The Liz Moody Podcast - Genius Hacks To Fall (& Stay!) Asleep, Eliminate Morning Grogginess, Get Deep Sleep & More With Vanessa Hill

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

Sleep tips for shift and night workers, and the impact of blue light, white noise, blackout curtains, weighted blankets, napping, and more on sleep. exactly what to do if you’re a “bad” sleeper (and why you shouldn’t freak out!) how genetics plays into sleep & how to become a “good” sleeper the truth about sleep trackers like Oura, FitBit, WHOOP, Eight Sleep, & more a simple explanation of the different types of sleep & their functions  why sleep paralysis happens + how to minimize it  lifestyle hacks for getting more deep sleep  how to figure out your chronotype + optimize your sleep and life based on it 2 hacks for eliminating grogginess in the morning why you feel tired even after a great night’s sleep a genius technique to get back to sleep when you wake up in the middle of the night  the 2 types of insomnia + how to address both the impact of blue light, CBD, THC, white noise, blackout curtains, weighted blankets, napping, & more on sleep how to get quality sleep if you’re a night shift worker or staying up with young children the best way to combat bedtime procrastination  and so much more! For more from Vanessa, find her at @nessyhill on Instagram or at www.nessyhill.com.  To join the Healthier Together Podcast Club Facebook group, go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/healthiertogetherpodcast. Grab your Raunchier Together deck in time for Valentine’s Day by ordering before February 9th at healthyconvo.co and use code LOVE15 for 15% off any Healthy Convo Co games!  This episode is sponsored by: Wild Health: go to wildhealth.com/liz or use code LIZ for 20% off.   Levels: sign up at levels.link/HEALTHIERTOGETHER to receive an additional two free months of your Levels membership. Seed: go to seed.com/daily-synbiotic and use code LIZMOODY for 15% off your first month. AG1 by Athletic Greens: visit athleticgreens.com/healthiertogether and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today.  Healthier Together cover art by Zack. Healthier Together music by Alex Ruimy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Healthier Together podcast. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I'm a best-selling author and long-time journalist. This podcast is all about helping you live your healthiest, happiest life, whether we're learning the neuroscience behind manifesting the life of our dreams, getting realistic tips for handling grief, or finding out how to hack our epigenetics to live longer and feel better. And yes, those are all real episodes, so if any of those topics sound good to you, scroll on back in the archives. I am so excited to welcome Vanessa Hill to today's episode.

Vanessa is an award-winning science communicator and sleep researcher. She's published tons of highly regarded papers on the science of sleep, and she's the creator of the hit PBS series BrainCraft and the YouTube original special, Sleeping with Friends, where she shares neuroscience hacks and tips for improving your sleep. I feel like a lot of episodes that I've heard on podcasts about sleep can be really scary and just make me feel terrified on nights that I am not. sleeping well, and I really didn't want this to be that. Instead, we packed it with hacks to help

improve your sleep no matter where you're starting. I wanted it to be actionable and science-backed and not terrifying. So we get into exactly what to do if you're a bad sleeper and why you should not freak out, how genetics play into sleep and how to become a good sleeper. I'm putting these in quotes because I think that the concept of like a bad sleeper and a good sleeper are really overused, and we get into some of the nuances around that in this episode. We get into the truth about sleep trackers like aura, Fitbit, Whoop, Apple Watches, 8 Sleep, and more. A simple explanation of the different types of sleep in their functions like REM sleep and deep

sleep. Why sleep paralysis happens and how to minimize it. Lifestyle hacks for getting more deep sleep. How to figure out your chronotype and optimize your sleep and life based on that. Two hacks for eliminating groginess in the morning. Why you might feel tired even after a great night's sleep. A genius technique to get back to sleep when you wake up in the middle of the night. The two types of insomnia and how to address both of them.

The impact of things like blue light, CBD, THC, white noise, blackout curtains, weighted blankets, napping, and more on your sleep. How to get quality sleep if you are a night shift worker or staying up with young children. The best way to combat bedtime procrastination and so much more. We would both love to hear your thoughts and your biggest takeaways as you're listening to the episode. So definitely screenshot and tag me. I'm at Liz Moody and Vanessa. She is at Nessie Hill on Instagram. If something resonates with you from the episode, please share it with somebody that you think would benefit. You have been requesting a sleep episode for so long,

and I know it's something that so many people struggle with, or they struggle with feeling tired all the time or even just using their sleep trackers correctly. So I hope this episode really helps. As always, thank you so much for continuing to share the podcast. It is the absolute best way to help support the podcast. And I massively appreciate every single one of you who text it to a friend or post it on your work slack or shares it on social or any of that. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And do not forget, if you are new here, first of all, welcome. I am so glad that you're here. But make sure that you are following the podcast where you listen so you never miss out on an episode. You're just going to go to the main podcast page that

lists all of the episodes and you will see the word follow under the logo of the episode under the healthier together logo on Spotify, or you'll see a little follow with a plus sign button on the top right of that same page on Apple Podcast. So hit that follow button, and then all of the new episodes will show up in your feed so you never miss out on one. And before I go, I want to give one last reminder to grab a copy of the raunchier together deck from my Conversation Game Company, Healthy ConvoCo, for Valentine's Day while there is still time.

I cannot think of a better way to spice up Valentine's Day this year than with 150 different question cards about your fantasies, confessions, and preferences. We also have 25 games and 25 dares. And you can play with your besties for a really fun girls night or with your partner. It is designed to work in both situations. So it's perfect for a Valentine's Day situation or a Galentine's Day situation. So grab yours in time for Valentine's Day by going to Healthycombo.co and making your order before February 9th at the latest. I even created a little discount for podcast listeners.

and we never do promo code. So if you want a discount, now is the time to order. Use code Love 15, that is L-O-V-E-E-15, for 15% off your order of any of the healthy combo code games. Plus, if you stock up in order two or more of any of the four games, you will get free two-day shipping. So you can grab Brunch here together. You can grab We're all in this together, which is our journaling problem deck.

You can grab the original deck, which can be used in any life situations. We have working together, which is amazing for office places and Zoom calls. So you can use that code, Love 15, on any of our four conversation card games. You can find all of those on HealthyConvo.co. Okay, let's get right into it and start sleeping better as soon as possible with Vanessa Hill. Vanessa, I am so excited to have you here. I'm such a huge fan of your work and I'm really excited to get into all things sleep. Thank you.

I'm excited to be here. Okay, so let's just start off in the simplest terms possible. why is sleep so important? The simplest terms. This is so tough to do sometimes. I think that at a basic level, everybody knows that sleep is important. We know that we just feel like shit the next day if we get a bad night's sleep. There's a lot of data that shows that inadequate sleep. And when I use that term inadequate, we use that in science, but that means less than seven hours a night. And there's lots of studies that show that that's linked with impaired heart health later in life, with increased stress hormones, with diabetes, with obesity, all of these different things.

So sleep is really one of the cornerstones of a healthy life. It has all of these different links. And I think that links are really interesting because it's not necessarily causing us to have, say, increase stress or higher anxiety if we're not getting seven hours a night sleep, but there's a link there that just kinds of shows us how important sleep is for us to have good mental health, good physical health to have that kind of holistic approach to a healthy life. And then I want to talk about the flip side for a second because I used to be like a quote unquote bad sleep and I always avoided any podcast where the topic was sleep because they really

freaked me out. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm going to get Alzheimer's. I'm going to. I'm going to die younger. I'm going to have all of these really negative effects. So is there anything that you would say to someone who is having a hard time sleeping right now to kind of walk them back from that catastrophic headspace? Like, can anyone become a good sleeper? I think this is a really important point because a lot of the communication about sleep is catastrophic.

