Top Hacks To Reset Your Sleep: Part IV Of Dr. Hyman's Sleep Master Class

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

Keep tech out of your bedroom or away from the bed. No watching TV in bed. Just like you put yourself to sleep, try putting your phone to sleep for the next 10 days. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark. I know a lot of you out.

There are practitioners like me, helping patients heal using real food and functional medicine as your framework for getting to the root cause. What's critical to understanding what each individual person and body needs is testing, which is why I'm excited to tell you about Rupa Health. Looking at hormones, organic acids, nutrient levels, inflammatory factors, gut bacteria, and so many other internal variables can help us find the most effective path to optimize health and reverse disease. But up till now, that meant you are usually ordering tests for one patient from multiple labs. and I'm sure many of you can relate how time consuming this process was and then it could all feel like.

A lot of work to keep track of.

Now there's Rupa Health, a place for functional medicine practitioners to access more than 2000 specialty labs from over 20 labs like Dutch, Vibrant America, Genova, Great Plains and more. Rupa Health helps provide a significantly better patient experience and it's 90% faster, letting you simplify the entire process of getting the functional medicine lab tests you need and giving you more time to focus on patients. this is really a much needed option in functional medicine space and I'm so excited about it. It means better service for you and your patients. You can check it out and look at a free live demo with a Q&A or create an account at RupaHealth.com that's R-U-P-A-Health.com Now, so many of my patients wait until they're sick to finally take care of their health. I've even had doctors as patients, well many actually, who just wait for their problems to get worse and worse and receive a diagnosis of disease before taking any kind of action. This is not the path to health. We can live longer, healthier, happier lives if we just prevent imbalances in our bodies in the first place. And nutrition is a key part of this. Many of us don't get the optimal amounts of key nutrients through diet alone, even with a whole foods diet. And then when you add in all the stressors we're up against, like work demands, toxins, lack of sleep, or even more likely to have a nutrient efficiency. So one of the things I use every day to optimize my intake of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, pre and probiotics is AG1 from Athletic Greens. It's a comprehensive superfood powder with a special blend of high quality, whole food ingredients that work together to fill the nutritional gaps in your diet. It's specifically designed to support energy and focus, aid with gut health and digestion, and support a healthy immune system, which we all need right now. I've made AG1 part of my daily ritual because I feel better knowing I have a little extra nutritional insurance to complement my healthy diet. It also gives me a nice energy boost without feeling overstimulated. I like to think of it as a huge leafy green salad shrunk down into a simple glass of water I can take anywhere. Right now, you can get 10 free travel packs of AG1 when you make your first purchase. Just go to athletictgreens.com/Hymen. That's A-T-H-L-E-T-I-C-G-R-E-E-N-S.com/Hymen.

Hi, this is Lauren Feen, one of the producers of the Doctor's Pharmacy Podcast. Today we are featuring part four of Dr. Hymen's Sleep Masterclass. You'll hear from experts Dr. Mark Bruhenn, Dr. Mary Pardi, Dr. Judy Nihosa, Dr. Afrouz Demeri, and Mike Mutzel about tips and tools to reset your sleep. If you'd like to watch the entire series, you can sign up for free at DrHyman.com/sleep.

Welcome back to the Sleep Masterclass. Once you've taken care of the root cause of your sleep challenges, there are a few additional things that you can do to support your sleep. Over the past few years, I've discovered some useful tools and gadgets that help me get my best rest. I've also dialed in on what supplements can be the most useful for supporting our sleep. In this episode, I'll share all of these tools with you and all the tips that I use personally. First, I want to talk about tracking your sleep. Now, when I started tracking my sleep using the Oura Ring, that's this thing right here, I was given some powerful insight about my health. In fact, all the experts in this lesson recommend tracking your sleep as the first line of defense. Understanding how well we sleep is an important part of fixing our sleep.

Tracking someone's sleep is interesting because when you track sleep, you're able to see how much time someone spent on REM versus deep and light states of sleep. And I do think it's a good idea for a lot of patients when they're starting to understand their sleep to track their sleep. There's many devices out there. And my recommendation for my patients, one of the most accurate ones is called Oura Ring. And it's a ring that they can wear at night that will track their sleep and it'll be very accurately track their deep REM and they're light sleep and it will, it's, there'll be an app that they can download the information to, to understand their patterns. My advice around this for my patient is if you wear the ring, make sure that your phone is on airplane mode and then your Wi-Fi is turned off, the Bluetooth is off. So at night you're not getting constant connection into your ring because that defeats the purpose, which we'll talk about EMFs. If you keep the phone on next to you as you're wearing your ring, you're gonna have a lot of MS running through your body, which are going to disrupt your sleep. And I recommend my patients just to wear it at night. I don't think they should be wearing in during the daytime. In the daytime, you're walking around EMFs and WiFis that are constantly trying to connect to your ring. So when you charge it to, when you put it in in the morning to analyze the data, don't analyze and run it when it's in your body. Otherwise, you're getting a lot of EMFs into your body. I'm not a fan of a lot of bands. to wear through the whole day because it meets a lot of EMFs and EMFs have been shown to really disrupt sleep as well. So I think it's a good idea to understand patterns, but I'm also very cautious in telling my patients that whatever shows in the report of their sleep cycle to not panic about it, to not become obsessed of it. I can see sometimes certain patients I might not have them track their sleep at all because if they have too much anxiety and concern about sleep, actually monitoring and tracking their sleep creates more insanity for them. So I don't think it's a long-term solution for patients to constantly monitor and track, but just to have an idea of what, what their body's doing or how certain therapies or certain lifestyles or food or alcohol can impact their sleep is a bit of an experiment for them, but without attachment. And it's really important to have the information, the conversation of don't attach yourself to what the ring says, get the information, but eventually sleep without a tracking device in your body. I think that's something that's necessary.

