Click title to see more…

The sleep to healthy website is now a 10 lesson course on curing insomnia. 

 This course is not a quick fix and it is not easy.  The course is based on CBTi or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia.  CBTi is the first-line insomnia treatment method endorsed by:

• The U.S. National Institute of Health and
• The British Association of Psycho-pharmacology. 
• The American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

 By the end of the “Cure Insomnia” course, students will have the knowledge and tools they need to cure their insomnia.  Not just now, but for a lifetime. 

 Did I mention that it’s free?

 Go to SleepToHealthy.com to get started.

Summary: Host Dennis Trumpy:

• Explains why there will be a break in the podcast.
• His recommendation for something you can do tonight, to sleep better in the days to come so you can feel and function better in the future.

Links mentioned in the show:

Episode14: Sleep Coach with Martin Reed  https://sleeptohealthy.com/e14/

Episode 10: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi) with Dr. Stephanie Silberman https://sleeptohealthy.com/e10/

Episode1: “Listen to Sleep” with Drew Ackerman of the Sleep with Me Podcast https://sleeptohealthy.com/e1/

 

Show notes with approximate time they occur in the episode: (for this short episode, I have not used time stamps)

(Note: For your convenience, the following is paraphrasing from the interview, not exact quotes.  For exact wording, listen to that part of the episode)

Today I have some bad news and some good news.

The bad news is that I must take a break from producing podcast episodes for a while.  The thought of not posting episodes for a while saddens me.  It is similar to the feeling we have when our favorite team loses and no longer qualifies to continue in the playoffs.  Or it is like the day after the final performance of a successful play or musical tour.  There is a lingering feeling that it stopped too abruptly, too soon.

The good news is that I will be back, stronger than ever.

Although there is no interview today, as a bonus, at the end of this short episode I will explain something you can do tonight, to sleep better in the days to come so you can feel and function better in the future.

Let me explain the pause in the podcast.

This podcast gig is 100% voluntary.  I’m semi-retired and the way this works is that I work hard in my business for 5 to 6 months in the summer to pay the bills for the year and fund this podcast.  Then I take the remaining 6 to 7 months off to work on my passion – The Sleep to Healthy Podcast.

I started this podcast at the end of my summer season in 2018.  I started from scratch with no podcasting experience and no network of sleep experts.  I knew it would be an uphill battle, but my goal was to create enough episodes to carry me through the work season of 2019.  But I was not able to complete enough episodes.

My summer work takes me out of town, and I often work sunrise to sunset 7 days a week to make that business work, so there just isn’t time to put together podcast episodes.

After my work season last fall, I laboured long days on creating this podcast, usually 7 days a week for several months until I launched the 1^st podcast episode at the end of February 2019.  It may be hard to believe, but it still it takes me about 25 to 30 hours a week to create a single episode.  I will break it down for you in the show notes, but won’t bore you with the details here.

Podcast time:

Total	25
Event	Hrs
Find a guest	1.5
Read book & research	4
Communicate with guest	1
Create questions – send	1.5
Interview	2.5
Listen, make notes	2
Create show notes page	1
Create summary, record	1
Create social feeds	1.5
Create audio file	3
Release the podcast	2
Weekly stats	1
Search engine optimization	3

It seems like a lot of hours until you realize that I am still learning and that the professional podcasters like NPR and BBC take hundreds of hours per episode plus have a variety of highly trained professionals at their disposal.  From that perspective, I am probably doing OK.

Anyway, I simply can’t earn my living and produce a quality podcast at the same time.  So I don’t plan to produce any new episodes for a few  months.  If I find the time, I will produce an episode or two, but no promises.

The good news is that The Sleep to Healthy Podcast will be active again in the late summer or fall.  I am super excited as I have plenty of sleep experts and fascinating topics lined up.  Also, over the summer I plan to do some ground work to improve the podcast to make it better than ever.  I’m pleased to say that the episodes are available on iTunes and all major podcast apps and have been listened to in over 10 countries including South Africa, Australia, The United States and Canada.

Thank you for your loyal support.  You can send me ideas for improvement or encouragement through the website.  Again, sorry for the interruption and thank you for your understanding and support.

And now, as promised, here is something you can do tonight, to sleep better in the days to come so you can feel and function better in the future.

Two of the most repeated recommendations from our guests for curing insomnia are sleep restriction therapy and stimulus control therapy.  If you are not sure what these are you can refer to episodes 14, Sleep Coach with Martin Reed and episode 10 Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia with Dr. Stephanie Silberman.  You can easily access these through the sleeptohealthy.com website or on your favorite podcast app.

The issue in common with both is that they require you to have the self discipline to get out of bed when you least want to.  Generally this happens in the middle of the night and when waking in the early morning, especially after or during a poor night’s sleep when you least want to comply.

The problem stems from our brain’s emotional centre, especially the  amygdala, being highly active at night.  So our emotion of reluctance is heightened.  At the same time our logic centre, the prefrontal cortex, which allows us to override our emotions, is at low activity.  So our ability to overcome the negative emotion is greatly reduced.  Even if we are a person who has good self control during the day, we can struggle to do what’s helpful but difficult in the middle of the night.  That’s certainly my case.

What to do?  Here is a 2 step process that should help.

When you know you should get out of bed but lack the will power, rank your motivation level out of 10.  Perhaps it is a 3 out of 10.  Then ask yourself, why isn’t my motivation level even lower, say a 1 or 2 out of 10.  For example, it might not be lower because you know it will help in the long run.  Or it might not be lower than 3 out of 10 because you know that once you are out of bed you don’t feel that bad.

Answering this simple question will automatically increase your motivation to do the right thing.

Now for step 2.  Right away, start counting down from 5 and before you reach 0, start the motion of getting out of bed – for instance, swing your legs around or start removing the sheets.  You don’t need to be out of bed before you reach 0, just in the process of getting out of bed before you reach 0.

You should find your success rate at getting out of bed when you least want to, goes up.  It may not reach 100%, but it will almost certainly improve.

You can use this same technique for other initiatives you struggle with such as exercising or starting an unpleasant work task.

The 5 second rule is covered more thoroughly at the end of episode 1, titled Listen to Sleep with Drew Ackerman of the Sleep with Me Podcast.

This is the end of the episode.  Please remember to drop me a note through the sleeptohealthy.com website.  Thank you for keeping me company today.  I hope it won’t be too long before you join me next time on The Sleep to Healthy Podcast.

 

Click title to see more…

The sleep to healthy website is now a 10 lesson course on curing insomnia.

This course is not a quick fix and it is not easy.  The course is based on CBTi or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia.  CBTi is the first-line insomnia treatment method endorsed by:

• The U.S. National Institute of Health and
• The British Association of Psycho-pharmacology.
• The American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

By the end of the “Cure Insomnia” course, students will have the knowledge and tools they need to cure their insomnia.  Not just now, but for a lifetime.

Did I mention that it’s free?

 Go to SleepToHealthy.com to get started.

Summary: Guest: Martin Reed, Insomnia Coach ®:

• Martin Reed tells about his struggles with insomnia and sleep restriction therapy success stories.
• The common issues most people with insomnia share.
• The biggest challenge for people with insomnia.
• 3 true statements about you and sleep.
• What motivates people to finally tackle insomnia.
• Martin’s approach: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi).
• The aspects of CBTi that people have the most trouble executing.
• The most common underlying problem that interferes with sleep.
• The myth of the 8 hours sleep.
• How to tell if you are getting enough sleep.
• Why we have trouble falling asleep.
• The Sleep Forum, what its for, what he has learned while moderating it, how to benefit, what pitfalls to avoid.
• How to reconcile “sleep well for better health and well being” with “don’t worry about sleep as it prevents you from sleeping well.”
• Where people have the most problem with sleep hygiene.
• The improvements people receive from sleep coaching.
• What Martin Reed would put on a
• His recommendation for something you can do today, to sleep better tonight so you feel and function better tomorrow.

Note: We encourage you to listen to the podcast with a portable device (via a podcast app is best) rather than sitting in front of the computer.

Links mentioned in the show:

Martin Reed’s website: https://insomniacoach.com/

Mr. Reed’s two-week free sleep training course: https://insomniacoach.com/sleep-training/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/insomniacoach/

Twitter: @insomniacoach,  https://twitter.com/insomniacoach

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL5LsLUeVA2j_Vsl5625shQ

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myinsomniacoach/

Episode 10: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi): https://sleeptohealthy.com/e10/

 

Show notes with approximate time they occur in the episode:

(Note: For your convenience, the following is paraphrasing from the interview, not exact quotes.  For exact wording, listen to that part of the episode)

Introduction (the host, from the audio):

In high school, I played many sports: The traditional basketball and soccer but also cricket and rugby.  Regardless of the sport, we always had a coach, someone with more experience and knowledge of the game who taught us, encouraged us, held us to account and helped us improve our skills.  Even seasoned professional athletes have coaches.  So why not a coach for sleep?

As a listener to this podcast, you might be solidly in the self-help group, someone who prides themselves on learning and improving on your own.  But what if you find yourself learning lots, but not improving your sleep to the point you desire.

Today we will be talking with Martin Reed, the Insomnia Coach®.  Martin offers a free 2 week insomnia training course, runs an on-line sleep forum and provides one on one sleep coaching.  So he understands what we can achieve on our own, and when we need a supportive coach.  He has many sleep restriction therapy success stories.

