 I want to introduce myself. I'm Renee Rossi. Thank you all for coming. I'm this kind of rainy sleepy day, so I appreciate it But what I wanted to ask before we got going is who in here has a sleep problem right now Wait, keep your put your hands up so I can see You did okay, so you've been there sometimes Okay, sometimes then who sometimes or all the time has a sleep problem at night Okay, who know one more question So I'm just asking a few questions because then I get an idea of a little bit of how I'm going to direct things Who would who of you would you say? Do not sleep well at least three nights a week for the past three months or for any three-month period Okay, raise your hands. That's three nights a week for three months or more okay, all right and And Who has had a sleep problem and has gotten past it? You and you okay? We have in you for the most part. Okay, because we want to hear from those folks, too Okay, so you tell me when we we want to get going Parallels a number of things that are happening with sleep, so I'm not going to be talking about sleep apnea However, if at the end we're gonna have time for questions I'm happy to entertain questions about that But this lecture is about sleep physiology and sleep and how can you get a better night's sleep? And what can we do to help ourselves sleep because we do spend a third of our lives sleeping? and the other part about my background besides being an ear, nose and throat physician for 32 years is that I have also for the past 20 years practice Ayurvedic medicine, so Many of you are probably not familiar with that. It's the most ancient form of medicine And it's the most ancient form of holistic medicine so and I'm just about finished with a master's degree in Holistic medicine, so so I'm bringing together both my background as an ENT and Background in holistic medicine Together for this talk, so so I'm gonna just start talking briefly about sleep and what it does physiologically because in the past 10 to 15 years there's been a lot more research on Why we need to sleep and what sleep does for us things that we didn't know before So I think it's really important to go over that so you understand that and also not only for yourselves But for your children grandchildren the public at large to understand some of this you can also be advocates for sleep So it's not just for yourself. So can everybody see this or do I need to put a little bit higher? So basically a hundred years ago Less than 1% of Americans Slept less than six hours a night. How many do you think how many what percentage of Americans? Do you think sleep less than six hours a night routinely now? It's you're about there. It's about 33 percent. So about a third of Americans sleep six or hours six hours or less a night And I want to talk about the impact of that because that's kind of a magic number six hours as far as sleep and what we need physiologically So what is there's there's something called the recycle rate of humans every organism has and for humans It's about 16 hours. So that means we can kind of we recycle after 16 hours we need to sleep Recycle and at about greater than 20 hours a week We become pretty non-functional and I learned this as a resonant because for five years I was up either every other night or every third night without sleep often times 36 hours a night So I'm very aware also of what the impact and I can tell you that way back when before we had all the electronic EEGs and EKGs and all that I remember one night When I was on call reading an EKG upside down for ten minutes finally a nurse said oh, you just need to flip it this way And I I'm familiar with sleepwalking, which I did when I was a resident And I may have done some things while I was sleepwalking. So So there's that whole so anyway, so what happens now? We have researches so when you're awake more than 20 hours particularly, let's say with driving There's studies to show now that actually the risk of having an accident is actually greater Than somebody who's legally drunk So we have a lot of we have a lot of work to do in that area So we should never ever drive When we're that sleep deprived and how many people you know We have a lot of people out there on the road doing it right now truck drivers Huge and they also have a much higher rate of having sleep apnea as well because of the lifestyle that they have So I just want to mention some of these things. Oh, no, no problem. So Adolescents are most susceptible. That's the you know the formation of medical mental illness really mostly And I don't need to go into all of that but Occurs really oftentimes starts when we're in adolescence and that's when we have another big area Where we have sleep deprivation because schools now compared to a hundred years ago Also, they used to start after 9 a.m. And now they're starting earlier and earlier and I'll explain why that's a problem Because kids are being robbed of early morning sleep, which is really really Necessary for their health and well-being and for their mental functions. So and I want to Um Mention the technology genie. We can't put the technology I don't know where I read that but they call it the technology gene We can't put it back in the bottle now, right? But it is something that we all have to be aware of and we have to live with and I was just at a conference about a Month and a half ago. It was a it was a holistic medicine conference and there was One of the speakers it was on the mind Because that was the focus of the three-day conference was on the mind and was saying what is one of the what? What he said is there's three things that he sees right now that are Increasing neurodegenerative diseases because they are on the rise and I mean Alzheimer's Parkinson's and we're not It's not it they are definitely on the rise along with a number of other things like autism ADHD etc etc and one of the things that he said that he sees as being really problematic For our minds. There's three things so one of them is technology and I'll talk about that in a minute Because it is reshaping our brains We have studies from neurosurgeons showing that kids who have closed head injuries are taking longer to recover And they think it's due in part to their technology use So one of the things is technology second one is meds, you know 60 years ago. We didn't have the meds that we do now for our brain, right? Or well start in the 50s with hell doll and a bunch of but we don't we have a lot of meds that are people are on I'll talk about that in a minute what these meds are doing for instance right now Well, how much extra time do you think you get from taking a sleeping pill at night? How much extra sleep? Ten minutes nine to ten minutes I'm just letting you all know that because we're going to talk about that later So meds and I'm talking about all meds psychotropic meds just meds in general and the third thing. What do you think the third thing is? I'm talking about it Sleep not enough sleep. Yeah, really not enough sleep because sleep is imperative for brain health. So yeah So I Just briefly I want to mention you've all heard about melatonin people plug melatonin some people take it melatonin our brains produce melatonin has to do with circadian rhythm amount of light and then kind of an inherent Chronometer that we have in our body to tell us when to sleep But melatonin is like the starting gun at a foot race. Okay, it tells you when to start the process It doesn't necessarily keep you asleep. And so that's really what melatonin does as a function physiologically in our bodies so Melatonin production is severely hampered with blue lights LED lights screens and all of that And there's all kinds of studies. I don't need to go into it. You can look it up But it really really does a number on melatonin so and we'll talk about that in the handout It's all in here So you don't need to write this down But about when people should stop using screens at night and this also means TVs So anybody with sleep issues and so that's But I don't need to go into all of it, but I can just tell you it's it markedly impacts a release of melatonin and thus sleep onset And then I just want to mention Romans and lead because we're all used to Now by now. We're all used to the internet and I just want to say that in 2002 the Sleeping pill Industry took a real uptick. And do you know what that was connected with by any chance? There's no 9-11 could be part of it, but the other part was in that time period. We now had over 50% of households had internet and So it's really correlating sleep problems are very much correlating with online activity And I'm sure 9-11 had an impact too because we can't ferret out everything But what I do want to say is I'm gonna bring up the Romans and lead I put that there for me to remember that Back years ago the Romans Used lead and when I went to Pompeii. I was with a medical anthropologist. It was fascinating He just happened to be in the tour group, but it was talking about His interest in in the lead pots and so it really made me focus on those and so they The Romans would drink out of lead pots, right? And that's they had lead pipes lead pots but they had a lot of wine in lead pots too and Wine is acidic and so it leached the lead into the so they had a lot of brain damage from But everybody did it. So everybody did it. Well right now. We're doing a similar thing Everybody does it and we're we're we're the guinea pigs right now. So We and we won't have the vissigoths coming in and the Goths coming in to overtake us But what we might have is that you know somebody through the World Wide Web overtaking us I mean we're so in any way I'm just saying We have to be smart about this because we don't know what it's doing to our brains and particularly all of us Have to be smart about our children and our grandchildren. That's why I really want to educate about this I think a lot of