The Sleep MasterClass; Proven Sleep Hygiene Tips; The Perfect Sleep Temperature; Eat This Not That; Ambien Zombies; Your Brain on Sleep; The Tart Cherry Juice Effect and more tips.

Transcript

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John Tesh here with Gib Gerard, welcome to the podcast today. We're gonna be all about sleep, because I'm the guy who doesn't get any sleep. How are you doing with sleep these days?

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It depends.

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Three kids at home.

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It depends. I you know, I end up doing this. I follow. I do the worst thing. I generate myself into a horrible sleep cycle where I fall asleep putting my youngest to bed. He's eight, and I'll fall asleep either laying on the floor next to his bed or reading the stories to him, and then I wake up at like, 1130 and sometimes I wake up and I'm able to, like, do work and talk to my wife for a half an hour, and then I go to bed, or I wake up at like, two o'clock in the morning, completely disoriented.

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I forgot to brush my teeth, and then I finally actually get to go to bed. It's terrible. And then that creates a sleep deficit the next day, which makes me that much more likely to fall asleep putting the kids to bed the next night. It's just a it's a vicious cycle. We have some tips for you. I can't wait send your kids to boarding school now. Just kidding, don't do that. This is from the from Stockholm home university. If you want to feel younger, they say you have to make sleep a priority, duh. So not getting enough sleep can cause you, they say can cause you to feel five to 10 years older than you really are. I know you're true.

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It makes sense, because being sleep deprived reduces your energy, and so people are also less physically and socially active when they're sleep deprived. I know this feeling and both of those things, sleep and being social make people feel younger. So in studies, it's linked to living longer, okay, a good night's sleep, lower rate of dementia, less depression, positive traits like optimism, hope and resilience.

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Feeling younger is also, they say, associated with, uh, better physical and mental health. This is blah, blah, blah. But according to the journal frontiers in aging neuroscience, people who feel younger than their chronological age, they have more gray matter in their brains, and they scored younger in tests of brain aging. So basically, I mean, and we're going to go through a couple of things here and get a couple of different studies, but we can connect, and we've done it many times on the radio show. We can connect a lack of sleep, yes, to many things. So it's cognitive decline, we've seen that also it makes you hungry. So we can connect it to belly fat. We can also connect it to losing a job or not being as effective at a job because because of anger issues, right? Sleep deprivation makes you angry. It also can destroy your relationship. So so enjoy again, if you're angry, irritable, craving foods and stimulation in order to stay awake. All of that's going to that's going to hurt your your job. It's going to hurt your relationships. It's going to hurt your waistline. You're going to be, you're gonna be less effective working out. And what you and I, I mean, this is an example that I give all the time when I was younger. It was a badge of honor, yes, how little sleep you needed to get by? Yeah, it was, it was like, the thing, oh, it was sleep is for the week. It's, you know, you don't really know why you need it. So if you need it, it's just because you're weak. You should just power through, you know, drink that extra cup of coffee, yeah, hustle sickness, right? Yeah, stay awake. Do what you need to do. And and more and more research shows that we need the sleep more than more than like that, another hour of studying is going to be less effective than an additional hour of sleep will be followed by, you know, more intentional studying and better planning next time. Yeah, yeah. Amen to that. Also, there's a, there's actually a sleep position. You know, we've spoken about this before.

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Really, the best sleep position is on your back, yeah, but a lot of people can't do that. Can't stay there. The worst sleep position, for many reasons, is on your side, on your stomach, because you can mess with your breathing. You can also just destroy your your back as you're inverted my stomach. Yeah, we're not supposed to, but I sort of do, like a combo deal. I got like one knee up and then, you know, that kind of thing. But now we know that sleeping in one according to internist Dr Holly Phillips, who studies sleep, that sleeping in one particular position will not only help your back feel better, but they she's finding that you can reduce your risk of Alzheimer's disease, and here's how it works. Well, first of all, you lie on your side, leg spent with the pillow between your knees. When you put the pillow between your knees, it saves your back. So Holly Phillips doc, Holly Phillips says the position alleviates the strain in your back, but now research shows it helps remove damaging proteins from your brain while you're sleeping, the ones that accumulate and eventually contribute to the development of Alzheimer's, because lying on your side, she says, improves circulation to your head and neck and increases oxygen flow. How about that?

