December 22, 2025 • 39 mins
Our listeners didn't sleep on this episode! It was one of the top downloaded episodes of 2025.
Sleep expert Dr. Tina Burke shares her experience working with veterans, first responders and others who have trouble sleeping and provides tips on how to improve sleep including meditation, breathing techniques and establishing a routine.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
We're back alphas. We're coming in hot with
inspiring guests, witty banter and colorful commentary for
today's veterans and military community.
This is the Tal Podcast. Hi there, Alphas.
During the holiday season, the Tal Podcast team is taking a
break. Need a break?
(00:21):
But while we're gone, we do havea little bonus content for you.
So we've looked back at all the things we've done during Season
6 and we've come up with a list of our our top six most
impactful guests from 2025. And that was not easy.
It really was difficult there. Were so many great guests, but
we'll be releasing those interviews this week.
So if you haven't already subscribed to Tango Philima on
(00:43):
Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube,or, you know, wherever you get
your podcast, don't miss our countdown.
We've got you covered. So anytime you go to interview
someone who does sleep studies, you kind of worry it's going to
be a bit of a snooze. But Doctor Tina Burke, associate
director of Behavioral Biology Branch and a sleep research
scientist at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research was it was
(01:08):
incredible. You know, our, our alphas didn't
sleep on this one either. It was one of our, our high
performing episodes as one of the top downloaded episodes of
2025. So it turns out that a lot of
folks want to know how sleep effects Wellness and and to
learn better sleep habits. Did either of you make any
changes to your sleep routine after our chat with Doctor
Burke? I started sleeping less.
(01:33):
As a form of counter protest. I'm going to go back and listen
to this episode just so I can get my sleep back on track.
I. Love it.
I think she just reaffirmed all of the the sleep health things
I'd learned over time and why it's important.
I know like I really, I suffer from insomnia a lot, but I found
(01:56):
her this episode very beneficial.
So I'm thankful that this has made our replay this season.
Yeah, me too. I, I think for me personally, I,
I, I go through waves of things going really well sleep wise and
then things not and, and I got to change it up.
But you know, it's luckily I've been able to control it without
(02:16):
having to take anything. That's kind of the goal for me
with everything is to, to learn how to manage it in a way.
And, and the only way you can really do that is with
information. So Alphas, if if you want to
know more about this episode, you need to come check it out.
Stick around after the break we in our dream sequence and
revisit episode 254 for interview with Doctor Tina
(02:38):
Burke. Family and community engagement.
The American Legion meets the unique needs of local
communities. We are veterans strengthening
America. We are the American Legion.
(03:04):
Hey Alphas. Today we are joined by Doctor
Tina Burke, associate Director of the Behavioral Biology Branch
and a sleep research scientist at Walter Reed Army Institute of
Research. Occasional skedaddler and wearer
of cool yellow glasses. Welcome to the Tal Podcast.
Thanks for a wonderful welcome. Of course.
(03:25):
Hey, Doctor Burke, it's a pleasure to have you join us and
in preparation for this show. Actually, it's not in purpose.
It's just it's an absolute coincidence.
I had my first sleep consultation last week and I'm
actually have a 9:15 PM Showtimefor my first phase of my sleep
(03:46):
study tonight. So I could not have I Yeah, I
couldn't. I couldn't have planned it.
I'm so I'm excited to learn fromyou today as I'm trying to
unpack the things that are happening when I sleep and how I
may be able to do it better. And so certainly looking forward
to hearing that from you today. But your journey into sleep
(04:07):
research is, is quite fascinating.
So what was it that sparked yourinterest into understanding
sleep and circadian rhythms? And how did that lead you into
military focused research that you do now?
Yeah, it's, it's a quite, quite,quite interesting journey.
I feel like as as most people similar to kind of what what
(04:27):
you're demonstrating right now is everybody sleeps, even most,
most species all have some form of, of sleeper posturing that is
sleep like. And so it, it makes it easier
for my job sometimes to actuallybe able to connect and
communicate with people because just like everybody poops,
(04:49):
every, everybody sleeps or sometimes they have a different
relationship with sleep. I shouldn't know.
Sometimes at the same time. I know, I know poop and sleeping
together, the the dynamic combo.So and so it's interesting for
me when when I was in high school, I definitely liked this
idea of consciousness and I loved dreaming.
(05:11):
I loved what I saw in my dreams,what I felt like I had the power
over my dreams and just the creativity of it.
And I didn't really know how that that was a career or
anything like that. And I, I started my kind of
scholastic journey not really knowing what I wanted to do, as
(05:31):
I'm sure most, most new college students do.
And I kind of started with a preMed degree, a psychology degree
and a biology degree is my like major focuses.
Psychology went out with, with more kind of the, the minors in
the, the Med and biology side. But I still really loved how
(05:54):
that was connected. And I had an opportunity at Kent
State University to really engage in in research.
And so I looked at research in animals with immunology and
learning and then in humans as well with how humans learn and
then some stress research and how people respond to stressful
(06:15):
situations. And one of the things that I
found very passionate was reallythinking about how learning at a
collegiate level or more in depth information was linked.
But I still always loved sleep. And so when I finished my degree
for my bachelor's, I, I was really talking to one of my
mentors who was in learning and I was like, Hey, I really want
(06:38):
to link what we're doing with, with how college students learn
to then how do we link that withtheir sleep?
Because I really think, I know for me, sleep is important for
my learning and it, and I don't see a lot of research in this
particular area of learning and for more complex ideas with
sleep. And it just happens that that my
(06:58):
advisor at the time, her name isKatherine Rossen.
She's like, oh, I went to the school for Graduate School at
the University of Colorado Boulder.
There's this guy there that I know his name's Ken Wright.
And I, I think he's doing what you want.
And I went out to Colorado and. Instantly fell in love with.
(07:20):
With probably the community first because the environment is
absolutely fantastic and I am definitely a very like huggy
person. I love, I love stranger hugs.
I don't know if you can get those vibes from me, but man,
that was the the place that I wanted to be.
A lot of hugs out there in Colorado.
I know. I know love it might be the ones
(07:42):
where. Georgia went.
We used to do it a lot down here, but we don't anymore.
It's a very subtle. Thing I'm also from Ohio so I
guess I also have like the Midwest hug as well.
So like it's just like transitioning to the the
different type types of hugs. I feel like I've I've brought
more hugging to the East Coast. That's my.
Also one of my. It's a good import.
(08:04):
And so when I then met, met Kenneth Wright, he was so
passionate about just teaching. So as a mentor, I, I always
tease him because I was like, man, you have served the best
Kool-aid I have ever drank. Because literally his passion
for research and specifically sleep research and something
(08:27):
that at that time had no idea what, what circadian or internal
biological time was. And he just made it sound like
it was the, the sexiest thing. And if you, you didn't want to
do research on it, like it's like, man, you've got to get
with the time. So it's a nice circadian fun for
you guys too. And I, and I literally through
(08:48):
just that experience kind of with him and really learning
from someone, even wanting to kind of like do learning
research, put me on this different path and trajectory to
learn different intricacies about sleep that I, I didn't
know. And it just happened as I kind
of progressed throughout my career.
(09:09):
I really, my husband at the time, he had been a professional
cyclist and like, we're kind of staying in the area for him to
finish his career. And he finally retired and I was
like, all right, my, my turn again.
And so I got in contact with a lot of my, my friends in the
community. And a lot of my, my friends had
(09:30):
kind of gone on military, military paths that I gone to
Graduate School with. So a couple of them kind of
went, went to the Navy side of the house.
And I happened to have a friend who had been enlisted.
