How to Sleep After Surgery: Explant Recovery Tips

All right, on this episode of the Drive Today, we're going to talk about sleep. So why would I care so much and talk so much about sleep to all of my patients? So the crazy thing about sleep is if you can't get enough quantity and quality of sleep, and we'll talk about it specifically deep sleep, you can't recover effectively. Whether it's from surgery or from activity or from sports performance, whatever you're trying to recover from working out, it won't happen. So we'll dig into why that is such an important factor and some tips and tricks to really just make it simple for you. The biggest hack right off the bat is stop eating near the time you're going to bed. And so one of the very, very simple, fundamental things I tell people to do is a three, two, one rule that one of my friends Reagan really espouses. But so just with analytics, I'll tell you, this is the way it works. And analytics, by using the ultra human ring or the whoop strap, which I wear all the time, those analytics show that your hrv, your heart rate variability improves as you do a better job at this. So when you're going to have your last meal, and so that should usually be about three to four hours before you're going to go to bed, if you're able to, you know, have that meal. And of course anybody who follows me, you know, click, subscribe, follow me, Whether it's on YouTube or Instagram, Facebook or X, you'll know that I talk incessantly about protein. So I have higher protein diets, lower carb diets, no processed sugars, no refined sugars. So if you're going to get sugar, get out of a fruit, make sure the fruits have been cleansed. So have that meal higher in protein around three to four hours before you go to bed. So once that meal has been ingested and you're kind of figuring out what the rest of the evening is looking like, try to then reduce your fluid content to about three hours to two hours. So that two to three hour window before you're going to go to bed, have your last drink of fluid. So like last last of water, what have you. And I'll explain because it's important to do it this way. So when you do it this way, you're setting up your body to one, not have to wake you up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. But two, you're not, you're not gonna burden the system by having like too much volume, if you will, on Board. It's I would say anybody who's went to bed on a really full stomach after a large meal or they've had a lot of fluids to drink or alcohol to drink that makes their stomach sleep poorer. So what we should do always is follow like three, four hours before bed, have our last meal, two, three hours before bed, get the last large amount of. We'll just say water or fluid intake right into the system. And then you're really trying to wind down. So a lot of people wind down by these days methods that, you know, probably keep them more awake by looking at the phone or a tablet. If you're watching tv, you know, obviously watch it at a distance, reduce the room light. You got to start winding down so your body knows it's time to go to bed. And then if you have trouble getting off to sleep or staying asleep, I have specific things that we recommend for sleep. And everybody's heard of magnesium. There are a variety of magnesiums. We have mag absorption that we use as part of our getting off to sleep, if you will, and staying asleep. Bundle I also like adaptogens, like things like Ashwagandha. So in my calming sleep support, that's a main component. And the third and final thing we recommend if someone has trouble getting off to sleep and staying asleep is melatonin, srt. Melatonin is secreted naturally in your body and helps you go off to sleep. But many times people can't stay asleep. So that's a real nice hack to get off to sleep and stay asleep. I'll teach you how to go ahead and use those because it's important about timing. All right, so now, you know, you're winding down and it's been, you know, an hour or two since you had your last meal and you've had anything to drink. Now people have a lot of craving habits. And this is where drugs like Ozempic, All these drugs really change behavior, inhibit the stimuli in your brain. If you want to think of it that way, it takes away the craving. It's all that binge behavior that people have at night that's also super disruptive to sleep, is taken away by those medications. So those medications are going to have a lot of unintended consequences. People are going to lose, as you should, a lot of weight on those medications. If done properly, I find it very hard to believe you couldn't lose weight. And then it's also going to reduce in our population with just that weight reduction and the change in eating habits, it's going to decrease type 2 diabetes mellitus, which ultimately will decrease the number of people going on dialysis from kidney failure. So those drugs are going to have long range unintended consequen. So getting back to that time before you're going to go to bed. So about an hour before bed, it's the time to kind of get the room ready, if you will. So the room you're going to go sleep in should be cooler slightly. The air, if you have an air filter, you can turn the air filter up and start, you know, increasing the filtration of that air. It also creates, depending on the filter, a little bit of background white noise. And then, you know, if you have this kind of real problem getting off to sleep in that hour, hour and a half before sleep, you can take a hot bath or a hot shower. The reason this works is the heat generated by the bath actually causes some internal cooling and you have to get cooler in order to get off and stay asleep. So these are all things that are being wrapped into going to sleep, sleep, getting off to sleep and staying asleep and getting through the cycles of sleep. So now we've, you know, stopped eating, drinking three to four hours or stopped eating three to four hours before, we stopped drinking two to three hours before. And now the, the room is getting, you know, prepared so that there's no issues with the temp of the room. Now