The Livy Method Podcast - The Psychology of Sleep with Dr. Beverley David - Spring 2025

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

In this episode, Gina and Dr. Beverley are talking psychology and sleep. Dr. Beverley breaks down why sleep is more than just rest—it's brain maintenance. She explains how sleep affects everything from your mood to your hormones to your ability to make solid choices during the day. If you’ve ever felt like you’re doing everything right but still struggling, your sleep might be the missing piece. From why you can’t actually “catch up” on lost sleep to how your daily habits shape your nights, this conversation shifts the way you think about winding down. Dr. B also gets into what’s happening in each sleep stage, whether or not working out late is a good idea, and how to track your sleep without adding pressure. Plus—spoiler alert—men and women do experience sleep differently. The takeaway? Sleep isn’t just part of your wellness routine—it is the routine.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.Find Dr. Beverley:https://www.yourpsychologycentre.ca/@drdrbeverleyYou can find the full video hosted at:https://www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodspring2025To learn more about The Livy Method, visit www.ginalivy.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Gina Livi and welcome to the Livi 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 relisten 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. This is an opportunity to become curious. To learn some things. How do we help you feel less overwhelmed so you can continue on your journey? Keep believing in yourself and keep trusting the process. Just be patient.

Whether you're trying to lose weight, maintain your weight, or just live your life, sleep is so important, but especially when it comes to weight loss, it's even more important. I think somewhat just as important as what to eat and when. And here to talk about it today is clinical psychologist, Dr. Beverly David.

Now you may be expecting someone to talk about sleep hygiene and how to manage your stress, and that's coming tomorrow with Alana McGinn. But we're gonna talk about what's happening with your brain and how does that affect the choices that you are making when you're not getting the sleep that you need. Hello. Hi, Dr. Beverly. Hello, Gina.

Happy location. Thank you. I am live in beautiful St. Lucia here at the Harbor Club. We are scoping out potential retreat places, which of course Dr. B will have to come and join us because you know, getting sleep on vacation also equally important. I mean, it is a game changer. When you are removed from your life,

it's amazing how much better you sleep when, you know, I can't do much about what's going on with my kids or my dog or, you know, work and whatnot. Just being away really helps with our sleep. Before I get into talking about it, I know we have a lot of new people joining us. So why, as a psychologist, are you joining us to talk about sleep and where did your love of sleep come from?

Oh, well, psychology includes sleep. So when you do your undergrad in, my first undergrad was human psychology and it's a very big part of that because we know sleep is so important to being a human and it's all about our thoughts, our feelings, our behaviour. So without looking at sleep we would be missing a huge part of being a human. So I was very lucky to go to Loughborough University where we had a famous sleep research lab run by Jim Horne, the first ever author of Why Do We Sleep? And sadly he passed a couple of years ago. But that was where I first bit my teeth in sleep, started to watch how

we would deprive students of their sleep and watch to see what happens to the brain when we remove sleep and what happens to the brain when we give it back to them. After my first degree, then I went away, had some rest because my brain was tired, worked for Disney, came back and then did a Masters in Health Psychology that also led to the importance of sleep. And that my focus was cancer on that occasion, but sleep was so important to recovery and managing the grueling medications and the schedules and things like that. So then I ended up doing a PhD in sleep, my first PhD, totally loved it and was looking at insomnia,

what makes people with insomnia different, how do we repair insomnia by understanding what goes wrong in the first place and then writing cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia booklets and work workshops for them people to be able to access it. And then my final PhD, because I have the two, was clinical psychology, looking through the lifespan. And I was able to bring it back even in that part of my research. And I looked at how to improve sleep in hospitals, because we absolutely know we need to recover, we need to repair, we need to restore. And often hospitals, we don't get very good sleep with the machines and the lighting. So it runs through all of psychology. I will cover it always with clients at whatever age,

