Hello Sleep with Dr. Jade Wu
Hey, it's Molly from alcohol minimalist. What do you do in this October? I would love to have you join me in my more sober October challenge. What do I mean by more sober October, it simply means that we're going to add in more alcohol free days than you currently been doing, whether that's one or two or 31. It's up to you, you get to set your own goal and that's why it's more sober October. You can check it out and learn more at get got sunnyside.co/molly It's totally free. I've got prizes, I'm going to be going live every week to announce the prize winners. And it's just going to be an awesome event. So I would love to have you join me. You can learn more at get.sunnyside.co/molly and you can get registered today. Welcome to the alcohol minimalist podcast. I'm your host Molly watts. If you want to change your drinking habits and create a peaceful relationship with alcohol, you're in the right place. This podcast explores the strategies I use to overcome a lifetime of family alcohol abuse, more than 30 years of anxiety and worry about my own drinking, and what felt like an unbreakable daily drinking habit. Becoming an alcohol minimalist means removing excess alcohol from your life. So it doesn't remove you from life. It means being able to take alcohol or leave it without feeling deprived. It means to live peacefully, being able to enjoy a glass of wine without feeling guilty and without needing to finish the bottle. With Science on our side will shatter your past patterns and eliminate your excuses. Changing your relationship with alcohol is possible. I'm here to help you do it. Let's start now. Well hello and welcome or welcome back to the alcohol minimalist podcast with me your host Molly Watts coming to you from well, it's a little bit gray and cloudy here in Oregon this morning. But I found some sunshine as promised. I was in Hawaii, it was magnificent. And then when I came back home, it was sunny here too. Now, again, we've got a little bit of rain on the horizon. Not gonna lie. I'm a little bit disappointed about that because I kinda have maybe I turned the corner I went to Hawaii brought the sunshine and thought it was going to stick around. But regardless, it was a fantastic break and I am super excited to be back I am excited to share with you this podcast interview I did with Dr. Jade Woo. He is a board certified sleep psychologist, researcher and speaker. And she works at the Duke University School of Medicine. She has recently written a new book called Hello sleep, which we talked about at length. And what I love about Dr. Jade Wu's work is that she focuses on behavioral changes for treating insomnia. So non medication treatments to help people improve their sleep, and their waking life as well. Really excited because may, if you did not know is better sleep month. So what better way to kick off a month that is focused on sleep than to talk with a sleep specialist. And for many of the people that listen to this podcast, they are turning to using alcohol as a sleep tool. And we've talked about it many times that it's really not helping you get better sleep. But what I love about this conversation with Jade is that you'll hear some really fantastic tips and some mythbusting regarding your sleep habits. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Dr. Jade. Woo. Good morning, Jay. Thank you so much for being here on the alcohol minimalist podcast. I for 1am. Super excited to talk to you about all things sleep. Thanks so much for having me, Molly. Yeah. Asleep. It's so may is actually better sleep month. So this is a perfect time to have this podcast recording and jump into this conversation. And I'm really excited to share your new work in your book with my audience. So before we get into the rest of the podcast, tell me a little bit more about your project and about writing the book in the first place. Sure. Thank you. So I am a behavioral sleep medicine specialist, which means that I help people improve their sleep without medications. Thank you. Yeah. And so my whole mission is to basically spread the good word of sleep. And I really wanted to write this book because the patients that I that I work with We all struggle with insomnia and other types of sleep problems. And one really common thing is that people feel really lonely in their experience of insomnia. It's, you know, like, we may know that a lot of people have insomnia, in fact, something like 25 million 30 million American adults do. But it still feels like a very lonely, isolating experience at night when you're just like, so frustrated and just trying to get to sleep. So I wanted to write this book that's very compassionate, that's very, like, I understand your experience. And here are some things we can actually do to reset our relationship with sleep. So yes, I love. And I love the title, hello, sleep. I mean, it just, you know, for a long time, I used to have some pretty significant sleep struggles, but now I'm in a really good sleep pattern. And I'm really, really appreciative of it. But so that feeling of hellos, you know, it's just when you really are struggling, and all you want to do is sleep. Having a compassionate, caring voice in your ear, or, you know, as you're reading, just really, I can imagine, it's very helpful for people. I hope so. Yeah. I know. So I know. So the, the reason that I really wanted to have a conversation with you, and we talked about it briefly in our conversations is, I have so many people that listen to this