Unlocking the Secrets to Better Sleep with Dr. Catherine Darley
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Dr. Catherine Darley a sleep specialist, delves into the role that sleep plays in our overall health and well-being. She provides a comprehensive overview of the three pillars of healthy sleep—duration, quality, and timing—and examines the societal hurdles contributing to widespread sleep insufficiency.
Key Discussion Points:
The Three Pillars of Healthy Sleep:
- Duration: Understanding the importance of getting enough sleep and how to determine the optimal amount for individual health.
- Quality: The significance of sleep quality and practical ways to enhance it.
- Timing: The role of timing in sleep health, including maintaining a consistent sleep schedule.
Sleep as a Health Priority:
- Catherine emphasizes the need to prioritize sleep on par with nutrition and exercise.
- Discussion on the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance, emotional intelligence, and overall well-being.
Societal Challenges and Sleep:
- Exploration of modern societal factors that contribute to insufficient sleep, such as work demands and screen time.
- Practical advice on managing these challenges to improve sleep quality.
For more information about Dr. Catherine Darley and where to find her check out her guest profile here.
Transcript
Well, I have Catherine with me today.
Speaker:She is a sleep specialist.
Speaker:And I'm so glad you're here because we're going to talk about everything sleep today.
Speaker:So welcome, Catherine, to the podcast. Great. Thanks.
Speaker:I'm glad to be here.
Speaker:Before we get started, how, why did you decide to focus on sleep?
Speaker:What was what was the thing that intrigued you about that?
Speaker:You know, I've been interested since actually early college and my whole work life has been
Speaker:in sleep, sleep research, sleep medicine.
Speaker:And when I was a kid, 12 years old, I was a sleepwalker.
Speaker:And I once sleepwalked out of our house across our yard into the neighbor's house and through
Speaker:their house to the opposite end. No way. Yeah.
Speaker:So that is a true story of extreme sleepwalking.
Speaker:Boy, I bet your parents were.
Speaker:That would be so scary for everyone involved.
Speaker:You know, you're yes, at two in the morning or whatever. Oh, wow.
Speaker:So that that I mean, thinking about back to your sleepwalking days, that really kind of was
Speaker:the impetus for Yeah, and just that I think I observed early on that sleep is one of those core
Speaker:pillars of health and nutrition and exercise for decades have gotten a lot more attention.
Speaker:And to me, it's like a two legged stool.
Speaker:Nobody wants to sit or at least very long on a two legged stool.
Speaker:You need that third leg, which is sleep, sleep, movement and good nutrition.
Speaker:That is a solid foundation.
Speaker:And so my career mission has been to really uplift the importance of sleep and give people sleep
Speaker:skills so that they know what to do to sleep well.
Speaker:That is so true, because you always hear about you need to eat right, you need to exercise more.
Speaker:And then a lot of times with sleep, you hear things like, well, you know, don't be on your phone
Speaker:before you sleep and not really like any sort of impactful techniques that we can use to help us sleep. But so that's great. I love that.
Speaker:And I always love the analogy of the three legged stool. So tell us why.
Speaker:First of all, two questions, you can answer them any order you want.
Speaker:Why are we not sleeping?
Speaker:And why is sleep just as important as nutrition and exercise and all the other things they tell us to do?
Speaker:Yeah, I think that it's really comes down to societal values and modern lifestyle, why people aren't sleeping.
Speaker:There's three things to consider for healthy sleep. One is sleep duration. Are you sleeping enough?
Speaker:And over a third of people are simply not giving enough time in their schedule for the sleep they need.
Speaker:The second piece is sleep quality.
Speaker:Do you have a sleep disorder or is there something in your environment that is disrupting your sleep quality?
Speaker:And then the third piece is sleep timing.
Speaker:And that's all about whether you're a night owl, a morning person or neither.
Speaker:And honoring that and scheduling your lifestyle to accommodate that.
Speaker:And you know, of course, we don't always have 100% control over our schedule.
Speaker:Bosses dictate our work hours or whatnot.
Speaker:But there are some places where we do have control and we're not scheduling our life around
Speaker:whether we're that morning person, night owl or neither.
Speaker:That's interesting about the night person, morning person, night owl, because I'm actually a morning person.
Speaker:I can be in bed by 8.30 and up at five and I'm perfectly content.
Speaker:But so how many hours?