people are trying to educate about this Dementia telomeres and aging we know now telomeres are like the little caps on the end of shoelaces You know if you know the little pie so on our DNA and they keep kind of think of it Is they keep our DNA from unraveling just like a shoe, you know and they get shorter and shorter as we age and our DNA starts so Telomeres are very connected with or the length of telomeres with our Physiologic age not our chronologic age. So you can see people that have aged telomeres That it doesn't match up with their chronologic age and vice versa, right? So one thing that really helps that is sleeping Also, I just want to I put Reagan and Thatcher here. What what did Reagan and Thatcher both have? All-timers and insomnia they both boasted of sleep getting by in four hours or less a night Nobody gets by unless in four hours a night There is such a small percentage of the population that can and I mean it's way way less than 1% Everybody needs six hours or more so and that's being borne out We're starting to see and I think another present that we're going to see have that is going to be Clinton You can kind of already sort of see it in him, too But well that he's he he doesn't look like he's all there right now Yeah, so oh Well, we'll we'll I think I think we're gonna see it with him, too Yeah, and that gives some people solace and maybe not So I Just say keep tweeting Tweet from your bathroom. Yeah So basically what I'm saying here is the shorter your sleep the shorter your life the less your sleep the more physiologic problems you're going to have Daylight savings I mean you've probably all heard this, you know the day of daylight savings in the spring where we lose an hour We have an uptick in heart attacks and sudden deaths 25 percent the reverse is true Six months later when we switch it back We actually have an a decrease in heart attacks and sudden death events. This is what you can look this all up It's all there just with one hour just with one hour amazing So the other thing that happens when we Do not get enough sleep as we have increased cortisol, which is a steroid that we naturally produce increased obesity Reproductive hormone imbalance. I don't need to go into the physiology, but it's all there It's it's really where we're seeing and I'll talk about the sentimentals. No sleep and immune function It also really depresses immune function. They're very related. There is a genetic disease I can't remember the name you learn these in medical school and you forget the names But where people I sleep There's they they stop sleeping in their 40s 30s late 30s early 40s They don't live really much more than about eight or nine months after that You cannot live without sleeping and you know what they die from they die from massive sepsis or bacterial infection and Gut infection so we also need sleep for good gut function and we need it for immune function so The World Health Open World Health Organization who has declared a sleep epidemic in four countries as of right now the US the UK Japan and South Korea and believe it or not Japan and South Korea are worse than we are so and Then there's a connection. I said with psychiatric disease. Yes, did I think so, but yeah and Psychiatric disease there is no psychiatric disease that we know of that doesn't have a sleep impairment and vice versa So we just have to keep that up there, too Our smoke alarm our amygdala an area in our primitive brain in our illicit brain When we are not sleeping enough we have hyper reactivity there and I'll talk about that a little bit later If and hopefully get to that shift work pilots who and Denmark, okay? What I want to say is World Health Organization has also declared lack of sleep under six hours a Probable carcinogen because rates of cancer are markedly increased in people who routinely sleep less than six hours a night so that's for sure and in a few countries in particularly Denmark night shift workers who develop cancer actually it's considered a a What do you call it a job? Work related. Yes. Yeah So they they actually get compensated if they develop a cancer. So we're talking about night shift workers nurses, you know This is this is there's there's a whole hormonal cascade that's released when we sleep and we don't sleep We know like for children growth hormones released when kids are sleeping particularly in the early hours of the night And it's it's required But there's also other hormones that suppress and increase appetite that are reversed if we are not sleeping So I used to notice as a resident when I had been up 24 hours that I would be really hungry the next morning and now that's we Know all about that and so there's a higher rates of obesity and people that don't sleep So I don't know if this is all news to you or not So Okay Okay, so yeah, and I want to get on to because I I wanted to talk a little bit about the physiology and I'll sleep I'll talk a little bit about sleep architecture Just see what we got here time wise. Okay, so the three pillars of good health are Sleep food and basically you could call self-discipline which would include exercise and lifestyle events, right? So what is the function of sleep and I'm going to go through these really quickly It's a natural analgesic. So people again people who are sleeping or undersleeping have lower pain threshold Right. They they pain is more of a problem One of the more recent things which is just fascinating if any of you you've heard of lymphatics Which is part of our drainage system in our body For infections for good health and all that Those are called lymphatics now in the brain. They felt lymphatics, okay? So we didn't know that there was actually a lymph system in the brain but we do have it and they've called them glimpse lymphatics and That's our neurosanitation So it's and you know when it happens when we're sleeping during non-rem sleep So if the garbage truck goes and does all it's cleaning up while we're sleeping. So it's an absolute necessity So you can see and their studies also now looking at build-up of some of the beta amyloid and the funky proteins that occur in Alzheimer's Those if we're not sleeping enough. We're not cleaning up enough up in our brains Restocking of the immune system occurs as I mentioned before that's one of the things they found just by the folks that that have that Genetic loss of sleep that their immune functions completely gone It is a nerve sleep provides a neurochemical bath for our brains And it also helps the microbiome. Have you been hearing this word a lot recently? It's a big tag word now microbiome But anyway, it does keep happy You know, we're we're 90% not us right most most of us I mean we're we're our our gut and our body is filled with bacteria The reason we don't look like a bacteria is there's the bacteria cells are smaller than ourselves So but they if you count cells, they're 90% us. So microbiome in our gut is happier with sleep Fitness of the cardiovascular so I can I mean millionth reproductive hormones And there is the bottom line is there's no sleep bank When you lose sleep, you don't recover from loss of sleep. It's you can count it off. Okay? It's it's lost that time is lost. There's a saying in the punishments that says that Which is in an ancient text that Basically the same thing that when you when you're not sleeping Your your life is shortened and and it's been borne out. I mean they said this thousands of years ago So I want to read one little quote from I don't know if any of you know Richard Rohr It's it's it's called falling upward a spirituality for the two halves of life and He writes if there's a Carl young quote in here that I really like One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning For what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening and What in the morning was true? Will it evening have become a lie? so one of the things about sleep and why I like this quote is that We have to nurture our sleep in our second half of life It doesn't come as easy as it did before as all of you that are here probably know and One of the biggest things that I see and I saw it used to see in patients was if you do ask them about sleep A lot of people are not sleeping well and not getting enough sleep. So Just real quick one more thing on the benefits of sleep I was talking about the functions now the benefits We have sleep spindles. I won't go into all of this, but they help with memory consolidation when you don't sleep enough You don't have enough memory Everybody knows that a bad night of sleep bad night or bad day of memory And you don't consolidate the memory of functions or things that you learn the day before Including not just motor tasks, but mental tasks. So when they study students college students now The old you know students that that's pull all-nighters their retention is it's it's gone and they Never Consolidate long-term whatever they've studied compared to people who actually get sleep and you can't recover that again There's no sleeping motor skill memory Consolidation I've talked about it's the only time that we are devoid of norepinephrine When it's when we sleep and that's one of the fight-or-flight hormones. So it's a calming of our sympathetic nervous system our autonomic nervous system that so that's Emotions are processed and consolidated especially during REM sleep I'm just going to mention Mendeleev because I way back when I was a chemist way way way way back when but Mendeleev is the one who came up with the periodic table, right all the elements and he for years This is a great story for years he went around with cards apparently with all the elements and he said there's got to be some way or what he knew of the elements that these all work together and years and One night while he was asleep The whole periodic table came to him and he got up in the morning and wrote it down and it has stuck