It is saying that if you're not getting seven hours of sleep a night, like you're going to have an early death, have fun thinking about that every night when you can't fall asleep. And it's funny because there's this loop with sleep and anxiety. And anxiety can include overthinking, rumination, thoughts that you can't control, worries, all that kind of stuff. And there's this loop that can increase if you're not getting enough sleep at night. And then if you don't get enough sleep at night, you're thinking about that.

And you're just kind of in this cycle where you're anxious and then you're not sleeping and then you're more anxious because you're not sleeping. So it's something that I try to be really careful about with people. And I think one of the most important things to say is that sleep is hard. And even though it is a process that our bodies do, that doesn't mean that it's going to be easy or effortless for everyone. I mean, think about it like eating. We can all go and eat something,

but it's actually really hard to have a healthy balanced diet at something that you have to work at. It's the same as fitness as well. Like you can always be fitter, right? And just because you can't run a half marathon or something doesn't mean that you're not healthy or fit. So there are all different standards for everyone. Sleep need is something that's really individual.

So you might need eight or nine hours of sleep a night or you might be someone that can get by with six and a half hours and that's going to be perfectly fine for you. And to what I mentioned before about sleep being one of those kinds of pillars of our health alongside diet and exercise. If you're not great at sleeping and that's just not something that you're really good at, it's a hard thing for you. You can focus on your diet and exercise as those other pillars of health and you can still be a healthy person and it's then not as likely that you're

going to have some of those negative effects down the road. Are there people who are naturally good sleepers and bad sleepers? Is that like a genetic thing or something we're born with in any way? Or can anybody become a good sleeper at some point in their lives? Yeah, genetics comes into this in lots of ways. Sleep is one of those super interesting things that, to be completely honest, as a scientist, we haven't quite figured out all of the aspects of sleep yet. Like, if you talk to a scientist who's like, yeah, I know why we dream and what your dreams mean and why people get sleep paralysis, like they're not telling the truth because there are all of these gaps in our understanding of what happens in the brain when we sleep. So genetics does come into this and that can be a factor,

but like a lot of things in our lifestyles, there's a bunch of different things that go into if you're a good sleeper or not. Some of those are personal factors, which could be like your job stress, your genetics, and then the others are more environmental, like the environment that you sleep in, perhaps your work schedule, like shift workers, unfortunately, you're just never going to have the opportunity to get as good sleep as people who aren't working night shifts and stuff like that. My point is that there are all of these different things that kind of go into if you are necessarily a good sleep or not. But like a lot of things, it's something that we can work on and we can improve if that is something that is a goal for you. So let's talk about how we can

kind of know if we're getting good sleep. Let's start with how effective. How affects you. It's do you think sleep trackers like Hora or whoop or eight sleep or things like that are? That is such a fantastic question and this is such a scientist's response, but break down what you mean by effective, right? Like, yes, they work. How they work is really interesting because depending on the kind of tracker that you have, they all have this different algorithm that is some proprietary algorithm that kind of works out what your sleep stages are and how much sleep you get. And people who are listening who have used one of these and it's told them they were asleep when they were just at the movies or something like that, know that that isn't always perfect. I think that

it's a good indication of how regular your sleep is. I don't like to use the words good or bad because they kind of implied judgment when, I mean, we're just all trying to do our best, right? But I am someone who as a scientist have a lot of opinions about sleep trackers. I think they can be good to help us improve our sleep, get healthy sleep, except I think for people like myself, I've stopped wearing a fitness tracker to bed because they really cause a lot of anxiety in me because I'm looking at them and I used to use a fitbit. It is impossible to get a perfect sleep score. And I couldn't function during the day if I didn't have a perfect sleep score.

There's actually this term called orthosomnia, which defines people who are obsess about their sleep tracker data. And there was this study that I found fascinating that came out in 2014. And what the scientists did in this study was they restricted sleep in a bunch of people. So they got them into a sleep lab and they kind of woke them up after four hours. And they said to them, hey, you got eight hours sleep last night. You had a great sleep last night. Here are a bunch of tests that you can do, like cognitive tests, memory tests, reaction time tests. all of those people performed really well on those tests compared to their baseline. And then they went and got people who had slept for eight hours, told them that they had

slept for four and got them to do the same tests and they performed terribly. And they called this placebo sleep because there was a placebo effect that they found by telling people that they had just gotten more sleep than they actually had. So I think that this effect goes to show why you can feel like shit if you're fitness tracker tells you that you haven't had a good night's sleep because ignorance is truly bliss in so many areas of life. And if you're not really aware of the minute details of what your sleep has been overnight, then you can just go about your day being blissfully ignorant about it. Whereas for me, when I had that negative feedback, it really ruined my day.

It's so interesting because I had the exact opposite experience where I identified as a bad sleeper and then I got an aura and my aura was usually like, oh, you got enough REM sleep, you got enough deep sleep even on nights that I didn't get that much total sleep. And I found it very comforting and freeing and permission giving. It took away a ton of my sleep anxiety, but then I have a girlfriend who had the same experience as you and she had to get rid of hers. I think it's so personal and individual people's reactions to it and it's really interesting. So much of sleep is personal and individual and a lot of people ask me sleep questions.

and the best answer to a lot of them is, well, it's up to you. It depends on how you sleep. It's a very personal thing. People ask me, what's the best mattress? I'm like, honestly, whatever you like, that is the best mattress for you, whatever you can afford that you find comfortable, like go crazy. So, yeah, it is very personal. If somebody wanted to get a sleep tracker,

is there anything that they should look for to make sure that it is as accurate as possible? I would say go with one of the bigger companies. They have huge teams of sleep and circadian scientists who are doing great work with the data that they are getting from the sleep trackers also. They're doing some super interesting science with it, but they also have big teams of people who are developing those algorithms to make them as accurate as they can be. One of the ones that I do like is more of a low tech option, actually. So I have a Google home, or I think it's called a Google Nest now, basically the smart speaker assistant thing and one of the ones that has a screen. And a couple of years ago, Google made one of these to go in the bedroom and it has a radar sensor on it instead of a camera. And it does this sleep sensing where it can detect when you're in bed and how much you're moving. And it just gives you these more rudimentary stats where it's like, this is the amount of time that you spent in bed. this week and this is when you were going to bed and when you were getting out of bed and this is the light in your bedroom. And I really like that because it just tells me I was trying,

I was putting in the work, I was sticking to a decent schedule, like I was in bed for this time, my bedroom was dark. To me, that is as optimized as it's realistic for my schedule to be. My sleep tracker tells me when I have light sleep, deep sleep and REM sleep, are those basically all of the types of sleep. And can you kind of explain each one a little bit? So they are the different types of sleep, basically. Light sleep, we kind of all know the feeling of light sleep because that is when say you're kind of falling asleep and you get jerked awake by something. Like we've all experienced that when we've been sitting in a movie or on an airplane or something and you see people doing the head nods. That is light sleep. And as the name suggests, it's a lighter stage of sleep. So it's really easy.

to wake up from. Deep sleep is my favorite stage of sleep, if I had to be a stage, and that is the really restorative and rejuvenating stage of sleep. So when you're in deep sleep, your heart rate slows down quite a lot. And that's one of the main signals, actually, that the fitness trackers use to know when you're in deep sleep because your heart rate is slowing down. Rem sleep is fascinating because all of your signals in REM sleep in terms of your heart rate and your brain waves are actually almost identical to when you're awake. And REM sleep is the main stage of sleep where you dream. And the fascinating thing about it is there's a part of your brain that paralyzes your body

so you don't move when you're in REM sleep, basically so you don't act out your dreams. And they are the signals that go into the fitness trackers to say you're in REM sleep because that's when you have your normal heart rate and you're not moving at all compared to the other stages of sleep. That's so interesting. So is that where sleep paralysis would come in? Sleep paralysis is where you have that same sensation or feeling, but it is in those other stages of sleep, like it's in light sleep, which can be quite scary for some people if you're in light sleep and you wake up and you can't move, basically. What causes that and is there a way to stop that from happening? Yeah, it's really interesting because it's linked to so many different things.