The best device that I can think of is the device that changes your behavior. The one that changes your behavior and makes you a better sleeper and gets you to bed on time. That's what I love about the Oura Ring. It's making suggestions as to when I should go to bed. I don't really need those anymore, but it's there. It does reinforce my behavior. And it also rewards your behavior, your good behavior. So that's where a device is helpful. It is not going to be the solution It is an additive thing that can help you become a better sleeper. And again, sleep is innate, but it's not guaranteed. We do have a lot to learn about sleep, and we are bad sleepers, self-imposed, and I'm speaking for myself. We have abused that privilege of being able to sleep. And so devices are helpful in that regard, is rewarding for good behavior, and also letting you know you know, giving you tips on what you can do.

To be a better sleeper. Next, let's talk about temperature. Remember a night we're meant to feel slightly cool. Now, this might mean something different for everyone, but you need to find the best temperature for you and your partner. This tip is one of my favorites.

I've been doing it lately. Take a warm or cold shower. That temperature change will reduce your body temperature. Body temperature is extremely important. when it comes to sleep. In fact, there are some devices out there that measure body temperature. A drop of half a degree is a good thing because your core body temperature, when it drops, sleep is more likely to happen. The cold shower, the hot shower will in fact accelerate that. It will create that body change where you may fall asleep quicker.

So cool is usually, I used to be a very cold person and when I heard that, I was like, absolutely not. not gonna sleep good. But the research does show, and that's what happens in nature, like when we were in caveman, we didn't have heaters, we didn't have a ton of blankets. You're supposed to be cooler, your core temperature actually drops at night, and it comes up around four in the morning, five in the morning to warm you up as the sun comes up. So that's another thing is looking at temperature and maybe getting some more breathable mattresses or blankets, pillows. What happens to babies if you're, you know, putting blankets all around them, head sweat. So we release heat through our head. And that's why you see a lot of babies, they leave that little mark at the back of their head because that's where they sweat. Well, with adults, we've forgotten that. And I think a lot of men especially, they heat up at night. You know, as soon as they lie down, their body temperature goes up. And so I wanna look at that when I'm talking to my patients, I ask that. And people just think, oh, that's my disposition. I'm just a hot person. But when you study Chinese medicine, when you study other, you know, non-conventional therapies, you realize there is a normal and healthy way of being. And when you're not moving, you shouldn't get hotter. You should actually either remain the same or actually get cooler, especially when the temperature actually naturally comes down as the sun goes down, it's supposed to get cooler. But with our climate control and being able to, you know, keep your temperature at 70 or 72 all day, you don't get that cue that's natural that we would if, you know, we lived more in tune with nature and we would get cooler. And that often is assigned to the body to release the hormones to get you sleepy.

Right.

And so that I look at temperature a lot with my patients and what happens throughout the day. Do their feet only get hot? Do they get hollow hot all over? Do they get really cold? Does the tip of their nose get cold? That can often be a sign that they're actually tired. Do they start yawning at 8:00 p.m. and then a lot of my women, I'll say, touch the tip of your nose. If it's cold, that's a sign that your periphery isn't getting that blood and your body is trying to get ready for sleep.

So using these cues to help you. Ideally, your room will be between 65 and 72 degrees, depending on the person. In order to cool down your body temperature before bed, A bath or shower is great. Also, I love using BedJet, which blows cool air into your sheets all night long, or a chili pad, which I love, which keeps the whole bed cool. And even you can have one for you and one for your partner, so you have different temperatures. You can set it to different temperatures using your smartphone. It's pretty cool. Not only should your room be cool, but it should also be dark. Remember what Dr. Afu said about melatonin receptors? If our room isn't dark enough, we might have a tough time falling asleep. And I use blackout curtains. I use black tape to cover all the lights in my room, like the smoke detector, all kinds of stuff. And I also keep technology out of the bedroom. I keep the bed for sex and sleep, that's it. I also use eye shades, which are goofy, but they work. Next, I want to talk about one inexpensive tool that has helped thousands of people get better sleep, and it's related to mouth breathing. Remember our conversation about mouth breathing? Well, recently more and more folks have been experimenting with something called mouth taping to help them breathe through their nose. Breathing through our mouth versus our nose can contribute to poor sleep. It can cause dry mouth, high blood pressure, migraines, and lots more. When we breathe through our nose, we're able to activate our parasympathetic nervous system. this means we're more calm, relaxed, and ready for bed and get deeper sleep all night long.