till this day except for one element so Sleep during sleep. There's a huge not not just emotions during REM sleep But also during REM sleep. We also have a time for creative problem-solving. So the adage sleep on it is really true So and I just talked about that I talked about neurosanitation Neurosanitation and sanity go together Kind of makes sense and immunity. So I've already talked about that and so I'm just going to really briefly Talk about triggers later Show you the architecture of sleep, and I don't know if any of you have seen this before probably some of you have we had to learn this That didn't work So I'll just put it back where it was Basically we have as humans we have 90 minute cycles every 90 minutes we cycle through same and we hope to get Four of those a night at least Preferably five so I'm showing you one two three four five and so the architecture of sleep is such that here's awake and Here's the deeper sleep the slow wave sleep. So when we're awake we go through and We start the night the pink here is the the width of the pink is our non REM sleep and REM sleep is Rapid eye movement sleep. You've all heard about REM sleep. I hope I'm not putting you to sleep So basically when we're awake, this is what an EEG electrodes on her head would look like just all kinds of Discombobulated activity and look at what happens during REM sleep. It looks pretty much the same, but it's very different So we're having this and this is deep non REM sleep these synchronized deep Delta waves, okay And basically when things are being you can think of non REM sleep is when things are coming and being Transferred to the hard drive, right? So they're kind of being uploaded during this time So EEG is just measure what's happening across the brain is a composite So this is awake a lot of these beta active waves and then here we see the delta the deep waves but in REM sleep we see the same thing but the difference between REM sleep and Awake is that when you're in REM sleep, what happens when you're in REM sleep? You're dreaming. What else is happening to your body? You're paralyzed You can't move your heart slows down Actually, I'm sorry your heart increase your heart rate increases in REM and REM sleep It slows down in non-REM. So when they do sleep studies and I can talk and answer questions about this at the end I can talk about what happens during sleep study for people that helps sleep apnea or what have you but all this is Looked at but anyway, I just wanted to show you that REM so there's very different things happening even though At an outward glance it looks exactly the same So I just wanted to show you that and so anyway getting back to this We have cycles of non-REM REM sleep throughout the night throughout these 90 minute cycles and each animal has this and it's Determined by the width of our brainstem. So You know narrower brainstem shorter cycles etc. So it's fascinating that that's what mother nature did for us But it goes all the way, you know all the way back and forward with us So non-REM sleep is in pink here and you can see over the night We have a lesser amount of non-REM up here in blue is REM and over the night we have More REM sleep so our early morning hours are really rich in REM as many of you know when you often wake up from a dream Right, it's more of a chance that you're going to wake up from a dream or You know in the early more remember a dream from early morning hours We also have non-REM 1 and 2 which are kind of a lighter sleep You know when you're falling off to sleep and you're kind of hypnogot, you know You're you're kind of sort of in and out that's our none our lighter none non-REM Deeper non-REM really slow wave like those waves that are showed you are are in In our deep deepest sleep So and this is when neurosanitation occurs that I was talking about a lot of consolidation of memory and Uploading of things to the hard drive in the brain from you know So so kind of consolidation of experiences and what we've what we've been going. Yes Yes oftentimes people can kids you can see even right here is like this is just a an example see the little blip right here and here Yeah, yeah, there's a you know champ But doesn't obviously this person got right back to sleep though, but yeah, there's there's a chance during non if you can get into this The the thalamus, which is the sensory switch gate in our brains and in our core Well actually not in kind of in the central brain Actually switches off our senses during not deep non-REM not these so you shouldn't be able it's a deeper sleep And that's why you can sleep through noise and smells Etc. Right so our sensory gates turned off at the deepest stages not the lighter sleep and dirt definitely not during REM Okay, REM you're paralyzed non-REM. You're not paralyzed so sleep walking occurs in non-REM Does this make sense to everybody just to understand kind of what's going on giving did you have a question? When they're waking up It's just that when we we typically early morning are waking up during where there's more of a chance of waking up during a REM cycle You know when I'm talking about early morning when people wake up when you wake up Oftentimes is more likely like if you were to wake up at 6 in the morning that you would remember a dream Then if you woke up at 2 in the morning That's all because it's it's just that there's more REM occurring in those early morning hours So there's more of a chance that you would wake up during a REM and The issue basically the reason I'm showing you this is the issue is that a lot of people are not getting down to the non-REM Okay, and this is also when a lot of hormonal stuff is happening and on that so I Just wanted to Yes REM is when you but you can you can have dreams in non-REM to in deep non-REM but By and large most of dreaming occurs during REM and REM means rapid eye movement So that's when she and you can see little babies spend about more than half of their night or half of their sleep Cycle and they sleep newborn sleep over 14 hours and a lot of it's in REM so Okay, this is just a real quick end of this is really hard But there's an urge to be awake and an urge to be asleep and some of it's due to our circadian rhythm Which happens in a sine wave and they've put the classic experiments were in the 30s They put people in caves with no light somewhere down and I don't know if it's mammoth cave or wherever it was and they were in there and as we get Older we have a little bit of a longer circadian rhythm and Younger folks don't this is with the absence of light, you know to see what we have a circadian around the clock rhythm That is now, you know, that's inherent in us. It's our biological time clock our chronometer But we also have a sleep urge which is separate and that that's what called a sleep drive and it builds up here And it's about strong 10 to 11 p.m. Right about 10 p.m. And then it drops as We start to sleep and this is and it kind of correlates with the The dip in the circadian rhythm so those that's really when our sleep it urges about 10 p.m. At night when we should be falling asleep physiologically that's all I want to kind of share with that but just to understand that we have but Circadian rhythm can be messed up with things like flying across time zones, right? And you've always noticed right that is it easier to fly east or easier to fly west Okay, so because we have Our circadian rhythms a little bit longer than 24 hours. I can't I can't explain that later But I well I just want to get through So as far as sleep drive, there's just one thing I want to tell you about this This is a chemical in the brain that builds up and then it drops naturally drops. There is one drug that affects this There's several drugs, but one big drug Which is called caffeine and what it does is it knocks off those It knocks the adenosine off the receptors So when you drink caffeine particularly if you're drinking caffeine much after about 11 or 12 a.m. I mean 11 in the morning caffeine has about an a hour half life right and as we get older its process through our liver our Livers are a little weaker, right just like everything else. It takes a little longer to recover. So this is really aggravated by caffeine Just wanted to show you so there is a physiologically so really and probably and I need to notice with patients So a lot of people would say if they had caffeine Much after about noon, they would have trouble sleeping. I certainly do Okay, and then I just want to show you one other thing and it's And to sleep is cortisol, which is the natural steroid that is produced From our adrenal glands add renal sitting above the renails above the kidneys and they produce this Right, and this is part of what? Helps us live and helps us wake up. We have a natural spike when we wake up in the morning this is again if we're sleeping like we should be sleeping and It kind of through the day goes down if we eat if we exercise we bump it up If we have a lot of sugar we bump it up the biggest lump is here Usually around three o'clock everybody Everybody knows that their biggest lump can be about three o'clock And the slump is worse if we're pushing beyond our limits, right? And so we have in green here is adrenal fatigue and these are usually when we're pushing so much that we're actually not Having it go down Towards nighttime, but it's actually pushing to try and keep awake all day And this is adrenal burnout when we just don't really our adrenal glands just aren't giving us enough cortisol And so you start to see in these folks. These is where you see autoimmune diseases and that kind of thing So I'm I just briefly wanted to show you that it's just a picture. It's But it's very Related to sleep So how are we time-wise right now? Okay, good So I want to take some questions with this before I go into what we do about it. Does anybody have questions? Yeah And then you take the