whether we're helping our new little ones to sleep or whether we have lost our own sleep and we don't know how to get it back. So it's very important. Yeah, I want to- Thank you for asking. I want to, oh, I think people, I think it it's I think I love that you shared that because one it talks about your passion for actually you know talking about sleep and helping people

get better sleep and you do run some sleep clinics and we'll give people some more information about that. But you know when it comes to weight loss specifically or making any kind of change in your life, I think a lot of times people think that they don't have willpower. Why can't I do this or why am I not doing that? And when you're not getting sleep, it's not just affecting your energy, it's affecting your brain and the choices that you are making. And it does affect your body. And we're going to talk to Dr. Alinko on Thursday about how it can really mess with your hormones. But what is the role of sleep? Why does our body need sleep?

So let's start there. Let's just start there. Why we need it, because so many people will say, oh, I don't have time for sleep. I'll sleep when I'm dead. I'm fine. And now obviously, before we get into this, there are people who can't get more sleep.

And it's not about that if you're a ship worker, it's about getting better quality sleep. And we're gonna have Alana join us for more tips tomorrow, but I want you to understand why it's so important to make an attempt to get better sleep. So why do we need sleep? So first of all, sleep is for the brain by the brain. That means the brain makes us sleep. The brain holds a clock inside of it that says, okay, we need to sleep every day, every 24 hours. So it's for the brain by the brain. We used to think it was just for the body. Why do we sleep a third of our lives? Is it for the body? And interestingly, a lot happens during our sleep, during our eyes being closed, mitosis, cell division, body recovery,

things like that. But a lot of that will happen even if you're resting. So when we were able to look into the brain and think what is happening when we close our eyes and we find sleep, that's where the magic happens. And we used to think about there being core sleep and optional sleep but now we know that every part of sleep is very important for all of our brains because our cells talk to one another, our lobes talk to one another and the particular parts of our brain are very active in how we move through life. So when we do take something away as mean psychologists and researchers do, that's where we start seeing well what was its function when we remove what we see happen. Well first of

all probably everybody here realizes the next day they don't feel very bright, they don't feel as fast, they don't feel as sharp, they might notice their verbal capacity or verbal fluency leaves them, you know, you're still learning the words, word finding is difficult, and that very prefrontal cortex, that's the very front of our brain and to the left where our language is stored. So we fumble, okay, thought processing like helicoptering out, seeing the bigger picture, that is is effective. So we have a lot more trouble planning and executing and having patience. We have a lot of trouble with impulse control. So that is, you know, that's important in every part of our life. But if we're thinking about food and food choices or movement and exercise and what's good for,

if we're impulsive, we might do the thing that we didn't mean to do, or we might be impulsive with our internal thought. I'm so stupid, I'm gonna fail. Because of course impulsivity is also the speed of our internal critic. Emotional regulation, we're learning more and more and more about now the role in sleep with emotions.

Our rapid eye movement is very important for being able to then hold space for ourselves, manage anxiety, manage depression, low mood, and emotionally regulate through the day. And when we sleep deprived, we notice even that is really affected. So it's for everything. The role of sleep, if we think about it, it's absolutely washing the brain. So we're getting rid of toxins and it's very, it's not nice toxins that are building up. So plaques and amblyloids, we want to wash

the sponge. This is our brain. we want to wash it every night and be able to wake up with it feeling fresh. Also, when we wash it, we're putting memories where they should go. So that the next day we can build new memories. So we need sleep in order to make memories. But we also need sleep to make room for memories. Okay, so we need both sides of our day, in order to make memories, but we also need sleep to make room for memories. Okay, so we need both sides of our day in order to learn, we need to have been rested and in order to put it down into long-term memory, we then need to sleep.

The other thing is then also that emotional regulation piece. Yeah. So important. And then Dr. Alinka will be talking about it, but absolutely the hormones. Our brain tells us when to release hormones, so it's going to impact our insulin sensitivity, our hunger cues, our fullness cues. And so when we used to put the students into the eating lab, we had an eating disorders clinic as well.

