October 7, 2022 • 28 mins
It’s said that “The news never sleeps,” but the reporters who are breaking news in this nonstop 24-hour cycle have to get shut-eye sometime. ABC News anchor Diane Macedo has worked all hours day and night in news, and while her passion for reporting has never diminished, the adrenaline and anxiety that come with the job makes getting quality sleep a challenge. Discover what sleep professionals say about that sensation of being “tired but wired,” and learn about Diane’s journey to restful sleep even on busy news days.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
In order to be able to cover news seven. It
means people have to work at all strange hours of
the night. And even if you think about a program
like Good Morning America, everyone who works on that show
is waking up at two, three, four, maybe five in
the morning if they're lucky. Diane Merseado is a journalist, author,
(00:27):
and news anchor who co hosts ABC News Live. From
the anchor chair of early morning news shows to field
reporting for overnight news coverage, Diane has done it all.
We rely on journalists like her to be there to
deliver the stories and information that we need to know,
and Diane is one of the most trusted voices in
the industry. On an average day, she's reporting the news
(00:50):
to roughly eight point one million viewers. The ultimate reward
is relaying this information that I think is really important,
and I do you consider news a public service? And
I'm a very sort of principled, idealistic person. Even still
in my career, things don't stop happening just because the
(01:10):
sun goes down. Reporting the news is seven job. I've
had shifts where I went in at noon, I went
in at three thirty in the morning, I went in
at one thirty in the morning. Camera ready. I've gone
in at ten or eleven PM and come out of
(01:30):
work at nine am, and then you try to sleep.
If the news never sleeps, what does that mean for
the journalists who report it and how do they disconnect
from the intensity and severity of current events to unwine
for healthy sleep. I'm on at O'Connor and this is
Chasing Sleep and I heart radio production and partnership with
(01:52):
Mattress Firm. As a bestselling author and health calls with
the background in psychology, I've spent a lot of my
time studying and writing about sleep. Sleep is so essential
to our overall health, but often it's something we overlook
and it's the first thing we tend to neglect. And
(02:13):
each episode we'll meet people living and working in extraordinary circumstances.
I want to learn how they rest and recharge their
bodies and minds to perform at their very best. In
this episode will uncover what working through the night to
bring you the news does to the brain and how
to slow things down to be able to get some
much needed rest. Breaking news is the most challenging part
(02:42):
of my job now, but it's the part that I
love the most it's when there's no prompter to rely on,
there's no script to rely on, sometimes very little information
to rely on, and you kind of just have to
go with your gut. It's you and the audience and
nothing in between. As you're actively getting in this new information,
(03:04):
how do I best relay this to the audience in
a way that everyone's gonna understand and be able to
take in and to be able to capture what the
important parts of this story really are. There's something deeply
exciting about the world of reporting and fitting in all
the pieces of a story to give the public a
(03:25):
full picture. I think I've just always had this intense
curiosity about wanting to know what was going on in
the world and wanting to figure it out, like everything
was a giant puzzle, and the more information I could get,
the more I could figure out how it all comes together.
There's no shortage of difficult moments in journalism. Sometimes the
(03:45):
bigger the story, the bigger the emotional toll it can
have on the public and the journalist delivering the story.
I wondered about some of those bigger moments in Diane's
career and how she's learned to process the weight of
the news she's reporting. One big one for me was
working on the Eric Garner case. I was in Staten
(04:06):
Island talking to his friends, people who were there who
witnessed the police put him in a chokehold. They were
all telling me, you know, they're saying he died at
the hospital. As far as we could tell, he died
in front of us. And being able to talk to
people like that firsthand, see additional videos that they took.
(04:29):
Regardless of your opinion on the case, when you see
how any serious news story actually touches the people who
are directly involved, it affects you differently. And that's one
of those stories that you know even now, I go
home sometimes and I find myself at midnight watching the
video again, listening to the audio again. Can I do
(04:50):
anything about it? No. But in instances like that, your
brain doesn't always let you sleep because it's so consumed
by something else. And every now and then you hit
a story that just consumes you to the point where
you can't fall asleep as easily as you would like to.
Journalism requires those in the field to be able to
manage high levels of emotional stress along with the intense
(05:13):
pressure of being the first to break the news, no
matter the hour. At a certain point, that all starts
to take a toll. And when you're pushing through on
high levels of adrenaline, how do you come down from
the reporting high? Little by little, I just saw my
sleep deteriorate more and more and more and more. And
I think I did what most people do, which is
you just assume you can power through it. And one
(05:37):
of the perks of having a job like this is
that you love it and when you're doing it, your
adrenaline is pumping and you kind of find a way
to perform. Your body just you know, goes into showtime
mode and you dig deep and you do it. I
think the problem comes around after. It's when you get
(05:57):
home and now you're trying to plug from showtime mode,
and you're trying to tell your body work time is over.
Now it's time to relax and unwind and go to sleep.
I think for myself and for a lot of of
journalists who are used to that kind of quick, fast paced,
fast thinking life, it's when you try to step back
from that that then you start to have a problem,
(06:19):
because you lay down in bed and you're trying to
tell your body. It's time to go to sleep, and
your body is still in go mode. We all know
at this point that stress can really do a number
on our bodies. But I wanted to talk to an
expert to learn more about how stress and anxiety impact
our sleep. So I decided to catch up with Dr
Jade Woo. She's a Board certified sleep psychologist, researcher, and
(06:42):
author of the book Hello Sleep, The Science and Art
of Overcoming Insomnia Without Medications. And so, with the high
stress environment of working in a newsroom like Dianda's, could
you walk us through how stress effects sleep? We know
that not getting enough sleep can be stressful, but how
does having high levels of stress effect your sleep? Yes,
(07:06):
stress and sleep are not good friends. So when we
experience a lot of stress, especially chronic stress, hour after hour,
day after day kind of stress, the message that's sending
to our bodies is there must be a predator on
our tail, because otherwise, why are you so high octane
all the time, Why are you going, going, going, Why
(07:26):
is your heart rate up and your cortisol levels are up?
