81: Sleep Science Today with Andrew Colsky - Episode 81

It's time to wake to sleep with a number one sleep authority sleep science today and sleep better tonight

We all hear myths about sleep and sometimes it gets confusing to know what's true and what's not true

You can find pretty much anything you want to find on the internet today

But coming to sleep science today we are going to talk with

Dr. Ishaan Shu and she is going to help us figure out some of these myths about sleep

So I'm your host Andrew Kulski. This is sleep science today

We have Dr. Ishaan Shu who is an adjunct faculty at standard sleep medicine center and founder of a multilingual mental health practice called mind and body

garden psychology

Welcome, Dr. Shu

Hi, thank you for having me

So we obviously talk all about sleep here and there's so many

misperceptions out there and you know in my own practice and working with clients

When they first come in you know, they tell me all these things they've tried to do to improve their sleep and

Sometimes you know, you can

Clearly hear that they got that off of the internet somewhere and it's just not true stuff

So I figured today we could talk about myths and kind of give the reality behind them so

With that I am going to start off and I'm going to give you one of the most common ones I hear which is

Everybody needs eight hours of sleep and if I don't have eight hours of sleep something must be wrong

What's true what's not there

That's a very common question and one thing I learned in sleep field is sleep

It's such an individualized thing. There's no such thing that

Everyone need absolutely the same lens of hours to sleep

So in reality

Everyone's different

Someone may just need six to seven hours per night and they are totally fine

They are bring their body can only create that

Many hours of sleep and they can function so well so energetic during the day

But others may need eight nine some people may even need more than nine hours per night of sleep to feel more

Recharged during the day and but we want to be careful if you constantly need a lot of sleep

Like you constantly need nine to ten hours per day to sleep

And you still feel like it may not be enough for you there may be some indications

Something underlying wrong in your house. So actually sleep more is not necessarily a good thing

And also there's type of

Small percentage of people in the world. We call them short sleepers

So genetically, they just cannot create that many hours of sleep and they don't need many hours sleep

For short sleepers, they may just need five hours sleep per day and they function perfectly

So you can see everyone's so different and the problem is if we force someone who

Can only sleep for six hours we force them to lay on bad for eight hours or more

We may actually create insomnia problems for this person

I see I see so

So you mentioned you know the people who may be regularly needing ten hours or more of sleep

There might be something else going on there

First thing that came to mind for me was maybe they've got sleep apnea and they're not getting good sleep

And so they're trying to kind of catch up with it what types of things might be going on in the background

Yeah, sleep apnea definitely a vaccine because their sleep quality is poor and night

It's not about how long you sleep is about the sleep quality you're getting and there are many other sleep disorders

Like I treat insomnia most sleep, but there are

90 more other type of sleep disorders in the picture they could all lead to

Your body need more sleep

But besides sleep disorders

We may have other medical conditions that

Your body may need more sleep more rest try to recover from that

Maybe injury you got maybe some like medical procedures you went through

Or some underlying house issues it could be very complicated different type of

Medical or genetic problems that you are not aware of

That need your body try to recover through sleep, but it may not actually be able to really do that

And that need medical condition a medical attention

Right right and I guess there's also the the other part here which is you know

We we talk about this generic concept of eight hours that people think about

But different stages of life we're going to have different needs for sleep

So a teenager or a newborn is going to be very different from someone who is in their 80s or 90s

That's a very good point. I'm glad you mentioned that yes

So babies need a lot longer sleep

So two-thirds of their time positive spend in sleep as we grow older like children teenagers around 10 to 18 years old

Of a lot of teenagers actually need more than eight hours sleep

I'll average it just based on big data

So but unfortunately nowadays in our school system a lot of teenagers

They are not getting enough sleep. They are sleep deprived

Um, not only how loud is sleep, but also teenagers tend to be more night out

So they tend to sleep later. That's another problem

Um, but as we enter adulthood

Our our body needs a little bit less sleep as we guess older at older age stage

Um, we we may still be able to create certain amount of sleep

But we may experience more night weeknings

So the total sleep hours still reduce but in a different way

So um, it's very solid point to your mentioning different life stage sleep change