When it comes to sleep, I mean, you would think that someone who's very interested in this, I'm naturally a good sleeper, but that's not at all the case. I mean, my brothers can fall asleep on an airplane really loud, but I struggle very light sleeper and I would wake up oftentimes, especially in my adolescence, I noticed like I would be really sleepy in school time and things like that. And lo and behold, it wasn't until, gosh, 2015 that I met Dr. Mark Revenna. I realized that I was a mouth breather. and that's why I was getting really unrefreshed sleep. And so the practice of mouth taping literally transformed my brain, my life, my energy. And ever since then, I mean, I've prioritized sleep and considered sleep to be very important, but I didn't really, I wasn't able to really differentiate what was a good night's sleep versus a bad night's sleep until I started mouth taping. I remember the first night when he taught me this in 2015. I was staying at my mom's house in San Francisco. I did an interview with him that day. When he was telling me that you can enhance your sleep by taping your mouth, I thought he was kidding. I thought it was like a bad joke that I wasn't getting. I'm like, what is he talking about? And he said, no, no, there's really science about this and he's a dentist. And I went home and on my way home, I bought some 3M Micropore tape that he recommended. And I remember waking up. I remember putting it on the first night that I did this and putting on mouth tape and I thought it's kind of claustrophobic feeling. Like you feel like you're kind of trapped. Like all these things run through your mind. What if I have to vomit? What if I cough? What if this? What if that? Anyway, thankfully I just fell right asleep. I had one of the best night's sleep that I've ever had up to that point in my life. I remembered every dream in vivid detail and color, and I was blown away. And ever since then, I've been trying to encourage more people to do this. And have even, you know, at that time my daughter was three years old. It took some, you know, convincing with my wife to convince her because I had seen my daughter, you know, she was a mouth breather just like me. Okay? And at that point she was sleeping with us in the bed and she would end up upside down. I would get a foot in my mouth, you know, and part of that was because she was struggling, as I understand it, from a neurologic perspective while she was sleeping. She wasn't getting oxygen because she was breathing through her mouth and her tongue was collapsing the airway during her REM stages. So when I started mouth taping with her and we had to make it as a parent, this is a tip for helping your kids to mouth tape, we had to have mom and dad do it and it was cool. Mom and dad are mouth taping. This is really cool. It's part of our pre-bed routine. And then so eventually she would do it on her own volition. At first I had to put it on her and just say, Just please do this, honey. You know, this is going to help you with sleep. And she would lie still and sleep really good. And she used to have these really deep bags under her eyes even at age three. Those totally went away. And so it's been amazing. And her face structure, her jaw, you know, has totally changed. Her teeth, you know, were starting to come in kind of crooked. There was a lot of crowding. The dentist was saying, you know what? We're probably gonna have to refer you out to an orthodontist. There's a lot of crowding in here. And so the mouth taping has been very helpful with that. And we also, with her, got the myo brace, which I have no financial affiliation with, but it helps kids learn how to breathe through the nose while they're sleeping. It's just a it's not invasive at all. It's like a night guard essentially for kids. And that, she's had no dental work at all. And again, her teeth were coming in kind of crooked on the bottom, a lot of crowding. Now her jaw is expanding. And so it was amazing to me to see in real life and in a few years' time how just changing how we breathe while we're sleeping could have an impact on facial development and teeth structure. And various experts have talked about this going back to Weston A. Price about the, the mouth and the connection between the airway and all this, but to actually see it and not see these pictures of people in Africa, but to see that nutrition and breath, it was such a game changer for us.