It is associated with narcolepsy. So some people who suffer from narcolepsy also experience sleep paralysis. It can be genetic, so people can have a family history of it. But it can also be related to other things like PTSD and insomnia and anxiety. And one of the most fascinating things is how much our psychology interacts with our sleep, actually. In terms of of stopping sleep paralysis, a lot of the recommendations are the kind of sleep hygiene and sleep behavior recommendations that are also recommended for those things that I just mentioned, like PTSD, like anxiety, where we're trying to have a pretty regular sleep schedule, trying to get six to eight hours a night, kind of optimizing our bedroom environment to allow for that as well.

And does each type of sleep have a function? Because I also think of deep sleep as the main good type of sleep and I'm kind of like, do I even need light in REM sleep for any reason? REM sleep has a lot of functions. Rem sleep is really important for learning and memory. So it's kind of the stage of sleep where your memory areas in your brain are encoding and storing information, things that have happened to you throughout the day and also when you're forgetting things as well. So all of the stages of sleep do have their own functions like that. They're all in important. And one of the interesting things is you cycle through all of these different stages, right? So you'll go from light sleep to deep sleep to REM sleep back to light sleep and you'll

kind of cycle through them over the course of the night. In the first half of the night or towards the beginning of when you fall asleep, you're more likely to spend more time in deep sleep. And then towards the end of your sleeping period, you spend more time in REM sleep. And that kind of happens naturally over the course of a six to eight hour period. And if people look at their fitness tracking data, you can see that you have more time in deep sleep at the beginning and more time in REM sleep at the end. And so that goes to show that it's important to try to get a longer block of sleep if you can. A lot of people ask me, can I just sleep for five hours overnight and then have like a two hour nap during the day or something like that? And if you do that, you're not cycling through those stages of sleep in the way that your body intended.

But you are still getting probably all of your deep sleep, which I don't know. The deep sleep is the thing that I always check my aura for the most because I'm like, oh, like I want memory. I want cognition. I want some fun dreams with my REM sleep. But deep sleep feels like it's like neurodegenerative disorders, cancer, like longevity. It just feels so much more serious and intense. So it's like one of those checks where I'm like, oh, I got my deep sleep.

Like I'm getting rid of the scary stuff. Maybe I don't get some of the more fun stuff that comes with. REM or late sleep? I think all of the stages are important. I'm not going to go out there and advocate that one is more important than the other because I think that they all play their role. And the thing about sleep science and brain science in general is we're still discovering so much about the brain. So it's unknown and it's an exciting thing, but it's unknown what some of perhaps the long-term effects of not getting enough REM sleep are. So I think for now, let's not overthink it.

And let's just try to get as much good quality sleep of all the different stages as we can. You're like your brain is probably doing this for a reason. Like it's probably not wasting hours of the night on something that's absolutely useless, which is fair. Your brain is so active while you're sleeping. Like people used to think that sleep was just wasted time and that nothing was going on in your brain. But there's like a lot that's happening actually. If somebody wanted to get more deep sleep specifically, are there any kind of hacks that can help us get there?

Exercise is a really good one for deep sleep and cardio exercise. If your body is physically tired, if you have done a decent job getting some cardio exercise throughout the day, it's more likely that you'll have a better quality deep sleep and you'll spend more time in deep sleep. Is there a cutoff for that? Like should we not be working out at 9 or 10 at night or as any time good? There used to be a lot of opinions on this about how you shouldn't be doing cardio exercise. Two hours before bed, four hours before bed used to be one of the recommended numbers. but there has been some new research that has come out that suggests that there's not a huge effect on sleep, but when you're exercising later in the day. So I would say for people,

that's one of the ones that falls into the personal category. Like, I know for me that if I'm working out late at night, I'm not going to be able to fall asleep for hours. I'm really kind of running on those endorphins that I'm getting from doing a cardio workout. So I personally, I can't exercise in the late evening. But for some people, it's fine. I'm genuinely confused how master class gets literally the absolute top people in every single field to teach every single one of their classes. I use it when I want to learn things directly, like the cooking class from Thomas Keller

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And if you want to grab their premium starter kit, you can use code Liz Moody for 15% off at branchbasics.com. That's code Liz Moody for 15% off the premium starter kit at branchbasics.com. And when they ask you where you heard about us, please make sure to mention the show. That is branch basics.com and use code Liz Moody. And then what about sleep timing? Like I've heard people say that if you go to sleep earlier, you're getting most of your deep sleep before midnight. but then I also know there's individual chronotypes where different people need to sleep in different time periods. Can you kind of explain how you think about sleep timing and how that

impacts our sleep? This is one of my biggest hot takes on TikTok is about chronotypes and sleep timing because a lot of the media really kind of victimizes night owls and talks about how night owls aren't productive, about how sleeping in is lazy, about how you should be getting up in the morning to be productive and it's better for you to try to go to sleep earlier. And it's all kind of bullshit because it's so personal depending on people's chronotypes. Now, your chronotype is your tendency to be sleepy at a certain time of day. We call it mostly early bird or night owl. It's also really interesting because it kind of follows this pattern of alertness that we all have

that goes over a 24-hour cycle. So if you're an early bird, you're more likely to be alert earlier in the morning, but you're also more likely to make better decisions earlier in the morning. There's been studies on people making financial investment decisions and people who had a morning chronotype or who were early birds made better financial decisions in the morning. and then people who were evening chronotypes or night hours made better decisions in the evening. So I think chronotypes are fascinating because not only do they suggest what time is best for you to sleep, it also shows us when you can be maybe most productive and get more work done, when you can make better decisions, like you can kind of base a lot of your life around it.

