April 24, 2026 • 30 mins
Most people struggle with sleep in one form or another, but Jana is ready to find out what it really means to catch quality Zs.
Dr. Michael Breus shares the facts behind getting a good night's rest, including what time you should stop caffeine, what time you should wake up, and the truth about mouth tape!
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Wind Down with Janet Kramer and I'm Heeart Radio podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This week's AE We've got a sleep doctor KB and I, well,
I've got something that I have not addressed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
I have so many throat.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
No no, oh good. Rest is everything, and I've not
been getting it lately. So I'm actually I've been so excited.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
Right.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
He's a snorer, Okay, great?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, and he actually Alan doesn't snore as much anymore
because he's you know, healthy living.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yes, yeah, yeah, but still.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
We still a little not as often, but I Preston
also likes to keep our room really cold. There's just
like a lot of things that I need to know.
If they're scientific backing, I can always get on board.
But I have a lot of questions.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Well, let's get him on. His name is doctor Michael Bruce.
He's a double boarded clinical psychologist and a clinical sleep specialist.
So he's got the knowledge. Let's bring him on. I
went to the dentist. Actually I need to I cancel
my last pointment. I really need to go back. But
that's besides the point.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
So but when about that.
Speaker 5 (01:06):
But we're this.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I promise you this leads to sleep. Okay, So I okay,
So yes. So I was at the dentist and it's
the first time I've ever heard this, and she's like,
you have scales on your tongue and she goes scalloping yes,
and I'm like, I'm a fish, you know, so it
feels kind of chic to me.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I'm like, cute.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
So but she's like no, and then she goes and
you have a very tight airway in your throat. So
she's like, do you have sleep issues. I'm like, well,
I don't sleep great because my husband's snores and so
I'm constantly woken up by that, and so I'm pushing him.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I said.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I don't feel like I'm struggling for sleep, I said,
and I don't feel like I can't breathe. I go.
But now I'm so, oh my god, is my airway
like she knows me, like I am now since that
dentist appointment, and I haven't made an appointment yet and
that's probably a year ago. But I'm like, I'm like, well,
I have a small throat and that's I can't like,
I can't breathe because I'm a slight hyperchondrect. So talk
(02:05):
to me, talk me through that piece of it, and
then should I, because now I'm worried. I'm like, okay, well,
if I've got a tight or a small airway passage,
then if I have an allergic reaction, then my throat's
going to just close and I'm not going to have
any rooms. So now I'm and I've spiraled to the
point where thank you. So i'd like to welcome you
to being her best friend.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Welcome doctor.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
This is Did you see how quickly it happens.
Speaker 5 (02:30):
I just I just launched right in and I was
right there.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yeah, and there's no air where you are so quick
and the air sucked out and help me bring the
air back into my lungs.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
Absolutely so. So first of all, it's lovely to meet you.
Lovely to meet you on the show. So let's talk
about that, because first of all, this is not particularly uncommon.
It's not the first time I've ever heard something like that.
So number one, let's go through a couple of different things. So,
first of all, your husband snores, so that in and
of itself could be slightly problematic. To be clear, not
(03:04):
everybody that snores has sleep apnea. You look like you're
about to say something.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Well, so I thought for sure he had sleep sleep apnea.
He did the test and he was like one point
away from having it. So it was like, you know, right,
He's like, I'm not going to do the mask for
if I don't actually full blown habit.
Speaker 5 (03:22):
Sure, so back up for half a second, just to
let you know, I have sleep apnea. I stop breathing
in my sleep twenty four times an hour. I wear
a mask every single I know. Pretty crazy, right, I'm
the fucking sleep doctor, right, and I've got this. You
know it's crazy. So I actually I actually wear a
seapap machine every single night. So number one, it's not
this awful, terrible experience. But there are a lot, a
(03:45):
lot a lot of other possible treatment modalities that could
be out there. Does the snoring It sounds like the
snoring is pretty disruptive for you more so than it
is for him. Is that an accurate statement?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (03:56):
He sleeps like a baby, Okay, mine does not, in
mind snore. Okay, but I have mouth taped him, and
I don't know what the doctor sa.
Speaker 5 (04:05):
Terrible terrible idea. No, yeah, so people have Just to
be clear, people have died from mouthfare.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Are you trying to kill your husband? I know you
don't like him on the show sometimes, but yeah, I just.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
To be clear, I'll send you the study I was.
I was fortunate. I was talking with Lewis Howse a
little bit about this about mouth tape, and you can
you can die from using mouth tape. I want to
be super duper clear, especially if you have undiagnosed sleep
apnea or if you have a lot of nasal congestion.
While it might sound peaceful for the bed partner, it's
(04:35):
not a great idea if they haven't been checked. Now
for her husband, who has been checked, mouth tape might
actually not be the worst idea. So because we know
we're not masking the disease, and that's really where this
comes from. Is so backing up. I don't know how
many years ago, James Nesta wrote a book called Breathe
and started talking about mouth tape, and all of a sudden,
(04:57):
everybody started doing mouth tape. Oddly enough, his father's a
pol monologists, so it's kind of strange to me that
that he's actually been talking about this. But I've known
James for a while. He's a wonderful reporter, but he
ain't no doctor. So when you put mouth tape on
somebody and you, and especially if you go all the
way across, you give them almost no option if there's
a nasal obstruction that's going on. And so we want
(05:19):
to be very very thoughtful about doing something like that.
So in both of your cases, For one, if you've
already done the test, all good, I'm not as concerned.
But if your husband hasn't done the test yet, what
I think makes a lot of sense is to do
a home sleep test.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Oh I love that. And he does have a hole
in his mouth tipe, and this is not torture, by
the way, like it's I'm not like duct taping him.
Speaker 5 (05:42):
I probably don't. Well know, people are people.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Are overwhell make for a better podcast, but people are
always I think, like overwhelmed by mouth tape because I
think it's going to be a complete I know I was,
But this one has like a hole, a complete hole,
so you actually can breathe through your both Okay, I
just I just don't want you to think I'm like
hostaging him.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
He still I.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
Judgment so far, I've only known the two of you
for about sixty.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Seconds, but really we go deep.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
So Psycho and Killer are the two. The two are
the two and doctor.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
That wants out and that's your character name.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
To be fair here, there's a couple of things that
I think are important to be thoughtful of. So number one,
it used to be that nobody would want to do
a sleep test because everybody thought they were going to
end up with the mask. That is not the case anymore.
Once COVID hit this. What happened was is all the
technology increased dramatically, and so now I can actually send
a test to your home for under two hundred bucks
(06:39):
and you wear it on your wrist and on your finger.
There's an app. I know, it's crazy. There's an app
that will pourt the information over in the morning. Then
you talk with one of my doctors and we figure.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
It out like this, like you specifically, we can talk
to you, no one else.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I would love that. That's like everything.