Martin has his masters degree in health and wellness education, is a certified health education specialist, holds Certification in Clinical Sleep Health, and is an affiliate member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.  Martin is the founder of Insomnia Coach® at insomniacoach.com.

Martin, welcome to this episode of the Sleep …… to Healthy Podcast…..

Interview

1:50 – Martin read talks about his struggles with insomnia and how he handled it.

5:50 – How his students struggle with sleep before they start his course.

Many of the students struggle with the same issues. Primarily it is anxiety and worry. They worry about sleep or the effects of poor sleep. Their bed can become associated with anxiety and worry rather than a place where they can relax. Also people have unrealistic expectations about sleep such as bad things will happen if they don’t get 8 hours of sleep.

7:40 – What are their biggest challenges to improve their sleep?

The problem is they don’t know what to do, they have tried lots of things, but nothing has been helping. They believe that they lost the ability to sleep.

9:00 – Martin comments on three statements he uses: You are capable of restorative sleep, You have not lost the ability to fall asleep or fall back to sleep and You can sleep without sleeping pills.

Having people know this is important so because they think they have lost the ability to sleep. Sleep is a core biological function like breathing. Anxiety and worry can postpone sleep, but eventually sleep will take over. Our bodies make us sleep, sleeping pills don’t make us sleep. They can reduce anxiety and arousal to make it easier, but the sleep is still be generated by our own bodies.

11:00 – What motivates people to finally make the effort to improve their sleep?

When it gets to a point where it really affects your quality of life. You feel tired all the time, it affects your productivity, you start to avoid things like going into work. Then they’re willing to put in the work.

12:30 – How the arousal system can hijack the Circadian rhythm and the Sleep Drive systems.

There are three types of arousal. Cognitive arousal such as the thoughts and worries that make sleep difficult. The second is physiological arousal such as a racing heart or a sense of panic. And the third is a conditioned arousal where we’ve learned that the bed is a place of dis-ease and wakefulness. The states of arousal can override our natural sleep drives. The arousal is the body’s response to danger, so it takes it seriously. These responses are targeted by cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia or CBT-i.

14:40 – The approaches he uses to deal with people’s sleep issues.

First the cognitive, which is a fancy way of saying how we think about sleep, so it means setting realistic expectations about sleep. The behavioral aspects are to reduce arousal and also increase the sleep drive and reset the body clock. Combined they are a great long-term solution for insomnia because they are skill-based so once you learn them you can apply them for life. If you have problems with sleep in the future, you just go back to your toolbox and implement the solutions.  It includes sleep restriction therapy success stories.

16:10 – What aspects of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, CBT-i, do people have the most trouble executing?

There are two and they are the most important components of CBTi. The first is sleep restriction. It has bad terminology problem because it suggests that were restricting sleep when in fact we’re just limiting sleep to your normal sleep time and reducing your time spent in bed to your sleep time. Reducing your time in bed to be closer to your total sleep time increases your sleep drive because you’re spending more time awake during the day. Also your sleep becomes more consolidated which improves the sleep quality. That helps you feel better during the day. The second component that tends to be a struggle is stimulus control. We want to associate the bed with sleep so that the bed becomes a strong trigger for sleep. The only way we can do this is to make sure that the only thing we do in bed is sleep. This means that if you go to bed and you’re not getting to sleep then you get out of bed. This also applies during the night. So get out of bed until you feel sleepy again and repeat the process as necessary. In the beginning you may be in and out of bed like a yo-yo all night. But there are many sleep restriction therapy success stories. Which is difficult. Just as it took time to build up the condition to associated with arousal, it will take time to learn to associate the bed with sleep.

20:30 – Insomnia can be s a symptom of an underlying problem. What are some root problems of people’s sleep issues?

Although some cases of insomnia have underlying issues such as stress, most cases do not. The most common cause is anxiety and worry, usually about sleep, or the consequences of poor sleep. This can lead to the wrong approach to sleep. And this makes the problem worse.

22:10 – The average sleep time after your training is 6.8 hours which is well below the 8 hours of sleep that we hear and see in the media. What is happening?

The idea that we need 8 hours sleep is a myth and is inaccurate. This triggers many cases of insomnia as people worry they are not getting the proper amount of sleep. People tell him that they had no problem with sleep until they tried to get more of it. Just as we wear different size shoes, we need different amounts of sleep. And we shouldn’t try to fit in the average of everybody else’s foot size and worried that are foot size is different. A German study showed that our need for Sleep decreases as we age, for instance an 80 year old needs only about six hours of sleep on average. But these are just averages as everyone needs a different amount of sleep. Adjust your sleep not on duration, but how you feel during the day and your judgment of the quality of your sleep.  This is why there are so many sleep restriction therapy success stories.

25:10 – How can you tell if you are getting enough sleep?

Don’t make your judgment when you first wake up as you may experience sleep inertia. This is a groggy sleepy feeling when we first awake in the morning. It can last half an hour to an hour first thing in the morning. If you’re feeling productive, if you’re feeling reasonably energetic, then you are probably sleeping fine. If you are randomly falling asleep during the day then you probably have a problem. It is probably not insomnia, as insomnia is usually associated with general fatigue, not actually falling asleep. It’s very subjective, generally if you feel good during the day then your sleep is probably just fine.

27:10 Why do we have trouble falling asleep?

For many people it is because they go to bed before they are sufficiently sleepy. This leads to insufficient sleep drive. Sleep drive builds during the day, and the longer we have been awake and the more active we have been, the stronger the sleep drive. So if we didn’t sleep well the night before then we tend to go to bed early to compensate, but if our sleep drive is still too low we will not get to sleep. Another problem with sleep onset is anxiety and conditioned arousal and worry that happens when we go to sleep.

30:00 – What problems does the Sleep Forum help people solve?

When he had insomnia he felt quite alone, like other people didn’t get it, so when he told friends that he had insomnia they really didn’t understand. They thought that if they had one bad night sleep they had insomnia. So he thought that having a forum could help others connect with people with similar experiences.

31:40 – What has he learned from moderating The Forum?

That people have a lot in common with each other concerning insomnia, that they share many of the same issues. Many people think their situation is unique, but it’s not. Although there are many different triggers, people’s experience with insomnia is very similar. The other is people have a lot of unhelpful beliefs about sleep. They can have a lot of crutches and rituals that are really not helpful. The rituals can leave the person thinking that unless they do this same ritual every night that there was sleep will be even worse. Sleep hygiene, by itself, does not work to cure insomnia. Everybody with insomnia has tried sleep hygiene, but by itself it is not a cure. You can be helped when combined with cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, or CBTi, but by itself does not work. It can do harm in that people will try sleep hygiene and when it doesn’t work they come to the conclusion that there is something wrong with them and their sleep.

35:10 – How to get the most benefit from the forum.

Just be open and honest and share your story. Even if you don’t get a response or at get advice I can still help. Keep in mind that it is a peer support group and that he is not there all the time. Also, the advice you get there might not be the best advice for you. As people cure their insomnia, that they will not be in the forum anymore, so most of the content is about people were struggling with insomnia, not people who have who are now sleeping well. So you don’t get the success stories, and it can feel a bit more doom and gloom.

37:00 – What methods are combined with cbt-i, or cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia?

His professional work is now 100% cbt-i techniques as he has seen how effective a method it is.

38:40 – We are told to sleep well for Better Health and well-being but not to worry about it. How do we reconcile these conflicts of interest?

Although we can’t control sleep, we can set the stage for sleep. He uses a surfer analogy: A surfer wants to catch the perfect wave. He can’t control the waves, but there are things he can do to increase the likelihood of catching the wave. We can do things to increase the likelihood that we will get a good night sleep. The things that we can do are going to bed only when we are sleepy, go to bed at the appropriate sleep window, getting out of bed at the same time each day, and getting out of bed when you can’t sleep. Those are the things that we have control over.

40:50 – Where do people have the most problems with sleep hygiene?

The biggest problem is keeping a regular sleep schedule. Most people focus on things like not exercising too close to bedtime, having a comfortable bed, reducing lights in the bedroom. But the problem with this is that many people ignore these rules but have a good night’s sleep. When sleep researchers need a control group which is known as the no-treatment group, they typically give them sleep hygiene as their goal. So focusing on sleep hygiene is not likely to help cure insomnia.

43:20 – The types of benefits clients receive from sleep coaching.

Clients are the ones that put the work in, he acts as a guide. Everyone who is willing to put in the effort sees improvement in their sleep. One of the measurements he uses is Sleep Quality. At the beginning on a scale out of 10 they will rate it at 3.8. After completing the course they will rate it at 6.8. About a month after completing the course it goes up to 7.4, after three months it is 7.8 out of 10, and after 6 months it is up to 8 out of 10. This is because they are learning skills that can continue to be improved with time.

46:30 – What Martin would put on a billboard about sleep.

You don’t need 8 hours of sleep a night. That myth is a major driver of sleep problems.

47:20 – What is something that listeners could do today, to sleep better tonight, so they can feel and function better tomorrow?

Have no expectations about how well or how poorly you will sleep tonight. Only go to bed when you feel sleepy enough for sleep.

48:00 – Resources Martin Reed has available.