If we sleep deprive our students, we immediately see different choices with foods, quantities, when do they feel full, what do they reach for, as well as risky behaviours. We would also have a casino sort of idea. And what do we do when we have less sleep? We're risky. We think, ah, you know, I'm going to put that extra thing on my plate, as it were, or we're going to put that extra money down at the roulette wheel. So it really is everything. Memories, flushing toxins, emotional regulation, and that's included in everything that we do as human beings. Yeah, I want people who are listening, especially the first time, to go back and rewatch that

last, that last segments, because it's so important. You can see how it really factors into weight loss, especially why you don't want to be eating late at night. Because when you're eating late at night and after dinner, that really affects your body ability to do everything it needs to do with your sleep. And then it affects the choices that you're making and it affects how your body is processing, digesting your foods. It affects everything. And this is why I say people really underestimate the importance of sleep. They're like, oh yeah, it's fine. It's not the sleep. it must be what I'm eating or the lack of exercise. Unfortunately, it's unfortunate that the world, the world that we lived in started just to

prioritize work, work, work and artificial light was created. We no longer went to bed when the sun went down and rose when the sun woke and the cock crowed. Now we can see the effects of this go, go, go lifestyle. And the artificial light keeps us up longer. The number of channels we have on the TV keep us up longer. The stress during the day makes us displace our sleep. We think, oh, I wouldn't bother with that. I wanna catch up on Downton Abbey. Now, when we're not

prioritizing our sleep, we're not prioritizing ourselves. And then the next day, so we are, we're thinking it, we can catch up and we can't catch up. It's not a bank. We can't think, okay, I'm going to lose it, lose it, lose it and catch up on the weekend. Doesn't work like that. Once we haven't deposited it, it's not there. What do you think is the, what are your top like three things that affect sleep? So of course, eating after dinner, I'm going to get stressed. What would, what would your top three things that affect sleeping? First thing is routine. Routine is the guardian of sleep. We need, our body likes patterns and it's likes knowing what's coming. Okay, so when we're inconsistent, our body doesn't like it. We see that even just with daylight savings, that one hour shift and it causes havoc.

You know, we see that there's more accidents, more cardiac events and more suicides the day after we lose an hour of sleep. When we regain that hour of sleep, actually that trend returns back to normal. And then we have all have a great, we see this great change in society. So routine is key. If you're thinking, okay, I'm going to go to bed at 10 o'clock, 10 o'clock, 7 o'clock, 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock, 3 o'clock, your circadian rhythm doesn't have a chance to know what's what. And that's where you're going to start to muddle sleep as well as all of those other cells in your body that rely on a circadian rhythm. Circadian means a rhythm about twice a day, our temperature goes up, our temperature goes down and every cell in our body is working to this. So if we eat our breakfast around the same time every morning, that's brilliant.

Our body knows, wake up digestion, I'm awake. Okay. If we try and finish our last meal within 12 hours of that period, so say we have our first something at 9 a.m., try and be done within a 12 hourhour period, that's time-restricted eating, then your body knows what's what. Okay, so routine is absolutely the first thing. Yes, which is, I just want to stop you right there, Beatrice, is why the routine of the program is so important. The routine of the food plan, and then we make slight changes week to week to week based on that. In fact, this week, week three, rolling into week four, this is where people start to really feel the routine. Sometimes they feel a little bored. They're like, I'm bored. I'm not motivated. I need to make my food exciting. And I'm like,

no, you just need to be bored. You just need to, your body is not bored. Your body is loving the routine. But we're all looking, we're always looking for things to make things more exciting or motivate us when routine is the foundation of change. Okay and again I just want to say with the program you're already doing so much and we are going to have Alana come in because people are talking about should you all what if I watch tv and what if I do this. We're going to talk about sleep hygiene tomorrow but we wanted you to understand why you want to work so hard on that sleep hygiene. Okay, so routine can disrupt sleep. What else? Well, you are right. That routine with what we're putting in and when and being hydrated totally helps