Speaker:We always hear we should be sleeping like eight or nine hours. Yeah.
Speaker:So the thing that I think people may not be clear about is that's a bell curve.
Speaker:So the typical bell curve of how much sleep an adult would need is somewhere between seven and
Speaker:nine outliers would be some people do fine with six.
Speaker:That's like 2% of the population, maybe three and about one to 2% of us need 10.
Speaker:But so it's not that every adult will be fine so long as they're getting seven.
Speaker:It means that you may be at seven and a half.
Speaker:That's how much sleep you do best with.
Speaker:I know I do best with eight and a quarter.
Speaker:Somebody else might need nine.
Speaker:And so that person who needs nine hours, if they're getting only eight a night, which most people
Speaker:would go only eight, that sounds like plenty.
Speaker:They're still sleep deprived an hour every night and they're going to suffer from that.
Speaker:Their performance isn't going to be as good.
Speaker:Their health isn't going to be as good.
Speaker:Their mood and their ability to interact well with others is just not going to be as good when
Speaker:they're getting only eight if they truly need nine.
Speaker:So one of the first steps I like people to do is to identify how much sleep you do best with.
Speaker:And there's a couple of ways you can do this.
Speaker:One is you can think back to a time that you were really well rested and operating really well.
Speaker:Cognitively sharp, safe on the road, emotionally even keel, and identify how much sleep were
Speaker:you getting at that point.
Speaker:The other thing, the other method is to give yourself 10 days in a row to just get as much sleep
Speaker:as you need at night and not wake up with an alarm.
Speaker:One red flag that you are not getting enough sleep is if you're waking up with an alarm.
Speaker:An alarm means you're truncating your sleep and you're interrupting your sleep.
Speaker:That is a novel idea for a lot of people, but it can be really useful.
Speaker:So you know, if you're chronically sleep deprived, giving yourself 10 days with 10 hours a night
Speaker:in bed to really catch up on your sleep and hopefully, if you're not too sleep deprived, it'll
Speaker:start to even out and you'll know, okay, how much sleep do I need on a regular basis?
Speaker:Well, that's a super interesting way to do that because I've never heard that you're the first
Speaker:person that ever said, you know, like, let's determine first how many hours you need to sleep.
Speaker:I'm a nine hour sleeper. I do know that.
Speaker:And it's also fascinating that even just an hour less than my needed time can cause so much havoc in your life.
Speaker:I mean, I know if I only sleep five hours because something's happened or I can't fall asleep at night. Oh my gosh. It's terrible.
Speaker:I'm just like, don't talk to me.
Speaker:But you know, it's fascinating how just an hour can do that.
Speaker:And I've noticed too, since I've gotten on a more, well, since I started caregiving is I set
Speaker:my alarm for six because I need to check on Steve after so many hours in the night.
Speaker:And I just now I'm waking up like five or 10 minutes before the alarm goes off.
Speaker:I don't even really need the alarm anymore that I've, you know, if I go to sleep at my normal
Speaker:time and get my, you know, nine hours of sleep, I just like wake up at 10 till, you know, I
Speaker:still set the alarm just in case.
Speaker:So that's really, but I've never heard anyone say, let's figure out your baseline before we do anything. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's important. Yeah. Important. Like first step.
Speaker:So why do some people need seven and some people need nine?
Speaker:Is there some sort of like physical or physiology sort of thing going on there?
Speaker:It's it's not, it's not anything negative.
Speaker:It's really just that, you know, if you took women my age in the US, if you and you track like
Speaker:how tall we are, we would fall on a bell curve.
Speaker:And, you know, how much sleep you need is not, you know, it's nobody should be making a moral
Speaker:judgment about, you know, it's just what your set point is.
Speaker:I think of it like your eye color, your height, it's both how much sleep you need is given to
Speaker:you and whether you're not a night owl or a morning person or neither is also given to you.
Speaker:And I think there's been, unfortunately a lot of kind of blame and shame of people who are night
Speaker:owls, you know, early bird gets the worm.
Speaker:And if you just would, you know, turn off your phone at night, you could get up in the morning
Speaker:or if you actually had were motivated and not lazy, you can get up, you know, that is not true at all.
Speaker:That's it's just like, you know, and and what's really interesting is if you think about human
Speaker:history, when there were smaller groups, tribes, you know, that it is actually adaptive to have
Speaker:people who are awake and alert at different times of day to watch over the group.