So for people to know whether there are morning or evening chronotype, like you kind of have an idea of that. Everyone does. A lot of people aren't sure, which means that you might fall somewhere in the middle. It's a spectrum. There's online tests that you can do on that called the morningness eveningness questionnaire, the MEQ, if you're interested. But basically, there isn't a best time for every single person to sleep. Do what is best for you, your schedule. My heart really goes out to people who have small children because it's not really up to them when they sleep or people. who are shift workers or have to get up really early for work. If somebody has more of a night owl chronotype though, so if they go to sleep at midnight,

let's say, are they still going to get the same amount of deep sleep as somebody who's more of an early bird who goes to bed at 9 p.m.? Like their sleep will be as high quality? It probably would if they don't have to get up for work at 6 a.m. or something like that. That is one of the most common problems with night owls is that they're not. natural inclination is mismatch to the social clock, which scientists use the social clock just to mean like the normal going's about of the day, I suppose, like when people are more likely to start work or go to school or whatever it is. So it can be really hard for people who just can't fall asleep before 1 a.m., yet they start work at 8 or 8.30 every day,

so they're always having to get up early. There are some ways that you can try to train your body, to go to sleep earlier if you do have to get up early for work and you have trouble falling asleep, a lot of those involve routine. Our brains thrive on a routine. So in terms of making sure that at the same time every night, you're leaving enough time to wind down, you're doing things that are calming and soothing for you, whether that is listening to podcasts, listening to meditation, stretching, taking a long shower, doing some hobbies like crocheting. I don't know why I picked that one out of thin air, reading, whatever it may be, and having a routine where you're winding down, you're dimming the lights in your house, which is super

important, and you're just giving your body enough time to wind down so you can fall asleep earlier. If you do that for a while, can you actually change your chronotype or are you just kind of modifying it for a specific period of time? Like, can you ever make it so you would naturally just fall asleep earlier, even without all the extra stuff? Your chronotype is one of those things that it's more permanent, like it's hard to actually change. It's kind of like personality types. You can tweak it a little bit, except it's one of those things that is more innate to you. you can definitely, regardless of that, train your body to fall asleep earlier. And one of the easiest ways to do that is just to be exhausted, to be honest with you.

Like if you're working a full day and you have a lot of family commitments and you're going to the gym and you're doing a cardio workout, you're probably going to fall asleep early, right? Personally, I have an evening chronotype. I'm a night owl. And at the moment, it's amazing because I work from home and I set my own schedule. So I do start work at 10 o'clock every morning and that works really well for me. But in the past, I've had jobs where I've had to be there at like 7 or 7.30 in the morning for years. And I was tired, but it's possible.

And I was just so tired at the end of the day that I would just fall asleep early and you can kind of get into that pattern. So it's possible. Is there anything that we should be doing on the other end? Like if we go to sleep and we have to wake up early and we're trying to be energized and pop out of bed in the morning, in? What can we do to facilitate that? One of the best things that you can do to wake up early in the morning, there's two amazing things actually. One is light and the other is a short burst of exercise. So at the end of the day, honestly, we are all solar powered. We are like walking plants. And people think that sleep scientists actually like work in a lab and they're attaching electrodes to people's

head to measure their sleep. But what a lot of sleep scientists do is actually to do with light and circadian biology and kind of looking at people's exposure to light and how that affects them. In the morning, there's something that's a pretty popular concept called light viewing, basically, where you just go outside and you're not looking directly at the sun, but you're just kind of existing in the natural daylight early in the morning as early as you can when the sun is more shifted to a blue tone, like the sun naturally has more blue wavelengths in it. And that wakes up this area in your brain called the SCN, which is like the master clock of your body and your circadian clock. So that is something just kind of existing in the daylight.

Something that I recommend is eating your breakfast outside if you can. If you're driving to work, don't wear sunglasses unless it's critically necessary. If you're driving and coming through the window, Is that still effective? It's not as effective as being outside, but it is still effective. And I used to just wear sunglasses every single morning when I drove to work. And then all of a sudden, I read a lot of these papers and I was like, oh, I'll just take my sunglasses off and I'll be a bit more alert. What's the ideal amount of sunlight viewing, you would say, to kind of turn on our brain?

More than half an hour isn't going to have a better effect. Like I would say anything from like five minutes to 30 minutes. and I find it pretty difficult to have the time to do that in the morning. So I actually just eat my breakfast on the balcony or if it's cold or raining or whatever, like right next to the window. So I'm trying to get some of that. I'll walk and pick up a coffee, basically. So I just try to kind of work it into my schedule in whatever way that I can. And when I wake up in the morning, instead of lying in bed on my phone for half an hour, I'll get out of bed and go and sit in a chair next to the window in another room where it's bright and just exposed myself to light.

The other thing that I was going to mention is exercise. So there's actually been a lot of studies done on on-call workers, so people who are firefighters who are medical workers who get a call in the middle of the night or very early in the morning and they have to leave their house within minutes and drive to work for an emergency. The best thing that has woken them up and reduced something called sleep inertia, which is that groggy feeling that you have in the morning, is actually doing. jumping jacks or star jumps for a minute. Like this short burst of aerobic exercise is the best thing that has increased their aloneteness in the morning. That's so interesting. Do you have any personal

tips for not laying on your bed and scrolling, like getting yourself to get up and to do your star jumps and to sit on the balcony and eat your breakfast? I have a lot to say about this in the evening in terms of bedtime procrastination, which we can talk about. But in the morning, something that I think is really important is recognizing or finding things that for you are fun. So for me, I'm obsessed with coffee and I only really want to, like, have the taste for it in the morning. So as soon as I wake up, I'm just excited because I can go and have my coffee and make

my coffee. And it's a little ritual that I really enjoy. Sometimes I'll get really delicious. as breakfast foods and kind of have those there. So as soon as I wake up, I'm like, amazing. I get to go eat that now, you know? So I think it just for people, it's finding something that you really enjoy, whether it's like a daily crossword or a coffee or something to eat or just going for a morning run. Whatever does it for you, kind of having that there as an incentive for you to get out of bed, I think is the best way to do that. I will also stress,

to your point earlier, there is nothing that wrong with using your phone in bed. A lot of sleep scientists really use it as this terrible behavior that everyone needs to fix. And it's like, come on. There's so much good that we get out of our devices as well, right? In terms of news, of social connection, just like having a bit of time to ourselves. So I don't want people to think that that's terrible. But sometimes for me personally, as I mentioned, because I manage my own work schedule, sometimes I can just be incredibly kind of lazy and just like.

I in bed on my phone for like an hour and I'm just like, oh my God, what am I doing? Yeah, same. What's happening if we've gotten like eight hours of sleep, but we still feel super groggy and tired the next day? That's a fantastic question. There could be a few things going on there. One thing is it could be the quality of your sleep. So you could be getting still that duration of sleep.

You could be getting eight hours, but it might not be a good quality. And that is actually, I will stand corrected. the time where sleep trackers can be helpful. That's something where you could look at your sleep tracker and you could have gotten a lot of light sleep. So you could just be really tired because you haven't gotten deep sleep, a lot of deep sleep that night.