And I was like, Hey, I really want to learn about neuroimaging
and how I can bring like the circadian system to the military
'cause I haven't really heard about that.
(09:52):
Are you aware of any positions? And she literally was like, I
have a job right now for you. Can you, can you come, come from
Colorado in two weeks and the job is yours.
And, and that was, was history of just a, an amazing
happenstance of connecting with my friends.
I did. And where are you now?
I am in Silver Spring, MD is where Rare Rare is located.
(10:17):
So I, I had the privilege of having the flexibility to just
kind of get up and, and move andit's been one of the best, best
decisions of my life. And it's so interesting as well.
Like our community, like I feel like we've also 'cause we have
so many of the same sleep peopleand in the community, we've also
(10:38):
helped to bring try service efforts for the military as well
to together. Well, how do you feel now that
you're an expert? That I, it's so interesting.
I, I would say I, I know more, more than most, but I, I always,
I always know that there's always more to learn.
So, so I, I, I always like, liketo dance that line because it's
(11:04):
interesting. Every person has such a unique
story and there's a lot of things that we can provide and
then sometimes everything can betailored to kind of the unique
individual as well. So I always would say like I
may, I may be considered an expert, but there's always,
always an opportunity to learn more.
(11:24):
Well, so I'm really excited to be able to talk with you today
because sleep has been a a long time struggle for me.
I'm Stacey by the way. Nice to meet you, Doctor Burke,
about Gosh, it's been about 20 years that I was maybe even more
than that now. Yeah, more than that, that I was
hit by my first roadside bomb and had my first TBI.
(11:47):
But since then, over the, over the course of many years, that's
when my sleep struggles really began and have developed lesions
because of TBI and of course theside effects of, of post
traumatic stress like so many other combat veterans.
You know, the side effects of PTSD impact sleep, behavioral
sleep disorders, things like that.
For me, a lot in in the initial days of still being deployed and
(12:12):
in the years ensuing after my combat deployments, my major
problem was it wasn't that I hadn't had behavioral
conditioning around sleeping that I had tried to readdress in
those times. It was like, well, in combat you
can't really get around staying up around the clock.
(12:32):
That's just how your body gets conditioned to doing it.
You know, adrenaline spikes and you, you just can't sleep.
And that is something that I couldn't overcome in the years
after combat. And the initial way to overcome
that was pharmaceuticals and using things like Ambien and,
and in the long term, that was what wasn't going to be the
(12:53):
solution. So they transitioned to
melatonin, which was like, yeah,not going to work for me.
And so it just became a real problem.
And and it was funny because I was in my research, looking over
a lot of the the articles and things that you had developed
and you have these wonderful P PDFs and things.
(13:13):
And ironically, I came up with this sort of self meditation
thing where I visualize this rock that I held in my hand and
it was a three sided rock flat on high slides.
And it had this Ridge and I could, I, I could visualize each
and every Ridge and I could feelits heft and, and how cool it
was. And, and anyway, it wouldn't let
(13:35):
me go back to sleep because I had so much adrenaline
constantly spiking through my system.
But it did help me I, you know, focus on my breathing and
reorient myself. And, and, and anyway, I guess
it's like meditation and you talk about meditation, you talk
about breathing. And for so many of us folks who
(13:57):
deal with insomnia, that's a bigPart 1 of the practices you you
mentioned. So I've dealt with this for 20
ish years. Sleep struggles are a problem
and I'm tired unintended, but this is common for veterans like
myself. What are what are some of the
(14:19):
things that you recommend for alphas like me who are
struggling and maybe an ongoing struggle for decades?
What do you got? Help us doc save.
Her I, I, I very much empathize with with your struggle.
And, and it's interesting because each person is unique,
but they're often times can be very common threads, especially,
(14:45):
I would presume in the alpha community.
We see, see a lot in veterans populations and even folks who
are just in the military community or a lot of the
support staff as well. Because like you were saying,
similar to 1st responders, a lotof our medical providers, part
(15:06):
of your job is, is the sleep loss.
And there's parts that are unavoidable and there, there are
stressful things with it. And then sometimes we don't
always take into account the grace of the training that that
type of environment provides, let alone kind of your
discussions of the things like traumatic brain injury that,
(15:27):
that can in and of itself just impact your sleep from a
biological perspective. So even our folks like who might
be our, our football players, our soccer players who have been
having having things like the, the ball hit their head or, or
collisions can then have a greater prevalence of insomnia
(15:49):
even later just because of that.And if you look at a lot of our
veterans and even some folks in,in our service members who have
had these experiences, it's kindof like add, adding, adding
these factors or conditions thatthat can contribute as well in
an additive way to what might belinking to sleep problems.
(16:10):
And of course, what, when you try to figure out what might be
causing issues with, with sleep,it can kind of be dependent on,
on really what, what the, the, the issues in the, in the root
causes. Because sometimes if it is
something like you're talking about a, a traumatic brain
injury, there's some actual Physiology in terms of there,
(16:30):
there's damage. And sometimes you can see
different neural circuitry that,that can impact how and why
you're why you sleep. But even without that, a lot of
what you describe are, are common things that that we tend
to hear in folks that I know tend to report feelings of kind
of stress around their sleep loss.
(16:52):
And sometimes we can, we can seethat more in folks who report
insomnia. They're different things that
that are traditionally from, from a medical side of the house
recommended. Sometimes you can use
pharmaceuticals like like you describe and then there can also
be different interventions like cognitive behavioral therapy,
trying to change those signalings.
(17:14):
And then there can sometimes be these other interventional
solutions like you're talking about tactical breathing or
meditation in addition to just trying to get your body at a
different rhythm or routine. It's interesting because I
sometimes I, I get to go and collect saliva from our service
(17:35):
members and I'm like, I need youto spin this tube and they're
like, I don't have saliva. I can't, I can't do it for you
after work. And one of the things that, that
I do is I have to do a visual exercise of just kind of closing
your eyes and we visualize a very yellow lemon.
We cut that lemon in half and then we quarter it.
(17:58):
And then when you bite on it, you then salivate because of
this visual imagery. And it's kind of like this old
school Pavlogs dog. I, I give you a cue and, and you
react to it. And you said as a great example
of how me as just this external person to you can elicit A
physiological response because of the behavior that that you've
(18:19):
become predicted to have when when presented with with a
specific cue. And we tend to try to recommend
as well when you're having issues with with insomnia or
sleeping, trying to get a ritualized routine in order to
try to do the same thing. So if you can get a routine that
(18:39):
can start serving for your body as a cue to start transitioning
and to bedtime, then you can tryto help elicit that same type of
physiological response. So decreasing things like your
stress hormone activation, things like cortisol and like
how you're talking about the adrenaline surge to try and
(19:01):
dampen that down. And then it's interesting when
we think of meditation and tactical breathing, it really is
a a physiological process. So when we engage in a lot of
those breathing techniques, it activates a part of our
autonomic nervous system called the parasympathetic portion of
your autonomic nervous system, which is like the rest and
(19:23):
digest piece. And so when you start engaging
in those breathing techniques, it actually starts kind of
forcing that system online. So we're moving from the, the
like, run the fight or flight response to try and activate
that system, which helps bring down heart rate, helps decrease
that stress response. But you also have to have
(19:45):
patients that, that, that takes a little time to transition.
And sometimes when we talk aboutthose routine and those tactics,
sometimes we don't give ourselves enough time to kind of
have that transition and give ourselves solid cues because
it's interesting. Sometimes I'll talk to folks,
even just talk, talk to someone in my, my lab who's one of our
(20:06):
research assistants and he, he'slike, oh, Doctor Burke, I'm, I'm
starting to like change the, thebacklight on my screen.