because it also de-stresses the mind. If we know, oh, this is when I'm going to have my breakfast and this is my snack and this is my lunch, that also adds calmness to our chaos, calmness to the day. Now, that also adds calmness to our chaos, calmness to the day. Now that really matters. We are living in a very chaotic world that then is definitely going to impact our sleep because when we're swirling, it's very hard to then put on the brakes and think we're going to stop at the stoplight. Okay, so people that have rushed through their day, whack a moaling, are going to find it very hard when their head hits the pillow

to actually fall asleep. So that's the other thing, trying to start to look at not just sleep, sleep is not the enemy. We want to look at the 24 hours. We want to think, are you doing stuff for your body and achievement and connection and enjoyment? That's the base of the day, B-A-C-E, body, achievement, connection and enjoyment. That's the base of the day, B-A-C-E,

body, achievement, connection, enjoyment, because that's really important for our sleep. Okay, if we sleep well, we do better in the day. When we do better in the day, we sleep well. That's why it's so psychological. Okay, it's one of these cycles. Can we put in time? And it doesn't even have to be a lot, but when we're thinking

about what might keep me up tonight, what worries might take, you know, come with me to bed, because we know if we pair worry and bed, worry and bed, worry and bed, what's going to happen when we go to bed? We're going to worry. So we want to separate that. Okay, we want to have worry time elsewhere. Is it four o'clock? Is it five o'clock where you just spend five minutes thinking, okay, what have I done today? What's on my mind?

What's coming up? Can I do anything about it? Can I park it or can I do something about it next Tuesday? Because that also, our brain is hardwired to be looking for threat. If it thinks something's not right, it's gonna find it hard to let you sleep. Yeah, so this is, Alana says, find time to stress out in your day.

Like schedule time, be like, this is my time to freak the fuck out. I'm gonna stress about this. Yes, I should stress about it. I love that you mentioned that. It's not just so black and white when it comes to our sleep. Routine is really important

than what you are doing in your day. I love that you mentioned that social connection part. I mean, that's what it is, finding joy in your life. Because we all just think, OK, these are the checklists that we need to get better sleep. And it's not necessarily about the checklist. And you know what? Social connection is exhausting. Our brain loves it, okay? Because we're connection animals.

We are humans that need connection. But if we are sleepy, how many of us notice we withdraw? We don't want to go to that thing. We don't want to call our mum. We don't want to speak to the neighbours. So we then start avoiding. And that's so upsetting to that human part of us. We are also way more fun to be around

when we are rested and slept. We're prettier, we're more handsome because we have more intonation. We have more facial expressions. People actually find us less boring if we've slept, okay? And we probably find ourselves boring if we're asleep because we're like, boom, boom, boom, you know?

So joy, you mentioned joy, you mean social connection, it all is wrapped up in sleep. And how many of us have like a lovely weekend and then we sleep well? Because we've got joy coming with us. You know what's interesting? I'm thinking of the social battery. Everyone's talking about their social battery.

I just don't want to do this. I don't want to do that. I think that it's kind of a little bit backwards. The reason why we don't want to do this, don't want to do that is because we are not getting the sleep and it's doing those things that we are so tired in the moment. Like you said, being social is exhausting and it is, but in all the most amazing ways. So we went to the Mel Robbins tour last Friday, and we met so many members.

And it was tiring, but fulfilling at the same time. And man, I slept so good that night, because I had an opportunity to be around people. And in one sense of me, it was like, oh my goodness, that was a lot. I'm really tired. But then I also really felt like it was so fulfilling. It was like, it was like, so it was, so I think that we've created this thing

where my social battery maxed out. No, oh, you're just not sleeping. And so you're tired. But being around people actually helps you with your sleep, okay, that's.'s so and that even helps your sleep stages. Okay, because we know underneath all of this, when we think we're being very quiet and our eyes are closed, our brain is very busy moving through sleep stages. And a lot of people will ask me, you know, talk to talk about the sleep stages.