podcast, who are working on their relationship with alcohol. And one of the key beliefs that many of them have is that alcohol is helping them sleep better, which I know and I've shared before, and I've shared many times on the podcast, it's simply not true. But one of the things that it does help people do is get to sleep quicker. So it can help you get to sleep, but it then disrupts sleep. So tell me a little bit about your take on alcohol. Yeah, this is such a tricky one. And I certainly have worked with many people who have this kind of catch 22 relationship with sleep and alcohol, where they really don't want to have to drink to go to sleep, but then it feels like that's the only weigh and then when they tried it not drinking, and then going to sleep, it just seems to really not work. And then they so they feel really stuck. And I can very much sympathize with that. Because you know, sleep is something that hopefully happens every night, you know, you can kind of feel like you're on the hook for it every night, and you can start to dread the battle with insomnia as you're approaching bedtime. And if you have this thing that takes the edge off, that feels like it's a pretty sure, go to that you can always rely on to at least you know, ease you into sleep, then of course, that's extremely tempting. And you know, I can very much understand why people would would, you know, feel stuck in this pattern. And you're right, alcohol can kind of tamp down on the busy brain or just the hyper arousal, which is just means too much brain or body feeling revved up. So alcohol can sort of take the edge off. But once you actually do fall asleep, alcohol can keep your body temperature higher, it can keep you getting into deep sleep. And it really can disrupt the quality of your sleep, and end up making you sleeping shorter. And also, over time, if this becomes truly a thing that you feel like you rely on to sleep, then even just on a psychological level, it is harder to sleep on your own. So then you really kind of get stuck in this pattern. It's really interesting. I'm so glad that you mentioned psychological because that's one of the things that's really fascinated me about your work specifically because I think so many people think that sleep is just a biological function that we cannot, you know, that we don't have any input into with our brains? And I believe you would say that's actually not very, that's not true. Yeah, so much of sleep is psychological. And after all, sleep mostly happens in the brain, the brain is the thing that, you know, makes us sleep makes us wake and tries to find the balance between the two things. You know, the the master clock for our circadian rhythms lives in the brain. And that kind of runs a show for when we should feel sleepy versus awake. So, you know, sleep is a brain activity. And, and it's a psychological activity too. Because sleep, you know, here's how I think about sleep. It's like a friend, a very loyal old friend that has, you know, been with you all of these years, but she's also a shy friend. So if you really try to chase her down really hard and you're really overbearing and you're like my way or the highway, you have to show up at this time in this specific way or else and you blame all your problems on your friends sleep, you know, if you don't get enough sleep right then that's putting a lot of, you know, stress and pressure on the relationship. So then sleep runs away from you. So there's a lot of us Soft, you know, pieces to the relationship with sleep that you're right. It's not just a biological on or off switch, that I love that metaphor of a friend, a shy friend. So one of these myths that people carry around in their brains about sleep that I know you've talked about, is the fact that that they need to sleep through the night. I mean, I think that's one of the reasons people get stuck in this cycle of wanting to get to sleep is because they feel like they should be sleeping, you know, through the night. Yeah, is it true? No, nobody sleeps straight through the night. And if you do, then you're in a coma, or I mean, that's not even sleep, you know. So it's very normal and healthy for us to wake up a number of times during the night. In fact, for adults, the average number is something in the 10 to 16 times range. Now, most of those times you don't know or you don't remember. But it's also okay to remember a small handful of those times, that's very normal. And even to have one awakening that's a little bit longer. That's not abnormal, either. You know, before our industrialized world, like in pre industrial Europe, for example, we knew that people just as a matter of routine got up during the night for like an hour or two, to, you know, rise bread, or visit neighbors or sing songs and whatnot, and then go back for their second sleep. So biologically, our sleep is actually built to be kind of two halves, that are kind of qualitatively different in terms of what stage of sleep we're in, you know, what our bodies are going through. And it's, it's okay to have a gap in between those two halves, that I love as well, because I think that I know, for me, when I was struggling with, like I said, I wasn't struggling necessarily to get to sleep, but I had a bad bad situation, you know, continual wake up in the middle of the night, and it wasn't just, you know, turn over go back to sleep, even half it was like, persisting for two, two and a half, three hours. And that, that was not good, right. But I think that the idea that, I