Ep. 97: Sweet Dreams with Dr. Michael Breus- Author, Clinical Psychologist, and “The Sleep Doctor”

In this next episode of the “Powered by Paragon” series, we are joined by Dr. Michael Breus. He is a board certified sleep specialist and author of three best selling books: The Power of When, The Sleep Doctor’s Diet Plan: Lose Weight through Better Sleep, and Good Night: The Sleep Doctor’s 4-Week Program to Better Sleep and Better Health. Dr. Breus appears regularly on The Dr. Oz Show, CNN, The Doctors, CBS This Morning, and Huffington Post Live. He contributes to the Huffington Post, Psychology Today and The Dr. Oz blogs. He is the official sleep expert for Princess Cruise Lines, where he helped to develop the Sleep by Princess program in the Princess luxury bed. Dr. Breus is also a Diplomate of the American Board of Sleep Medicine and a Fellow of The American Academy of Sleep Medicine. He also is the brain behind sleep chronotypes, which helps people better understand their biological programming and rhythms.

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Show Notes

[6:01] In traditional clinical psychology, it can take months, it can take years to see treatment gains with things like depression, anxiety, bipolar. I mean, these are very long term things. Sleep, you change somebody's sleep, you change their life over night. It's miraculous.
[7:09] So number one, that's going to cause us to have lighter sleep because of this anxiety, and it's going to make us have really weird dreams. So I don't know if you guys have experienced this, but we're now calling it Quaran-Dreaming, believe it or not. And what's happening is, is our anxiety is playing out in our dreams.
[8:04] So step number one is to pick one schedule in terms of a wake up time and stick to it.
[9:29] Eight hours is a myth.
[10:38] Number two is to stop caffeine by 2p.m.
[10:54] Even if you can fall asleep with caffeine on board, if I put electrodes on top of your head, the quality of the sleep that you're getting is crap.
[11:55] Alcohol is the number one sleep aid in the world. More people use alcohol to help them fall asleep than any other thing. To be clear, it's the worst sleep aid in the world.
[12:20] The data suggests alcohol reduces immune function. Period. More alcohol on board, less immunity. We're at a time where nobody, I think, can afford to relinquish any extra immunity.
[12:49] One glass of wine, have one glass of water, wait one hour. Two glasses of wine, have two glasses of water, wait two hours.
[13:34] Step number three is to stop alcohol three hours before bed.
[13:50] The single best way to improve the quality of sleep is with daily exercise.
[14:22] If our body doesn't have something to recover from, our body is not going to sleep well. So when we're not moving, our body doesn't actually require as much sleep and our sleep gets lighter as opposed to shorter. And that's why we feel worse because of it.
[15:18] Exercise daily, but step number four is stop exercise four hours before bed to allow your body to have that time to kind of calm down.
[16:02] When you wake up in the morning, step number five is to grab the water and go outside and get 15 minutes of sunlight.
[16:38] In summary, step number one, wake up on one schedule. Step number two, stop caffeine by 2PM. Step number three, stop alcohol three hours before bed. Step number four, exercise daily, but stop exercise four hours before bed. And step number five is to give the sun a high five while drinking twenty ounces of water for fifteen minutes every morning.
[19:39] There was a study done nine months ago where they pulled, I think it was ten different brands of melatonin off the shelf and they tested each one of the pills. Not one of them had in the pill what it said they had on the bottle. In most cases, it was extra melatonin and in one or two cases it was not enough melatonin based on what they said was the dosage.
[20:55] Melatonin is a sleep regulator, not a sleep initiator.
[22:21] One of the things we know is that once you reach age kind of 45 and 50, melatonin production begins to decline. Only in those instances would it make sense to me to say, hey, you should consider taking melatonin on a regular basis in the evenings.
[27:17] So our sleep need is very individualized. I don't want people to think everybody's supposed to get eight hours. That is not true. That is a myth.
[35:49] Sleep is a lot like love. The less you look for it, the more it shows up.
[36:46] Everybody needs to allow themselves to be human, number one. And number two is just create an environment and a behavioral environment that's conducive to sleep.
[37:59] You are the best person to interpret your own dreams.
[38:15] We think that dreaming is actually the process of moving information from our short term memory to our long term memory.
[42:00] Sleep is complicated, but at the end of the day, it's manageable.
[42:19] We all know how to eat healthy. We all know how to exercise healthy. We need to think about how to sleep healthy.
[44:24] We know that there's a link between poor sleep and Alzheimer's dementia. We know that there's a link between Benadryl and dementia. We don't know exactly what causes what, but we know there's a link there.
[45:12] When you deprive your body of sleep, it affects every organ system and every disease state in a negative way.
Thank you for joining us on Health Gig. We loved having you with us. We hope you'll tune in again next week. In the meantime, be sure to like and subscribe to this podcast, and follow us on healthgigpod.com.

“Step number one, wake up on one schedule. Step number two, stop caffeine by 2PM. Step number three, stop alcohol three hours before bed. Step number four, exercise daily, but stop exercise four hours before bed. And step number five is to give the sun a high five while drinking twenty ounces of water for fifteen minutes every morning.” - Dr. Michael Breus
“When you deprive your body of sleep, it affects every organ system and every disease state in a negative way.” - Dr. Michael Breus
“We all know how to eat healthy. We all know how to exercise healthy. We need to think about how to sleep healthy.” - Dr. Michael Breus

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