That can happen if your sleep is really disrupted because of noise, because of babies, whatever it may be because of stress even. So that could be one reason is just your sleep quality. The other reason is that it could have nothing to do with your sleep. could be burnout. It could be emotional burnout. It could be work stress. It could be something hormonal that's going on. Like, it could be a vitamin deficiency. There's a lot of reasons why we feel tired. And sleep is super important in those, but a lot of it is also physical or psychological as

well. And sometimes it can be really hard to kind of like pass those out. What I do, do in my own life is I just do a kind of process of elimination. Like if I'm feeling tired, I'm just like, was it my slate quality? Did I have three glasses of wine before I went to bed? And should I maybe do that earlier in the day next time or like only have two or something? Like I just kind of work through that. I might think about my stress level at that time. I will say you don't have to do this all the time. But if it is a chronically bad problem for you, it just helps to kind of work through all of the different options and figure out if there's a way that you can address that. The stress level one annoys me so much because I feel like it's like stress makes you sleep bad,

but then if you're sleeping poorly, you're stressed about not sleeping. And so I'll just like lay in bed and be like, don't be stressed, but I'm stressed. So I can't just like not be stressed, you know? Yeah, this is what I said before about anxiety, right? Like you're just anxious and then you're not sleeping and then it makes your anxiety worse. One thing that I will say about that that I think is really important for people to know is that stress and anxiety are some of the most common reasons why people have insomnia. Now, a lot of people's perception of insomnia, and I even thought this before I got into sleep research, is that insomnia is when people don't sleep at all, and they're just like on the couch watching TV every single night, and they're bleary-eyed, and they're like

a kind of zombie vampire person. And that's not the case. Insomnia can be as simple as not being able to fall asleep at night, waking up frequently during the night, waking up early in the morning. There are two different types of insomnia. One is short term, so that's called stress-induced insomnia, and you're just doing that for a short period of time. And chronic insomnia is when that lasts for longer than three months. Now, the gold standard treatment for insomnia in sleep science is therapy. Psychological therapy. It's called CBTI, so it's a different version of CBT for insomnia. And it is the most effective thing that people can do to improve their sleep. And I just think it's kind of crazy to hear that, right?

Because a lot of people, if they can't sleep, they think there's something wrong with them. They take sleeping pills. But actually, the most effective thing is addressing stress and anxiety. And for a lot of people, if you can't sleep well, there's often some kind of root cause like that, whether it is stress, anxiety, something else that is going on in your body. So it's just really interesting where bad sleep is often a simple, of something else that's happening. On sort of an acute level, in the specific situation of somebody waking up in the middle

of the night and not being able to go back to sleep, is there anything that you recommend in that scenario? For people who wake up and they're struggling to go back asleep, there are a number of things that they can do. One that is pretty effective is called progressive muscle relaxation. They have this on YouTube, on different apps like Calm and Headspace. And basically what it is is when you are tightening certain muscle groups, you're breathing into them, and then you're releasing them. And you do this in a way that progresses through your

body and it calms your muscles and your body down. I mean, the mind and the body are just one big feedback loop. So when you do things like this to calm down your body, it also calms down your mind. Progressive muscle relaxation is one. The other is breathing techniques. So four by four breathing is another thing that can lower your heart rate, that can slow down your body, where you're counting in and breathing in for four counts. You're holding it for four counts and then you're breathing out for four counts and you can kind of do these breathing exercises. For me, those two are okay. Some people swear by them. For me, when I can't fall back asleep, it's because my mind is racing and I'm just thinking of all of these different things. So I actually just put in headphones

and I listen to sleep stories and I just put those in and just listen to something random and I fall back asleep most of the time. Oh, that's so interesting. I have the same thing where my mind is racing and I just go through history stuff on Wikipedia or Quora. Like I read history articles on my phone, which is probably bad because of the blue light. I should do an audio version of that. But I do need something to occupy my brain I find in that same way.

A lot of people talk about watching YouTube videos to do the same thing. And if you do that, it is good to maybe just put on a video about something and turn off the screen so that light isn't entering your mind. There are some other thought exercises that you can do. One of them is where you think about a happy memory that you have. And if there isn't a happy memory that comes to you, and this is my favorite part about it, you can just make one up. And you think through all of your different senses, like you're walking in a place and

what does it sound like and what does it smell like and what are all the different colors that are around. And this, I mean, I'm saying it out loud and it seems like so silly, but I love watching interior design shows and like dream house kind of TV shows. And I will just imagine my dream home. This sounds so silly saying it out loud. But I think you can't have any judgment with what people use to fall back asleep. Do you know what I mean? It's just like, honestly, whatever works for you, If you have insomnia, it's hard, just do it. But I'm like, I just want you to know that when I can't sleep, I'm like at a beach house, walking by the pool, listening to the waves, I own the house, I'm doing so well.

And that is like, I'm just like thinking through all of the different aspects of the property and walking around. And that is kind of a visualization that I do to fall asleep. But you can do that for a day that you had at Disneyland, a trip that you took overseas. You can just kind of go through that happy memory in your mom. mind using all of those different senses? That makes sense to me for two reasons. One, you're kind of like implanting a dream, which is like a little bit fun. You're like choosing the dream you want and kind of controlling it. But then two, I had a therapist teach me that as a technique for when I'm having

panic attacks or when I'm starting to feel that panic rising in my body is to find something for each of my senses, like something that I can smell, something that I can see to count colors, like things like that. I do think there's something that you'd probably know this better than me that happens in your brain when you're engaging your different senses that seems to stave off anxiety in some way. Yeah, I think at the end of the day, it's just a really effective way of distracting your brain. And people who have had those kinds of experience in therapy would know that four by four breathing and progressive muscle relaxation is something that is also recommended for panic attacks, for stressful moments, like all of these things are linked. And that is, as I'm mentioned,

before, one of the most common reasons why people can't sleep or people are waking up during the night. So a lot of the tips to deal with insomnia are actually the same techniques as other things like this. And if it's one of those nights where you haven't even been able to fall asleep in the first place, you're just kind of like tossing and turning, sleep isn't happening, would you do those same things? Is there any point where you would get out of bed and be like, this isn't happening tonight? What's the approach there? The recommended approach is to get out of bed and just to do something else that is relaxing until you feel sleepy again and then you return to bed. So you might get up and sit on the

sofa or something and watch a boring TV show, read a book, listen to a podcast, something more boring than this podcast, a bad podcast. Something that's not going to engage your brain that you're really going to think about too deeply. And then when you feel sleepy, back to bed. That is the recommended advice. Personally, I do that sometimes, but for me, I find that I like to put on something to listen to and then I'll usually fall asleep while that is playing. So I will just do that in bed so I can just fall back asleep. So I think it depends on what has worked for you in the past. But getting out of bed and doing something else is definitely recommended. I have a list of things that I would love to hear from you what the research says about their impact on

sleep. This is like a lightning round. It's like a lightning round. Some of them we've already touched on a little bit, but I just want to kind of go through them. So avoiding blue light, there's strong research there, yeah. Definitely. Can I talk about light a little bit?

Yeah. Please do. I feel like this is anti-lightening round where you say one word. I'm like, let me talk about that for five minutes. Go for it. But you mentioned research. So light is actually something that I've mentioned before. It's super important.

And in the evening, light has a lot to do with our melatonin production and release in our brain. Melatonin is a hormone that makes you feel sleepy and super important for you falling asleep. Now, the reason why I want to talk about this is because melatonin supplements are increasing in popularity. They now have them in gummies for children in like all different amounts and quantities and some of the prevalence of them is really concerning. You can produce melatonin naturally. It is a natural hormone that everybody has the ability to produce. The best way to do that is to dim the lights two hours before you go to bed.

Some of the best advice that I've given to people who are having trouble falling asleep is buy a lamp. Like turn off your ceiling lights, get a warm orange lamp, just make it like a really cozy, dark, warm environment, kind of orangey red environment before you go to bed. There have been studies done. So there was a study done in Monash University. out of Australia a couple of years ago where they put on this light meter on a whole bunch of people. It was like a wrist thing that they wore to measure the light exposure in their home. And they found that in people's home, the lights were bright enough to suppress melatonin by 50%.

