Exhausted? Sleep hacks that work — and the ones that don't

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sale on the drop by GNC. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this

is the current podcast. Sleep. Sometimes feels like none of us are getting

enough of it. We're young, we complain, we shell out for another coffee. And after

losing that hour, today lights saving time last weekend, many of us are feeling

even more tired. Seems like everyone has advice for getting better rest. If you

go over to TikTok, you'll get lots of sleep tips, mouth taping, melatonin,

something called cognitive shuffling. What exactly are these? Do they actually

work? Don't worry. We have your back. Eric Prather is a psychologist who runs a

sleep clinic in California at the author of the sleep prescription seven days to

unlocking your best rest. We spoke in September. Here's our conversation. How did

you sleep last night? I slept surprisingly well, but you know, it's not always

that way. I'm thankful for it. You sound surprised. You're a sleep doctor. I

mean, somebody who studies sleep and you're surprised that you got a decent amount

of sleep. Like you said, it's a busy world. And, you know, I think we're all

trying to do our best. And, you know, there are some clear ways to improve it,

but it can be a roller coaster sometimes. If you talk to people about this,

they will complain about how little sleep they got. As you understand it, how

many of us are struggling with sleep? Yeah, you know, I mean, the data

suggests that about 30% of the population is reporting difficulty falling

asleep, staying asleep, waking up too early. And kind of about the same

percentage is getting what we would think is insufficient amounts of sleep. So

the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, other scientific bodies say that we need about

seven hours to maintain optimal adult health. Of course, it might vary from individual to

individual. What do you hear about how people are struggling? Is it about

quantity? Is it about quality? What are what are the complaints that you would get

directed towards you? Yeah, so I help run an insomnia clinic here. And so it's often

both. I mean, people feel like they're not today enough sleep. And a lot of it has to do

with how they're feeling during the day, right? I mean, it's kind of feeling

sluggish, feeling tired, not feeling your best. They're sleep off and is

fragmented. They wake up a lot in the middle of the night. Maybe have trouble falling asleep.

And as a consequence, it leaves feel like they're not getting enough sleep and can't

get on with their day. And so people will turn, I mean, I mentioned

social media. They will turn to any venue that offers some advice on how to get

better sleep. And there are all those hacks and tips that are out there that people may not

make sense of. I'm going to run some of them past you to talk about whether they work or not,

or if they might even make your sleep worse. I want to start with this one. Have a listen.

Did you know that taking tart cherries before bed is like melatonin?

Make sure it's not concentrated juice. Get it to your husband, give it to your wife,

take it yourself, give it to them kids, and y'all gonna sleep like a baby. Thank you

later. Tart cherry juice. Have you heard this?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it is suggested that tart cherry juice might increase

availability of serotonin and or trip to fan and melatonin. And there's still a little bit of

evidence to support it. In general, though, it's probably isn't going to hurt you, but it's

certainly not going to solve anybody's sleep problem. All right. Here's another one that's

getting a lot of attention of late. So I've been mouth taping for the past like two weeks

and you guys, I know you hear it all the time, but it's actually life changing if you're a mouth

breather. So she says mouth taping, which I mean, it sounds fairly straightforward. You take tape

and you put it over your mouth at night to make sure you breathe through your nose. She says that's

life changing. What do you make of that? I mean, I'm really happy for her, but you know, I mean,

mouth taping, there's growing evidence that breathing through your nose has lots of benefits,

but it also carries some risk, particularly for people who have trouble breathing through their

nose are people that have obstructive sleep apnea, which is a sleep disorder where we kind of cease

breathing in the middle of the night and people often have to kind of open their mouth, the gas

for breath. And so there is some risk that this may kind of disrupt people's sleep even more.

What does it tell you that people are so desperate for good sleep that they would put tape across

their mouth while they're sleeping? It's a double edged sword in this way. I mean, I love the fact

that people are trying to invest in their sleep and really trying to make that a pillar of their

health. But in the same way, it is a little bit of desperation that people are really struggling

and it's difficult to find kind of clear science-backed evidence-based habits to improve people's

sleep. And so as a consequence, that void is filled with maybe kind of suspect solutions.