math later on do you add those hours or our whatever to the five hours in other words Of the course of the 24 hours a day It's a good question We try to make up for sleep We and we really shouldn't take naps and longer than about half an hour so we don't get into a REM cycle You you well what you do is you try to get you try to Get a good night of sleep and it's fine And it's actually really beneficial a lot of cultures have this to take an afternoon nap But really taking much more than 30 to 45 minutes can actually impair the next night's sleep So that's where you get into that you if you're going to do that Then you've got to probably set a timer so that you don't get into the cycle of taking an hour and a half nap or whatever That you know in the afternoon and then impairing your your nighttime sleep No, this is there this is every this is now in most folks like everybody can you know We can have a little variation But mostly they're 90 minute things and if you look at sleep studies from some people that go in in sleep labs And have polysomnograms or they're hooked up to EEG's The the bellows thing that measures breast, you know breath excursion They have pulse oximeters to measure oxygen They have EKG's and all of that it will show you pretty much that this is pretty much what we have is these 90 minute cycles Yes The sleep sleep strike yes, exactly so that is a real problem having nighttime Awakenings from other physical conditions and we can talk about that a little bit at the end about yeah But that's a really good one to ask about so remind me Mm-hmm. Do you feel rested in the morning? Yeah, so that's what you're having is you're not probably getting down into deep enough non-rem sleep Because again what I was telling you the sensor gates are off and we would get into that really deep nourishing sleep We don't have those Repeat think about kids. I remember my kids are young You know like somebody could be you know pounding outside and all this stuff and they'd sleep through it and you know The house could be on fire and the dogs barking and they'd sleep You know so we're as we get older You know in part of this is is is related to brain function and related also to our sympathetic drive We have a sympathetic and parasympathetic our autonomic nervous system, right? The fight-or-flight thing and it can be we're primed to a certain degree You know and so part of that is about actually, you know being able to get into that deep sleep And so typically people who have frequent awakenings I Would and I would suggest them getting a sleep a polysomnogram to make sure you don't have sleep apnea because You've had that check so you know you Not enough to the CPAP Yeah Right, so what you what then you want to work with that is actually we'll talk about this We're gonna talk about how how we work on achieving a deeper level of sleep More efficient, I never really noticed a problem Right Yes Yes, yes, you'll you'll you'll There's a huge relationship between hormones And sleep and what we see in women particularly and women tend to have Worst overall sleep that men are catching up because we have a lot more sleep apnea in the men Right, so it's a little bit of a different reason women's more hormonal usually or obesity related and that's not your problem You know, but one of the things that happens is there is Protective effects from estrogen and progesterone on the brain So and helping and also thyroid hormone so often times and those are all interrelated with cortisol So those are not working independently. So if we're working with boosting cortisol and boosting in working with their sympathetic nervous system then that also helps But we see it a lot around in thyroid hormone around menopause where women have sleep problems And I'll You have great so do you have a thyroid disorder right up Yeah, but It's taking a synthetic, you know is never the same as having your own and response So there's so what I'm going to teach you that's why I want to spend I'm going to teach you some techniques For trying to achieve deeper sleep so that we don't wait because one of the bigger things that we have one of the Problems that we have is not achieving a deep enough level of sleep when we sleep. So and and there's a thing is is Sleep onset insomnia, which is lesser in older folks But sleep maintenance so what you're having is a sleep maintenance issue And even though you're in bed and sleeping say eight or nine hours a night If you're having frequent awakenings then you're you're really not it's showing us that you're not getting the deep non-rim Sleep or good quality sleep Any other questions before Well, it's just when the cortisol is at the lowest Well you can you're Yeah, people take Mars bars You know chocolate bars that's when people have chocolate and caffeine and you know what no Actually, what you try to do is work with Work with sleep and work with your diet and work with lifestyle so that that dip isn't as deep You know so that you can get through it without having to have a supplement But yes a supplement may help, but we'll talk about that Okay, because I'm going to talk about some herbs and things that yeah that might that might really benefit Somebody who has that really kind of slump So but we're seeing younger and younger people by the way with sleep disorders thyroid disorders used to be No, women really have like ten times more thyroid disease than men and it's very the thyroid gland is such it's you know It's right here. It's it's our kind of it determines our metabolic rate And so it's absolutely necessary for life to have thyroid hormone So and and it's necessary for sleep. It's necessary for a number of physiologic functions I once when I was at Ohio State years ago They brought in a woman that was older who hadn't they it was a grandmother Do you remember granny on the Belverly hillbillies? Yeah, well they brought her in she was in a rocking chair for two days And they had noticed finally that she she hadn't moved in about two days And so they thought she was dead and they took her pulse and she was still it was very low But she was and she was still barely breathing But she was so stiff and rigid that they actually couldn't get her out of the rocking chair So they strapped her into the back of the pickup truck and drove her into the ear like that because she was just rigid And she was so hypothyroid. She her her core temperature is about 92 degrees Which I mean it had been gradually can bet you know And you had to kind of warm her up and thaw her out and get some thyroid hormone But it shows you what severe severe hypothyroid at least that was a real learning experience for me Yeah, and she had no reflexes and was basically almost comatose She was in what they call a mix edematous coma basically so Anyway, but as we get older You know one of the things about this is one of the things I've learned with Ayurveda is they say that for instance You know we slow down as we age right I mean we all do and we're all gonna die so that's a known but We you know as far as neurodegenerative diseases and that type of thing that isn't necessarily a natural thing Just as hot flashes are not a natural thing and we think in our culture that hot flashes are a natural thing But they're not so there's so many things that we've come to just accept as a part of aging that we don't have to accept There's also another saying when whenever I talk to people. I love this saying about like why Bother with doing some of these things as we age because we're gonna die anywhere And I always I like this saying which I heard said to me once is do you want to die death by a thousand paper cuts? So it's kind of up to it's up to us What what quality of life do we want to have and what quality of living do we want to have? so Let me go on to So I'm gonna just take a little this is I'm gonna take and show you just a couple of things that And then I'll talk about the you look at the time 1.46 perfect we have till I think 2 30 but and we'll go over the sanctuary sleep Which is your handout, but I'm gonna show you a couple things. This is gonna be the show and tell time now So I'm gonna show you something That I Think is it's kind of a lifesaver When you wake up in the middle of the night or if you can't fall asleep Staying in bed is probably not the thing you want to do, right? And so some people will get up and watch TV or get on the computer and that's also something you don't want to do So what are some things you could do? You could meditate but what my my and I think it's a great and I'm gonna talk about meditation I meditate every morning, but sometimes when your mind is racing and one of one of my teachers Dr. Joshi says with America. He's Indian. He says with Americans. I don't even start them on meditation I start them on Shavas and corpse pose because they are Cycling so much that we we have to calm down their parasympathetic nervous system. So we want to do that first Calm down this before we get them into meditating because all they do in meditation is close loop thinking and they just get it You know, so I'm gonna show you some techniques and some of you probably know these That that I've learned and one of those you can use pillows or a bolster. So this is kind of show and tell time now So if you were to wake up in the middle of the night We know that you can you can lay on your back to go to bed So you can lay on your back to do this too and one of the most wonderful things you can do is Lay with your feet up unless you have severe severe glaucoma or severe severe hypertension. You can do this So I'm gonna show you corpse pose, which is just basically being like a corpse preparing for death So I Mean why not, right? I Had a I had a rollover accident 20 years ago when I was 40 and I almost died I had a C5 cord injury and you know and all that and when I remember going when I went and I Don't know who was I talked