Speaker:And, you know, that is probably why we have this variability across the human population of
Speaker:some people are extreme night owls and some people get up at the crack of dawn.
Speaker:I am strongly a morning person and I usually wake up by 430. Oh, wow. That is a morning.
Speaker:Even if even if I stay up late, yeah, I still wake up at 430.
Speaker:Like that's my time and you know, my best work hours are before one or two o'clock in the afternoon. Same. Yeah.
Speaker:Well, thank you so much for saying that, because I do know that there is a lot of, you know,
Speaker:how do you get anything done?
Speaker:And there is a lot of judgment and then all these like, you know, get up at five o'clock and
Speaker:do your morning routine kind of thing.
Speaker:So thank you for saying that. I do appreciate that.
Speaker:So why do we why do we need to sleep?
Speaker:What happens when we sleep?
Speaker:Why is that so important for us?
Speaker:Oh, my goodness, this could be an eight hour class.
Speaker:Well, we can always do a two parter.
Speaker:I think about it in five domains.
Speaker:So I'm just going to kind of give an over a high level overview and we can go down into some
Speaker:of the weeds that are interesting to you.
Speaker:I think about it in five domains, your physical health, when you're sleep deprived, actually
Speaker:your blood sugar control isn't as good.
Speaker:And that is obviously an issue for a lot of people in America.
Speaker:They have blood sugar problems, pre-diabetes, diabetes.
Speaker:And if you're not getting enough sleep, it's going to alter your blood sugar control.
Speaker:It's going to also alter your appetite hormones.
Speaker:When people are sleep deprived, they tend to eat about 300 calories more a day.
Speaker:And to put that into perspective, that's 30 pounds over a year.
Speaker:So if you're just constantly like many people like myself struggling with that, you know, are
Speaker:you eating more calories and less healthy calories?
Speaker:So physical health, mental health, anxiety is so common in our society.
Speaker:And it's really interesting that you could see sleep hours in America have decreased over the
Speaker:decades since the 1920s sleep hours in America have decreased.
Speaker:And it looks like anxiety rates are also increasing, which we would anticipate because being
Speaker:sleep deprived does increase anxiety, increases depression, increases panic.
Speaker:Then think about cognitive performance and physical performance.
Speaker:So cognitive performance, you know, we have a really broad spectrum of tasks, cognitive tasks
Speaker:we have to do things like me remembering that your name is Shelley.
Speaker:We have just met this morning.
Speaker:We had some emails, but you're a new a new friend.
Speaker:So simple tasks like remembering someone's name to really the other end of the spectrum, which
Speaker:is that complex problem solving that we all need to do, you know, like as you were things out
Speaker:and do some problem solving and then physical performance, like if you're doing any kinds of
Speaker:athletics or fitness activities, greater increase, greater likelihood of injuries.
Speaker:If you are not well rested, dry, drowsy driving is particular concern.
Speaker:We're recording this at the beginning of July.
Speaker:Lots of people have summer trips, road trips, and then we'll have the fall and winter holidays that also involve driving.
Speaker:You're at greatly increased risk of a collision if you're drowsy driving.
Speaker:And then the last piece, which I'm really excited about and I think is is a growing area of
Speaker:research and just insight in the sleep medicine community, is that when we are not getting adequate
Speaker:sleep, it changes our emotional intelligence and our ability to get along with others.
Speaker:We are less observant of other people's experience.
Speaker:We are more self-focused in our reasoning and frankly, less kind. Yeah.
Speaker:Well, yeah, I've never heard that about the emotional intelligence, but I guess that would make sense.
Speaker:So let me ask you this, Catherine, we talk about anxiety and one of the things I talk about
Speaker:caregiving is like there's a lot of systemic issues within institutions and various just work
Speaker:schedules and caregivers not getting support, moms not getting support, just families in general not getting support.
Speaker:And I know on this podcast, we're not going to change the issues, the systemic issues that are
Speaker:out there in this country, in the world.
Speaker:So how can how can we sleep better knowing that we've got some of these issues?
Speaker:I mean, think about how I need to ask this.
Speaker:How can we sleep better knowing that we've still got some of these things that we have to deal
Speaker:with, like kids and, you know, people to care for and bosses and all those things or some practical ways to help us?