Speaker 5 (06:57):
Yeah, let's well, let's figure it out. But here's some
other information that I think is worthwhile for the both
of you. So number one, this is a little bit
of good information for you both. But if you sleep
next to a snoring bed partner, you lose approximately one
hour of sleep per night.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
That feels accurate, okay, which.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
And it could be even more depending upon how heroic
and loud the snoring might be. There are actually a
bunch of solutions that you can look at for if
we would look talking about just snoring, which we're starting
to talk about now. So one of the things that
we have to remember is your nose is a hose, okay,
and so it basically brings air up through the nasal
passages and down into the lungs. Anywhere that the hose
(07:37):
gets thinner, right, it makes the air move faster. So
you've ever been out in the garden and you stick
your thumb over the end of the hose, you know,
the water sports out much faster. This is the same
process that's going on here. So any narrowing of the
airway makes the air move faster, which causes a vibration,
which causes a cadence something causes the snore. So we
got to do something to open up the pipe. Right now,
(07:58):
there's a lot of different entry points along the way.
There's the nose, there's the jaw, then there's down deep
in the throat. So when we're talking about the nose,
that's the place I like to start with first. It's
let's get rid of any nasal congestion that might be
going on. So the easiest way to do that is
with the saline spray that you can get for like
ten bucks at the local drug store or flow Nase
(08:19):
is now over the counter. This is a nasal steroid spray.
It's not steroids like er it's like just yeah yeah.
And if you do two shots in each side in
the morning and at night, we shrink that tissue and
we open up the pipe right, and so a lot
of times we can get a significant reduction in the
decibel level of the snoring, which is great for your
(08:40):
sleep and allows for better air passageway for both of
your husbands. There's also something called an internal nasal dilator,
and so this is like a small stent that goes
up into the nostril. By the way, it doesn't really
feel terrible. You're thinking like he's telling me to stick
something up my husband's nose. Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing.
But it's called mute snoring. I have no affiliation with them,
(09:03):
just to be clear for you, Shaw, but I use
this in my patients all the time because if I
drink bourbon, my wife says, hey, go put your nose
thinging in otherwise you're gonna sound like a freight train.
So because alcohol makes it worse significantly. So if you
have a situation where there's a lot of particulates in
the air, a lot of allergens going on, or there's
alcohol involved, that can make the whole situation significantly worse.
(09:26):
We want to try to avoid that if we possibly can,
So I would try the nasal steroid spray, the saline spray,
or this mute snoring device on both of your husbands.
But for your husband, I think it would make most
sense for us to do a sleep test on them,
and we can put a link in the show notes
for people if they're interested.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
That would be amazing because I let's love that given
what the dentists had said to me, should I do
a sleep test so.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
You do not have the body habitast that I would
imagine somebody who has sleep APNA, But by the way,
neither do I. So I think it would probably be
worthwhile for us to do a sleep test on you anyway,
just to try to understand what's going on. Now, just
backing up for half a second, let's say that one
of you or all of you have sleep apnea. The
mask is not necessarily what's going to have to happen
(10:11):
to you. They now make mouthguards that has an upper
and a lower, and the lower pulls your jaw slightly forward,
which opens up the pipe in the back right. And
so if we can open up the pipe in the
nose and open up the pipe in the back of
the throat, usually we can resolve sleep apnea without you know,
a hairdryer blowing up your nose all leg.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Right and the airway in the throat. There's nothing to
do to open that up.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
That's just so there is there is, but it's usually surgical,
and so that walks down a whole different path. There
are also ways that you can actually have a procedure
that opens up the esophagus a bit more. That's non surgical,
but that is something that an ear nose and throat
doctor would do. Who's a surgeon? I am not one
of those, but I could definitely refer you to somebody
if you needed it.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Is that something that people that have that should do
something like that, or is it totally fine?
Speaker 5 (10:59):
That would be pretty extreme? That would be I would
I would I would reserve that for somebody who either
has a restricted airway due to other type of airway
diseases or lung problems, and or who had super duper
severe at me and we couldn't figure it out any
other way. I really reserve surgery as kind of the last,
you know, thing that we would have to do as
a last resort if at all possible. But here's the
(11:21):
crazy thing. We think that for men, almost eighteen percent
of men have got undiagnosed sleep apnea. That's almost one
in five people. Like, that's more than diabetes. Right. So
when you start to think about it, and here's the thing,
sleep affects everything. It affects every organ system, every disease state.
Like literally everything you do you do better with a
(11:44):
good night's sleep. So for me, what you're telling me
right off the bat is I think we need to
take a look at them. And you know, one of
the things we could do if you, if you were interested,
is we could take a look at them and then
I could come back and we could talk about their results.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
That.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
Yeah, and we can have a lot of fun with it.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, I agree. They're fun guys too.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
Actually, yeah, I can't wait to meet them.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
I have a question for you when you say a
good night's sleep. So you know, a thousand non professionals
are just spouting out information all over social media all
the time.
Speaker 5 (12:28):
That's why I I.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Bet, and that's why I was so excited to talk
to you, because we're both in our forties and definitely
in the perimenopausal portion of life where I you know,
I used to just be a champion. I could rock
on no sleep and I could keep going. But now
if I do not sleep well, it is I feel hungover.
It's I would it's like torture. So I know it
(12:52):
used to be we would hear like eight hours of
sleep if you get six or seven and it's great sleep.
What is your opinion on what is the perfect night's rest?
Is it individualized?
Speaker 5 (13:01):
Such a great question. I'm so glad you asked. So
number one, sleep is not necessarily a quantity game. It's
a quality game, right and so, like, as an example,
I went to better around eleven thirty last night. I
woke up around six six thirty this morning. I'm fifty
eight years old. Like, I've got plenty of energy. I've
had no coffee today. You know, Like I think that
we need to think start thinking less in number of
(13:24):
hours and more in the quality of the sleep that
we're getting. And the good news is is there's a
lot of ways that we can positively affect quality of sleep.
And they're simple and by the way, they don't even
cost any money in order to do so. Right, So
let me throw a couple of tips at you if
I might, that I think you could find helpful. Also,
(13:44):
people in my family are going through that whole menopause thing.
By the way, men have a menopause too, it's called
andro pause. So there's a lot yep, there's a lot
of hormonal fluctuations that can occur. So this is a
problem that I would argue was affecting everybody kind of
forty on, because y'all are much younger than me all
the way on up to like I'm I'm fifty eight
(14:04):
years old, Like in a much different kind of category.
When we're talking about sleep, one of the things I
like to remind people is your wake up time is
the most important thing. Like, if everybody gets one thing
out of this other than you should probably get a
sleep test. It's to wake up at the same time
seven days a week. I know that kind of sucks
(14:24):
on Saturdays. I totally get that you want to be
able to sleep in and make up for sleep that
you miss during the week. But let me explain the
biology for half a second. And then it looks like
you have a question.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Well no, I was just saying, you know, we're in
our forties, we also have young We both have a
two year old, you know, and then you know older ages.
But like, it is seven o'clock every single day, so
like that's I wish I could sleep in. Oh yeah, no,
I'm like, there is no no, But this is really
good to hear because it is no matter what time
I go to bed, my alarm is seven am because
(14:55):
I need to go get you know, we need to
get the kids and the toddler and back going.
Speaker 5 (14:59):
Yeah. Perfect. And here's what's interesting from a biology standpoint
is when you wake up in the morning, sunlight hits
your eye. You have a special cell in your eye
called a melanopson cell, and this says the signal to
the back of your brain to turn the melotone and
faucet off in your head, but it sets a timer
for approximately fourteen hours later. So what I just said
was that the time that you wake up directly affects
(15:22):
when melatonin turns back on at night. This is getting
to your quality question, which is, how do I make
sure that I get the highest quality sleep when you
go to bed. If your melotonin hasn't kicked into gear
because it's got this variable time when it's coming in,
your brain doesn't get good quality sleep until certain parameters
have been met. So step number one is to have
(15:45):
the same wake up time every single morning, which it
sounds like you do are already doing, so kudos to you.