So it's. It's less blue and then right
next to his screen was a giant can that was a monster can with
lots of. Caffeine in.
It and I was just like, oh, I was like, I am.
I am glad that that you're trying to use.
(20:27):
Use techniques that. That you're learning, but that
that caffeine which six hours before bed can impact your
sleep, that that might make thatprocess or the cues that you're
trying to do with with your lighting not work as well as you
might intend. So sometimes when when folks are
like, oh, that's not, that's notquite quite right for me.
(20:50):
I'm like, oh, there may also be just like other things in your
routine that you might not like monsters.
It's interesting awake. At night, too.
That is so. So I'm.
I'm going to steal that for later.
That's February. It's yours.
I know. Sorry, I forget.
My jokes as soon as I say. Them.
I know no copyright on that one.You forget them because they're
(21:11):
not funny, Joe. Most of them.
I remember all those insults though.
I write them down and I read them.
Out loud to myself, but but of course they're they're they're
these things that that that sometimes may not may not
recognize. And so it's more trying to also
provide an education to say likeyou're, you're doing great on
(21:34):
this, but you might not notice it.
Like another great common example, because nighttime
awakenings happen very, very frequently.
And our bodies are actually designed to kind of rotate and
in and out of these kind of cycles.
But a lot of times we're not consciously aware.
And some of my folks who might wake up and have to go to the
bathroom or something like that,they go into the bathroom.
(21:57):
And I don't know if it if it's all bathrooms or if it's just
mine. Like the lights that are in the
bathroom are the brightest lights on the planet.
So you can see like the microscopic view of your face.
And they're like, Oh yeah, I getup and go to the bathroom.
I lay back down. I can't go to sleep.
But I was like, it's 'cause you just.
I was like, 'cause you try to try, try and light in your eyes.
I'm like, I'm so sorry. It's taking you a long time to.
(22:18):
Go. You're like washing your hands.
Right now. Not to make eye contact with
yourself like. You're walking to a grocery
store or. Something I just use a night
light. Like I don't have a big, I don't
have a light switch I turn on. Love it, I love it.
Write that down and we will start start reminding people.
But those are the things like the the first approach I always
talk about is like, let's go through what your routine is.
(22:39):
And then just from practice, I know it.
I get used to being like, what, what is your kitchen light
situation looking like at like 9:00 at night?
Like what? What are those things?
But again, like you talking about your, your visual imagery
because a lot of folks who mighthave more intrusive thoughts,
especially if they like wait till the end of the night.
(23:00):
That's the first time you actually have quiet time to be
with your own internal thoughts to try to help distract yourself
from those intrusive thoughts. 1You can kind of write, write
them down or try to get them outof your body.
But exactly what you're saying is a tactic that that we teach,
which is to use visual imagery while also doing a breathing
(23:23):
technique in order to try and engage more of those processes
to, to focus on that one thing to make make the breathing or,
or meditation more effective. So you doing that like self
starting that is, is amazing andI'm glad it's working because it
should work. But again, like sometimes people
don't don't know those things orhaven't been presented with that
(23:45):
as an option. So I, I'm so glad that you kind
of came across that yourself. And learn not to look at the
version of you stuck in the mirror dimension in the middle
of the. Night.
Yeah, you definitely don't want to do what you were as a kid.
Stare. Stare at yourself in the dark
and say Bloody Mary three times.You don't want to do that.
(24:06):
So on my end, I just want to first of all say thank you so
much for, for talking with us. And, and I just was recently
invited to do a sleep improvement program with the
Super Fi and Americas fund. And, and I'm really looking
forward to that. They, they've done some cool
stuff, but, and, and my sleep isgenerally good for A1 legged guy
who lost a leg in war. I feel like it's, it's not bad,
(24:28):
but I don't want to wait until I'm in crisis mode before
learning about it. And that's so for me, your
baseline, you know, your, your bottom should not be something
that you let yourself get close to when you have control over
because you're not always going to have that.
Yeah. So while my sleep is good, I'm
trying to learn a little bit more.
And they sent me this little packet with like, now I could
(24:49):
never wear the thing that like covers my eyes because in my
mind, like, as soon as I put that thing on, somebody's going
to break in the house or something and it's just going to
be one more. But I, I say that because
they've also got a thing to helptrack sleep.
They've, there's even the Pokémon Go has a thing that
tracks your sleep. Like my daughter was talking
about. It is like, it'll help you like
(25:10):
hatch the eggs or something. But my point is, technology is
increasingly intertwined with our sleep.
I mean, almost everybody, even if you read a book, generally
you're doing it on your phone asyou go to sleep.
It's, it's real. It's, you know, then you get,
you know, your buddy Delvin sends you something on
Instagram. And the next thing you know,
you're, you're, you're scrolling, scrolling through.
So how do we leverage technologyin a positive way to improve our
(25:33):
sleep? Or what are some potential
pitfalls that we should be awareof?
And, and how can we use some of this technology for good instead
of distractions? Because I think we're at a point
now where it's, it's hard to just tell someone now take your
phone and plug it in across the room because no one is
realistically going to do that, even though they should.
I agree 100%. I mean, there's a, there's,
(25:56):
there's the, the small wins. Like I'd love, love to be myself
as a a big beefy person that I could just lift like 200 lbs.
I know that's not true and I probably couldn't lift 100 lbs,
but I could start at 15 and start.
Start small steps. And and gain more strength and
in your sleep and, and changes with that is no different.
(26:17):
And when I think of technology, because I agree if like,
especially with how we use technology right now, it's not
always easy for me to be like, no electronics in the room.
Even though I love, I also love love to say that I also try and
think of what, what are the quick wins?
And I'm like, Hey, if your phoneis with you, there's night shift
(26:37):
mode and you can change the color of the, the background
lighting because it's so weird. Our, our eyes see, see better.
Like our, our visual system is much, much more attune and acute
as well as our internal timing system to blue light.
And so of course, when you have some of a lot of our old E
(27:00):
readers, when you're watching very expensive TV's, if anyone's
getting ready for the, the SuperBowl, we are used to having
these really high definition pictures with, with bright light
on there to help us see. And so some of the times as you,
you bring that type of technology because most, most of
(27:21):
these technologies that we see from that aspect for
entertainment or social media tends to have light associated
with it. And so it's more trying to
mediate the light aspects of it than necessarily some, some of
the other keys. Although notifications, of
course, dealing with social media as a stressor 15 years ago
(27:45):
is very different than what we have to mediate as a stressor
today, of course, like scrollingand indifferent activation if
you read or watch something that's charged.
And so a lot of our devices now are starting to get like these
sleep modes and things like thatto try to limit the
notification. So trying to change how you are
(28:07):
notified can can be a good step changing the, the lighting.
So if you have ATV in your bedroom, which I do not
recommend, but if you happen to have one in there or you have a
bed partner that that needs to watch that, try and change the
gain on it. So and just the lighting
structure. So it's more of this kind of
like red sepia tone. A lot of our phone devices or
(28:31):
things like our tablets and our computers also have that kind of
night shift type mode where you can change the color of of your
life. And do not disturb mode.
Yeah, yeah. But alternatively, sometimes you
just want to watch Reacher and have Allen Allen Richardson, you
know, and you're hold you while you go to sleep.
That's true. That's true.
(28:51):
Well. These are these are things we
were very much aware of because I was a helicopter pilot in the
Army. So, you know, light sensitivity
and preparations for night flying and OPS was a big deal.
But it was also the first time that I heard the word circadian
rhythm. And oh, that's fun to say.
