Best Of: How Sleep Affects Your Sex Drive w/ Dr. Michael Breus

You know, I can tell you the exact time to have sex, eat a cheeseburger, ask your boss for a raise, like literally, you name it. It's all based on the hormone flow. So if you can predict where somebody's serotonin is at a particular time of day, you know that you can say certain things to them, how they'll take it. It's very predictable.

You're listening to Sex with Emily. I'm Dr. Emily and I'm here to help you prioritize your pleasure and liberate the conversation around sex. In today's best of episode, we're talking about my second favorite bedroom activity, sleep. I chatted with sleep expert Dr. Michael Bruce about everything from what kind of sleeper you are to what to do if you and a partner don't align on morning versus night sex. Please rate and review Sex with Emily wherever you listen to the show and my new articles flow with it. How to have period Sex and six ways to infuse intimacy into your weeknights Couples edition are up on sexwithemily.com before we get into the episode, I have something to share with you all. I'm so excited I get to formally announce to you right now that my new online store, Shop with Emily is live. It's something I've been working on for a long time. I've always wanted to have a store of all of my favorites and go to's because you know, I've been reviewing and testing sex toys for a very long time. Almost two decades. I've literally tried every single toy on the planet. And and I just want you to know that I've never talked about toys that I don't love that I haven't tried or someone on my team hasn't tried. And so I put them all in one place and there's not too many. You won't get overwhelmed. But for all the categories I talk about, you're going to find the sexy thing that you need and it's going to be the right thing. And you know how stores often have staff picks. Think of Shop with Emily as one big selection of staff picks. Lubes, plugs, vibes, couples toys, candles and sextras. Everything you need for a pleasure filled life. Free shipping on orders over $69. I'm guessing you won't forget that number. And we ship with discrete packaging all over the US go to our website sexwithemily.com click on the shop button at the top and it will take you to our online store. Or just go straight to shop.sex with emily.com. all right, everyone, enjoy this episode.

Welcome to the show. Dr. Michael Bruce.

So excited to have you. Dr. Emily. It's my super duper pleasure to be here.

Yeah. And I think sleep is having a moment. The last few years, I feel like everyone's sort of been jumped. I think everyone is, their sleep is impacted. You know, we're not sleeping. We don't know why. But really this time, as a planet, it is having a moment. So what's going on? Tell me why, tell me, Dr. Bruce.

So, I mean, all of a sudden, several different things sort of collided. Number one, we could start tracking it a lot better. So now we've got rings, we've got wristbands, we've got things under our mattresses that can start to give us a little bit more feedback so we can start to understand more about our sleep. So that's certainly helpful. The other thing that we started to realize is that performance is really directly tied to sleep. All kinds of performance. So like financial performance, like how well you do at work, relationship performance, sexual performance certainly has got its roots in sleep. So, you know, when you start to think about all things performance related, we as a, as a species seem to be kind of evolving towards this sort of high performance, high tech sort of universe. Guess what? Sleep's going there too. And we're all trying to figure it out as fast as we can.

Yeah, we really, really are. Right. And all the impact of the lights and everyone's talking about the blue light blockers. I mean, our phones. Right. We're staring at our phones all day now even more so we're on our computers. You're staring at your computer screen. That's going to impact our sleep.

Yeah. Which is not so great, not only for eye strain, but also exposure to the blue light that's in the computer screen. I'm oftentimes recommending to people there's a free software out there, it's called Flash Flux Flux. You download it, put it on your laptop, and it will automatically change what's called the color temperature of the screen, the monitor. So that way you're not getting the blue light in the evenings. I mean, you know, if you're in a studio, obviously there's lighting. So that's a different story. But then like I also tell a lot of my female patients, I said to them, you know, look, like if you wear makeup, don't take your makeup off as the last thing that you do at night because you're in front of this huge brightly lit mirror usually right you know? Cause you're really trying to get it out from the pores and, you know, under the eyeballs and all that kind of good stuff, right? And so I'm like, dude, don't do that in front of a brightly lit. Like, you're telling your brain it's basically sunshine morning time, right? So take your makeup off at 6 o' clock or, you know, 7 o', clock, you know, earlier in the evening, then, you know, chill out, throw on a ponytail or whatever you do, and then you're off to the races, right? And then you're not getting this massive dose of blue light in the evening.