think getting over that, definitely, there was a cognitive part of that, where I would just get fearful and stressed out and like, Oh, God, it's gonna happen again. So the idea that you don't have to sleep through the night that you can have to balance are two different pieces of that. I love that idea as well. And this idea two about the different levels of sleep, deep sleep versus light sleep, I think we're lulled into thinking that we want to get deep sleep, it sounds really good, like deep sleep like that doesn't really need and want. But is it true? Or is light sleep just as important? That's a great question. It's funny, when I asked people, so people often come to me and say, Oh, my sleep tracker told me that I'm getting such little deep sleep. I don't even know how I'm alive right now. I'm like, oh, geez, how little is there, you know, deep sleep. And they say, oh, you know, like 20%, like, 20% is pretty good. So actually, deep sleep is supposed to take up about 15 ish, 20 ish percent of the night, and light sleep about 45 to 55%. So about half of the night should be light sleep. And then REM sleep should be about 25% of the night, and then about five ish percent of the night, maybe 10% should be awake. So, you know, it's the way I think about it. It's almost like nutrition. It's not like, as much protein as possible, like 100% protein is, you know, of your diet is the best, right? Like we need to balance our different types of nutrition, you need protein, and you need other types. And, you know, I don't I'm not a nutritionist, so I don't want to go too deep into that and say something wrong. But basically, yeah, balanced diet is good. Just like a balanced diet of different types of sleep is good. Deep sleep is very important. Obviously, it you know, clears out toxins in your brain, it heals your body, it boosts your immune system, it you know, you release growth hormones during it. That's all very important. But during light sleep, we are also consolidating our memories and what we learned during the day, we are resting our bodies, you know, we're giving our bodies, our bodies and our brains a break from doing the work of deep sleep because deep sleep is not just like you turn all the way off. It's actually a very active brain state. So your brain needs a break from that too. And then REM sleep is also important. That's where we do a lot of emotion regulation, memory consolidation. If we dream it's usually during REM our muscles are also getting a break during that time because most of our muscles are kind of turned off during REM so we don't act out our dreams. So you know all the different types of sleep are fascinating and important. I love that and I love that the fact that you gave all those percentages, folks, just dial into that go back that was that was worth worth the listen right there. As you all know, I'm a science girl and that is why I am so proud of my partnership with Sunnyside. Sunnyside has great data based on their user experience and they also have great science techniques behind what drives the program in the first place. Users of Sunnyside in their first 30 days experience on average a 29% reduction in drinks. They avoid 1500 calories and they've saved over $50 each month. This is because there is science behind the program. Sunnyside helps you reach your goals and stick with them long term by focusing on three scientifically proven superpowers. One is pre commitment, you intentionally make a plan ahead of time and we talked about making a plan all the time here on the podcast. Number two is conscious interference. And you'll learn that the habit of tracking each drink helps you decide about it. Number three is positivity. We know this is not easy sometimes right? And we all need a little boost. I tried to be a boost and Sunnyside is a great boost via text message or email to keep you motivated. So if you haven't already checked it out, I invite you www.sunnyside.co/molly To get started on a free 15 day trial today. All right, so let's talk a little bit about some of the other things besides alcohol that people use to try to help them sleep melatonin being one that many of us hear about. And I know what I appreciate so much about your work is the focus on behavioral change not on medicines and taking prescriptions to try to break the insomnia pattern. But what's your take on melatonin? Is it is it? Is it really as harmless as people think. So believe it or not, melatonin is not an insomnia drug. It is not meant to help people sleep better. Wow, it is a time shifting drug. So melatonin is a natural hormone that we already produce, to keep track of time in our bodies. So supposed to ramp up at night and subside during the day. So for people who are for example, night owls who need to live as a morning person, you know, people whose circadian rhythms, body clocks are just shifted to late, we can use melatonin, like many hours before bedtime to try to pull their melatonin curve earlier. So they can feel sleepy earlier. But then they'll also wake up earlier too. So melatonin is not a drug to just make you sleep more or sleep better. It's simply there for shifting time. So most people who are taking melatonin first of all don't need it. And if they are taking it for insomnia, they're taking it at the wrong times and the wrong dose. And melatonin may be not harmless. Because it's not a prescription medication is over the counter, which means that it's not as closely FDA regulated, right. And so a big study as found and actually a second