So this stage one where you would hear your name. If I said Gina, you'd go, I'm not asleep. Just resting my eyes. Maybe you're on the beach and you're sort of there and it's a little bit of light changing in your brain waves. Stage two, you would probably see yourself twitching because your brain is having little K complexes

going into deeper sleep. And then stage three is where we see delta. And that's really restorative sleep. Now we go through these stages and back up. So stage one, stage two, stage two, stage one, and then rapid eye movement, where if I was to watch you, and if we've ever watched our pets, we can see them twitching and their eyes are flickering.

And rapid eye movement is that where we often think of it as the dreaming state, we do dream in deep sleep, but we will remember our dreams if we're woken in rapid eye movement. Now, when we have done stuff, just like you've said, speaking, because that's so hard on our on our language brain, we're listening, we're receiving, we're answering, it's really, really high end, we're receiving, we're answering. It's really, really high-end, like smart, smart brain socialize, okay. Now we see more delta. We see a nice deeper sleep

when we've done that, when we've learned something new, when somebody said, you know, have you heard, you know, this, this, this, this, when we collect new experiences, we see a change in our deep sleep. So it also then creates this depth feeling. I slept well, because you were busy. So that is what I call it. It's the outside in approach. When you might not feel like doing something, do it anyway. Don't wait for the inside to tell you, I feel like doing it. Go outside in, I'm going to go for that walk. And then lo and behold, the inside feels happy about it. Now I feel good. And the brilliant thing is we then see it in our sleep. We sleep better when we are more active, when we have moved, when we have had, when we have based the day and unfortunately when we are slowing down

when we're messaging ourselves that maybe we're in pain and I can't move or I don't feel like going out I'm too fatigued unfortunately we then see sleep change and our sleep gets a little more shallow and if our sleep gets a little bit less deep then that will also affect your next day and you don't want to go again Okay, so we want to just change that cycle of thinking. I just want to add a little bit I might not feel like going for a 1k walk But can I go to the post box and back or can I sit out and just people watch for a little bit? Because it really then translates into our sleep and then again our sleep translates into the next day. And these stages do change you know and they're all

important. We used to deprive different parts of the stages but now we know that they are a cacophony, they are an orchestra that they all play a role either either in learning, like learning skills, like procedural, like do how good are we at brushing our teeth? That's part of our sleep. Our emotional regulation is very rapid eye movement. Our delta is very, very quiet. It's where the brain is almost switched off. Okay. That would be the hardest time for me to wake you up because you're in a deep sleep. Um, and so so the stages stages are there and it's hard to just manipulate them. Some people will say well how can I get more deep sleep? But that's the best way. Do things you enjoy. Move your body and keep consistency because when your body knows what's

coming it knows how to move through those stages instead of thinking, yikes, I've only got four hours tonight, I'm going to have to change the architecture of my sleep to compensate. You mentioned moving your body. So just like you don't want to eat late at night, would you be want to move late at night? Like would someone want to do a workout? Is it better? Like if they can only do a workout at night? Is it better than not doing a workout at all? Or is that affecting someone's sleep?

You said it, I think if you're wanting to get in a workout at night? Is it better than not doing a workout at all or is that affecting someone's sleep? You said it. I think if you're wanting to get in a workout and you haven't been able to, have a look at why. You know, be curious, be detective. Think, is the, am I too stressed? Why is it only this very time I have time to do it? But think about it, monitor it. We like to think, do something and see what happens because we're all different. Some people will just fall asleep really well having gone to yoga, gone for a swim, gone for a walk, thought,

because it's so good for our mental health activity and movement and getting away from our phone or just scrolling. So I'd say it's better to do it than not, but monitor it. We always say, if you're looking to change your sleep, keep a sleep diary. And I've given Jodie the consensus sleep diary, which is the recommended sleep diary that we use.