What is that? And, and how does that apply,
(29:14):
you know, to me being an aviatorand being able to be at my
optimal performance because we're constantly shifting our
schedules to be able to fly, youknow, disrupting, you know, our,
our sleep sequence or we always get made fun of because of, you
know, the downtime that we had to have and the, and the rest
before we went and got into the aircraft because you don't want
a tired Apache pilot shooting missiles down rage.
(29:37):
So I'm interested to hear about your thoughts and kind of maybe
even the questions that you're asking or maybe some insights
about circadian rhythm. What does the research say about
how these disruptions impact thebody over time?
Especially for, you know, folks like us that are having to beat
our rhythms up all the time. Yeah.
Well, it's it's, it's interesting because we have
(30:00):
these two kind of primary systems that work together.
So we have that internal timing system, which is interesting.
Always a lot of times I make that a kitten too.
If you had like a watch that you're wearing or you're using
your phone, I always ask the question like if you didn't have
your phone or watch, how, how, how many of you would get to
(30:20):
work on time or, or, or do what you need to.
And most of the time it's not. So internal timing system is
really a way for us to predict our environment.
So help us have physiological signals to help us signal sleep,
how to signal us to be awake. And that complements kind of
(30:41):
what, what we consider the, the other primary system our, our
sleep need or our sleep drive. So how long you've been awake,
you're kind of getting a lot of metabolic waste and things like
that over time, which contributes to this sleep need.
And so we tend to be able to, toreally kind of feel these, these
(31:05):
things in terms of like our, our, our sleep need.
But sometimes it's harder to decouple how, how these two
systems work in harmony togetheruntil we start working, of
course. Like when we when we look at our
service members who have round the clock operations or we have
folks that are even doing something like transparent and
travel. And then we hear about this, the
(31:27):
coupling, but we call it jet lag.
And so our circadian system of course is really designed as
this kind of, it's an approximate 24 hour or so circa
around the end day, the this approximate 24 cycle that's
really built into our genes. But as it is intended to be a
(31:49):
predictor of your environment, it's also exceptionally
adaptable because it it wants tobe able to be there to help you
predict and anticipate. Like should I be eating now?
Yes, all right, I'm going to start having signaling cues so
that I can eat my food, digest that more, more quickly.
Is it getting time, time to go to sleep?
(32:10):
I start secreting my endogenous or internal melatonin to help
facilitate that that kind of tiredness and transition into
sleep at night. But when we do transmission
travel, because that circadian system can really only adapt to
about one hour time change a day, is that when that decouples
(32:31):
either for say shift workers or transmission travel, then we
have these cues that are, that are signaling our body that,
that aren't as efficient. And then if you have rotating
schedules on top of that, we tend to see like, OK, well, my,
my body isn't predicting that I should be eating at 3:00 AM in
the morning, but I'm on a 24 hour operation and I'm starving.
(32:55):
And we, we found in some of our,our research studies in the
sleep community, of course, thatwhen doing that one, your body
is like, oh, like I'm in a high stress environment.
Obviously because I'm up for 24 hours, I need really fast
digestible sugar. So I really want that, that bag
of Cheetos or something that I can just digest easily.
(33:16):
But then we don't necessarily have the physiological processes
that might be catching up to actually efficiently, like
breakdown those foods so that you can get the energy from it.
It's like, Oh, I'm going to store that for you as, as fat.
And then we see a lot of our shift workers then that start
leading to having these kind of pre diabetic profiles or more
(33:38):
inclined to have cardiovascular risk and things like that.
And so I think when you talk about how do you help folks
who've kind of been dysregulatedis really trying to start
because of how plastic and how much that that circadian system
wants to adapt, wants to predictis to start giving cues.
And really the biggest cue for that system is light, either the
(34:01):
presence or absence thereof. So in the morning, walking
outside, getting a big dose of that, that bright morning
sunshine. And then of course, as your
external environment, as you're getting closer to sunset, also
having your internal environment.
So in your house, if it's getting dark outside, this is a
great plan for you to start saying, oh, hey, instead of
(34:23):
having my bright kitchen lights on, maybe I should be using a
lamp. And so that you can also start
mimicking that. And then that internal timing
system for your circadian systemcan help have that natural rise
in your melatonin to try and help more easily with the
transition to sleep. Of course, again, different
recommendations. If you're traveling, you can do
(34:44):
so more acutely to try and be like shifting that system
earlier or later sometimes if someone won't have enough time
to appropriately mitigate the jet lag just through natural
transition. Sometimes it's not best to shift
if you're only going to be therefor 24 hours or a day.
So I love lamp lamps. Well, I think that's such great
(35:08):
insight and I think, you know, what it, what it says to me is
that our rhythm, so like, you know, it wants to get into its,
its natural kind of correspondence and we have these
things that take us out of it and take it away.
But just by being aware in recognizing that there's, you
know, some things that we can doto, to mitigate it.
(35:29):
So if we have to go to that shift work, we have to take a, a
big jump, just recognize that it's going to affect you.
But with a little preventative, you can minimize the impact to
your sleep. Absolutely.
Well, Doc, we really appreciate you all your insights and for
all you alphas out there, Doc, where can they, where can they
(35:52):
find some of this information? Where should they go?
Yeah. So on our Walter Reed Army
Institute of Research home page,we actually have a resources
page which I can send the link. It's probably very, very long
for me to actually say out loud,but happy, happy to provide
that. And it has especially for our
(36:14):
folks who are active duty right now.
And even not it's, it actually translates to everyone, but it's
especially a lot of our our resources, our our focus on
folks who are undergoing stressful situations, which I'm
aware that that could be more more than more than just our
(36:35):
service members at at this moment in time is while engaging
in jet travel, how to appropriately use caffeine.
A lot of times when people say melatonin is not for me, my knee
jerk response is like, you mightnot be using it right.
There's how to use melatonin on there, how, how to mitigate jet
(36:57):
lag. And so there's also just some
sleep leadership trainings that that we try in order to use to
kind of train, train our folks earlier on, on how to kind of
talk about sleep, how to mitigate the impacts of fatigue.
If you can't avoid, avoid sleep loss, which again, can be quite,
(37:19):
quite frequent. But then when you have control
of your sleep, which Joe, I, I appreciate your words.
So when you have control, what can you do to ensure that the
sleep that you're getting is higher quality and more
restorative for you? Or even how to do something like
sleep banked to try to help. If you know you're going to be
(37:39):
going on a a series of time where you're not going to get as
much sleep as you want, or if even you might be anticipating a
stressful event where you might not get the sleep that you want.
How can you do some tactics to improve the sleep leading up to
that to try and be a little bit more protective so that you're
not as fatigued well while you're engaging in that
activity? I personally just want to be
(38:01):
ready when they add it to the Olympics, you know, competitive
sleeping is something that I feel like I could be very.
Strong been training your whole.Life, yeah.
That one go. I spend at least six hours a
day. Training Olympian alphas.
We're going to. Have that medal, that medal for
there and it's like, I feel like, I feel like I could win.
We're going to. Have that website in our show
notes along with the social media handles.
(38:22):
So be sure to check that out, Doc.
It's been such a wonderful experience chatting with you and
look forward to digging a littledeeper into all those resources.
Yeah, Doctor Burke, thank you somuch for joining us for the
great conversation. I feel ready for my sleep study
tonight. Alphas, stick around for some
scuttlebutt after the break. Welcome back, Alphas.
(38:44):
We're keeping things short and sweet on the countdown, so
there's no scuttlebutt today, but thanks for taking the trip
down memory lane with us. We really hope you guys enjoyed
the episode. On behalf of the entire Tal
Podcast team, we hope you're enjoying time with your loved
ones during the holiday season. If you miss us during the
holidays, which I know you are, you can always subscribe to our
(39:05):
podcast, our newsletter, or sendus guest and mail
recommendations at legion.org Back slash Tal Salon.
