a nap. You've got the hang of it. You've really got that because you want to build up the sleep need. So if we take sleep too close to bedtime, we've eaten before, you know, we've snacked before our meal, if you want to use that analogy. So we want to build the sleep need so that then it comes quicker when our bed, our head hits the pillow, because the longer we're awake in

bed, the longer we're going to be awake in bed, because we've invited the opportunity for thinking. But naps are very powerful. If you are not a person with insomnia, so we want to find out what is your presentation. If you truly are sleep deprived, if you haven't got the opportunity to sleep, and you're only sleeping for six hours, say, we want to then be able to give you more. And so a well-timed intentional nap is very, very powerful. And that doesn't mean falling asleep on the sofa and dozing. That's not an intentional nap. An intentional nap is I am now going to set up a time that I'm going to take myself somewhere else. I'm going to put, you know, shut the curtains, tell everybody I'm having a 20 minute, 40 minute nap. I'm going to go to sleep.

Okay. And it's, we have to practice that. When I work with high top athletes, I'm having a 20 minute, 40 minute nap. I'm going to go to sleep. Okay. And it's, we have to practice that when I work with high top athletes, I'm teaching them how to nap because they need to, they need to, and it's going to make the difference with their, their speed. It makes a difference to our adolescence grades. You know, it can be the difference between a C grade and an A grade because our adolescents are not sleep, they're chronically sleep deprived. And that's because of this wonky circadian rhythm. So to train and nap is really important. Our adolescents aren't lazy when they sleep.

We want them to, it protects them from depression, anxiety and suicide and they perform better. So we want to find that time for individuals, you know, to think, okay, if we were in Spain, we'd be having our siesta. So we're going to follow it and we're going to plan it. And then we're going to understand the nap. The nap is going to start taking you into those stages, the one, two, three REM. Okay. So a 20 minute nap is pretty good. Okay. It's going to take the edge off and we're going to notice that productivity,

cognitive clarity, verbal fluency, impulse control improves. We've always got to be mindful of something called inertia, the grogginess afterwards. Okay. So a 20 minute nap often will wash out quite quickly. We can go, okay, this means setting an alarm, not just free, free go. Cause if we free go, we might be asleep for two hours. And that's going to be hard to wake up from. That's like a worn out syndrome where we're like, oh, I wish I hadn't even got to sleep now. I feel like I've got the flu. So the longer the nap, the longer the inertia,

the longer the grogginess when we wake. So we just need to experiment when you want to think, is this 10 minute nap working? Boom. Okay okay maybe give yourself five minutes extra to get to sleep 10 minutes nap alarm goes off and then you proceed as you would in the morning your alarm goes off your feet go on the floor and up you get because your your body follows your feet because you do not want to be snoozing Don't press the snooze because you go back into those sleep stages. Okay. And your body goes, uh, and it's not, it's not, it's not good sleep at that point.

Yeah. So the nap, very powerful. More tired. Well, this is why those nuts and seeds are in there for that second afternoon snack or one of the reasons, because our body, you mentioned siesta, our bodies are wired to take a dip in energy at that time, that late afternoon. And if you can catch a nap, great, a planned 20 minute nap, amazing. But most of us can't, we have to keep working. We have to keep doing. And this is where a lot of people will go looking for another cup of coffee around that time or a chocolate or something to give us sugar to pick up our energy. And so just another reason why, again, the food plan in the program is so amazing because I just love the way this is all fitted in.

It is. It really is well-timed. I love it because I even know it. And plan it. Think, okay, I'm going to have my nuts and I know I'm not brilliant at that time in the afternoon, so I'm not going to plan a meeting. meeting I'm gonna try and go for a walk or I'm gonna do something that's a little easier until it passes until I get my second my surge okay so so oh gosh we get so much isn't there because I didn't talk to you about sleep apnea or and or insomnia but it's really it, but it's brilliant. There's so much about sleep.

