Speaker 1: Hey, Adam, do you remember when we were talking with
Speaker 1: doctor Wendy Troxel in our first episode I Do and
Speaker 1: how she.
Speaker 2: Mentioned that guys.
Speaker 1: Who only get four to five hours of sleep per
Speaker 1: night have testosterone levels of someone ten years older.
Speaker 3: How can I forget that? It was terrifying.
Speaker 2: Well, guess what. The news isn't any better for women.
Speaker 1: Researchers at Duke University found that women who reported unhealthy
Speaker 1: sleep are at an elevated risk for type two diabetes,
Speaker 1: heart disease, and even depression.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, that is also terrifying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Adam, it's like, if we want to enjoy our
Speaker 1: later years, we need to get good sleep. Now, it's
Speaker 1: just science. Hi, I'm Katie.
Speaker 3: Low's and I'm Adam Shaviro.
Speaker 1: And this is Chasing Sleep, a production of Ruby Studios
Speaker 1: from iHeartMedia in partnership with Mattress Firm. This episode is
Speaker 1: about sleep and age when it comes to longevity and
Speaker 1: quality of life. Study after study shows that the better
Speaker 1: you sleep, the better your overall quality of life. We're
Speaker 1: also going to look at how our sleep changes as
Speaker 1: we get older.
Speaker 3: Doctor Jennifer L.
Speaker 4: Martin has done extensive research on sleep and aging. Just
Speaker 4: this year she studied how best to treat insomnia among
Speaker 4: older veterans.
Speaker 3: She co authored the.
Speaker 4: Definitive statement on the recommended amount of sleep healthy adults
Speaker 4: should get?
Speaker 3: How much should we get? What is?
Speaker 1: Hold on?
Speaker 2: Hold on, Adam? We can just ask her. Yeah, hello,
Speaker 2: doctor Martin, Hi.
Speaker 5: Thanks so much for having me here.
Speaker 3: Thanks for being here.
Speaker 4: Also joining the conversation is Sarah Brown. She spent most
Speaker 4: of her health care career working with seniors, first as
Speaker 4: a nurse and then as the executive director of Emperi
Speaker 4: Systems home care in Minnesota. While Sarah was there, she
Speaker 4: introduced a revolutionary program to help nursing home residents get
Speaker 4: more and better sleep.
Speaker 3: Sarah, welcome to Chasing Sleep.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much for having me. And I just
Speaker 6: want to give credit where credits do. I was part
Speaker 6: of a team that did the sleep program. Can't take
Speaker 6: all the credit for myself.
Speaker 3: Awesome.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear about that. That sounds absolutely amazing.
Speaker 3: Okay, doctor Martin, you wrote the book on this. How
Speaker 3: much sleep should we get?
Speaker 5: The magic number is at least seven every day, every day, Katie,
Speaker 5: not just once in a while.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, does the amount of sleep that you need
Speaker 1: actually evolve with age. So like, let me toss out
Speaker 1: an age and you tell me.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, let's just throw out a couple numbers.
Speaker 1: Thrown out numbers, Yeah, Like, how much should a sixteen
Speaker 1: year old get?
Speaker 5: A sixteen year old probably needs somewhere between eight and
Speaker 5: ten hours of sleep. Anyone out there with the high
Speaker 5: school kid knows how hard that is. But through development,
Speaker 5: kids need less sleep over time until really early adulthood,
Speaker 5: and then it's pretty consistent from there on out. So
Speaker 5: from now on, when you throw out a number, I'm
Speaker 5: probably just going to say seven.
Speaker 1: So thirty five seven, seven, fifty five seven, okay, three,
Speaker 1: forty three seven, okay, cool?
Speaker 2: What about eighty fives?
Speaker 5: So it's really interesting. There was a bit of a
Speaker 5: myth floating around when I first started my training a
Speaker 5: long time ago that as people get older they need
Speaker 5: less sleep, and that was based on studies where they
Speaker 5: didn't account for the fact that older people take more naps.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, So the other.
Speaker 5: Thing that happens with aging is the quality of our
Speaker 5: sleep changes, so it's harder to get that full night
Speaker 5: of sleep. I think our best estimate now is that
Speaker 5: if you, let's say, you feel really good on seven
Speaker 5: and a half hours of sleep when you're thirty five.