Salon.
We're back alphas. We're coming in hot with
inspiring guests, witty banter and colorful commentary for
today's veterans and military community.
This is the Tal Podcast. Hi there, Alphas.
During the holiday season, the Tal Podcast team is taking a
break. Need a break?
(00:21):
But while we're gone, we do havea little bonus content for you.
So we've looked back at all the things we've done during Season
6 and we've come up with a list of our our top six most
impactful guests from 2025. And that was not easy.
It really was difficult there. Were so many great guests, but
we'll be releasing those interviews this week.
So if you haven't already subscribed to Tango Philima on
(00:43):
Spotify, Apple Podcast, YouTube,or, you know, wherever you get
your podcast, don't miss our countdown.
We've got you covered. So anytime you go to interview
someone who does sleep studies, you kind of worry it's going to
be a bit of a snooze. But Doctor Tina Burke, associate
director of Behavioral Biology Branch and a sleep research
scientist at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research was it was
(01:08):
incredible. You know, our, our alphas didn't
sleep on this one either. It was one of our, our high
performing episodes as one of the top downloaded episodes of
2025. So it turns out that a lot of
folks want to know how sleep effects Wellness and and to
learn better sleep habits. Did either of you make any
changes to your sleep routine after our chat with Doctor
Burke? I started sleeping less.
(01:33):
As a form of counter protest. I'm going to go back and listen
to this episode just so I can get my sleep back on track.
I. Love it.
I think she just reaffirmed all of the the sleep health things
I'd learned over time and why it's important.
I know like I really, I suffer from insomnia a lot, but I found
(01:56):
her this episode very beneficial.
So I'm thankful that this has made our replay this season.
Yeah, me too. I, I think for me personally, I,
I, I go through waves of things going really well sleep wise and
then things not and, and I got to change it up.
But you know, it's luckily I've been able to control it without
(02:16):
having to take anything. That's kind of the goal for me
with everything is to, to learn how to manage it in a way.
And, and the only way you can really do that is with
information. So Alphas, if if you want to
know more about this episode, you need to come check it out.
Stick around after the break we in our dream sequence and
revisit episode 254 for interview with Doctor Tina
(02:38):
Burke. Family and community engagement.
The American Legion meets the unique needs of local
communities. We are veterans strengthening
America. We are the American Legion.
(03:04):
Hey Alphas. Today we are joined by Doctor
Tina Burke, associate Director of the Behavioral Biology Branch
and a sleep research scientist at Walter Reed Army Institute of
Research. Occasional skedaddler and wearer
of cool yellow glasses. Welcome to the Tal Podcast.
Thanks for a wonderful welcome. Of course.
(03:25):
Hey, Doctor Burke, it's a pleasure to have you join us and
in preparation for this show. Actually, it's not in purpose.
It's just it's an absolute coincidence.
I had my first sleep consultation last week and I'm
actually have a 9:15 PM Showtimefor my first phase of my sleep
(03:46):
study tonight. So I could not have I Yeah, I
couldn't. I couldn't have planned it.
I'm so I'm excited to learn fromyou today as I'm trying to
unpack the things that are happening when I sleep and how I
may be able to do it better. And so certainly looking forward
to hearing that from you today. But your journey into sleep
(04:07):
research is, is quite fascinating.
So what was it that sparked yourinterest into understanding
sleep and circadian rhythms? And how did that lead you into
military focused research that you do now?
Yeah, it's, it's a quite, quite,quite interesting journey.
I feel like as as most people similar to kind of what what
(04:27):
you're demonstrating right now is everybody sleeps, even most,
most species all have some form of, of sleeper posturing that is
sleep like. And so it, it makes it easier
for my job sometimes to actuallybe able to connect and
communicate with people because just like everybody poops,
(04:49):
every, everybody sleeps or sometimes they have a different
relationship with sleep. I shouldn't know.
Sometimes at the same time. I know, I know poop and sleeping
together, the the dynamic combo.So and so it's interesting for
me when when I was in high school, I definitely liked this
idea of consciousness and I loved dreaming.
(05:11):
I loved what I saw in my dreams,what I felt like I had the power
over my dreams and just the creativity of it.
And I didn't really know how that that was a career or
anything like that. And I, I started my kind of
scholastic journey not really knowing what I wanted to do, as
(05:31):
I'm sure most, most new college students do.
And I kind of started with a preMed degree, a psychology degree
and a biology degree is my like major focuses.
Psychology went out with, with more kind of the, the minors in
the, the Med and biology side. But I still really loved how
(05:54):
that was connected. And I had an opportunity at Kent
State University to really engage in in research.
And so I looked at research in animals with immunology and
learning and then in humans as well with how humans learn and
then some stress research and how people respond to stressful
(06:15):
situations. And one of the things that I
found very passionate was reallythinking about how learning at a
collegiate level or more in depth information was linked.
But I still always loved sleep. And so when I finished my degree
for my bachelor's, I, I was really talking to one of my
mentors who was in learning and I was like, Hey, I really want
(06:38):
to link what we're doing with, with how college students learn
to then how do we link that withtheir sleep?
Because I really think, I know for me, sleep is important for
my learning and it, and I don't see a lot of research in this
particular area of learning and for more complex ideas with
sleep. And it just happens that that my
(06:58):
advisor at the time, her name isKatherine Rossen.
She's like, oh, I went to the school for Graduate School at
the University of Colorado Boulder.
There's this guy there that I know his name's Ken Wright.
And I, I think he's doing what you want.
And I went out to Colorado and. Instantly fell in love with.
(07:20):
With probably the community first because the environment is
absolutely fantastic and I am definitely a very like huggy
person. I love, I love stranger hugs.
I don't know if you can get those vibes from me, but man,
that was the the place that I wanted to be.
A lot of hugs out there in Colorado.
I know. I know love it might be the ones
(07:42):
where. Georgia went.
We used to do it a lot down here, but we don't anymore.
It's a very subtle. Thing I'm also from Ohio so I
guess I also have like the Midwest hug as well.
So like it's just like transitioning to the the
different type types of hugs. I feel like I've I've brought
more hugging to the East Coast. That's my.
Also one of my. It's a good import.
(08:04):
And so when I then met, met Kenneth Wright, he was so
passionate about just teaching. So as a mentor, I, I always
tease him because I was like, man, you have served the best
Kool-aid I have ever drank. Because literally his passion
for research and specifically sleep research and something
(08:27):
that at that time had no idea what, what circadian or internal
biological time was. And he just made it sound like
it was the, the sexiest thing. And if you, you didn't want to
do research on it, like it's like, man, you've got to get
with the time. So it's a nice circadian fun for
you guys too. And I, and I literally through
(08:48):
just that experience kind of with him and really learning
from someone, even wanting to kind of like do learning
research, put me on this different path and trajectory to
learn different intricacies about sleep that I, I didn't
know. And it just happened as I kind
of progressed throughout my career.
(09:09):
I really, my husband at the time, he had been a professional
cyclist and like, we're kind of staying in the area for him to
finish his career. And he finally retired and I was
like, all right, my, my turn again.
And so I got in contact with a lot of my, my friends in the
community. And a lot of my, my friends had
(09:30):
kind of gone on military, military paths that I gone to
Graduate School with. So a couple of them kind of
went, went to the Navy side of the house.
And I happened to have a friend who had been enlisted.
And I was like, Hey, I really want to learn about neuroimaging
and how I can bring like the circadian system to the military
'cause I haven't really heard about that.