 

Summary:

Let’s summarize some of the key points Martin Reed made today.

The first that came through loud and clear is to stop worrying about how much sleep you are getting.  If you feel well rested, then you are doing fine.  If you don’t, then get some help.  But keep your eye OFF the clock.

The second is to focus on the things that actually help improve your sleep – sleep restriction and stimulus control.  You know its a bit like work – you can be busy, or you can be effective.  The two are often not the same.  Don’t spend too much energy being busy with sleep hygiene.  Do the heavy lifting of sleep restriction and stimulus control for the most impact.

The third is that when you learn good sleep skills, the skills can last you a lifetime and even allow your sleep to improve with time.  So although learning sleep skills may be an effort and discomfort, the payback is enormous.

As always, you can find the detailed show notes about the interview with Martin Reed along with all the links at sleeptohealthy.com.

This concludes our episode for today.

Other episodes related to todays topic include:

• Episode 9 with Dr. Stephanie Silberman on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for insomnia.

 

Click title to see more…

The sleep to healthy website is now a 10 lesson course on curing insomnia. 

This course is not a quick fix and it is not easy.  The course is based on CBTi or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia.  CBTi is the first-line insomnia treatment method endorsed by:

• The U.S. National Institute of Health and
• The British Association of Psycho-pharmacology. 
• The American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

 By the end of the “Cure Insomnia” course, students will have the knowledge and tools they need to cure their insomnia.  Not just now, but for a lifetime. 

 Did I mention that it’s free?

 Go to SleepToHealthy.com to get started.

 

Summary: Guest: Suzy Giordano, author of Twelve Hours’ Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old discusses:

• Suzy tells about her experience of being sleep deprived as a mother of 5 young children and how she used that to develop her method and business.
• How Suzy’s team goes into peoples homes to train babies to sleep through the night.
• The daytime benefits of the baby sleeping better for parent and child.
• Why quiet times are good for the child’s development.
• The myths and stereotypes of sleep training.
• How the baby and family should adapt to each other.
• The four stages of better baby sleep: Daytime feeding, napping, bedtime routines and nighttime sleep.
• How to teach a baby to go back to sleep after they have woken up.
• What Suzy would put in a 30 second YouTube video.
• Her recommendation for something you can do today, so the baby sleeps better tonight so you can both feel and function better tomorrow.

Note: We encourage you to listen to the podcast with a portable device (via a podcast app is best) rather than sitting in front of the computer.

Links mentioned in the show:

Suzy Giordano’s website: https://thebabycoach.com/

Book: Twelve Hours’ Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old: A Step-by-Step Plan for Baby Sleep Success https://www.amazon.com/Twelve-Hours-Sleep-Weeks-Step/dp/0525949593/

Facebook: Suzy Giordano the Babycoach, https://www.facebook.com/thebabycoach/

Instagram: thebabycoachofficial  https://www.instagram.com/thebabycoachofficial/

Show notes with approximate time they occur in the episode:

(Note: For your convenience, the following is paraphrasing from the interview, not exact quotes.  For exact wording, listen to that part of the episode)

Introduction (the host, from the audio):

When you get married, start a business or become a parent, despite your planning and analyzing, the fact is, you don’t have a clue of what you’re getting yourself into. Out of these life-changing endeavors, the one that likely has the most impact on sleep is having a baby.

I’m writing this introduction in Toronto where I am visiting my daughter who is our first born.  It’s been almost 40 year since bringing her home from the hospital, and I still vividly remember the experience.

She was quickly followed with siblings, and I trace my first experience of chronic insomnia back to the days when multiple young children meant multiple nighttime awakenings which created a habit of waking during the night.  That habit carries through to this day.

Besides the motive of care givers sleeping better, much of a young child’s development is occurring during sleep.  If you are guardians or guardians to be of young children, I would like you to avoid developing insomnia while at the same time helping with your child’s healthy development and improving the quality of time you spend together.  That is a win-win-win combination.

That is why today we are going to have a helpful talk with Suzy Giordano, author of “12 hours sleep by 12 weeks old, a step by step plan for baby sleep success.”

If you are caring for young children, know anybody else who does, or you or somebody you know are hoping to have your own family someday, you should definitely listen to today’s show.

Suzy Giordano is known as the Babycoach and is author of “12 Hours Sleep by 12 Weeks Old” and “The Baby Sleep Solution”. She is a child sleep consultant based in Washington D.C and New York. Suzy, welcome to our show.

Show notes with approximate time they occur in the episode:

(Note: For your convenience, the following is paraphrasing from the interview, not exact quotes.  For exact wording, listen to that part of the episode)

2:40 – Suzy Giordano tells about her experience in Brazil when she had five children including twins and became very sleep-deprived. She transformed her difficult situation into an opportunity.

8:50 – How Suzy goes into people’s homes to perform sleep training for their babies. Suzy and her team are often people’s last hope. They often think their baby can’t do it, that there’s something wrong with their child. She has been working with children for over 29 years working with autism, cleft palate, Down syndrome, heart problems, digestive problems. The babies have all the reasons not to be able to sleep but they do. So she finds that every child can do it. They started their business it was more like overnight care. Now they are more focused on sleep training for older kids where the bad habits have been in place. Because sleep is primary, even older children can be taught how to sleep properly. Children at any age can be redirected to finding their ability to sleep. They usually stay for five nights. Their goal is to eliminate anything that is getting in the way of their baby sleeping the optimum time. They equip the parents by answering questions and letting them know the benefits of sleep, and how, because it’s a basic need, how easy it is to get them to sleep as is age appropriate. We bring them through the worst of the storm. They get the whole family back into a better rhythm.

13:40 – The daytime benefits of better sleep such as improved child behavior and the parents decision-making ability. Sleep is a primary need and we are just beginning to scratch the surface have the importance of sleep. All the restoration, growth, filing of information etc. is occurring during sleep. If we s lose sleep then something is compromised. She wants to educate people on the importance of sleep. A rested parent is a better parent, is more engaged more willing to play, able to perform better as a parent. A rested baby is a better baby, an easier baby to manage. Sleep affects you emotionally, physically, and intellectually. There is pressure from society that we have to be with the baby, have to sleep with your baby, have to function 24 hours to be a good parent. That is a myth that she educates against. She wants parents to see sleep in their child intellectually rather than emotionally. And Society will be healthier and happier with babies who sleep well.

18:50 – Why quiet time is good for a child even if they’re not sleeping. Your baby is a gift you don’t get to keep. Your job is to give the child the best tools emotionally physically and intellectually for them to live a good life. So you are actually raising adults. Everyday you have an opportunity to teach a little lesson. You have to give them the opportunity of how to entertain themselves, how to be self-sufficient, how they don’t need to be engaged and entertained by somebody else all the time. If you are entertaining and keeping the baby entertained and engaged all the time, then that is the lesson they learned, that they need somebody else to do that for them. They can’t do it on themselves by themselves. You want to teach them that sometimes you play with other people and sometimes you entertain yourself. They can learn that they are enough. When you engage your child, you are deciding for them what they are going to be engaged in. When they are by themselves, they get to choose for themselves what interests them the most. Their imagination will kick in. Parenting is working between the extremes of being attentive to your child all the time, and ignoring them. Then they develop their own abilities to be able to explore, to use their imagination, to be creative, Etc. To become who they are meant to be. You don’t want the parents to become too important. But the parent should be at in a supportive role. You allow them the room to grow and figure things out for themselves.

24:40 – The myths and negative stereotypes about sleep training. One myth is that sleep training is the equivalent of letting your baby cry it out. This doesn’t go well with caregivers as they just want the baby to be happy. Crying is a baby’s only way of communicating from the get-go. It goes against mother’s extinct to listen to their crying baby. She tells parents that we have to make peace with crying and challenges. Because that is growth. Just as physically we have to challenge your body to get stronger and better. They have to cry just enough so they can try. She has a three minute rule where she lets them cry for 3 minutes, if at the three minutes they are so upset that they are sidetracked and not learning anything, then go in and help them get from a very emotional place to a place where they can try again. Because that is life. You have to try and try and try again in order to figure it out. That is the beauty of sleep, if you give them the chance to learn, they will learn how to go to sleep by themselves. Because sleep is a primary need,. She wants parents to learn that sleep training isn’t to cry it out, it is to try it out. Giving them room to grow and develop their own abilities. So like exercise, it’s not easy, but you feel much better afterwards. Parents are pulled in all different and opposite directions with overload of information and misinformation and different people’s opinions. Because it is their child, parents and caregivers are the hardest on themselves. She tells them to welcome every suggestion, but as a suggestion, then decide what is it that works for you with the information you have. Getting sleep under control will benefit the whole family. Parenting is one of the most difficult things anybody will do, and you’ll get lots of things right and lots of things wrong. It is a learning experience for both the baby and the caregivers. Having a good sleeper will not happen overnight, it is a conscious decision that you make and that you have to do every night. The results are very empowering. Good sleeping habits need to be practiced every day throughout your whole life.

31:50 – How should the baby and the family adapt to each other? Unfortunately, it specially in the US, the baby becomes the center of attention. In reality the baby is the most malleable, and she thinks every member of the family should count equally. Parents are in charge because they are most experienced and have access to information to make the best call. It doesn’t mean they have all the answers, all you can do is to have is a good intention and make the best decision you can. You just have to decide what is best for your family, not what is best for anybody else’s family. Just as the couple has to adapt to the different backgrounds and families they came from, the baby needs to adapt to the existing family. So you going to continue to compromise the same as you did before. You always get another chance to do it right tomorrow.

