Exhausted? Sleep hacks that work — and the ones that don't

0:00There's one place for the newest drops in wellness and performance and the biggest sale of the year. It's the drop by GNC, curating the best of what's new handpicked by the pros who know what works. And right now get it all by one get 150% off during the semi-annual live-well sale from crushing workouts to leveling up to nutrition and everything in between get the best deals on the latest innovations. All the newness is all on sale right now during the live-well sale on the drop by GNC. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is the current podcast. Sleep. Sometimes feels like none of us are getting enough of it. We're young, we complain, we shell out for another coffee. And after losing that hour, today lights saving time last weekend, many of us are feeling even more tired. Seems like everyone has advice for getting better rest. If you go over to TikTok, you'll get lots of sleep tips, mouth taping, melatonin, something called cognitive shuffling. What exactly are these? Do they actually work? Don't worry. We have your back. Eric Prather is a psychologist who runs a

1:05sleep clinic in California at the author of the sleep prescription seven days to unlocking your best rest. We spoke in September. Here's our conversation. How did you sleep last night? I slept surprisingly well, but you know, it's not always that way. I'm thankful for it. You sound surprised. You're a sleep doctor. I mean, somebody who studies sleep and you're surprised that you got a decent amount of sleep. Like you said, it's a busy world. And, you know, I think we're all trying to do our best. And, you know, there are some clear ways to improve it, but it can be a roller coaster sometimes. If you talk to people about this, they will complain about how little sleep they got. As you understand it, how many of us are struggling with sleep? Yeah, you know, I mean, the data suggests that about 30% of the population is reporting difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, waking up too early. And kind of about the same percentage is getting what we would think is insufficient amounts of sleep. So the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, other scientific bodies say that we need about seven hours to maintain optimal adult health. Of course, it might vary from individual to

2:06individual. What do you hear about how people are struggling? Is it about quantity? Is it about quality? What are what are the complaints that you would get directed towards you? Yeah, so I help run an insomnia clinic here. And so it's often both. I mean, people feel like they're not today enough sleep. And a lot of it has to do with how they're feeling during the day, right? I mean, it's kind of feeling sluggish, feeling tired, not feeling your best. They're sleep off and is fragmented. They wake up a lot in the middle of the night. Maybe have trouble falling asleep. And as a consequence, it leaves feel like they're not getting enough sleep and can't get on with their day. And so people will turn, I mean, I mentioned social media. They will turn to any venue that offers some advice on how to get better sleep. And there are all those hacks and tips that are out there that people may not make sense of. I'm going to run some of them past you to talk about whether they work or not, or if they might even make your sleep worse. I want to start with this one. Have a listen. Did you know that taking tart cherries before bed is like melatonin?

3:06Make sure it's not concentrated juice. Get it to your husband, give it to your wife, take it yourself, give it to them kids, and y'all gonna sleep like a baby. Thank you later. Tart cherry juice. Have you heard this? Yeah, absolutely. You know, it is suggested that tart cherry juice might increase availability of serotonin and or trip to fan and melatonin. And there's still a little bit of evidence to support it. In general, though, it's probably isn't going to hurt you, but it's certainly not going to solve anybody's sleep problem. All right. Here's another one that's getting a lot of attention of late. So I've been mouth taping for the past like two weeks and you guys, I know you hear it all the time, but it's actually life changing if you're a mouth breather. So she says mouth taping, which I mean, it sounds fairly straightforward. You take tape and you put it over your mouth at night to make sure you breathe through your nose. She says that's life changing. What do you make of that? I mean, I'm really happy for her, but you know, I mean, mouth taping, there's growing evidence that breathing through your nose has lots of benefits,

4:11but it also carries some risk, particularly for people who have trouble breathing through their nose are people that have obstructive sleep apnea, which is a sleep disorder where we kind of cease breathing in the middle of the night and people often have to kind of open their mouth, the gas for breath. And so there is some risk that this may kind of disrupt people's sleep even more. What does it tell you that people are so desperate for good sleep that they would put tape across their mouth while they're sleeping? It's a double edged sword in this way. I mean, I love the fact that people are trying to invest in their sleep and really trying to make that a pillar of their health. But in the same way, it is a little bit of desperation that people are really struggling and it's difficult to find kind of clear science-backed evidence-based habits to improve people's sleep. And so as a consequence, that void is filled with maybe kind of suspect solutions. In the introduction, I mentioned something called cognitive shuffling. If people haven't heard of it, here's a guy on TikTok who says he's a doctor. He does a lot of night shifts to explain what this is.