I never even thought about that. Oh, gosh, this is amazing. Okay, well, before you enter this, I do want to talk about how sleep impacts our sex life. But the first thing off the top of my head is that one of the most common questions I get asked is, I want sex more often than my partner. What do we do? And then a lot of times it comes to, well, I'm a morning person, my partner's a night person, right? How do we make that work? How does it impact our sex life?

All right, so this is the $64,000 question, as they say. So in my book called the Power of When I actually took a look at this question, because this is a question that I actually get asked on a very regular basis, is what's going on here? So, first of all, what we're talking about is a basic idea that I call chronotypes. So people may have not heard the word chronotype before, but you have heard of the concept. If you've ever heard of somebody being called an early bird or somebody being called a night owl, right? Those are chronotypes. So originally we thought that there were three. There were early birds, what we called in the middle, or hummingbirds, not the best of names, and then night owls, right? So I added a fourth chronotype to the literature. And so, by the way, these are genetic. So it's not like you happen to choose, hey, I want to be a morning person or I want to. This is actually something where we see a single nucleotide polymorphism, or what we call a SNP on a particular gene, the PER3 gene. This is what actually has a lot to do with scheduling within your circadian system. So when you see the polymorphism there, it makes you an early bird or it makes you a night owl. So this is where it gets interesting. By the way, if this is one of these genetic things, right? And it's kind of inbred in us. We want to figure out what that is. We probably, probably want to be dating somebody that's the same chronotype as us, Right? Like, wouldn't you want to.

Well, that should be yes. I mean, I always say.

So here's my question. Yeah, so here's my question. Why doesn't, like match.com, why don't they ask these questions? Wouldn't there be a ton of sleep related questions that you'd want to know about your partner before they became your partner? Right? Because, I mean, I'd want to know, do they snore? Do they like it warm or cold? What side of the bed do they sleep on? Like firm bed, soft bed. Like, there's a bunch of factors here, right?

Yeah. A snorer and a soft mattress. We're done. Like, let's not even go out for drinks. Let's just call it there, right?

I mean, you see what I'm saying?

Yes. See, I already knew.

Critical. It's part of the human condition. It's all about the relationship. The core is sleep for sure.

Don't hit the snooze button because after a quick break, we're talking all about how sleep impacts our sex life. But first, I want to tell you about one of my favorite new ways to sleep better at night. Hello again. Hello again. Makes cannabis powered vaginal suppositories to provide relief from the physical, cognitive and emotional challenges of womanhood before, during and after menopause. Founded by Women for Women, hello again. Uses cannabis and natural botanicals to provide relief without the typical head high. And you guessed it, they have suppositories just for sleep. Their sleep suppositories help you go to sleep, stay asleep and get back to sleep. Plus, they regulate your body temperature, address inflammation, and keep your vagina, or vforce as they call it, moisturized. Dr. Bruce and I talk about how CBD can be used as a sleep aid later in this episode. And sometimes. Spoiler. He reveals that CBD is much more effective for sleep when combined with THC. Well, hello again. Sleep suppositories have a 4 to 1 ratio of THC to CBD, making them effective and again without causing a head high. And did you know penis owners can use them too. For those of you without a vagina, hello again. Suppositories can also be inserted into the anus. Try hello again for yourself@shop.hello again products.com and use the code EMILY25 for 25% off your order. That's shop.hello again, products.com or just click the link in our show notes and use the code Emily25 for 25% off. All right, everyone, we'll be right back.

