Sleep As Medicine - Part 2 - YLAM240027

SPEAKER A This programme presents ways to optimise health and well being. When considering lifestyle changes, please consult with your health care provider to ensure they are suitable for you. Hello and welcome. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. According to the Australasian Sleep Association, 4 out of 10 Australians are not getting enough sleep. In addition, the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare reports that almost half of Australian adults experience at least two sleep related problems. That's a lot of sleep deprived people. Today we'll talk more about how we can optimise our sleep and enjoy better health. This is yous Lifestyle as Medicine, a production of 3 ABN Australia Television. On this programme we explore ways that you can shape your lifestyle as medicine. It's great that you've joined us as we continue talking about sleep and how we can improve it. And we have Dr. Eddie Ramirez back with us to talk about this. Thank you so much for coming once more, Eddie, to share on this topic. SPEAKER B It's a pleasure to be here again and we're going to be learning how to optimise your sleep. So make sure you're taking some notes. SPEAKER A Absolutely. So in the last programme we were talking all about your sleep cycle and how light and regularity and your routines all play an influence in that. And I'm wondering something that came up last time was the topic of melatonin. Can you explain to us just refresh our minds about melatonin and how that relates to our sleep? SPEAKER B Absolutely. Melatonin is what's going to help you have a nice deep sleep. So as the melatonin starts to increase in the evening, starts prepping you up to sleep. If you're sleeping early, you get a nice peak of melatonin and that's going to be translated as you wake up in the morning, you will feel refreshed and energetic rather than a little. Melatonin is going to give you that fitful type of sleep, superficial type of sleep, sleep that you wake up very early in the morning and not sleep enough. So for those people, I get this complaint quite often as a doctor. People say, Doctor, I'm waking up at 4am, I wish I could sleep one or two other hours. Well, what you need to do, you need to optimise that melatonin. And how can we optimise that melatonin? Bright light is going to help us and take note as we're going to be dealing with a few more things that you can do to improve that melatonin. SPEAKER A Yeah. So bright light in the morning, but little or no light at all in the evening is what helps, it can. SPEAKER B Be red, it's okay red, but not blue or white light. Those two are going to, they're going to block that melatonin you can see in the screen actually something else that you could invest. I don't sell this, but I know that it works. So drinking coffee regularly will literally atrophy the pineal gland. The pineal gland is an important part where we secrete a lot of the melatonin. So if you messed up that pineal gland, you're gonna end up decreasing the amount of melatonin and this is gonna translate into a sleep problem. By the way, this is from my TW, my Twitter is edirdMD. And this fascinating study gives us this insight how long term coffee drinkers are literally damaging their pineal gland. You know, if you're gonna mess up a gland, that shouldn't be one that you should be messing up, you know, because your melatonin is there, the hormone that keeps you young. So the reason why I know that coffee is not the best thing is because in lifestyle medicine, this happens to be a programme about lifestyle medicine. Things that are addictive are not good for you. As simple as that. I am yet to find a patient addicted to broccoli, for example. Oh, doctor, I didn't need my broccoli. I'm going to get nervous and I'm going to. SPEAKER A That would be a world record if that was out there somewhere. SPEAKER B I'm not going to be able to sleep well tonight and so forth because broccoli is not an addictive substance. So as a general rule, if it's addictive, it's probably not good for you. And this is not the only study. There's multiple studies that show that, that caffeine has that negative effect. In fact, you can see on screen, this is one of my latest studies. I presented this study and it came out in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. And basically we were documenting how people that are drinking caffeine, they do more likely to do things against their conscience, more likely to be users of alcohol and smoking, more likely to have irregular sleep, more likely to not eat all those good nutrients that we need, more likely to eat less vegetables. So as you can see, one after another after another after another. And that's why it's a bad habit that we need to break. I know it's popular, I know a lot of people are doing it. That doesn't mean you need to do it. I remember when I was a medical student, I had to do this crazy 36 hours straight in the hospital and I would do that without a single drop of. It is possible to do these long periods of work, which I don't recommend people doing it. This is intemperance. But because of my training, I had to do that without a single drop of coffee. So the mind is powerful. As long as