to it was a psychic or whatever after they said well, that's great You're already prepared for death. You know, I had a near-death experience out of body experiences. You're prepared for death I thought oh, yeah, okay. That was that was good So I'm gonna show you corpse pose and corpse pose is very easy Everybody can do it and then I'm gonna show you this other pose kind of a restorative pose I had a teacher doctor saying who is also from India who Is both a physician and an Ayurvedic physician both and he did studies with hypertension in India and found that Doing corpse pose for ten minutes a day for three months lowered people's blood pressure It's pretty easy ten minutes ten minutes. So corpse pose is basically this In the middle of the day so at that three o'clock time period You lay like this and you just breathe do abdominal deep breathing You shut off everything if you want to listen to music you can listen to some music So this is something you can do for the slump You're not and you can do this if you wake up in the middle of the night if you want to go Right you're on the floor so you're connecting with the ground and you're breathing into your Now we do yeah, this is this is even a better one So if you have pillows or a bolster or if you just want to lay on the floor you can do this one too And I do this a lot and what's nice about this is that? Look at what it's doing for your chest. It's expanding your chest. You can it's a little easier to breathe Your arms are down here. I have a pillow up there. I put a See that pillow Thank you You can put pillows under your arms if you have you know if it's it's painful and you just do this for 10 or 15 minutes And if you want you can do it against a wall if you want and a lot of folks can't because they're a little bit tight in their hamstrings You know, but this is an inversion. This is a milded version inversion This is incredibly good for the Nervous system and it's really good for the adrenal glands. I was talking about cortisol and the adrenal glands You're actually having pressure put there on that right from your body weight And that's great for breath because it's causing most of us are hunched over Right, it's causing you to open up your chest and if this is too much which it is sometimes for people You just put pillows under your arms And you just breathe see right now. I already feel like going to sleep. It's just it's luscious. It's just it's just amazing Right, you can be flat on the floor too Yeah, maybe put a little pillow under your under your neck not not as much as this the reason I'm doing this You see what's happening is my body my spine is completely supported But my chest and every you know, I'm kind of draped over it, right? So this offers something that you know, but flat on the floor is great too because you're you're having an inversion Your legs are higher So also if you have a little bit of ankle edema or foot pain or whatever this is also really good for that Right, so to get out of it You just do this and then you roll off to one side And sit there for a minute to kind of recalibrate so both of these are really excellent for When we have insomnia we have hypertension we have any sleep problem or we're just really stressed out, right? Right, so you can do it with your bed because you have a firm mattress if you have a firm mattress. Yes It's good to have the support and you could put pillows and put those up against you know But you want to have your legs higher than your head so Those are pretty easy, right? I mean Your mind is racing right what you're doing is you focus on your breath So you just focus on breathing and if your mind's racing just watch it You just watch all of us have mind racing all of us have but by doing this you're training your nervous system So it's not going to happen right away, but just like anything else we do brushing our teeth right or Flossing or any any repetitive activity trains our nervous system So yes, it may not happen right away, but you didn't get to where you are right away either So you don't go in you know It's it's fine to think but you're just going to also do this while you're thinking and Gradually and sometimes you'll find you fall asleep with this in fact Oftentimes when I do this I fall asleep and then I know I was pretty tired And so that time in the afternoon when you're talking about that slump at three o'clock you can try this as well You know I used to do it I used to do it at work as a physician you know on the days that I was just going non-stop and I would just put The way I could keep people from bothering me You know my office is I would just say that I was breastfeeding I put a little tag up You know nobody would ever come in and bother me That's the only time they wouldn't so I Just for ten minutes in the afternoon. I just say I'm pumping breast milk or something and so You can come up with your own thing, but you can you can always take ten minutes, right? You can take ten minutes right in the middle of the day. Yeah Exactly, but you can turn your phone off to you can also put earplugs in you put this It's you want to actually block as many senses as you can so if you need to put earplugs in put earplugs in I'd suggest doing this because that there's pressure number one there's pressure over your forehead is really nice and It's it's very cooling and some of these have lavender and what have you and that's also you can also use essential oil Put some essential oil in it the one that you like like I suggest vetiver lavender Whatever one you like rose Vetiver the ETI VR. It's in the lemongrass family. It's wonderful You have to try it and you can use it in a diffuser as well But also so smells, you know all those kind of things help with that So I wanted to show you that I also want to show you my other pitch for for sleep and For home hormonal you were asking about deep sleep one of the very best things you can do if you're not sleeping the very best it's second on this list is Putting an oil on your body Now as we get older we get drier right we shrivel up right yeah itching we get itchy We get dry our eyes get dry our vaginas get dry our everything gets dry right we get dry all over and When we're babies we're way more we have way more moisture in us But as we get older we we dry up, you know So what can we do to offset that well a lot of people drink water? That's great, but we also one of the things that we need more than anything is Oil why do we need oil? Our brains are what percent fat? 60 percent 60 to 65 percent fat, so we are not getting good enough quality oils Usually in our food because we eat a lot of processed food, which is we are we know that now We know what happened with the not eating fats and what that did for us, right? We know now was kind of come back around but what I want to what I want to talk about is healthy fats So what's a good way? What our brains have a lot of insulation in them, right? Just like telephone wires, and if you lose insulation you you lose nerve conduction, right? So if we are not and it's not about how much we weigh or how much we don't weigh if we're underweight or Overweight or good with it's about good quality oils and So I'm going to talk about a few good quality oils around the handout and one of the best things you can do And this is really ancient is to Drop the oil is to put warm oils if you're not sleeping wells to put warm oils on your body. Why? Body is the biggest surface area. It's the biggest organ. We have is the skin right on our body So what's the easiest way and it's got the most nerve receptors? Of anywhere in our body is our skin So what's the easiest way to pacify your nervous system putting warm oil on our body massage We can't always go out and get a massage but we can do it for ourself so an ounce or two of warm oil and You can use sesame oil You can in the summer Mix in a little coconut with it, you know, it's cooler if it's hot here It tends to be like a day like this I would just use sesame but you can use this before bed you can wear old pajamas If you want or you can shower it off after about 10 or 15 minutes This is one of the most and and for the winners here. I just spent a winner here my first winter back I still live in Boston for a while, but I did a lot of soda gala a lot of oiling to keep because it's dry Right and it's very it's so winter is drying Older age is drying our diets are drying Looking at computers is drying pretty much everything we do is drying Alcohol is very drying. Yeah, and I didn't get to and I'm just going to when I get to the handout talk about the drugs that are drying every single drug every Drug in the Western pharmacopia is drying except for the hormones. Those are building they're nourishing and building like thyroid hormone replacement You know reproductive hormones, etc But we can what do we build our hormones from we build them from cholesterol? What is cholesterol from it's from good fat so we can make Better hormones and healthier hormones by really paying attention to all the fats We use both what we ingest and what we put on our skin, and I know it sounds Antithetical, I mean folks don't want to do it. It's one of the hardest things I When I see patients one of the hardest things that I have to sell us is for them to put oil on three nights a week I said just do it three nights a week And if you can't do it put a little bit on the tip of your head and put it on your feet rub your feet with it and if you can't do that then you know I Just have a side story but when for years as a physician when I would ask people what meds they were on they go You know I'm on I'm on a green pill and a red and white pill and I'm on an orange Pill I say how much is in your checkbook and they can tell me just like that I'm like, okay, and you know what you have left for your mortgage. Oh, yeah Yeah, and and they know what year their car is and they