Speaker:Yeah, so I think about it as having a sleep healthy lifestyle because there's multiple things
Speaker:that you can do during the day and just kind of incorporate into your lifestyle that don't necessarily
Speaker:take much more time, but are going to make sure that you're you've got physiology on your side.
Speaker:And one of the things that is probably new information for folks is the importance of light and dark.
Speaker:One thing that happened with the adoption of the electric light is that human beings moved indoors,
Speaker:indoors during the day, indoors at night.
Speaker:And we have significantly altered in a very short span of time, our light, dark cues.
Speaker:And we have a circadian rhythm, which is this 24 hour pattern in our function where we do more
Speaker:of our function at certain times of day and less at others.
Speaker:For instance, we're awake during the day, we're asleep at night, which is a really basic that everybody knows.
Speaker:But if you go down to the organ system and even the cellular level, every cell does more or
Speaker:less of its function at different times of day.
Speaker:For instance, your digestive cells and your digestive organs, they are programmed to be more
Speaker:active in the day than they are at night.
Speaker:And many people can can personally identify with this.
Speaker:Think of a time that you ever did over, you know, pulled an all nighter to get a project done
Speaker:or you had to get up super early to a travel day.
Speaker:If you try to eat at a time that you're usually asleep, the food could just sit there. Right.
Speaker:It does not digest well because your digestive system is off.
Speaker:Basically, it's the light, dark cues that set our circadian system.
Speaker:And now we're indoors during the day and indoors has maybe 10 percent of the light intensity as outdoors does.
Speaker:And then at night we're indoors and we are getting more light at night than we would have.
Speaker:So we are getting our light is not enough during the day and it's too much at night.
Speaker:So there's actually recommendations that have been put forward by health organizations on how
Speaker:much light you're supposed to get.
Speaker:And this makes a huge difference.
Speaker:You want your circadian system to have you be widely awake or deeply asleep. And what we get.
Speaker:With these altered light conditions is we're a little bit awake.
Speaker:We're a little bit asleep.
Speaker:So you asked about practices.
Speaker:That was a lot of the why and the science.
Speaker:Let's go into the practices.
Speaker:You want to in the morning, get up and within the first couple hours of your day, be outside for 20 minutes.
Speaker:That is critical because that morning light signals to your body strongly that it's morning
Speaker:is time to get into active mode.
Speaker:And it actually will increase your nocturnal melatonin and shifted earlier.
Speaker:If you get that bright light and then throughout the day, go outside every couple hours.
Speaker:So if you are a caregiver and you have the possibility of taking the family outside with you
Speaker:to sit on the porch or sit, you know, a window is really not enough light, but if that's the
Speaker:best you can do, it's better than nothing.
Speaker:But sitting outside on a patio or a porch and having your breakfast and having getting bright
Speaker:light is going to be really important for people of all ages.
Speaker:And then you mentioned earlier today about the blue light at night and your screens that actually
Speaker:has a huge impact for three hours before bed.
Speaker:We're supposed to be in dim light conditions that are 10 lux or less.
Speaker:Lux is a measure of a light that one lux is equal to one candle flame.
Speaker:So 10 lux is not very much.
Speaker:And I think this is one of those areas where many people have heard about turning off the screens
Speaker:or dimming the lights, but don't necessarily understand how huge of a difference it can make.
Speaker:Shelley, if you can hold your hand out at arm's length and see your fingers wiggling, that is
Speaker:enough light to suppress your melatonin.
Speaker:And for sleep, we want our melatonin to be high.
Speaker:So I've got a couple tricks.
Speaker:One is on your phone, you can download what's called a lux meter, LUX meter, and it just uses
Speaker:the little camera lens to measure the light.
Speaker:Um, so the, the recommendations there is during the day, 250 lux of light with blue light.
Speaker:Um, it's unlikely that your home or work environment has that.
Speaker:Typically offices and homes are about 160 lux, whereas outside is 16,000 lux.
Speaker:So outside is 16,000 indoors, 6, 160.
Speaker:So we want 250 lux during the day.
Speaker:And then three hours before bed, we want 10 lux or less without blue.
Speaker:And that's why we need to turn off our screens because the screens give blue.
Speaker:I mean, even if you just see my hand here, it's has like this bluish, um, bluish hue from the light of the computer.
Speaker:LED lights have, have, so you can measure the lux.
Speaker:I think for many of us, we are still in a really active part of our day, three hours before bed. Right.