That's perfect. Step number two has to do with caffeine.
So look, don't get me wrong. I don't mind a
great good cup of coffee, but a lot of people
out there are using coffee to replace their sleep. It
doesn't work that way, okay. Mother nature does not allow
(16:07):
something like that to happen. And a lot of people
will say, mate, well, Michael, look, I can have a
cup of coffee with dinner and I can fall right
to sleep. If I stick electrodes on your head and
I look at the quality of sleep that you're getting,
it's crap. Okay, So, and don't get me wrong, people
have different caffeine sensitivities. But as a general guideline, I
ask people to stop caffeine around two pm.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Oh I am sailing you don't worry.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
Look, we'll get you there. We'll get you there, don't
I'm the sleep doctor. I'm on your case. All right,
we'll get you there. But if you can stop caffeine
by two it allows for that to be removed from
your system by at least fifty percent. So what people
don't know is caffeine has what's called a half life
of six to eight hours between Half of it gets
digested and moves through the system within eight hours. So
(16:54):
if you stop it two and ten ish is kind
of when you're thinking about going to bed, at least
half of it is out of your system. The issue
is is that if you've got a lot of caffeine
left on board, this affects your brain's ability to get
into the deeper stages of sleep. So there's a lot
of stages of sleep. The two that you guys really
want to be most interested in is deep sleep or
(17:16):
stage three and four sleep, and rem sleep. Deep sleep
is that physical restoration. So if you've got a two
year old, you need a lot of physical restoration. Okay,
my kids are twenty four and twenty two, so I
get it I remember back in those days, right, And
so caffeine pulls you out of that restorative, physically restorative sleep,
(17:37):
and that's really not going to be helpful for you.
So a lot of people think, oh, I'm going to
take caffeine and it's going to give me energy and
it's going to keep me going. In fact, the long
term effects on it, when they compound over time, it
really kind of erodes a lot of the good stuff
that sleep is trying to do. Also, not to be scary,
but during that particular stage of sleep, something happens called
(17:59):
the lymphatics system. So, believe it or not, your brain
shrinks a little bit. During stage three and four sleep,
Cerebra's spinal fluid comes in and washes out all of
the proteins that have been built up during the day.
If you don't get into stage three four sleep, the
proteins build up and they have a tendency to wrap
around the nerves. That's called Alzheimer's disease. Right. Wow, So
(18:21):
this is serious stuff what I deal with every single day.
So we really want people to stop putting the hurdles
in front of themselves for sleep. And it's not like
I'm telling you to quit caffeine. By the way, anybody
out there, don't quit caffeine cold turkey. I had two
patients end up in the er because of that, because
they were two and a half pot a day's caffeine drinkers. Wow. Wow,
(18:41):
Oh trust me, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Poor hearts too. My word, that's a lot on.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
This system exactly. So if you can stop caffeine by
about two pm, you kind of save your deep sleep,
which is going to be really good and important to you.
The third one is alcohol. Now, don't get me wrong,
I'm not a teetotaler. I don't think there's anything wrong
with having a nice glass of wine or a Scotch
or a bourbon or something like that. But there's a
really big difference between going to bed and passing out. Okay,
(19:09):
we don't like the passing out, and when you get
past two drinks, what ends up happening is it stays
in your system for longer and longer periods of time,
and that's when it has an effect again on this
ability to get into deep sleep, which we kind of
really want you to get into, but it also affects
rim sleep. One of the things that people don't understand
is alcohol is basically anesthetizes you. So it's like sticking
(19:33):
you know, propofol in your arm and then going to bed.
When you wake up after surgery, it's not like you
got a good night's sleep, right, And so you don't
with alcohol either. Also, alcohol is a tendency to increase
your core body temperature. You get the night sweats from alcohol,
Like if you've ever had two or three glasses of wine,
you wake up, your pillow is drenched. You know, you
(19:53):
feel like crap. And if you are in that perimenopausal universe,
it can also kick off hot flashes as well.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
But what he's saying is is you can have at
least too or.
Speaker 5 (20:05):
Let's talk about it. Let me give you the method
and I'll tell you how you can have at least two.
So what you would do is you would understand what
your bedtime should be. And I'm gonna explain to you
how you can figure out exactly what your bedtime needs
to be. And then what you do is you go
backwards from that. And so if you stop drinking three
hours before lights out and you limit yourself to two drinks,
(20:28):
you're probably in good shape. You want to intersperse the
drinks with the glass of water. So as an example,
let's say your dinner is at six o'clock six thirty
because you got young kids, right, You've fed the kids.
Now you and your and your partner are hanging out.
You have one glass of wine, you're eating the meal.
You have a glass of water. Maybe you have a
half a glass afterwards, because your belly's going to be
(20:49):
getting pretty full. Right, cut things off. Make sure you
use the restroom before you go to bed a couple
of times, and that allows your body to metabolize through
the alcohol fairly quickly. Takes the average human approximately one
hour to digest one alcoholic beverage. So that way, at
least when you show up for bed, you're not passing out.
You've enjoyed a nice red with your steak or whatever, right,
(21:11):
and you can still get a reasonable night's sleep. Now,
the other thing is is if if you have either
children that wake up in the middle of the night
that become disruptive to your sleep, that's really even more difficult.
In that case, while I feel, I know you would
love to have a glass of wine, it's probably going
to do you more damage than good.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
That's where we've been for a couple of years. There's
been no wine for a while. Yeah, it's just not
kind of worth it, you know, like we both.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
Are not it's totally not worth it.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I had a date night last night with the husband
and I haven't had I had a sip of wine
when it was like one sip that we have on
our little outing and I'm like, I kind of just
I literally just wanted one sip and my husband doesn't drink,
and so we had dinner and I was just like,
He's like, you literally are just having one sip. I'm like, yeah,
I just wanted to taste it. It's been a minute.
(22:10):
But I don't like the effect of how I feel
and then sleep wise, And I'm curious your thoughts on Listen,
we don't do this, I said, but there are times
when if I'm filming and I have to get a
good night's rest, I will sleep in a different room
because I know that I have to be on for
my work the next day. And again that's very far
(22:33):
and few between, but what are your thoughts on people
not sleeping in the same room to get sleep if
their partner is snoring.
Speaker 5 (22:39):
And so I have no problems with it. Here's the thing.
People think that the strength of their relationship is based
on where they spend the night, and that is not
necessarily the case. Okay, assuming you're not spending the night
with somebody else, then like right, spending the night in
a different room to get a good night's rest is
absolutely positiveatively a smart strategy, especially if you're filming the
(23:03):
next day. I do a lot of television work. I
do a lot of podcasting, and so my wife, So
this is crazy. My wife sleeps with a big screen
TV on all night long. We have two French bulldogs
in the.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Bed with so snoring. I can't all of it.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
You have the screen dog. Isn't it bad to have
a TV? I'm too when you sleep because the blue
light sleep.