know all those things They don't know about their own bodies. They don't know what they're putting in their bodies And that kind of blew me away. It really really blows me away that people will kind of You know outsource Their their their health to other people and yet they're very aware of their finances and what they own and you know And and it's it's it's part of it is is that we're not really wanting to take the time to take care of us And I asked them how much TV do they watch at night, you know when they say they can't lay 10 minutes on the floor You know so it's not a judgment But what it is is it's where you where you're gonna put your attention in your energy and where you decide To do this and so one of the biggest things really is is to think about this and it's on the handout Where you can get the oils? I'm gonna pass this one around and this one around just so you see it and hold on to it And you're gonna think oh, it's really gross gross and oily But you can there's stuff you can put in you can do it and and leave like it all winter long I just had old flannel pajamas, so I just put on an ounce and go to bed with it The other oil Olive oil is okay. That's a good one Almond oil for some is good Coconut oil is cooling so not in the winter here sesame oil is probably the reason I love sesame oil and why they typically all these oils are a base of sesame oil is that as we get into older Age this is probably one of the most nourishing ones And it has the highest amount of calcium of pretty much anything also if you have any dental problems or any Gum periodontitis You wear dentures anything you can do oil pulling with with sesame oil you put it in for ten minutes every morning and Do this you it nourishes the good bacteria in your mouth, so it's one of them as an ENT I can just tell you is the the best thing you can do for your mouth and It has the highest amount of calcium, so that's taken up into your bones So particularly for postmenopausal women, it's a beautiful simple simple thing to do you can walk your dog doing it You can do it in the shower Yeah, about a tablespoon. Oh, and yeah ten minutes I Used to do it while I walk my dog and my neighbors just had to get used to you know So and then you spit it out and you rinse your mouth you can look it up It's called oil pulling so oils and and it also is very good for People who do a lot of speaking public speaking Teachers people with any type of gum problems. I went from having to get my teeth cleaned You know how they want you to get them cleaned every six months to about every year and a half and they never find any plaque anymore It's just from doing this. It's nothing else Every day. Yeah, but at least five days a week first thing in the morning Before your coffee actually you don't want to have coffee first thing in the morning Anyway, you want to have water so your kidneys don't so you you so these are things that you can do But the oiling and I have on the handout where you can watch a video. It's a seven minute video I believe on why and what and how you do it. I don't get any returns on this other than I When I see clients that have sleep problems. I'm gonna tell you this works this work It doesn't work overnight. It's not a sleeping pill But I will talk about what sleeping pills do and don't do so that's a quick fix the other oil. That's really great is ghee and Ghee which is clarified butter. So it's butter that's been It's been it's Butter that's been cooked for about 10 or 15 minutes the solids and milk solids Separate to the bottom and you strain off over teeth cloth. You can make it I make my own and there's great butter up here in Vermont, right? and This does not it's been studied It does not raise cholesterol. I mean unless you have massively high cholesterol like say above 300 But it's a very very good nourishing brain food In fact, one of my teachers dr. Ladd says the ball the brain is just one big ball of ghee. So it's called So I want I want so I just feel like bite smell it see it and it doesn't The other thing about it is you can leave it out on the counter. It doesn't have to be refrigerated. You can make it It's cheap to make because you just make with butter you can look up online how to make it or you can buy it It's really great to get butter Kind of now in the spring right from grass-fed cows. That's the the very best butter to make ghee from but you can use it You can put it in your nose If you have a dry nose you can warm it up as long as it's you know You're not putting dirty spoons in it. You have to always put a clean spoon in nothing wet So it doesn't get moldy, but it can stay on the counter forever It doesn't get rancid it doesn't get rancid because the milk solids are as long as you strain it through cheesecloth or you buy it and And helps your nose Congestion or dryness. Oh, it's beautiful and dry eyes. We all have dry eyes as we get older, right? Who has dry eyes? Okay, yeah, so One of the things you can do is you can put warm ghee especially in the winter when you're really dry You can put a couple drops in your eyes at night Right in your eyes and the whites of your eyes just do this and it's so nourishing. It's wonderful. It's been around for Thousands of years trust me. I've done it for years You just warm it up you don't put a big slab of it in there, you know, you warm it up you put it in a little Yes, if you have properly made ghee yes, you can because the milk solids with a casein are out of it Yeah, yeah Eating you can put it in your eyes. You can put it in your nose You can actually and for women you can put it in your vagina for dry for because it's we're dry all over, right? So yeah, I can be used in all those places But you can cook with it too. It has a high flash point In fact, it's one of the best cooking oils because it does have a high flash point and isn't degraded with heat Because a lot of oils, you know, like you don't really want to cook high high heat with olive oil I mean really olive oil is a finishing oil. It's not really a cooking oil that you know and it if you can't you can't you can't you can't tolerate gay you can use flaxseed oil, but Gays Giza lovely and you can put olive oil if that's what you want to put I would put I would always put organic right because the skin This is a big thing with anything dairy You really want to have organic because they there's so many toxins in in that are being used to raise our animals and one big one is antibiotics another one is Pesticides and herbicides and all that and when we have antibiotics in our dairy meat, whatever and and you know why they give Them antibiotics is so that they grow faster and quicker But we do the thing when we have the antibiotic plus we're seeing now that it affects our microbiome, right? It changes our gut bacteria So you really really if you're gonna do one thing organic It should be any dairy or meat you eat and then you can look at whatever vegetables and I mean I would say eat all organic if you can Yes tea tree oil is Okay, tea tree oil is a great antiseptic And it's great one if you want to put if you like if you want to but it's not something you would use You know, but if you were to have like staff infections. It's a really great one. Well my one son from Equipment, you know from sports would sometimes get staff infections or impetigo and you can put a couple drops in the tub So it's great to use that if you want to use it in the tub But and if you want to add it add it to your mouth your mouth one to your sesame oil at a drop of either tea tree oil or frankincense oil to the Sesame oil that you're going to oil pull with it particularly for people that have periodontitis And I'm telling you one thing because I would have my patients particularly the the vets, you know, because we had a lot of vets that had From the VA hospital, you know that had head neck cancers Just a high prevalence in that population because of drinking and smoking would have you but they would get radiation And they would have the driest mouse it make no more saliva And so what remaining teeth they had would fall out. They have terrible punt periodontitis Terrible food. They couldn't taste food. It was so dry Had got you know, you couldn't get them to do much of anything, but they would oil They would they wouldn't put oil because it was the one thing that really really helped them Okay, we're gonna talk about that in a minute Hobo oil is okay, too. That's another oil. It's best to put oils on warm though, right? How do you warm you take let's see you've got your oil in a little get a little You know from the pharmacy get a little squeeze bottle, right and then heat up some oil in the microwave Don't put the oil in the microwave or on the stove and take it off And then just put the bottle in it for a little bit and have it warm Yeah, and some hot water, you know So you do you're doing it separately in the hot water and you can just get a little I didn't bring one with me, but you can get a little one The last thing I'm gonna pass around before I oh good. We still have to is I'm gonna pass around some herbs And one of the things I'm doing my thesis on is is the herbs that are new tropics And that means herbs that improve memory and cognition. They've been around for a long time We're studying them in Western medicine now, but One would be go to Cola another one is Bacopa Ashwagandha anybody that has thyroid disease should be on Ashwagandha and I can talk about it at the end You can but these are herbs that Improve memory Improve cognition and they've been we can look it up now. There's studies showing it They've been around forever, but it's a whole herb as opposed to an extract so I would say I've been taking Bacopa and I've been taking these for years. So I'm just going to pass them around and There's a thing called Medjah Resina. This is in the ancient texts and Medjah is Resina is a rejuvenative so all in