(09:52):
Are you aware of any positions? And she literally was like, I
have a job right now for you. Can you, can you come, come from
Colorado in two weeks and the job is yours.
And, and that was, was history of just a, an amazing
happenstance of connecting with my friends.
I did. And where are you now?
I am in Silver Spring, MD is where Rare Rare is located.
(10:17):
So I, I had the privilege of having the flexibility to just
kind of get up and, and move andit's been one of the best, best
decisions of my life. And it's so interesting as well.
Like our community, like I feel like we've also 'cause we have
so many of the same sleep peopleand in the community, we've also
(10:38):
helped to bring try service efforts for the military as well
to together. Well, how do you feel now that
you're an expert? That I, it's so interesting.
I, I would say I, I know more, more than most, but I, I always,
I always know that there's always more to learn.
So, so I, I, I always like, liketo dance that line because it's
(11:04):
interesting. Every person has such a unique
story and there's a lot of things that we can provide and
then sometimes everything can betailored to kind of the unique
individual as well. So I always would say like I
may, I may be considered an expert, but there's always,
always an opportunity to learn more.
(11:24):
Well, so I'm really excited to be able to talk with you today
because sleep has been a a long time struggle for me.
I'm Stacey by the way. Nice to meet you, Doctor Burke,
about Gosh, it's been about 20 years that I was maybe even more
than that now. Yeah, more than that, that I was
hit by my first roadside bomb and had my first TBI.
(11:47):
But since then, over the, over the course of many years, that's
when my sleep struggles really began and have developed lesions
because of TBI and of course theside effects of, of post
traumatic stress like so many other combat veterans.
You know, the side effects of PTSD impact sleep, behavioral
sleep disorders, things like that.
For me, a lot in in the initial days of still being deployed and
(12:12):
in the years ensuing after my combat deployments, my major
problem was it wasn't that I hadn't had behavioral
conditioning around sleeping that I had tried to readdress in
those times. It was like, well, in combat you
can't really get around staying up around the clock.
(12:32):
That's just how your body gets conditioned to doing it.
You know, adrenaline spikes and you, you just can't sleep.
And that is something that I couldn't overcome in the years
after combat. And the initial way to overcome
that was pharmaceuticals and using things like Ambien and,
and in the long term, that was what wasn't going to be the
(12:53):
solution. So they transitioned to
melatonin, which was like, yeah,not going to work for me.
And so it just became a real problem.
And and it was funny because I was in my research, looking over
a lot of the the articles and things that you had developed
and you have these wonderful P PDFs and things.
(13:13):
And ironically, I came up with this sort of self meditation
thing where I visualize this rock that I held in my hand and
it was a three sided rock flat on high slides.
And it had this Ridge and I could, I, I could visualize each
and every Ridge and I could feelits heft and, and how cool it
was. And, and anyway, it wouldn't let
(13:35):
me go back to sleep because I had so much adrenaline
constantly spiking through my system.
But it did help me I, you know, focus on my breathing and
reorient myself. And, and, and anyway, I guess
it's like meditation and you talk about meditation, you talk
about breathing. And for so many of us folks who
(13:57):
deal with insomnia, that's a bigPart 1 of the practices you you
mentioned. So I've dealt with this for 20
ish years. Sleep struggles are a problem
and I'm tired unintended, but this is common for veterans like
myself. What are what are some of the
(14:19):
things that you recommend for alphas like me who are
struggling and maybe an ongoing struggle for decades?
What do you got? Help us doc save.
Her I, I, I very much empathize with with your struggle.
And, and it's interesting because each person is unique,
but they're often times can be very common threads, especially,
(14:45):
I would presume in the alpha community.
We see, see a lot in veterans populations and even folks who
are just in the military community or a lot of the
support staff as well. Because like you were saying,
similar to 1st responders, a lotof our medical providers, part
(15:06):
of your job is, is the sleep loss.
And there's parts that are unavoidable and there, there are
stressful things with it. And then sometimes we don't
always take into account the grace of the training that that
type of environment provides, let alone kind of your
discussions of the things like traumatic brain injury that,
(15:27):
that can in and of itself just impact your sleep from a
biological perspective. So even our folks like who might
be our, our football players, our soccer players who have been
having having things like the, the ball hit their head or, or
collisions can then have a greater prevalence of insomnia
(15:49):
even later just because of that.And if you look at a lot of our
veterans and even some folks in,in our service members who have
had these experiences, it's kindof like add, adding, adding
these factors or conditions thatthat can contribute as well in
an additive way to what might belinking to sleep problems.
(16:10):
And of course, what, when you try to figure out what might be
causing issues with, with sleep,it can kind of be dependent on,
on really what, what the, the, the issues in the, in the root
causes. Because sometimes if it is
something like you're talking about a, a traumatic brain
injury, there's some actual Physiology in terms of there,
(16:30):
there's damage. And sometimes you can see
different neural circuitry that,that can impact how and why
you're why you sleep. But even without that, a lot of
what you describe are, are common things that that we tend
to hear in folks that I know tend to report feelings of kind
of stress around their sleep loss.
(16:52):
And sometimes we can, we can seethat more in folks who report
insomnia. They're different things that
that are traditionally from, from a medical side of the house
recommended. Sometimes you can use
pharmaceuticals like like you describe and then there can also
be different interventions like cognitive behavioral therapy,
trying to change those signalings.
(17:14):
And then there can sometimes be these other interventional
solutions like you're talking about tactical breathing or
meditation in addition to just trying to get your body at a
different rhythm or routine. It's interesting because I
sometimes I, I get to go and collect saliva from our service
(17:35):
members and I'm like, I need youto spin this tube and they're
like, I don't have saliva. I can't, I can't do it for you
after work. And one of the things that, that
I do is I have to do a visual exercise of just kind of closing
your eyes and we visualize a very yellow lemon.
We cut that lemon in half and then we quarter it.
(17:58):
And then when you bite on it, you then salivate because of
this visual imagery. And it's kind of like this old
school Pavlogs dog. I, I give you a cue and, and you
react to it. And you said as a great example
of how me as just this external person to you can elicit A
physiological response because of the behavior that that you've
(18:19):
become predicted to have when when presented with with a
specific cue. And we tend to try to recommend
as well when you're having issues with with insomnia or
sleeping, trying to get a ritualized routine in order to
try to do the same thing. So if you can get a routine that
(18:39):
can start serving for your body as a cue to start transitioning
and to bedtime, then you can tryto help elicit that same type of
physiological response. So decreasing things like your
stress hormone activation, things like cortisol and like
how you're talking about the adrenaline surge to try and
(19:01):
dampen that down. And then it's interesting when
we think of meditation and tactical breathing, it really is
a a physiological process. So when we engage in a lot of
those breathing techniques, it activates a part of our
autonomic nervous system called the parasympathetic portion of
your autonomic nervous system, which is like the rest and
(19:23):
digest piece. And so when you start engaging
in those breathing techniques, it actually starts kind of
forcing that system online. So we're moving from the, the
like, run the fight or flight response to try and activate
that system, which helps bring down heart rate, helps decrease
that stress response. But you also have to have
(19:45):
patients that, that, that takes a little time to transition.
And sometimes when we talk aboutthose routine and those tactics,
sometimes we don't give ourselves enough time to kind of
have that transition and give ourselves solid cues because
it's interesting. Sometimes I'll talk to folks,
even just talk, talk to someone in my, my lab who's one of our
(20:06):
research assistants and he, he'slike, oh, Doctor Burke, I'm, I'm
starting to like change the, thebacklight on my screen.
So it's. It's less blue and then right
next to his screen was a giant can that was a monster can with
lots of. Caffeine in.
It and I was just like, oh, I was like, I am.