Speaker:Um, and if that's the case, you can wear blue blocking glasses and that is a good alternative
Speaker:or, you know, dim the lights as you can and where the blue blockers, um, a tip, if you're gonna,
Speaker:I basically think everyone who has electric light in their home needs blue blockers.
Speaker:Um, a tip you want to get this strong reddish orange color.
Speaker:If they have just this yellow color, that's not enough for those three hours before bed.
Speaker:You might use these during the day to protect your eyes from the computer.
Speaker:If you're on the computer all day, some, uh, I doctors recommend that, but for the night or
Speaker:evening, you need this strong reddish orange color.
Speaker:Well, that's where, yeah, those are, you know, I'm, I'm seeing it as you're talking and all
Speaker:that first, first things that sort of popped into my head was, um, I've heard this phrase called rage scrolling.
Speaker:So like people who don't have the day to themselves, they tend to be on their screens at night,
Speaker:like rage scrolling, because I don't, this is my time to do what I want.
Speaker:And I, I get that, but, you know, we watch TV, we do this, we do that.
Speaker:I don't want to give that time up.
Speaker:I think we have to decide what's, what's the most important thing for you.
Speaker:I would say sleep is more important than binging TV till 11 o'clock at night.
Speaker:I mean, not judgment call or anything like that.
Speaker:I mean, not judgment, but, you know, I would just think that for me, it's more important to
Speaker:get sleep than it is to, you know, spend two hours on the phone or TV.
Speaker:I mean, that's just my opinion, you can take it or leave it.
Speaker:But I know a lot of people push back with that because they think, well, this is something we do.
Speaker:This is a habit we've developed.
Speaker:And maybe we just need to look at a different direction and think maybe sleep needs to be my priority now.
Speaker:So yeah, I have a few ideas on that.
Speaker:One is that, um, we need rest and we need recreation.
Speaker:Um, and it's unfortunate when people feel like they need to cut their sleep to have that, uh, rest and restoration.
Speaker:I, um, you know, I myself have been a single mom, which puts a lot of demands on time.
Speaker:And, uh, you know, maybe some people don't want to do this, but I, um, you know, when my kid
Speaker:was eight or 10 or something, I just decided I want to have rest.
Speaker:That is like fun recreational time.
Speaker:And of course I want to have enough sleep.
Speaker:And so I just honestly lowered my standards.
Speaker:Like I love to garden, but I turned some of my garden back into lawn because I was like, I don't
Speaker:have the time for this.
Speaker:And it just, I needed to have less actual tasks to do every day.
Speaker:And, you know, we may not like that or we might get some pushback, but you know, we do need
Speaker:to have rest work, sleep, rest, and like rest would include play and positive rest.
Speaker:And I think, you know, one of my concerns with the scrolling on the phone is that it's not really satisfying or constructive rest.
Speaker:It's more kind of vacuous or, um, you know, once we get going and I mean, I am not, um, I, I
Speaker:can get into this particularly with, you know, so much going on in the news.
Speaker:I can get into scrolling.
Speaker:So don't, don't think I'm like on my high horse over here because I am fighting this myself,
Speaker:but I think, you know, how can we have habits that are constructive rest, like, you know, being
Speaker:in a bath for some time before bed and reading a paper book, much more constructive bath helps us sleep.
Speaker:The paper book isn't as stimulating.
Speaker:We're not getting that blue light.
Speaker:Um, you know, so I think about, yes, we need rest and what can we do that's constructive and
Speaker:healthful rest, you know, also hobbies are a great thing to do.
Speaker:You know, that is much more joy giving than scrolling on the phone. Typically. I like that.
Speaker:I like what you said about taking some tasks away.
Speaker:So like you realize that you needed to let go of some of your garden.
Speaker:And as you were saying, I was thinking, what can I let go of myself?
Speaker:And sort of this panic set in, like, I don't know if I want to let go of these things, but I
Speaker:like that because I think we're over scheduled. We overschedule our kids. We overschedule ourselves.
Speaker:It's like, you know, we have to be doing something all the time.
Speaker:So thank you for saying that.
Speaker:I think that's really great advice, but let me ask you about, like, I have a Kindle.
Speaker:I read paper books, but I also have a Kindle that I tool around on the day.
Speaker:I know you can take the settings on the Kindle and lower the light.