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So here's the basic answer to the question when we look across chronotypes, right? You need five hormones to have successful sex to be elevated. You need estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, you need cortisol and adrenaline, all to be high. Right. You want all of those to be high. You want melatonin, the sleep hormone, you want that to be low. Right. So we did a survey. 74% of people like to have sex between 10:30 and 11:30 at night. What do you think their hormone profile looks like? The opposite. Right.

Right.

The melatonin is high and all the things that are supposed to be high are low. Right?

Right.

So that's clue number one as to what might be going on here. And if you're in a heterosexual relationship, what do most men wake up with? An erection. Right. If that is not mother nature telling you when to use that Thing I don't know what.

Right. Yes, I agree with you. You already got it going on. You got half the problem there. Right? Half the. Half the problems are answered.

Yeah, because you've got the elevation in testosterone there, so it makes a lot more sense. So a lot of times I have a lot of patients who say to me, I like having intercourse with my partner, but he falls asleep afterwards all the time, and I want to spend more time or whatever. And so I'm like, well, okay, well, what about morning sex? And I'm like, I'm being a sex doctor, not a sleep doctor here. But what I'm talking to him about is when they want to do that. And so that's really what we talk about. So I actually created a matrix in the book. So what? So what do we do if an early bird is already married to a night owl? Right? That's the big question. I had to create a matrix in the book. And in the book, I also have a matrix for lesbian couples and gay couples because the hormone profiles are different.

Wow, this is amazing. Right, hack? Yes.

The science is incredible.

I love the science of it. And I love. Because I actually want to talk about, too, the chronotypes. Go back to that. Your chrono quiz. You can find it at chronoquiz.com, that's c h r o n o quiz dot com. Because you're saying that these chronotypes are set at birth. It's about our hormones, so you can't really change it. But my question is, I feel like I used to be when I was, like, younger, mom was always like, you're a night owl, you're a night owl. You're up so late. And then over the years, I used to run marathons and stuff. Like 20. I used to get up really early, but now I feel like I'm seriously like a night owl. I go back to that, but I want to be a morning person because that seems like the right way to be. So you're saying it's set. And let's talk more about.

Let's talk about what we call chrono longevity across the lifetime. So guess what? Everybody is a chronotype at certain points of their lives. So think about it. If you have a baby, right? Babies are lions. They're early birds, right? They go to bed super early. They wake up super early. Right? That's the earliest chronotype, what I call my lion chronotype. Then you got a toddler. Toddler through middle school. When do they go to bed. They go to bed when the sun kind of goes down, they kind of get up when the sun kind of comes up. They're kind of in the middle like what a hummingbird would be or what I call a bear. Then you got teenagers, right? I got two teenagers. I've got an 18 year old son, 17 year old daughter. Okay. It's hell. All right. I'm just letting you know there's nothing fun about having teenagers. But what do they want to do? They want to stay up until 2 o' clock in the morning, they want to sleep until 2 o' clock in the afternoon. Right. Those are wolves, those are the night owls. Right. So everybody goes through. By the time you reach about 18, 19, 20 years old, it kind of sets in. Then it kind of stays with you. Assuming no major circumstance kind of juts in and changes things like you have to take a shift work job and you become like a night shift worker or something like that, you know, or. And in some cases motherhood can be one of those jobs that can go right in and mess up your sleep schedule pretty bad. So. And that's a whole nother line of.

Yeah, that's a no sleep chronotype. Right? That's just a.

That'S a mess chronotype. But yeah, so the whole thing kind of works itself out. But then when you get older, so I'm 52 years old, so right around 55ish, my melatonin is going to start to slow down, which means I'm going to start backing up because I'm more of a night owl. I don't go to bed before midnight ever. I just don't.

Okay. Never have. Okay, you don't go to bed and then do you wake up at the same time or do you? Because I know how important that is.