study just that just recently came out, found that the amount of melatonin that's in the gummy or the pill or the whatever, can be so much more than what's advertised on the label. So if it says one milligram, it can be up to three or five times as high as it could be five milligrams, and about. So if you're taking that big of a dose of melatonin, it can stay in your system too long. And that can actually backfire make you groggy during the day or shift your circadian curve in the wrong direction. So melatonin is not just a harmless, you know, why not try it, like having real tea kind of thing, right? It actually can backfire. Right, which I can vouch for. Because of course back in those days when I was struggling with my sleep, you know, it's it's Dr. Google, right? We look. And melatonin is something that everybody thinks, oh, I should take that to help me get to sleep better. And I obviously wasn't using it the right way because I did feel groggy all the time. You know, which could have also been because I was it didn't really help me it What was funny is that it didn't really help me with my middle of the night insomnia. Yeah, it was like, Yeah, I would wake up still. So anyway. One of those other things that we hear about, or we hear from, I don't know, celebrities and gurus, they seem to like be able to sleep less like they're able to manufacture or force themselves to operate better at lower hours of sleep per day, like, you know, somehow miraculously and they've managed to do this and they're and they're successful and productive. So we think they're that maybe maybe you can actually get away with only sleeping four or five, six hours a night. Is that true? So it's probably not true. Most of the time. Most of the time I hear about this, I just kind of roll my eyes because it's, I don't know if it's part of their personal branding, or just bragging rights or whatever it may be. But the vast, vast, vast majority of people cannot function well, or be healthy on so little sleep. I mean, there are people, and they're extremely rare, who need very little sleep like four or five hours a night, and they do exist, I've met them, you know. But most people listening to this podcast, just assume that that's not you until proven otherwise. And, you know, sometimes we can feel like we're functioning fine on very little sleep. But we might actually be sort of kidding ourselves, we might feel almost a little hypomanic, like really like jazzed up, like, oh, I only got four hours of sleep last night, I feel great, I feel on top of the world, like I'm quick, I'm on my feet, you know, but that's actually just you being a little hypomanic, that's your open seating, we're not enough sleep by like hyping you up. But that doesn't mean you're actually making good decisions, or, you know, reacting quickly to what you need to or, you know, emotion regulating Well, or doing any of the things that we need to do to actually be a happy functioning human being. Yeah, I for one, can really, I've really become very, I don't know, sleep aware, sleep sensitive, I really noticed in myself, when I don't get that, you know, when I don't get my full normal seven, I aim for seven, seven half hours every night. And when I don't get that, I can definitely feel it in my body, I can feel it in my brain. And I'm eager to get get caught up, which I think I would love to ask you that. I know, it's not a myth that maybe you and I talked about beforehand. But is is it possible to catch up on your sleep? Hmm, that's a great question. In the short term, yes, not in the long term. So it's not like if you sleep an hour less than you need to per day, for a very busy year, and then at the end of that year, you can sleep 365 hours straight to catch up. Like, that's not possible, right, like, at some point that the ship has sailed and, you know, the, your sleep deprived. Yeah, like, at some point, the damage has already been done, and you can't reverse you know, that damage. But you know, I wouldn't sweat it if it's like, you know, I had a long weekend partying with friends who are visiting from out of town, and we just kind of like threw sleep to the wayside, that's fine, we're all allowed to have fun, and we are allowed to have some resiliency and adaptability in our sleep, that's fine, sleep will take care of you, you know, you'll probably crash and sleep a lot more than usual the next day. And that's okay. You know, we're allowed to kind of go with the flow a little bit. And this is, again, some of the stuff I really love about your work. And just this, this idea that sleep is a relationship that we you know, a relationship we want to foster and not just chase, but some of us feel very frustrated by what we call, and I know what you call as well, our busy brains, the brain that just does not seem to want to turn off at night. And so let's talk a little bit about that. And some of the strategies that you employ with your because again, what I love about your work is the focus on cognitive basically cognitive behavioral therapy, changing some of the stories that you have and the thoughts that you have, because that's really aligns with the work that I do as well. Right. But when it comes to turning that busy brain off at night, that's why I think people want to change you know, that's why the alcohol sounds so good, because they know that it helps turn the brain off. So let's talk about some of these some tips that we can share with folks to help them D busy the brain. I like that deep is the the brain. Yes. So