So for a lot of people, the ceiling lights in their home are just so bright and people have all of the lights on right up until they go to bed. And that can just suppress your natural production of melatonin. So two hours before is enough to get all of the melatonin you need? Yeah. That's fascinating. Okay, so avoid blue light. I have a lot of friends who use friends or the office or something like that to fall asleep. They say it's the only way they can turn their brain off and they find it really comforting.

What would you say to them? Comforting media is something that is really popular for people to use as a sleep aid. And I think if that works for you, go for it. As I said before, if you can find something that works for you, your friends have actually now trained their brain to fall asleep to friends or the office. And I think that is fine. Sometimes I think that those older kind of sitcom shows are good for falling asleep compared to other types of media that you can consume because they're more passive and they're short.

So you're watching a half an hour episode or 22 minute episode, I suppose, and you're falling asleep. You're not necessarily going on some eight-hour Netflix binge with a new show. you're not scrolling through TikTok, watching a new video every 10 seconds. There's this concept in research called passive media and active media. And active media is much worse for your sleep. And active media encompasses things that have a social element to them like Instagram or TikTok. And passive media is stuff that is just more chill, like probably those shows that you mentioned, like podcasts, like music, things where you're not actively engaging in the media. Okay, so if it works for you, maybe also you could do it with like the screen off and just like listen.

Yeah, or you can turn the brightness down on your TV or your computer or phone. What about white noise? I love white noise. It's one of my favorite comfort things to help me sleep, but I'm really worried that I'm simulating a part of my brain all night that's going to have negative impacts in the long term because I'm not letting it rest from processing noise or something like that. What does the research say on white noise? That's a really interesting area of research.

because the research is actually inconclusive. There was a systematic review that was done recently within the past year it was published that looked at all of the studies, the single studies that had been published on noise as a sleep aid. And then it collated all of the research together to see like what is the effect across all of the studies on white noise. And it found that there isn't really an effect. Like it was helpful in some studies.

It didn't really have. impact in others. So it was just kind of like, we need more research on this, I suppose. So it does fall into one of those areas that it is quite personal. I love white noise and I use it every single night. I don't think that you need to worry about your brain processing the noise. That is just kind of a nice background thing. Its main role is actually just shielding out all of the other noise, It's like noise from the hallway of your apartment or from the street outside your house. Like that is its main purpose. So I don't think you need to worry about that.

I will say that in this review, the one thing that they said was that sometimes, particularly in kids, white noise that is too loud, it can lead to hearing loss. So just be careful that it is not like blasting absolute full volume. So it sounds like you're on a plane about to take off. Or maybe I put mine across the room from me too. so it's not just like right by my ears. What about brown noise, pink noise, all of that? Like, does it matter the type of noise for sleep? There are so many noise opinions just in the past few years. There hasn't yet been enough research done on the different types of noise to actually say.

So again, that would just come down to personal preference. I actually prefer brown noise to white noise because it's a lower pitch. So it more sounds like you're on a plane or you're on a boat. or something like white noise is a little bit higher pitch. There's no real benefit to using either that has been proven. So really just whatever works for you. What about CBD or THC? This is really interesting. With CBD, it is so new to the area of science and clinical trials. Unfortunately, it takes years to do this type of research. So there hasn't been any concrete. inclusive research with that. It's kind of similar to the white noise research, actually. Some that suggest it helps, some that didn't find any effect, some that found an effect but only in people

with anxiety. All of the results are quite different for that. THC is one where that does help a lot of people fall asleep. But similarly to alcohol, actually, your sleep might be of a bit of a lower quality than if you didn't have that in your system. Is it because you're body is processing it and that's keeping it awake? Is it because those chemicals are having some sort of impact on your brain? It's more the reason that because your body is processing it, it's not having the same kind of effect. It can affect how much time you spend in those different sleep stages as well, depending on, you know, what kinds of substances you've had across the board. With alcohol, for example, that can suppress the amount of time that you're in REM sleep. Like,

If you have had a big night hour, you've had a lot to drink, and you look at your sleep tracker, you'll spend a lot of time in light sleep throughout the course of the night. It does depend on for all of these things like the person, the dose, the timing. And that's honestly a lot of the problem with the research on this is that it's done with different doses and different people and different populations and stuff like that. So it's kind of hard when we're just talking about general research to be like, yes, this does lead to bad sleep or whatever it may be. What about weighted blankets?

I love weighted blankets personally. I use a weighted blanket every night. The recommended weight is 10% of your body weight. And I'm telling you this because I found that way too heavy and I bought a weighted blanket for children. And it's the perfect one for me. when you get into the territory of blankets and mattresses and pillows and those that are more like consumer things, the research is actually happening more by the companies that make them

and not by independent universities. So the research that companies have done suggests that they help with sleep, but that's not the most reliable result. But again, they are really good actually at helping with anxiety and stress. Just be careful if you do have sleep apnea of not getting a weight of blanket that is too heavy because it can restrict breathing. Look, I'm never going to make everything that I wear organic, but your sheets, your pillows, your comforter are literally touching your skin for eight hours every single night. That is a third of your life right there with one simple swap. And if your betting is worn out, it's trapping heat or it's made with questionable materials, your sleep is going to suffer, and so will everything that depends on it? You want a bed,

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look and feel as I age. Support yourselves and how you age with mitopure gummies from Timeline. Visit Timeline.com slash Liz and save up to 39% on your mitopure gummies. That is timeline.com slash Liz. Can you explain from a science perspective in as simplistic way as possible why a weighted blanket blanket would help with anxiety? Like, why does that pressure make a difference? It's fascinating, isn't it? It goes back to the feedback loop that I was talking about before where it is helping to relax your muscles and that is having feedback to your brain, basically, to calm you down and to relax you. What about eating a snack before bed? I have. I've heard some people say that this is great for sleep.

It keeps your blood sugar stable throughout the night, so you're not waking up from that. But then I've heard other people say that it's bad for your sleep because your body turns on to digest the food. So where do you fall in that? The general advice is to not eat within anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours before you go to bed. When I say general advice, it does change depending on who is giving it. But something that poor sleep is linked to is people having a later dinner time. There are kind of all these other effects that we don't think of. If you're having dinner late, if you're having a snack late, that means that you're delaying

your wind-down routine. You're getting into bed later. Yes, your body is also digesting that, but it also just pushes your whole routine later, so you don't have as much time available to sleep. Are there any food or drinks that you recommend to get a better night's sleep? I'm thinking everything from like the old wives remedies of warm belk, but then also people talk about tart cherry, increasing your melatonin levels, etc. There are two main foods that I would say people should be mindful of. One is just anything with caffeine. So caffeine, like a lot of different drugs,

has a half-life, which means that 10 hours after you've had a cup of coffee, half of the caffeine that was in that cup of coffee is still in your system. So a lot of people who have trouble falling asleep, that could be due to an afternoon coffee or a Coke that you have had late at night or something like that. So be super mindful of caffeine. Some of us are more sensitive to it than others. I'm really caffeine-sensitive, but some people like my dad, can have a cup of coffee and just fall asleep 10 minutes later. And I don't know how that guy does it.

