Sleep Doctor: If You Wake Up At 3AM, DO NOT Do This!

What are the most popular questions

people come to you with as a sleep

doctor?

>> There's three biggies. Number one is,

"What do I do if I fall asleep, okay,

and I wake up in the middle of the night

and I can't fall back asleep?"

>> And you can help people with that.

>> Absolutely. The second question is,

"What pillow should I buy?" And I'm

going to walk you through which pillows

make sense for which people. And then

another one that people ask me all the

time is, "What's the best time to have

sex?"

>> That's a strange thing for somebody of

your profession to be

>> about. Well, let me explain why. So,

I've been an actively practicing sleep

specialist for 26 years. I take care of

people's sleep problems like apnea,

insomnia, and I'm really interested in

the things that you might be doing right

now that are messing up your sleep that

are easy to fix. So, for example, most

people don't know that they have a

genetic sleep code inside them called

their chronoype, which decides when your

brain releases things like melatonin,

cortisol, adrenaline, and dopamine. And

so I can show you based on your

chronotype when it's bedtime, but also

the perfect time of day to do almost any

activity, including the perfect time to

have coffee and alcohol. Crazy. There's

even data to show that your ability to

understand complicated concepts improves

when you're more in line with your

chronoype. Now, there are three known

chronotypes, but what I'm famous for is

discovering a fourth one, which I think

might be you. So, we're going to talk a

lot about that. We're also going to talk

about dreams because dreams can tell you

things about yourself that you may not

want to know. And then there's how to

fix jet lag, whether you should sleep

with a TV on, the truth about melatonin

supplementation, and my favorite way to

get magnesium.

>> Before we get into all of that, shall we

go and look at the best possible sleep

position?

>> Yeah, let's check it out.

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yeah, let's do this.

>> Dr. Bruce, yes. What is it you do? Why

does it matter so much now? And what

perspective do you take on what you do

that is atypical versus other people I

might have spoken to about this subject?

>> I'm a sleep doctor. Um I take care of

people's sleep problems like apnea,

narcolepsy, insomnia, things like that.

I've dedicated a good portion of my

career not just to understanding how to

treat those disorders which are sleep

disorders, but what I also I call

disordered sleep. I'm really interested

in behavioral habits. What's going on?

what are the things that you might be

doing right now that are kind of messing

up your sleep that are easy to fix um

and be able to maybe change how things

are going forward? You know, I I didn't

start out thinking I was going to become

a sleep doctor if I'm going to be honest

with you. Like that that was not on the

on the path. Um I was actually going in

a completely different direction. And

one of the things I really discovered

was when you change someone's sleep,

dude, you change their life. Like it is

fundamental to who they are. And it's

important for me to be a sleep educator

in a way, shape, and form that's

practical so that people can actually

get something from what I'm talking

about and apply it right then and there.

>> And there's probably a couple of million

people that have clicked onto this

conversation to listen.

>> Yeah.

>> Who is this conversation for?

>> I think it's for anybody out there who's

either curious about sleep or wants to

try to improve their sleep or maybe

suspicious that they could have a

problem with their sleep. I think any

one of those three types of people would

find tremendous value here. And what are

we going to be able to do for those

people today specifically?

>> So, I'm going to give people um several

different like plans, if you will, uh

maybe even a five-step plan of things

that they can absolutely learn how to

do. They're also going to learn about a

genetic sleep code that they have inside

them called their chronoype. A lot of

people don't even know that they have a

chronoype or maybe they've heard of the

of the idea, but they haven't ever heard

of the term. We're going to learn a lot

about that. We're also going to talk

about dreams a little bit. Um I'm

excited to have the opportunity to do

that. I've spent the last year and a

half learning more about how to use

dreams in my clinical work as a

psychologist, which is very interesting

stuff. So, I'm excited to share some of

that. So, I think people are going to

learn a whole bunch.

>> And dreams matter.

>> Oh, yeah. They absolutely matter. I'm I

call dreams emotional metabolism, right?

And so, when you're dreaming, what is

you what is the function? What is the

purpose? What are you doing? You're

actually working through your emotional

states that you had during the daytime.

Um this is why we have nightmares,

right? And so in a nightmare, it's a

scary scene and all a sudden it gets so

emotional, you wake up. That is

officially called a nightmare. That

awakening, but you stop processing. And

when you go back to sleep, you go back

to the dream and you get to that scary

point, you wake up again and you get

caught in this loop, right? And so

dreams matter because they can be

incredibly disruptive. Also, they can

tell you things about yourself that you

may not want to know or may not have in

the front of your mind at all times.

Right? Sometimes people have very

interesting dreams like dreams of being

chased or dreams of their teeth falling

out or all these different things and

they can mean a whole host of different

things. But I want to be super clear.

There's no guide book that says, "Hey,

you know, if you're if you're dreaming

of that you're in water, you hate your

mother." Like, it doesn't really work

that way. Dreams mean something to the

dreamer. And so the goal is to

understand the context within that. So

who is the dreamer? What is the dream?

And then how do those two work together?

And what is the experience that you're

drawing from academically but also

professionally? Give me a view of how

many people you've worked with and

the range of things people come to you

with.

>> Yeah. So I've been an actively

practicing sleep specialist for 26

years. So I work in offices with medical

doctors cuz I'm not a medical doctor. I

have a PhD and I work with them on their

patients. lot of insomnia patients but

also the apneas, the restless legs, the

narcolepsies of the world because I have

kind of a unique distinction in that I'm

one of 168 people in the world who took

the medical boards without going to