That means our expectation of how what what means a good sleep should change accordingly as well

Mm-hmm

Yeah, and you know you talk about the more middle and night awakenings as people age

One of the things that is so common for me um, with with with my patients is when I get patients who are

Let's say 70 years old and above roughly um, they have sleep changes such as more middle-of-the-night

Wakingings and also waking earlier than they used to the other parts of their life

And so obviously, you know, there's this concern. Oh my gosh

I can't sleep the way that I used to I'm getting up so early. What's wrong? What's happening?

Is that kind of your your experience as well?

Yes, uh totally and my suggestion would be you know

It's not quite rational to expect your body sleep exactly the same when you are at 70 years old

Compared to when you're 20 years old

So sometimes we need adjust to the change in our body and maybe some medical conditions getting the way as well

daily activities also different

So try to understand how I sleep right now based on where I am in my sleep stage

Whether we can build up more acceptance

To this type of sleep

Instead of thinking oh, I want to go back to how I slept 20 years back

That may be hard

Right right. Yes

And that that's pretty much, you know

The the biggest part there is once they can accept the fact that their body changes over time

That it's natural to wake up earlier than there are a lot more comfortable um, I think so good good point

All right, let me let me let me go to a different one here. How about

Well, you know, I can stay up all I want because I'll catch up with my sleep on the weekend

Can people really catch up with their sleep?

Yeah, it's a common myth we all think we can catch up on sleep

But there are lots of research showing

Actually, we cannot really catch up on sleep that well

It's in sleep field. We have this concept of sleep that you accumulate your sleep that right

Sleep actually spread out every day how how much sleep your body and bring gas you use to form a type of function during the day

If you sleep deprived yourself purposely throughout the week or for several weeks and then you count on several days to catch up

Um, actually we find out through different research

Your function your counting function level does not go back to the baseline. It takes more than seven days sometimes

For your cognitive level your function to go back to your original baseline and it's really hard

It's also not quite possible for people to just take seven or ten days sleep a lot try to catch up

Um, so I think more

reasonable way to think about this is yes, if you don't sleep enough

Try to catch up on your sleep maybe can help a little bit

But it won't restore 100% of what you lost

Whatever sleep you lost you lost and impact your cognitive functioning also impact our immune system

It needs take a lot of time to recover and sometime it's very hard for a to recover fully bad

Right, right. Yeah, I I heard somebody describe it one time in a way that I really

It made it easy for me to understand which is if you were to go for a week and you

Restricted the amount of food that you ate all weeks you ate a very little amount of food and then you said

Well, I'll catch up on the weekend. I'll eat all the food that I didn't eat on the weekend

The weekend comes you may eat more food because you might be hungry

But you are not going to eat the amount of food that you

Restricted during the week you you it would just be impossible for you to do

Same thing with sleep you'll catch up on some

But you're not going to catch up on all of it like you were saying

Yeah, I love this metaphor. Yes, exactly. We always talk about you only have so big of a stomach

And how much food you can really feel in right for sleep in a way

Similarly your body and the brain can only generate so many hours of sleep per day

Even when you are super sleep-differently deprived for a while

You can maybe sleep several hours more, but not that much more and another thing we don't know is what the quality

Sleep quality look like when you try to catch up on sleep. That's not something you can just feel

Um, so it's just

You never whatever you lost in sleep. You never can get it back

And your brain your body just gonna carry on with that

I remember many many years back in the sleep science field

There are very famous research talking about sleep definition

And they find out for both human being and then they did this on um rats on animals

after

Long term of sleep deprivation

Your mental health actually suffer a lot

Uh, and your function really dropped

Even when you um do that to animals and you also shift the schedule of the animals for a while

They just die early

It's just impact your house in a lot different ways

So we have to be careful about what is important in life, right?

Does it worth it to to deprive your own sleep for other things?