I think the first story that we want to take a nother look at is this idea that oh, my brain is busy, and that's keeping me up. Okay, so a lot of the time it's actually that you're up and therefore there's space for your brain to be busy. Okay, okay. Yeah. So our brains are just designed to be working at all times. You know, like we as linguistic creatures, we're just not good at not talking to ourselves about something. Right, right. So if you're awake, you're going to be thinking but it's not necessarily the fact that you're thinking that's keeping you awake but wow, wow, he's blowing my mind right there Jade. I thought it was just So I love to start with that, because I think that takes a little pressure off. Because sometimes we're trying so hard to turn the brain off and there just is not an off switch. So if we're just trying desperately to say like, just shut up, brain just turn off. Like if I say to you do not, you know, on the threat of death, think about a pink elephant, right? You know, like, that's the first thing you're gonna think about. Now, you're going to be thinking about that pink elephant for the rest of the day. So if we push against our thoughts, they're gonna push back harder. So instead of doing that, let's do get out of our head and into our body. Okay, so first of all, recognize that if you're not sleeping enough, you if you're going to bed too early, or if you took a big nap earlier today, or if you fell asleep on the couch watching TV after dinner, thank you may just not be sleeping right now at regular bedtime. So you may just have to stay awake a little bit longer. And if you really listen to your body, your body will tell you, because there's a difference between being tired and being sleepy. If you're sleepy, your eyes will be droopy, you're going to be like yawning a lot, and you're going to be falling asleep, that sleepy. But if you're just tired, like a had a long day, I'm so done with it, you know, my body is tired. That's great, you need to rest, but you may not need to sleep. So good. Get out of your head into your body, listen to what your body is really telling you in terms of what you need in this moment, whether it's sleep or rest or something else. Another way to get out of your head and into your body is to just really pay attention, non judgmentally, to what your body is doing and what it's feeling. And that way we can help to slow down the mind not to shut it off, because that's impossible. But we can slow it down a little bit. Because when you're in your body, your body can really only be in one place at one time at a time, right. Whereas your brain can go to 1000 different places and times and hypothetical futures. And there's infinite circles you can run in your brain. But in your body, there's just one thing. So if you pay attention to your breath, for example, and just notice the sensations of the breath of the air coming in, of the air leaving of how your body is moving, not trying to change any of it. But just to notice, if you just notice your breath for two minutes, I promise you, your brain will slow down a little bit, will calm down the body and brain a little bit and allow sleep to come to you more easily. If sleep is ready to come to you. That is gold. I love it. You talked to about this transition. And it's kind of I think, aligned with what you're talking about with the body but from doing to being from doing the transition because we're so goal oriented during the day, we're you know, we're crossing off the To Do lists, we're just constantly getting things done. And so, talk to me about that, about basically moving our brains right from doing to being Yeah, I think that's a really important one. Thank you for bringing that up. It's, you know, our, our day to day modern lives are just so goal oriented and so busy. We are very productivity oriented, I think for sure, often, yeah, often I'm talking to my patients, and they're just saying like, you know, I don't like to sit still because I want to get stuff done. And I can relate to that, you know, as a type A person that I feel that all the time too. But then what happens while we're constantly on the go and getting stuff done. I mean, the message we're sending to our bodies is that there must be a saber toothed tiger behind us choosing us because otherwise why wouldn't you sit down under the shade of a tree and hang out with your tribe member and you know, pick fleas out of their hair or you know, do something relaxing like that, right? So you know, these cavemen cave women still live within us, we're still very evolutionarily very old, even though we're living in this new world. So we need to honor that. We need to show our brains and show our bodies that it actually is safe, you know, by taking breaks during the day and then at night, your body will say okay, we've taken breaks during the day, there's no tiger on the horizon. Now it's time to wind down and we can we can let down our guard to do that. So switching over to being mode, which is just noticing what's around you and allowing your body to tell you what it needs. Rather than being goal oriented and making making stuff happen. I love that and I one of the things that I really enjoyed about your tips to Jade is the the idea that you can enjoy some extra me time don't force it. And what I really appreciate it because I am a person that that definitely doesn't have like Perfect sleep hygiene when it comes to screens, especially. And this was something that I just just loved about your