Speaker 5: By the time you're eighty, maybe seven hours and ten minutes,
Speaker 5: So maybe your biological need drops by say twenty minutes
Speaker 5: or so, but it's not really a big difference, Like, Oh,
Speaker 5: I used to need seven and a half and now
Speaker 5: I'm great with five. Right, that's not really what happens
Speaker 5: with aging.
Speaker 1: And what about is it a quality question or quantity?
Speaker 1: Which one is more important?
Speaker 5: That's an impossible question to answer.
Speaker 2: Stumped, you know, I'm kidding gay ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 5: If people like me and Sarah knew the answer, we'd
Speaker 5: have Nobel prizes, right, like, because not all sleep is
Speaker 5: the same. There are different types and stages of sleep,
Speaker 5: and the only way to get them all and the
Speaker 5: right amount is to sleep well.
Speaker 7: Right, And I'd like to just add to that.
Speaker 6: What with the sleep program that we found is that
Speaker 6: it wasn't time in bed or time of sleep like
Speaker 6: it's it was consolidated sleep. So someone listening might think
Speaker 6: you're saying consistently like every night seven hours, but really
Speaker 6: it's you want seven hours uninterrupted to allow your body
Speaker 6: to go through all the sleep stages and cycles. Without
Speaker 6: that fragmentation. And I think with older adults, with all
Speaker 6: the napping they end up the time that there is
Speaker 6: sleep in a twenty four period might be higher, but
Speaker 6: the quality is really low because they never got into
Speaker 6: that deep, restorative sleep.
Speaker 7: Do I have that right, doctor Martin?
Speaker 5: That's perfect, Sarah.
Speaker 4: Can you tell us a little bit about the research
Speaker 4: and the work you've done at Impira.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: The resortive sleep program actually stemmed from a falls program
Speaker 6: in which we were trying to identify the root cause
Speaker 6: of falls and one of the things that kept coming
Speaker 6: up is that these residents were reporting they were tired,
Speaker 6: or staff were reporting they were weak or tired.
Speaker 7: So we're like, well, maybe they need more sleep.
Speaker 6: So Pierre I was able to get a grant from
Speaker 6: the Department of Health to look at residents over twenty
Speaker 6: five different nursing homes. What we did is we went
Speaker 6: and got tigraphy watches, which is a gold standard for
Speaker 6: measuring sleep, and we measured the amount that residents were sleeping.
Speaker 6: And the more we learned about sleep is where we
Speaker 6: really learned that they weren't sleep deprived, they had sleep fragmentation,
Speaker 6: and that the sleep fragmentation was actually more harmful than
Speaker 6: the sleep deprivation.
Speaker 7: We thought they had.
Speaker 6: You know, one of the big things we found is
Speaker 6: sleep is all about your twenty four hour cycle. It's
Speaker 6: not just when you sleep at night, but what you
Speaker 6: do during the day to help get that resortive sleep
Speaker 6: at night. And from that we were able to create
Speaker 6: what we called a sleep program or a sleep initiative
Speaker 6: that really involved every department.
Speaker 7: Everything we did.
Speaker 6: Had an impact on someone's sleep, because again, it was
Speaker 6: at twenty four hour day, so it was like looking
Speaker 6: at things of signing contracts with vendors, all the labs
Speaker 6: want to come in and draw labs first thing in
Speaker 6: the morning for residents before they go to the hospital.
Speaker 6: We looked at shift change, we looked at meal times,
Speaker 6: we looked at activities throughout the day, we looked at napping,
Speaker 6: and we looked at the mattresses on the bed. So
Speaker 6: how can we let them sleep longer uninterrupted. So that's
Speaker 6: kind of like a snapshot of it. Really, sleep was
Speaker 6: the fountain of youth or the foundation of healing and
Speaker 6: restorative Sleep was a basic human need.
Speaker 2: That's the line of this episode.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the felt like my drop right there, Sarah.
Speaker 4: Once you pulled all of this research together. What was
Speaker 4: the big takeaway for you? What needed to change for
Speaker 4: seniors in your care?
Speaker 6: I think the big summary of it is that people
Speaker 6: need a night and a day care plan.
Speaker 7: Right in long term care nursing home.