I am glad that that you're trying to use.
(20:27):
Use techniques that. That you're learning, but that
that caffeine which six hours before bed can impact your
sleep, that that might make thatprocess or the cues that you're
trying to do with with your lighting not work as well as you
might intend. So sometimes when when folks are
like, oh, that's not, that's notquite quite right for me.
(20:50):
I'm like, oh, there may also be just like other things in your
routine that you might not like monsters.
It's interesting awake. At night, too.
That is so. So I'm.
I'm going to steal that for later.
That's February. It's yours.
I know. Sorry, I forget.
My jokes as soon as I say. Them.
I know no copyright on that one.You forget them because they're
(21:11):
not funny, Joe. Most of them.
I remember all those insults though.
I write them down and I read them.
Out loud to myself, but but of course they're they're they're
these things that that that sometimes may not may not
recognize. And so it's more trying to also
provide an education to say likeyou're, you're doing great on
(21:34):
this, but you might not notice it.
Like another great common example, because nighttime
awakenings happen very, very frequently.
And our bodies are actually designed to kind of rotate and
in and out of these kind of cycles.
But a lot of times we're not consciously aware.
And some of my folks who might wake up and have to go to the
bathroom or something like that,they go into the bathroom.
(21:57):
And I don't know if it if it's all bathrooms or if it's just
mine. Like the lights that are in the
bathroom are the brightest lights on the planet.
So you can see like the microscopic view of your face.
And they're like, Oh yeah, I getup and go to the bathroom.
I lay back down. I can't go to sleep.
But I was like, it's 'cause you just.
I was like, 'cause you try to try, try and light in your eyes.
I'm like, I'm so sorry. It's taking you a long time to.
(22:18):
Go. You're like washing your hands.
Right now. Not to make eye contact with
yourself like. You're walking to a grocery
store or. Something I just use a night
light. Like I don't have a big, I don't
have a light switch I turn on. Love it, I love it.
Write that down and we will start start reminding people.
But those are the things like the the first approach I always
talk about is like, let's go through what your routine is.
(22:39):
And then just from practice, I know it.
I get used to being like, what, what is your kitchen light
situation looking like at like 9:00 at night?
Like what? What are those things?
But again, like you talking about your, your visual imagery
because a lot of folks who mighthave more intrusive thoughts,
especially if they like wait till the end of the night.
(23:00):
That's the first time you actually have quiet time to be
with your own internal thoughts to try to help distract yourself
from those intrusive thoughts. 1You can kind of write, write
them down or try to get them outof your body.
But exactly what you're saying is a tactic that that we teach,
which is to use visual imagery while also doing a breathing
(23:23):
technique in order to try and engage more of those processes
to, to focus on that one thing to make make the breathing or,
or meditation more effective. So you doing that like self
starting that is, is amazing andI'm glad it's working because it
should work. But again, like sometimes people
don't don't know those things orhaven't been presented with that
(23:45):
as an option. So I, I'm so glad that you kind
of came across that yourself. And learn not to look at the
version of you stuck in the mirror dimension in the middle
of the. Night.
Yeah, you definitely don't want to do what you were as a kid.
Stare. Stare at yourself in the dark
and say Bloody Mary three times.You don't want to do that.
(24:06):
So on my end, I just want to first of all say thank you so
much for, for talking with us. And, and I just was recently
invited to do a sleep improvement program with the
Super Fi and Americas fund. And, and I'm really looking
forward to that. They, they've done some cool
stuff, but, and, and my sleep isgenerally good for A1 legged guy
who lost a leg in war. I feel like it's, it's not bad,
(24:28):
but I don't want to wait until I'm in crisis mode before
learning about it. And that's so for me, your
baseline, you know, your, your bottom should not be something
that you let yourself get close to when you have control over
because you're not always going to have that.
Yeah. So while my sleep is good, I'm
trying to learn a little bit more.
And they sent me this little packet with like, now I could
(24:49):
never wear the thing that like covers my eyes because in my
mind, like, as soon as I put that thing on, somebody's going
to break in the house or something and it's just going to
be one more. But I, I say that because
they've also got a thing to helptrack sleep.
They've, there's even the Pokémon Go has a thing that
tracks your sleep. Like my daughter was talking
about. It is like, it'll help you like
(25:10):
hatch the eggs or something. But my point is, technology is
increasingly intertwined with our sleep.
I mean, almost everybody, even if you read a book, generally
you're doing it on your phone asyou go to sleep.
It's, it's real. It's, you know, then you get,
you know, your buddy Delvin sends you something on
Instagram. And the next thing you know,
you're, you're, you're scrolling, scrolling through.
So how do we leverage technologyin a positive way to improve our
(25:33):
sleep? Or what are some potential
pitfalls that we should be awareof?
And, and how can we use some of this technology for good instead
of distractions? Because I think we're at a point
now where it's, it's hard to just tell someone now take your
phone and plug it in across the room because no one is
realistically going to do that, even though they should.
I agree 100%. I mean, there's a, there's,
(25:56):
there's the, the small wins. Like I'd love, love to be myself
as a a big beefy person that I could just lift like 200 lbs.
I know that's not true and I probably couldn't lift 100 lbs,
but I could start at 15 and start.
Start small steps. And and gain more strength and
in your sleep and, and changes with that is no different.
(26:17):
And when I think of technology, because I agree if like,
especially with how we use technology right now, it's not
always easy for me to be like, no electronics in the room.
Even though I love, I also love love to say that I also try and
think of what, what are the quick wins?
And I'm like, Hey, if your phoneis with you, there's night shift
(26:37):
mode and you can change the color of the, the background
lighting because it's so weird. Our, our eyes see, see better.
Like our, our visual system is much, much more attune and acute
as well as our internal timing system to blue light.
And so of course, when you have some of a lot of our old E
(27:00):
readers, when you're watching very expensive TV's, if anyone's
getting ready for the, the SuperBowl, we are used to having
these really high definition pictures with, with bright light
on there to help us see. And so some of the times as you,
you bring that type of technology because most, most of
(27:21):
these technologies that we see from that aspect for
entertainment or social media tends to have light associated
with it. And so it's more trying to
mediate the light aspects of it than necessarily some, some of
the other keys. Although notifications, of
course, dealing with social media as a stressor 15 years ago
(27:45):
is very different than what we have to mediate as a stressor
today, of course, like scrollingand indifferent activation if
you read or watch something that's charged.
And so a lot of our devices now are starting to get like these
sleep modes and things like thatto try to limit the
notification. So trying to change how you are
(28:07):
notified can can be a good step changing the, the lighting.
So if you have ATV in your bedroom, which I do not
recommend, but if you happen to have one in there or you have a
bed partner that that needs to watch that, try and change the
gain on it. So and just the lighting
structure. So it's more of this kind of
like red sepia tone. A lot of our phone devices or
(28:31):
things like our tablets and our computers also have that kind of
night shift type mode where you can change the color of of your
life. And do not disturb mode.
Yeah, yeah. But alternatively, sometimes you
just want to watch Reacher and have Allen Allen Richardson, you
know, and you're hold you while you go to sleep.
That's true. That's true.
(28:51):
Well. These are these are things we
were very much aware of because I was a helicopter pilot in the
Army. So, you know, light sensitivity
and preparations for night flying and OPS was a big deal.
But it was also the first time that I heard the word circadian
rhythm. And oh, that's fun to say.
What is that? And, and how does that apply,
(29:14):
you know, to me being an aviatorand being able to be at my
optimal performance because we're constantly shifting our
schedules to be able to fly, youknow, disrupting, you know, our,
our sleep sequence or we always get made fun of because of, you
know, the downtime that we had to have and the, and the rest
before we went and got into the aircraft because you don't want
a tired Apache pilot shooting missiles down rage.