And that helps you just think, when did I go to bed? How long was I in bed before I wanted to go to sleep? Because some of us will get into bed hours before we intend to sleep and we do not want to be doing that. If you get into bed at nine and you're not planning to sleep until midnight, don't be in bed because you're creating wakefulness in bed. So the sleep diary will say, when did you go to bed? How long were you awake until you wanted to fall asleep? How long did it take you to fall asleep? And it's all guess, it's all guesstimate. I don't want anybody sitting there with a stopwatch. How long do you think you were awake in the night if you got up? What time did you finally wake up?

And again, that's different to what time did you get up? Because a lot of people will linger. They'll think, oh, I didn't get a good night's sleep. I'm just going to lay in bed now for another two hours. And again, you're diluting the relationship between what we want to be doing in bed, which is sleep and sex only and wakefulness. So now we're accidentally creating the bed as a wakeful, thoughtful place. I'm frustrating for most. Yeah, that's consensus sleep diary.

But I'm just thinking, just like you have triggers when it comes to food, right? Associations when it comes to food, issues when it comes to food, you do also with your sleep environment. And you know, some people think, oh, I watch TV, it's fine. Trust me, it's not fine. And if you remove it, you'll notice a big difference. I used to have my office in my room. You know, some people think, oh, I watch TV, it's fine. Trust me, it's not fine.

And if you remove it, you'll notice a big difference. I was, I used to have my office in my room and I thought it's fine. It's not a big deal. And then the minute I removed it, I walked into my room and it just instantly felt different because I was no longer associating with work. What do I need to do? You know, it does make a difference. Again, we're going to get into more

sleep hygiene tips this weekend. But there's a couple big things that I learned from you. One is that a good night's sleep is not going to bed and then not waking up all night. It is normal for us to wake up. My sleep cycle is about 90 minutes. And so when I wake up, I'll be like, oh, I'm awake. I probably just came out of a sleep cycle. I don't stress out about it. I just go back to sleep. If I wake up in the morning and it's before my alarm and I don't have enough time to get another 90 minutes in, I wake up because I know if I go back to sleep and wait for that alarm, I'm gonna wake up and be so tired because I wouldn't have finished that sleep cycle.

The other and more important thing I learned from Dr. B was don't think about trying to sleep. And when she first mentioned that, I was like, what are you talking about? And it's really important. I was really stressing about, I need to go to sleep. Let's go. Let's go to sleep. I need, there was so much stress around my need for sleep.

Never try to chase it because it will run faster. Okay, it will just leave you. So beautiful, I'm glad you brought us back to the sleep cycles. We can get to know our sleep cycles a little bit and absolutely sleep is not static. So we're going through those stages and then we're coming out of them.

So yes, you could get into a lighter sleep and you might hear the air conditioning go on. Our generator went on last night. So you might hear it. And that's what we want to do, want to cultivate calmness and thinking it's OK. I'm going to just rest my body and the sleep will come and get me again instead of which unfortunately a lot of us do because we do worry, oh never going to get sleep, I've got that, I've got Gina live in the morning, how am I going to be articulate? And then the worry is now what's stealing us from our sleep because we're worrying

about it, we've got performance anxiety around sleep. So that's absolutely right. If we can think, oh, I've just woken because probably I'm in light stage I'm gonna just lie here and think about something nice or do a meditation or something just lovely and hopefully you catch another sleep cycle and that also works in the morning like you said if you're noticing that you woke before your alarm and you don't think you have time often people will think oh great I'll just lie in a bit more. And we then regret it. Probably a lot of us are like, oh why did I do that? Now I feel like I've got the flu. And that's called the worn out syndrome, where you've woken in a not a nice stage, like a deeper stage where

you're like, this is yucky. Okay, so we want to be mindful of our body cycle. And absolutely never try it. It's called paradoxicalical intention so we want to not chase sleep we don't want to lie they're going I must sleep I must sleep I must sleep my little boy couldn't sleep last night and I never tell him just go to sleep because that's counterintuitive I said imagine you're playing the golf he had a really great golf game last night with all his little friends and I'm like, just revisit all the holes and lo and behold, Sleep came and got him because he wasn't chasing Sleep.