Nose breathing is huge. Mouth taping is a simple fix, or at least a diagnosis, differential diagnosis, for knowing whether you can properly nose breathe during the day and also at night. I first discovered mouth taping via research for my book. My daughter and I came across it, and again, four or five years ago, it was not such a big deal. Maybe in the outer circles of healthcare, mouth taping was mentioned. We were aware of it. These patients that couldn't breathe properly were mostly obligate mouth breathers. I mean, they weren't able to breathe through their nose. And so after a lot of research and then seeing that being verified, but what I was seeing in my practice and it being linked to poor sleep, interrupted sleep, poor quality of life, high blood pressure, and certainly the dental grouping of decay and gum disease and bad breath, it became a very big part of my practice. And unfortunately now I can't go without noticing that with anyone in any daily conversation. Our patients that are phobic, that don't like dentistry, that avoid the dentist, most of them are mouth breathing. Think about it. If you're at the dentist and you're on your back, which is, I've been told by some of my patients, it's a form of waterboarding, and you can't breathe through your nose and your only airway, only source of air is through the mouth, and I've got my fingers in there and the dental system has their fingers in there and their instruments in there. There's a rubber dam on there. There's water in the back of your throat. You're going to be in panic mode during the whole visit. And that's not what we want, of course. That's because they can't breathe through their nose. There are, as I mentioned, so many things about nose breathing that are just so, so important to know. For example, when you breathe air in through your nose, it gets warmed. The temperature is slightly elevated, and it also is humidified. That air gets to the lungs, and that is actually better for your lungs. It's less likely to dry out the lungs. Breathing through your mouth, of course, counteracts that. There is a nasal biome. There is a layer inside of your nose that is living and helps you filter out viruses and even spores. breathing in through your mouth, it's an open passageway to your lungs and to the rest of your body. Breathing through your nose can actually allow you to sound different. It changes the tone of your voice. Typically, if the patient doesn't have a cold, I can hear the mouth breathers. It's a nasal kind of tone. And, you know, that's not right. I mean, we should be able to breathe while we speak, right? I mean, that's important. So again, that whole idea of using the nose to breathe is very, very important. Nitric oxide is produced with this biome in the nose. If you have a very dry nose because you're not breathing through it and all the air is going in and out of your mouth, you're going to have a lot of allergies. The histaminic response to allergens and pollens is that much more exaggerated. because your system is not in place to counteract that and to work properly. So use your nose. If you don't use it, you're going to lose it. It's that simple. So how does one figure all this out? It's so simple. It's as simple as just putting tape over your mouth. So my wife and I tape every night because even though we have our oral appliances and we have very good readings on AHI and all that, this does help. We don't want to get cavities. We don't want to get gum disease, of course. but we also want to make sure that we are nose breathing. And I'm not sure why, but even though we are good nose breathers and able to nose breathe, every once in a while we sleep in such a way where our mouth falls open and that's when the heart rate goes up. That's when the respiratory rate goes up. Why even deal with that if we can fix it by, and I literally do this in the dark before I go to bed, lights out, I reach over, grab some tape, and I seal up my lips and they stay on till morning time. I'm gonna give you a demonstration right now. Just take some, the right tape, I like 3M Nexcare, and you rub it onto your lips, place it onto your lips with a normal lip posture. Don't pucker up, don't pull in, whatever your rest position is, even if you're slightly open, and some people can't close their lips properly, that's lip posture. That's fine, whatever is relaxed for you.

And this is what you do.

It comes off. It comes off very easily. No one's going to suffocate. So a lot of my patients will mouth tape and some will do it fine. The tape's on in the morning and I encourage them to keep doing that because most of them right away notice that they something's different. They remember less at night. Their partner, sleep partner, may say, oh, you didn't snore last night. Those are patients that can do it well. and they're kind of borderline in terms of obstruction of the airway. The more borderline patients, the tape will stay on for a few hours, and then they just remember ripping it off and having a headache. They're having hypoxia. They're suffering from hypoxia. They were able to do it for a certain amount of time, but there wasn't enough air coming in through the nose, and they started getting this headache from not getting enough oxygen. And that's very telling as well. So, and then the people that won't even mouth tape, and those are the patients that you know, those are the same patients that are phobic when they come to the dentist, they can't breathe through their nose. And anything that comes in front of their mouth, they won't wear masks, they won't, they're phobic about anything close to their mouth. Those are the patients that they instinctually know or know overtly that they cannot nose breathe, and they are very protective of their airway. and those patients get an ENT referral. I wouldn't force tape on them. Some patients have allergies. There is discussion on the web about techniques of bringing your breathing rate down. And I don't run around, have a high heart rate, high respiratory rate, and tape and jump into bed. That's almost impossible for anyone. You have to be relaxed, then tape up and then go to sleep. For patients that have allergies, forcing the issue with tape. Let's assume they're good nose breathers, but they have an allergy, they're a little stuffed up. And I've had this issue as well sometimes, and there's some nights that I cannot tape, but sometimes it's good to try. Bring down your breathing rate, meditate, bring down your resting heart rate, and then try and tape. And even though you're slightly obstructed in terms because of the allergy, all of a sudden, by forcing the air through your nose, you're able to kind of reverse that stuffiness because you're allergic to something. And that has worked for a lot of people. So anyway, mouth taping is a very interesting technique for a variety of reasons, and I highly recommend it.

If you're considering mouth taping, please consult your doctor. Again, this is not suitable for everybody. If you're a beginner with mouth taping, I recommend Somnifix mouth tape. They offer a gentle mouth tape that has a little slit between the lips for anyone who feels uncomfortable. The tape also comes off super easy. Now let's turn to a discussion on supplements. It'll be great if we can get all our nutrients and everything we need from food, but even with a perfect diet, the combination of lots of things including our depleted soils, the storage and transportation of our food, genetic alterations, of traditional heirloom species, the increased stress and nutritional demands resulting from a toxic environment, all these things make it really hard for us to get the vitamins and minerals we need solely from the food we eat. Also, our late nights and stressful lives mean that sometimes we need support when it comes to our sleep. So let's hear from our experts.