Speaker:Is that, is that good?
Speaker:Or am I just fooling myself?
Speaker:There was a study that looked at that and the Kindle is still too much, too much light.
Speaker:So really a paper book, if you can, is better.
Speaker:A Kindle is better than your phone or the computer screen.
Speaker:So, you know, make, make improvements as you can, but still paper is better.
Speaker:So what are your, oh, I'm sorry, didn't mean to interrupt you.
Speaker:What are your thoughts on melatonin, these so-called natural sleep aids?
Speaker:You know, some people do CBDs or have THC gummies to sleep or melatonin or valerian, or I can't remember what.
Speaker:I can't do those things because I get a hangover.
Speaker:Like I call it a melatonin hangover.
Speaker:Even at three milligrams, I wake up next morning and for hours, I'm just groggy.
Speaker:So what are your thoughts on, on some of those sleep aids? Yeah.
Speaker:So I have two, two parts.
Speaker:The first thing I want to do is not answer your question directly, but there are 58 sleep disorders. Oh, wow. Yeah. Right.
Speaker:Way more sleep disorders than people may know.
Speaker:And, um, and sleep disorders are largely undiagnosed.
Speaker:So if you're having a sleep problem, I would recommend you consider that you may have an undiagnosed sleep disorder.
Speaker:Uh, and you know, I imagine that a lot of your community are women, women after menopause have,
Speaker:um, high rates of both obstructive sleep apnea and restless legs syndrome.
Speaker:And they are typically, um, underdiagnosed population.
Speaker:So just be aware that your risk as a woman of those two diseases does increase as we get older.
Speaker:So what was the first one you said?
Speaker:Obstructive sleep apnea and restless leg syndrome.
Speaker:Um, so, uh, sometimes people tell me, oh, I've tried different stuff and it hasn't worked.
Speaker:And whenever I hear that, I think, oh, well maybe you have one of those 58 sleep disorders.
Speaker:And of course it's not going to work if you're not matching the treatment to the cause. Right. Brilliant. Yeah. Yeah. Makes total sense.
Speaker:So then, um, talking about sleep AIDS, melatonin, uh, for sleep and circadian rhythm disorders,
Speaker:we really, uh, don't recommend there's no evidence for more than three milligrams working. Yeah.
Speaker:Uh, sometimes melatonin has many actions throughout the body.
Speaker:It's also anti-inflammatory it's antioxidant.
Speaker:People might want to take it for other conditions.
Speaker:And that's a really exciting area of research is using it for cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis
Speaker:and reproductive disorders and just whole other classes of disorders.
Speaker:But for that sleep and circadian, uh, 0.5 to three milligrams most, and the timing makes a big
Speaker:difference in the effect and the dosage.
Speaker:Um, and it's really, there is a science to melatonin and the use of melatonin that is just really
Speaker:not, um, discussed or shared by the, um, the companies that are pushing melt over the counter melatonin.
Speaker:So if you want to do melatonin, I would actually check with a licensed healthcare provider who
Speaker:knows, you know, what dose and when for the kinds of So I'm, um, I've gone to my doctor to do
Speaker:some blood work for, because what's happening with me, Catherine is I'm sleeping my eight to nine hours.
Speaker:And then I wake up, I'm still exhausted.
Speaker:I mean, I wake up before my alarm goes off, but I'm just like exhausted.
Speaker:And I find myself, um, I could sleep for two hours in the afternoon.
Speaker:I mean, sometimes even at 10 in the morning, I'm like exhausted.
Speaker:I, I, I don't think it's a physical thing and it's, I'm not going to go into, uh, I think it's
Speaker:more anxiety and stress and maybe a little depression, but my doctor has, um, done some blood
Speaker:work and it's all coming back. Fine.
Speaker:And so she says, maybe you need a sleep test because maybe you have sleep apnea and you don't know it.
Speaker:And so I really liked what you said about, because I am almost, well, it'd be 62 in three days
Speaker:and I've gone through menopause and I've had some restless leg and magnesium really seemed to help that.
Speaker:But, uh, so, and I don't have sleep apnea. I don't snore.
Speaker:I don't do those things.
Speaker:So she goes, no, you know, if we can't find anything, let's, let's do a sleep test on you.
Speaker:So you've sort of convinced me that maybe I've got some other issues there that, um, I I'm in denial of.
Speaker:Yeah, I think that's a good idea.