Speaker 6: It's so easy to just create the care plan based
Speaker 6: on what you do as a nurse on the day shift,
Speaker 6: who made the care plan, and then the night shift
Speaker 6: comes and it's their daytime really or they're awake time,
Speaker 6: so they're still turning and repositioning every hour, every two hours,
Speaker 6: toying rounding every hour, waking residents and following that exact
Speaker 6: same care plan. And that's just not good for our bodies,
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 5: I think it's so interesting, Sarah, because I also got
Speaker 5: interested in sleep, actually studying sleep in nursing homes like
Speaker 5: in the early nineteen nineties.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's very cool.
Speaker 5: And the interesting thing is the napping is not napping.
Speaker 5: It's not like, oh, we have lunch and then everyone
Speaker 5: goes in their room and puts their head on their
Speaker 5: pillow and they have this sweet little afternoon siesta. Sure
Speaker 5: what happens in nursing home. And Sarah, you pointed this
Speaker 5: out so eloquently is that like sleep is just distributed
Speaker 5: all over the twenty four hour day.
Speaker 1: So when you say connected seven hours of sleep, do
Speaker 1: you mean for all of our listeners out there, do
Speaker 1: you mean I fall asleep at ten and I don't
Speaker 1: see anything, remember anything. I don't get interrupted to p
Speaker 1: or be with my kids or anything like that until
Speaker 1: you know, five thirty six am.
Speaker 5: Not quite that perfect, Okay.
Speaker 1: But okay, so it might it might be a wake
Speaker 1: up and a head and go back down, but it's
Speaker 1: short wake up. It's not like and we're up in
Speaker 1: our brain spinning for an hour.
Speaker 7: Correct.
Speaker 4: Katie's a big napper. God, I love a napp But
Speaker 4: are those naps fragmenting her sleep too much?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 4: Is she getting too long of a nap in the
Speaker 4: afternoon so that when she does go to sleep at night.
Speaker 4: It's why she's not getting the same kind of connective,
Speaker 4: restorative sleep.
Speaker 5: If napping is part of the plan and you do
Speaker 5: it at the right time of day, which biologically for
Speaker 5: us is in that afternoon time, it's great. But most
Speaker 5: people don't have a life in the US at least
Speaker 5: where they can protect that time. Most people have kind
Speaker 5: of a nine to five ish gig going on, and
Speaker 5: so being able to protect the time is a big problem.
Speaker 1: Right, So I'm a weekend napper because I'm so used
Speaker 1: to being on a more kids schedule.
Speaker 6: I just want to go back to and ask doctor
Speaker 6: Martin to clarify because when I was heavy in the research,
Speaker 6: really we saw that napping, like that siesta kind of
Speaker 6: nap what could be healthy. But that was like we
Speaker 6: would recommend less than thirty minutes because if you sleep
Speaker 6: longer than that, what happens is you start to get
Speaker 6: into your deeper stage sleep and then you kind of
Speaker 6: rob from your nighttime sleep bag. Is that still an
Speaker 6: accurate statement?
Speaker 5: I mean, I think now we talk about there's two
Speaker 5: ways to nap. There's that short kind of power nap
Speaker 5: where you don't get into deep stages of sleep. And
Speaker 5: then there are people who do well with like a
Speaker 5: long nap like hour and a half, but then they
Speaker 5: spend less time in bed at night. So again, if
Speaker 5: you add it all together, and you know, it's a
Speaker 5: consolidated a bout of sleep in the afternoon, not like
Speaker 5: dozing off in your car, you know, or in front
Speaker 5: of your television. It's like a planned sleep cycle. But
Speaker 5: in general, most people feel that little burst of energy,
Speaker 5: just as Sarah said, with a short nap like thirty minutes.
Speaker 5: So you asked a great question to start with, which
Speaker 5: is how much sleep do you need? And I said
Speaker 5: seven hours? And that number actually is based on health outcomes,
Speaker 5: things like development of type two diabetes, heart disease. There's
Speaker 5: actually some evidence that because sleep has anti inflammatory properties,
Speaker 5: that if you're chronically sleep deprived, that inflammation might even
Speaker 5: make its way to your brain and increase your risk
Speaker 5: of Alzheimer's disease later in life. Oh wow, Sure, he's
Speaker 5: kind of still out on that one. I don't want
Speaker 5: to overstate it, but there is a plausible physiological mechanism
Speaker 5: for that. And when we look at research with animals
Speaker 5: that have risk for Alzheimer's disease, that's what we're seeing.