Yeah. So it turns out that your wake up time is more important than your bedtime. And so when I started an experiment on myself about three or four years ago where I was like, I'm going to wake up at the exact same time every single day, no matter what. And so 7:30 was the time that my body naturally woke up because I'm kind of a night owl, I'm not kind of that early person. So I wake up 7:30, 7:30. Then all of a sudden I didn't need an alarm to wake up. And then all of a sudden I was waking up at 7:15 and then it was 7 o'. Clock. I wake up at 6:13 every single morning. Now I still go to bed at midnight. That has not changed at all.

So how do you explain that?

So my entire sleep schedule has begun to consolidate based on how strictly I'm my circadian rhythm.

Ah, yeah, right.

So I like. So that's kind of the super hack here. So I'm a high performance sleep coach now. So I work with CEOs, athletes, like, you know, celebrities who say to me, michael, I need my sleep, but I don't have the time to do that. Can you help me get there in a healthy way? And the answer is, absolutely I can.

Oh, so okay, so then we're talking about following your unique circadian rhythms so you can hack your sleep. But there must be so many factors. Diet, exercise, right?

Oh, of course there are. Yeah. So we layer all that in. And that's the cool part about this whole circadian rhythm thing. It's not just sleep. All of your rhythms flow based on when you go to bed and when you wake up, based on your melatonin rhythm. So like your cortisol doesn't kick off until your melatonin is going down. So everything goes and it's very, very predictable. So the rest of the book is where it tells you all the different cool things. Like I told you how you know, I can tell you the exact time to have sex, eat a cheeseburger, ask your boss for a ra. Literally, you name it. It's all based on the hormone flow. So if you can predict where somebody's serotonin is at a particular time of day, you know that you can say certain things to them, how they'll take it. It's very predictable.

But if it's different for everybody, then how would I know? Wouldn't I have it? Stop.

There's only four types.

But how would you know your boss's type, for example?

That's easy to figure out. If your boss emails you at 4 o' clock in the morning, guess what? They're a lion. Right? Oh, right, right. This isn't hard to figure out.

You can hack that, right? With your employee, I guess with your staff. Ye, you're right.

If your boss shows up, right. And never has a meeting before, like 9 o', clock, they're probably a bear. Right? If your boss never makes it into early morning meetings and is usually later in the day person, they're probably a wolf. And if their boss is emailing you 24, 7, they're probably a dolphin.

Oh my God, you guys. Well, they know that I'm a wolf. Stick around. Because after the break, Dr. Bruce and I are talking more about sleep, including what to do if a partner's snoring is affecting your sleep quality.

Okay, so, Dr. Michael Bruce, I'm curious about how sleep can be a thing. Like if I was with a snorer or somebody who was, you know, woke up super early and I'm a night owl, all these things aren't going to work together. But how do we deal with that? Like someone's an insomniac, you're saying usually there's not two in every relationship of someone who's got sleep problems and someone does it. We don't get matched on that, unfortunately.

Dude, let me just tell you that I've saved more marriages as a sleep specialist than I ever would have as a marital therapist just by getting people back into the bedroom together. You'd be shocked. So snoring is the number one usually problem that I'm dealing with from a relationship couple standpoint. Right. And so what's that all about? So usually the snorer is the guy, and it's usually because he has gotten pretty comfortable and started to gain some weight. And so as men gain weight, we gain weight through our necks and around our spare tire bellies. Okay? Women gain weight in different places. And so what we know is when men gain weight in their throats, it begins to crush their throat. So if you've ever been in the garden and you stick your thumb over the hose, the water squirts out a lot faster, right? Same holds true with here. The nose is the hose. So as you gain weight, the hose is getting crushed, which means the air has to move faster, which causes a vibration, which causes a snore. So all of a sudden, somebody's in their relationship for a little while, They've gained a couple pounds, and all of a sudden, boom, they start to snore. Now, some people were snorers beforehand, or some people only snore when they drink alcohol, right? So all of these can play into whether or not somebody can get a good night's sleep. And there's a fourth kind of snoring, and that is the pet that snores. So, Emily, you know that I have a French bulldog, and that's all they do.