You know, all of this is telling our bodies there
must be a predator. So if there is a predator. Obviously,
the last thing you want to do is sleep. So
it's really hard to turn on and off that switch
to say, Okay, now I'm on i am reporting breaking news,
I am you know, chasing down leads, I am in
(07:46):
front of the camera, in front of millions of people,
and then switch it off like Okay, I'm alone in
my quiet room and I want to sleep now. It's
really hard to just, you know, switch on and off
like that and get into sleepy mode. So, if we're
going about our days and tackling the challenges that life
throws at us, how can we tell when stress is
reaching a point where it's actively impacting our sleep. So
(08:09):
one of the most common things I hear is tired
but wired. So someone is exhausted, they're dragging, they can't concentrate,
they don't feel well. They just want to crawl into
bed like everything in their body is screaming for rest.
But when they get into bed, they can't sleep. They
have insomnia. They're staring at the ceiling, they're tossing and turning.
(08:32):
Their mind is racing, you know, and sometimes they even
feel like panicky feelings in their body. That racing mind
needs some sort of release. You know, you can't just
keep keating the can down the road. Your thoughts, your
mind really do need your attention. So if all day
long you're saying, Okay, I'm busy, I'm distracted, and I
(08:53):
don't have time to process my thoughts or emotions. If
the first time in your day that you have a
chance to as your thoughts emotions is at bedtime, when
you lay down and it's finally quiet and dark, and
then of course you're racing mind is going to come
out to play. It's like been waiting patiently all day,
like a child talking at your sleeve. Okay, now I've
got your full attention. Let me tell you all of
(09:14):
the things. This is the tired, bit wired phenomenon that
a lot of high stress jobs will bring, because then
your body and mind are really confused about what is day,
what is night? You know what is on time, what
is off time, so it has a hard time keeping
up that you know biological rhythm to help you up
regulate when you should be awake, down, regulate when you
(09:35):
should be asleep. We really should set aside time during
the day to process our thoughts, to review what we're feeling,
what we're doing, let your mind stretches wings so that
your mind isn't like jonesing to go at bed time.
So this tired but wired feeling is definitely a telltale
sign stress plus crazy hours. Diane was feeling the weight
(09:58):
of her job and it was impacting her sleep, and
the little sleep she was getting was starting to impact
other aspects of her health as well. When I first
started experiencing issues, I didn't realize that they were tied
to my sleep. But the first thing I noticed was
I had horrible acid reflux almost as soon as I
started working in early morning news. So I saw all
(10:20):
these doctors about my acid reflux. They put me on
all this different medication. I started making all these dietary changes.
Nothing helped, and in fact, I started pushing my dinner
time earlier and earlier and earlier, because I kept reading
that you have to have a big space between your
last meal and the time that you go to sleep
(10:42):
in order to prevent acid reflux. What I didn't know,
and what no one ever talks about, is that for
some people, it's really hard to go to bed when
you're hungry, and lack of sleep can cause acid reflux.
The other symptom I noticed was dry eyes. I started
feeling just this is comfort in my eyes that I
had never felt before, and I didn't know what was
(11:05):
causing it. I started feeling foggy at times, mentally foggy,
like I couldn't focus, and I felt exhausted, but not sleepy.
I think the breaking point for me ended up being
when I developed a tolerance to ambient So I called
my doctor and her advice to me was, you know,
you're only taking half of the lowest dose, so just
(11:28):
take a full pill. And I kind of decided right
then and there that this is not going to be
the way forward for me. So that was kind of
my big Eureka moment of I need to find a
better solution. Doctor Woo has seen many struggle with sleep
the same way Diane has, and she recognizes that when
you get to this breaking point, it can be hard
(11:49):
to see the path out of poor sleep. To see
patients who are really struggling and who really feel like
they've tried everything that feeling kind of hopeless, to be
able to turn that around for them, to give them
optimism and to really help them to re connect with
their sleep really kind of changes their whole life. You know,
(12:09):
there's a famous saying among really busy people, I'll sleep
when I'm dead. Yep, I've heard that. Yeah, I'm sure
you get that a lot. What are some of your
big highlights for why sleep is so important, Teddy, What
do you say to people who say, you know, I
can skimp on sleep and focus on other things. Well,
to me, sleep is not just the empty space in
between your days, right. Sometimes we think of it as like, oh,
(12:32):
it's just filler. It's just like quiet time, and if
I can squeeze more into my day, how awesome would
that be. But the problem is that if you don't
sleep well, then you don't have that nourishment, you don't
have that basic foundation for health and well being. I
don't think of it as empty space. I think of
it as water in between continents. You know, it's the
very thing that makes life possible. So we do need
(12:54):
to fill our oceans and make sure that, you know,
we we have the rest that we need, we have
the sleep that we need. It's amazing how interconnected all
of these pieces are within our brains. It's like a
car engine. When everything is going well, you can just
cruise on down the street. But if you have a
bad radiator or one of your spark plugs is out
of whack. Well, you might still get the car from
(13:16):
point A to point B, but it will be a
struggle and one that can become dangerous. So how do
you solve a serious sleep problem like a journalist, Well,
you report on it. I sat down with my producers
at World News Now, and given we were an overnight show,
I knew our audience, many of them presumably we're struggling
(13:38):
with a lot of the same issues. I knew a
lot of my coworkers were too, for that matter, and
so I said, you know, I want to set out
on this mission to fix my sleep. Do you guys
want me to document it? And I will find doctors
and do whatever they asked me to do, and we
can put together the story of the things that I
(13:59):
try and what works and what doesn't, and then we'll
bring it to our viewers and so they can learn
from it. We'll be right back after a brief message
from our partners at Mattress Firm, and now back to
chasing sleep. In my quest to find a doctor to
(14:24):
work with me to do this whole news story and
document my adventure, I had learned that cognitive behavioral therapy
because the gold standard treatment for insomnia. Once we finally
got this test done, I got the official insomnia diagnosis.