the holistic medicine everything from about menopause or Men go through menopause too. It's called menopause So what what it said is really when we get into our 40s, we start to lose memory We all know that right and that happened to all of us, but we don't We have slowing down, but we don't have to completely slow down. We don't have to develop a neurodegenerative disease We don't have to develop those things. I mean, we're really There's things that we can do to either stave it off or to have so this is From the ancient texts from thousands of years ago. Medjah Resina is a brain Resina and Resina means a rejuvenative So this is I'm just showing it to you can read the back of it It won't mean anything, but it is something that has been there for years and that we can do too It doesn't mean we're not going to age but to make us have a healthy aging and to have You know better brain function And I'm spending this is okay one more stress ease Which has also got the same of these herbs if you just want to take a tablet Banyan metanacles and they're listed on the handout So I just and now I'm going to go over the handout everybody has the handout Okay, we have We're gonna you're gonna have to get a couple from up front. I brought I'm gonna I think I have three left Okay, you need one She made bigger And if you don't yeah, okay So you'll have to get one out front. I'm sorry if you we had more than we thought So let's go over this and you have 20 minutes, right? Yeah, okay So the sanctuary of sleep, so I'm gonna go over these they're not necessarily in the order of importance But sort of one have a routine bedtime each night fall asleep by 10 p.m As late nights are drying and rob your body of subtle digestion time There's no antidote for lost sleep. Make sure to get at least seven hours of sleep a night. I Just showed you how to apply the warm oils This is just telling you about this and telling you a place where you can look at a video on it And don't you don't have to say sorry So I've gone over that about self-oil massage. It is Trust me on it. Just try it. I've had people that cannot sleep And they finally got in just even three nights a week Just try it and again if you can't do your whole body and you'll see on the video how to do it Just do your feet every night and and maybe the top of your head. Okay, just you know Everybody can do that and put some socks on and go to bed Why why the feet and this is in all ancient traditions. Hmm Right a lot of what we have an acupuncturist here what why the feet? Everything from the ground up. Yeah, also it takes us out of our heads Right Okay There you go You can try and you could try you could also do tea tree oil in sesame oil because tea tree is an antiseptic Antifungal it's amazing frankincense. Also, you want you can try those two with it. Yeah You can also try putting silver rings on your toes because fungus don't like silver. So you can try that's just another Thought if you want to buy some cool silver rings and you'll be pretty Well, you'll have to look I don't know Yeah, I mean they they don't like silver fungal fungal infections I mean, I'm not saying this is an overnight cure either nothing by the way All of this none of this is overnight and and you know the overnight cures like sleeping pills are not a cure Either because I'm going to talk about them warm. Okay for those who can take milk and And preferably if you can get raw milk, which fortunately you can get here in Vermont. We couldn't in Texas when I used to there Warm almost to boiling whole preferably raw or non-homogenized at the least non-homogenized milk spice with a pinch each of nutmeg Which is a soporific? Cardamom turmeric and a couple threads of saffron if you have it before bed Very very pacifying for the nervous system and milk again if you can take it Has a lot of good fats for your brain and it has serotonin which is very helpful for sleep You can use the lactate milk or you can use almond milk Perfect if you Yes, perfect. So that's a really good point. Yes, if you're if you're lactose intolerant or but Play around with that. These are things to play around with the oil is like huge number one getting trying to have a routine bedtime is huge and usually with Elderly people or people from menopause on I'm not having so much of a problem with people are pretty much good about Well, most people are it's a younger folks that are really pushing the envelope on on sleep time You know you all remember when you stay up past 10 10 30 you get a second wind, right? Right, you know, we use that right when we were studying for college and all those things, but it's at the expense of your liver That's when subtle digestion occurs. So you're really Trashing your liver by staying up. That's that's liver time. When is kidney time again? It's Yeah, and but in the middle of the night when is kidney time Yeah, yeah, so each of our organs has a time and I can I don't have the chart with me But they each organ has a time so when you push beyond then you're those those organs are are Are not getting the nourishment they need Yes So castor oil is it is Used actually in in a lot of holistic medicines you can put castor oil in your eyes Very safe to put in your eyes particularly if you have a lot of burning if you have dry eyes that burn You can use castor oil and you and they're very good for the eyelashes if you get Infections around the edges of the eyelids, you know styes a lot and that kind of thing castor oil Can be for women that have cramps or people that have cramps and and constipation it can be put on the abdomen and externally with a hot water bottle not a heating pad so that's really good for it Deconjusting the pelvis and helping with with that, but as far as taking internally it's heating and it's a Collagogue so it causes the liver to contract and and and and it is used sometimes for It's used for constipation as we know, but it's pretty it can be pretty violent too so it's not a first go-to for Constipation and for but it is used it does actually cause the bile ducts and the and the you know the liver to kind of squeeze things out so I don't know I don't know about that that that one I don't know and you mean take it because usually when you take castor oil You're taking internally and you take up to a table soon only organic because castor oil has you know It's got really if they use hexane to which is a you know hydrocarbon to you know like like gasoline to to extract it so you want just you want Whenever you're taking castor oil always has to be organically not not the You have to you have to look at that Okay, so I talked about oh and there's an herb that you can add go to cola or Brahmi herb to the milk So I passed around these herbs But you can look online and you can get Brahmi herb and it's right here and you can add that to your milk and you can Practice with that if you want it it Brahmi is really delivered Really well with milk or with fats so taken with milk. It really is absorbed quite well Brain and nervous are 60% fat as I said I already talked about ghee Avoid processed foods avoid MSG We probably all know that food dies coloring artificial flavors artificial sweeteners. They all act as Excitotoxins so their brain neurotoxins and it's not so much in this group But it's in the younger when I used to talk to younger families and mothers I used to always put up a thing of Skittles, you know the candy skittles the only food in skittles is high fructose corn syrup That's the only food the rest is carnubu wax about ten different like red lake and these are all terrible neurotoxins So we have to really watch that with their young people I don't think that there's probably any skittles addicts out here, but But all the candies and all the dyes and all those things are neurotoxins So they're they're they're not good things for our brains Make sure to have at least 30 minutes Outdoors exercise each day you talked about exercise me I just want to tell you for to clock in your circadian rhythm having 30 minutes at least and I was talking I talked to women's groups when I was in Texas I could not believe how many people did not meet that each day Did not get at least 30 minutes outside And this doesn't matter if it's a snowy day or rainy day or whatever day inside these lights have You know lumens right and so outside lumens above 20,000 inside I mean in the hundreds and it is it really makes a difference for our circadian rhythm and the whole the whole thing so much so that in Indonesia where they have done visual That tests on kids going into recruited into the army For years and they have that data they've noticed that the number of kids requiring glasses by the age of 18 or whenever they're recruited is up to like 80 90 percent And part of it is because these kids get no ambient light It's all indoor light or computers and I talked about blue light And you notice this right with when now with all the LED lights on headlights when you're driving at night Even if they have the same lumens, they're much more blue light is we're much more sensitive to it Okay, how am I doing for time good all right So I tell oh and vitamin D big big in cold areas vitamin D now they say the levels D3 mm-hmm big big big big big big very big so D3 yes, and you know they say the level should be 30 Right and meaning your your blood level, but a lot of us probably don't have that up here So make sure you have especially here in Vermont that you take vitamin D You can get it mixed with your calcium pill Yeah, but and and periodically you might want to have it checked particularly if you're having sleep problems Okay, because you should really be nice to have it above 50, but it's just I don't think we're getting enough of it Well you want your blood level to be above 30, you know the weight, you know, but as far as the pills that 1,000 IU 2000 is a good number 2000 you're you're right on so that's