Right right well

Yeah, and I know that so many people these days are much more in tune to

dementia and other types of things and recognizing that sleep is such an important part to

You know our overall health. It's you know, it's not just sleep compartmentalized, but it impacts us totally

Yeah, just mention one quick thing on the other end

We notice clinically if you can improve your sleep

It actually helps to speed up your recovery in many other

conditions for example depression anxiety different mental health issues and some of your

medical health

Like physical health issues. So sleep can be a really good

Factor to consider it to help a lot

Right right

Well, we are at a point to take our first break. So I'm going to take a break

But when I come back from the break, I have some additional myths that I'd love to talk about. So

Stay tuned on sleep plans today. We'll see you back after the break

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Sleep science today

And sleep better tonight

All right, welcome back to sleep science today. I'm your host Andrew Kulski. We're talking with Dr. Shoe

And we're talking about this and here's one that I hear a lot

Well, you know, I'm I'm I'm not tired, but I know I need to sleep

So what I do is I just drink a glass of wine and that puts me to sleep

Prorecon

So wine or any liquor is so interesting

There's a lot of research around um, how a little bit wine can help us relax before bedtime

That's true, but the problem is really after you fall asleep in the process of sleeping

Any liquor you drink before bed. They're gonna start being digested by your body

And they're gonna become different things different chemicals in your body

Some of those actually is not quite good for our sleep quality

Uh, some research showing drinking wine or any type of liquor before bedtime actually

Increase the chance of our sleep apnea symptoms when we fall asleep

And sometimes the liquor you drink before bedtime including wine can

Cause more weakening or poor sleep quality after you fall asleep

So just be careful. I think it's not about black and white years and no necessarily like drink or not drink

It's about a balance

What is too much for you

What is appropriate amount make you feel like just right for you to relax or it's a routine

It's a bedtime routine. It's associated with mental soothing then just a little bit

Half glass for example possibly okay for you

Um, it's just you need to understand what works best for your body

Okay, great great. Thank you. So there's there's there's a related one

Which is oh

Well, I just go to the drugstore and I buy some melatonin gummies

And I'll just take that right before bed and it'll knock me out. True or false

Does it really knock you out right?

In my clinic, I see a lot of people talk to me

Melatonin does not work for me or there's some people eat a lot of melatonin and then in the mornings

They feel so drowsy. They like just cannot wake up. They they thought they did not sleep well

But melatonin has a lot problem

Um, first melatonin is something our body naturally release

So it's everyone we all have that and actually our body only release such a tiny dosage per night

And it's something to help signal us. It's dark. It's nighttime. Be ready to go to sleep

So melatonin itself, it's not something to knock you down put you to sleep

It's not the same thing as sleeping pill. It's really just the same thing in your body to signal you about being prepared for sleep

Um, yeah, that

Our body I think last time I read a research our body only released about

point 08 milligram

Um melatonin per night

So that's not a lot

But if you buy melatonin on the market in any drug stores

It's huge dosage. It's like 5 milligram 10 milligram

So that means a lot of people already release enough melatonin. You cannot sleep

You cannot fall asleep. It's not because you don't have enough melatonin

It's because many other things you worry about things right you your sleep

habit is not very healthy

So but you take melatonin you take too much it much more than what your body naturally release

That means it's going to be your system until the morning is still going to be in your system

So that caused a lot of problem in the morning. You cannot really wake up

You don't feel like refreshed and then you blame sleep

You don't blame melatonin. So next day you do the same thing

Yeah, so I think that's a problem another thing is several years back

I think there's a research paper published by a Canada researcher team

They studied handlers of melatonins on the market

But they find out whatever labeled on the melatonin bottle that's not really match

How many melatonin exactly in the pew your algorithm you're taking

Sometimes the dosage of melatonin in that little pure gummy can be four hundred times more

Or less

And it also not only has melatonin in it. It has many other weird stuff

Combined together into that melatonin you are taking so you actually don't know what you're exactly taking

It's not the same as what labeled on the bottle. I think that's another problem

Wow, well, that's certainly something to be aware of

um

But yeah

The fact like you said you go into the drugstore and typically you're right

You're going to find five milligrams and ten milligrams and both of those are way too much