He's a heroic snorer, as we like to call him. And he sleeps in my bed. So that's a whole other story. And that's another question that you would have between couples, right? Is so. And here's the thing. Like, why is it. Like, why don't we figure that out early, you know, in a relationship? Because I think some of Those are some pretty interesting questions to have. But snoring is a big one and there's actually real data behind it. And so one of the things we now know, number one, snoring is not just a social nuisance. People who snore do have a significant increase in mortality. We do know that they have a significant increase in the ability to gain weight. So there's all, I mean, all cause mortality, like it's no messing around, like the real deal, is there? And it is a precursor to sleep apnea. So we don't have to say, you know, sleep apnea is a big deal, all that kind of stuff. But not only is it not good for the person who snores, but it's actually not good for the person who's lying next to them. The data now suggests that the person lying next to a snorer loses approximately one hour of sleep themselves from listening to that snore. So it is their problem. It is your problem. It is your problem and it is their problem. When we talk about stuff like snoring and look, let's be fair, if all we're talking about here is a little bit of weight loss, in many of the cases, I'm not saying you gotta drop 50 pounds, I'm saying a five pound weight difference, right? So a five pound weight difference for a 200 pound guy is 10 pounds. Like it's not that much. That would lower it probably about 20 to 25 decibels, which would probably change everything and allow everybody to be able to fall back asleep. I am however saying if you think you got sleep apnea or your bed partner says they heard you stop breathing, sleep, please get it checked.

So snoring in most cases is something that you could correct by perhaps going on a reading one of your books, going on a sleep cycle, losing weight, or there's also some other things that going on, right?

Or so there's losing weight, but there's also devices out there, there are mouth guards that can be actually very, very helpful. And to be clear, you don't want to just go get a boil and bite mouth guard that you get off the TV because you can end up with jaw problems. Also, if you have tmj, it can make TMJ significantly worse. So this is something you want to get from a dentist. There are dentists now that are actually board certified in dental sleep medicine. And so it's great because they put, you know, they can move your jaw forward. Then there are commercially available things that you can go to get at cvs. Or whatever one is called Mute M U T E, which is a nasal stent. It goes inside the nostrils. So this is like a miracle cure for snoring for a lot of people, because what it does is it literally just kind of opens up the nostrils. So think of a Breathe Right strip, but on the inside, it's not uncomfortable. You're thinking, oh, my God, who's going to shove that thing up their nose? Right. Trust me, they will. 30 seconds after you put it in, you really don't feel it. And so it actually works out really, really well. I work out with one on, and it's great because I get more oxygen, and if I drink bourbon, my wife's like, go put your nose thingy in. I want to hear you tonight.

So these are great hacks for. I use the Breathe Right chips because I realize as I've gotten older, I feel like it's harder for me to breathe sometimes. But then sometimes I. Like. My mom called me that. I was wearing it, and she, like, FaceTimed with me, and she's like, what's on your nose? Because I don't wear it like this one.

You could. Nobody would even see it, and you'd breathe a lot better. It's called mute M U T E. Like, hit the mute button, and I.

Can get it at CVS.

I think it's 14 bucks.

Okay, I'm gonna buy one of those. This is super helpful. We have some calls. I'm talking to Dr. Michael Bruce. And we have Marie, 23, in Texas, has a snoring challenge in her relationship. Hi, Marie, you're on with Emily and Dr. Bruce.

Hi.

Hi. Thanks for calling. How can we help?

So my boyfriend and I, we've been together for a couple years now. He has a really big snoring problem. Like, I mean, really big. Okay. He sounds like a bear. When he sleeps, it wakes up the whole house.

So it just makes me really tired in the morning. You know, I go to bed early. I work really early, and it just keeps me up all night. I've tried earplugs. He's tried nose strips. He's tried allergy medication. All the things you could try. And it just really. It makes me tired. It makes me irritable towards him, and I don't know, sometimes I feel like it affects our sex life, too. And I'm. I don't know.

