# Understanding Sleep & its Vital Functions with Dr. Angela D’Rozario

An episode of [Project 100 with Mark Bouris](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1767053714), 21 Apr 2025, 1 h 30 min.

Audio: https://p.podderapp.com/2544644999/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/2fb3740d-3436-44af-8cc0-a91900716aa5/05ac4e52-79fb-46b8-849c-b305000bd6d0/930ade49-1f89-4599-9bd6-b305000c0033/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=ef13e652-7a19-41fd-9d0f-b305000bd6dc

All content and media by Project 100 is created and published online for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health or personal advice. **** Dr. Angela D’Rozario is a leading expert in sleep medicine, with a deep interest in how sleep impacts brain ageing and cognitive health. She holds a Bachelor of Applied Biological Sciences (Honours) from the University of the West of England and a PhD in Sleep Medicine from the University of Sydney. This episode dives into the science and processes of sleep—what happens during sleep, how it changes as we age, and why it matters. It’s all about understanding the fundamentals of sleep before we explore treatment approaches in upcoming episodes with other experts. With my current regime, one of the simplest ways I can take steps towards that goal is by using Bulk Nutrients’ BCAA Recovery. BCAAs – Branched-Chain Amino Acids – are scientifically backed to reduce muscle soreness, speed up recovery, and keep you feeling fresh after a tough session. And the best part? It’s made in-house, right here in Australia. Check out their limited-edition Purple Grape flavour here: https://www.bulknutrients.com.au/products/bcaa-recovery Ready to take your sleep and recovery to the next level? Head over to www.eightsleep.com/project100/ and use the code PROJECT100 to get $350 off your very own Pod 4 Ultra. Trust me, your body will thank you for this investment in better sleep. Shipping to many countries worldwide. See details at eightsleep.com/project100/ Follow Project 100 on Instagram. Follow Mark Bouris on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter & YouTube. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Gooday, guys, and welcome to another episode of Project one
[0:02] Speaker 1: hundred with sleep scientist doctor Angelo de Rosario. Now, I've
[0:07] Speaker 1: only come to truly appreciate if I live a good
[0:10] Speaker 1: sleep in recent years, and honestly, I wish I'd prioritize
[0:14] Speaker 1: it a lot sooner. But the old bed at nine
[0:17] Speaker 1: up at five routine doesn't always cut it. Body temperature
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[1:00] Speaker 1: pod for Ultra and take your sleep game to the
[1:03] Speaker 1: next level. Now onto the show, Doctor Angela de Rosario,
[1:07] Speaker 1: Welcome to Project one hundred.
[1:10] Speaker 2: Hi Mark thank you very much for having me.
[1:11] Speaker 1: It's awesome here. I just yeah, your career title. I mean,
[1:16] Speaker 1: I know how these things can be. They can be
[1:19] Speaker 1: very brief, but actually try to describe your career is
[1:22] Speaker 1: going to be pretty difficult. But your career titles. In
[1:25] Speaker 1: my brief here is a Sleep and Circadium researcher because
[1:28] Speaker 1: this is a sleep episode. It's about sleep, which I'm
[1:31] Speaker 1: really interested in. But maybe to kick it off, you
[1:34] Speaker 1: can just tell us what your qualification, maybe start off
[1:38] Speaker 1: your academic staff and maybe what you're researching or what
[1:40] Speaker 1: todework you do.
[1:41] Speaker 2: Okay, sure, So undergraduate Applied Biological Sciences many moons ago.
[1:47] Speaker 1: What is that? What's applied biological sciences?
[1:50] Speaker 2: Just the study of how the body works? And that
[1:53] Speaker 2: got me interested in the brain. PhD in Sleep medicine
[1:58] Speaker 2: that was the University of Sydney many years later, and
[2:01] Speaker 2: then my sleep training began about twenty years ago Saint
[2:05] Speaker 2: Thomas's Hospital in London, had the opportunity to work there
[2:09] Speaker 2: and then came over to Australia two thousand and four.
[2:12] Speaker 2: So I've been here for over twenty years now and
[2:16] Speaker 2: I worked as a sleep scientist at Rawal Prince Alfred
[2:19] Speaker 2: Hospital and did some started my research career there.
[2:24] Speaker 1: Really, so you're at you're still RPA doing research?
[2:27] Speaker 2: No, So I am at the Walcock Institute of Medical
[2:31] Speaker 2: Research where the sleep laboratories are, and at Macquarie University.
[2:36] Speaker 2: So I lead a program of sleep research at there.