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You got to make sure that that spine is aligned when you're on your side. You can't have your head way up, way down. So you have to have the right pillow. And, yeah, and, you know, a big pillow never, never works for me. It always messes with my neck.

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I have, I mean, I have, like, three different kinds of pillows. I've also heard for what for? Well, you know, you have the big pillows that are the decorative ones that obviously I didn't pick. And there's, like, the. A hard foam neck pillow, and then a couple of soft pillows that you can, kind of like, manipulate into position, and then, and then finally, you, you know, yeah, then we have the body pillows from when my wife was pregnant that you you can, like, put between your legs and kind of hold on to which that one's fantastic. I highly recommend that if you cannot sleep on your side, if you can't dial all that in. I do know that there has been the recommendation that you do lay on your back, but you put a pillow beneath your knees to kind of put some of the stress off of your lower back when you do that, so you can get that better night sleep. But it you know, all of this is just adding up to the important, the overall importance of sleep, like the position that you're talking about is just the position that helps you stay asleep the longest and puts the least amount of stress on your brain.

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And that's the point of sleep.

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So, you know, these are just ways to optimize what our body needs.

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You know, we're going to talk about sleep hygiene in a minute, but I also want to talk about how the according to the UCI center for neurobiology, and, by the way, and you know, every major university, including, including Texas, University of Texas, which is where MD Anderson is there. They're now looking at sleep deprivation and connecting it to, to the development of cancer cells.

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Again. I mean, it's, it's, it's crazy, the connection, it's an important part of your body's cleaning out process, right? And so if you can't, if you can't properly clean out your body, then you can't, you're, you're going to have all of the metabolic disorders that lead to cancer eventually, if you can't do it, just you, we got to figure out how to say and by the way, I don't normally have a hard time sleeping. I just don't get enough of it. Except the times when I can't fall asleep, and when I can't fall asleep is the only thing I can think about, yeah, and it's only thing that matters. And there's also, I can't remember what the name of it is, but it's one of those things where, where you're it's a type of insomnia where you worry that you're not going to be able to go to sleep. Remember that thing we were talking about that Exactly, yeah, and, and I remember, when I was doing so many I'd go back and forth from Los Angeles to New York. And anybody you know, when you're on a business trip and you have a time changer and you got and you got a business meeting or a television interview early in the morning, and and you're looking at that, you're so afraid that you're not going to to wake up on time, right? And you're just looking at that clock, yes, and then, and every time it clicks over, you think, okay, I can get six hours now. Okay, I get five hours. Okay, just four hours of sleep, and I'll be ready to go and then, and then, before, you know, you haven't slept at all. Yeah. So according to those researchers at UCI center, lead researcher Michael Leon says by age 60, our sense of smell begins to decline. We saw this with your grandmother, along with our memory. So he and his team decided to see if fragrances might make a difference in the study, half of the participants were asked to sleep in a scent free room, bedroom. The rest were given an essential oil diffuser to use in their bedroom for two hours every night. Diffuser, of course, you get that at Amazon.

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You can pick your fragrance, and lavender really works well for me. And participants rotated through the different scents, getting a fresh whiff before bed each night. So here the ascents included rose, which I don't like lemon, yes, I like that, orange, lavender, eucalyptus, peppermint and rosemary. And after six months, the study participants with scented bedrooms, they scored 226% better on memory tests compared to the ascent free room people.

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Once we reach middle age, we need to sleep a certain amount of hours each night to maintain good health. And so if you don't, if you don't, if you're not able to do that, then, then apparently, these, these, these, these scents can really help you. And the number one scent that helped was lavender, and because, because peppermint, it lit peppermint. Lemon lit people up, right?

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They wake up. Do you? Do you have a diffuser? Do you do this?

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I have a diffuser right here.

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Actually, it ran out of stuff.

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It's in my studio. But, you know, rosemary, I'm sorry, lavender, I had I ordered it. I ordered a diffuser recently, Amazon. I thought I ordered it with lavender, and it came with rosemary. And I really hate the smell of rosemary and Rose.

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Yeah, I don't know. It's just, it's, I get in there, I feel like I'm, I feel like I've, I feel like I've gone out of gone on a date with the wrong person.