And then like you said you people get caught up in this cycle because they think I didn't sleep

Well, so I need more melatonin when it's the fact that you're taking too much melatonin

Which is causing you to have the brain fog and you know sleepy during the day

So

Yeah, that that that's a very common one. I think that's a huge myth out there that people think that well

I take that and it's like a sleeping pill and it is absolutely not

So

All right, let's let's try another one

I love to watch tv in bed because it helps me relax so that I can fall asleep

So

I would say this does not work for everyone it depends and not those kind of very rigid sleep psychologists

They definitely cannot do certain things. It's depends on what you need

So for people who watch tv before bedtime

I think what they are trying to do is to do some wind down activity

Which is great thing when we all should have some wind down activities

Because our brain is not a life switch. It cannot just switch off

Okay, it's sleep. We do need a period of time to slowly wind down from the busy mind during the daytime to a more calm mind

So we are ready to sleep

For some people watching tv or beyond their phone

Or listening to music. It's a way for them trying to wind down

and

That's a good thing

But you have to figure out the activities you're engaging in are they really

Help you wind down or they are making you more awake more excited

tv or any phone

Um like social media stuff depends on the content

For example, are you watching horror movies right before bedtime? That possibly gonna be too much right

Because that gonna stimulate your brain make it very excited right before bedtime

But if you are watching something very soothing

You really enjoy you feel like help you build up your sleep drive further make you feel more sleepy

You're more ready to go to bed. Maybe that's not such a bad thing

You just have to be careful

Another about the content another thing is the blue light we all talk about

So research showing tv actually the blue light is not as much as the phone or other

Um, electronic device you're holding on your on your hand

So tv is distance away

But it's still gonna have some blue light blue light is a signal it suppress the release of melatoni because it triggers the brain believe

Oh, it's still not dark enough. It's it's it's not ready. You don't have to be prepared for sleep yet

It's a signal to wake us up somehow and our eye is a very important signal receptor

So we use light to decide

To regulate our sleep center in our brain. That's the problem of blue light

Um, yeah, so

Another problem for tv is are you laying on bed to watch it or are you watching it in your living room?

It's slightly different

Because for for someone if you already have insomnia issues

We want really help you build up sleep

Uh equal bed equal sleep this equipment. We want your brain understand when you lay on your bed

It's for sleep or sex not anything else

So that help to train your brain to be ready to sleep every time you go on bed your brain

Naturally, right help you to sleep, but if you lay on your bed

watching tv and sleep and et and talking and do all kinds of things your brain will get confused

Um, there's you can see there's a lot of moving piece involved in this tv watching and we need

Taylor eight out based on different individuals needs to understand

Is this a good thing for you or does actually get in the way of a high quality sleep for you

Mm-hmm. Yeah

Yeah, no, you know, and along the same lines is is the sort of the follow-up question here, which is

So if someone is in bed

And they've got insomnia for example

So they're laying in bed. They're awake and they

They say well, I just need to try to sleep better

And so they lay there in bed and they toss and they turn and they try to sleep

I still don't know what try to sleep means um, but what

What's going on with that is that a good thing if that they should stay in bed and just keep trying to sleep

Based on what you described very likely. It's not a good idea. I think that goes back to

Our effort does not really uh lead to a good result

So I see a lot of people with insomnia. They try so hard. They go to bed early

They asked the whole family to be quiet to accommodate their needs for sleep

And in the mornings, they don't want to get up. They try to lay on bed for longer time

So basically they are trying to create longer time to be on bed

Hopefully this can help them gain more hours of sleep, right?