But for a lot of people, that's something to be mindful of, in terms of food that can help you sleep, chamomile tea is a really good one. I think the main thing to remember with a lot of this stuff is that we can get really caught up on these specific questions. Like, is there a certain type of food that's really going to help me sleep? And for a lot of this stuff, it is pretty common sense. Like, I think one of the reasons, actually why we get so caught up with all of these different things now is because there are so many sleep products, foods, gummies, drinks, all of these different things that claim to improve your sleep. But there's not a lot of science on if those things actually work. And I think that one of the best things that people can do to improve their sleep is actually

just do less rather than do more. Like I think our natural tendency when we're thinking about improving something is like, what can I buy? What can I add to my routine? What's something else that I can do to try to make this better? But in terms of sleep, it's like, well, what can you take away? Can you cut out caffeine? Can you cut out light in your bedroom? Can you maybe just not try not to do as much at night? Like, productivity is one of the worst things for sleep if we're like our bodies are really active and we're thinking about work and we're stressing about stuff. Can you speak to the importance of light, do we all need to be getting blackout curtains or sleeping with an eye mask? Is any light bad when we're trying to sleep? I would say, yes. I don't want people to freak out and rush out and

buy blackout curtains. But a sleep mask is something that is pretty inexpensive and easy to buy that could really improve the quality of your sleep. One thing that light does is it can wake us up earlier than we need to, particularly in the summer months. Light is one of the strongest cues that regulates our circadian rhythms and that is going to make us sleepy or awake. I'm a big proponent of blackout blinds and people wearing a sleeping mask. And in terms of the research, like there is just so much research on how light affects your brain and body. What about the impact of temperature on your sleep? Can you speak to that? The ideal temperature for people to sleep in is probably a lot colder than what you think. There is research that

suggests in Fahrenheit, it's 60 to 66 degrees, is the ideal sleeping temperature. And I think in Celsius, that's like maybe 16 to 18 or something like that. So it is a little bit colder. Your bodies do run hot while you sleep. And being too hot while your sleep is one reason why some people wake up in the middle of the night. So it can improve your sleep quality and the amount of time, that you're spending asleep if you sleep in a colder room. Another temperature hack that people can use to help them fall asleep more quickly is take a hot shower before they go to bed. So if you take a hot shower or a bath and then you come back into the natural room temperature, the temperature drop, that difference actually makes you feel sleepy and can help you fall asleep more quickly.

I'm constantly fighting with my husband about the thermostat and I'm like, science, says, we need to have it be very cold to sleep well. And he gets so much colder than I do. And I run really, really hot when I sleep. I feel like that is so uncommon. Um, normally it's the women who are freezing. I'm freezing all day. But the second I'm trying to sleep, I'm a furnace. I'm so, so, so hot. I'm at 64 every night and I have to fight with him about it. So I'm going to make him listen to this. That is so funny. I mean, I'm always fighting with my husband about the thermostat. It's just like the last frontier of relationships. There are some super fancy mattresses that have cooling pads and heating pads on them.

So the different halves of the mattresses can be different temperatures. Oh, we need one of those. I think you do. What's your take on naps? Are we pro or con? Is there an ideal way to nap? I think that naps can be fantastic if you are not getting the sleep that you need at night. And reasons for that could be kids,

particularly babies and toddlers or work schedules. So naps can be a really good supplement to sleep, but they shouldn't replace sleep that you're getting at night. If you do take a nap, the best way to nap is to make sure that your nap isn't longer than half an hour. If it's longer than half an hour, it's just another period of sleep and not actually a nap and not to do it too close to bedtime. Try not to nap within like six or seven hours of you going to sleep at night. Is it bad if it's another period of sleep. If I have a really bad night sleep and then I take a three hour nap so I could cycle through all the sleep periods, is that actually bad? It's bad if it then affects your sleep that night. Like if you are just trying to catch up, it's probably fine. If you can help it,

I don't know if three hours is like the best thing to do. Again, everyone's different. It's all personal and individual. If you're a shift worker, if for whatever reason, you've had a really bad night sleep if you're jet lagged. Sometimes naps can be really helpful, but keeping them on the shorter side is generally better. We've mentioned shift workers a few times, and I would love any tips that you could share that you would have directed towards night shift workers. I just love talking about shift workers, but I think part of that is because shift workers are a group that a lot of sleep research is on. And the group that I work with, which is at Central Queensland University in Australia, they do a lot of work on shift workers. It's really important if you're a shift worker to

have good sleep hygiene. And sleep hygiene is one of those things that can be almost a never-ending list. But I would say the most important things are actually just making sure that you're not having caffeine within like eight hours of when you are going to sleep, that you're trying to use light. So use the sun and the natural daylight to reset your circadian rhythms. So you're trying to kind of get back onto the rhythm with the sun. Like you're going outside when you wake up to get that light, that feedback into your body, dimming the lights before you go to bed or in the evening. And I was talking about melatonin supplements earlier. Shift workers are some of the only people where research are shown that melatonin can be really effective.

in terms of helping them fall asleep. And in terms of the light, if you're coming off your shift, it's morning, you actually wouldn't want to be viewing the morning light, right? You'd want to be kind of pretending at night time. You would want to be keeping your environment dark so you can go to bed. I mean, for shift workers as well, those blackout blinds and those sleeping masks are super important to them. But then when you wake up from whatever time you have slept, go outside immediately,

get the sunlight in your eyes and try to be like, it's morning brain. Yeah, and something that shipworkers can do that a lot of people who live really far north do is have a light box. A lot of people do this if they have seasonal effective disorder or if they live somewhere that has like four hours of daylight in winter. If they have a light box that is just like a really bright blue light that they just sit in front of for like 15 minutes or 30 minutes. So shipworkers can also do something like that. Are there any sleep myths that you want to bust for us? Like things that you hear people saying all the time about sleep and you're like, okay, the science doesn't support that.

Like, let's not say that anymore. Something that frustrates me, this isn't a myth, but if you've just given me the opportunity to rant, this is what frustrates me, is when people get on their high horse about using technology in the bedroom and saying that you shouldn't be using your phone or your computer or the TV or anything like that within two hours of bed, which is the recommended advice. If you go onto the website of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, like that's what they say. But honestly, what do they expect everyone to do? Like, what I know that we're going to do to entertain ourselves for two hours before we go to bed if we're not using technology?

You light your candle, you open your book, you all gather around together and read out loud together. You can. And I wish you well. doing that. But I mean, in my research, like, I specialize in bedtime procrastination, and I've done interview-based studies where I've just tried to understand people's experience of bedtime procrastination, like, why do you do it? It was driving that behavior. And people have said to me, like, if I didn't use my phone or if I didn't watch TV, what would I do? I don't know what I would do with my time. And I think that that is a normal feeling, and it's something that we'll struggle with. So the thing that annoys me is when people feel judged or they feel like they're doing the wrong thing by watching

friends or the office to go to sleep when that is a fine thing to do. Like if you were watching out for other areas of your lifestyle, if you have a healthy life, like watch friends every night to help you fall asleep. Sleep aids are individual and they are different for everyone. And the best thing that you can do is just make sure that you're giving yourself enough time to go to sleep at night, to get a good night's sleep, that you're managing stress and anxiety and that you're not going overboard using TikTok for three hours in the middle of the night. Can you define briefly what bedtime procrastination is and maybe give us a few tips if we do struggle with that? Bed time procrastination is particularly interesting. It's defined as the intentional