[2:40] Speaker 1: And yeah, what are you researching? I mean it's probably
[2:45] Speaker 1: some really small aspect of sleep, because sleep covers a
[2:48] Speaker 1: lot of territory, but just ad interous. It's probably not
[2:51] Speaker 1: that interesting to our audience, but it is for me
[2:53] Speaker 1: what really refined area of researcher you're working on right now?
[2:58] Speaker 2: For example, two main programs or sleep and aging, So
[3:03] Speaker 2: understanding the links between sleep disturbance and accelerated brain aging.
[3:07] Speaker 2: I know you're interested in that class. Also looking at
[3:12] Speaker 2: how sleep disorders and sleep loss impact brain function and
[3:17] Speaker 2: understanding how if you don't get enough good sleep during
[3:21] Speaker 2: the nights, what the consequences are in the daytime, So
[3:24] Speaker 2: how that can potentially intrude into your waking brain and
[3:28] Speaker 2: cause a whole host of problems, including fall asleep crashes
[3:31] Speaker 2: for example.
[3:33] Speaker 1: Sometimes like you mean, like as a micro sleep, is
[3:36] Speaker 1: that that.
[3:36] Speaker 2: Much more distinct than a microsleep? So no, your eyes
[3:38] Speaker 2: are open, you're engaged, but very small areas of your brain,
[3:45] Speaker 2: so islands of neurons are actually falling asleep, and so
[3:52] Speaker 2: you will look you look awake. It's not like microsleep,
[3:55] Speaker 2: so it's really obvious. You know, you've got your eyes closed.
[3:57] Speaker 2: This is much more discreete than that. And this is
[4:00] Speaker 2: a more recent discovery that sleep and weight can co exist.
[4:03] Speaker 2: So those are the two, the two kind of broad
[4:06] Speaker 2: programs of research.
[4:07] Speaker 1: So let's just this, And obviously there is a show
[4:10] Speaker 1: but not limited limited to, but definitely interested in sleep
[4:17] Speaker 1: and it's relationship with aging, or maybe aging and its
[4:20] Speaker 1: relationship with sleep, if I can put around the other way,
[4:22] Speaker 1: I don't know which one comes first. We often and
[4:28] Speaker 1: in terms of let's call it managing to optimize your
[4:37] Speaker 1: life relative to age, in other words, being healthy she
[4:41] Speaker 1: possibly can, and maybe living the longest you possibly can.
[4:44] Speaker 1: Subdue all variables. We've got nutrition, exercise, and sleep. We've
[4:50] Speaker 1: got a few other things, you know, like socialization, et cetera.
[4:53] Speaker 1: But just looking at those three, there is a there
[4:58] Speaker 1: is somewhat of a debate, and I've heard dif from
[5:01] Speaker 1: people debate this that sleep is the most important. And
[5:05] Speaker 1: then I've heard other people that debate that exercise the
[5:08] Speaker 1: most important. The nutrition obviously sits in there somewhere, but
[5:11] Speaker 1: there's been this debate why is sleep so important for optimization? Like,
[5:17] Speaker 1: just let's say for people over fifty, why is sleep
[5:22] Speaker 1: so important? What's it doing for us?
[5:25] Speaker 2: Well, I'm going to be biased and say that all
[5:28] Speaker 2: of those sleep's the most important, but of course hand
[5:31] Speaker 2: in hand with exercise and nutrition, and both are linked.
[5:36] Speaker 2: When we fall asleep, it's time out for us right
[5:39] Speaker 2: from our busy schedules, and that's important. We don't have
[5:42] Speaker 2: to worry about anyone, we don't have to think about anything.
[5:45] Speaker 2: We go into a sort of a state of restoration
[5:48] Speaker 2: and rejuvenation. That's important no matter what age you are.
[5:51] Speaker 2: We know that sleep is important for nearly all physiological processes,
[5:57] Speaker 2: from our immune system to our cognitive and are thinking.
[6:02] Speaker 2: And so that's an area of research that I'm particularly
[6:04] Speaker 2: interested in. How we perform and working at our optimum,
[6:09] Speaker 2: It's all about our sleep in terms of that sort
[6:15] Speaker 2: of fatigue and performance related optimization. Yeah, I think that
[6:21] Speaker 2: sleep is very important for that.