In the introduction, I mentioned something called cognitive shuffling. If people haven't heard of it,

here's a guy on TikTok who says he's a doctor. He does a lot of night shifts to explain what this is.

To do cognitive shuffling, what you have to do is think of a completely random word.

And then visualize the thing that that word represents. From there, think of a second word and

a third and a fourth. They're all completely unrelated. The aim here is to give random thoughts to

your brain to stop it from being anxious and allow you to get off to sleep. What do you understand

about cognitive shuffling? Yeah, I mean, many people struggle with kind of an active mind when they

get tried to go to bed. And so this technique is really to kind of fill that space. It's not

magic. Our brain can only focus on so many things at one. And so if you are focused on a random

word and then you're kind of identifying words to start with that letter and you do it over and

over and over. I mean, you're really filling that space and it allows your brain to kind of get

the rest of its needs and allow you to drift off to sleep. And so it definitely can be a powerful

tool for people. I don't think it's always a one-size-fits-all solution. It's just another example

of how distraction can be effective in helping people drift off to sleep.

So has it worked? I mean, it's interesting. I've done this before, who I count, you pick the

number 300 and you count backwards by threes. And I will find, I mean, I can get through a handful

of numbers and then off I go. This might actually work. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's the exact same

principle focusing your mind and then nature takes over. What about when nature is not enough,

people will take all sorts of things. Melaton and magnesium gravel, of course, prescription

sleep aids as well. Where do you stand on those interventions? You know, they're not all made equal

with respect to risk. So it's important to kind of console your doctor if you're taking something.

I mean, there's definitely a role for sleep medications in kind of a cute setting, but they

weren't designed for chronic daily use. And so that's where we can often get into trouble. Because

what often develops is this psychological dependency on these medications that you feel like you

can't sleep without them. That's where you really need to kind of pause and think about, okay,

what are the perpetuating factors that are causing this insomnia? Because often those medications

are really just masking kind of the underlying problem. I mean, we also live in a society where we

are on screens all the time right up until the moment, perhaps, when we close our eyes and go to

sleep. There has been talk of how long you should have between the time that you're looking at a

screen and the time you want to go to sleep and that number can change. People also will say,

well, it doesn't really matter because that's the world that we live in. Should we get off the screen

before bedtime? It really sort of depends, which I appreciate is kind of unsatisfying, but we

really need to remember that we're not kind of a laptop computer. Our brain doesn't just shut down

at our whim. And so, you know, really ensuring that you have this transition time to relax and get ready

for sleep is important. And some people use screens for that. I mean, the concern has always been

recently around blue light exposure and that that impacts the brain and decreases melatonin

production and this may get in the way of our sleep. And while that is true, to some extent,

you know, the content that we are consuming on, say, social media, those kind of things are really

arousing to our brain. I mean, in some ways, it's really rewarding. And so you get kind of this

dopamine hit that might keep you aroused or, you know, it might increase anxiety. And those things

really work against us in our ability to let go and go to sleep. I mean, the other part of this is

that we think differently about sleep now because we have more information about how we're sleeping.

Before, if you didn't get enough sleep, you knew that because you woke up and you were exhausted

and cranky and miserable. Now, you can look at your phone, which tells you from your watch that

this is how much sleep you got, but also what kind of sleep you got. You can wear the ring that will

give you even more information. Do you think those devices that give us data on sleep? Are they

helpful? Are they harmful? Are there something in between? I think there's somewhere in between.

They're often part of the reason that people have become more and more interested in their sleep

because we can measure it for so long. It was kind of magical. And it still is to, to some extent,

but we are learning a lot. And at the individual level, people can begin to identify patterns in

their sleep that might be meaningful. You know, you take, you know, wearing a device and the impact

of, say, drinking alcohol close to bedtime. I mean, you see that almost immediately in the signals.