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And I'm sure she felt the same way about me, but, but anyway, lavender, no, I'm thinking of somebody in particular where it was, like, the whole night I was smelling this perfume. I was like, Oh my gosh, the wrong my gosh, the wrong oils can smell like, bad. Why didn't you read? You wear Halston? And she's like, Well, why didn't you read? Why didn't you wear English leather? Yeah, anyway, so, so lavender was, was the one? Yeah, there was, was the had the biggest effect. And it's, it's most calming for me too. Yeah, I don't have a diffuser. Don't do this. Don't do a candle if, instead of a diffuser with candles in the room. So just, you know, little, little warning right there we I have the, I have the lavender that has, like, actual lavender parts in it, laundry bag and I dry my sheet. Oh, that's a gentle smell of lavender. Lavender on all of the laundry, but I don't have the diffuser in the bedroom because I don't know it feels, it feels too it feels like too much to like be messing with that stuff. But all of the things that we're talking about with the eye masks, we haven't talked about eye masks. Yeah, we'll talk about that. But with eye masks and light in the room, and sleep hygiene, and what time we go to bed and all of that.

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You know, your your your brain has a mechanism that kind of keeps you safe and alert in case something happens. Right? What we have to do is we have to make sure that we're overwhelming those that, hey, I want to keep you alert parts of your brain so that you can actually fall asleep and relax. And you know, most of us are not facing constant threats when we're asleep. And so, you know, our brain is kind of doing this hyperdrive thing for no reason, and we want to, we want to short circuit that. And like the smell of nice lavender flowers helps your brain, because, you know, the smell goes right into your brain. There are fewer, fewer interpreting neurons between the reaction to scent and your and your your brain being able to process it than there are with like taste or touch or there's just fewer neurons that has to go through, so it goes more closely to your brain, and then that allows you, allows our scent to be a great way to overwhelm the brain, so that we can fall asleep. So I definitely support it. I just, I haven't it seems, it seems like too much of an investment. I feel like I've lost I think, you know, the nights that I'm having a really hard time trying to fall asleep, I'm gonna wish that I had it, but I don't get it, because it's like, Oh, I'm not one of the people that needs a diffuser in my bedroom. And now I'm thinking about it, I'm gonna end up needing a diffuser in my bedroom. Yeah, let's talk about sleep hygiene. Because, because of what we do, we, you know, we interview experts, sleep experts. Dr Christopher winter, Wendy Troxel, Dr Michael Bruce, known as the sleep doctor. Lot of these folks, and they all agree on several things for good sleep hygiene. So what's happened is, given I have have tested these out, and it's an interesting test, because I'm, you know, where I'm an empty nester here, but I'm also, I'm still on account on a mild cancer treatment, and I wake up a lot during the night and so and then I'm competing with my wife, who wants to sleep at a certain temperature at night, and then you've got, you're with your kids. So I think we can all agree that that a safe and very effective way to help you sleep is to is to get a sleep mask.

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And you were against this at first, is that? Right?

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I hated the idea of a sleep mask because they pushed on my eyelids, right? But then the newer ones came out. And I don't have stock in a sleep mask company. I'm just telling you my experience. The newer ones came out that have the little round, circular had that one it sits around your eyeballs, that the actual mask parts is sort of, you know, maybe two centimeters to half an inch off. Yeah, those long eyelashes I do, yeah, and it's helpful. And I also, because I was getting, like a new fangled one, I got one with Bluetooth in it so that I could play, like Sleep Sounds on it when I want to, but I can't find them. You told me about them. Like I need that, but I always afraid if I put earphones in, I'm gonna miss somebody sneaking up on me. Yeah, yeah.

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It doesn't really happen very much, so I feel okay with it. I mean, it's, you know, I don't sleep in my windows open, but I, but I don't, I don't. I'm not so worried about that the I do miss. I do worry that I'm gonna miss something going on with my kids, or my kids trying to my daughters get to the atrium, I start sneaking out.

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Oh yeah, very soon I gotta be ready. So what is the temperature in your room? What are you sleeping? I don't, I don't have it as controlled as you do. Oh yeah.

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I, you know, I will say, I will say that my air conditioner was broken during the height of the summer this year, and I did not sleep well because I was very sweaty. But I, you know, I my room gets to about, you know, the high 60s midnight. That's good. That's good. So they said, they say, now in this interview I just did with Dr Christopher winter, because ours was, that's like, 68 right? And he likes 65 and 66 it is really cold and, and the funny thing is, is that Connie doesn't like doesn't like it. She likes it like it's almost like it's 70. And so what I do is I wait for her to fall asleep, and then I creep into it. I have to use like, the I have to use the the flashlight on my watch, because it's not as it's not as big. And I sneak in there, and I try to push the button without making any noise.