Yeah. What do we do, Dr. Bruce, with the snoring?

So this is exactly the situation that I hear about all the time. So number one is one of the things that you should consider doing is going to see a sleep doctor to evaluate the snoring. Because if somebody's snoring is waking up the whole house, there's a very high likelihood that they have sleep apnea. It's highly unlikely that that level of volume and frequency of snoring wouldn't have some sort of apneic characteristics to it. So I would say have the person evaluated by a sleep specialist, and that'll set you down the path of ways to actually correct the problem. And I think that would probably be the first thing that I would consider doing. The second thing I would consider doing is putting him in another room. There's really no reason for you to continue to be disrupted by. You've got to go to work. I mean, it's. If he's got the issue, why is it disruptive to you in your life? He can go into a guest room or he can go to the couch at the end of the day. I mean, I'm not trying to be a not so nice guy about it, but if you continue to make the problem easy for him to not fix, then he's not going to fix it. Right? Yeah. So I would say, you know, I mean, I'm not saying do it in a mean way. I'm saying doing it in a loving way, like, hey, babe, I can't sleep. I need to go to work, and it's a problem. So I'm going to need you to sleep, you know, kind of on the couch until we can kind of figure this thing out. I mean, trust me, it doesn't feel good to be told that. But at the end of the day, it's pretty motivating to possibly get something done. And if it's something really going on with his health, like there might be a suspicion of, then maybe you're doing him a favor.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Marie, sometimes we have to have these tough conversations. You know, you're acquiescing, but it's also impacting your, you know, your ability to show up the day. So thanks, Marie. Let us know how it goes.

Okay, thank you so much, you guys.

Thanks for calling.

I appreciate it.

We have Jane, 58, in Illinois has a question for us. Hi, Jane. Thanks for calling.

Hi.

What's going on? Hi. How can we help?

Thank you both for taking my call.

You bet.

My question is dealing with a job that I'm not really happy in. I've got quite a bit of stress and anxiety been affecting my sleep to the point where I wake up with my jaw clenched. I had Some tooth pain. Went to the dentist. He's like, gosh, it looks like that tooth is that trauma. And I'm pretty sure it's from clenching my jaw when I sleep. I recently started taking CBD oil, hoping that that would help with my stress and anxiety. And I'm not even a weekend, but I definitely feel calmer. But I don't know that it's necessarily helping my sleep. And so I'm wondering if you might have any insight on CBD oil and how that might help or any other tips to get to sleep and stay asleep and turn my brain off?

Yes, that is the question. How do we turn our brains off? Thanks, Jane. It's a great question. What about CBD oil and sleep?

So if you look at the data, and unfortunately, there's not a tremendous amount of data on CBD and sleep as of yet, you would need probably north of 160-180mg a night of CBD for it to actually have an effect on sleep itself. So you'd need to have quite a bit of cbd. Now, if you had a little bit of THC in there, then it would act more as an accelerant and you wouldn't need as much cbd. Now, off the top of my head, I can't remember if Illinois is one of the city states, rather, that has got medical marijuana as legal cannabis or recreational or what have you. If it isn't yet, it probably will be soon.

I think there's some great options looking at cannabis for possibilities for sleep. When we're talking about stress and we're talking about turning off our brain, that's one of the things that cannabis actually does pretty well. But to be clear, I'm not talking about getting stoned. I'm talking about getting to sleep. So there are products on the market now that are being created that you can find in dispensaries that are specifically targeted to sleep. Again, it's not there to. To get you all psychedelic and high. I mean, that's fine if you want to be recreational, but that's not what this is for. This is specifically to help lower that anxiety that you would be having before bed, to help you kind of coast off and be able to fall asleep. Now, to be fair, if cannabis isn't your thing, which for a lot of people it's not or can't be yet, there's actually a couple of other options on the marketplace that people should be aware of. My absolute favorite thing to tell people about is magnesium. Most people are magnesium. Deficient. So if you really want to go with the best starting route, what you really want to do is you want to look at your magnesium, your vitamin D and your iron. If you're deficient in any one of those three, get that fixed first. Right? If you can get that fixed first, then you at least know what's going on, because sometimes you're correcting for a problem that you don't really need to correct for. Right. So make sure that you've got magnesium, vitamin D and iron up to par first. I think somebody put in the chat that it's recreationally legal in Illinois. Thank you for that, by the way.