And so, you know, people can do experiments to better understand what things work for them,

what might support their sleep. But also, there is some risk. I mean, there's a lot of data. People

can get wrapped up in it. In fact, several years ago now, there was a condition point orthosomnia,

which is an insomnia that develops because of wearable devices, because people get so anxious

about their sleep. I mean, not a day goes by where someone doesn't come into my clinic with, say,

their Apple data. And, you know, they lose their mind over kind of what they do or do not have

in their sleep data. Tell me about some of the things that do work. If people, I'd read somewhere

that 30% of Americans live within insomnia. There are a lot of people who perhaps don't identify

as insomniacs, but they wake up in the middle of the night and they're frustrated and furious,

because they can't get enough sleep. They can't get back to sleep. What habits do work to get

somebody a decent night's sleep? When people come to my clinic, the first thing that I have people

do is standardize their wake-up time. So, get up at the same time seven days a week. Make it

consistent. And the reason for this is it helps in train your circadian rhythm. And then it also

helps kind of regulate what's called your sleep drive, which is something that kind of builds up

throughout the day and increases your sleepiness as you're awake. The next thing is, you know,

ensuring that you have a strong wind down routine. So, again, we want to make sure that people can

transition the bedtime. And these rituals can be really powerful in kind of telling your body

what comes next. This can be, you know, giving yourself an hour, do something for yourself,

do something, calms you down, you know, turn down the lights, make sure that your sleep environment

is well-supported. And then, you know, with people are having kind of consistent bad nights,

one of the things that often is really powerful is actually moving your bedtime a little bit later.

And this feels kind of counterintuitive because you want sleep so badly. But it actually really

increases your sleep drive or called your homeostatic sleep drive, this need for sleep. And often can

kind of lead to more sleep consolidation. And then the final thing that I think is really important

and is really often at the foundation of insomnia is people spend a lot of time in bed not sleeping.

The bed we say is for sleep or sex. And, you know, if you're having lots of nights of kind of

tossing and turning and, you know, you're in bed awake for, say, more than 30 minutes,

it might make sense to get out of bed and wind down until you feel sleepy again and then return

to bed. Because what often occurs is that when people are having bad nights of sleep, they'll

tell me things like, you know, I'm feeling really sleepy and then I got in bed and my brain woke up.

And that's what's called a cognitive arousal. And that is brought on by kind of all these

bad nights that your bed itself has kind of become a trigger. So trying to break that that

relationship and repair it with the feeling of sleepiness over time can ensure that the bed

again becomes this supportive, sleep-inducing trigger. Why should I stick my head in the freezer?

Never ends. So in this book, I use that as an example as an alternative to

napping. And so, you know, people are trying to increase their alertness. And so there's some

data to suggest that kind of cold exposure kind of activates your sympathetic nervous system

and can kind of get you going. People I meet with, they're trying to fix their sleep.

And so in that case, napping is something that we suggest again because it impacts your night.

Are we thinking differently about sleep now? Because there used to be a time when the

captains of the universe would brag that they got, I can operate on three-hour sleep. I don't

need more than three. It feels like that's over and done with in some ways. I wish it was over and

done with. I think that's true. I think my cynical view is that some of the reason that people are

so interested in sleep is because this industry has been created. And so now there's all these

products. I do like to think that kind of the collective consciousness around sleep has been

changing and shifting towards sleep is really fundamental for health. And that's all good news.

But, you know, as we've already discussed, I mean, for some people, it's kind of pushed them into

this area of anxiety or optimization and trying to fix their sleep or gamify their sleep and or

hack it. And, you know, that can often be a dangerous path. But, you know, overall, I'm thrilled with

the changes that people are making about their sleep, the way that we're thinking about it.

And I think the future is bright for this field. So, you know, admittedly, there's a lot that we

still have to learn. So for somebody just finally, who comes to your office and they, you look at

them and you know that they're not sleeping, but they will tell you that they're losing their mind

because they're not getting enough sleep. And they worry that they'll never get enough sleep

and that they'll never sleep well again. What do you say to them? I say that, you know, one,

I completely understand. And it's really scary, you know, when people begin to have insomnia,

it feels like everything is broken. I think of sleep is kind of the glue that holds our life

together. And so, you know, first about kind of meeting them where they are. But the good news is

that, you know, we're built to sleep. Sleep has kind of been conserved across millennia,

across all the species that we've ever studied do something that looks like sleep. And so,

it's really built into us. And so, despite all the trouble that people have had, there are ways

to improve it. And hopefully that gives people a little bit of confidence or hope. And that's

just as important as we move forward. Eric, thank you very much for this. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Eric Breather is a sleep scientist and the author of the sleep prescription seven days to unlocking

your best rest. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway.

Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.