Activity and Rest | Dr. Sal AbiEzzi, M.D.

Sleep regenerates, kind of restores the mind. And there are 2 aspects of that. One related to mood. So if you get a good night's sleep, it's like having a therapeutic session with a psychiatrist or a psychologist, it turns out, because you process all the thorns of the day. Anything that's really bad happening in the day— stress, anxiety— actually, a lot of it gets processed through the mind at night. And usually when you sleep it off, you feel better the next day. Let's fast forward to the second Pillar. So there you have— I've been able to identify kind of 3 aspects of what exercise is about. You think of aerobic— running, swimming, biking. You think of resistance— weightlifting or pushing, pulling against resistance. And then posture. So it's very important to think about those 3 elements. Intermittent interval exercise and breaking a sweat seems to be very important. So if you go for a walk, It's not the same as going for a run. So breaking a sweat, getting your heart rate up there is really critical. So you think of interval aerobic exercise. Resistance, the same thing. You really want those muscles to ache. So having enough weight and doing repetitions enough to get that muscle to ache, that's very important. There was one study there that looked at, for example, lifting, doing dumbbells with 10 pounds versus 20 pounds versus 30 pounds, let's say. Turns out you get the same strength Benefit to the muscle. It might not bulk as much by doing one set of the lower weight for a longer period of time. So, you don't have to spend a full hour in the gym to do a lot of heavy lifting. If you do maybe 15 minutes, but get the muscle to ache. Super sports are activities that you can do that involve other things that are important in our life, such as sports. Obviously, you just came back From spending a week where you're in nature, where you're with others dancing. So think of those super activities where you can exercise. Resistance posture. So the squat, I'm going to have you get up and do the squat with me. So this is kind of an activity that obviously we're all familiar with it, but we're going to do it. I like the idea of the squat because why? You can do it anywhere, anytime. You don't have to go to the gym. So we're going to all stand up. So the idea is that something you could do every day, obviously. What did I just do? I mean, this is a super exercise because I got your heart going. I got your core, upper and lower body to be engaged. It's a balance exercise. And then at the same time, you're stretching those paraspinal muscles, which get really affected quite a bit from being on the computer or sitting. So think of exercise and think of that as a super activity. Let's delve into sleep quickly. Again, I'm going to go through these fast because you know a lot of this information. You can gain it. So the relationship between disease and sleep is a U-shaped curve. If you sleep too little or too much, it seems to be bad for you. The magic word is 7 to 9 hours. Most of us sleep 6 hours or 5. If you go less than 5, you're in big trouble. If you go more than 10 hours a day, that's also bad. Why sleep is so important. I think for innovators and entrepreneurs like yourself, you really need to understand the power of sleep. Sleep regenerates, kind of restores the mind. And there are 2 aspects of that. One related to mood. So, if you get a good night's sleep, it's like having a therapeutic session with a psychiatrist or a psychologist, it turns out, because you process all the thorns of the day. Anything that's really bad happening in the day, stress, anxiety, actually a lot of it gets processed through the mind at night. And usually when you sleep it off, you feel better the next day. The other is memory consolidation. If you think of you're trying to solve a problem or remember something complex, that's when you do that. And there is a third aspect to sleep that's very important is allowing the left brain to talk to the right brain, the idea of intuition. That's when bright ideas come about. If you think a lot of the scientists out there, innovators, creators, they found their work in the middle of the night. They get up and put it down. So sleep is critical. It's really bad for your heart if you don't sleep. Heart attacks go up. It's bad for your weight, your metabolism. You tend to gain more weight if you don't sleep well. It has to do with our metabolic rate dropping. You become more hungry, more tired, so you tend to gain more fat as a result. It's pro-inflammatory. Lack of sleep is pro-inflammatory. It induces things like diabetes. You think of multi-system problem, another way to think of sleep affecting multiple systems of the body, you think of sleep apnea. This is a condition that's becoming more prevalent. Partly because we're gaining weight and partly because of the severe allergies that people tend to have and reflux from eating late at night. So it's a multi-system problem where you're not getting enough oxygen during sleep and it leads to multiple chronic problems. I just had a patient come to me last week with a new innovative device which I've been waiting for for a while. It's actually not that innovative, but the idea of doing a pulse ox which measures your blood oxygen level while you're asleep. So this is something that we used to order on our patients, but we no longer do that because of this product. So it's important to understand what's happening during sleep. Obviously, there are many companies that are tackling that space, whether it's SnoreLab measuring the sound when you're sleeping, or motion, which is another key, and monitoring your heart rate and breathing rate. So those technologies are kind of converging on a solution that's going to be actionable, allow people to wear these devices and give them more information about sleep. Natural ways to improve sleep, you probably all know this. Sleep at a set time, wake up at a set time, use the bedroom for sleep only, condition yourself. Cooling the bedroom down is critical, like opening up that window, keeping the room cool. There's a fair amount of research that supports that. This is from a year ago looking at the Amazon indigenous population and another one, the Aboriginals. In Australia, looking at— they don't have electricity. They go by nature. It turned out it wasn't the light that helped them cue when to fall asleep, when to wake up. It was actually the temperature that allowed them to sleep better, deeper sleep. When the temperature started rising, that's when they kind of got closer to waking up. It's important to get away from the electronics, the machine. Getting sunlight early in the morning. So don't use those sunglasses in the morning. Try to get bright light in the morning. Exercise during the day helps you sleep much better at night. Sex, we can talk about that. There's a lot on that subject matter, but it does help you sleep better. But it's a complicated subject. Avoid alcohol and caffeine, obviously, and so forth. Again, take inventory of your sleep habits and the use of supplements. Again, we can open up questions at the end. We can talk about that. Thank you.