38:00 – There are four stages covered in the book, daytime feeding, nap times, preparing for sleep, and sleeping at night. The most important thing when the baby first comes home is that the baby gains weight so it can survive and thrive in the new environment. The goal at the beginning is to get the baby to feed and then they give them time to process the food. That is why you have intervals between feeding. As they gain weight they will eat more at a feeding and have longer times between feedings naturally. You want to avoid snacking where they eat small amounts of food throughout the day. Because that is unsustainable. The priority is to give the baby the nutrition that they need, but as you’re able to, to make a distinction between wake time and sleep time. In the daytime you want to wake them when it’s time to eat, but not at night, because that will create the optimum pattern for your baby.

42:10 – The next is the nap time. You want to put the understanding of the difference between daytime or awake time and sleep time. In the awake time the parent is in charge and creating structure.

43:00 – The night time is when you want to put rituals in place to prepare the baby for sleep. It is to create cues and predictability for the baby. So you want to transition from an active environment to one that is calm and spa like. The rituals will change depending on the child and their age.

45:10 – How do you get a baby to sleep through the night? All Humans naturally sleep at night, but we have to learn how to do it for ourselves, nobody can do it for us. Nobody can find the happy place that allows us to drift off to sleep. We have to learn that ourselves and be given the opportunity to learn that. The more we try to do it for the baby, the more we interfere with the baby learning that important life lesson. You need to keep your eye on the goal which is that the more you interfere with the baby, the more you stop them from learning important life skills.

48:30 – How do you teach a baby to go back to sleep when they have woken up? She has the three-minute rule, and the 15-minute rule. The three-minute rule is about teaching them how to sleep. This is the minimum amount possible for the average mother to hear their baby cry. It is a long 3 minutes. You put the baby in the crib and then you walk away. You walking away is you giving your baby the opportunity to try. The baby will cry. Crying is their means of communication so you want to monitor for the emotional cry, the type of crying that makes you feel uncomfortable. She calls that red-lining, and you stay in that place for 3 minutes which will seem like a long time. If after three minutes the baby does not manage the calm down, then you step in. The baby can get too upset to learn anything, and that’s what you don’t want to allow to go on and on. Your job is to bring the baby from the very emotional place where they’re not learning to of state of being more calm. And able to try again. You can pick them up and pat them. Your job in going in is twofold. One is to bring a baby from a place where they’re not learning anything to where they can learn. You want to reset the baby. Make sure there’s nothing seriously wrong such as a poopy diaper. The second is to calm the baby. Once the baby is calm, then you walk away again. Then you repeat repeat repeat until the next scheduled feeding. The resistance occurs when the child has bad habits in place and they are resisting changing the bad habits to good ones. The baby thinks things should be done differently. The sooner you put good habits into place, the better. The longer you wait, the more bad habits you have to overcome which makes it a lot more difficult.

55:00 – Suzy answer what she would put in a YouTube video. She would put in the actual facts of the benefits of sleep, and that sleep training is giving the baby the opportunity to learn something that they are equipped to learn.

57:20 – What you could do today to help your baby sleep better tonight so you can both feel and function better tomorrow. Think of bedtime like setting an environment like a spa, with cool, and dark, fed, soothing. When the baby is calm, put them to bed and walk away. Have a plan that you can follow through on. You will experience an improvement which will empower you to go to the next level. Take baby steps that challenge yourself a little and your baby a little and the results will wow you.

58:40 – Suzy reviews the resources that they have available, their website, their Facebook page, and Instagram.

 

Episode Summary:

Let’s summarize some of the key points Suzy made today.

The first is: The myths of sleep training.  Your resistance to sleep training will depend a lot on your parenting style.  If you take a more hands-off approach when parenting and are uncomfortable with forcing expectations onto your child, then you might struggle with implementation.  It can seem unnatural to struggle against the child’s resistance to training.  But if you can overcome this tendency of yours, then sleep training can benefit everyone.

The second is that sleep training is a round-the-clock event.  In includes daytime feeding and naps and bedtime rituals as well as middle of the night-time responses.  It is not just what you do after you put the child to sleep.

The third is the 3 minute rule.  One of the most distressing aspects of sleep training is when the baby is alone, in the dark, and crying.  Nobody likes that.  Maybe you settle on 2 minutes or 4 minutes, but regardless, setting up pre-determined and age appropriate boundaries can reduce much of the stress.

And the fourth, which is both hopeful and important, is that sleep training isn’t just for babies.  Even if your child is older, they can still learn to sleep through the night.  You must expect more resistance and be more persistent and adapt the techniques to the age of the child, but it is doable.

As always, you can find detailed interview notes with Suzy Giordano along with all the links at sleeptohealthy.com.

This concludes our episode for today.

Another episode related to todays topic is:

–           Episode 9 with Michael Schwartz titled Sleep on Demand where he talks about sleep training for adults.  Listening to it might make sleep training for babies seem a little more reasonable.

Thank you for keeping me company today.  I look forward to you joining me on the next episode of The Sleep to Healthy Podcast.

Click title to see more…

The sleep to healthy website is now a 10 lesson course on curing insomnia. 

This course is not a quick fix and it is not easy.  The course is based on CBTi or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia.  CBTi is the first-line insomnia treatment method endorsed by:

• The U.S. National Institute of Health and
• The British Association of Psycho-pharmacology. 
• The American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

 By the end of the “Cure Insomnia” course, students will have the knowledge and tools they need to cure their insomnia.  Not just now, but for a lifetime. 

 Did I mention that it’s free?

 Go to SleepToHealthy.com to get started.

Summary: Guest: Dr. James Alexander, author of Getting the Z’s You Want: Sleep Sense in the 21^st Century:

• Alexander tells about his teenage trauma which lead to sleep problems.
• The BRAC (Basic Rest Activity Cycle) and how to use it to get to sleep.
• Why Dr. Alexander has an aversion to the term “sleep hygiene.”
• Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) – What it is and how to use EFT for insomnia and EFT for sleeping in great detail.
• “Real-Time” Emotional Freedom Training or EFT for sleep at night and EFT tapping for insomnia or EFT tapping for sleep.
• What Dr. Alexander would put in a 30 second YouTube video.
• His recommendation for something you can do today, to sleep better tonight so you feel and function better tomorrow.

Note: We encourage you to listen to the podcast with a portable device (via a podcast app is best) rather than sitting in front of the computer.

Links mentioned in the show:

Dr. James Alexander’s website:  www.drjamesalexander-psychologist.com

LinkedIn:

Book: ‘Getting the Z’s You Want: Sleep Sense in the 21st Century https://drjamespsychologist-com.webs.com/apps/webstore/products/show/7342820  – OR – https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Zs-You-Want-Sleep-sense/dp/154476989X/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Dr-James-Alexander-323849141056608/

 

Show notes with approximate time they occur in the episode:

(Note: For your convenience, the following is paraphrasing from the interview, not exact quotes.  For exact wording, listen to that part of the episode)

Introduction (the host, from the audio):

So far on the podcast we have covered a wide range of sleep advice such as cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia and sleeping pills.  But this represents a small slice of the methods used in different cultures to cure sleeping ills.

Humans have a natural suspicion of ideas from other cultures as they seem strange and we can’t make sense of them within our frames of reference.  But if we can bridge that gap we may benefit immensely.  A good example is meditation.  When I was growing up, it was foreign and shunned.  Now it is mainstream, helps millions and is widely viewed as beneficial.

Today we are going to discuss BRAC, EFT (EFT for insomnia and EFT for sleeing) and EMDR.  Haven’t heard of them?  Well neither had I until I read Dr. James Alexander’s book: Getting the Z’s You Want: Sleep-sense in the 21^st Century.  Dr. Alexander has a gift for taking ideas from another culture and making sense of them in our western understanding of things.  If you have been frustrated with traditional approaches, or want to take your sleep to a new level, this episode is for you.

And although we might not be familiar with these techniques, they are backed by the World Health Organization and have peer reviewed studies including the gold standard – double blind studies – to support their effectiveness.

Dr. James Alexander is an Australian psychologist, author of two books and self-professed occasional poor sleeper.  He joins us from New South Wales in Australia.

 

Interview:

2:40 – Dr. James Anderson tells about his sleep struggles. He was nearly killed in a car accident as an 18 year old. His recollection is that his sleep became difficult after that experience. As an adult sleep has been a challenge, sometimes he gets on top of the challenge, sometimes it is difficult. So he has had to explore options to improve his quality of sleep.

3:40 – What sleep strategies work for him? There are many factors that influence sleep. It’s rare that only one solution works, so he has a suite of interventions. It includes Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT (EFT tapping for insomnia and EFT tapping for sleep), which involves tapping on a accupuncture points.  Also there is the need to address trauma in a person’s life, and also alternative solutions such as herbal remedies or homeopathic remedies.