So I started reading more and more about cb T
I because I knew that that's what was going to
be coming next for me, and in the effort to
(14:45):
be a very prepared journalist, I wanted to get ahead
of the game as much as I could and understand
what it is that I was going to be covering
and talking about. And part of the reason we experienced
insomnia over and over and over again is because we
spend so much time awake and frustrated in bed that
your brain starts to learn that bed is not a calm,
(15:06):
safe space where we go to be sleepy. Your brain
starts to learn, oh, bed is a stressful place where
we have to be alert. And so going to bed
triggers this arousal that keeps you awake. It's why you
feel like you're dozing off on the couch one second,
and then all of a sudden you go to go
to sleep and boom, your wide awake and your brain
is going a mile a minute. That's something called conditioned arousal.
(15:28):
You don't need to be a news anchor to have
experienced this feeling. Your muscles are sore, your body is
begging for sleep, but you just lie on the bed
and stare at the ceiling. More often than not, this
is the manifestation of the effects of stress on your
sleeping cycle. So now the question is how do we
fix this? Is there anything we can do from our
otherwise comfortable beds to get our minds into sleep mode. Actually,
(15:53):
most of what we can do about this is what
we do outside of bed. So for example, leading up
to bedtime, really need to have a nice wind down routine,
a buffer zone between the day and the night, or
for people who are working nights between you know, they're
on time versus off time. That might be the best
way to describe it. So leading up to bedtime, we
(16:14):
need to be switching from doing mode to being mode.
So doing mode is like getting our chores done, crossing
off to do lists, getting the kids ready for bed,
preparing for work, checking emails, you know, doing all of
these things that are goal oriented and very active. We
want to be switching from that mode to being mode,
(16:35):
which is more like getting in touch with our body,
getting in touch with our emotions kind of winding down
from the day and putting away to do lists, putting
away sort of goal oriented activities, and really switching more
to a grounded, centered kind of mode. And to do that,
you know, we can really design our own wind down routines.
(16:56):
Often people have a nice you know, like bath or shower,
skincare routine, get into Pj's, cuttle up with the dog,
maybe read the book for a little bit, chat with
your partner, but save you know, big conversations for tomorrow,
because we're winding down now. So having that buffer in
between your really on go, go go kind of day
(17:18):
versus your relaxing a sleepy night is very important. The
driving forces that push us to calm down and actually
get some rest are so strong, and the unique stresses
of journalism require unique solutions. I was curious, how do
journalists like Diane take some of the more tragic or
(17:39):
emotional parts of the job and release them in order
to get the amount of rest that they need. So
I think I've just sort of naturally, through the course
of doing this job for so long, learned that I
need to create a separation to be able to function.
But that doesn't mean that you know there are in
(18:00):
some stories that just that do affect you in that way,
and I think for me, it's been a lot of
just about just acceptance. Right. It's okay if I'm not
shedding tears about every story that I report on on air,
even if they are a tragedy, And it's also okay
if every now and then there is one where I
do shed tears on air about it. And you know,
(18:21):
if I was crying over every story, that would probably
be fine too. I just think a lot of it
is just sort of accepting what your body needs to
do to process those emotions, and just to make sure
you are acknowledging them and processing them, which I think
I do a technique that I have used that's not
necessarily about separating the sympathy and empathy part of things,
(18:44):
but more about organizing my thoughts and my worries and
my feelings. Sort of processing all of that and realizing
what I can and can't control. I think has been
a huge part of my sleep recovery. And this is
a practice called constructive worry, and I often just refer
to it as a worry list or a brain dump
(19:06):
because it sounds so silly, but you just do. You
take a notebook and you divide a page down the center,
and on the left hand side of the page you
just write down anything that's on your mind, the kind
of thing that would keep you awake at night, or
that might wake you up in the middle of the night,
and now your brain starts racing right any of that
stuff on the page, and then on the right hand
(19:27):
side you write down the very next step toward resolving
that issue. The exercise itself also gets you focused on
solutions instead of problems. And when you're stuck in this
sort of insomnia cycle where you get into a pattern
of going to bed and suddenly your brain starts racing,
we often at that time are more susceptible to catastrophic thinking,
(19:49):
and so we often will ruminate on problems and it
will feel like there's no way out of this. And
so by doing this exercise, you sort of retrain your
brain into thinking, Okay, problem, solution, what are we going
to do about that, instead of just problem, problem, Oh
my god, problem. And part of the reason why we catastrophize,
at least one of the leading theories on it is
(20:10):
that the areas of our brain that focus on things
like rational thinking turn off while we're sleeping. They kind
of sleep as well, and so if you're awake in
the middle of the night, let's say at a time
that you're normally sleeping, that part of your brain is
still asleep. So now you're thinking about your problems, but
without the part of your brain that controls the irrational thought.