Speaker 5 (23:21):
Is flexible, all right, And so look, I've been married
for twenty six years. Like when we first met, she said, Hey, Michael,
if we ever happen to have a sleepover, I want
to let you know that I sleep with the television on.
I said, oh, don't worry about that, Lauren. I'm going
to fix that. I'm becoming a sleep doctor. I don't
know about you, but if you ever tried to fix
something in your partner, it doesn't go well. So I adapted,
(23:44):
and what I learned was is she actually doesn't even
watch it. She listens out of the corner of her
ear because it's just enough for her to avoid what
she calls monkey mind, right, which is that I can't
stop thinking about this or that or the other and so,
and it's usually nothing important. It's like an episode of
Seinfelder some thing stupid like that. And by the way,
every single television on earth has a timer built in now,
(24:05):
so I just adjust the timer and it goes off
in the middle of the night. Now, the bulldogs, on
the other sleep, one of them definitely does, yeah, which is,
by the way, why I adapted to my seatpap so well.
So we have a puppy bulldog. He's about a year old,
and he likes to sleep in between the pillow between
my wife and I, and for some reason, he likes
(24:27):
to put his head on her pillow. So guess which
end of the dog I get? No, I get the
ass end of my bulldog every single night. So when
somebody said to me, hey, Michael, we're gonna put a
mask on your face. We're gonna put clean, filtered, humid
air going right in. You don't have to smell bulldog
parts all night long. I joked at the chance. So
I adapted to seapap pretty quickly. I know I'm a
(24:50):
different use case than a lot of people out there.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
That's incredible.
Speaker 5 (24:54):
But like at the end of it all, like sleep
is flexible and there's a lot of different ways that
you can go about doing it. Sleeping in a separate
room is absolutely positively it can be very good and
in fact, I have discovered for a lot of people
it actually increases intimacy, doesn't decrease intimacy, because what happens is,
let's say somebody is spending the night two to three
(25:14):
nights a week in there. When they're in the bedroom,
it's on right, Like it's like, let's.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Go, it's a signal, right, so it.
Speaker 5 (25:22):
Kind of can work in your favor, and you still
get a good night's rest.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Right, and you say it's flexible, like you know with
the TV, is it just as bad or okay? Then
looking at your phone before you go to bed.
Speaker 5 (25:34):
Let's talk about phones, because here's what's interesting. So I
want to be super duper clear the blue light aspect
of it all. There's not great data on it. Especially,
there's not great data on blue light blocking glasses. Like honestly, like,
if you want to look like Bono, do it, do
it some other time, but you really don't have to.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
And these are blue light glasses. We're just old. Yeah,
I just can't see you and I'm tired of squinting.
Speaker 5 (25:56):
Look, I got glasses on too. But here's the thing.
If you're if you're trying to get your high score
on Candy Crush, you ain't trying to go to bed.
Do you know what I'm saying? Right, it's about the engagement.
Like television, I don't really mind because it's kind of
content that just kind of washes over you, but you're
not engaging with it. But when you get pissed off
because so and so is on Facebook saying something about
(26:16):
so and so, that's not what we want to do.
Sleep is very simple because it really is follows two
specific biological functions, heart rate and temperature. If you can
control both of those, I can get you to sleep
almost anywhere. In order to enter into a state of unconsciousness,
you need a heart rate of about sixty or below. Right,
(26:38):
So when you're playing on your phone, your heart rate
can go up, and especially if you wake up in
the middle of the night. A lot of people grab
their phone and head to the can, right, and the
first thing they do is they look at the clock
and they instantly do the mental map. And now they're
pissed off. Right, They're like, oh crap, it's three thirty
in the morning, I've got to wake up at six. Sleep. Sleep, Sleep,
(27:00):
And they try to force themselves to sleep, which just
elevates their heart rate and puts them in the completely
opposite direction of what we kind of want them to do.
So why I don't I understand? You know, phones can
be a valuable tool. The other thing that they do
is they increase your arousal level, and not sexual arousal,
I'm talking about brain arousal level, and that can really
(27:22):
override a lot of the functions that the body is
trying to do in order to get you to sleep.
The second one being temperature, is another big, big, big one,
especially since you both expressed that there's some types of
menopausal perimenopausal symptomatology floating around. A lot of women will
get hot flashes men as well, and so staying cool
before bed and in bed turns out to be really,
(27:45):
really important. So there's a couple of different things that
I'd love to describe to your audience. If that's okay
about ways to stay cool in bed.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
I want to hear that, But also how we can
you know your website, how we can find you, how
we can do your sleep test.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
All in want to be get We'll get it all
in there.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Literally we could sit with you all day. I know.
Speaker 5 (28:05):
Let me tell you when we do a sleep test
on everybody, let's do another episode.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
I would love that. I would truly love ye.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
So that's how we need to know how to connect,
where we can find you on Instagram and everything else.
Speaker 5 (28:14):
Okay, so all of that is super easy. I am
the sleep doctor doctor dot com. I'm the sleep doctor
on Instagram, I'm the sleep doctor on LinkedIn.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
You're the sleep doctor in our hearts. You're the sleep
doctor fixing our marriage. You are high sleep doctor.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
I will tell you this, I've saved more marriages as
a sleep doctor than I ever would have as a
marital therapist. Just getting people back in bed, sleeping together.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Yeah, and just being just getting good rest. I mean,
you can't even be levelheaded emotionally when you don't get
good rest.
Speaker 5 (28:43):
It's a big deal. Trust me on this one. So
let's talk quickly about temperature, because I think that's something
that I think your audience members would be and would enjoy.
So when you talk about temperature, you want your room
to be cool. But here's the problem. You could turn
your room into a meat locker and put it at
fifty something degrees, But once you get underneath the covers.
This unit that we're walking around in for eighty or
(29:05):
ninety years runs it about ninety eight point six degrees,
and so when you cover it, you just basically create
a little mini sauna inside of underneath the covers. So
there's a couple of things that you can do. Number One,
if you have a tendency to sleep hot, don't wear
socks and put your feet out from under the covers.
There's no hair on the bottom of your feet, so
(29:25):
you can express heat a lot easier that way, so
it makes it a little bit easier. Number Two, there's
data to show that sleeping naked or with as little
clothing as possible is better because there's less for your
body to have to thermoregulate. There are also now these
thermoregulatory devices that you can put underneath your sheets that
can cool you from underneath. So I'm the chief sleep Officer.
(29:48):
I love that title. By the way. I'm the chief
sleep officer of a company called Orion Sleep. And we
make a topper that you put this little tube that
goes through on either side and we can either heat
or each person to exactly the right temperature to follow
their circadian rhythm to allow them to sleep better. So
there's I want to be clear, like some gadgets around
(30:09):
bedtime can be pretty helpful, but you want to be
thoughtful and think about some of the things that you
want to do. And if people want to get those
sleep tests, if you just go to sleep doctor dot
com forward slash doctor Mike, then that two hundred dollars test.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Is right there boom, and I'm sliding into your DMS
right after this. Yeah, we're doing so much for coming on.
Really appreciate all this insight and I just cannot wait.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
So thank you. You have some fun, yes, thank you.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
So you meet our snoring husbands, You're gonna appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Thank you so much. Doctor.