it's, you have to wind down. So the room you're in before you go to bed, you want to obviously start dimming the lights because part of your circadian cycle is obviously the sun rises and the sun sets. But if you have really, really bright lights on before you're going to bed, then it's not going to seem like you're getting, your body's not going to interpret that as the signal. It's time to go to be. So that's part of it as well. And I won't go into like everybody's mattress and things like that. I will say if you want to learn more about your sleep, I use the ultra human ring which is on this finger and I use a whoop strap. Whoop is W H O o P. I've had one since 2016. I think those wearables to me are the best ones to interpret sleep. I than both because I look for the consistency between the two of them and I like the data that each of them gives back. It's a little bit different. But once again, if you're going to know and learn about this and make sure that you're achieving an improvement in your heart rate variability. Recently had a patient come to me and say they had a heart rate variability in the teens, like 16, 17, 12, 13. Those are not good. You're not recovering. Your sleep score or indice on the ultra human ringing will be very poor. Your whoop strap will say that you didn't hardly recover. It gives you a percentage of recovery. So either of those I, I feel confident in telling you about. So, okay, you've done all the things, stopped eating and drinking, stopped with the room, you've got the room ready, you've cooled down the room, the lights have been adjusted and now we're going to say you're going to get off to bed. Now, for me, personally, I take my own sleep supplements with a little tiny like a shot glass of water. And currently I use my mag absorb in a powder form. I also have mag absorption absorb in a pill form. So I'll do one of each. I'll take my melatonin SRT and I'll take my calming sleep support. Once again, that's a little shot of water. Now, personally for me, I want to make sure that I go to the bathroom before I get into bed. And then because I'm easily woke up with noises around me, I have to wear something to block noise. And so I wear a little headphone, earbud, whatever works for you. I don't have a specific recommendation on those. It's just if you're sensitive to noises and wake up easily like I am, it's better to have something covering your ear. Now I'm going to talk specifically about something that's really unique and underappreciated, which is cpap. A lot of people have sleep apnea. If you have sleep apnea and don't treat yourself, you're on your way to having a problem with your brain health because your brain gets deprived of oxygen at night and that's a real risk factor for you to go on, develop all sorts of brain health issues, brain diseases. So me personally, I have sleep apnea. And although I don't like wearing cpap, there is no chance that I'm gonna have a brain problem because I didn't wear my CPAP mask. So if you have a CPAP mask, wear it it. So I get my CPAP mask on. I also, because I go to bed earlier than everybody else in my house and people may need to come in and out of the bedroom where I'm at, I will wear a sleep mask, my cpap. And then like I said, I have to wear Something to keep noise out of my ear because I wake up easily. So obviously it seems like a lot, but quantity and quality of sleep are super important. And so for me, that's what it takes for me to get off sleep and stay asleep. And if I can get into deep sleep and spend between, you know, I think the best deep sleep I ever have is like three and a half hours of deep sleep. So the, there's sleep cycles, but I'm concerned really about getting into deep sleep sleep because that's where true recovery happens. So about two to two and a half is really a good stretch of deep sleep. And if you have that, you're always going to recover and feel better. You'll be able to perform better cognitively and physically if you could achieve that. The minimum amount of sleep I like to hear patients of mine getting is six and a half to seven on the minimum. Then obviously you can get above that. That's, you know, when you get up you're going to be dehydrated. So there's this 90 minute window where you don't necessarily want to drink a bunch of caffeine, but you hydrate. And for my patients, one of the tricks is before you go to bed and when you wake up is how you intake fluid. So in that two hour window when you're stopping fluid intake prior to bed, make a little protein drink, mix it up with water so you get good hydration but you have proper protein intake. And then when you wake up, one of the hacks I do is just you put your protein powder that you like or my protein powder, that's pea protein into the water, use a frother, drink it. Now you're rehydrating, but you're increasing your protein on the back end before you go to bed and on the front end. One of my other very specific hacks is we use digestive enzymes. So digestes from us, which is my enzyme, is very good, it has betaine in it, that's super helpful for digestion. Also proteases and everything to break down gluten and fats. And then if you're having trouble with digestion and with a meal, you're adding those enzymes. Obviously if you're eating high protein with a meal, you can add things like more fiber. So these are all just little things because if you're trying to get the most out of your body, you have to be able to digest, absorb and get those nutrients. So this also dovetails into how we do our supplementation. Most of our supplements really are liposomal except the sleep supplements are not. So it's a more, you know. In summary, it's go to bed earlier, stop eating earlier, stop drinking earlier, you know, get the room right, cool it off, wear something if you need to to block light and noise and then get off to sleep with sleep supplements if you need those to get you off the sleep and keep you to sleep, hydrate you know the right way two hours before with protein and then when you wake up, the hack is the hydrate with protein again and rinse and repeat. Get your deep sleep and you'll feel better.