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But I made the mistake of, okay, so it works for her. Shout out to Tempur Pedic. I don't like your beds. Tempur Pedic is too hot for I know that. I know they make another bed that said that's cooler, but I'm a hot sleeper. And so the original Tempur Pedic bed, which I have it and Connie and I have two twins right next to each other, as you know, and which is great, by the way, it's great idea, because you can move around a lot, and the other person doesn't feel you, and so it holds the heat. And so I need the room to be really cold. And the reason you want the cold the room cold is because it gets into your hormones that help you actually fall asleep, right? That when your body temperature plummets, it. Actually releases your natural, your body's natural melatonin, which, you know. So you can't do that if you're in an 85 degree room. But I can't, I can't get my room that cold, and I I don't whatever works. It doesn't sound comfortable either.

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No, while you're sleep, you get up when you go to the bathroom, and you're literally you have to put your jacket on.

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It reminds me of, you know, in my younger days, you'd go out with your friends, and nobody be in a condition to drive home. So you'd fall asleep at whatever house the you started from, yeah, and and then, but you wouldn't have a blanket and wake up in the morning. You're freezing because nobody, you know, when you went to sleep, nobody cared about blankets. You just fell asleep wherever you sat, and then you're like, I'm so cool. Yeah, there's also you got. It could be one.

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It could be just an LED light on a on on a phone, or an LED light even on on a clock radio. Yeah, your that. Your eyelid is gonna see that. And so if you don't want to wear the sleep mask, you have to make you have to have the blackout drapes.

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You have to have the blackout drapes. Honestly, the I don't love wearing the sleep mask. It irritates the back of my head. I found one that I like, that I can tolerate, but I don't love it. But the reality is, it takes a long time to get used. You got to get used to it, and it's so much faster than doing what you would have to do in order to get your room to the place where it would have to be to equal the amount of sleep hygiene that you get from wearing the mask, meaning you would have to get blackout curtains. You'd have to get a noise machine. You would have to remove anything with a light out of your bedroom. You'd have to put the you'd have to make sure that the you had a good seal on the doors, that no outside light from the hallway comes in, in order to get this the exact amount of the same kind of sleep hygiene that you get from just wearing a sleep mask. Yeah. So while I don't love a sleep mask, it is definitely the quickest way to good sleep hygiene you can possibly Yeah. And we've also seen this tip from from Dr Michael Bruce, I was still talking about sleep hygiene.

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Here is, is is to is to take a shower or a bath, a warm bath, before you go to sleep. But it really should be a full hour beforehand, because it because the cooling down of your body, that process is what releases the melatonin. And if you, if you do it like a half hour before you try to go to sleep, it's not going to work. Okay, we've talked about all these different things you can do to fall asleep. We've talked about the the temperature of the room, we've talked about the importance of sleep. We've talked about, you know, all this stuff. But let me tell you, the best sleep that I've had in my adult life. Talk to me, is a nice, hot Epsom salt bath. Oh, okay, okay, right. And then I get out of that bath. I dry off, I put, you know, I put, like, sweats on. I don't care what temperature the room is, I don't care what amount of lavender I can smell. That is the best sleep. Okay, so listen, there's science as to why. And you know this, there's science to why this works. Epsom salts baths, and you can get it with the one we got from Dr TEALS, I think it's called, it's, it's Epsom salt, which is magnesium, right? And then lavender, they have lavender side of there. So the magnesium, when that gets into your system, that's what puts you Yes, great. Whatever it is.

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I don't need a sleep mask at that point. I'm out, so I recommend that. But the rest of this is, if that doesn't work for you, okay, and let's talk, let's talk about what not to eat before you you go to sleep. A lot of the, a lot of the one of the meats called, like, salami, and all of us cured me, cured meats, that's, yeah, so cured meats is really a bad idea because they have tyrosine in them, and then also a fatty meal will keep you awake as well, true. So, so then the number one thing, and I just read this in a report the other day, the number one thing that you should eat before bed is the number one thing that I will not eat, and that is cottage cheese.