He was just thinking of teeing off. So definitely allow yourself to try that because it's so effective. What about, I'm thinking new moms, shift workers, people who just can't get that like strung together full night of sleep. How do you feel about naps and melatonin? Like is there anything? Melatonin, that's well, let's do naps first of all. So new moms, anybody that is not getting sleep, so when we are sleep deprived we need to get it. Okay, so very different to insomnia.

The treatment for insomnia is totally different. Though if you do my CBTI program, that will be different. But if you are sleep deprived, and that's new moms, new dads, shift workers, sport people, teenagers, because their sleep clocks are so wonky, we need to be thinking about the 24 hour as a 24 hour bank and find somewhere else to sleep in it. Just because we might

not have had eight hours in a row, even eight hours of nighttime sleep, now we need to find it somewhere else because we're wanting about, you know, seven to nine hours if we're adults, we want a bit more if we're teenagers, up to 10. And where could we put it? And a nap, if we're gonna have it, needs to be an intentional nap, where everybody knows what we're doing. We're coming home.

If we're a shift worker, we're prioritizing it. We're not thinking, okay, I'm gonna go out and build a deck now, or I'm gonna paint my neighbor's porch. I want you to prioritize your wellness, your brain, your longevity because you will die sooner if you don't get sleep. Yeah. So I want there to be a sign on the door. If you've got a basement, Canada has these wonderful basements where it's cold because cold, cool temperature helps our body hibernate 18 degrees. We want to put our earplugs, our eye masks, you know,

go to sleep, okay, and try and get that extra bit. So if you had four hours, now you're looking to try and get yourself another four or five hours somewhere. If you're a new mum, absolutely. I know many of us have more than maybe one child or things like that, but try and sleep when your baby sleeps. A lot of moms really do, moms and dads, I keep saying, I want to be making sure we don't know who is looking after the little one, but sleep when the baby sleeps. It's so important.

They will get the best of you. You will feel better. It can be a real help to prevent postpartum depression if we're trying to get our sleep. See if somebody can help with a dream feed if you're breastfeeding, but prioritize it. Go to bed when they go to bed. And catch up if you can't

and then somebody else can tag team with you. Do as a shift worker would, intentionally go somewhere, get your pajamas on, shut out the doing you because now you want to just be the being you and sleeping you and rest. And again if we can be consistent, if we've got teenagers that would be finding the time straight after school to schedule a 40 minute nap alarm on because you have to then make sure you wake up to the alarm. Otherwise you're going to creep into again a little bit like you were describing that morning groggy.

You don't want to oversleep. And again, it's about experimenting thinking is a 20 minute nap, right? Is it a 30 minute nap? Is it 40 experiment? Um, because the longer you nap, the longer it takes you to get rid of inertia, that sleepy feeling when you wake up. So it's like a balance. You've got to think I'm going to expect it. I'm going to feel a bit groggy. And I'm going to have myself a shower, come down and act like it's a morning again, where you feel sort of

cool for the first seven minutes, you know, but you're up and moving. I don't want you to go, oh, a minute, I'm gonna press off and I'm gonna go for another hour, because then we've wiped out and we're definitely not gonna sleep at night, because we don't want to eat before the meal. We don't wanna take too much of our sleep appetite away

before nighttime. But if you have insomnia, do not nap. We don't nap if we have insomnia. If you have incredible daytime sleepiness where you're falling asleep, talking or in the car or at meetings, that's another sign of sleep deprivation. And if you didn't know, if you didn't think, well, yeah, I'm a shift worker, I'm a new parent,

and you did, it could be a sign of sleep apnea or restless leg syndrome or something else that's going on in your sleep that you don't know about. You might think you're getting great sleep, but if you are sleepy during the day, and sleepy is very different to fatigue, sleepy is given the chance you'll fall asleep. Fatigue is more of a don't feel like doing something.

