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Speaker 1: A warm welcome back to Doc de Laura Peiffer, who's

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Speaker 1: goes to Medical Guru, and this week she was keen

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Speaker 1: to chat about something that we all encounter on a

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Speaker 1: daily basis, although chances are it's something that we are

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Speaker 1: not getting enough of. Goodness knows, that's the Howden's at

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Speaker 1: the moment with a newborn in the house. Sleep, Doc

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Speaker 1: de Laura, what does a good night's sleep actually look like?

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Speaker 2: A truly healthy sleep is one that you falling asleep

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Speaker 2: fairly quickly, sort of within ten to twenty minutes, staying

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Speaker 2: asleep through the night, and waking it around a similar

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Speaker 2: time each day, and when you wake up you feel refreshed.

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Speaker 2: And depending on stage of life, is different hours or

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Speaker 2: quantity of sleep that we want you to try and achieve.

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Speaker 2: People are different, obviously, there's always extremes and some people

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Speaker 2: don't need as much sleep and some people need a

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Speaker 2: bit more. But we think on average most adults are

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Speaker 2: sort of aiming for around eight to ten hours a night.

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Speaker 1: What eight to ten hours? Okay, Doctor Laura. Let's step

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Speaker 1: into the real world, shall we? With people who run

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Speaker 1: busy lives or work odd shifts. How they mean to cake?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, certainly. I think shift work's a really tricky one,

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Speaker 2: particularly if it changes on a week to week or

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Speaker 2: months to month's basis, And the main advice we have

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Speaker 2: in that space is saying, try not to do anything

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Speaker 2: rapidly because our bodies run on a circadian rhythm, which

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Speaker 2: is like our body clock. Our bodies don't like extremes,

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Speaker 2: So my advice is to try and do things slowly

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Speaker 2: and gradually. So if you know that you're changing into

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Speaker 2: a night shift pretty shortly, you want to start drawing

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Speaker 2: that sleep in a week bit earlier, maybe going to

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Speaker 2: bed a bit earlier, getting up earlier, and just slowly

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Speaker 2: incrementally shifting that sleep cycle is best you can. We

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Speaker 2: have this underlying hormonal rhythm that really does want us

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Speaker 2: to be asleep when it's dark, So our melatonin peaks

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Speaker 2: around ten pm at night, so really we do want

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Speaker 2: to be asleep at night. But if that's just not

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Speaker 2: our reality, and we need to be working really hard

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Speaker 2: at trying to make our sleep environment and sleep schedule

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Speaker 2: as best we can to adapt to a daylight sleeping time,

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Speaker 2: and that can involve sometimes things like use of supplemental

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Speaker 2: or sleeping medications as required and working on good sleep hygiene,

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Speaker 2: so that we're starting to forecast to our brain that

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Speaker 2: this is actually our new sleep time. So doing some

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Speaker 2: predictable behaviors can be helpful, like having the same cup

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Speaker 2: of tea, reading the same book, having the hot shower

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Speaker 2: being off our screens for a good two hours beforehand,

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Speaker 2: and we can start to sort of signposts to our

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Speaker 2: brain that this is now sleep time because the same

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Speaker 2: things are happening each time. Also, soon as we get up,

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Speaker 2: if we can eat a sort of carbohydrate rich breakfast,

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Speaker 2: we're also triggering our brain to go into wake mode.

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Speaker 2: And actually wake mode is just as important as getting

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Speaker 2: us off to sleep, so the quality of our wake

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Speaker 2: up does impact on our sleep that following die