hello Dr Rachel my wife is having some problems in sleeping what advice would you recommend for
her to do so any of us who are having sleeping sleep sleep issues and this is gentlemen and
ladies first of all one I want you to think about am I having trouble going to sleep or
staying asleep right so going to sleep tells me that we've got a lot of things going on too much
stimulus in the brain area lots lots impacting that and as a result you're not able to shut your
brain down shut your life down and go to sleep so if you're having trouble getting to sleep let's
look at sleep hygiene right it's a television on it should not be we got to turn that off or you
have a lot of Bright Lights coming through is your phone popping up every time someone sends
you a message is that light coming through do you have your Wi-Fi on in your room or you have any
little blue lights on any of the devices that are showing through they even actually sell
little stickers that you can put on those lights do we have any Street lamp light coming through
is the garage light coming through it's shining through the room so first of all you want to kill
all of the light possible you want to turn off your television the next thing you you want to
start limiting your screen time after five or six o'clock you want to start thinking about how can
I get away from the screen instead of sitting in front of it like this now if you've got to
be on your phone you got to be on your computer you got to be on your iPad you want to change
the temperature setting of what you're looking at so you want to try to decrease and pull the
blue light out of the screen so basically what you want to be looking at are warmer tones so
watching a movie with warm tones isn't it you know it's not quite as sexy but when you take
that blue light out it's not impacting your body's ability to sleep because see what's happening is
our body naturally goes off of rhythms it's going off of what we call a circadian rhythm but that
rhythm is based off of a lot it's based off of the sunshine it's based off of the moon it's
based off of lots so if you are confusing your body into thinking that night time is daytime
what that does is disrupt your cycle your body gets confused and it doesn't know what to do it
doesn't shut down so when you have this blue light and all these light this light around
you when it's time to go to bed your body is like well wait a minute I thought it was nighttime but
no the sun is shining but wait no is that really the sun and it gets confused and not only will
your sleep patterns be thrown off but it throws off your hormone Cycles too right because think
keep in mind your testosterone and estrogen levels and all of that they don't just throughout the day
they actually have Ebbs and flows they go up and they go down and it's based off of your circadian
rhythms and what it's thinking what time your body thinks it is so one thing always to reach set your
sleep cycle you got to get some of that bright morning sunshine directly into your eyeballs
without the sunglasses and what that's actually doing is it's the sunlight is actually traveling
through the retina and it's letting everybody know it's morning time so if it's morning time
now guess what time things should start to think about nighttime flow so that's one thing is the
light is extremely important so start dimming your lights around six o'clock you should have
evening lighting Moonlighting Moon Lighting mood lighting that is really different than the
lights that you're using throughout the day right because you're trying to tell your body it's time
to come down another thing most people who are having sleep issues I always look at magnesium
could this person be magnesium deficient and will magnesium help any so since two-thirds
of us we know for a fact have low magnesium and since magnesium gives you a lot of bang for its
Buck because it is implicated and very important in over 300 parts of our cellular processes I
always look to magnesium now someone asked me the other day Dr Rachel can you overdose on magnesium
sure you can overdose on any damn thing you can overdose on water too much water will land you in
the hospital if you're not putting electrolytes in with it but when it comes to magnesium you need an
awful lot of magnesium and over to overdose you know we're talking about putting it in the IV or
you're talking about somebody who's intentionally taking a whole bottle of magnesium tablets because
if magnesium levels get too high if you're you're overdosing on it one of the first things that it
does is it relaxes the muscles but it actually starts to relax your body's ability to breathe so
that's what happens when a magnesium overdose happens which is fairly fairly uncommon in
the regular everyday world of things now with magnesium so you know we talk about magnesium
a lot and what it's doing at a cellular level but what it actually does when it's with the
respiratory piece it's actually relaxing some of the diaphragmatic activity that's how we're
breathing in and out and of just a quick secret if you ever have somebody who is having asthma
attacks that they just can't control I always look to magnesium if they were in the Urgent
Care with me or in the clinic with me one of the things that I put in the IV is a little magnesium
because magnesium can actually help with that severe asthma attack they use it in the emergency
rooms too we use it in in people who can't get their asthma under control so magnesium is really
important but magnesium can help bridge the gap between not able to sleep and being able to sleep
because if you get magnesium glycinate magnesium is conjugated with a Glycine and and the glycine
um helps to stimulate this process and bring you down nerve wise so it kind of helps reduce