5:40 – What is the BRAC cycle. BRAC stands for Basic Rest Activity Cycle. It could also be referred to as the brain rest activity cycle since it refers to the brain. When our brain is active we are utilizing sodium and potassium ions. These ions can become exhausted. Then the brain needs to take a rest. Then the brain becomes deactivated to a certain extent and we become day-dreamy or tired. During that time the sodium and potassium ions are becoming replenished. The cycle is 80 to 120 minutes with an average of 90 minutes. So the cycle is resting for a while and replenishing the sodium and potassium ions, and then swinging back up into an activation level where we are quite alert.

7:50 – How can the BRAC cycle can be used to get to sleep? If we try to get to sleep when we are in the cycle where we are on the upswing of activation, we will have trouble falling asleep. But in the last 20 minutes when the brain is becoming quite deactivated, is the time that’s most conducive for falling asleep. We’ve all had times during the day when we have been in a boring situation and we struggle with staying awake. Likely at that time our brain is cycling down at the deactivation level. So if we are aware of the timing of the BRAC, then we can coordinate the downward cycle with the time that we go to bed. If we try to fall asleep at the wrong time of the cycle, you can feed into a feeling of anxiousness or frustration around getting to sleep.

10:30 – Dr. Alexander tells why he has an aversion to the term “sleep hygiene”. The term hygiene is borrowed from terminology in the physical health area such as medicine. It is a problem in that issues with living become medicalized. He is cautious about the over medicalization of ordinary problems with living. And the problems are not contextualized, meaning that we don’t deal with the problem in their context. Such as what is going on in our lives now, and our history of emotional and psychological events such as traumas. So it tends to happen when you medicalize an issue is it often leads to a pharmaceutical solution. His observation and reading of the research shows that pharmaceutical solutions to sleep problems often cause as many problems as they solve. He also recognizes that sometimes sleep problems do have a medical foundation and need to be taken care of through medicine. But more often than not he does not think that most sleep problems have a medical cause.

13:10 – Emotional Freedom technique, or EFT. EFT is a psychological process that takes advantage of acupuncture points. But no needles are involved, we simply rub or tap the acupuncture or acupressure points. It came about from an American psychologist whose name is  Roger Callahan. So he combined exposure therapy with the acupuncture points using acupressure. So it combines Western psychology in the form of exposure therapy with Eastern methods of acupuncture points. It involves identifying an emotional, behavioral, or health issue, and then tapping the acupressure points while you repeat phrases about the issue.  It includes EFT for insomnia, EFT for sleeping, EFT tapping for insomnia and EFT tapping for sleep.

15:00 – How do you perform EFT? The first step of of EFT is to establish the target for change, the thought our reaction that were trying to correct. We construct the phrase about the issue we are wanting to address. So in terms of sleep issues, EFT is very effective for sleep issues, we need to identify clearly the issue we are trying to correct. So the issue could be problems falling asleep, problems staying asleep, or problems waking up too early and not being able to get back to sleep. From that we create a set up phrase,. The standard formula for the setup phrase is even though I – – -, I deeply and completely accept myself. So for instance, if my difficulty was falling asleep, I would say “Even though I find it very difficult to fall asleep, I deeply and completely accept myself.” So if that problem is real to me, then likely I will have anxiety or other strong emotions around that issue. So rather than bedtime being a relaxing release into sleep, it can become a time of anxiety and frustration. So particular emotional centers in the brain are being activated. While we are repeating that phrase, we are also tapping on a acupressure point such as at the karate chop position, which is on the side of the hand where you would strike something if you were doing a karate chop. So in terms of the process, it is exposing us to the anxiety that we feel around that particular issue.  It includes EFT for insomnia, EFT for sleeping, EFT tapping for insomnia and EFT tapping for sleep.

19:40 – Dr. Alexander talks about how to create an effective set up phrase. It is a case of homing in on the particular sleep issue that you have. They are not positive affirmations.

20:40 – Dr. Alexander talks about how Acupressure affects our brains. Any sensation on the skin has to be made sense of by the brain. When we stimulate the skin, we stimulate the brain. There is about an 80% correlation between the meridian lines of energy in Chinese medicine and acupuncture points, and physical channels of connective tissue in the body. So this demonstrates that there is or maybe a physiological correlation between the meridian lines and physical attributes of the body.

23:40 How does the combination of repeating the target phrase and tapping the acupressure points modify our brain? This is why we are making statements about the issue we want to change, and not positive affirmations. We repeat the reminder phrase, which is the part of the setup phrase where we filled in the blank. So for instance, the reminder phrase might be I may have the difficulty falling asleep. When we make a statement that is true for us and contains emotional power, then the emotional parts of her brain become activated. So the limbic system in the brain, which is the emotional system, becomes are highly activated, with fear or anxiety or anger, strong emotional negative reactions and emotions. So when we repeat the setup phrase, we turn the amygdala on. As we repeat the reminder phrase, we are tapping on many different acupressure points. So we are stimulating our neural cortex and our sensory cortex. So while we are activating our emotional brain, we are also activating our sense sensory brain. So these are areas away from the emotional brain that have nothing to do with the emotion. So this allows some of the neural activity in the emotional brain to be drained way into the other parts of the end on emotional brain.

A useful analogy is a dirt road with a heavy rain that cuts a channel across the road at the lowest point. If we try to fix the channel by filling it with gravel, the next time it rains the erosion will occur again and the channel will simply reform. So what we need to do is take a pick or shovel and dig feather drains that divert the main flow of water away from the channel. We can then fill up the channel and the feather drains will draw the water away. So with the EFT, we are creating neural pathways that take a main emotional are energy away. This dissipates the anxiety that we might feel around sleep issues.

32:30 – Dr. Alexander talks about the evidence of efficacy for EFT. Since Dr. Callahan created the thought field theory, an EFT procedure, there has been quite a lot of research in a variety of different situations. From anxiety, to trauma, to other emotional issues. An example is a video that he saw of a war vet from the Vietnam War, who had never had a good night’s sleep since he had left Vietnam 35 or 40 years before. He had tried many different therapeutic interventions but none had really helped. In the video an EFT specialist used a EFT technique for trauma, and he then had his first good night sleep that he’d had in 35 or 40 years. There have been double-blind control research studies as well.

35:00 – How to use EFT for sleep. It begins with the set-up phrase, you can do it prior to going to bed for the night. He finds it helpful to insert the word may, rather than stating that he will have a particular problem. So for instance he might say “Even though I may wake up too often tonight, I deeply and completely accept myself.” He does this while tapping on the karate chop point. You then tap on your eyebrow closest to the center of your head, tapping about 7 times while repeating the reminder phrase, which would be “May wake up too often tonight.” Then to the side of the eye by the rim of the bony socket, then under the eye on the rim of the bony socket, then on the upper lip below the nose, which is a spot that he accidentally omitted in his book, each time tapping 7 times while repeating the reminder phrase. Then below the bottom lip, then under your arm about in line with your nipples, then an inch below the nipple. Then if you put your two hands together has in a prayer position, and slowly roll your thumbs together until the thumbnails touch, the next spot is the outer corner of the thumbnail. Again you continue to repeat the reminder phrase while you’re tapping 7 times. The next spot is on the pointer finger at the same position on the nail is on the thumb, then the middle finger, at the same spot on the little finger. And then you go back to the karate chop point.

39:10 – The next part of the procedure is called a Gamut procedure. Make a fist with your hand and feel for the space between the knuckles of your small finger and your ring finger, and go back a little bit from the knuckles you will find a small dip or indentation between the tendons. That is called the Gamut point. The procedure now is to tap the Gamut point about seven times still repeating the reminder phrase and at the same time doing the following procedures: Close Your Eyes, Open Your Eyes,, look down to the right with your eyes keeping your head still, looking down to the left, roll your eyes in a big circle in one direction, roll your eyes in the opposite direction,. While you are doing each of these motions, you are tapping seven times and repeating the reminder phrase. Now you hum a tune that you knew when you were five years old or younger, and has pleasant memories associated with it. A common tune used is happy birthday. But a favorite nursery tune would work well too. Hum this tune for 5 seconds. Hama. Then count quickly from 1 to 7, and then go back to humming again. Now you go back to tapping on the eyebrow and continuing until you get to the karate chop position. Now you have completed the whole procedure. It sounds complex but once you get used to it you can do it in under 2 minutes. At first you may need a written procedure, but after a couple of days you will have it memorized.

42:30 – Dennis shares his experience with EFT, emotional Freedom technique.  For sleep.

47:40 – Dr. Alexander Comments on Dennis’s experience with EFT. Every few months Dr. Alexander goes through a time when he is not able to sleep very well. Then he starts to become more anxious about sleeping. Then he will remember to do his EFT. It is rarely a one-off success experience. It usually takes a few nights before he’s back to his normal sleep regime. He has other aids to employ to improve your sleep in the book, and he recommends that you try them all and try them in different combinations. Find the combination that works best for you. He has some relaxing music with sounds of nature which she uses. EFT is one helpful contributor to getting a good sleep.

52:50 – Dr. Alexander discusses real-time EFT, emotional Freedom technique. So at the time at night that you are experiencing the emotional issue, you are in the experience or in real time. Going through the physical actions of EFT tends to be too stimulating and wakes him up. Also it would likely disturb his wife. So he finds that doing the EFT procedure in his imagination is quite effective. EFT is a procedure that you need to think about, but it’s not particularly interesting or stimulating. It is not arousing. It helps to absorb some of the excess mental electro activity in the brain. So he imagines himself tapping the acupressure points while saying the phrase. He does not include the Gamut procedure as rolling his eyes would tend to be too stimulating. He cycles through the process and finds that he gets to back to sleep more quickly.