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Oh, yeah, it's the right it's the right blend of protein and carbohydrates, yeah.

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I mean, look, I like, if you can get used to the texture, cottage cheese, we talk about that all the time. I mean, it's good.

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It's good, efficient way of getting protein into your body.

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It is. It is a healthy way. It's not as bad for you. Dairy wise as like, pure milk would be. So it's yes, we absolutely support the idea of cottage cheese, if you can stomach it. I like cottage cheese. If you have dairy, it is a good dairy to have. I can't I cannot recommend enough not you know, you don't have to be weird about intermittent fasting. You don't have to do the eight full 18 hours or 20 hours like some people do, but the earlier you can just stop eating for the day, the better you're you don't need that late night snack. It's not good for your waistline.

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It's not good for your sleep. And now we know that I love elite ice neck.

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Yeah, don't get me wrong, last night, I was out late. I stopped a taco bell on the way home.

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Yeah, you love Taco Bell and and I ate right before I went to bed. And I know how bad it is for me, but I did it. I'm just put I, but I it is terrible for you.

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Yeah, oatmeal is also pretty good, so because you digest it quickly, but you don't, we don't, you don't want and you.

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And as much as I like having a glass of wine at dinner, if I do that, it's, it's as soon as my body finishes metabolizing it, boom, I'm wide. So the the we, let's, let's just talk about alcohol for a second.

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Because, shall we? Yeah. So first and foremost, everybody has this misconception about alcohol and sleep that it helps you fall asleep because it does, because it does. It helps you fall asleep. It really does not help you stay asleep. In fact, it makes you less likely to be able to stay asleep. So as soon as your body is processing those process, your livers is digesting the alcohol, it's processing the alcohol, and then it releases, I forget what the name of the chemical is. Is some kind of aldehyde. Yeah, it is that. Then that's what actually causes you to have aceta aldehyde, or something like that. That's what caused you to have a hangover. And there are some great products that you can buy. You can get them anywhere, including Amazon, that will help your body actually digest those faster. But that wakes you up.

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When you start the hangover, it will start to wake you up and that. And that gives you, even if you don't perceive it, it gives you less restful sleep. So even if you are not fully awake, you still are not getting the sort of deep REM sleep that your body needs that we were talking about at the beginning of this episode. That's what you you really need, that in order to in order to have the most effective next day. And alcohol interferes with that. I love, I love a glass of alcohol. I like a good, a good, you know, scotch at the end of the day. I like wine. I like a martini. I do. I drink. I still, I still do. But I recently was reading a study, and basically that we know, we used to talk about, oh, one or two glasses of wine is good for you. One cocktail is not so bad.

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I read the same study and the new the new thing is, there is no amount of alcohol that has a health benefit. So it is every sip is detrimental to detrimental to your health, health. I'm saying this as somebody who is not going to stop having alcohol. I am going to continue to have it, but I am going to, I'm not going to have it with the knowledge that I'm doing anything good for myself.

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I'm going to have it with the knowledge that this is, this is a place where I, you know, you have, you have things that you do well for your body, and things that you do for fun. And the alcohol is now a thing I just I accept that this is my time. This is my junk food, and I'm going to enjoy it accordingly. Yeah, I had stopped drinking for a while, and then we went to Italy and yeah, and my excuse was, well, they don't have any sulfates in Okay, yeah, that's the issue.

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The alcohol itself is the issue.

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There was just a story yesterday on the news that restaurants and bars are reporting that Gen Z is not interested at all in happy hour. Yeah, have you heard this whole story about they're not they're not drinking well and they're not drinking. They don't want to drink around co workers. The idea of meeting immediately after work is no longer appealing, for a variety of reasons. People don't work the same schedules anymore, and the also, people aren't really commuting by train. We, I think, for for on a huge upside, we have really stigmatized drunk driving to the point where people don't feel comfortable having a cocktail or two and then getting behind the wheel as well. They shouldn't. And so because of that, people are not reaching for they're not meeting for after work. How could you go for after work cocktails if nobody's gonna be able to drive to it? People are leaving work at the at different times, and you're not as interested in drinking anymore, period. Yeah, my mom and dad, you actually used to drive to a to church meetings with was like a half hour drive. Used to drive with it, with a high ball of Scotch in their hands, in their Thunderbird. Thank God, nothing ever happened. That was the thing back just 1990s I know.