Speaker 6: I think it's your overall entire health, not just like
Speaker 6: Alzheimer's and heart disease, but pretty much any chronic condition.
Speaker 6: There's research to back that sleep has a contributing factor.
Speaker 6: And if you think about sleep at its core, what
Speaker 6: is it doing is sleep is really our body's medicine
Speaker 6: and our body's opportunity to let the body do what
Speaker 6: it's supposed to do to heal, to regenerate, to balance hormones,
Speaker 6: to process memories, to process stress.
Speaker 5: So you know, I think it's not irreversible, but fix
Speaker 5: it now.
Speaker 1: So, Sarah, both you and doctor Martin have worked a
Speaker 1: lot with seniors. Let's talk about chronotypes. I have heard
Speaker 1: of those early bird larks and night owls, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean early bird special That's a thing we've all
Speaker 1: heard about. Do we all turn into early birds as
Speaker 1: we age? How does that work?
Speaker 5: I could nerd out on this for like the rest
Speaker 5: of the time.
Speaker 3: Let's do it. That's what the podcast is for.
Speaker 5: I love this, I absolutely love this. So there's this
Speaker 5: funny thing about humans. First of all, our circadian timing
Speaker 5: system is genetic, and like I feel like I'm calling
Speaker 5: myself old. But I remember when like the first genes
Speaker 5: related to circadian timing were discovered, and it would like
Speaker 5: blew our minds because we didn't really know how all
Speaker 5: of this worked. But we did know that these German
Speaker 5: scientists who went and lived in caves away from time
Speaker 5: cues didn't have a twenty four hour sleep cycle. It
Speaker 5: was about twenty four hours and twenty minutes. So we
Speaker 5: need the sun to like reset us every day.
Speaker 7: We're all diurnal.
Speaker 6: It means diurnal that we should be up during the
Speaker 6: day and sleep at night. And so nobody can really
Speaker 6: flip and become a nocturnal.
Speaker 3: Like an owl.
Speaker 6: So whether you are more of an early riser or
Speaker 6: a night owl or somewhere in between, there all still
Speaker 6: our body does best when we sleep when the sun
Speaker 6: goes down.
Speaker 5: So Sarah mentioned like night owls, that is a genetic thing.
Speaker 5: And some people are on the far extremes, so you
Speaker 5: can tell them go to bed early and get up early,
Speaker 5: and it is impossible for them to do that.
Speaker 2: That's my husband.
Speaker 3: That's my husband, that is me right there, right now.
Speaker 5: Most people are in the middle. That's where the vast
Speaker 5: majority of people, probably well over like ninety ninety five
Speaker 5: percent of people have some ability to adjust. There is
Speaker 5: this age related change where during adolescence we become more
Speaker 5: night owl ish and as we age we become more
Speaker 5: lark ish. So if we take out those people on
Speaker 5: the far extremes, there is this pretty consistent age related adjustment,
Speaker 5: which is why senior dinner specials are at five and
Speaker 5: why again high school shouldn't start at seven. O'clock in
Speaker 5: the morning. So your chronotype is your internal tendency, and
Speaker 5: I always say the best thing in the world is
Speaker 5: to respect your clock.
Speaker 6: One thing that we had learned and we usually advise
Speaker 6: people is like, when you're twenty five years old and
Speaker 6: you're in your healthy time, when you can go to
Speaker 6: bed at will and wake at will and wake up
Speaker 6: and feel refreshed, how many hours is it?
Speaker 7: And kind of pay attention to that.
Speaker 5: So I think we just have a lot of segments
Speaker 5: of society where we try to get people to do
Speaker 5: something that messes up their sleep, and then we just
Speaker 5: like kind of shrug our shoulders and say, gee, why
Speaker 5: can't they get it back on track. We just publish
Speaker 5: a paper recently looking at people in the military where
Speaker 5: they're followed over time. There's a large study called the
Speaker 5: Millennium Cohort, And what we saw actually is that sleep
Speaker 5: problems pre date things like post traumatic stress disorder and depression.