5:12To do cognitive shuffling, what you have to do is think of a completely random word. And then visualize the thing that that word represents. From there, think of a second word and a third and a fourth. They're all completely unrelated. The aim here is to give random thoughts to your brain to stop it from being anxious and allow you to get off to sleep. What do you understand about cognitive shuffling? Yeah, I mean, many people struggle with kind of an active mind when they get tried to go to bed. And so this technique is really to kind of fill that space. It's not magic. Our brain can only focus on so many things at one. And so if you are focused on a random word and then you're kind of identifying words to start with that letter and you do it over and over and over. I mean, you're really filling that space and it allows your brain to kind of get the rest of its needs and allow you to drift off to sleep. And so it definitely can be a powerful tool for people. I don't think it's always a one-size-fits-all solution. It's just another example of how distraction can be effective in helping people drift off to sleep. So has it worked? I mean, it's interesting. I've done this before, who I count, you pick the

6:15number 300 and you count backwards by threes. And I will find, I mean, I can get through a handful of numbers and then off I go. This might actually work. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's the exact same principle focusing your mind and then nature takes over. What about when nature is not enough, people will take all sorts of things. Melaton and magnesium gravel, of course, prescription sleep aids as well. Where do you stand on those interventions? You know, they're not all made equal with respect to risk. So it's important to kind of console your doctor if you're taking something. I mean, there's definitely a role for sleep medications in kind of a cute setting, but they weren't designed for chronic daily use. And so that's where we can often get into trouble. Because what often develops is this psychological dependency on these medications that you feel like you can't sleep without them. That's where you really need to kind of pause and think about, okay, what are the perpetuating factors that are causing this insomnia? Because often those medications

7:16are really just masking kind of the underlying problem. I mean, we also live in a society where we are on screens all the time right up until the moment, perhaps, when we close our eyes and go to sleep. There has been talk of how long you should have between the time that you're looking at a screen and the time you want to go to sleep and that number can change. People also will say, well, it doesn't really matter because that's the world that we live in. Should we get off the screen before bedtime? It really sort of depends, which I appreciate is kind of unsatisfying, but we really need to remember that we're not kind of a laptop computer. Our brain doesn't just shut down at our whim. And so, you know, really ensuring that you have this transition time to relax and get ready for sleep is important. And some people use screens for that. I mean, the concern has always been recently around blue light exposure and that that impacts the brain and decreases melatonin production and this may get in the way of our sleep. And while that is true, to some extent,

8:20you know, the content that we are consuming on, say, social media, those kind of things are really arousing to our brain. I mean, in some ways, it's really rewarding. And so you get kind of this dopamine hit that might keep you aroused or, you know, it might increase anxiety. And those things really work against us in our ability to let go and go to sleep. I mean, the other part of this is that we think differently about sleep now because we have more information about how we're sleeping. Before, if you didn't get enough sleep, you knew that because you woke up and you were exhausted and cranky and miserable. Now, you can look at your phone, which tells you from your watch that this is how much sleep you got, but also what kind of sleep you got. You can wear the ring that will give you even more information. Do you think those devices that give us data on sleep? Are they helpful? Are they harmful? Are there something in between? I think there's somewhere in between. They're often part of the reason that people have become more and more interested in their sleep because we can measure it for so long. It was kind of magical. And it still is to, to some extent,

9:21but we are learning a lot. And at the individual level, people can begin to identify patterns in their sleep that might be meaningful. You know, you take, you know, wearing a device and the impact of, say, drinking alcohol close to bedtime. I mean, you see that almost immediately in the signals. And so, you know, people can do experiments to better understand what things work for them, what might support their sleep. But also, there is some risk. I mean, there's a lot of data. People can get wrapped up in it. In fact, several years ago now, there was a condition point orthosomnia, which is an insomnia that develops because of wearable devices, because people get so anxious about their sleep. I mean, not a day goes by where someone doesn't come into my clinic with, say, their Apple data. And, you know, they lose their mind over kind of what they do or do not have in their sleep data. Tell me about some of the things that do work. If people, I'd read somewhere that 30% of Americans live within insomnia. There are a lot of people who perhaps don't identify