When it comes to therapy, so what can one do to support the sleep? So in terms of supplementation, there's some great things you can do. For supplements, I like a combination of nutrients or bottles, supplements that have a combination of herbs and amino acids. Some of my favorite herbs are lavender. There's great lavender oil capsules. That's a great gentle therapy even for children that have overstimulated mind or they can't sleep. So lavender oil capsules are great. You can also get a combination of a herbal formula that has some chamomile, some passion flower, some valerian root, some ashwagandha, some rhodiola, some of the adaptogenic herbs that help manage adrenal function and help relax the brain and the mind for sleep. So an herbal formula, there's many companies that make great products. Gaia makes a great formula called Sleep Aid. It's herbal. So if you're just going gentle, the herbs are a great way to help. If you're going into the amino acid realm, I love to use GABA, L-theanine around 100 milligrams to 200 of L-theanine, the same with GABA, 5-HTP around 100 milligrams to 200 as well. And again, if you use melatonin or 5-HTP, I like to use the controlled release version of it, meaning it stays in your body through the whole night. And it's good if it has a lot of B6. B6 around between 5 to 15 milligrams helps you metabolize and activate the serotonin pathway, so the conversion of melatonin happens easier. Many patients that pick up melatonin need a little bit of the B6 built into it to metabolize it better. And again, the controlled-release formula tends to work better. But you want to build up slowly on melatonin, start with a half a milligram. The highest dose a patient can take is 10, but build up slowly if you need to. but again, the amino acid blends that have a combination of GABA, glycine, threonine, and taurine, so another great support for sleep. I also like magnesium. Magnesium is very relaxing for the brain. Women actually have much lower levels of magnesium than men, and this is one of the reasons why females tend to struggle more with insomnia. We need magnesium for balancing our hormones and balancing our adrenals and nervous system. There's more stress. naturally in the body because of the hormonal changes, being a mother, having children. So magnesium supplementing with around, I like between 200 to 400 milligrams of magnesium. I personally like magnesium citrate the best. I think patients sleep the best with the citrate. You can get in a powder form or in a capsule form. But my routine is I take magnesium every night, counts my central nervous system, allows me to fall asleep easier. There's also great formulas. Again, I use a powder called Relax for helping patients sleep and to balance cortisol. So greedy, it's all, so much of sleep is the cortisol, breaking down that cortisol at night. I use something called cortisol balancer and cortisol manager that has amino acids, phosphatidylserine to break down the high cortisol in the body. So metabolizing that cortisol is very important. for patients doing a fiber, also buying some of this excess hormones. So maybe doing some flax seeds in the morning or in the evening, a tablespoon of that can settle and bind some of those toxic hormones that are surfacing in higher levels.

Some of my favorite supplements for sleep include cortisol manager, which has ashwagandha, Magnolia and phytoseal serine, all which help lower cortisol levels. Melatonin is also fabulous. It reset your sleep cycle and help you stay asleep. GABA, which is sort of not a natural valium, it's an amino acid. Magnesium is very good. L-theanine comes from green tea, also powerful. And there's lots more. Now it's important to talk to your doctor before taking anything. Some people are really sensitive to melatonin, so you might want to start with a small dose. Some people use half a milligram. Some people might need one or three or five. Depends on the person. Start with a small dose and see how it affects sleep. Now, I know we shared a bit of information and it might feel overwhelming, but the key here is not to stress yourself about sleep. The key is to choose which tools resonate with you. And as our experts mentioned, stressing out about not getting sleep and stressing out about not setting up everything perfectly only makes the problem worse. I'm going to offer you all options for your 10-day sleep reset. I'll talk about food. exercise, a morning and evening routine, setting up a sleep environment, and lots more. However, I also recognize that not all of this is possible for everyone. I want you to focus on what works for you. If it all works for you, then great. If you only get a chance to change a few things, such as focusing on balancing your blood sugar, that's still a step in the right direction. I want you to wake up every day feeling happy, focused and healthy. And I know that means getting great sleep. I hope the tools that we offer you today will plant the seeds for healthy sleep habits that will carry you beyond these next 10 days on into the rest of your life. So let's get started.

Your evening time is that wind down time. You have to like prepare the body, you know, even like a loving touch, even like a facial. just touch itself can release oxytocin, which is relaxing. You know, touch with intercourse or sex can absolutely calm your nervous system down. That's that parasympathetic mode. You know, an herbal tea, not drinking too much fluids, but an herbal tea, a chamomile tea, valerian root, a lot of these things you can get that calm the nervous system down. These herbs we call nervines, like skull cap, oat straw, passionflower, chamomile. These are great ways to actually wind you down if you're too wound up from the day.