Speaker:The thing is both estrogen and progesterone, which decline, um, across menopause.
Speaker:So they're much lower, um, is, um, excuse me, estrogen actually helps us keep the tone of our tissue.
Speaker:We can observe that in our external body, but people don't think about it also affects your airway.
Speaker:So your airway also loses its tone because of the, the lower estrogen, the progesterone actually is a respiratory.
Speaker:Um, it, it improves our respiratory drive, our, our breathing, our drive to breathe.
Speaker:So that is also decreased.
Speaker:So you've got some very real mechanisms that would increase our risk of obstructive sleep apnea as we age.
Speaker:Oh my gosh, that's fascinating.
Speaker:So with the obstructive sleep apnea, is that like, I don't wake myself up snoring that when
Speaker:you say, when you talk about sleep apnea, that's what I think about, you know, someone going
Speaker:like, you know, like snorting themselves awake or something.
Speaker:I don't, I don't wake up during the night and let's have to go to the bathroom.
Speaker:So that's why I'm like, I don't have sleep apnea.
Speaker:And she's like, well, you never know. Yeah.
Speaker:People can, people can sleep.
Speaker:What's happening with obstructive sleep apnea is we have these little 10 minute, 10 second or more apneic pauses. They're called.
Speaker:And if you have 10, if you have five or more of those an hour, then that is considered apnea.
Speaker:And it can get really severe.
Speaker:People can have 35, 40 of these apneic pauses an hour.
Speaker:They can last much longer than 10 seconds. 10 seconds is the minimum for the definition, but
Speaker:they could last 30 seconds or more.
Speaker:And people are not necessarily going to wake themselves up out of it.
Speaker:And it really can have impacts on your overall health, particularly metabolic disorder and diabetes
Speaker:type conditions, blood pressure can be increased, stroke risk, heart attack risk also increased.
Speaker:So you do want to get it addressed. Thank you so much.
Speaker:I mean, I, you just don't hear about these things, you know, it's just like, and you know, there's
Speaker:so much information we're just in overload of information era.
Speaker:And so, you know, is this good? Is that good? Is this good?
Speaker:But I've never had anyone explain sleep apnea.
Speaker:Cause you always think about, you know, these, these, you know, they say as you get older and
Speaker:you get heavier or whatever, and, and you, you snore really loudly when you have sleep apnea.
Speaker:And I, you know, I don't, I don't never been told I snore.
Speaker:If I do, it's just like a little sinus thing that I've got going on.
Speaker:So, oh my gosh, that was fascinating. That was so fascinating.
Speaker:So, okay. We're going to pause here a second, cause I need to edit this out.
Speaker:What else would you like to say before we wrap up?
Speaker:And I'm not talking about like the wrap up thing, but is there any other important points that
Speaker:we should touch on before we wrap up that you'd like to tell the audience?
Speaker:I think that's, I think that's good.
Speaker:I mean, we got some good information out there. Yeah.
Speaker:I think that was, and thank you so much.
Speaker:Cause I don't know a lot about this issue, so I sort of stumbled through it.
Speaker:But you just have done a really great job of bringing some things to light that I never, ever
Speaker:would have even thought up.
Speaker:And I'm going to go get a sleep test now. Okay.
Speaker:So back to our regularly scheduled program.
Speaker:So that was so good.
Speaker:You know, I just learned so much and I am going to go get a sleep test now.
Speaker:I'm going to do what my doctor told me to do, especially after you talked about what sleep apnea,
Speaker:what our general perception of sleep apnea is not.
Speaker:So before we finish up our conversation, Catherine, is there anything you'd like to tell my
Speaker:listeners about, you know, if there's something you've got going on and then any parting words
Speaker:of wisdom that you have for us?
Speaker:Yeah, so I have a series of online sleep courses that have been customized to the needs of people in different circumstances.
Speaker:So I do have a course that is targeted for families, talks about sleep problems kind of across the lifespan.
Speaker:I do have another one that's targeted for the needs of women.
Speaker:And you can see a couple other populations that I have customized courses for you.
Speaker:So you can find those at skillsleeper.com.
Speaker:I also have a freebie, which is a sleep plan.
Speaker:You can download and then a free webinar that can lead you through building your own sleep plan.
Speaker:And that would be a good starting place for people who are curious,
Speaker:and the things that I'm trying to