Well, again, this is just to highlight, this is to get the conversation started this week. Where do you, because I know you do, I'm going to talk to you about, I think you do sleep clinics. Do you do sleep clinics? Yes, yes. So anybody that, like if anybody is thinking, I can't get to sleep, I can't stay asleep,

or I wake up feeling unrefreshed. And if anybody thinks they hit the criteria for insomnia, I offer a cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia workshop. It's six weeks and it talks in detail about all of these things, you know, everything. So the clock, the sleep clock, the circadian clock, what's going on. And it goes through it in a very methodical way in a line with the standards, we have to teach this. And then by the end, we want to see your scores change, you know, sleep satisfaction, sleep duration, everything, and then mood. Um, so that by my

first group of the year is just sold out. So I just opened another one because I know so many of you want to come, which is really lovely and really exciting. So do it fast. I'm going to start that April 2nd. I did it on Tuesday, Gina. So it doesn't clash with your Mondays I was mindful I was like okay we'll get people in touch with you um I'm not done yet though yourpsychologycenter.ca is where people can reach out to you but before we go how does like what is like how does someone know if they have insomnia what's the difference between someone who like a mom who's just, I don't know, her stressed about her kids or maybe they have young kids or someone in menopause. A lot of women, I hear menopause every, you know, third question in there it's menopause, or it's just like, I'm really stressed. You know, it's tax

season. I'm on accountant. My brain is going, or I just, you know, I've created really shitty sleep habits for me, or I'm just drinking too much caffeine and I'm, you know, I've created really shitty sleep habits for me, or I'm just drinking too much caffeine and I'm, you know, I'm, I'm not eating till later in the day or I, you know, like, how do we, like, what do all of those, can all of those fall under insomnia? It can all be part of it. Absolutely. Okay. So the definition of insomnia is at least three nights per week and at least three months where it's really difficult okay so with the opportunity to sleep so this is where it might take it out it's going to take somebody that's a shift worker out of insomnia because that could be that would be a circadian rhythm piece that we'd be working on. If you haven't got the chance to sleep,

you know, if say you've only got five hours a night to sleep, you might not be in insomnia, you might be sleep deprived because you don't have the opportunity. So this is when you have the opportunity to get eight hours, but you can't. Okay. And so there's no other sleep disorder. There's no substance that is related to it, but bearing in mind, coffee's going to, um, and we want to just see that it's there. Now it's very different to, to actual chronic sleep deprivation. Somebody with insomnia is very unlikely to fall asleep very quickly in front of me. Okay. And, and interestingly, well, it's not interesting. That is their difficulty is to fall asleep very quickly in front of me. Okay. And interestingly, well, it's not interesting. That is their difficulty is to fall asleep.

So it makes sense. So when we would bring them into the clinic, there would be this sort of discrepancy. We think, well, you know, they can't fall asleep quickly. So they're not sleep deprived, but that's not their problem. Now, so we changed the question. We would say, try and stay awake for as long as possible. And of course, when we ask people to do that, you fall asleep quicker, because you've taken away the pressure. Now, chronic sleep deprivation is very, very dangerous. And very, it's, you know, we don't want it to go unmarked. And that's where maybe sleep apnea, you know, if you if you are struggling to stay awake. And so question is, like the Epworth sleepiness scale would ask, you know, how likely are you going to fall asleep if you're having a conversation, watching a movie,

sitting in a car? Because that is how tired you are. So if you're falling asleep within a minute, you're probably sleep deprived. Normal sleep onset latency is about 10 to 15 minutes. That's okay. But if you are like that, or if you're not able to stay awake for meetings, then it's likely that you're not having enough sleep. And that's slightly different work. We would work on getting you more sleep and probably prescribing the nap. And with new mums or mums sleeping when our children sleep or trying to recruit some support. Okay, so sleep apnea is where we're thinking we're getting sleep, but we're not getting our deep levels because as we're falling asleep, our airway will close, our brain will signal there's not enough oxygen and we'll snore or

splutter. Okay, so now we're not going down into restorative sleep. So we wake up thinking I had my sleep, but wow, I can't function and I'm gaining weight and I can't keep a clear head and I can't think through words. So then we would refer for a sleep study, an overnight study, where they would be able to measure oxygen saturation. And there's good treatment for that. And if we follow the treatment and if we can adhere to as much as we can, lots of people find the sleep apnea machine very difficult. That keeps the airway open. But if we can adhere to it for the majority of the night, our quality of life changes. It's a lifesaver

because being sleepy kills people. It's more dangerous than driving drunk because you won't know that you're asleep. You won't put your foot on the pedal, the brake, you will just crash. Okay. So we want to take it seriously. And if anybody wants to know, do I think I have sleep apnea? What was the acronym? Stop bang. It was, are you snoring? Are you tired? I don't like the word tired because tired is very different to sleepy. Sleepy is that, you know, so are you tired?