Speaker 5 (30:38):
Of course that's dream.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Have a good day.
Wind Down with Janet Kramer and I'm Heeart Radio podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This week's AE We've got a sleep doctor KB and I, well,
I've got something that I have not addressed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
I have so many throat.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
No no, oh good. Rest is everything, and I've not
been getting it lately. So I'm actually I've been so excited.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
Right.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
He's a snorer, Okay, great?
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, and he actually Alan doesn't snore as much anymore
because he's you know, healthy living.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yes, yeah, yeah, but still.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
We still a little not as often, but I Preston
also likes to keep our room really cold. There's just
like a lot of things that I need to know.
If they're scientific backing, I can always get on board.
But I have a lot of questions.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Well, let's get him on. His name is doctor Michael Bruce.
He's a double boarded clinical psychologist and a clinical sleep specialist.
So he's got the knowledge. Let's bring him on. I
went to the dentist. Actually I need to I cancel
my last pointment. I really need to go back. But
that's besides the point.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
So but when about that.
Speaker 5 (01:06):
But we're this.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I promise you this leads to sleep. Okay, So I okay,
So yes. So I was at the dentist and it's
the first time I've ever heard this, and she's like,
you have scales on your tongue and she goes scalloping yes,
and I'm like, I'm a fish, you know, so it
feels kind of chic to me.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I'm like, cute.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
So but she's like no, and then she goes and
you have a very tight airway in your throat. So
she's like, do you have sleep issues. I'm like, well,
I don't sleep great because my husband's snores and so
I'm constantly woken up by that, and so I'm pushing him.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
I said.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I don't feel like I'm struggling for sleep, I said,
and I don't feel like I can't breathe. I go.
But now I'm so, oh my god, is my airway
like she knows me, like I am now since that
dentist appointment, and I haven't made an appointment yet and
that's probably a year ago. But I'm like, I'm like, well,
I have a small throat and that's I can't like,
I can't breathe because I'm a slight hyperchondrect. So talk
(02:05):
to me, talk me through that piece of it, and
then should I, because now I'm worried. I'm like, okay, well,
if I've got a tight or a small airway passage,
then if I have an allergic reaction, then my throat's
going to just close and I'm not going to have
any rooms. So now I'm and I've spiraled to the
point where thank you. So i'd like to welcome you
to being her best friend.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Welcome doctor.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
This is Did you see how quickly it happens.
Speaker 5 (02:30):
I just I just launched right in and I was
right there.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Yeah, and there's no air where you are so quick
and the air sucked out and help me bring the
air back into my lungs.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
Absolutely so. So first of all, it's lovely to meet you.
Lovely to meet you on the show. So let's talk
about that, because first of all, this is not particularly uncommon.
It's not the first time I've ever heard something like that.
So number one, let's go through a couple of different things. So,
first of all, your husband snores, so that in and
of itself could be slightly problematic. To be clear, not
(03:04):
everybody that snores has sleep apnea. You look like you're
about to say something.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Well, so I thought for sure he had sleep sleep apnea.
He did the test and he was like one point
away from having it. So it was like, you know, right,
He's like, I'm not going to do the mask for
if I don't actually full blown habit.
Speaker 5 (03:22):
Sure, so back up for half a second, just to
let you know, I have sleep apnea. I stop breathing
in my sleep twenty four times an hour. I wear
a mask every single I know. Pretty crazy, right, I'm
the fucking sleep doctor, right, and I've got this. You
know it's crazy. So I actually I actually wear a
seapap machine every single night. So number one, it's not
this awful, terrible experience. But there are a lot, a
(03:45):
lot a lot of other possible treatment modalities that could
be out there. Does the snoring It sounds like the
snoring is pretty disruptive for you more so than it
is for him. Is that an accurate statement?
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (03:56):
He sleeps like a baby, Okay, mine does not, in
mind snore. Okay, but I have mouth taped him, and
I don't know what the doctor sa.
Speaker 5 (04:05):
Terrible terrible idea. No, yeah, so people have Just to
be clear, people have died from mouthfare.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Are you trying to kill your husband? I know you
don't like him on the show sometimes, but yeah, I just.
Speaker 5 (04:15):
To be clear, I'll send you the study I was.
I was fortunate. I was talking with Lewis Howse a
little bit about this about mouth tape, and you can
you can die from using mouth tape. I want to
be super duper clear, especially if you have undiagnosed sleep
apnea or if you have a lot of nasal congestion.
While it might sound peaceful for the bed partner, it's
(04:35):
not a great idea if they haven't been checked. Now
for her husband, who has been checked, mouth tape might
actually not be the worst idea. So because we know
we're not masking the disease, and that's really where this
comes from. Is so backing up. I don't know how
many years ago, James Nesta wrote a book called Breathe
and started talking about mouth tape, and all of a sudden,
(04:57):
everybody started doing mouth tape. Oddly enough, his father's a
pol monologists, so it's kind of strange to me that
that he's actually been talking about this. But I've known
James for a while. He's a wonderful reporter, but he
ain't no doctor. So when you put mouth tape on
somebody and you, and especially if you go all the
way across, you give them almost no option if there's
a nasal obstruction that's going on. And so we want
(05:19):
to be very very thoughtful about doing something like that.
So in both of your cases, For one, if you've
already done the test, all good, I'm not as concerned.
But if your husband hasn't done the test yet, what
I think makes a lot of sense is to do
a home sleep test.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Oh I love that. And he does have a hole
in his mouth tipe, and this is not torture, by
the way, like it's I'm not like duct taping him.
Speaker 5 (05:42):
I probably don't. Well know, people are people.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Are overwhell make for a better podcast, but people are
always I think, like overwhelmed by mouth tape because I
think it's going to be a complete I know I was,
But this one has like a hole, a complete hole,
so you actually can breathe through your both Okay, I
just I just don't want you to think I'm like
hostaging him.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
He still I.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
Judgment so far, I've only known the two of you
for about sixty.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Seconds, but really we go deep.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
So Psycho and Killer are the two. The two are
the two and doctor.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
That wants out and that's your character name.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
To be fair here, there's a couple of things that
I think are important to be thoughtful of. So number one,
it used to be that nobody would want to do
a sleep test because everybody thought they were going to
end up with the mask. That is not the case anymore.
Once COVID hit this. What happened was is all the
technology increased dramatically, and so now I can actually send
a test to your home for under two hundred bucks
(06:39):
and you wear it on your wrist and on your finger.
There's an app. I know, it's crazy. There's an app
that will pourt the information over in the morning. Then
you talk with one of my doctors and we figure.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
It out like this, like you specifically, we can talk
to you, no one else.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I would love that. That's like everything.
Speaker 5 (06:57):
Yeah, let's well, let's figure it out. But here's some
other information that I think is worthwhile for the both
of you. So number one, this is a little bit
of good information for you both. But if you sleep
next to a snoring bed partner, you lose approximately one
hour of sleep per night.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
That feels accurate, okay, which.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
And it could be even more depending upon how heroic
and loud the snoring might be. There are actually a
bunch of solutions that you can look at for if
we would look talking about just snoring, which we're starting
to talk about now. So one of the things that
we have to remember is your nose is a hose, okay,
and so it basically brings air up through the nasal
passages and down into the lungs. Anywhere that the hose
(07:37):
gets thinner, right, it makes the air move faster. So
you've ever been out in the garden and you stick
your thumb over the end of the hose, you know,
the water sports out much faster. This is the same
process that's going on here. So any narrowing of the
airway makes the air move faster, which causes a vibration,
which causes a cadence something causes the snore. So we
got to do something to open up the pipe. Right now,
(07:58):
there's a lot of different entry points along the way.