what you said is like sleep hygiene doesn't have to be perfect. And I can actually look at my screens at night, and it's not going to just totally disrupt everything that I've ever thought about my sleep. That's right, that's a good news I come bearing is you can look at your screens at night, it's okay. I mean, I would try to make it them the screens a little bit and maybe not do like extremely stimulating things like playing the most graphic video game or something. Or I don't know, for some people even that's relaxing. So you know, everyone knows themselves best. Think about the intention of what you're using your screens for, like, are you using your screens to relax and to connect with friends and to enjoy some storytelling, some content, great. But if you're doing scrolling, looking for the thing that's going to make you angry, or if you're, you know, distracting away from a really important thought or emotion that you really should be processing on your own, then that may not be as helpful, but just screens themselves are not the devil, especially if you get lots and lots of light during the day. So if you are able to go outside for at least half an hour during the day and get some you know, even if it's cloudy, it's still a lot brighter outside than inside. If you get lots of light exposure during the day, then that mitigates the effects of screens at night because as long as there's a big contrast between day versus night, then your brain will know the difference. And a will not mess up your body clock. Oh, that's really great news. Because everybody that listens to this podcast knows I've been on this kick with morning light. Because there's a lot of great research for getting morning light, right when we first wake up and I finding it really, really helpful for many things. And also, obviously for circadian rhythm. So that's fantastic. And it also allows me the screens allows me to listen to audiobooks at night, which is something that I find to be very, very helpful. It's kind of what pushes me over the hump, especially I have, which I don't know up for me, I actually listen to books that I've listened to before when I've been awake, because I don't want to like, get into a book so much that I don't want that I want to keep listening and not fall asleep. But when I listen to a book, especially if it's a great audio, or some people tell me, I listened to your podcast, Molyneux puts me to sleep because to your voice, I'm like, whatever works for you. Great, yeah. But that's I find listening to a certain voice. If it's somebody that the narrator that I really appreciate, and like, it really does soothe and help me and gets my brain listening enough where it's turning off the other stuff, and then it just kind of lulls me into sleep, which I guess it's just kind of harkens back to when we're young and children and we're, you know, we've got bedtime stories, right? I mean, listening to voices is something I think many of us can, can find comfort in and definitely helps me at least get to sleep. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And that's a really good point about children being read to at bedtime. And that's one of the universal favorite activities for children, right, they feel loved and safe. And you know, they get to use their imagination a little bit. And you know, a lot of kids talk to themselves after lights out, they just chat with themselves in bed. And that's a self soothing, you know, thing that that we naturally do as kids, we probably don't do that much as adults anymore, especially if we have a bed partner who can't really stop by that. But yeah, listening to a podcast or audiobook, I do that basically every night when I go to bed as well. Yeah. And it's, it's, you know, it's a great redirection for your brain as well. Because no matter how engaging a book might be, for example, an audiobook, it's probably not going to be as personally engaging as whatever big worry you have on your mind, you know, so if that worry is not something you're going to be able to solve right now. You might as well defer it till tomorrow, and redirect your brain to a nice story that you're listening to. I love it. Dr. Jade Woo, I could probably talk to you all day about sleep, which would not be very beneficial for you because I know you've got work to do, as well. But it is great to have you on the show. The book, my friends is called Hello sleep and you can find it anywhere. I will link it in the show notes, of course, and I will link everywhere that you can learn more about Jade's work and her some of this some of the podcasts you've done recently used to host this assay psychologist on the quick and dirty tips Podcast Network, that's fine. So you went back on there and shared some of these tips that we've talked about A little more in depth, so I will share those episodes as well. And just really great to have you here. I appreciate you taking the time. Thanks so much for having me. This was a lot of fun. Good. I hope it's fun. And we've also I think, shared some really great information. So Thanks, Jake. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the alcohol minimalist podcast. This podcast is dedicated to helping you change your drinking habits and to create a peaceful relationship with alcohol. Use something you learned in today's episode and apply it to your life this week. Transformation is possible you have the power to change your relationship with alcohol now, for more information, please visit me at www dot Molly watts.com