(20:32):
That's why it's so much easier to go into that
spiral in the middle of the night. And often I
found by writing things down, when I look at them
the next day, it seemed absurd that I was so
worried about this thing. And I think just knowing that
helps the next time you're in that position to realize, wow,
I think it's the end of the world that this
(20:52):
thing happened, But it's probably just because it's two o'clock
in the morning. And I bet, just like last time,
when you know it's nine am, I'm going to realize
that this really isn't so bad. And sometimes just knowing
that can help turn the temperature down on that anxiety
that's keeping you awake. Diane's journey to find better sleep
(21:13):
took her down a path of a lot of research
and reporting, and ultimately she wrote a book. It's called
The Sleep Fix. Practical, proven and Surprising Solutions for insomnia, snoring,
shift work, and more. Her goal in writing the book
was to help others learn from her struggles and discoveries
so they could find fixes to their own sleep problems.
(21:36):
I think one of the hardest parts for me it
was I didn't know it was anxiety that was keeping
me awake. I was reading all of these articles and
all of these things about the temperature in the room
and the perfect bedtime routine and swearing off screens and
quit and caffeine, and I was trying all of these things.
And I don't consider myself an anxious person in general,
(22:00):
and so I had no idea that it was anxiety
that was playing such a huge role in why I
wasn't sleeping. If I had known that, I probably would
have sought out therapy or some you know, other techniques
to address that. But that's not what I was looking for.
I was looking for sleep solutions, and generally sleep solutions
don't address anxiety, and really, textbook insomnia, it just means
(22:22):
your arousal levels are too high. It essentially my layman's
translation for it is insomnias when you can't sleep because
you can't relax, and there are a number of things
that can do that for you. It can happen if
you're too excited about something, but of course it can
also happen if you're really stressed and worried about something,
and normally, if it happens for a long time, it's
the latter. So for me, the anxiety, you know, in
(22:44):
addressing this sort of fast paced lifestyle and just the
way that my brain works was something that I kind
of stumbled into accidentally. So for our listeners who may
be curious about their own sleep aadventure, do you have
any advice for how people can assess and maybe to
get a better understanding of their own sleep. I do
recommend that if you're struggling with your sleep, consult with
(23:07):
a sleep specialist, even just to get an assessment to
figure out, you know, is it because of shift work
or do you have another sleep disorder. There are so
many things that we don't know that we don't know
about sleep, So I really caution folks not to just
go down that internet rabbit hole of reading lots and
lots of articles and self diagnosing. There are people who
(23:29):
also work too hard on their sleep. I have lots
of insomnia patients, for example, who say they have the
perfect sleep hygiene routine from all these articles they've read,
but now they're trying so hard to perfect their sleep
routine that they are kind of psyching themselves up and
almost creating insomnia anxiety in the evenings for themselves, and
(23:52):
they end up with orthosomnia, which is the condition of
having insomnia because you're working too hard to track your sleep.
Everyone's situation is different, and that's why I think seeking
help from a sleep professional is so important. Meanwhile, I
think listening to our bodies and trusting our bodies to
tell us, like if you feel sleepy, that's your body
(24:12):
trying to tell you something important, And if you feel awake,
that's also a sign that maybe it's not time to
force sleep, it's not the right timing, or you just
don't have enough sleep drive yet. So I think listening
to your body is a good start, and consulting with
a sleep specialist can kind of take you all the way.
As a news anchor, of course, you have to be
(24:33):
really on right for the cameras, and you have to
be really sharp mentally, you have to ask challenging questions
to whoever you're interviewing. All of those things require mental focus,
being alert, It requires being to switch gears in your
mind very quickly. All of that improves when you have
better sleep and better circadian functioning. So if we can
(24:54):
stay on track with our rhythms and have that good
quality sleep, then we can definitely function better as a
news anchor or as you know, whatever we do with
our lives. The drive and determination that allowed Diane to
thrive in the high octane field of journalism is also
what allowed her to fix her sleep when it was
veering dangerously off track. And with the return of good
(25:17):
sleep came all the health benefits too. Once I just
started to sleep better, all of these things, like a
flywheel now turning in the right direction, started getting better.
My acid reflux went away, my eating habits improved, because
when you lack sleep, you're hormones for feeling hungry and
(25:40):
feeling satisfied get completely thrown out of wax. So suddenly
I I just started eating better without even trying, as
opposed to before I was trying all these diets and
all these different things to improve my eating habits. That
just sort of fell into place. My dry eyes went away,
my thought process felt clearer. I started making better decisions
and feeling less tempted by things like screen time at night,
(26:04):
and you just start to realize how much it all
ties together, and if you can just pull on one thread,
sometimes that's enough to get everything then moving in the
right direction. So much of this journey for me has
been learning to surrender in many ways. I can't be
the doer, the fixer, the perfectionist here in many ways
(26:26):
I have to learn to let go and now the
ability to sit at this seat for ABC News Live
and have people invite me now not only into their
homes every day, but their offices every day, the gym
every day, wherever it is that they are watching. Do
you really feel like you form a relationship with the viewers.
I don't take that lightly, and I feel really privileged
(26:49):
to be able to do it. That's all for this episode.
Join me again next week, when we learn about how
health care professionals priorities and schedules sleep while they're saving lives.
We'll hear from an e R doctor in New York
City about how he chased his sleep through the stress
of changing work schedules and life and death scenarios during
(27:13):
residency I had to do. I see you rotations that
did have twenty four to twenty seven hour shifts. It
doesn't sound possible, and I didn't think it was, but
somehow you make it through it. We want to hear
from you. Leave a rating or review for our show
on your podcast player of choice. You can find me
on Twitter at on O'Connor. Until next time, hoping you're
(27:36):
living your best while sleeping your best. Chasing Sleep is
a production of I Heart Radio in partnership with Mattress Firm.