(29:37):
So I'm interested to hear about your thoughts and kind of maybe
even the questions that you're asking or maybe some insights
about circadian rhythm. What does the research say about
how these disruptions impact thebody over time?
Especially for, you know, folks like us that are having to beat
our rhythms up all the time. Yeah.
Well, it's it's, it's interesting because we have
(30:00):
these two kind of primary systems that work together.
So we have that internal timing system, which is interesting.
Always a lot of times I make that a kitten too.
If you had like a watch that you're wearing or you're using
your phone, I always ask the question like if you didn't have
your phone or watch, how, how, how many of you would get to
(30:20):
work on time or, or, or do what you need to.
And most of the time it's not. So internal timing system is
really a way for us to predict our environment.
So help us have physiological signals to help us signal sleep,
how to signal us to be awake. And that complements kind of
(30:41):
what, what we consider the, the other primary system our, our
sleep need or our sleep drive. So how long you've been awake,
you're kind of getting a lot of metabolic waste and things like
that over time, which contributes to this sleep need.
And so we tend to be able to, toreally kind of feel these, these
(31:05):
things in terms of like our, our, our sleep need.
But sometimes it's harder to decouple how, how these two
systems work in harmony togetheruntil we start working, of
course. Like when we when we look at our
service members who have round the clock operations or we have
folks that are even doing something like transparent and
travel. And then we hear about this, the
(31:27):
coupling, but we call it jet lag.
And so our circadian system of course is really designed as
this kind of, it's an approximate 24 hour or so circa
around the end day, the this approximate 24 cycle that's
really built into our genes. But as it is intended to be a
(31:49):
predictor of your environment, it's also exceptionally
adaptable because it it wants tobe able to be there to help you
predict and anticipate. Like should I be eating now?
Yes, all right, I'm going to start having signaling cues so
that I can eat my food, digest that more, more quickly.
Is it getting time, time to go to sleep?
(32:10):
I start secreting my endogenous or internal melatonin to help
facilitate that that kind of tiredness and transition into
sleep at night. But when we do transmission
travel, because that circadian system can really only adapt to
about one hour time change a day, is that when that decouples
(32:31):
either for say shift workers or transmission travel, then we
have these cues that are, that are signaling our body that,
that aren't as efficient. And then if you have rotating
schedules on top of that, we tend to see like, OK, well, my,
my body isn't predicting that I should be eating at 3:00 AM in
the morning, but I'm on a 24 hour operation and I'm starving.
(32:55):
And we, we found in some of our,our research studies in the
sleep community, of course, thatwhen doing that one, your body
is like, oh, like I'm in a high stress environment.
Obviously because I'm up for 24 hours, I need really fast
digestible sugar. So I really want that, that bag
of Cheetos or something that I can just digest easily.
(33:16):
But then we don't necessarily have the physiological processes
that might be catching up to actually efficiently, like
breakdown those foods so that you can get the energy from it.
It's like, Oh, I'm going to store that for you as, as fat.
And then we see a lot of our shift workers then that start
leading to having these kind of pre diabetic profiles or more
(33:38):
inclined to have cardiovascular risk and things like that.
And so I think when you talk about how do you help folks
who've kind of been dysregulatedis really trying to start
because of how plastic and how much that that circadian system
wants to adapt, wants to predictis to start giving cues.
And really the biggest cue for that system is light, either the
(34:01):
presence or absence thereof. So in the morning, walking
outside, getting a big dose of that, that bright morning
sunshine. And then of course, as your
external environment, as you're getting closer to sunset, also
having your internal environment.
So in your house, if it's getting dark outside, this is a
great plan for you to start saying, oh, hey, instead of
(34:23):
having my bright kitchen lights on, maybe I should be using a
lamp. And so that you can also start
mimicking that. And then that internal timing
system for your circadian systemcan help have that natural rise
in your melatonin to try and help more easily with the
transition to sleep. Of course, again, different
recommendations. If you're traveling, you can do
(34:44):
so more acutely to try and be like shifting that system
earlier or later sometimes if someone won't have enough time
to appropriately mitigate the jet lag just through natural
transition. Sometimes it's not best to shift
if you're only going to be therefor 24 hours or a day.
So I love lamp lamps. Well, I think that's such great
(35:08):
insight and I think, you know, what it, what it says to me is
that our rhythm, so like, you know, it wants to get into its,
its natural kind of correspondence and we have these
things that take us out of it and take it away.
But just by being aware in recognizing that there's, you
know, some things that we can doto, to mitigate it.
(35:29):
So if we have to go to that shift work, we have to take a, a
big jump, just recognize that it's going to affect you.
But with a little preventative, you can minimize the impact to
your sleep. Absolutely.
Well, Doc, we really appreciate you all your insights and for
all you alphas out there, Doc, where can they, where can they
(35:52):
find some of this information? Where should they go?
Yeah. So on our Walter Reed Army
Institute of Research home page,we actually have a resources
page which I can send the link. It's probably very, very long
for me to actually say out loud,but happy, happy to provide
that. And it has especially for our
(36:14):
folks who are active duty right now.
And even not it's, it actually translates to everyone, but it's
especially a lot of our our resources, our our focus on
folks who are undergoing stressful situations, which I'm
aware that that could be more more than more than just our
(36:35):
service members at at this moment in time is while engaging
in jet travel, how to appropriately use caffeine.
A lot of times when people say melatonin is not for me, my knee
jerk response is like, you mightnot be using it right.
There's how to use melatonin on there, how, how to mitigate jet
(36:57):
lag. And so there's also just some
sleep leadership trainings that that we try in order to use to
kind of train, train our folks earlier on, on how to kind of
talk about sleep, how to mitigate the impacts of fatigue.
If you can't avoid, avoid sleep loss, which again, can be quite,
(37:19):
quite frequent. But then when you have control
of your sleep, which Joe, I, I appreciate your words.
So when you have control, what can you do to ensure that the
sleep that you're getting is higher quality and more
restorative for you? Or even how to do something like
sleep banked to try to help. If you know you're going to be
(37:39):
going on a a series of time where you're not going to get as
much sleep as you want, or if even you might be anticipating a
stressful event where you might not get the sleep that you want.
How can you do some tactics to improve the sleep leading up to
that to try and be a little bit more protective so that you're
not as fatigued well while you're engaging in that
activity? I personally just want to be
(38:01):
ready when they add it to the Olympics, you know, competitive
sleeping is something that I feel like I could be very.
Strong been training your whole.Life, yeah.
That one go. I spend at least six hours a
day. Training Olympian alphas.
We're going to. Have that medal, that medal for
there and it's like, I feel like, I feel like I could win.
We're going to. Have that website in our show
notes along with the social media handles.
(38:22):
So be sure to check that out, Doc.
It's been such a wonderful experience chatting with you and
look forward to digging a littledeeper into all those resources.
Yeah, Doctor Burke, thank you somuch for joining us for the
great conversation. I feel ready for my sleep study
tonight. Alphas, stick around for some
scuttlebutt after the break. Welcome back, Alphas.
(38:44):
We're keeping things short and sweet on the countdown, so
there's no scuttlebutt today, but thanks for taking the trip
down memory lane with us. We really hope you guys enjoyed
the episode. On behalf of the entire Tal
Podcast team, we hope you're enjoying time with your loved
ones during the holiday season. If you miss us during the
holidays, which I know you are, you can always subscribe to our
(39:05):
podcast, our newsletter, or sendus guest and mail
recommendations at legion.org Back slash Tal Salon.
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