Then you want to be thinking, is there something going on inside of your sleep that you're unaware of? And sleep apnea would be one of those where you're not reaching the deep sleep and you're not aware of it because you're going down, you snore or you splutter to get oxygen and you don't get that Delta stage three. Yeah, and so I don't want to,

we don't have time to get going soon. I don't want to get into sleep apnea. Obviously the program will help in terms of you giving your body what it needs, bringing awareness will help with your sleep. In fact, some of the things people talk about as they get the best sleep of their entire lives, but there are people who are also dealing with insomnia.

And I highly suggest that you check out some of the workshops that Dr. Beverly David has. Before we go, I want to get into, is it different for women and men? Is there any difference there? And I know you're going to be joining us in our menopause group that we do, and you've had some conversations about what's happening with menopause specifically and sleep. So I'm going to save that for another day. Is there a difference between what men need and women need? Women definitely still report many more sleep disorders than men. We see that consistently in the graph in the Office of National Statistics. So women still report more insomnia. Their sleep gets worse,

like you mentioned, and we'll talk about that during different life stages, whatever that is, whether it's puberty, parenting, perimenopause, menopause. But men notoriously not reporting a lot of things, you know, it still is harder for men to report it. We see sleep apnea still more in the gentleman, but women often forget to think about it. So there is differences there, but we want to be mindful that even, you know, women have it, sporting people have it. So yes, our sleep does differ. Our women's brain is different to a man's brain.

We do do a lot of socializing. We're very communicative. And yes, men are too, but there's differences. And so we see also there's some differences in the architecture of our sleep that probably helps us advance in the things we need to be good at, whether it's people skills and multitasking and delegating.

So we can see that also if we were to look inside of the brain with our electrodes. Ah, interesting. OK, so before we go today, people are on week three, our week of mindfulness and our weight loss program. We have people who are also on week three in our maintenance program. And when it comes to sleep, what's your takeaway for our members today? Consistency is key.

Make sure you have a bedtime because a lot of us, when we get to adulthood, we don't have a set bedtime like we do with our children. And so we very often think, we'll just watch one more episode or I'll just tidy up the kitchen or I'll put tidy up the kitchen or I'll put the bins out and then we push it and that then breaks that consistency and

we need to help our body know what's what so that our clock has a better chance of knowing when is bedtime and when is wake up time and the more we do that the better our sleep becomes because we correct the circadian rhythm. When we lie in and we think our catch up, we're shifting it. We're giving ourselves a jet lag. We're gonna now, you know, make it harder to fall asleep the next night. So I'd say consistency is key.

Okay, love it. Dr. Beverly David, everyone, she's gonna be back joining us in the program to help us work through a lot more stuff, but sleep is her specialty, and we're so honored to have her here today, sharing her knowledge. Sleep is definitely something you wanna take seriously. It's one of the things if you're like,

why isn't the scale moving? Why am I making this choice? Why did I didn't do that? Chances are you might find some answers in terms of managing your sleep. Alana McGinn's gonna join us tomorrow and talk about tips for managing stress and managing sleep.

Dr. Alinka Trejo is going to join us on Thursday and talk about what's happening in our body. We talked a lot about our brain and how sleep or lack thereof is affecting our choices and just how we function on a daily basis. Go back, read it again, have a great rest of your day and a restful sleep tonight. Thanks everyone for joining us. Thanks Dr. B. We'll see you again.