Our executive producer is Molly Sosha, our EP of post
is Matt Stillo, our producer is Sierra Kaiser, and this
show is hosted by an a Hot O'Connor
In order to be able to cover news seven. It
means people have to work at all strange hours of
the night. And even if you think about a program
like Good Morning America, everyone who works on that show
is waking up at two, three, four, maybe five in
the morning if they're lucky. Diane Merseado is a journalist, author,
(00:27):
and news anchor who co hosts ABC News Live. From
the anchor chair of early morning news shows to field
reporting for overnight news coverage, Diane has done it all.
We rely on journalists like her to be there to
deliver the stories and information that we need to know,
and Diane is one of the most trusted voices in
the industry. On an average day, she's reporting the news
(00:50):
to roughly eight point one million viewers. The ultimate reward
is relaying this information that I think is really important,
and I do you consider news a public service? And
I'm a very sort of principled, idealistic person. Even still
in my career, things don't stop happening just because the
(01:10):
sun goes down. Reporting the news is seven job. I've
had shifts where I went in at noon, I went
in at three thirty in the morning, I went in
at one thirty in the morning. Camera ready. I've gone
in at ten or eleven PM and come out of
(01:30):
work at nine am, and then you try to sleep.
If the news never sleeps, what does that mean for
the journalists who report it and how do they disconnect
from the intensity and severity of current events to unwine
for healthy sleep. I'm on at O'Connor and this is
Chasing Sleep and I heart radio production and partnership with
(01:52):
Mattress Firm. As a bestselling author and health calls with
the background in psychology, I've spent a lot of my
time studying and writing about sleep. Sleep is so essential
to our overall health, but often it's something we overlook
and it's the first thing we tend to neglect. And
(02:13):
each episode we'll meet people living and working in extraordinary circumstances.
I want to learn how they rest and recharge their
bodies and minds to perform at their very best. In
this episode will uncover what working through the night to
bring you the news does to the brain and how
to slow things down to be able to get some
much needed rest. Breaking news is the most challenging part
(02:42):
of my job now, but it's the part that I
love the most it's when there's no prompter to rely on,
there's no script to rely on, sometimes very little information
to rely on, and you kind of just have to
go with your gut. It's you and the audience and
nothing in between. As you're actively getting in this new information,
(03:04):
how do I best relay this to the audience in
a way that everyone's gonna understand and be able to
take in and to be able to capture what the
important parts of this story really are. There's something deeply
exciting about the world of reporting and fitting in all
the pieces of a story to give the public a
(03:25):
full picture. I think I've just always had this intense
curiosity about wanting to know what was going on in
the world and wanting to figure it out, like everything
was a giant puzzle, and the more information I could get,
the more I could figure out how it all comes together.
There's no shortage of difficult moments in journalism. Sometimes the
(03:45):
bigger the story, the bigger the emotional toll it can
have on the public and the journalist delivering the story.
I wondered about some of those bigger moments in Diane's
career and how she's learned to process the weight of
the news she's reporting. One big one for me was
working on the Eric Garner case. I was in Staten
(04:06):
Island talking to his friends, people who were there who
witnessed the police put him in a chokehold. They were
all telling me, you know, they're saying he died at
the hospital. As far as we could tell, he died
in front of us. And being able to talk to
people like that firsthand, see additional videos that they took.
(04:29):
Regardless of your opinion on the case, when you see
how any serious news story actually touches the people who
are directly involved, it affects you differently. And that's one
of those stories that you know even now, I go
home sometimes and I find myself at midnight watching the
video again, listening to the audio again. Can I do
(04:50):
anything about it? No. But in instances like that, your
brain doesn't always let you sleep because it's so consumed
by something else. And every now and then you hit
a story that just consumes you to the point where
you can't fall asleep as easily as you would like to.
Journalism requires those in the field to be able to
manage high levels of emotional stress along with the intense
(05:13):
pressure of being the first to break the news, no
matter the hour. At a certain point, that all starts
to take a toll. And when you're pushing through on
high levels of adrenaline, how do you come down from
the reporting high? Little by little, I just saw my
sleep deteriorate more and more and more and more. And
I think I did what most people do, which is
you just assume you can power through it. And one
(05:37):
of the perks of having a job like this is
that you love it and when you're doing it, your
adrenaline is pumping and you kind of find a way
to perform. Your body just you know, goes into showtime
mode and you dig deep and you do it. I
think the problem comes around after. It's when you get
(05:57):
home and now you're trying to plug from showtime mode,
and you're trying to tell your body work time is over.
Now it's time to relax and unwind and go to sleep.
I think for myself and for a lot of of
journalists who are used to that kind of quick, fast paced,
fast thinking life, it's when you try to step back
from that that then you start to have a problem,
(06:19):
because you lay down in bed and you're trying to
tell your body. It's time to go to sleep, and
your body is still in go mode. We all know
at this point that stress can really do a number
on our bodies. But I wanted to talk to an
expert to learn more about how stress and anxiety impact
our sleep. So I decided to catch up with Dr
Jade Woo. She's a Board certified sleep psychologist, researcher, and
(06:42):
author of the book Hello Sleep, The Science and Art
of Overcoming Insomnia Without Medications. And so, with the high
stress environment of working in a newsroom like Dianda's, could
you walk us through how stress effects sleep? We know
that not getting enough sleep can be stressful, but how
does having high levels of stress effect your sleep? Yes,
(07:06):
stress and sleep are not good friends. So when we
experience a lot of stress, especially chronic stress, hour after hour,
day after day kind of stress, the message that's sending
to our bodies is there must be a predator on
our tail, because otherwise, why are you so high octane
all the time, Why are you going, going, going, Why
(07:26):
is your heart rate up and your cortisol levels are up?