Thanks, Blaze.

Thanks, Blaze. Huh? Blaze. That's funny.

Blaze knows all about it.

Blaze knows all about the weed. Dude, I love it. Blaze, you're awesome. So when you're looking at cannabis as a potential option, that can certainly be one. But there's also a couple other things out there that are pretty interesting in the marketplace. So I work with this company called EB ebb. Now, this is going to sound crazy, first of all, I'm just warning you ahead of time, but this is really cool technology. So I worked with this company, and what they do is they have this thing that they put. It's a cold press that goes across your head and you fall asleep wearing it, and it stays on your head all night long. And it slows down the cerebrospinal fluid. It slows down everything and slows down your thinking. Not to the point of, like, you can't think, but it actually turns off your brain in a sense. It's very unique. It's very cutting edge. It literally was released on the market four months ago. It's got so much science behind it, and the science is pristine. The science is by one of the top sleep researchers in the world, Dr. Eric Knofsinger. So he looked at the neuroprotective effect of cold. So when somebody cracks their head open and they end up in the emergency room, we wrap their head in ice to keep everything there, but also to slow everything down. Take that idea and now put it into a headband that you put on somebody as they're trying to fall asleep. And it just slows that thinking down, and it makes things so much easier. So there's lots of different things I think people need to be considering when they're looking at difficulty falling asleep, not being able to turn off their brain. But to be clear, stress is certainly a big one. And it's definitely clearly telling you that you need to do Something about it. So thanks for calling in. I wish you the best.

Yeah, thanks, Jane. I mean, so I think to answer your question, see, it can work cbd, but also what you're saying is if.

It is, you need a lot of cbd.

You need a lot of cbd. So thc. Just a little bit of thc. And if you go into a dispensary, they can help you with this. It helps to activate the cbd so it be more effective.

Yeah, it just makes it more. It just pushes it through a little bit quicker and also helps lower the anxiety. Right. That, you know, that's what THC kind of does.

Exactly. All right, Jane, Great. Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jane. Thanks for calling. Yeah, appreciate you. That is so interesting too. The thing about cold though, I would think it's called ebb. I would think that, you know, you put splash cold water on your face when you want to. When you want to wake up. So to have a cold band around.

Your head, it is. Well, remember that your core body temperature has to drop in order for melatonin production to begin. So it actually follows your core body temperature. That's why things like the oura ring and the straps on the arm can be able to measure your sleep.

Where is one place to start to get your sleep regulated? To feel like you have control of your sleep rather than it's controlling you?

Absolutely. Okay, so I'm gonna give all of your listeners a five step plan that everybody can do and it's not gonna cost you a dime and your sleep will be significantly better. Okay?

Okay.

So step number one is to pick one wake up time and stick to it. I would tell you, go to Chrono quiz, figure out what your wake up time should be and do it that way. If you don't want to do it that way, that's fine. But figure out what your wake up time is seven days a week. Including the weekends. Including the weekends. I thought you were catching up on. No, don't mess around. Circadian consistency number one.

Got it.

