Dr. Andrew Simon debunks the myth that four to five hours of sleep is enough. Chronic sleep debt causes weight gain, high blood pressure, diabetes, and impaired cognition. He recommends natural alternatives like breathing exercises, melatonin, and blackout curtains over sleeping pills.
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Welcome back to Q13, Fox News this Morning. Feeling a little sleepy today? A lot of us are. And you might feel like you're operating on very little sleep all the time. For some of us, that might mean after a few nights of very little sleep, that 10 hour binge you promised yourselves on the weekends, not happening. But is there a real way to catch up on sleep so you're back on even? Is that even a thing? Joining us with the answer is Dr. Andrew Simon from Bastyr center for Natural Health. Good morning. Thank you so much. So I guess that's my first question is that I've heard of people who go around saying I'm fine, I, I don't need any more than four or five hours of sleep. Is that a thing?
Not exactly. Usually our body adapts quite a bit and it has pretty significant health consequences in the process. So people try, but usually they're always at a sleep debt.
So if you are in a sleep debt, can you catch up? Is that really a thing?
You can try taking a few naps here and there. It's always going to benefit you to allow your body to rest, calm the nervous system down. But the research is still kind of out on that process.
So what are the potential long term impacts if you're someone who doesn't get enough sleep over a long period of time and you're doing that thing where every few weeks you try to sleep all day to catch up?
Well, like I said, the body adapts a lot and some of it poor consequences to health, weight gain, blood pressure, diabetes, just a general level of stress, poor concentration, thinking critically at work and at school.
So when you say adapt, you don't mean adapts to function in a normal way. You mean in the opposite way?
Yeah, I mean our body will try to stay, we'll force ourselves to stay awake. I mean, we look at screens at night. It tricks our eyes to make us think that we're awake.
Some people will turn to sleeping pills. What's your opinion on that?
Well, there's always a time and a place. I use a full spectrum of things whenever is appropriate. But there are a lot of natural remedies that can be helpful just to help calm the nervous system down. I do breathing exercises. Even sleep tea sometimes can be really helpful. Melatonin, other herbs. That's what we kind of do at the Bastyr center for Natural Health.
Yeah. Run through some of the other things you've brought with you.
Yeah. So I mean, depending on what's causing the sleep deficit, you know, if there's pain or muscle spasms, things like that. Sometimes I like using a nice Epsom salt soak at night, nice hot bath, you know, I even brought my little sleep journal here, so you can kind of write down, you know, the day's stresses and things like that. So that way you get down on paper so you can always look at it the next day.
What about over the summer? It is hot. It is staying bright out pretty late. A lot of people try to go to bed early or they have kids, they're trying to get to go to bed early. How do we combat that?
I mean, myself, I'm a new dad, and it's been pretty challenging. You know, it's getting better, of course, but what we use is blackout curtains. That helps quite a bit. We kind of lock the cats out of the bedroom so they're not, you know, meowing at us quite a bit. But, yeah, really, ritual is the most important thing, much like teaching a new infant a ritual of sleep.
But when you're a new parent, it's hard to get onto a ritual. Do you just kind of have to knuckle down if you have a newborn? Is that the only answer?
Yeah. I mean, some things you just kind of have to do it, you know, reading a book, taking a nice bath, drinking some tea, whatever. It might be.
Awesome. Thank you so much. Great advice, and hopefully it'll help some people get some sleep over the next few days as it gets really hot. And Dr. Simon, we really appreciate it. So we posted a link to Bastyr's website under links you saw on tv@q13fox.com, so you can find out even more information still ahead.