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And you saw, you saw that in what was the show? Mad Men, right? Yes, yes. So we've studied this many times. I mean, we've seen the studies explain the folks who are listening because, because it is many times as I've seen it, I started to experience it where, the harder I work out in the morning, whatever workout I do, it could be high intensity interval training. Could be lifting weights. It could be lots and lots of stretching. 45 minutes of exercise is what I try to do every morning. If I do it, if I don't do it, my sleep is junk sleep that night. Well, how does that work? Well, first of all, the more you exercise, the more active you are during the day, the better your sleep is going to be. It's just amazing to me that what you do and the more you do in the morning is going to affect your sleep, though, yes, but you, but the best thing you could, honestly, we talk about this all the time, the best thing you can do for your body is to be going to sleep at the same time every day, waking up at the same time every day, and doing at least 30 minutes of physical activity within 30 minutes of waking up.

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So, you know, start that within 30 minutes away. Yeah, that is, that is a recipe for all kinds of success in life, but especially is good for your sleep. When you exert your body early in the morning, your ability to focus throughout the day, all it goes up, your hormones align better. You you will have more you'll have more attention. Ironically, you'll have or you'll have more energy throughout the day. You'll be able to focus. This better, and then at night, your body will will actually adapt to fall asleep much more quickly in anticipation of exercising the next day. I'm not exactly sure what hormones align when you when you exercise in the morning versus the evening, but as long as you give yourself, it's crazy that it works. But as long as long as you give yourself, I think it's, it's three to five hours from finishing your exercise to going to bed. Yeah, you don't want to get on this take a spinning class an hour before bed. Yeah, any exercise during the day is going to make it easier to fall asleep. And if you work out later in the day, make sure that whatever pre workouts you're using don't have stimulants in them, because that will, that will ruin any sleep benefit you get from the exercise. Let's talk about two more things. Two more things you can do for a better night's sleep. And the first one is, you know, the first time you and I mentioned tart cherry juice on the show, so weird, I know it was a 2010 and we said, according to the European Journal of Nutrition, tart cherries and tart cherry juice can help ease the pain of sore muscles and help you sleep better, because cherries contain a natural anti inflammatory that works exactly like ibuprofen in the body. Without that drug, they also contain high concentrations of the hormone melatonin. So in the last few years, right last three years, word has gotten out about how powerful tar cherries are, because there's three more studies that are out as a result. Listen to this, sales of tart cherry juice have increased by a full 30% in just in just the last five years. I absolutely believe it. I mean, I remember, when you we first did that story, we had to go to a very special grocery store right to be able to find, yeah, no, I can name it's called capital drugs. Remember the place? Yeah.

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And now I can think of, like, five different places where you can get tart cherry juice and and that's great. I mean, look, it's a great natural way. Just make sure that whatever juices you have, whether it's tart cherry pomegranate, whatever, don't have added sugar. That is the that is the key. All of the benefits that we talked about for all of these different antioxidants and things that come from the fruit juices themselves go out the window when you start adding sugar to make because tart cherry juice does not go down easy. You don't want to cut it with some Coca Cola. No, don't cut it with a coke. It does not go down easy with some water, at least sparkling water.

00:27:12.599 --> 00:27:20.279
Yeah, it doesn't go down easy, but it is good for you. And if it goes down smooth, it means you're probably getting the kind with the sugar in it, and you're losing any benefits.

00:27:20.279 --> 00:28:04.079
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And one more thing. And I started doing this because of our sponsor and our friends, Cindy Bigelow, at Bigelow t right? Oh, yeah. And these guys are great, because they've been really in the forefront of putting together what you, I guess you would call the functional food world is very big right now. And so there they really got in early on the functional teas, yes. And so they do have a they have a tea, they have a green tea with extra caffeine and l theanine, which means it's the L theanine is going to relaxes. You don't get the jitters, but you also get more more more caffeine with the extra caffeine. So it's a great combination, but I had never really had chamomile tea before, right? And so they sent this.

00:28:04.079 --> 00:28:20.660
They sent this giant thing, and you stole most of it. It was some half of it this big care package with all the teas in there. And so I thought, Okay, so I've heard from sleep expert, the from the good sleep guide.

