Sleep Tips Overview

Sleep Tips Overview
Transcript

People often ask me about tips to sleep better. And I go back to basics. It's kind of boring, but it's very necessary. The body likes routine. It likes to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It likes to have adequate fluid. It likes its vitamins. It likes its exercise. It also really likes to sleep, but it wants to go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time. It doesn't care about Saturday, Sundays, or Christmas or new years, the body doesn't know any better. It likes routine. So one of the things to do to train yourself to sleep better is to pick a wake time and pick a sleep time. What's easier to control is wake time because you know, when the alarm goes off at 6:00 AM, you'll wake up. You don't necessarily know when you'll go to bed or when you will fall asleep after you've gone to bed. So if you know that in general, you need eight hours of sleep and you have to get up at six because you need to get ready to go to work. You need to count backward from there. So eight hours, 6:00 AM. You need to go to bed at 10:00 PM.

Sleep Tips Overview

Biological Implications

Conclusion

Early Birds & Night Owls

Effects of Sleep Deprivation

Falling Asleep and Circadian Rhythm

"The average person needs five to 20 minutes to fall asleep. We call this sleep latency. So five to 20 minutes is normal. So some people come to me and they complain, ""oh gosh, it takes so long to fall asleep."" And I don't think they like to be alone in the dark with their own thoughts and feelings, but 20 minutes is totally appropriate. The flip side may come to my office and the patient says, Oh, I can fall asleep before my head hits the pillow. Well, if that's true, they're not necessarily a good sleeper. That person is too tired and should have gone to bed half an hour ago. So if you really needed to wake up at six and you know that your, your work time depends on that awakening go to bed at 9:30 or 9:45. So you have your five to 20 minutes to fall asleep, and then hopefully you'll get your eight hours. It will be absolutely continuous because it's absolutely normal in that sleep cycle to have some awakenings. So again, people come to my office and they complain. Dr. Sahni, I wake up four or five times during the night, and I say, so what that's perfectly normal. Waking up is not the problem, it's staying awake for too long. So I just want you to know wake is part of your night, not just sleep, it's not black and white, just like the daytime, even though the longer awake, the more tired we get, it's a linear relationship, that part's true. But superimposed upon that, there's a circadian rhythm, a 24 hour cycle. It's actually 24.2 hours and women are slightly longer. In men, a little bit less long, but on top of the average, no longer I'm awake, the more tired I get. There's certain times of the day that are more alert. And we all know this between nine and 11:00 AM. It's a pretty alert time of day. So if I slept really badly last night, I'm still pretty good at 10 o'clock in the morning. On the other hand, I might've slept really well last night, but now it's Saturday afternoon and I'm relaxed. I'm the only one home and I'm in my bedroom and the cat is on the bed asleep and it's two, three o'clock in the afternoon. I might want to lie down and join the cat. I might not be tired, but between two and 4:00 PM is a sleepy time of day, not the best time for me to give a lecture, but a very common time to take a snooze, whether you need it or not. So if you wait as long enough, you become more awake because again, the day changes. And so does our need for sleep and our sense of alertness."

How Much Sleep Do We Need?

Medication Effects

"One of the things I do when I meet with people is I do a very exhaustive medication and drug review. And the reason I do this is that I know that medications that might be very well-intentioned, um, and prescribed by very good doctors may not always be good for sleep. Sometimes the side effect of drugs can be made to make you too sleepy or too stimulated. And sometimes it's just a matter of the time of day. So when I look at those medications, I look to see, does this affect sleep in a good way, in a bad way, and what time of day those pills are taken? So sometimes on the pill bottle, it simply says, take one today. And the patient decides, I think I'll take everything before bed because that's convenient. It's an on my bedside table, perfect logic. But if you're taking a medication, for example, like Wellbutrin, a common antidepressant, a good antidepressant, one of the side effects, however, is stimulation, which is why it's good for a sluggish depression, but it's not good before bed. The same may be true, even for over the counter medications, supplements B vitamins are good for your heart and lots of other things, and you need them. They tend to be stimulating. Well, that's a good thing. First thing in the morning to give yourself a boost of energy at breakfast time to let you go through the day, but definitely a bad idea. If you take your B supplement before bed coenzyme Q 10 can do that as well. Again, a good supplement, but not before bed. Certain medications should be taken before bed because they can cause sleepiness. So I may hear the opposite complaint. Oh, I'm tired all day long. And then I see the drug is kind of a sleepy drug and it shouldn't be taken first thing in the morning because it will affect us. So learning about the medications that you take, whether they are prescribed or sometimes over the counter supplements, even anti-histamines are common. We may have allergy season in the spring and fall and we think we're doing a good thing by taking a Benadryl or Claritin, perfectly good drugs, but they tend to have sedating effects. In fact, almost all the over-the-counter sleeping pills are just derivatives of Benadryl, Unisom and ZZQuil. And all those things are just Benadryl. So very, very sedating. So once we know what we're taking and what their side effects are, we can help control our energy during the day and also our sleep during the night."

Shift Work Disorder

Sleep Deficit

Sleep Deprivation Overview

Stages of Sleep

Jyotsna Sahni, MD

Sleep Medicine

Certified in Sleep Medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine
Certified in Obesity Medicine by the American Board of Obesity Medicine

Jyotsna Sahni, MD

Sleep Medicine

Certified in Sleep Medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine
Certified in Obesity Medicine by the American Board of Obesity Medicine

Jyotsna Sahni, MD

Sleep Medicine

Certified in Sleep Medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine
Certified in Obesity Medicine by the American Board of Obesity Medicine

Jyotsna Sahni, MD

Sleep Medicine

Certified in Sleep Medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine
Certified in Obesity Medicine by the American Board of Obesity Medicine

Jyotsna Sahni, MD

Sleep Medicine

Certified in Sleep Medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine
Certified in Obesity Medicine by the American Board of Obesity Medicine

Jyotsna Sahni, MD

Sleep Medicine

Certified in Sleep Medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine
Certified in Obesity Medicine by the American Board of Obesity Medicine

Jyotsna Sahni, MD

Sleep Medicine

Certified in Sleep Medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine
Certified in Obesity Medicine by the American Board of Obesity Medicine

Jyotsna Sahni, MD

Sleep Medicine

Certified in Sleep Medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine
Certified in Obesity Medicine by the American Board of Obesity Medicine

Jyotsna Sahni, MD

Sleep Medicine

Certified in Sleep Medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine
Certified in Obesity Medicine by the American Board of Obesity Medicine

Jyotsna Sahni, MD

Sleep Medicine

Certified in Sleep Medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine
Certified in Obesity Medicine by the American Board of Obesity Medicine

Jyotsna Sahni, MD

Sleep Medicine

Certified in Sleep Medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine
Certified in Obesity Medicine by the American Board of Obesity Medicine

Jyotsna Sahni, MD

Sleep Medicine

Certified in Sleep Medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine
Certified in Obesity Medicine by the American Board of Obesity Medicine

Jyotsna Sahni, MD

Sleep Medicine

Certified in Sleep Medicine by the American Board of Internal Medicine
Certified in Obesity Medicine by the American Board of Obesity Medicine

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Sleep Tips Overview

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Sleep Tips Overview

Sleep Tips Overview Transcript

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Sleep Tips Overview

Biological Implications

Conclusion

Early Birds & Night Owls

Effects of Sleep Deprivation

Falling Asleep and Circadian Rhythm

How Much Sleep Do We Need?

Medication Effects

Shift Work Disorder

Sleep Deficit

Sleep Deprivation Overview

Stages of Sleep

Jyotsna Sahni, MD

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Sleep Tips Overview
Transcript