So your bedroom should be one of the most sacred places where you go into to rest. That's where you rest. Your bed is associated with resting, relaxation. It shouldn't be where you're working, doing emails or watching TV or eating. It shouldn't be the place where you're overly, the mind is overly engaged. so watch your home. Make sure that your home has, your bedroom has proper coverage for light. So we sleep better when we're fully in the dark. When we are in the dark, we release more melatonin. And if you have any electronics that are on or lights, that's going to disrupt your brain. So make sure everything is unplugged. Have a total dark room, even if you have to put blackout curtains, which I have in my house. and also noise. You want to minimize noise. So if you sleep with a partner that snores or if you're sensitive to noise, just wear earplugs. I sleep every night with earplugs and the body when it's quiet in darkness, it knows how to go to rest. Outside of the temper, darkness is also temperature control. So we sleep better when we are in a cooler space. The body naturally drops its temperature at nighttime in preparation for sleep. The body does better when it's in a cooler temperature. So getting the room cooler helps. So anywhere around 65 to 72 degrees depends on each person, but ideally around a 68 to 70 is the ideal for most people to have a cooler room when they go to bed. And one of the techniques for patients to actually get their body to fall asleep is take a hot shower or take a hot bath. It's not only relaxing, but when you come out of the shower, the contrast of the hot and the cooler temperature naturally is causing your body to circulate more blood and it's cooling your body down from all the heat. Your body starts to cool down. So it's a quicker way to drop someone's temperature as well to go to bed if you're too warm at night. My patients that have hot flashes at night, they're hot at night. They actually say that when they take after a hot shower, often they feel cooler. So their body is able to rest more at night. So getting your temperature down and making sure that your bed is not too warm as well. And what kind of clothing you wear, it is advisable that most people don't wear clothing when they go to sleep. You don't want to restrict again that lymphatic movement that happens. Otherwise you're not detoxing as well. You want to sweat. sleep just on your skin with at night time. So watching the temperature, the light sound. And again, if you're wearing a device to track your sleep, make sure that it's not connected or on on airplane mode. So you don't want to be radiating yourself all the time. Other practices for sleep. I always guide my patients to either adopt a practice where they focus on their spirituality, they're focused on their energy body where they have sacred space. And this is what I do every night. Right before the last thing I do before I go to bed for 10 minutes, I either pray or meditate and I do it either when I'm laying in bed or right next to my bed. And I will set up an environment where I actually love aromatherapy. So I may have some lavender oil or gentle rose being infused in the bedroom. And just just reminds my body to rest, relax, and I'll probably do a breath work or meditation or a prayer to just slow my system down and connect with a deeper self. The body has been active all day, so I go to a deeper place of transition where I can also run through my day and a prayer is a form of unloading the brain. So I'm spending in gratitude, I'm kind of going through my day and being grateful for what has happened and also releasing what I need to release, whether some, sometimes there's too much in my mind. I'll write it down. I'll Journal what's in my mind, my to-dos for the day or for tomorrow. I'll write it down and put it on a journal that the next day I've dumped my brain, in essence, in the paper. So it's there. I haven't forgotten it. But once I clear the mind that I go into a breath to calm my central nervous system down. But I always spend time in prayer and gratitude. Gratitude. to the day and just setting, relaxing the brain and the mind so the body can rest at night. And when we sleep at night, it's not just physiology, but it's our energetic body that needs rest. And the energetic body does well when we nourish it with kindness, with appreciation, with gentleness. So a lot of gentle energy you want to do around sleep time.

One of the best ways to prepare yourself for sleep is to keep your environment dark. And this means orange lights or dim lighting or even candlelight if it's safe. Also, for two hours before bed, for the next 10 days, can you commit to avoiding screens? Here's an example of what I do before bed. Around 8:00, we'll turn off the lights in the house and either switch to candlelight or we'll use orange lights. Now, if I'm on a really tight deadline and I have to be on my laptop, or if we're watching a movie with friends and family, I also wear my blue blocking glasses. My favorites are true dark blue blockers. Most nights, I'll try to do something really relaxing and here's some options. You can use that time to catch up with people in your house, your family. Write letters to someone you love. Play a board game with your family or friends or do some light yoga stretching. Take a bath. Listen to calming music. Meditate. Try some deep breathing. Make some chamomile tea. and just sit outside and watch the stars. Next, it's time for bed. Make sure the room is cool and dark. Your body can sense if there's light in the room, so try to use blackout curtains if you have a lot of light pollution coming in from the street. If not, just cover up any source of light in the room with pillows or black tape. I use an eye mask, which is awesome. Now, if you're having trouble falling asleep, try one of the breathing exercises recommended by Dr. Judy. I also added these exercises to your course materials. Also, consider mouth taping if your physician approves. This is another way to make sure you're breathing through your nose instead of your mouth, which we learned can lead to many issues, including sleep apnea. Next, if your challenge is staying asleep, try one of Dr. Judy's breathing exercises or use this as an opportunity to meditate. So if you have to get up and go to another room for a little while, Don't beat yourself up. Stressing about being awake is going to keep you awake. Remember, waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back asleep could also be a blood sugar issue. So try having a spoonful of almond butter or a little bit of sweet potato before bed and see if that helps. Finally, keep your phone and your gadgets away from your body when you sleep. If you need your phone and your phone alarm, Turn your phone on airplane mode and leave it charging in another part of the room. If you can, also turn off the Wi-Fi in your house. The key here is routine.