good But above you know 1000 or 2000 is really good and I would say for here. I put that for here particularly Wine down. Okay. Here's the last number eight wind down before bed between 7 and 10 p.m. The nervous system needs to wind down Avoid watching TV or be on the computer electronics at least one or two hours before bed as they stimulate the nervous system and Block melatonin production. I mentioned that already avoid caffeine any time afternoon. It has an eight hour half life You can teach others about this Avoid alcohol in the evening First it's a stimulant Then it's a central nervous system depressant. Okay, so what it does it'll cause maintenance insomnia You'll fall asleep, but you won't stay asleep and all of us know that from that that drink alcohol or have I I don't drink alcohol anymore, but it it causes Suppression of non-rem sleep so again, that's when neural sanitation occurs That's why people if you've ever seen anybody go into DT's, you know delirium tremens getting up. They go psychotic, you know because That's partly loss of non-rem sleep So yeah, it's a big one and people just think they're gonna take a nightcap and that's you know that is Really really a misnomer I can't I can't stress that enough and I have spent 31 years as an ENT in my first 10 years in practice when I was in Boston was dealing with head and neck cancers and Pretty much all of them were alcoholics Alcoholic or alcoholic plus smoker. It is so toxic to the nervous system and It is not a sleep aid It is not a sleep aid and if when people said oh the reservatrol I said have grape juice or You know, I mean you get reservatol from grape juice, right and so So avoid sleeping pills They sedate the brain and they suppress non-rem sleep. So right now There is there are studies to show that there's a four to five-fold increase of early death Death on people who have been on sleeping pills long-term. So if you are one of them start working on getting off of them And they sedate the brain. They suppress non-rem sleep. They cause daytime drowsiness Memory loss and increased risk of multiple diseases right now The American Medical Association has finally taken them off of a first-line thing for sleep disorders. Thank God But I can't stress enough Not having and they make beautiful names for them, you know ambient and I Mean they have gorgeous names for the sleeping pills. I just it's so creative. Yeah Just gone off and I can't do it. Yeah, well, but I'm taking melatonin. Fine But melatonin and they have a pill now that has Two different levels so For me so it's much much better to have melatonin than a sleeping pill. Yeah. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah Yeah, you don't see that's what it's your it's a stepwise thing For a while. It's a and it's a great thing if you're doing international travel You take it at the time you should normally be going to bed for wherever time zone you're in to get your sleep started So it's a great travel aid and it's a great for coming off a sleeping pill But also these other techniques that I'm showing you and the oiling and having the good fats in your diet are Imperative and then I've got a few more things too No, no, it's not a long-term sleeping aid. Yeah So The sleeping pills say it's huge, you know, there was like I told you there's an uptick in 2002 an ambient If any of you had stock in the company that I forget what company I mean, really I mean they made 24 billion in that next two years and profits and And part of it is because we are sleeping less so people are resorting to sleeping pills a lot of sleeping disorders Yeah, it causes yeah, it's got a lot of things including because it suppresses non-rem sleep It increases the risk now of Alzheimer's their studies to show that in and dementia A lot of it's it's really not a not not good not good Avoid electronics in the bedroom. We talked about why avoid eating late heavy dinners eat the last meal Greater than three hours. These are all things you can look at, you know in your lifestyle, right? Last meal three hours before bed have lukewarm or room Room temperature water with meals Make thank you for coming make lunch your largest meal of the day, right? Because if we have dinner is the largest meal We're going to bed with a full stomach or a near full stomach. We're really meant to eat our largest meal At lunchtime so lighter lighter dinners again this for everybody That's avoid exercising within two to three hours of bed I'm really more in the younger people that I have this issue. This doesn't mean walking I'm talking about heavy exercise because this increases adrenaline and cortisol and delays that onset of sleep. So Yeah Yeah, I here's what I would say with swimming Swimming is wonderful. It's as long as you're not doing it really exertional But if you're swimming in a heavily chlorinated pool, that's also a toxin and it's absorbed in Oh, these the fluoride. Okay a little it's better. Yeah But any heavy exercise at night and I don't usually it's usually in the younger population where we have to talk about that Avoid naps after 3 p.m Keep naps to half an hour or less We talked about why earlier because then you get into and then here's a really cool thing consider yoga nidra Which is a guided relaxation tape? And you can look it up. You can look ones up. There's an app called insight meditation app if you want to just be you know you can get it for your phone and Pick pick one that you like and listen to it. So they're guided meditation And what I would do is try those out in the afternoon and see if you like those So if you have a night time where you're and sometimes we all have nights at at times when we can't sleep You can do one of these and listen to a yoga nidra and nidra means sleep and These are just things to try you can try all of these things Consider legs up the wall pose breathing slowly into the belly for 10 minutes before going to bed or this pose right here or If you wake up, this is a good one to do Consider a meditation practice to start your day in the morning I wouldn't say to go to that first if you're having severe sleeping problems I would say to go to some of these other methods first and then add it but Meditation is great for everybody and it's a great way to I was talking about these sleep waves and there's lots of studies to show that when you sleep You have more of these deep waves and you and you improve non-rem sleep and a lot less of these beta waves Even during the day so And crime, you know really long-term meditators and yogis when they study their brains They have a lot less of the beta waves and a lot more of the deep waves and that's already been shown so Consider doing a restorative yoga class once weekly to train your nervous system what total relaxation isn't to promote healthy sleep I don't know because I'm not living here, but I'm pretty certain that there's probably some Yoga classes here that are restorative in Montpelier. I would assume that there are and so for you know What this is doing all of these things are doing is training your nervous system So you're retraining your nervous system and you can pick and choose but I would say you know these top couple are really important Also, I forgot to mention temperature in the sleeping place You want it to be cooler cool helps us go into deeper sleep Not as much of an issue here as it is in other places and Then consider listening to music playing music reading something pleasant walking your dog using aromatherapy I mentioned aromatherapy if you're taking baths at night or when you're taking showers you can put those around Rose jasmine aroly bedover relax the cns And you can also consider Taking if you're really really having problems of sleeping doing the oiling and then taking a bath before sleep and don't worry about cleaning up till the next day So the last disclaimer that I have is that a sleep disorder is Broadly defined as a physical or psychological problem that impairs your ability to sleep or causes increased sleepiness during the day We all have sleep problems from time to time. We can be very stressed out. You know, we we can't get away from The things that happen in life However, you might have a sleep disorder and can and should consult your physician if you regular Regularly experience difficulty sleeping three nights weekly for three months or more and you haven't had a checkup to see if there's some Other underlying condition you're often sleepy during the day or have impaired ability to perform regular daytime activities Even if you've slept seven to eight hours, okay? Really what you want to shoot for is having seven to eight hours of sleep every night always Your partner or other is told you snore loudly and sometimes stop breathing What I used to just have people do is just have somebody tape them and then they bring in the tape You know because everybody's got cell phones now and you could hear if somebody's doing this I mean they're having some apnea and even snoring Can be people can be having apnea even just with snoring so it's and Note the AMA American Medical Association no longer suggest sleeping pills of first-line treatment for insomnia Be referred to a sleep specialist. So any of you that have really severe long-term sleeping these these are all things But if you haven't seen a physician I would suggest doing that and being worked up because what if you have a thyroid disorder? What if you have an autoimmune disease? What if you have a? Number of different things, you know you could have sleep apnea and then there's some references here This is not everything I just picked a few that I think are really great and Consider also taking Fish oil as well. If you if you're you know or cod liver oil So thank you all for your attention. If you have any questions. I'm happy to stay and answer them Yes, so cognitive therapy, right so cognitive there and I'm sorry I think it's