There's the nose, there's the jaw, then there's down deep
in the throat. So when we're talking about the nose,
that's the place I like to start with first. It's
let's get rid of any nasal congestion that might be
going on. So the easiest way to do that is
with the saline spray that you can get for like
ten bucks at the local drug store or flow Nase
(08:19):
is now over the counter. This is a nasal steroid spray.
It's not steroids like er it's like just yeah yeah.
And if you do two shots in each side in
the morning and at night, we shrink that tissue and
we open up the pipe right, and so a lot
of times we can get a significant reduction in the
decibel level of the snoring, which is great for your
(08:40):
sleep and allows for better air passageway for both of
your husbands. There's also something called an internal nasal dilator,
and so this is like a small stent that goes
up into the nostril. By the way, it doesn't really
feel terrible. You're thinking like he's telling me to stick
something up my husband's nose. Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing.
But it's called mute snoring. I have no affiliation with them,
(09:03):
just to be clear for you, Shaw, but I use
this in my patients all the time because if I
drink bourbon, my wife says, hey, go put your nose
thinging in otherwise you're gonna sound like a freight train.
So because alcohol makes it worse significantly. So if you
have a situation where there's a lot of particulates in
the air, a lot of allergens going on, or there's
alcohol involved, that can make the whole situation significantly worse.
(09:26):
We want to try to avoid that if we possibly can,
So I would try the nasal steroid spray, the saline spray,
or this mute snoring device on both of your husbands.
But for your husband, I think it would make most
sense for us to do a sleep test on them,
and we can put a link in the show notes
for people if they're interested.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
That would be amazing because I let's love that given
what the dentists had said to me, should I do
a sleep test so.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
You do not have the body habitast that I would
imagine somebody who has sleep APNA, But by the way,
neither do I. So I think it would probably be
worthwhile for us to do a sleep test on you anyway,
just to try to understand what's going on. Now, just
backing up for half a second, let's say that one
of you or all of you have sleep apnea. The
mask is not necessarily what's going to have to happen
(10:11):
to you. They now make mouthguards that has an upper
and a lower, and the lower pulls your jaw slightly forward,
which opens up the pipe in the back right. And
so if we can open up the pipe in the
nose and open up the pipe in the back of
the throat, usually we can resolve sleep apnea without you know,
a hairdryer blowing up your nose all leg.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Right and the airway in the throat. There's nothing to
do to open that up.
Speaker 5 (10:34):
That's just so there is there is, but it's usually surgical,
and so that walks down a whole different path. There
are also ways that you can actually have a procedure
that opens up the esophagus a bit more. That's non surgical,
but that is something that an ear nose and throat
doctor would do. Who's a surgeon? I am not one
of those, but I could definitely refer you to somebody
if you needed it.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Is that something that people that have that should do
something like that, or is it totally fine?
Speaker 5 (10:59):
That would be pretty extreme? That would be I would
I would I would reserve that for somebody who either
has a restricted airway due to other type of airway
diseases or lung problems, and or who had super duper
severe at me and we couldn't figure it out any
other way. I really reserve surgery as kind of the last,
you know, thing that we would have to do as
a last resort if at all possible. But here's the
(11:21):
crazy thing. We think that for men, almost eighteen percent
of men have got undiagnosed sleep apnea. That's almost one
in five people. Like, that's more than diabetes. Right. So
when you start to think about it, and here's the thing,
sleep affects everything. It affects every organ system, every disease state.
Like literally everything you do you do better with a
(11:44):
good night's sleep. So for me, what you're telling me
right off the bat is I think we need to
take a look at them. And you know, one of
the things we could do if you, if you were interested,
is we could take a look at them and then
I could come back and we could talk about their results.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
That.
Speaker 5 (12:00):
Yeah, and we can have a lot of fun with it.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, I agree. They're fun guys too.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
Actually, yeah, I can't wait to meet them.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
I have a question for you when you say a
good night's sleep. So you know, a thousand non professionals
are just spouting out information all over social media all
the time.
Speaker 5 (12:28):
That's why I I.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Bet, and that's why I was so excited to talk
to you, because we're both in our forties and definitely
in the perimenopausal portion of life where I you know,
I used to just be a champion. I could rock
on no sleep and I could keep going. But now
if I do not sleep well, it is I feel hungover.
It's I would it's like torture. So I know it
(12:52):
used to be we would hear like eight hours of
sleep if you get six or seven and it's great sleep.
What is your opinion on what is the perfect night's rest?
Is it individualized?
Speaker 5 (13:01):
Such a great question. I'm so glad you asked. So
number one, sleep is not necessarily a quantity game. It's
a quality game, right and so, like, as an example,
I went to better around eleven thirty last night. I
woke up around six six thirty this morning. I'm fifty
eight years old. Like, I've got plenty of energy. I've
had no coffee today. You know, Like I think that
we need to think start thinking less in number of
(13:24):
hours and more in the quality of the sleep that
we're getting. And the good news is is there's a
lot of ways that we can positively affect quality of sleep.
And they're simple and by the way, they don't even
cost any money in order to do so. Right, So
let me throw a couple of tips at you if
I might, that I think you could find helpful. Also,
(13:44):
people in my family are going through that whole menopause thing.
By the way, men have a menopause too, it's called
andro pause. So there's a lot yep, there's a lot
of hormonal fluctuations that can occur. So this is a
problem that I would argue was affecting everybody kind of
forty on, because y'all are much younger than me all
the way on up to like I'm I'm fifty eight
(14:04):
years old, Like in a much different kind of category.
When we're talking about sleep, one of the things I
like to remind people is your wake up time is
the most important thing. Like, if everybody gets one thing
out of this other than you should probably get a
sleep test. It's to wake up at the same time
seven days a week. I know that kind of sucks
(14:24):
on Saturdays. I totally get that you want to be
able to sleep in and make up for sleep that
you miss during the week. But let me explain the
biology for half a second. And then it looks like
you have a question.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Well no, I was just saying, you know, we're in
our forties, we also have young We both have a
two year old, you know, and then you know older ages.
But like, it is seven o'clock every single day, so
like that's I wish I could sleep in. Oh yeah, no,
I'm like, there is no no, But this is really
good to hear because it is no matter what time
I go to bed, my alarm is seven am because
(14:55):
I need to go get you know, we need to
get the kids and the toddler and back going.
Speaker 5 (14:59):
Yeah. Perfect. And here's what's interesting from a biology standpoint
is when you wake up in the morning, sunlight hits
your eye. You have a special cell in your eye
called a melanopson cell, and this says the signal to
the back of your brain to turn the melotone and
faucet off in your head, but it sets a timer
for approximately fourteen hours later. So what I just said
was that the time that you wake up directly affects
(15:22):
when melatonin turns back on at night. This is getting
to your quality question, which is, how do I make
sure that I get the highest quality sleep when you
go to bed. If your melotonin hasn't kicked into gear
because it's got this variable time when it's coming in,
your brain doesn't get good quality sleep until certain parameters
have been met. So step number one is to have
(15:45):
the same wake up time every single morning, which it
sounds like you do are already doing, so kudos to you.