delay of sleep without influence of any external circumstances, which could be being on call for work, having kids, having someone else interrupt you, something like that. So it is when you are procrastinating your bedtime for something else that has a short-term gain, whether that might be using TikTok, it could be a Netflix binge, could just be like lying on the couch scrolling on your phone, whatever it may be. Is the idea like I haven't had any time to myself to give myself this little reward all day, so I deserve it right now because I feel like that's kind of what I mentally identify with. Definitely. That is one of the most common reasons why people procrastinate their bedtime. And it's such a tough thing because my research has actually found that bedtime procrastination

is correlated with worse sleep, with shorter sleep duration, with lower sleep quality, with increased daytime fatigue. Like, look, I've got this paper that was published in sleep medicine. Last week, everyone can hear it. The problem though is that it's an activity that people derive a lot of meaning or pleasure from and it's really tough because it's one of those things where you're like, yeah, it is bad for our sleep, but we're still going to do it from time to time. And I think it's similar to something like alcohol, right? Like alcohol is bad for our sleep, but we still enjoy it. It's social for us. We're going to drink from time to time. The thing with bedtime procrastination is we all do it from time to time, but some people do it chronically and in a really severe way, where they are getting significantly short asleep and it's really impacting their well-being in their day-to-day life, which is when, like anything, you know that maybe that's a problem for you.

What you said is really common that people need some me time. It's reported a lot in new mothers, actually, and people who are stay-at-home mothers who are just dedicating every month. moment of their day to something else and they just need some quiet personal time even with people who maybe have new jobs or who have a job where they don't have a lot of autonomy and they're just at work all day and they just want some time to socialise or be with their friends. It is very common for people and a lot of people also do what the research suggests because of anxiety or stress or there's a link there with anxiety or stress and rumination and overthinking, so people is just using their phone because they're anxious or they're distracted.

So it's a tough one because it's something that we can reduce if it's a problem for us. But if you're not doing it that often or if it's just for a short amount of time and you're getting a benefit from it, maybe you don't need to change your behaviour. If you wanted to reduce it, what would you recommend? Some good things that you can do are try to use some of the alarms and the systems that are on your phone. So you can set reminders on your phone to go to bed. You can set a reminder on your smart speaker that is time to go to bed. You can set in app controls. So if you are spending heaps of time on Instagram late at night, you can actually lock that app for certain hours. Like there's all

these things that you can do in your phone. That's one. The other thing is a lot of people get into a cycle of bedtime procrastination where they bring their phone into their bedroom. They use it as their alarm and then they're in bed and then they can't sleep and then they pick up their phone and then they're on Wikipedia and YouTube and it's just like a whole kind of it really blows out. So something that I recommend is really simple, like buy an alarm clock that is not your phone. It costs you like $15. Just do that and just keep your phone in another room. That can be really helpful for people. And I think that we can use timers and routines to allow us to have like half an hour or one hour of that me time and then you can kind of kick off the next step of your bedtime routine,

like you can have a shower. So work it into your routine, but in a way that's manageable. What about like scheduling some me time earlier in the day? Would it work to kind of shift when you would give that to yourself if you know that's something that you need and maybe make it a priority to have that earlier? 100%. That is also a really helpful thing to do. But I would say this kind of goes to my whole philosophy and my research area in sleep as well is that to date, a lot of research on improving your sleep focuses on self-control. So, oh, you're procrastinating your bedtime, you're watching TV, just turn it off. You need to improve your self-control, which doesn't work, right? So if we try

to actually develop routines and to form habits, that's a much more effective way of actually having healthier behavior and sustaining that over a long period of time. So when we're using these kinds of external cues, like thinking about your environment, okay, don't bring your phone into your bedroom, setting these reminders, like all of these things that are actually external to ourselves that can help us actually develop good behaviors in a certain context, that is going to be the most successful way to change your behavior. Which makes sense. You wouldn't say to like a baby, you should just fall asleep. You need the more willpower. You set up a whole sleep routine for a baby and you have them like always do a thing before and you turn on the white noise and you have

the black, like we do all these things for babies because we know it's effective for sleep. But then for ourselves, we just like sit there yelling at ourselves like, well, why can't you just fall asleep on demand when I say you should? A hundred percent. And we feel bad and we're like, oh my God, I just need more willpower and why can't I do this? And at the end of the day, psychology isn't that different from a baby where you need to have a routine and set your white noise machine and black out the curtains. And that can be some of the most effective ways to actually improve your sleep. Treat yourself like your own beautiful little baby is the takeaway lesson from the podcast. Are there any other sleep hacks that you really love that we

haven't mentioned on here? The one thing that I would say is have a look at your routine. If you want to target something, if you want to improve something, pick one thing. It can be overwhelming to think about changing your behavior or improving your sleep when there's like 20 different things that you can do. So just think about one thing. Focus on that. And then if that works for you, you can pick up another thing and do it. So it's kind of just a very small step-by-step approach to changing the way that we sleep and just thinking about sleep a bit more. I love that. I like to ask us at the end for one homework aside. meant something that we can all do immediately when we stop listening, but I feel like would that be

yours? I think that would be mine. Think about one thing that you would like to target or improve and just start with one tip and work your way up from there. Amazing. Can you tell us a little bit in your own words about all the amazing work that you're doing? I am spreading good information about sleep on TikTok. My handle is BrainCraft and BrainCraft is also the name of my YouTube channel. You can find me on Instagram at Nessie Hill, N-E-S-S-Y-H-I-L. I'm a science communicator who focuses on simple tips that you can use to improve your sleep and habits. Sleep and habits are actually my area of research. I have just published a new systematic review on bedtime procrastination in sleep medicine, which is out now. Just trying to do a lot of the good science research and tell

everyone about it too. Amazing. We also appreciate your work and you're taking the time to share all of your amazing tips and tricks with us here today. Thank you for having me on the show. I hope this episode was super helpful. I definitely learned a few new hacks that I will be personally implementing into my routines. Plus, I was happy to hear that my beloved cirque walks are actually one of the best ways to wake up in the morning. So that was a win for me. Please share a link for this episode with anyone who you think might need some helpful sleep tips. Not sleeping is just such a horrible feeling. And I don't want anyone to be going through that who does not have to. So shoot them a text, an email, just share the episode, please. And if you're new here, make sure that

you're following the podcast on whatever platform you like to listen on. Just go to the main podcast page on that platform. So it's the one that lists all of the healthier together episodes. And you will see the word follow under the logo on Spotify. And then there is a little follow with a plus sign button on the top right of that same page on Apple Podcasts. That way, all of the new episodes of the healthier together podcast will show up in your feed so you will never miss out. out on one. And that is especially important right now because we have some fabulous new episodes coming up, including one all about upleveling your sex life, which is very exciting. One of my favorite episodes that I have ever recorded all about how to be more confident and an episode

all about secrets to entrepreneurial success. So make sure that you are following so you do not miss out. And do not forget to grab your raunch your together deck in time for Valentine's Day. It is the perfect game for the best conversations to spice things up with a partner or have fun with all of your girlfriends for Galentine's Day. So head over to Healthycombo.com.com and be sure to order by February 9th at the latest to get your game and time for Valentine's Day. You can use code Love 15 for 15% off your order for this limited time that is L-O-V-E-1-5. And we also offer free two-day shipping when you order two or more of any of the Healthy Combo Code games. so it is the perfect time to stock up, especially because we do not do promo codes often. So take advantage while we have one active.

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