But this kind of effort really harm our sleep

Clinically, we find out when people do that they actually sleep worse

They they're sleep hours actually reduce because it caused a lot of anxiety in your brain

For insomnia, I think one big factor to stop us from sleeping is sleep anxiety

So that's type of anxiety directly related to our ability to sleep

So if you allow yourself to be on bed for that long period of time

But your body and brain can only generate a smaller chunk of sleep

Your brain will get so anxious. It will not trust your own ability to sleep

It will start going to this survival mode and start

Trying to analyze and make up series that all your your body must be broken

And you can never get enough sleep. You're they gonna be horrible

Whatever all this makes things worse for you

So in this situation we actually want to help people do the opposite

You should leave your bed and only go to your bed when you are really sleepy

So we want help you shrink the time or restrict the time you are actually on bed

And make sure when you're on bed most of the time you're asleep

That you can sleep we call with you can increase what we call sleep efficiency

And

That's a way to increase your sleep quality first

So even you're on bed just for three hours, but you're asleep almost for three hours

That's a good start. Let's start with that and slowly spend your sleeping hours

So I always think sleep quality is over sleep quantity

In the treatment of insomnia

Yeah, yeah

Yeah, so the like you like you said it's like if you're not sleeping and you know that you're not gonna be sleeping

It's better to get out of bed so that you train yourself that the bed is only for sleep

Not for laying there trying to sleep and building anxiety exactly exactly what I

You know deal with all the time

Okay related related to that is another question then

Many people these days by sleep trackers. They've got an apple watch or they've got a fit bed or you know

Whatever it is that they that they buy and these sleep trackers give them these sleep scores and some people get very very

um

Obsessed if they don't have a perfect sleep score

What's actually going on there? What should people be aware of?

You think sleep trackers is not for everyone

So what we saw is some people start using sleep trackers and then they start developing performance anxiety

around sleep and

There's a new word in the field called author's dominion

is basically a type of insomnia caused by

trackers

Because you are trying to sleep in a certain way

Then you are fitting your own sleep into that structure think that is good sleep if I'm not there

I need to do whatever I can to increase my sleep

Shift my sleep to that frame

It's very hard to control it. I think

Um

The one I treating insomnia

I would ask all my patient stop using sleep tracker for several weeks until their sleep gets better

And then because once you you don't have insomnia anymore

You have more control over things you feel more empowered

Then you may be able to keep a healthier relationship with your trackers

But when you have sleep problems when you have some difficulties around sleep

Plus sleep tracker it will make it really complicated and performance anxiety will make us not able to perform

We see that a lot in sleep because deep down you cannot control your sleep

Right anyone here listening if you ever been on bad tossing around you could not force yourself to sleep

You know that you cannot force yourself to sleep

So um if you

You know you you want to control your sleep too much then sleep tracker may not be for you or at least not for you temporarily

Sleep tracker has another problem is

Right now is a consumer side of sleep tracker. They are improving a lot over the years

But it's still not 100% accurate

Um, you cannot rely on it to tell a accurate story about your sleep

And also you don't know how to explain some of the data

And certain percentage of deep sleep does that means your deep sleep is poor

From a per for professionals point of view maybe not it may be normal within the normal range

But for consumers they may think oh no, I'm my deep sleep. It's not enough. I have to do something about it

That create another level of anxiety

Yeah, yeah

No, that's the big thing like the anxiety and insomnia tied together

So trying to to do better is actually making you do worse because you're increasing your anxiety. So

Yes, uh important important point

So we need to take our second break here. So we're going to take a break and we will be right back on sleep science today

UK health radio station. I make you feel good

UK health radio station. I make you feel good

You

Be sure to visit sleep science today.com for access to all of our channels and special offers

Sleep science today

And sleep better tonight

All right, welcome back to sleep science today. I'm your host Andrew Kulski

We are talking with Dr. Shoe and we're talking about sleep myths

Um how about this one

Yeah, I know people tell me that I snore but snoring is harmless. It doesn't matter

Yeah, I have a strong opinion about this because my old family members snores

And I remember as a child the young child. I was like so annoyed. I was like after two doors away

Why I'm still hearing this so clearly a night I could not fall asleep and I also growing up thought it's normal

Because a lot of people snore in China around when I grow up

People are so interesting when something happened a lot around us and nobody questioned that we think it's normal