You know, all of this is telling our bodies there
must be a predator. So if there is a predator. Obviously,
the last thing you want to do is sleep. So
it's really hard to turn on and off that switch
to say, Okay, now I'm on i am reporting breaking news,
I am you know, chasing down leads, I am in
(07:46):
front of the camera, in front of millions of people,
and then switch it off like Okay, I'm alone in
my quiet room and I want to sleep now. It's
really hard to just, you know, switch on and off
like that and get into sleepy mode. So, if we're
going about our days and tackling the challenges that life
throws at us, how can we tell when stress is
reaching a point where it's actively impacting our sleep. So
(08:09):
one of the most common things I hear is tired
but wired. So someone is exhausted, they're dragging, they can't concentrate,
they don't feel well. They just want to crawl into
bed like everything in their body is screaming for rest.
But when they get into bed, they can't sleep. They
have insomnia. They're staring at the ceiling, they're tossing and turning.
(08:32):
Their mind is racing, you know, and sometimes they even
feel like panicky feelings in their body. That racing mind
needs some sort of release. You know, you can't just
keep keating the can down the road. Your thoughts, your
mind really do need your attention. So if all day
long you're saying, Okay, I'm busy, I'm distracted, and I
(08:53):
don't have time to process my thoughts or emotions. If
the first time in your day that you have a
chance to as your thoughts emotions is at bedtime, when
you lay down and it's finally quiet and dark, and
then of course you're racing mind is going to come
out to play. It's like been waiting patiently all day,
like a child talking at your sleeve. Okay, now I've
got your full attention. Let me tell you all of
(09:14):
the things. This is the tired, bit wired phenomenon that
a lot of high stress jobs will bring, because then
your body and mind are really confused about what is day,
what is night? You know what is on time, what
is off time, so it has a hard time keeping
up that you know biological rhythm to help you up
regulate when you should be awake, down, regulate when you
(09:35):
should be asleep. We really should set aside time during
the day to process our thoughts, to review what we're feeling,
what we're doing, let your mind stretches wings so that
your mind isn't like jonesing to go at bed time.
So this tired but wired feeling is definitely a telltale
sign stress plus crazy hours. Diane was feeling the weight
(09:58):
of her job and it was impacting her sleep, and
the little sleep she was getting was starting to impact
other aspects of her health as well. When I first
started experiencing issues, I didn't realize that they were tied
to my sleep. But the first thing I noticed was
I had horrible acid reflux almost as soon as I
started working in early morning news. So I saw all
(10:20):
these doctors about my acid reflux. They put me on
all this different medication. I started making all these dietary changes.
Nothing helped, and in fact, I started pushing my dinner
time earlier and earlier and earlier, because I kept reading
that you have to have a big space between your
last meal and the time that you go to sleep
(10:42):
in order to prevent acid reflux. What I didn't know,
and what no one ever talks about, is that for
some people, it's really hard to go to bed when
you're hungry, and lack of sleep can cause acid reflux.
The other symptom I noticed was dry eyes. I started
feeling just this is comfort in my eyes that I
had never felt before, and I didn't know what was
(11:05):
causing it. I started feeling foggy at times, mentally foggy,
like I couldn't focus, and I felt exhausted, but not sleepy.
I think the breaking point for me ended up being
when I developed a tolerance to ambient So I called
my doctor and her advice to me was, you know,
you're only taking half of the lowest dose, so just
(11:28):
take a full pill. And I kind of decided right
then and there that this is not going to be
the way forward for me. So that was kind of
my big Eureka moment of I need to find a
better solution. Doctor Woo has seen many struggle with sleep
the same way Diane has, and she recognizes that when
you get to this breaking point, it can be hard
(11:49):
to see the path out of poor sleep. To see
patients who are really struggling and who really feel like
they've tried everything that feeling kind of hopeless, to be
able to turn that around for them, to give them
optimism and to really help them to re connect with
their sleep really kind of changes their whole life. You know,
(12:09):
there's a famous saying among really busy people, I'll sleep
when I'm dead. Yep, I've heard that. Yeah, I'm sure
you get that a lot. What are some of your
big highlights for why sleep is so important, Teddy, What
do you say to people who say, you know, I
can skimp on sleep and focus on other things. Well,
to me, sleep is not just the empty space in
between your days, right. Sometimes we think of it as like, oh,
(12:32):
it's just filler. It's just like quiet time, and if
I can squeeze more into my day, how awesome would
that be. But the problem is that if you don't
sleep well, then you don't have that nourishment, you don't
have that basic foundation for health and well being. I
don't think of it as empty space. I think of
it as water in between continents. You know, it's the
very thing that makes life possible. So we do need
(12:54):
to fill our oceans and make sure that, you know,
we we have the rest that we need, we have
the sleep that we need. It's amazing how interconnected all
of these pieces are within our brains. It's like a
car engine. When everything is going well, you can just
cruise on down the street. But if you have a
bad radiator or one of your spark plugs is out
of whack. Well, you might still get the car from
(13:16):
point A to point B, but it will be a
struggle and one that can become dangerous. So how do
you solve a serious sleep problem like a journalist, Well,
you report on it. I sat down with my producers
at World News Now, and given we were an overnight show,
I knew our audience, many of them presumably we're struggling
(13:38):
with a lot of the same issues. I knew a
lot of my coworkers were too, for that matter, and
so I said, you know, I want to set out
on this mission to fix my sleep. Do you guys
want me to document it? And I will find doctors
and do whatever they asked me to do, and we
can put together the story of the things that I
(13:59):
try and what works and what doesn't, and then we'll
bring it to our viewers and so they can learn
from it. We'll be right back after a brief message
from our partners at Mattress Firm, and now back to
chasing sleep. In my quest to find a doctor to
(14:24):
work with me to do this whole news story and
document my adventure, I had learned that cognitive behavioral therapy
because the gold standard treatment for insomnia. Once we finally
got this test done, I got the official insomnia diagnosis.