That's perfect. Step number two has to do with caffeine.
So look, don't get me wrong. I don't mind a
great good cup of coffee, but a lot of people
out there are using coffee to replace their sleep. It
doesn't work that way, okay. Mother nature does not allow
(16:07):
something like that to happen. And a lot of people
will say, mate, well, Michael, look, I can have a
cup of coffee with dinner and I can fall right
to sleep. If I stick electrodes on your head and
I look at the quality of sleep that you're getting,
it's crap. Okay, So, and don't get me wrong, people
have different caffeine sensitivities. But as a general guideline, I
ask people to stop caffeine around two pm.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Oh I am sailing you don't worry.
Speaker 5 (16:33):
Look, we'll get you there. We'll get you there, don't
I'm the sleep doctor. I'm on your case. All right,
we'll get you there. But if you can stop caffeine
by two it allows for that to be removed from
your system by at least fifty percent. So what people
don't know is caffeine has what's called a half life
of six to eight hours between Half of it gets
digested and moves through the system within eight hours. So
(16:54):
if you stop it two and ten ish is kind
of when you're thinking about going to bed, at least
half of it is out of your system. The issue
is is that if you've got a lot of caffeine
left on board, this affects your brain's ability to get
into the deeper stages of sleep. So there's a lot
of stages of sleep. The two that you guys really
want to be most interested in is deep sleep or
(17:16):
stage three and four sleep, and rem sleep. Deep sleep
is that physical restoration. So if you've got a two
year old, you need a lot of physical restoration. Okay,
my kids are twenty four and twenty two, so I
get it I remember back in those days, right, And
so caffeine pulls you out of that restorative, physically restorative sleep,
(17:37):
and that's really not going to be helpful for you.
So a lot of people think, oh, I'm going to
take caffeine and it's going to give me energy and
it's going to keep me going. In fact, the long
term effects on it, when they compound over time, it
really kind of erodes a lot of the good stuff
that sleep is trying to do. Also, not to be scary,
but during that particular stage of sleep, something happens called
(17:59):
the lymphatics system. So, believe it or not, your brain
shrinks a little bit. During stage three and four sleep,
Cerebra's spinal fluid comes in and washes out all of
the proteins that have been built up during the day.
If you don't get into stage three four sleep, the
proteins build up and they have a tendency to wrap
around the nerves. That's called Alzheimer's disease. Right. Wow, So
(18:21):
this is serious stuff what I deal with every single day.
So we really want people to stop putting the hurdles
in front of themselves for sleep. And it's not like
I'm telling you to quit caffeine. By the way, anybody
out there, don't quit caffeine cold turkey. I had two
patients end up in the er because of that, because
they were two and a half pot a day's caffeine drinkers. Wow. Wow,
(18:41):
Oh trust me, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Poor hearts too. My word, that's a lot on.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
This system exactly. So if you can stop caffeine by
about two pm, you kind of save your deep sleep,
which is going to be really good and important to you.
The third one is alcohol. Now, don't get me wrong,
I'm not a teetotaler. I don't think there's anything wrong
with having a nice glass of wine or a Scotch
or a bourbon or something like that. But there's a
really big difference between going to bed and passing out. Okay,
(19:09):
we don't like the passing out, and when you get
past two drinks, what ends up happening is it stays
in your system for longer and longer periods of time,
and that's when it has an effect again on this
ability to get into deep sleep, which we kind of
really want you to get into, but it also affects
rim sleep. One of the things that people don't understand
is alcohol is basically anesthetizes you. So it's like sticking
(19:33):
you know, propofol in your arm and then going to bed.
When you wake up after surgery, it's not like you
got a good night's sleep, right, And so you don't
with alcohol either. Also, alcohol is a tendency to increase
your core body temperature. You get the night sweats from alcohol,
Like if you've ever had two or three glasses of wine,
you wake up, your pillow is drenched. You know, you
(19:53):
feel like crap. And if you are in that perimenopausal universe,
it can also kick off hot flashes as well.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
But what he's saying is is you can have at
least too or.
Speaker 5 (20:05):
Let's talk about it. Let me give you the method
and I'll tell you how you can have at least two.
So what you would do is you would understand what
your bedtime should be. And I'm gonna explain to you
how you can figure out exactly what your bedtime needs
to be. And then what you do is you go
backwards from that. And so if you stop drinking three
hours before lights out and you limit yourself to two drinks,
(20:28):
you're probably in good shape. You want to intersperse the
drinks with the glass of water. So as an example,
let's say your dinner is at six o'clock six thirty
because you got young kids, right, You've fed the kids.
Now you and your and your partner are hanging out.
You have one glass of wine, you're eating the meal.
You have a glass of water. Maybe you have a
half a glass afterwards, because your belly's going to be
(20:49):
getting pretty full. Right, cut things off. Make sure you
use the restroom before you go to bed a couple
of times, and that allows your body to metabolize through
the alcohol fairly quickly. Takes the average human approximately one
hour to digest one alcoholic beverage. So that way, at
least when you show up for bed, you're not passing out.
You've enjoyed a nice red with your steak or whatever, right,
(21:11):
and you can still get a reasonable night's sleep. Now,
the other thing is is if if you have either
children that wake up in the middle of the night
that become disruptive to your sleep, that's really even more difficult.
In that case, while I feel, I know you would
love to have a glass of wine, it's probably going
to do you more damage than good.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
That's where we've been for a couple of years. There's
been no wine for a while. Yeah, it's just not
kind of worth it, you know, like we both.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
Are not it's totally not worth it.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
I had a date night last night with the husband
and I haven't had I had a sip of wine
when it was like one sip that we have on
our little outing and I'm like, I kind of just
I literally just wanted one sip and my husband doesn't drink,
and so we had dinner and I was just like,
He's like, you literally are just having one sip. I'm like, yeah,
I just wanted to taste it. It's been a minute.
(22:10):
But I don't like the effect of how I feel
and then sleep wise, And I'm curious your thoughts on Listen,
we don't do this, I said, but there are times
when if I'm filming and I have to get a
good night's rest, I will sleep in a different room
because I know that I have to be on for
my work the next day. And again that's very far
(22:33):
and few between, but what are your thoughts on people
not sleeping in the same room to get sleep if
their partner is snoring.
Speaker 5 (22:39):
And so I have no problems with it. Here's the thing.
People think that the strength of their relationship is based
on where they spend the night, and that is not
necessarily the case. Okay, assuming you're not spending the night
with somebody else, then like right, spending the night in
a different room to get a good night's rest is
absolutely positiveatively a smart strategy, especially if you're filming the
(23:03):
next day. I do a lot of television work. I
do a lot of podcasting, and so my wife, So
this is crazy. My wife sleeps with a big screen
TV on all night long. We have two French bulldogs
in the.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Bed with so snoring. I can't all of it.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
You have the screen dog. Isn't it bad to have
a TV? I'm too when you sleep because the blue
light sleep.