Until I went to Stanford and studied sleep behavior sleep medicine

Then I realized there's something called obstructive sleep apnea

And the reason why we snore is because our airway claps and night when we are asleep

Especially when we are in REM sleep when we are dreaming

So the old muscle got relaxed and the airway tend to collapse

And we cannot breathe well

So our body trying so hard to get air through the airway

And that's how we are making sound

So it's not necessarily not a healthy stay

We're in when we sleep that actually lead to more problems more pressure to the heart to the brain

And our oxygen level drops in our blood

So a lot of this lead to severe health consequences if you snoring

Years after years right and I after I studied sex therapy

Recently years I also learned that if you snore for many years

when you get to older age

And it may even impact your erectile dysfunction

And so it's just to have a lot of different type of sleep health consequences for people

So be careful about snoring

If you snore or your partner or your family member snore

I strongly recommend you try to go to a sleep doctor check it out

Do a sleep study figure out how severe this is

Is something you should pay attention to is something you should put intervention around it as soon as possible

Yeah, yeah, and that that's that's so true and

You know, I think one of the biggest issues is the person who snores

But they're asleep. They don't they don't hear themselves snore

They don't realize they're snoring and then if their bed partner says to them

Wow, if you're snoring really loudly

They don't think it's a big deal because you know, they don't they don't hear it

And then I think also they don't realize that there is a lot of harm that can come from it

Just like you were describing

So it is so important

You know if you if you sleep with someone who snores

Courage them to be tested you can even do home sleep apnea tests

You know, you just just wear a little thing at night. It's it's not a big deal

But it's really important to know

Because if you're if you have obstructive sleep apnea and you're not treating it

You you just heard about all the problems that you can have so

That's an important one. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah

Um

How about this one

I want to make my bedroom nice and warm so that when I go to sleep

I'll feel comfortable almost like I'm in the wound

Tell us about bedroom temperature

Yeah, so uh, it actually surprised us when you look at the research

Your temperature is cooler bedroom temperature is better for sleep. Of course, you should not freeze yourself

Uh, but as we fall asleep over the night our core body temperature is dropping

And around

Two hours two or three hours before we wake up in the morning

It drops to the lowest point

And then our body temperature start temperature start to increase slowly

And then we got waking up. So if your sleep environment is too warm or even hot

It may wake you up in the middle of the night because temperature actually is a weakening cue for us

Our body does it naturally and especially for women going through menopause

That's also a issue. They have naturally they have hot flesh

Uh hot flesh and that's a symptom and that kind of warm hot feeling in the middle of night

Wake up them often

So you don't want to sleep in a too hot a temperature and uh if you have a smart house

Um, it's it's better for you to adjust it automatically maybe at certain point in the night the temperature can drop

While to degree and uh, uh, when you wake up you can adjust it or you can set it up that way

Hmm interesting. Well, yeah

Okay, so so the message there is cooler is better than warmer when you're sleeping

so

Okay, um

Here's one that I saw going around the internet for a while

Which was people who believe that they can train themselves to need less sleep

Somehow it was a a badge of honor or a machismo type of thing that I don't need to have so much sleep

I can fight it what's going on there true false

I

See that mostly around entrepreneurs

Uh, I even I interviewed some very famous entrepreneurs um in America a long time ago

He was so proud of getting up at 5 a.m. In the morning

And I think there's a whole club about 5 a.m. Rising entrepreneurs somewhere around the internet

I would say depends on where you are in your life and what your body really needs

From a scientific point of view

I want to encourage everyone to think about

What your body really needs if we can sleep

matching our body's natural needs that's actually the best that's the highest quality most refreshing

Um, and we possibly rest the best

But I think the problem is many people use this kind of

Restrict your own sleep as a way to in exchange of success

productivity more work

and if

Your body needs more and you are restricting that that's really a type of sleep deprivation

And as we talk about earlier

Sleep deprivation is actually quite harmful

You cannot catch up on those can sleep. It's also harmful to you long-term. It's impact your house