So I started reading more and more about cb T
I because I knew that that's what was going to
be coming next for me, and in the effort to
(14:45):
be a very prepared journalist, I wanted to get ahead
of the game as much as I could and understand
what it is that I was going to be covering
and talking about. And part of the reason we experienced
insomnia over and over and over again is because we
spend so much time awake and frustrated in bed that
your brain starts to learn that bed is not a calm,
(15:06):
safe space where we go to be sleepy. Your brain
starts to learn, oh, bed is a stressful place where
we have to be alert. And so going to bed
triggers this arousal that keeps you awake. It's why you
feel like you're dozing off on the couch one second,
and then all of a sudden you go to go
to sleep and boom, your wide awake and your brain
is going a mile a minute. That's something called conditioned arousal.
(15:28):
You don't need to be a news anchor to have
experienced this feeling. Your muscles are sore, your body is
begging for sleep, but you just lie on the bed
and stare at the ceiling. More often than not, this
is the manifestation of the effects of stress on your
sleeping cycle. So now the question is how do we
fix this? Is there anything we can do from our
otherwise comfortable beds to get our minds into sleep mode. Actually,
(15:53):
most of what we can do about this is what
we do outside of bed. So for example, leading up
to bedtime, really need to have a nice wind down routine,
a buffer zone between the day and the night, or
for people who are working nights between you know, they're
on time versus off time. That might be the best
way to describe it. So leading up to bedtime, we
(16:14):
need to be switching from doing mode to being mode.
So doing mode is like getting our chores done, crossing
off to do lists, getting the kids ready for bed,
preparing for work, checking emails, you know, doing all of
these things that are goal oriented and very active. We
want to be switching from that mode to being mode,
(16:35):
which is more like getting in touch with our body,
getting in touch with our emotions kind of winding down
from the day and putting away to do lists, putting
away sort of goal oriented activities, and really switching more
to a grounded, centered kind of mode. And to do that,
you know, we can really design our own wind down routines.
(16:56):
Often people have a nice you know, like bath or shower,
skincare routine, get into Pj's, cuttle up with the dog,
maybe read the book for a little bit, chat with
your partner, but save you know, big conversations for tomorrow,
because we're winding down now. So having that buffer in
between your really on go, go go kind of day
(17:18):
versus your relaxing a sleepy night is very important. The
driving forces that push us to calm down and actually
get some rest are so strong, and the unique stresses
of journalism require unique solutions. I was curious, how do
journalists like Diane take some of the more tragic or
(17:39):
emotional parts of the job and release them in order
to get the amount of rest that they need. So
I think I've just sort of naturally, through the course
of doing this job for so long, learned that I
need to create a separation to be able to function.
But that doesn't mean that you know there are in
(18:00):
some stories that just that do affect you in that way,
and I think for me, it's been a lot of
just about just acceptance. Right. It's okay if I'm not
shedding tears about every story that I report on on air,
even if they are a tragedy, And it's also okay
if every now and then there is one where I
do shed tears on air about it. And you know,
(18:21):
if I was crying over every story, that would probably
be fine too. I just think a lot of it
is just sort of accepting what your body needs to
do to process those emotions, and just to make sure
you are acknowledging them and processing them, which I think
I do a technique that I have used that's not
necessarily about separating the sympathy and empathy part of things,
(18:44):
but more about organizing my thoughts and my worries and
my feelings. Sort of processing all of that and realizing
what I can and can't control. I think has been
a huge part of my sleep recovery. And this is
a practice called constructive worry, and I often just refer
to it as a worry list or a brain dump
(19:06):
because it sounds so silly, but you just do. You
take a notebook and you divide a page down the center,
and on the left hand side of the page you
just write down anything that's on your mind, the kind
of thing that would keep you awake at night, or
that might wake you up in the middle of the night,
and now your brain starts racing right any of that
stuff on the page, and then on the right hand
(19:27):
side you write down the very next step toward resolving
that issue. The exercise itself also gets you focused on
solutions instead of problems. And when you're stuck in this
sort of insomnia cycle where you get into a pattern
of going to bed and suddenly your brain starts racing,
we often at that time are more susceptible to catastrophic thinking,
(19:49):
and so we often will ruminate on problems and it
will feel like there's no way out of this. And
so by doing this exercise, you sort of retrain your
brain into thinking, Okay, problem, solution, what are we going
to do about that, instead of just problem, problem, Oh
my god, problem. And part of the reason why we catastrophize,
at least one of the leading theories on it is
(20:10):
that the areas of our brain that focus on things
like rational thinking turn off while we're sleeping. They kind
of sleep as well, and so if you're awake in
the middle of the night, let's say at a time
that you're normally sleeping, that part of your brain is
still asleep. So now you're thinking about your problems, but
without the part of your brain that controls the irrational thought.