Okay, step number two, caffeine. Stop caffeine by 2pm Why 2pm so most people don't know caffeine has a half life of between six and eight hours. Right. And so if you stop at two and it's eight hours because maybe you're a slow metabolizer, half of it's out by 10. It's around when most people are going to be going to sleep. So you want to have your coffee, have it in the morning, but stop by two. Step number two stop caffeine by 2:00pm Step number three, alcohol. All right, look, there's a really big difference between going to sleep and passing out. Ok? Right. We don't like the passing out, we like the going to sleep. It turns out that there's a very important relationship to understand here. It's all about the time in which you have your last sip to lights out. Whatever that timeframe in is going to have the greatest effect on your sleep. So if that time is very short, it will have a very large effect. If that time is longer, it will have a smaller effect. So step number three is to stop alcohol three hours before bed. It takes the average human approximately one hour to digest one alcoholic beverage. So I figure you go to two glasses of wine, I'm going to give you a little bit of room for maybe a half a glass more. But to be fair, you don't want to go over 2. For most people, it gives them energy, it doesn't make them relaxed. And for men, it can make them aggressive. Step number four is exercise. Exercise daily. But don't exercise too close to bedtime because like we were talking about, we want your body to cool down, not warm up. So stop exercise four hours before bed. Step number five, this is going to help with brain fog in the morning. When you wake up in the morning, you should have a 15 ounce bottle or glass of room temperature water. You should grab it and you should drink it. Walk over to the window and get 15 minutes of direct sunlight. Most people don't know, but in fact, sleep in and of itself is a dehydrative event. So you actually lose a full liter of water as you drink your water. You lose a full liter of water every night just from the humidity in your breath. So you need to get that back in there. And then number two, light that comes from sunlight when it hits your eye. You have specific cell in your eye called melanopsin cells. These cells will turn off the melatonin faucet in your brain, which will help you remove brain fog. Do me a favor, though. After you grab that bottle of water and you walk over to the window to get your sunlight, put on a robe. I'm just saying put on a robe.

Robe. Okay. This is great.

That's my best joke. Come on. That's my best joke.

Even if it is a great joke. We have time for one more call. JJ, 57 in Texas has a question for the sleep doctor. What's up, jj?

Hi there.

Hi. Hey.

I'm a truck driver and I've been tested for sleep apnea. And I have been diagnosed with it. So I have to use the machine. Is there any way that I'm ever going to be able to get off of this machine or is it permanent forever?

It's a great question. And so there's a lot of things that depend upon my answer. But I'll give you a general answer and then one that's a little bit more specific. So it all depends upon your anatomy. So for some people, if they've just got big tonsils, if you can remove those tonsils, then in many cases we can remove the CPAP machine. There are some very advanced surgeries that have been we've found. Now I work with a group out of ucla and they do some amazing work in looking at ent surgery. So it used to be very barbaric. We would just cut out everything, throw it in the back and not worry about it. Now it's very target picking. So, yes, you can get off of a cpap. Some people can get off a CPAP with weight loss. And then also some people can get off a CPAP by using a dental appliance that can work as well as a cpap. Then you don't have to lug the machine around with you. Also, don't forget there are travel CPAPs, so you might be able to get that and that might make your life a little bit easier.

Yeah.

Whew.

All right, jj, we got it in. Okay. Thanks, jj. Thank you.

Keep it up.

We will. Not going anywhere. Thanks, jj. Appreciate you. Thanks for calling. All right, they can find you@thesleepdoctor.com what's your best sex tip? Sex and sleep before we go, my.

Best sex tip is have sex in the morning with the lights on. That's my best sex tip.

The lights on or this? The sun coming in. Right? Open the door. Thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Bruce. You can find more about Dr. Bruce at thesleepdoctor.com Instagram and Twitter the sleep doctor and take his quiz to find out your chronotype@chronoquiz.com that's it for today's episode. See you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening to Saturday sex with Emily. Be sure to, like subscribe and give us a review wherever you listen to the podcast and share this with a friend or partner. You can find me on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. SexWithemily. Oh, I've been told I give really good email. So sign up@sexwithemily.com and while you're there, check out my free guides and articles for more ways to prioritize your pleasure. If you'd like to ask me about your sex life, dating or relationship, call my hotline 559-talk-SEX. That's 559-825-5739 or go to sexwithemily.com askemily Special thanks to Acast for powering the Sex with Emily podcast. Was it good for you? Email me feedbackexwithemily.com.

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