It sounds really simple and silly, but just brushing your teeth and going through your pre-bed routines kind of tell your psychology and your nervous system that it's time to go to bed. And it can help mitigate, again, that anticipatory anxiety of, Am I going to have another restless night? So we've all brushed our teeth thousands of times. Anyone watching this video probably has at this point. Think about all the good night's sleep that you had when you brush your teeth. And so another small tip that I would share with people, if they do wake up at say 2:00 in the morning and they're like, I just need to go back to bed. How am I going to get back to bed? I have to get up at 6:00, work and take the kids and do all these things. what you can do is just go through your pre-bed routine again. Floss your teeth, brush your teeth, and it sounds really simple and like, wow, how could this even work? But it can actually help you fall back asleep because you're doing that same pattern. And after that pattern, your body knows, oh yeah, it's time to go to bed again.

Okay, now let's talk about your morning routine. Remember, what you do during the day is as important as what you do at night when it comes to sleep. For the next 10 days, I want you to commit to getting outside first thing in the morning. Can you spend 10 or 15 minutes outside when you wake up?

So we know in the research light is more important than melatonin, it's more important than exercise. We need light exposure during the day to help us sleep at night. So that light exposure is going to reset your circadian rhythm, help you produce the right amounts of cortisol and melatonin, and get you the exposure you need for vitamin D, which is essential for the sleep process as well.

When you wake up, don't check your email, don't look at your social media feed for at least 30 minutes. Remember, what you do within those first 30 minutes is vital. It's vital for your health and it's vital for your life. If you're stressed out looking at your phone, this is gonna automatically Set your day up to be a stressful one. For me, I like to wake up, meditate for 20 minutes, step outside in the morning with my wife, sit on the porch and have some coffee, or go for a walk to the local coffee shop. And then I check my food before my workout. Next, eat a blood sugar balancing breakfast. For me, this is usually an omelette with tomatoes and olive oil and avocado, or I'll make a big green smoothie and I'll throw avocado and good fats in there. Remember, you want healthy fats plus protein plus fiber in the morning. And continue to eat blood sugar balancing meals throughout the day. For lunch, I like a big salad with loads of veggies and canned salmon, olive oil, nuts sometimes I put in there. For dinner, I like to have different types of veggies with some protein. Maybe I'll do a little grass-fed beef with roasted veggies. For snacks, I like nuts and seeds, and sometimes I'll have grain free or gluten free crackers with guacamole or hummus. For the next 10 days, can you commit to this way of eating? I call it Pegan because it takes the best of Paleo and vegan and sensible eating and science and common sense and it combines it for an inclusive way of eating that can fit anyone's dietary needs. Next, let's talk about your afternoon break. For the next 10 days, I want you to commit to taking an afternoon break. And that means at lunch or after lunch, Take a walk. Spend some time outside. So many of us are hunched over our desks working all day. We rarely schedule time to be outside or take five minutes away from our computers. Here are some options for your afternoon break. Eat lunch outside. Go for a walk after lunch. Do a quick meditation outdoors. Or walk to your local coffee shop and grab a cup of tea. Just commit to spending about 20 minutes outside in the afternoon for the next 10 days.

A lot of us stay indoors for two or three hours, and then maybe we see some sunlight, or we go into a garage, get into our car, we're behind glass, the windshield of an automobile, and then we get to work, we park underground, we go into our workplace, the windows are filtering all that wonderful vitamin D and sunlight producing good stuff, but we're not resetting our circadian clock. And then We expect ourselves to go to sleep at the right time, and it's because we haven't seen enough daylight. Trunk exposure would be wonderful. That means taking off your shirts and pants and getting as much of your skin exposed to sunlight. That trick has helped me, especially in situations where I'm suffering from jet lag, whether traveling to or traveling back from something. Get out there in the sunlight and soak it up. Don't get a sunburn. but don't use sunblock because that could negate the effect. Your exposure to sunlight is key. And that's, I think, one of the most important tips, especially for children. Getting out and playing is an important thing for many, many reasons.

Next, and I know this might be hard for some, I want you to do your best to take an information detox. And this means that you limit, especially before bed, the news, upsetting movies, TV shows, or aimlessly scrolling through your social media feed. You might not feel like these things are affecting your sleep, but they are. I can't tell you how many times I read a stressful news article before going to bed, and then I have chaotic dreams where I couldn't fall asleep thinking about what I just read. Instead, I focus on uplifting content, on spiritual books, on whatever makes me happy. Next, exercise. As we learned from our experts, exercise is an effective way to treat sleep disorders.

Exercising during the day is going to help you boost your cortisol levels appropriately. It's also going to help you increase your energy expenditure and improve sleep drive so you can fall asleep at night.

Other techniques for patients is exercise. What kind of exercise to do, what kind of movement, studies are showing that exercise is very essential to help you sleep. The type of exercise matters. If you're walking every day, you're moving your body, pumping your lymphatics, I would say most exercise will help your sleep. But if you're having a lot of insomnia problems, probably resistance training would be your best form of exercise. And you can do that just twice a week and then walk every day. Yoga, again, stretching, breath work. Patients always sleep better with movement, but make sure you're not doing intense exercise two hours before bedtime, two to three hours before bedtime. Otherwise, you're waking your body up too much. And patients sometimes exercise too late at night or up all night. So choose the timing of your exercise. Don't over exercise. Don't burn your system out as well.