1:00:00 – Dr. Alexander tells What he would put in a YouTube video. He sees society turning more and more to medicine as a means of solving the problems of living. You are medicalizing the problems, and calling them disorders as somehow akin to medical disorders, and this takes the problem outside the context that the experience or problem began. And this leads to medical fixes to non medical problems.

1:02:00 – One thing you could do today to help you sleep better tonight so you can feel and function better tomorrow. Try not to worry too much about sleep. Studies show that the more we focus on the lack of sleep, the more we suffer from the consequences of lack of sleep. Whether we believe that we got enough sleep or not, is more important on how we function the next day than how much sleep we actually got.  Don’t catastrophize our lack of sleep. Anything we can do to reduce our anxiety around sleep will be helpful.

1:04:00 – Dr. Alexander Gives his website and the resources he has available.

 

Summary: (by the host)

And now a summary of the key points Dr. James Alexander made today.

The first is: How we medicalize life’s issues in society today.  If our sleep is broken, then fix it with a pill.  This is a temporary solution with side effects.  But as we learn over and over again on the podcast, a single symptom such as insomnia can have many causes, some medical, many not medical.  If we can see our sleep issues in relationship to our whole selves, then we have a good chance at finding the underlying causes and improving our sleep and our lives.

The second is that there are other reliable, proven techniques that are outside our awareness to help with sleep.  Emotional Freedom Training or EFT is one of these.  Dr. Alexander explains other methods in his book.

The third, buried in the conversation, is that many issues are caused by a trauma which we experienced at some point in our life.  If part of the underlying issue is trauma, then no fix will really work until the trauma is dealt with.  Dr. Alexander thinks that trauma is often an underlying and hidden issue for many of us.

As usual, you can find detailed show notes about the interview with Dr. James Alexander along with all the links at sleep-to-healthy-dot-com.

This concludes our episode for today.

If you found this episode helpful, you might also want to listen to episode 9 with Michael Schwartz where he covers Intensive Sleep Retaining, which is another non-traditional but effective solution for getting to sleep quickly.

Thank you for being with me today.  I encourage you to let your friends know about the podcast and I look forward to you joining me on the next episode of Sleep to Healthy.

Click title to see more…

The sleep to healthy website is now a 10 lesson course on curing insomnia. 

This course is not a quick fix and it is not easy.  The course is based on CBTi or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia.  CBTi is the first-line insomnia treatment method endorsed by:

• The U.S. National Institute of Health and
• The British Association of Psycho-pharmacology. 
• The American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

 By the end of the “Cure Insomnia” course, students will have the knowledge and tools they need to cure their insomnia.  Not just now, but for a lifetime. 

 Did I mention that it’s free?

 Go to SleepToHealthy.com to get started.

Summary: Guest: Dr. Wallace Mendelson, author of Understanding Sleeping Pills:

• Mendelson gives an example of a young engineer with insomnia that used a combination of sleeping pills and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia to solve his sleep problems.
• Why Dr. Mendelson put sleep art in his book on sleeping pills and why he remains an active sleep advocate into his retirement.
• How to be an equal partner with your doctor when making decisions about your health care and how to prepare before going in to see you healthcare provider about sleep.
• Things to know if you are trying to solve sleeping issues on your own.
• What to do if your sleep medication is not working and how to improve your chances of success.
• What are reasonable expectations for sleeping pills.
• Why alcohol should never be used with sleeping pills.
• Melatonin as a sleep aid.
• What Dr. Mendelson would put on billboards to get his message out.
• His recommendation for something you can do today, to sleep better tonight so you feel and function better tomorrow.

Note: We encourage you to listen to the podcast with a portable device (via a podcast app is best) rather than sitting in front of the computer.

Links mentioned in the show:

Dr. Wallace Mendelson’s website: https://www.zhibit.org/wallacemendelson

Twitter: @TheScienceofSleep,  https://twitter.com/ScienceofSleep1

Book: Understanding Sleeping Pills

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Sleeping-Pills-Wallace-Mendelson/dp/1718039980/

Book: Understanding Antidepressants:

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Antidepressants-Wallace-B-Mendelson-ebook/dp/B07B4GWKSN/

 

Show notes with approximate time they occur in the episode:

(Note: For your convenience, the following is paraphrasing from the interview, not exact quotes.  For exact wording, listen to that part of the episode)

Introduction (the host, from the audio):

Humans have been trying to improve their sleep with sleeping aids for thousands of years.  It is only natural to seek out solutions to insomnia.  It is unpleasant laying awake for hours and the daytime consequences can be equally undesirable.  The wish for an instant, convenient, effortless, effective solution to our sleeping problems is enticing but not necessarily the right answer or achievable.

Sleeping pills have been with us for decades, and recent advances have seen new medicines that are more targeted for specific sleep issues and, equally importantly, less detrimental during our wakeful hours. But what are reasonable expectations for these pills?

When deciding if sleeping pills are appropriate, many factors need to be considered such as:

–           The root cause of the problem being solved.  For instance, is the sleep issue caused by stress or is there a biological basis?

–           Interactions with other medicines or herbal products, or even supplements,

–           Relevant medical issues such as weakened kidney function or sleep apnea,

–           How long the chemicals stay in our system and its impact during the daytime,

–           What other issues the person is dealing with and how urgently intervention is needed,

–           And which non-medical interventions are appropriate.

All this, means, that it is in your best interests to be well educated when you think about taking a sleep aid to help with your sleep problems.  The issue isn’t whether sleeping pills and their cousins are good or bad, but whether medication is appropriate, and if so, which one. Uneducated choices can prove problematic such as using a sleep medication that suppresses breathing when you already suffer from sleep apnea.

Fortunately today we have the person who wrote the book on sleeping pills.  Dr. Wallace Mendelson who recently wrote the book “Understanding Sleeping Pills.” He is a retired professor of Psychiatry and Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Chicago.  Dr. Mendelson’s credentials are too numerous to list here but includes being the director at the Sleep Disorders Center at the Cleveland Clinic, publishing over 190 peer reviewed papers and is a past president of the Sleep Research Society.

In his book, in addition to sleeping pills, Dr. Mendelson covers other treatments for insomnia such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia and he covers non-prescription sleep aids.

Interview:

3:50 – Dr. Mendelson gives an example where somebody struggled with a sleep problem but worked their way out of it. His example is of a young engineer who had trouble getting to sleep, found himself thinking about issues and problems he was dealing with during the day at night, he would wake up during the last half of the night and the result was in the morning he would not feel well rested. At work he was less enthusiastic than he used to be and he thought that his memory was not as good as it used to be. It’s important to focus on issues outside of sleep, so he found out in his personal life that he was unhappy with his marriage with some tensions with his wife,. He had tried over-the-counter sleep aids but that didn’t seem to help. They looked to see if there was any illnesses that he had that might have caused the sleep difficulty but there didn’t seem to be anything there. They looked at other medications, and noticed that he was on a decongestant for a chronic sinus condition, so we talked to his doctor about alternative types of medicines that would not be as disruptive to his sleep. He was also taking a thyroid medication so they tested to make sure that that was at the proper level, which it was. They looked at psychiatric illnesses and he didn’t appear to have any other than a slight depression but not a severe depression. He suggested that he try cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia or CBTi, which is a non medical intervention. Has patient was skeptical of that approach, wanting something that would be faster and not take such a long time. He informed him that it usually only takes 2 or 3 months with six or eight visits. So they made a compromise in combining CBTi with sleeping pills. This gave them a relatively quick short-term solution while working on the longer-term solutions. And that solution worked well for him.

10:20 – Dr. Mendelson talks about The Sleep art which is included in his book on sleeping pills. While he believes strongly in the scientific approach, it doesn’t always express the feelings and emotions around the subject whereas art is a better medium to do that.

13:30 – Dr. Mendelson talks about why he remains enthusiastic about sleep education even into his retirement. Insomnia is not just something that impacts at person while they are laying in bed unable to sleep, it affects them 24 hours a day. People with insomnia are more likely to get into accidents, have problems at work, and have problems in their personal lives. Also he wants people to know that it’s not hopeless and there are a lot of treatments options out there.

15:00 – What are the risks and side effects of sleeping pills? In the book he tries to make people aware of the benefits and the risks so they can make a balanced and informed decision. He thinks that you should not be a passive recipient of treatments for your condition, but that you should be an equal partner with your doctor. But to be an equal partner means that you must be informed. You also must balance the risk of the medication with the risk of not treating insomnia has there are issues such as mentioned earlier and also health effects.

17:50 – What to know if you are trying to solve sleeping issues on their own. The first one would be to educate yourself about sleeping issues, the consequences of not treating it, and what treatments are available. He thinks that it is important to work with a caregiver and look at the effects of other medications and illnesses. Also to look at potential psychiatric issues which really need the help of somebody else who is qualified. There are online methods of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia or CBTi, but the jury is still out whether they are as effective as getting help from a professional. They can be helpful if you are also seeing a professional.