Are you overweight? Are you, I'm trying to remember the stop man uh i can't even remember it let me see um you you look at that up for a second and um oh here here it is so yes snoring tiredness has someone observed it is somebody hearing you splatter or snoring? Have you got high blood pressure? Is your BMI greater than 35? Age is a risk factor over 50.

Neck circumference and unfortunately also gender. But the main thing is, are you sleepy even when you think you've been asleep? And is somebody saying, hey hey you're snoring all night yeah and go and see okay this is a lot sorry gina i've overdone it no it's it's not you because i want to just keep having this conversation with you i think it's so it's a really aha moment for me too when i'm like really excited how it's all coming together think it's so it's a really aha moment for me to what I'm like, really excited how it's all coming together, because it's really exciting as people might be like, Oh, my gosh, I am so overwhelmed. But if you are following the living method, you're already

doing so much. So we're already doing so much. You're helping your sleep by already incorporating regularity, and predictability predictability and security knowing that food comes we don't have to be stressed we don't have to think when is that meal coming and and we can start feeling confidence and empowerment and it's it's really good because it doesn't matter where we start we just need to start to change the cycle. It's brilliant. Yeah, and it's all, it's not just that, it's all the little things that you're going to be doing over the course of the next few months that are gonna pull together,

that are gonna impact everything in your life, including your sleep and your stress and all those things. That's why I love that maximizing post. It's really how it all works together because it's not any one thing that you're doing that's gonna help you lose weight. It's all the things that you are doing in combination. Um, okay. I don't, I'm just so excited about the sleep conversation. I just, I want to have more of it. You're going to sleep well tonight. Cause when we teach,

when we teach anything new, we would use to take the students students on a on a novel day out and when we learn stuff and when we socialize we see a huge increase in delta on that that following night because our brain needs to cool off and it's so brilliant so take a sleep because remember you know learning um applying things we need to sleep so that our learning goes in you know oh it's lovely it is yes we'll get it is it is lovely and again if you're listening we're just starting this conversation this week we're going to be back tomorrow with alana and then dr alinka on thursday and then no doubt we'll probably revisit it perhaps later on in the program when people have already had an opportunity to do so many things that can actually make a

difference after they hear what we have to say this week, start making changes. Maybe we'll have you back at the end of the program and we'll dig a little deeper into it. Dr. Beverly, as always, thank you so much. You can reach Dr. Beverly at yourpsychologycenter.ca. And you are sharing some fun tips over on Instagram. So yes, I'm getting brave, Gina. I'm going to start because I have tidbits, you know, the things that you tell people and you forget they're really important. I just want them out there.

So somebody might go, go yes that one fits for me or that one will work for my little person or so i'm good i'm being brave oh yeah well it's a great outlet you have this gift it needs to be shared and you have this knowledge and that's what we love about not just you but all of our guests that come on dr dr beverly is the your instagram account um i actually shared your one yesterday you were out and i was talking about that on the live last night okay that's our time for today otherwise i'm gonna i'm gonna keep dr beverly here all day um thanks everyone i hope that you found this super informative i hope that you've had a few aha moments i hope that you're not feeling overwhelmed, but also really excited because

there is so much that you can do to be really proactive in terms of, you know, seeing improvements in your sleep. And I also hope that you really understand how important it is that you focus on getting better sleep and stress. I will add that in there, which is all part of the same thing. For a lot of people, that can be their ticket to really getting and keeping that scale moving. It's like, yeah, follow the routine, eat what you need to eat, drink the water, do all that.

But it's really in the maximizing of the other things like your sleep that can really have a big impact. Final words, Dr. Beverly, before we go. I love this.'s all and I think that's it sometimes we need to find something we love because in the you know it's a 24 hour clock it's not just day and night what we do in the day goes into our night you know the happier we are how we're addressing things just be kind to yourself you know it'll come and this is like you said a brilliant program to help people start being just regular and providing that routine

so yeah thank you for letting me talk about my favorite thing thank you for joining me and thanks everyone uh for watching and listening Have a good day and get some sleep. Yes. Pilates era or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power.

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