[6:23] Speaker 1: So as you were speaking there, I was thinking about
[6:28] Speaker 1: my mother who died from neurine disease, and she was
[6:32] Speaker 1: probably the worst sleep right now. So she would go
[6:36] Speaker 1: to bed at ten, wake up at twelve. Invariably she'd
[6:41] Speaker 1: be away from twelve till she'd try everything, warm mile,
[6:45] Speaker 1: covered whatever, everything not cup to you, but like warm
[6:47] Speaker 1: mil can watch television or not watch television, reader book,
[6:51] Speaker 1: She just tried everything, went off forever, but then she
[6:54] Speaker 1: got back to see maybe about three. Then she maybe
[6:57] Speaker 1: see for two or three hours, and she'd be up
[6:59] Speaker 1: and then she'd be doing her day. And she'd do
[7:01] Speaker 1: this until the age of eighty six. But she ended
[7:03] Speaker 1: up getting amoutent neurone disease, and I often wondered whether
[7:07] Speaker 1: it was her dreadful sleeping patterns that contributed to a
[7:11] Speaker 1: brain disease. What would what would you consider to be
[7:17] Speaker 1: an optimized start, optimized amount of sleep in other words,
[7:21] Speaker 1: that we're talking about eight hours, seven hours, six hours.
[7:23] Speaker 1: I'm sure it's individualized, but overall generally.
[7:26] Speaker 2: Yeah, most people need to eight hours of sleep continuous, ideally,
[7:34] Speaker 2: but not necessarily. So that's an important point in that
[7:39] Speaker 2: if you have a nap and then you can't, you know,
[7:42] Speaker 2: you can't sleep at night, it's because you kind of
[7:44] Speaker 2: had that nap, or you had the nap too late,
[7:46] Speaker 2: or the nap was too long. So the napping can
[7:49] Speaker 2: sometimes take away the drive to sleep. But seven to
[7:51] Speaker 2: eight hours most people, however, not everybody, so I think
[7:56] Speaker 2: that this is part of the problem in that how
[8:00] Speaker 2: they're sensationalized, you must get seven to eight hours sleep
[8:02] Speaker 2: or you're in trouble. And some people are okay on
[8:05] Speaker 2: fewer hours and some people need a little bit more.
[8:08] Speaker 2: I think when it gets to the extremes of very
[8:10] Speaker 2: short sleep and very long sleep, that's a different issue.
[8:15] Speaker 2: But typically you know, six to nine hours somewhere in
[8:18] Speaker 2: between that is okay, and if you are having a
[8:22] Speaker 2: nap in the daytime, you can count that as your
[8:27] Speaker 2: you know, your twenty four hours sleep, that's okay. I
[8:29] Speaker 2: think you just have to know how that's going to
[8:32] Speaker 2: impact your nighttime sleep and be okay with that, so
[8:34] Speaker 2: have some realistic kind of expectations and understanding of what
[8:39] Speaker 2: that means for your nighttime sleep if you're sleeping.
[8:41] Speaker 1: In the day. So when I go, we have these
[8:48] Speaker 1: so called circadian rhythm, which probably is different for everybody,
[8:52] Speaker 1: but generally speaking safe for someone like me. By not
[8:58] Speaker 1: anytime from May thirty on. I try to stay weak tonight,
[9:02] Speaker 1: I thirty, but let's say I can go I can
[9:03] Speaker 1: actually go to sleep for any top of my thirty
[9:05] Speaker 1: assuming that's assuming in my case that I've haven't eaten late,
[9:12] Speaker 1: haven't had anything to drink, haven't been stimulated with conversation,
[9:16] Speaker 1: didn't go to the football and watch my team win
[9:18] Speaker 1: all lose. Then and I've got like this three hour
[9:22] Speaker 1: break between you know, not eight seven or three hours,
[9:25] Speaker 1: maybe two hour break between my last activity call it
[9:29] Speaker 1: and the time I go to sleep. And then I
[9:34] Speaker 1: can sleep for four hours and I'll wake up. Usually
[9:37] Speaker 1: you've got to get to the bathroom, and then you
[9:38] Speaker 1: go back and I go back to sleep, and I
[9:40] Speaker 1: wake up pretty I wake up pretty early. And sometimes
[9:45] Speaker 1: I've got all these devices awear, and sometimes I look
[9:48] Speaker 1: at it and it'll say, well, your total sleep time
[9:51] Speaker 1: was let's call it eight hours. You're but your rem
[9:56] Speaker 1: sleep how they calculated, I don't know, but your ram
[9:59] Speaker 1: sleep was one point five hours, one and half hours,
[10:02] Speaker 1: and your deep sleep was one point five hours, and
[10:05] Speaker 1: the rest of it was light sleep. Now I know
[10:07] Speaker 1: I slept light because I normally sleep light anyway, but
[10:10] Speaker 1: I know I slept light but I look at that
[10:12] Speaker 1: and I think, oh my god, is it a recommended
[10:18] Speaker 1: or generally accepted amount of REM sleep and deep sleep
[10:22] Speaker 1: versus light sleep? And is light sleep of any value
[10:25] Speaker 1: to me at all? Should I just not bother about it?