19:00 – Dr. Mendelson talks about how to prepare before going to see a doctor or speak sleep specialist. One thing is to come into the appointment prepared and educated. That was one of the purposes of writing the book so that people understand they medical issue with the insomnia as well as some of the solutions with their benefits and risks. The bottom line is to prepare, prepare, prepare.

22:10 – What things should you make sure your medical practitioner it’s aware of? It is important to tell them how about any medications you’re taking, including any over-the-counter medications. Another is to be honest and forthright about your alcohol consumption as there is a tendency to minimize this aspect. Alcohol is important because it can directly impact the quality of your sleep, especially in the ability to be able to stay asleep. Even in moderate amounts.

24:10 – Dr. Mendelson talks about his main message in “Understanding Sleeping Pills”. The first is that sleeping pills are just one of many different alternatives to deal with the issue. The second is to have an appreciation of why insomnia needs to be treated, why it is important that it be treated. And the third is that if you decide to go with the route of sleeping pills, that you have realistic expectations and understand the benefits and consequences.

25:50 – Dr. Mendelson talks about what to do if your sleep medication is not working. The first thing is to use it as an opportunity to go back to the very beginning and make sure something important has not been missed. For instance, if you are suffering from depression, it is important to solve the depression as sleeping pills will not do this, and may in fact make it worse. Although antidepressant medications in combination with the right sleeping medication can be very effective and beneficial. Also it is a chance to see if there are stressors in your life that need to be dealt with.

29:00 – Dr. Mendelssohn talks about how common it is to have to try a few different medications before you find the one that works for you. The response to sleeping pills is analogous to the response rate for medications for severe depression. The first medication may only have a success rate of 40 to 60%, so there is a pretty good chance you will need to try and alternative medication. Eventually the rate of success is in the 80 to 90% range. But you may need to try several different medications to get there. There is no research to give exact numbers, but the numbers reflect his general experience.

30:50 – Other things to do if the sleeping pills are not working: It is a good opportunity to go back to the beginning and see if anything has been overlooked such as other medications, or illnesses that might be interfering with sleep such as pain, or depression, He makes a point about not increasing the dose as it will not affect the effectiveness but will increase the side effects. Switching to a different medication is likely to be an incremental improvement, not to expect a big change.  It might also be time to consider non-medical solutions such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia.  That’s about 34:30 -.

35:10 – Do people give up too quickly on medication before they giving it a fair chance? It is important to recognize that your interaction with your medical provider is a process that may take some time. It’s also important to know that insomnia usually doesn’t just happen, it may have been going on for years.  It is usually related to what’s happening to you during your waking time. And sometimes these connections may not come out for a while you are working with your healthcare provider.

37:30 – What are some reasonable expectations for sleeping pills? The first is to not go into the appointment with an expectation of instant 100% success. It’s not realistic to think that an issue that has been going on for years and possibly decades is going to be solved in a brief time. What is realistic is that if you are willing to identify and work on issues that have been identified or neglected in the past, that you will likely be able to improve the situation with time.

39:10 – What should we know about over-the-counter sleep medications? Most over-the-counter medications or sleep aids, are not very effective but can still have their own risks. Many people think that because it is over the counter that it is benign, but is that that is not the case. The most common ingredient in the over-the-counter sleeping aid is his chemical called Diphenhydramine (Benadryl)which is an antihistamine. It is designed to help with allergies, and although it can make you sleepy during the day time, it doesn’t necessarily help you sleep at night. There is some data that it can disturb sleep in a number of people. There is a risk that long-term use, over years, can lead to an increased risk of dementia. And the elderly it can cause confusion all states and delirium which is serious. It is on the list of medications that is to be avoided by the elderly.

42:20 – Why should alcohol not be mixed with sleeping pills? Sleeping pills and alcohol are both central nervous system depressants. So when they are combined the results can be bad. For example if you have sleep apnea then the results can be very bad. If the sleeping medication is taken in excess, then the combination can be deadly.

44:10 – Is melatonin a good sleeping aid? It is a substance that is naturally secreted by the pineal gland at night. It is helpful for very specific conditions having to do with disorders of the body’s biological sleep clock. But if you give it to people with insomnia who don’t have one of these very few specific conditions, it is showing that it is not beneficial. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine does not list melatonin on their list of medicines for treatment of insomnia. It also has side effects including daytime sleepiness.

46:40 – What he would put on a billboard? To get his message across. The first message would be to take insomnia seriously, that affects you 24 hours a day. The second is that it is not hopeless, that there are many solutions out there. To educate yourself of the options available and avail yourself of them.

47:10 – What listeners can do today to sleep better tonight so they can feel and function better tomorrow. The solution is a process and the first step in the process is education, so learn, learn, learn.

 

Key Take-away points:

One thing that struck me about this episode and episode 10 with Dr. Stephanie Silberman, is that both sleep medicine experts continually point towards non-pharmaceutical interventions as the preferred route.  Sleeping pills have a role to play, but doing the work to identify and correct the root cause is the preferred option.

The second point is Dr. Mendelson’s recommendation that you become an equal partner with your health care professional through continual learning.  I think that medical professionals are often under-trained in sleep health and need a balanced perspective from you, their patient.

The final surprise was melatonin.  It seems like a very popular sleep aid for insomnia, but its application is much more limited.  Please use it wisely.

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Click title to see more…

The Sleep to Healthy website is now a 10 lesson course on curing insomnia. 

This course is not a quick fix and it is not easy.  The course is based on CBTi or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia.  CBTi is the first-line insomnia treatment method endorsed by:

• The U.S. National Institute of Health and
• The British Association of Psycho-pharmacology. 
• The American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

 By the end of the “Cure Insomnia” course, students will have the knowledge and tools they need to cure their insomnia.  Not just now, but for a lifetime. 

 Did I mention that it’s free?

 Go to SleepToHealthy.com to get started.

Summary: Guest: Dr. Stephanie Silberman, author of Insomnia Workbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Getting the Sleep You Need:

• Silberman gives an example of a new mother who was exhausted but still couldn’t sleep and was dependent on sleeping pills but was able to achieve good, natural sleep without the pills.
• The roll of sleeping pills with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi).
• How The Insomnia Handbook can be used for best effect.
• She explains what Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is including cognitive distortions and the relationship between thoughts and feelings.
• Why CBT has a specific branch for insomnia.
• The types of issues CBTi is especially effective with.
• The main components of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi): Sleep Hygiene (and which parts are most critical), Relaxation, Stimulus Control Therapy, Sleep Restriction Therapy and Sleep Logs.
• How to get started with CBTi.
• What Dr. Silberman would put in a 30 second YouTube video.
• Her recommendation for something you can do today, to sleep better tonight so you feel and function better tomorrow.

Links mentioned in the show:

Dr. Stephanie Silberman’s website: http://www.sleeppsychology.com

LinkeIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-silberman-phd-a8343715/

Twitter: @sleeppsychology https://twitter.com/sleeppsychology

Book: The Insomnia Workbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Getting the Sleep You Need

http://www.sleeppsychology.com/sleep-disorder-insomnia-books.html

https://www.amazon.com/Insomnia-Workbook-Comprehensive-Guide-Getting/dp/1572246359/

Show notes with approximate time they occur in the episode:

(Note: For your convenience, the following is paraphrasing from the interview, not exact quotes.  For exact wording, listen to that part of the episode)

Introduction (the host, from the audio):

Many years ago I struggled with anxiety and depression.  I am thankful for the counsellors and resources available that helped me dig may way out of that dark hole.  One of the most impactful tools was a book called “Feeling Good” by Dr. David Burns.  I thought the title was hookey, but the content was profound.  It was a book about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, a topic we will explain in a minute.  But even more helpful was “The Feeling Good Handbook”, a book that took the teachings and converted it into easy to follow exercises.

Since then I have preferred self help books that include exercises to put theory into action.  So you can probably understand my enthusiasm when I came across “The Insomnia Workbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Getting the Sleep You Need” by Dr. Stephanie Silberman.  Here was a book that gave fundamental principles of insomnia, and then added exercises to turn the knowledge into action and decisions.

Dr. Silberman is a clinical psychologist and board-certified sleep medicine specialist, a Fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine but also a working mother, wife and community activist.

Dr. Silberman, welcome to this episode of the Sleep …… to Healthy Podcast……

4:10 – Dr. Silberman talks about an example where somebody had difficulty sleeping but was able to find a way out of it. The example is one where a new mother, who despite her exhaustion found herself wide awake at night. When she came to Dr. Silberman she was physically and psychologically dependent on a sleeping pills.  They went through all the things that were causing her insomnia including caffeine and getting exercise. They were able to slowly come off the sleeping pills and eventually be completely medicine free. This took only five sessions in total.

5:50 – What is the role of sleep medication with cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBTi)? In general, sleeping pills are intended to be a short-term solution but that is not how they are always used. There’s a phenomenon called rebound insomnia or insomnia rebound which is where you come off a sleeping pill your insomnia gets even worse than it was before. Then the tendency is to go back onto the sleeping pills because the insomnia is so bad.

7:40 – Dr. Silberman tells how the book is intended to be used. The book was intended for either sleep professionals who did not know about cbt-i because they are treating medical conditions such as sleep apnea, or psychologist who know about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy CBT but doesn’t know about sleep. It’s also intended for people who don’t have ready access to a sleep psychologist.