Speaker 5: So it's a predictor if you're not sleeping well that
Speaker 5: after you're exposed to some kind of a traumatic event,
Speaker 5: that you'll go on to develop mental health symptoms later.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 6: I just want to share one kind of little thing
Speaker 6: that we had learned so in long term care, if
Speaker 6: you look at the manifestations of sleep deprivation, sleep fragmentation,
Speaker 6: and they line up perfectly with psychosis and the reasons
Speaker 6: that we're putting people on antipsychotics. So we had this
Speaker 6: huge aha that like these people came into the nursing home,
Speaker 6: they were not psychotic their whole life. They didn't have
Speaker 6: these mental health disorders, and all of a sudden, they're
Speaker 6: all having them. We have to look at the systems
Speaker 6: around them and what we're doing to actually cause psychosis,
Speaker 6: and it was the sleep fragmentation.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is a complete reversal about again what I
Speaker 5: learned in my training, which is sleep problems are a symptom.
Speaker 5: And I think, Sarah, what you're getting at is we
Speaker 5: have to change our mindset and start thinking about the
Speaker 5: role that sleep plays now at any point in life,
Speaker 5: if you chronically sleep deprive yourself, it changes your body.
Speaker 4: This is a fascinating discussion and we are not done
Speaker 4: more to come.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to chasing sleep. We're all getting older and
Speaker 1: we all want to stay healthy as we do. So
Speaker 1: we're talking about sleep and aging with doctor j Jennifer
Speaker 1: Martin and consultant for senior healthcare providers, Sarah Brown.
Speaker 4: What about sex, Katie, No, I'm just sorry. Was that
Speaker 4: totally out of the blue. I just was thinking about this.
Speaker 6: No, not at all.
Speaker 5: We've been Yeah, we've been headed in that direction for
Speaker 5: a while.
Speaker 1: And is the rumor true working in senior facilities, the
Speaker 1: rumor is that everyone's having sex in those places.
Speaker 5: I'm not answering that question. I don't know if Sarah
Speaker 5: will either.
Speaker 6: I've heard I'll answer it by saying, you're still a
Speaker 6: human when you're older.
Speaker 7: It doesn't matter what age you are.
Speaker 3: Good.
Speaker 2: I'm giving so many collaps for that.
Speaker 4: But if you're not sleeping, well, can it contribute to
Speaker 4: having a poor sex life?
Speaker 5: So, yeah, you know, this is an area where so
Speaker 5: there is a sleep disorder called sleep apnia, which is
Speaker 5: a condition where people have a hard time breathing when
Speaker 5: they sleep. These people snore, they stop breathing. It's very common,
Speaker 5: especially in men, and it contributes to high blood pressure,
Speaker 5: and it contributes to a rectile dysfunction, both directly and
Speaker 5: because then people end up on anti hypertensive medications and
Speaker 5: that can affect create problems with the rectile dysfunction. So
Speaker 5: that specific sleep disorder is directly linked to problems with
Speaker 5: sexual health.
Speaker 1: I just can't believe every single woman I know who's
Speaker 1: in a heterosexual relationship with a man at a certain
Speaker 1: age is complaining to me about how bad they're snoring
Speaker 1: is keeping them up, and the older they get, the
Speaker 1: snoring is the worst, and the sleep apnea.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think it's also when we are sleep deprived,
Speaker 5: we over interpret negative experiences emotionally and we under interpret
Speaker 5: positive experiences emotionally. So I think in your relationship, kind
Speaker 5: of think about that, like, what's the probability that you'll
Speaker 5: be interested in sex with your partner if you're sleep deprived,
Speaker 5: because again, all those positive emotions tend to be kind
Speaker 5: of blunted.
Speaker 1: So one of the things you mentioned earlier, how do
Speaker 1: you see what you learned in these studies with older
Speaker 1: veterans to the average person and how we age.
Speaker 5: Let's think about the military culture as a subset of society.
Speaker 5: So what I hear a lot from the folks that
Speaker 5: I work with and in my research is that they
Speaker 5: are trained to stay awake all the time except when
Speaker 5: they can sleep, and then they're supposed to fall asleep
Speaker 5: at the drop of a hat, that's not how life
Speaker 5: really is. So a lot of folks have to relearn
Speaker 5: how to sleep well. So one of the myths that
Speaker 5: we're also trying to get past is that just because
Speaker 5: someone is older, that doesn't mean if they have insomnia
Speaker 5: disorder sleep apnea, that we should just leave it alone, like,
Speaker 5: oh they'll be okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a wash. We actually look, that's your thing,
Speaker 2: that's your narrative.