00:28:17.700 --> 00:28:35.240
Sandy Margo is the author of the good sleep guy. There's also a podcast, and Sammy says chamomile works as a mild tranquilizer and a sleep inducer. And if you put some honey in there, oh, yeah. And you can get it with honey, you can get it right, right with the the Bigelow T, functional T.

00:28:31.940 --> 00:28:46.539
Honey contains glucose, which tells your brain to shut off orexin, chemical known to trigger alertness. So a couple of chamomile with honey as you relax and dozing off in no time.

00:28:41.980 --> 00:28:55.299
And so now, when I'm eating out, I always end with that. Actually bring it with me. The Bigelow came. I'm not doing a commercial. It's just I discovered it because they become, became our partner.

00:28:56.440 --> 00:29:25.579
Really works. It really does look you want to, you want to take the best non pharmaceutical path to and honestly, as far as sleep aids go, pharmaceuticals don't have a great track record. So this is probably the, I'm not going to make a claim relative to pharmaceuticals, but I this is, this is the the consolidation of so much research that we've that we've had on the show you're gonna go to bed at the same time every night, you're gonna wake up at the same time every day.

00:29:23.180 --> 00:30:01.680
You're gonna exercise in the morning. You're gonna have one cup of black coffee in the morning and follow that up with some green tea throughout the rest of the morning. And then you're going to stop all caffeine by noon. And then that evening, you're gonna take an Epsom salt bath with lavender scent in it while you drink a chamomile tea with honey and go to bed at the same time you went to bed the night before, that is in a dark room set to the right temperature that the rest of that is is important, but not as important as everything I just gave you with the with the sleep mask on right, I'm getting sleepy, and it's such a great wrap up, too.

00:29:57.640 --> 00:30:50.440
That's the. Fantastic. I you know, I want to dial back too, but so back. Well, I would say most recently, the most popular sleep aid is Ambien, right? And we've had many stories, I guess this comes under the heading of what give just said is, is do it naturally, right? Yeah, whether you use tart cherry juicer or the right type of exercise, all the stuff you just listed, but there are people who panic, right? And so they'll say, Oh, I'm just gonna have some Ambien, or the other one, which is Lunesta. And there's also Trazodone, which is an antidepressant that people are using now, but it's, it's first of all, they can become habit forming. And there's also, what's the one that's like, it's a tranquilizer. They actually gave me, this one I had when I was taking chemo. I'll think of it in a minute. But it's, it's, it's Raza pan, yeah, exactly.

00:30:47.380 --> 00:30:52.900
It's another name for it. But yes, that's the, that's the chemical term for Lorazepam.

00:30:53.200 --> 00:30:57.640
That stuff is habit forming.

00:30:53.200 --> 00:31:18.599
Yeah, and, and I remember when we, you know, we love Jordan Peterson, and I remember when he when his wife was so sick, and he ended up being on a drug to help him, to help him sleep, and he was saying how he regretted it because he had, he actually had to go and get, get therapy, get therapy, go into rehab, rehab and get off of it, you know, at his level, you know.

00:31:15.839 --> 00:31:29.000
And he's a, you know, he's a psychotherapist. So you have to be really careful with this stuff. Also, if you're traveling, and we really just went to Italy, and primo is asking me, Hey, should I take something on the plane? I absolutely do not take somebody.

00:31:29.000 --> 00:31:49.000
We see these stories of these of athletes who have to get up the next day, and they'll have have, I mean, that's just, there's, there are things called ambient zombies, yes, where people will on the way home from work, they know they have to get up early the next day, and so they want to get to sleep instantly. So they take an Ambien on the way home. This happened to one of the Kennedys. Do you remember this? No, I'm studying ambience.

00:31:49.000 --> 00:32:25.460
One of the Kennedys, I can't remember his name, like one of the cousins or something. And he lived in Washington. He was on his way home, and he had to go get sleep quickly, so he took Ambien in the car, no. And, and there was traffic, yeah. And by the time he got halfway through the traffic, he had an accident, couldn't remember who he was, right? The problem is, it makes you fall asleep. It does not do a great job of helping you stay asleep. And sometimes your brain does not fully wake up when you wake up these this is a known side effect of a lot of some of these sleep drugs. And you are walking around, you know, not fully conscious, but also operating as a full human being.