Be gentle. Next, focus on sleep support. My favorites include melatonin and GABA and theanine, vitamin D, magnesium. Remember, before you take supplements, you want to check in with your doctor. Now, some individuals are very sensitive to melatonin, so be careful. Next, reduce your exposure to environmental toxins. Keep dry cleaning and shoes out of the bedroom. Your bedroom should feel clean, not cluttered. Also, limit the use of plastics, toxic skincare products, and home care products. Use the Environmental Working Group's website to find the cleanest and the safest products. Also, keep tech out of your bedroom. or away from the bed. No watching TV in bed. Just like you put yourself to sleep, try putting your phone to sleep for the next 10 days. Pick a time where you turn your phone on airplane mode and keep it far away from your bed or not even in your bedroom. You might also want to consider some supportive gadgets. Gadgets cannot solve all your sleep troubles, but they can certainly help you get better sleep while you also address the root causes of sleep disturbances. My favorite gadgets include the OURA Ring, the Chilli Pad, the True Dark Glasses, an eye mask, and an air filter for your bedroom.

As I mentioned, I'm wearing the OURA Ring. I talked about this Chilli Pad, which can change your temperature and keep you cool at night, for example. And all these gadgets, you know, with our iPhones and iPads and iWatches that track sleep, all these are amazing tools and technology is amazing and it's evolved so much since I was a kid. But we sometimes are missing the foundation. So if I find out that I am hot and let's say this mattress that's now cooling me is helping me, we didn't address why I had the temperature dysregulation to begin with. Or if I have sleep apnea and now I'm using a CPAP machine and that's getting rid of the sleep app and it's helping me, I didn't address what was the cause of the apnea to begin with, you know? And so I often tell patients to start at the foundations and foundations of health. Sleep is often the foundation as a root cause in our functional medicine tree or naturopathic medicine. If someone's not sleeping well, then nothing is going to work well. Same thing as if they're not eating well and they're not digesting well. to go underneath that, if someone's not sleeping well, we have to understand the mind, the body, the spirit of that human being, the cellular function of that human being, the toxins in that being. So it's kind of like a holographic look at that individual, right? But when someone tells me they have to take these drugs to sleep, you know, and they've been having sleep issues their whole life, or this is a new onset, like there is always a reason why someone's not sleeping. And if they're not as interested to find out, and hopefully, you know, people watching this are, and that's why they want to fix this, they know how important it is to be in tune with yourself enough to know this is why I'm not sleeping well.

Finally, I want you to focus on active relaxation for the next 10 days. Remember our conversation about yin-yang energy? I want you to challenge the idea that being busy makes us worthy. And then we need to pile more and more onto our plates. This is depleting our health and causing restless nights.

Burnout is when your yin is gone and then you don't sleep as well. I had massive insomnia despite being able to take, I was taking my progesterone. I was doing everything right and I couldn't fall asleep. My body was too depleted and I had gone through a lot of detox for my heavy metals. So my, my young energy, my yin energy just burned. So at that point, I had to really see how, and even in the process of healing, one can burn once yin energy. So how you go even into healing has to be more gentle. We have to slow it down a bit and then nourish ourselves, find activities that nourish your yin. Having a soothing conversation with a friend is yin nourishing, doing something nice for yourself that love or getting a massage or going on a walk with nature, just sitting and observing life, going to the beach. You don't have to go away that far to practice Yin energies. How you see life around you and how you pro, how what, what do you do around the night time when the Yin energy should be the highest is at night. So Yin loves a little cooler weather. He likes it once warm, but he also wants cool at the same time. sleeping again in the colder room and also feeling safe, nourished. The foods that you give your body, yin foods tend to be things that bring a little bit more of the cooling down into the body without creating too much heat. So again, the choices of foods can really make an impact here in the yin. And the practices of life. I love recommending my patients to get acupuncture to build their yin. I love floating. Floating is Sensory deprivation in a floating tank, in a salt tank. I do that twice a week. And that's how I actually got my my yin energy back. Um, when you go to a floating session, you spend one hour just resting and, complete darkness. There's, it's darkness. There's no sensory stimulation. There's no lights. There's, it's just in complete darkness in warm water, salt water. So you get in a huge benefits or resetting their parasympathetic nervous system and building that Yin energy. So breath, work, meditation, floating are some of the great ways when my patients have burned up their Yin, I send them to get acupuncture or get, I do acupuncture myself. I have them do acupuncture or do floating tanks as well. Or I send them for five days to the mountains, to nature, to spend time. So resetting that energy is important, but also nourishing all the time. So let's be really aware that the yin energy needs to be nourished in our lives if we want to have continuous, helpful sleep.

Remember, we're meant to sleep well. If you don't get quality sleep, don't give up. There's always a solution. I hope that the takeaways from this course provided you with the inspiration and the motivation to reclaim your sleep. So thanks for tuning in to the Sleep Masterclass. I wish you health and happiness and great sleep. Hey, everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into the Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff. from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise. And all you have to do is go to drhyman.com/picks to sign up. That's drhyman.com/picks, P-I-C-K-S. and sign up for the newsletter and I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger, longer.

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