Speaker 5: You know, yeah, no, it's I mean, older pe respond
Speaker 5: just as well to treatment of sleep disorders as younger people,
Speaker 5: so age shouldn't be a factor.
Speaker 4: Oh that's good to know. I've always wanted to ask
Speaker 4: this question. Every time I have a really early flight
Speaker 4: and I don't get a lot of sleep. I'm talking
Speaker 4: like two hours, three hours, and then I'm up and
Speaker 4: I'm heading towards the airport. I get a really bad
Speaker 4: cold for like twenty four hours after that, Katie, that
Speaker 4: doesn't really happen to you, But like I every time
Speaker 4: get a really bad cold if I don't get a
Speaker 4: lot of sleep before flight, why what is that?
Speaker 5: Sarah? Do you want to with your nursing background, if
Speaker 5: like you're the one to talk about the immune system.
Speaker 6: Well, so really, our immunities are built during sleep, so tearing,
Speaker 6: you know, breaking down your immune system by withholding sleep
Speaker 6: and not giving that restoration to your immune system definitely
Speaker 6: makes you more susceptible. And then traveling you're more exposed
Speaker 6: to people's germs.
Speaker 5: All kinds of yucky stuff.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I have to tell you my own personal rule.
Speaker 5: For work, I do not fly overnight and I do
Speaker 5: not take a six am flight out of lax Yep.
Speaker 5: Now for fun, I do whatever a lot, but I
Speaker 5: just kind of made this decision that I like, I
Speaker 5: have to respect what I'm telling everybody else and I'm
Speaker 5: not going to stay up all night to catch a
Speaker 5: flight to go talk about sleep.
Speaker 4: That sounds like a good policy. Doctor Martin, what would
Speaker 4: you say to those of us who are pulling all nighters?
Speaker 4: I mean, we've all done that at some point. What
Speaker 4: is the impact on our overall health? Can we get
Speaker 4: away with pulling it on it?
Speaker 5: Yes? So we're fine, Like we can cope with a
Speaker 5: little bit of variation. Always say you can have cake
Speaker 5: on your birthday, you can't have it every day, three
Speaker 5: times a day. The problem is what a lot of
Speaker 5: students do is they get six hours of sleep every night,
Speaker 5: so they're super sleep deprived, and then they pull an
Speaker 5: all nighter on top of it. And that's where we see,
Speaker 5: you know again, dangerous levels of sleepiness, mood alterations. You know,
Speaker 5: we have a long conversation in this country about suicide, right,
Speaker 5: it turns out that poor sleep is a pretty potent
Speaker 5: predictor of thinking about and attempting suicide across ag.
Speaker 1: I have been jaw dropped multiple times. And Sarah, this
Speaker 1: is like one of my favorite questions about sleep and aging,
Speaker 1: and Sarah, you touched on this. I have a grandfather
Speaker 1: that passed away of Alzheimer's and a grandmother that passed
Speaker 1: away with dementia. And I'm curious, as we get older
Speaker 1: and we have a lot more life experiences that we
Speaker 1: store in our brains, how does sleep affect our memories
Speaker 1: and our memory.
Speaker 6: When it relates to memories, my answer would be, it
Speaker 6: doesn't matter how old you are. If you're not sleeping,
Speaker 6: you're going to have a harder time accessing executive function
Speaker 6: in your brain, no matter what age you are, because
Speaker 6: your body is under stress, and when we're under stressed,
Speaker 6: we can't access that higher level of executive functioning so
Speaker 6: some of the memory recall might get harder, our sharpness,
Speaker 6: mental sharpness might be harder. We might be more confused
Speaker 6: or forgetful for all ages.
Speaker 1: Right, But knowing all of this, how should younger sleepers
Speaker 1: approach their sleep now to improve their quality of life
Speaker 1: and ensure high quality life well into the later years
Speaker 1: of your life.
Speaker 6: So one of the big things I think with younger
Speaker 6: people is going to bed with your smartphone and that
Speaker 6: being exposed to that blue light that's going to disrupt
Speaker 6: our melatonin production and also just it's stimulating our brain,
Speaker 6: so it's harder for us to fall asleep.
Speaker 7: So staying off with tablets.
Speaker 3: And how long should we stay off them before bedtime?
Speaker 6: At least a half an hour, but like two hours
Speaker 6: before bed would be great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Adam, you screwed.