00:32:21.619 --> 00:32:59.319
When people were eating, forget, forget the life and death consequences, they were going and making chocolate sundaes in their in their in their kitchens, totally ruining their whatever eating plan they were on. So we had the best stories on the on the radio show, and there was a story just recently where they were. People were coming down to the like in the Hilton Garden Inn and holiday breakfast. Well, that yes, but also they were. We actually noticed this after we had done the piece where we checked in late, we noticed that there were, there were towels, big towels at the front desk.

00:32:59.559 --> 00:33:11.339
And we're like, what's with the towels? And they said, Ah, well, you know, people wake up in the middle of the night. They take a sleeping aid or something like that, and they come down here fully naked, and that we have to wrap a towel out. And he said, it like, like, it happens every night.

00:33:12.299 --> 00:33:27.440
That is why we hang out in the lobby all night just waiting to see one of them. And one more thing, back in the 70s, there was, there was asleep, yeah, there was a sleep aid called Halcyon. Yeah. Do you remember hearing about this?

00:33:24.440 --> 00:33:54.279
Because you've told me your mom used as a sleep aid and, and, I mean, it knocked this. Nobody prescribes it. Now, it knocked you out, and you got a great night's sleep, right? The problem is it just destroyed your memory. I mean, I mean your short term memory. And so I used to use it like i Black back and forth, back and forth to Europe when I was doing CBS Sports, right from New York and on those long flights. And so I would, I would, I would take that drug, and the day I stopped taking it.

00:33:50.799 --> 00:34:07.859
This is why you have to be careful with these things, especially on an airplane, or if you have a drink, or something like that, is I got back home one night, and I wanted to get to sleep because I had an appointment early in the morning. Got back to New York, and I took half of the house.

00:34:05.519 --> 00:34:35.780
Yeah, I hadn't taken one in a while, and I woke up the next day, and my my answering machine was was full of messages, and I checked the messages, and my friend Lenny is laughing, and he goes, Oh my gosh, you were so hilarious last night. I don't, I don't remember ever talking talking to him. So I called him up and I said, I said, I don't remember. And his apartment was like, five blocks away from me in Manhattan, right, right, so I don't remember talking to you.

00:34:36.019 --> 00:35:10.679
And he goes, talking to me, you were at my apartment. We were talking he goes, You were hilarious. And he goes, You have you left your wallet here? And I said, What? So I had gotten up on this drug I woke up right, walked out the door. I had to use the key, and all the rest of this stuff. Walked in the streets. Somehow in Manhattan, knocked on his door, got to his door, sat down and talked to him for a while, apparently feathery. The plan is very funny, so I'm thinking, maybe we should be a comedian. Just take this stuff and they'll walk to her have no memory, and then walk back and went back to sleep and had no memory. So, so be careful, folks.

00:35:10.679 --> 00:35:12.119
Yes, absolutely be careful.

00:35:10.679 --> 00:35:12.119
This.

00:35:12.179 --> 00:35:16.739
This really does change when you talk about the halcyon days of your youth on stage.

00:35:18.239 --> 00:35:21.018
I'm wondering, are those the nights you don't remember.

00:35:22.099 --> 00:35:33.438
You know, I know it's fun to do these sort of the the multi topics on the show, but we get so many people write it right to write to us about about sleep.

00:35:31.099 --> 00:35:44.259
So I wanted to do this. And thank you for being so smart with me again, because I know you've tried everything and and you're sleeping. Well, I know you are unless your kids wake you up, but where do you get to be my age?

00:35:44.320 --> 00:36:27.500
I mean, I tell you, I have more and more nights where I really cannot. We were when we were recording the new version of round ball in Oh yeah, we had heavy dinners, like three nights in a row. I mean, by the end of the trip, by the end of one of like the sessions, I had not slept in three days because I just could not fall asleep. And I fell asleep before dinner and one night, and I almost didn't want to wake up. I was because I it was so hard to fall asleep on that trip, and I think it was because we're eating at really nice restaurants every day. Well, it's just been great. Thank you guys for listening, give thank you for your wisdom, and we hope you guys got something good out of this? We hope you get a good night's sleep tonight. For gib Gerard, I'm John Tesh. Thank you for listening to the podcast.

00:36:34.940 --> 00:36:35.059
You.

The Sleep MasterClass; Proven Sleep Hygiene Tips; The Perfect Sleep Temperature; Eat This Not That; Ambien Zombies; Your Brain on Sleep; The Tart Cherry Juice Effect and more tips.

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