Speaker 5 (23:21):
Is flexible, all right, And so look, I've been married
for twenty six years. Like when we first met, she said, Hey, Michael,
if we ever happen to have a sleepover, I want
to let you know that I sleep with the television on.
I said, oh, don't worry about that, Lauren. I'm going
to fix that. I'm becoming a sleep doctor. I don't
know about you, but if you ever tried to fix
something in your partner, it doesn't go well. So I adapted,
(23:44):
and what I learned was is she actually doesn't even
watch it. She listens out of the corner of her
ear because it's just enough for her to avoid what
she calls monkey mind, right, which is that I can't
stop thinking about this or that or the other and so,
and it's usually nothing important. It's like an episode of
Seinfelder some thing stupid like that. And by the way,
every single television on earth has a timer built in now,
(24:05):
so I just adjust the timer and it goes off
in the middle of the night. Now, the bulldogs, on
the other sleep, one of them definitely does, yeah, which is,
by the way, why I adapted to my seatpap so well.
So we have a puppy bulldog. He's about a year old,
and he likes to sleep in between the pillow between
my wife and I, and for some reason, he likes
(24:27):
to put his head on her pillow. So guess which
end of the dog I get? No, I get the
ass end of my bulldog every single night. So when
somebody said to me, hey, Michael, we're gonna put a
mask on your face. We're gonna put clean, filtered, humid
air going right in. You don't have to smell bulldog
parts all night long. I joked at the chance. So
I adapted to seapap pretty quickly. I know I'm a
(24:50):
different use case than a lot of people out there.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
That's incredible.
Speaker 5 (24:54):
But like at the end of it all, like sleep
is flexible and there's a lot of different ways that
you can go about doing it. Sleeping in a separate
room is absolutely positively it can be very good and
in fact, I have discovered for a lot of people
it actually increases intimacy, doesn't decrease intimacy, because what happens is,
let's say somebody is spending the night two to three
(25:14):
nights a week in there. When they're in the bedroom,
it's on right, Like it's like, let's.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Go, it's a signal, right, so it.
Speaker 5 (25:22):
Kind of can work in your favor, and you still
get a good night's rest.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Right, and you say it's flexible, like you know with
the TV, is it just as bad or okay? Then
looking at your phone before you go to bed.
Speaker 5 (25:34):
Let's talk about phones, because here's what's interesting. So I
want to be super duper clear the blue light aspect
of it all. There's not great data on it. Especially,
there's not great data on blue light blocking glasses. Like honestly, like,
if you want to look like Bono, do it, do
it some other time, but you really don't have to.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
And these are blue light glasses. We're just old. Yeah,
I just can't see you and I'm tired of squinting.
Speaker 5 (25:56):
Look, I got glasses on too. But here's the thing.
If you're if you're trying to get your high score
on Candy Crush, you ain't trying to go to bed.
Do you know what I'm saying? Right, it's about the engagement.
Like television, I don't really mind because it's kind of
content that just kind of washes over you, but you're
not engaging with it. But when you get pissed off
because so and so is on Facebook saying something about
(26:16):
so and so, that's not what we want to do.
Sleep is very simple because it really is follows two
specific biological functions, heart rate and temperature. If you can
control both of those, I can get you to sleep
almost anywhere. In order to enter into a state of unconsciousness,
you need a heart rate of about sixty or below. Right,
(26:38):
So when you're playing on your phone, your heart rate
can go up, and especially if you wake up in
the middle of the night. A lot of people grab
their phone and head to the can, right, and the
first thing they do is they look at the clock
and they instantly do the mental map. And now they're
pissed off. Right, They're like, oh crap, it's three thirty
in the morning, I've got to wake up at six. Sleep. Sleep, Sleep,
(27:00):
And they try to force themselves to sleep, which just
elevates their heart rate and puts them in the completely
opposite direction of what we kind of want them to do.
So why I don't I understand? You know, phones can
be a valuable tool. The other thing that they do
is they increase your arousal level, and not sexual arousal,
I'm talking about brain arousal level, and that can really
(27:22):
override a lot of the functions that the body is
trying to do in order to get you to sleep.
The second one being temperature, is another big, big, big one,
especially since you both expressed that there's some types of
menopausal perimenopausal symptomatology floating around. A lot of women will
get hot flashes men as well, and so staying cool
before bed and in bed turns out to be really,
(27:45):
really important. So there's a couple of different things that
I'd love to describe to your audience. If that's okay
about ways to stay cool in bed.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
I want to hear that, But also how we can
you know your website, how we can find you, how
we can do your sleep test.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
All in want to be get We'll get it all
in there.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
Literally we could sit with you all day. I know.
Speaker 5 (28:05):
Let me tell you when we do a sleep test
on everybody, let's do another episode.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
I would love that. I would truly love ye.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
So that's how we need to know how to connect,
where we can find you on Instagram and everything else.
Speaker 5 (28:14):
Okay, so all of that is super easy. I am
the sleep doctor doctor dot com. I'm the sleep doctor
on Instagram, I'm the sleep doctor on LinkedIn.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
You're the sleep doctor in our hearts. You're the sleep
doctor fixing our marriage. You are high sleep doctor.
Speaker 5 (28:29):
I will tell you this, I've saved more marriages as
a sleep doctor than I ever would have as a
marital therapist. Just getting people back in bed, sleeping together.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
Yeah, and just being just getting good rest. I mean,
you can't even be levelheaded emotionally when you don't get
good rest.
Speaker 5 (28:43):
It's a big deal. Trust me on this one. So
let's talk quickly about temperature, because I think that's something
that I think your audience members would be and would enjoy.
So when you talk about temperature, you want your room
to be cool. But here's the problem. You could turn
your room into a meat locker and put it at
fifty something degrees, But once you get underneath the covers.
This unit that we're walking around in for eighty or
(29:05):
ninety years runs it about ninety eight point six degrees,
and so when you cover it, you just basically create
a little mini sauna inside of underneath the covers. So
there's a couple of things that you can do. Number One,
if you have a tendency to sleep hot, don't wear
socks and put your feet out from under the covers.
There's no hair on the bottom of your feet, so
(29:25):
you can express heat a lot easier that way, so
it makes it a little bit easier. Number Two, there's
data to show that sleeping naked or with as little
clothing as possible is better because there's less for your
body to have to thermoregulate. There are also now these
thermoregulatory devices that you can put underneath your sheets that
can cool you from underneath. So I'm the chief sleep Officer.
(29:48):
I love that title. By the way. I'm the chief
sleep officer of a company called Orion Sleep. And we
make a topper that you put this little tube that
goes through on either side and we can either heat
or each person to exactly the right temperature to follow
their circadian rhythm to allow them to sleep better. So
there's I want to be clear, like some gadgets around
(30:09):
bedtime can be pretty helpful, but you want to be
thoughtful and think about some of the things that you
want to do. And if people want to get those
sleep tests, if you just go to sleep doctor dot
com forward slash doctor Mike, then that two hundred dollars test.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
Is right there boom, and I'm sliding into your DMS
right after this. Yeah, we're doing so much for coming on.
Really appreciate all this insight and I just cannot wait.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
So thank you. You have some fun, yes, thank you.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
So you meet our snoring husbands, You're gonna appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Thank you so much. Doctor.
Speaker 5 (30:38):
Of course that's dream.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Have a good day.
Host
Jana Kramer
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