you keep your mind active, the temptation and so forth to sleep early, you can get in trouble there if you sleep too much in these duties. I was able to do it without the need of the caffeine and that's. SPEAKER A Quite impressive because I know many people would feel like they have to have it, like they just can't do without caffeine in the lifestyle. But I guess if your lifestyle has already got a lot of good things in it, you're going to be optimising your body's function all the time. SPEAKER B Yeah. In fact, this is what I suggest to my patients, the patient that says, oh, doctor, but I need that energy that coffee gives me and so forth. Bristol University from the UK demonstrated that you actually don't get much energy out of coffee. It just brings you down to normal levels of functioning. So somebody that does not drink coffee actually has those normal level of functioning. That is what the coffee drinker is craving as they take their morning dose. So if you want to have something similar, do what I tell my patients. Do a hot and cold type of shower. So you turn on the hot water as hot as you can handle it. Don't get burned. I'm not talking about getting burned, but just nice and hot and then some three to five minutes and then stop the hot water, put on the cold water and you're going to see, you're going to wake up because you're going to wake up. No need for the caffeine when you do this type of. SPEAKER A Especially if it's in winter. SPEAKER B That's right. SPEAKER A That really gets you feeling alive. SPEAKER B I don't know why, but here in Australia, the cold water feels very cold. SPEAKER A Okay. SPEAKER B At least where we are in the Sydney area, it feels quite cold. Another thing that you can do to improve your sleep, you can see there on my tweet about weighted blankets and melatonin. So in this study, they were actually measuring melatonin release and they found out that when the person uses these weighted blankets, the peaks of melatonin were higher. And some people complain that it bothers their toes when they use these blankets, but other people are able to handle it very well. It gives a sense like you're getting hugged, you know, that's what we do to Children, little babies, you know, you tie them, you wrap them up nice and tight and that gives them that feeling, you know, getting hugged. Well, you get a similar effect by these weighted blankets. I don't sell these blankets. You know, it's not like, oh, come and buy it from me. I don't sell this. No conflict of interest. But I do know that some people do benefit from those weighted blankets. SPEAKER A And do they have an idea of what the mechanism is for how those blankets help improve serotonin? SPEAKER B Yep. So it's probably through the senses of our skin. I'm actually in the process of writing a book on neuroplasticity. And, you know, there's many children that are born by C section, and it has been documented that those children tend to have a little more behavioural problems. And there's a reason why, as the baby is coming out to the normal birth canal, as it's coming out, that pressure that they're receiving from the birth canal is actually having an effect at the level of the brain. SPEAKER A Wow. SPEAKER B So the baby that was born out of C section, it never went through that stimulation. And sometimes those babies, there's certain reflexes that babies have as they're just born. Those reflexes are changed and so forth, and sometimes they can have even problems later on. So there's some research showing how those kids sometimes are very sensitive people. You touch them. Oh, they don't like to be touched. Very sensitive to certain noises. So as you create exercises for neuroplasticity, they're able to control themselves much better now. They start to like the touch and so forth. And the theory is it could have been, you know, by the way, that they were born. So the fact that you're feeling that sense of hugginess to that blanket, that's how scientists theorise that the increase of melatonin is interesting. SPEAKER A So maybe it is what they, you know, how they recommend it for feeling, you know, sort of secure or comforted perhaps that makes them relax more or something. SPEAKER B That's right. Potentially something along the lines. SPEAKER A It's so fascinating that something so simple may have an effect like that on the body. SPEAKER B And then you can also see on the screen this other study of mine. In this study, we were trying to see what happens with the sleep quality as we make changes to the lifestyle habits of the person. And in this particular study, we focus on people that have background with concussion. But as I run the data through all the patients that did not have that concussion status, we saw the same benefit. So we need to understand that sometimes in Our modern world, we just want a shortcut. Just give me the pill and that's it. And sometimes that's not the necessary answer. Sometimes there's other steps that we need to take in order to improve things. So things such as bright light outside, we talked about that. But also your exercise, also what type of diet you are eating. See, people that have more of a junk type of diet because the nutrients are lacking there. There's certain key