Speaker 4: I mean that's when I look at the gram. Is
Speaker 4: it weird that I kissed my iPhone good night?
Speaker 3: Is that? Is that? Am I too close with my
Speaker 3: iPhone at that point?
Speaker 6: Yes, that's very unhealthy. But if you're going to bed,
Speaker 6: you know, be in a dark room or amber red
Speaker 6: light that wavelength is better for your melatonin production as well,
Speaker 6: and then move your body during the day like, I
Speaker 6: can't emphasize enough how much our sleep is tied to
Speaker 6: our full twenty four hours. If you can learn to
Speaker 6: meditate the younger you are, or you know, just quiet
Speaker 6: reflection time is helpful and to calm that silence. Because
Speaker 6: I look back in my younger twenties, before I like
Speaker 6: had a family, and if I could have started to
Speaker 6: practice like that, calm down, just things to calm down
Speaker 6: my mind, calm down my body for me, like I
Speaker 6: take warm bath or warm shower before bed.
Speaker 7: That temperature regulation can be helpful.
Speaker 2: Oh that's what I do.
Speaker 1: That's nice, really really insightful and helpful. Final cueue, how
Speaker 1: do we encourage parents or even grandparents of the importance
Speaker 1: of good sleep?
Speaker 5: So I think the most promising development in terms of
Speaker 5: sleep and aging is that we now know that one
Speaker 5: of the ways to age successfully is to take care
Speaker 5: of your sleep. I mean, I did a lot of
Speaker 5: things with my sleep that I wouldn't do now. And
Speaker 5: I have to say that I feel really good that
Speaker 5: my kids, one of whom is a college student and
Speaker 5: one is a high school student, like they they do
Speaker 5: pay attention to their sleep and think about their schedules
Speaker 5: and their activities. In ways that we just didn't know,
Speaker 5: and I would I would just add that, you know,
Speaker 5: if we think about what we spend on a car
Speaker 5: versus what we spend on a mattress, where we spend
Speaker 5: a third of our lives, I think maybe we should
Speaker 5: think about some priorities. And at the same time, I
Speaker 5: also have to recognize that not everyone can afford to
Speaker 5: go out and buy a very expensive mattress. But the
Speaker 5: surface on which we spend a third of our lives
Speaker 5: is not something to take like lightly. There's no like
Speaker 5: magic bullet. Everyone has their own preferences. I'm the kind
Speaker 5: of person when you go to a hotel and you're like, oh,
Speaker 5: I really like that, Like what kind of mattresses is?
Speaker 5: Why did I like it? What was so great about it?
Speaker 5: And the other kind of less expensive option is really
Speaker 5: nice betting. So if you can't afford to replace your
Speaker 5: mattress right now, you know, what about some really nice
Speaker 5: pillowcases or something that just makes your bed an inviting
Speaker 5: place to be. But like I said, I think for
Speaker 5: most people really spending some time thinking about the investment
Speaker 5: that you put into your sleep environment and again remembering
Speaker 5: that you're going to spend seven eight hours of each
Speaker 5: twenty four hour day right there. And if you have
Speaker 5: a sleep disorder like sleep apnea or you struggle with
Speaker 5: chronic insomnia, that getting treatment still benefits people regardless of
Speaker 5: their age.
Speaker 1: Sarah, do you have any REX on how to help
Speaker 1: people If you have.
Speaker 6: A loved one who is in a nursing home or
Speaker 6: that you're providing care for, I would really just advocate
Speaker 6: that you would advocate for your loved one or yourself
Speaker 6: to say, my care plan should read that I want
Speaker 6: uninterrupted sleep. Like in nursing homes, the mattress can make
Speaker 6: all the difference in the world. A high density film
Speaker 6: mattress where you don't need to be turning and repositioning
Speaker 6: the body has protective mechanisms while we're sleeping. So nursing
Speaker 6: homes struggle though, because there's so much litigation that you've
Speaker 6: got to kind of say I want this, and I
Speaker 6: want you to go outside your norm and I will
Speaker 6: sign in a formed consent, but sleep is very important
Speaker 6: to us, and we want you to update the care
Speaker 6: plan to reflect that. Without doing that, it's unlikely that
Speaker 6: the nursing homes are going to vary from their standard practice.
Speaker 6: We've been getting the message out for years, but culture
Speaker 6: change and practice change takes years. So if you have
Speaker 6: a loved one even in the hospital too and a
Speaker 6: short hospitals say ask like we want it in their
Speaker 6: care plan, leave them uninterrupted.