10:22as insomniacs, but they wake up in the middle of the night and they're frustrated and furious, because they can't get enough sleep. They can't get back to sleep. What habits do work to get somebody a decent night's sleep? When people come to my clinic, the first thing that I have people do is standardize their wake-up time. So, get up at the same time seven days a week. Make it consistent. And the reason for this is it helps in train your circadian rhythm. And then it also helps kind of regulate what's called your sleep drive, which is something that kind of builds up throughout the day and increases your sleepiness as you're awake. The next thing is, you know, ensuring that you have a strong wind down routine. So, again, we want to make sure that people can transition the bedtime. And these rituals can be really powerful in kind of telling your body what comes next. This can be, you know, giving yourself an hour, do something for yourself, do something, calms you down, you know, turn down the lights, make sure that your sleep environment is well-supported. And then, you know, with people are having kind of consistent bad nights,

11:22one of the things that often is really powerful is actually moving your bedtime a little bit later. And this feels kind of counterintuitive because you want sleep so badly. But it actually really increases your sleep drive or called your homeostatic sleep drive, this need for sleep. And often can kind of lead to more sleep consolidation. And then the final thing that I think is really important and is really often at the foundation of insomnia is people spend a lot of time in bed not sleeping. The bed we say is for sleep or sex. And, you know, if you're having lots of nights of kind of tossing and turning and, you know, you're in bed awake for, say, more than 30 minutes, it might make sense to get out of bed and wind down until you feel sleepy again and then return to bed. Because what often occurs is that when people are having bad nights of sleep, they'll tell me things like, you know, I'm feeling really sleepy and then I got in bed and my brain woke up. And that's what's called a cognitive arousal. And that is brought on by kind of all these bad nights that your bed itself has kind of become a trigger. So trying to break that that

12:27relationship and repair it with the feeling of sleepiness over time can ensure that the bed again becomes this supportive, sleep-inducing trigger. Why should I stick my head in the freezer? Never ends. So in this book, I use that as an example as an alternative to napping. And so, you know, people are trying to increase their alertness. And so there's some data to suggest that kind of cold exposure kind of activates your sympathetic nervous system and can kind of get you going. People I meet with, they're trying to fix their sleep. And so in that case, napping is something that we suggest again because it impacts your night. Are we thinking differently about sleep now? Because there used to be a time when the captains of the universe would brag that they got, I can operate on three-hour sleep. I don't need more than three. It feels like that's over and done with in some ways. I wish it was over and done with. I think that's true. I think my cynical view is that some of the reason that people are

13:28so interested in sleep is because this industry has been created. And so now there's all these products. I do like to think that kind of the collective consciousness around sleep has been changing and shifting towards sleep is really fundamental for health. And that's all good news. But, you know, as we've already discussed, I mean, for some people, it's kind of pushed them into this area of anxiety or optimization and trying to fix their sleep or gamify their sleep and or hack it. And, you know, that can often be a dangerous path. But, you know, overall, I'm thrilled with the changes that people are making about their sleep, the way that we're thinking about it. And I think the future is bright for this field. So, you know, admittedly, there's a lot that we still have to learn. So for somebody just finally, who comes to your office and they, you look at them and you know that they're not sleeping, but they will tell you that they're losing their mind because they're not getting enough sleep. And they worry that they'll never get enough sleep and that they'll never sleep well again. What do you say to them? I say that, you know, one,

14:30I completely understand. And it's really scary, you know, when people begin to have insomnia, it feels like everything is broken. I think of sleep is kind of the glue that holds our life together. And so, you know, first about kind of meeting them where they are. But the good news is that, you know, we're built to sleep. Sleep has kind of been conserved across millennia, across all the species that we've ever studied do something that looks like sleep. And so, it's really built into us. And so, despite all the trouble that people have had, there are ways to improve it. And hopefully that gives people a little bit of confidence or hope. And that's just as important as we move forward. Eric, thank you very much for this. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Eric Breather is a sleep scientist and the author of the sleep prescription seven days to unlocking your best rest. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.