nutrients that you need. When you are assembling the melatonin, you need to have certain key elements that are going to be part of that melatonin. If your diet is poor in these key nutrients, as you try to make your melatonin, you are going to decrease the process, so less melatonin is going to be generated. So that's why, as we document in that study, by improving your health overall, you are going to see a very positive effect on your sleep. SPEAKER A That's interesting. And I guess it's that synergistic effect of the various important lifestyle factors coming together and they all help each other. It's like a cooperative effort, isn't it, when you have a healthy lifestyle. SPEAKER B So the more of those you have present, the better the system is going to able to work. In parentheses. All this research that I'm showing you, you can find it on my research gate page. Just Google Francisco, which is my other name, like San Francisco Francisco Ramirez, Research gate. Put those three words in your Google and the very first hit, that is where you're going to find all this research, where you can read it with more detail. SPEAKER A Nice. I'm sure there'll be people watching this who will want to dive into the detail and get all the little nitty gritty facts. That'll be very interesting. SPEAKER B And also something that is to me very interesting is that there's research that show that people that don't sleep enough, their behaviour is similar as somebody that is under the influence of alcohol. So no wonder. Why more likely to end up in an accident, more likely to start fighting with somebody, more likely to decrease your performance as a worker and so forth. So that's why we need enough sleep in order to function properly. The range is between seven to nine hours. Each person is different. For some people, seven is more than enough. For some people, they need that eight. For some people, they need that nine hours of sleep. Now people, there's a subgroup of people that say, oh, but I function good without seven. That's not necessarily true. If I give you a very detailed test in which I'm measuring Small things such as micro movements and so forth, you're going to see that you're not as efficient when you're sleeping that less than seven hours a night compared to when you have a good night's sleep. Your motor abilities actually improve as a result of that. So it's important to prioritise those seven hours. Research show that not sleeping less than seven hours a night in a study that was done among university age students, showed that one week of sleeping less than seven hours a night activates 711 disease genes in your body. SPEAKER A Whoa. SPEAKER B It is a big deal not to do, not to have enough sleep. So don't activate those disease genes because if you keep them active, then the disease is going to start manifesting in your body. SPEAKER A Wow. That's quite a powerful thing to think about, isn't it, when you're thinking about, oh, should I stay up and do this or that, get to bed, have that sleep. SPEAKER B That's right. It's better to wake up early in the morning rather than staying late in the evening. And also another one that we can see on the screen, this is another one of my studies and on this one, we were trying to study what's happening with lavender oil and now we use this lavender oil for multiple things. One of the things that we use it is for anxiety. Again, I don't sell it, you know, so there's no commercial interest here. This lavender oil, when you take it in capsules, in oral format, it is as effective as Xanax or this benzodiazepines that people use for anxiety. Now, anxiety is something very hard to treat if you are in clinical practise. You know this. Patients with anxiety are challenging patients. Yet lavender oil, it helps to decrease those levels of anxiety, helping you to function much better. You want to take one or two of those capsules of lavender oil orally. Don't take it straight because it tends to be very irritating. PRN as needed every 8 hours and the anxiety starts to decrease tremendously. So we were wondering what's happening if we were to correlate, when you're taking that lavender and regarding your sleep, does that have an effect there? And yes, we saw very clearly how that lavender oil, taken orally, actually helped the patient have a better quality of sleep. So that's something that you can potentially do. There's also other teas that have been published in the scientific literature, such as the tea of hops. It's also another one that is very good. Chamomile also is excellent to relax and the importance with this is that you need to have a routine as you go to bed, if you can have that routine. Some people like to take a shower. Some people like to read something before they go to sleep. Some people like to have everything nice and planned, which is the ideal thing. See, research show that even though your eyes may be closed, if your room is a mess, you don't sleep good. So having your room nice and tidy actually improves the quality of your sleep. So this is something that you can do as part of your routine. You know, try to tidy up things a little bit before you go to sleep. Somehow that brings calmness to your head. And also another thing that I find is