Speaker 3: That's great to know that that's something that we can
Speaker 3: advocate for. Well.
Speaker 6: Growing up, I used to tell my friends sleep when
Speaker 6: you die, and I was kind of the life of
Speaker 6: the party. And right now seeing that short term and
Speaker 6: cumulative effective poor sleep, it really is your best medicine.
Speaker 1: Thank you both so much, doctor Martin and Sarah Brown.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for all the work you were
Speaker 1: doing around sleep your studies. And I'm so I like
Speaker 1: I said, I if we were seeing this, I spent
Speaker 1: most of this episode with my mouth completely agape.
Speaker 2: I have learned so much.
Speaker 1: From both of you, and I'm so appreciative of your time.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Thank you for coming on Chasing Sleep.
Speaker 5: Thanks thanks for having us.
Speaker 1: It's been a lot of fun, Adam, I learned so
Speaker 1: much from that conversation. I mean, can you believe what
Speaker 1: they said about Alzheimer's and dementia.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it really brings into focus just how important good
Speaker 4: sleep really is.
Speaker 3: Yes, we we talked about sleep deprivation.
Speaker 4: I love that that sleep deprivation is actually can be
Speaker 4: used as a as a predictor for other mental conditions
Speaker 4: as opposed to, oh, these mental conditions are hurting the
Speaker 4: person's sleep.
Speaker 3: We can use sleep.
Speaker 4: Not only as sleep our medicine, but sleep is like
Speaker 4: this great predictor.
Speaker 3: Of what might be coming down the road.
Speaker 1: How about our personal you and me, Adam, were you
Speaker 1: so pumped to finally ask why you get sick?
Speaker 3: That's been something that's been bothering me forever.
Speaker 4: Why why when I wake up, you know, after three
Speaker 4: hours of sleep to get on.
Speaker 1: A flight, Because we learned today lack of quality of
Speaker 1: sleep harms our immune system, leaving us more susceptible to disease.
Speaker 1: How about this banger getting off the phone and other
Speaker 1: screens at least thirty minutes, but I'm pretty sure she
Speaker 1: said two hours, Adam.
Speaker 4: That well, that's a huge thing for the young people too,
Speaker 4: because healthy sleep habits now that are going to you know,
Speaker 4: have them be successful healthy sleepers. Later, it's time to
Speaker 4: start getting off those screens before bedtime.
Speaker 3: Oh boy.
Speaker 1: We also we need to add that sleep dot com
Speaker 1: is also a great resource for information on nearly every
Speaker 1: aspect of sleep. Great resource and the last huge mic drop,
Speaker 1: we need to go shopping. Think about what people are
Speaker 1: willing to spend other mattresses. Considering that you spend a
Speaker 1: third of your life laying on your mattress, I feel
Speaker 1: like we need to put more emphasis on that when
Speaker 1: we are looking for a mattress.
Speaker 3: Let's go shopping baby.
Speaker 1: On our next episode, we are talking about sleep and creativity.
Speaker 3: I am excited about this.
Speaker 4: I've always used this as an excuse as to why
Speaker 4: I have to sleep late like my whole life.
Speaker 3: Right you totally yeah.
Speaker 4: I hope that this backs my theory that I need
Speaker 4: my sleep in the morning and in the meantime. We'd
Speaker 4: love to hear what you think about the podcast right now,
Speaker 4: go to your podcast player and rate and review Chasing
Speaker 4: Sleep please, or.
Speaker 1: You can also find us at our socials on the Insta.
Speaker 2: I'm Katie q.
Speaker 3: Lows and I am Shabby Shafts.
Speaker 1: And don't forget to follow or subscribe so you never
Speaker 1: miss an episode until next time.
Speaker 3: I hope you're living your best while sleeping your best.
Speaker 1: Chasing Sleep is a production of Ruby Studios from iHeartMedia
Speaker 1: in partnership with Mattress Firm. Our executive producer is Molly Sosha.
Speaker 4: This show was written and produced by Sound That Brands,
Speaker 4: Dave Beeson, Jason Jackson, and Michelle Rice.
Speaker 1: This episode was hosted by Katie Lows and Adam Shapiro.
Speaker 1: Thank you to our partners at Mattress Firm.