9:30 – People who come in to sessions for insomnia treatment who have already read the book make progress much more quickly.

10: 30 – What is cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT?  It is for people whose thinking or behavior is causing a level of stress such as anxiety or depression. So for instance of person might have some irrational thoughts that could be thought of in a different way that would not cause the stress. The irrational thoughts can be corrected. So that is the cognitive part of CBT. The other part is the behavior. The behavioral side are the actions or behaviors that the person does that are maintaining or increasing the level of stress or anxiety.

11:20 – What are cognitive distortions? An example might be that someone thinks you need 8 hours of sleep a night to feel rested and restored, when the reality is that most people need something other than 8 hours of sleep a night. This incorrect thought can lead to anxiety and unhelpful behaviors. So for instance in that case you could give the person some information, and then get them to experience 6 hours of sleep good solid sleep and let them see that they can feel very alert and well-rested the next day. There are many other distortions but the basic principle is that you look at the belief, and then use a scientific principle either prove or disprove the belief, and then I make appropriate adjustments.

13:10 – Dr. Silberman talks about the relationship between thoughts and feelings. She looks at it as a circle with thoughts, feelings, and behaviors on a circle. So as an example, if you have negative thoughts about something then when something happens during the day you will respond with negative feelings, and then that feeling will lead to a behavior which tends to reinforce the original negative thought. So for instance you could have negative thoughts about social interactions such as people won’t listen to me, then when you have an social interaction you could have that thought then you have the negative feelings of isolation, and that leads to behavior which is to avoid social interactions which tend to lead towards your original negative thought. So the function of CBT is to cut in at the thought by correcting the thought or by correcting the behavior in order to break out of the vicious cycle.

15:10 – Why was a specific branch of CBT created for insomnia? The international classification of sleep disorders has over 85 sleep disorders listed. So there are many, many Sleep disorders, so it is complex and there’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. Sleep disorders is a very complex field filled with many different medical specialties involved. CBTi covers both thoughts and behaviors that you have during the day, and at night before sleep, and also if you wake up during the night. All areas are covered.

17:30 – What types of sleeping issues is CBTi especially effective with? Sleep onset insomnia, which is the problem with being able to get to sleep initially, sleep maintenance insomnia, which is the issue of being able to stay asleep and circadian rhythm disorders where the biological clock not synced, where you are not able to sleep until very late or or waking much too early. Those are termed “Advanced sleep phase” and “delayed sleep phase”. Usually the issue there is you are not synced well with the rest of society. Teenagers and those in their early twenties tend to have the issue of not being able to sleep until late, and the elderly tend to have the issue of starting to sleep early and then waking up very early. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia is also very effective for a lot of sleeping disorders that children have.

18:30 – Dr. Silberman goes over some of the main components of CBTi or cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, starting with sleep hygiene.

What is Sleep Hygiene?  Sleep hygiene is our daytime behaviors that create the conditions for a good sleep. For instance getting exercise, ideally for the 5 hours before bedtime. Controlling caffeine, she recommends no caffeine 12 hours before bedtime. Another example is making sure that sleeping environment is dark, quiet, comfortable, with a correct temperature for sleeping. That activities in the bed or not too stimulating such as being on your phone or using other backlit devices, or reading or watching TV if those are stimulating activities for a person. Also making sure stressors are dealt with during the day so that they go to bed they are feeling calm cool and relaxed.

21:00 – Whether to pay attention to a few critical sleep hygiene rules or whether you have to pay equal attention to them all.  Dr. Silberman encourages total discipline at the beginning of the treatment to get the most impact most quickly. Then after the person has made good progress then some things will be found to be critical and must be adhered to and other things can be taken with less emphasis. For instance, some people cannot tolerate any caffeine whereas others can have some caffeine but still need to end at a certain time of the day. Within a certain quantity. On the other side, electronics shortly before bed have been very well-documented to be pretty much universally bad for sleep.

22:30 – Dr. Silberman talks about the role of relaxation. You cannot be anxious and relaxed at the same time. Some people have anxiety throughout the day that carries over into sleep, and other people have very little anxiety during the day but having anxiety just at sleep time. Most people that have sleep issues have some level of anxiety. So does helpful to learn deep breathing, meditation, or other means to reduce anxiety.

24:10 – Dr. Silberman talks about Progressive Relaxation where you go through your body from head to toe relaxing each area in progression. Out of all these relaxation exercises she teaches, that is her least favorite. She prefers one that she has in her book and that she gives to her patients as an audio. That one is more focused on relaxing and focusing on deep breathing. You cannot just try to do relaxation exercises when you are especially anxious or stressed. You need to practice it at other times so that when you are anxious it can be effective.

25:50 – What is Stimulus Control Therapy? It is effectively saying get out of bed when you cannot sleep. If you stay in bed when you cannot sleep, you are reinforcing the belief that the bed is not a good place to sleep, and whatever other negative associations you are making with the experience of being in bed. Such as being anxious. So you want to get out of bed, go somewhere else, and do something that is boring or relaxing, wait until you are feeling sleepy again, and then return to bed,. It starts to recondition the brain and makes the association with the bread have more positive and relaxing Association.

27:20 – What is Sleep Restriction Therapy? Sleep restriction is the nuts and bolts of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. During treatment you keep a sleep log which records how many hours you are actually sleeping, as compared to how many hours you are spending in bed. So you keep that sleep log for a minimum of one week and you figure out what the average sleep time is that you have, and then you restrict the amount of time in the bed to that number. She gets a lot of resistance to this part of the therapy. The minimum time they allow is 5 hours. Sleep restriction creates sleep consolidation which means you’re spending more time sleeping and less time awake in the bed.

30:50 – What is a sleep log? Often when people come into see her about their sleep issues they don’t see any relationship between what they are doing during the day and how well they sleep at night. So sleep logs helps to establish the cause and effect and lets you see some of those relationships and patterns. It helps to show which things for that particular individual helped and hindered sleep. You can see patterns that you would not otherwise be aware of. It helps to take a situation from being unpredictable to being predictable. From uncontrollable to be controllable.

32:50 – Other aspects of CBTi. Some people benefit a lot from focusing on the other cognitive distortions or negative thinking that causes excess stress during the day. Other people benefit more by focusing on the behaviors that need to be changed.

34:00 – How do you get started with cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, CBTi? She would recommend seeing a sleep specialist if there is one available, or going to a sleep lab, not to do an overnight sleep study but to get a referral to a sleep specialist. The American Board of sleep medicine has a list of providers, or you could do an internet search for local resources.

35:00 – How to use Dr. Silberman’s book (The Insomnia Workbook) for best effect. She recommends that you actually work through it and do the exercises as it is meant to be hands-on, it is not meant to be a book that you just passively read. Many people benefit from the help with a professional in addition to the book because some aspects are difficult to do on your own such as sleep restriction therapy. Having somebody such as a sleep specialist to be accountable to can help a lot.

36:40 – What Dr. Silberman would put into a YouTube video. It would be a superwoman who comes in and knocks out all the sleeping pills and the pharmaceutical industry and tells people to be hopeful and that they absolutely can find wonderful sleep on their own. That it is a process and it does take work, and it gives you control but it does not require a sleeping pill. It would end by emphasizing how much better they would feel and how much better medication-free sleep is. That is something Dr. Silberman sees over and over again is that people didn’t realize they could feel so good and have such good sleeps after they got off the sleeping meds.

38:10 – One thing that listeners can do today to sleep better tonight to feel and function better tomorrow. Put away the electronics at bedtime. If you have children or teenagers, do not allow them their have their electronics in their room at night. Not even charging their phone. It is too enticing.

Summary:

Let’s see if we can pull out some gems from today’s episode:

One thing that struck me was Dr. Silberman’s comment that the core of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia is Sleep Restriction Therapy.  In the media we hear mainly about quantity, how many hours to get.  But she is saying that it is more important to focus on quality.  Restrict your sleep until you are getting high quality sleep, then ease up and maintain the quality.  When you think about it, this is the same for developing any skill.  You need to practice towards perfection, not continue to practice your bad habits.

Perhaps the 2^nd is to not give up hope.  We have heard this same theme from other guests and will here it in the future.  In the Sleep to Healthy Podcast, we try to present many different perspectives and methods for improving sleep.  So if you are still struggling with sleep, keep on listening.

The final gem is the role of sleeping pills and sleep. Dr. Silberman is a board certified sleep medicine specialist, so when she recommends that we use sleeping pills as a temporary measure, we should probably listen.  The alternatives are not going to be as convenient as handing over some cash and popping the pills, but the results will be worth it.

As always, you can find detailed show notes about the interview with Dr. Silberman along with all the links at sleep-to-healthy-dot-com.

This concludes our episode for today.

Other episodes related to todays topic include:

• Episode 9 with Michael Schwartz titled “Sleep on Demand” where he discusses Intensive Sleep Retraining.
• Our next episode, Episode 11 with Dr. Wallace Mendelson titled “Sleeping Pills” where he covers the role of sleeping pills and their benefits and risks.
• Episode 12 with Dr. James Alexander. If you are looking for some fresh & effective methods to improve your sleep, Dr. Alexander will not disappoint.

Thank you for keeping me company today.  I look forward to you joining me on the next episode of The Sleep to Healthy Podcast.