Impact how long you can live your longevity and it's

It's a typical I think

philosophy people think other things are more important than sleep. So I can sacrifice sleep

To gain other things in life

Um, when we restrict our sleep not only housey house-wise, we're going to suffer

But emotionally we're going to suffer

So when I treat couples I do couples therapy sometime

Uh research shows if we don't sleep enough we tend to be more irritable

We have less empathy

To to our partners

We we have a lower threshold of tolerance to to our children to our family members

It's just the whole person may be more grumpy and grumpy people is hard to be around

So it's just the spiral

Down to causing a lot of problems. I think it's all related

The I think recently two years more research from Stanford and many other research team in the US showing

Um, sleep actually become one of the key

predictor of

Suicideality that's a heavy topic

But it's really think about mental health and whether you still want to live a meaningful life, right?

If you don't sleep enough and that severely impact your mental health and just open a door for many many other

possible negative consequences

Right, right. Well

Yeah, that's uh, uh, uh, you know

The deep sleep that we get is is where so much good stuff happens and you know

Whether we talk about mental health whether we talk about entrepreneurs even the

You know all of the ideas and things kind of come together when you're in that stage three deep sleep

Where it's not going to happen when you're awake trying to force yourself to think

So if you give yourself that opportunity to get the sleep that you need your brain is going to

Process all those things that it needs to process and you don't have to force yourself

But I think a lot of people miss miss that

I just want to add one thing about that not only deep sleep is important every sleep stage

Are important in their own way for example when we talk about mental health

Ram sleep, which is what the sleep stage when we are dreaming

It's very important to regulate emotions

Because when we sleep

that sleep stage help us to

process our emotional memories

And so uh, it's a very important stage of sleep deep sleep also important especially important for teenagers for children because deep stage of sleep is the stage

Our body release grows hormone. That's when you can grow bigger taller

And that's very important for younger people

Um, and all of course it helps you you know recovery or body tissues everything. So it's important for everyone

A light stage of sleep actually is quite a lot in our daily nights sleep

More than 50% of our each night sleep actually are light stage of sleep. They're important as well

Um, so I just want to put that out is every structure like the whole

architecture of our sleep every piece of that has its unique function

And it just overall sleep is important for us

Absolutely, absolutely

Well, that's that's a very important message and that's the message that we're going to end up leaving our

Our show with because we're out of time for the show

But this has been very

You know informative. I think we've covered a lot of the common questions that people have about sleep out there

And I appreciate your detailed answers and giving us the information that we need

So um, I'll just ask if there's any last words you have before we close out the show

Yeah, it depends on how much time there's one thing I want uh mention

Another miss waiting on cover which I find very common among Asians uh and many others or

The dream part like um

One is when to sleep and one is whether dreamy and waking up in the middle of night is a good thing

I just want to spend a little bit time working on that

I just want let you know waking up in the middle of the night is very common for almost everyone

So don't be afraid of that normal adults wake up more than 10 times per night. No matter you remember it or not. It's normal

So regarding the sleep window

Everyone is different. That's another

Uh philosophy. I will always want to pass out to people is following your body's natural rhythm

If you can if you're night out then maybe your natural sleep window should be go to bed late and get up late

If you're work your daytime activity allows it

That's the best type of sleep for you

You don't have to force yourself sleep like others if it's different for you. So just overall I think

um sleep again sleep is an individualized thing

I think it's very important for us to understand how our body prefers

In sleep and then decide accordingly what we can do to adjust it accordingly if you

A stuck you are having problems. There are a lot of great resources out there find a professional

Find a well-tuned sleep doctor sleep psychologist to help you

You know

Optimize your sleep. I think resources are help out out there

Um, but don't scare yourself too much don't

Uh put too much effort in the wrong direction with the right guidance

Sleep issues can be solved you can recover

Excellent excellent. Well, thank you for that. That's all important information

We have to close out our show here. So thank you all for joining sleep science today

And we'll see you on an upcoming episode

Thank you, Dr. Sheen. Thank you

You have been listening to sleep science today your number one sleep authority

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