the excitability of the nerves so like if you're thinking about all the stressful things that could
be happening your life is worried about what's going to happen tomorrow what what who's going
to call her and tell her somebody died you know all that type of stuff so another thing besides
modulating the sleep you gotta help her understand too that social media being too much on your
social media looking to see what everybody else is doing and all that and scrolling and staying
glued to this like this can really impact sleep it can impact and make you feel depressed I want
you to do an experiment feel on a day where you're feeling really good about yourself
go on Facebook and stay on there for 10 minutes come off of it and just ask yourself do I feel as
good scrolling through people's feeds as I did before I did it and I bet you the answer is no
something about being on social media brings your mood and your energy levels down so you do want
to start limiting it so tell your wife to start looking at her phone and you know our phones track
how much we're doing on social media to actually just start trying to every day decrease the amount
of time we spend on social media so that you can actually kind of reset the space that social media
Keeps Us in where it's actually one giving us the light that we don't need to disrupt sleep
cycles but also too interfering with our mood and pushing us a little closer towards depression and
moving us a little further from feeling really good then the other piece to that is so with the
magnesium have her think about magnesium another way to get magnesium for people who don't like to
take supplements is a nice hot Epsom salts bath and if you've been suffering from not being able
to go to sleep you're constipated you could just take the whole thing and dump that whole bad boy
right into a nice tub of hot water let it dissolve out and soak in there for at least 20 minutes and
what you'll notice for some of you you might get out and have to go poop which is a good thing I
mean you know we don't like to talk about poop because poop is poop but poop is important it
removes toxins from our bodies it can help you poop but it also actually relaxes the muscles
helps relax decrease neural excitability to the point where your your brain and everything isn't
super excited and you can come down a little bit the next thing is to think about well if
I'm not sleeping throughout the whole night is there something waking me up is it because I'm
having hot flashes in the middle of the night is it because I have to pee in the middle of
the night is it because I think someone's breaking in the house every night what is it that's waking
you up right so you want to put your finger on that piece and see if you can find a remedy for
it if you're getting up to pee a couple times a night that's too much is it my prostate is it my
bladder right if I'm getting up in the middle of the night worried about something what can
I do to decrease my stress level if I'm getting up in the middle of the night because I'm hot
we need to get a fan going we need to maybe turn the air on maybe I'm opening am I waking
up because I'm cold okay what can I do to do that so figuring out what is waking you up in the first
place and then the next piece I can't reiterate this enough is getting some sunshine getting out
into the cold air cold air or warm air wherever you're living and getting that first morning
sunshine in and do that every day for about two to three weeks so that you can reset your
sleep cycle follow all those other things that we talked about and also not exercising right
close to bedtime because what happens is you got all this adrenaline going and it's like oh I'm up
now you know so exercise in in the morning time or the early afternoon or very early evening so
you're not disrupting that sleep sleep cycle but then making sure that you're getting sunlight at
an opportune time making sure you're getting some sunlight some of you were just sitting in
your house working from home and aren't getting out for days at a time you're going to disrupt
your sleep cycle you'll end up depressed have some seasonal affective disorders we got to get out of
our houses we got to meet people we gotta mingle and we got to do all of these things that just
help us feel good and help reset the cycle kind of exhaust you throughout the day so that by the
time it's time to go to bed you actually can and then the other piece is you know your wife should
look at her hormone levels how is she on estrogen and testosterone because all of us as time goes by
our hormones start to get disrupted and for men and women a decrease in testosterone can
interfere with sleep cycles it can interfere with with mood it can interfere with sex drive
it can interfere with just about everything energy mood libido all of that so really have her start
to look at what ways can she either augment those things or or boost them but also get them checked
and see are they in Desperate levels or are they in levels that I can maintain and of course diet
some food is going to keep you up eating sweets close to bedtime eating sugar close to bedtime
that you know unfortunately we get a craving you want something sweet before bed but that
actually is going to disrupt your sleep cycle and those of you who are drinking four cups of
coffee a day three cups of coffee a day drinking green tea at night all of that has caffeine in it
and will disrupt your sleep cycle so that is take take that back to your wife as a matter
of fact show her this video share this video with her to see where in that trajectory she
is and what things she can change and modulate so that she can actually sleep this is great