that there's certain people that say, well, you know, at night is when I get dressed, really good ideas, what should I do? Because I'm afraid that if I get up and turn on my computer, you know, I'm going to mess up my sleep. Well, you don't need to get up and put it in your computer. Rather have next to your bed a good old notepad and pencil. And if you get one of those ideas that you think is worth following up in the morning, write it down, just some keywords that's going to help you remember. And then once the morning comes, then you can put your mind to it and start developing and working in that particular idea that you have. Another thing, if you're going to have those night lights, which may not be a bad idea, we don't want somebody to fall, you know, in the middle of the night. You want those night lights, number one, to be in the floor and not above you. You want to have red light. Don't have those that are white light. And red light doesn't have that, you know, melatonin blocking effect. So I know some people that actually in the evenings they just turn on red light. I don't think this is for everybody, but if you want to, if you want to, you know, pursue it, go for it. So turn on just red light. As red light blocks less your melatonin. SPEAKER A So it will keep that cycle going normally without having any interference. SPEAKER B That's right, yeah. And also another tip. I've seen some people that drink alcohol before going to sleep because they say that it helps me sleep. Well, it's a yes and no. You do sleep faster, but it blocks the melatonin. So the quality of your sleep is much poorer compared to somebody that, you know, sleeps without that alcohol. The peaks of melatonin tends to be higher on somebody that does not partake, you know, of the Alcohol. So watch out. You know, don't try to make things better by drinking alcohol, because at the end of the day, you're actually making things worse. Another tip for having a good night's sleep is to make sure that you're in peace. If there is, you know, hate and discord and so forth, as you go to bed, that actually affects your sleep. And you know that very well. You know, those days that you're very stressed and so forth, you don't sleep good. SPEAKER A That's true. SPEAKER B And the reason why is because the stress hormone blocks your melatonin. So that's why even in scripture it talks about that, that don't go to bed. You know, if there is some angry, if there's some anger, if there's some fighting going on, you first need to solve that, then you need to go to bed. So make sure you do that. And also another thing that can happen is that the thoughts, some people complain about that, oh, Dr. Mayim, I have these racing thoughts in my head that are just bothering me and so forth. One of the best things to deal with those racing thoughts is by starting the good habit of journaling your thinking. So in a paper, not in a computer, in a paper, write down those thoughts. By some reason, the person thinks that unless I think, think about it, it's not gonna stay somewhere. But if you're able to put those thoughts in paper, somehow that stops many of those racing thoughts on those people as you're trying to express them, you know, in the correct fashion in that written format. And another thing that we give our patients as prescription to do is to write down every day five things that you are thankful for. So this gratitude journal, everybody has something that they need to be thankful for. Don't tell me that you don't. You know, everybody has something to be thankful for. So as you think about it, as you put those thoughts in that gratitude journal, that's something that it will actually help you later on those days that you feel discouraged, those days that you feel sad, you can go back to that gratitude journal and start reviewing. And you're going to see, you know what? Life is not as bad as I am trying to make it be. The fact that you are grateful starts to open your horizon and starts to give you a different perspective. And that's the way that we can change what we call stinking thinking. SPEAKER A That's a good phrase. SPEAKER B That type of thinking that is very negative and so forth. You get in this rut of getting more negative and more negative. You can break down with that gratitude. SPEAKER A Journal and practising that will help you feel more at peace inside, won't it? SPEAKER B That's right. SPEAKER A It will give you a nice feeling to go to sleep to. Yeah, that's really good. Well, thank you so much. That was a wealth of tips that you just shared with us just then and some research behind many of them too. So thank you so much for coming and sharing with us today. SPEAKER B Thank you. SPEAKER A We've been talking with medical doctor, researcher and international speaker Dr. Eddie Ramirez about sleep and I trust that this episode has given you a better understanding of this vital factor for our well being and that you're equipped with strategies for health and life giving sleep. If you have questions or comments about this programme, contact us on health at 3abnaustralia.org au remember to shape your lifestyle as medicine. SPEAKER A You've been listening to Your Lifestyle as Medicine, a production of 3ABN Australia television.