(20:32):
That's why it's so much easier to go into that
spiral in the middle of the night. And often I
found by writing things down, when I look at them
the next day, it seemed absurd that I was so
worried about this thing. And I think just knowing that
helps the next time you're in that position to realize, wow,
I think it's the end of the world that this
(20:52):
thing happened, But it's probably just because it's two o'clock
in the morning. And I bet, just like last time,
when you know it's nine am, I'm going to realize
that this really isn't so bad. And sometimes just knowing
that can help turn the temperature down on that anxiety
that's keeping you awake. Diane's journey to find better sleep
(21:13):
took her down a path of a lot of research
and reporting, and ultimately she wrote a book. It's called
The Sleep Fix. Practical, proven and Surprising Solutions for insomnia, snoring,
shift work, and more. Her goal in writing the book
was to help others learn from her struggles and discoveries
so they could find fixes to their own sleep problems.
(21:36):
I think one of the hardest parts for me it
was I didn't know it was anxiety that was keeping
me awake. I was reading all of these articles and
all of these things about the temperature in the room
and the perfect bedtime routine and swearing off screens and
quit and caffeine, and I was trying all of these things.
And I don't consider myself an anxious person in general,
(22:00):
and so I had no idea that it was anxiety
that was playing such a huge role in why I
wasn't sleeping. If I had known that, I probably would
have sought out therapy or some you know, other techniques
to address that. But that's not what I was looking for.
I was looking for sleep solutions, and generally sleep solutions
don't address anxiety, and really, textbook insomnia, it just means
(22:22):
your arousal levels are too high. It essentially my layman's
translation for it is insomnias when you can't sleep because
you can't relax, and there are a number of things
that can do that for you. It can happen if
you're too excited about something, but of course it can
also happen if you're really stressed and worried about something,
and normally, if it happens for a long time, it's
the latter. So for me, the anxiety, you know, in
(22:44):
addressing this sort of fast paced lifestyle and just the
way that my brain works was something that I kind
of stumbled into accidentally. So for our listeners who may
be curious about their own sleep aadventure, do you have
any advice for how people can assess and maybe to
get a better understanding of their own sleep. I do
recommend that if you're struggling with your sleep, consult with
(23:07):
a sleep specialist, even just to get an assessment to
figure out, you know, is it because of shift work
or do you have another sleep disorder. There are so
many things that we don't know that we don't know
about sleep, So I really caution folks not to just
go down that internet rabbit hole of reading lots and
lots of articles and self diagnosing. There are people who
(23:29):
also work too hard on their sleep. I have lots
of insomnia patients, for example, who say they have the
perfect sleep hygiene routine from all these articles they've read,
but now they're trying so hard to perfect their sleep
routine that they are kind of psyching themselves up and
almost creating insomnia anxiety in the evenings for themselves, and
(23:52):
they end up with orthosomnia, which is the condition of
having insomnia because you're working too hard to track your sleep.
Everyone's situation is different, and that's why I think seeking
help from a sleep professional is so important. Meanwhile, I
think listening to our bodies and trusting our bodies to
tell us, like if you feel sleepy, that's your body
(24:12):
trying to tell you something important, And if you feel awake,
that's also a sign that maybe it's not time to
force sleep, it's not the right timing, or you just
don't have enough sleep drive yet. So I think listening
to your body is a good start, and consulting with
a sleep specialist can kind of take you all the way.
As a news anchor, of course, you have to be
(24:33):
really on right for the cameras, and you have to
be really sharp mentally, you have to ask challenging questions
to whoever you're interviewing. All of those things require mental focus,
being alert, It requires being to switch gears in your
mind very quickly. All of that improves when you have
better sleep and better circadian functioning. So if we can
(24:54):
stay on track with our rhythms and have that good
quality sleep, then we can definitely function better as a
news anchor or as you know, whatever we do with
our lives. The drive and determination that allowed Diane to
thrive in the high octane field of journalism is also
what allowed her to fix her sleep when it was
veering dangerously off track. And with the return of good
(25:17):
sleep came all the health benefits too. Once I just
started to sleep better, all of these things, like a
flywheel now turning in the right direction, started getting better.
My acid reflux went away, my eating habits improved, because
when you lack sleep, you're hormones for feeling hungry and
(25:40):
feeling satisfied get completely thrown out of wax. So suddenly
I I just started eating better without even trying, as
opposed to before I was trying all these diets and
all these different things to improve my eating habits. That
just sort of fell into place. My dry eyes went away,
my thought process felt clearer. I started making better decisions
and feeling less tempted by things like screen time at night,
(26:04):
and you just start to realize how much it all
ties together, and if you can just pull on one thread,
sometimes that's enough to get everything then moving in the
right direction. So much of this journey for me has
been learning to surrender in many ways. I can't be
the doer, the fixer, the perfectionist here in many ways
(26:26):
I have to learn to let go and now the
ability to sit at this seat for ABC News Live
and have people invite me now not only into their
homes every day, but their offices every day, the gym
every day, wherever it is that they are watching. Do
you really feel like you form a relationship with the viewers.
I don't take that lightly, and I feel really privileged
(26:49):
to be able to do it. That's all for this episode.
Join me again next week, when we learn about how
health care professionals priorities and schedules sleep while they're saving lives.
We'll hear from an e R doctor in New York
City about how he chased his sleep through the stress
of changing work schedules and life and death scenarios during
(27:13):
residency I had to do. I see you rotations that
did have twenty four to twenty seven hour shifts. It
doesn't sound possible, and I didn't think it was, but
somehow you make it through it. We want to hear
from you. Leave a rating or review for our show
on your podcast player of choice. You can find me
on Twitter at on O'Connor. Until next time, hoping you're
(27:36):
living your best while sleeping your best. Chasing Sleep is
a production of I Heart Radio in partnership with Mattress Firm.
Our executive producer is Molly Sosha, our EP of post
is Matt Stillo, our producer is Sierra Kaiser, and this
show is hosted by an a Hot O'Connor
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