[10:30] Speaker 1: You know? They I just don't understand that information. Why
[10:35] Speaker 1: and what does REM sleep do and what does deep
[10:37] Speaker 1: sleep do? What's the difference between the three of them?
[10:39] Speaker 2: Okay, well, first of all, I think that at the
[10:42] Speaker 2: beginning of that, when you explained all of your healthy
[10:45] Speaker 2: sleeping habits, you know that that's great. Only recently, yeah,
[10:49] Speaker 2: very good. So you're doing all the right things there.
[10:54] Speaker 2: The typical amount the makeup of our sleep if I
[10:59] Speaker 2: talk about proportions, so maybe seventy five percent is non
[11:03] Speaker 2: rim sleep, twenty to twenty five percent is REM sleep,
[11:07] Speaker 2: and then you've got some wake in there. So first
[11:08] Speaker 2: of all, bit of weight completely normal, waking up to
[11:11] Speaker 2: go to the toilet normal as well, And that non
[11:17] Speaker 2: REM sleep is made up of light non REM sleep
[11:20] Speaker 2: and then deep sleep. And so you mentioned REM and
[11:22] Speaker 2: deep sleep. What's most important? Well, I guess the short
[11:25] Speaker 2: answer is all of it. And light sleep is important
[11:29] Speaker 2: because what happens during light non REM sleep. Is you
[11:33] Speaker 2: your brain very active during sleep? There's particular brain waves
[11:37] Speaker 2: that are occurring, and those brain waves they're called spindles.
[11:41] Speaker 2: They help with memory consolidation and cognitive processes during sleep,
[11:45] Speaker 2: during your light sleep. Yeah, yeah, okay, so the light
[11:48] Speaker 2: sleep is just as equally important. Now you'll get researchers
[11:53] Speaker 2: that only look at REM or only look at slow
[11:55] Speaker 2: wave sleep, and they'll each argue that slow wave sleep
[11:59] Speaker 2: very important.
[12:00] Speaker 1: Deep sleep is it deep sleep growth.
[12:02] Speaker 2: Hormone secreted, repair, restoration. We think that that's also when
[12:07] Speaker 2: the brain cleans out or the toxins that accumulate their
[12:10] Speaker 2: glymphatic system.
[12:12] Speaker 1: So during slow waves sleep, deep sleep.
[12:14] Speaker 2: Which is slow wave sleep, right, So this they're really big,
[12:18] Speaker 2: high amplitude slow waves. If we would record your brain
[12:21] Speaker 2: activity with EEG, we'd see these really big slow waves,
[12:26] Speaker 2: so that that kind of sleep is linked with lots
[12:29] Speaker 2: of important functions. REM sleep. If we record your brain activity,
[12:35] Speaker 2: if I didn't see that your eyes were moving or
[12:37] Speaker 2: that you lose your muscle tone during rems so you
[12:39] Speaker 2: can't act out your dreams, your brain activity looks like wake,
[12:44] Speaker 2: so very different type of brain activity that's occurring. Now,
[12:49] Speaker 2: REM sleep important for laying down memories as well different
[12:52] Speaker 2: types of memories, and also regulating our mood so that
[12:57] Speaker 2: all every aspect of sleep is in important. Going back
[13:02] Speaker 2: to the devices now, so many wearables, near ables measures
[13:07] Speaker 2: that monitor your sleep. And this is fine if you
[13:13] Speaker 2: take it with a kind of pinch of salt, But
[13:16] Speaker 2: if you're constantly looking at that information and that's feeding
[13:21] Speaker 2: some kind of anxiety around your sleep, it's not good
[13:24] Speaker 2: because it creates a problem when it's not really there.
[13:28] Speaker 2: And so when we measure sleep Gold standard something called polysomnography,
[13:32] Speaker 2: we are measuring the brain activity and it's only that
[13:36] Speaker 2: that can accurately define whether you're in light sleep, deep sleep,
[13:40] Speaker 2: rem sleep. So without that, if you know mattress under
[13:45] Speaker 2: the bed, great, they're using other physiological signals, but that
[13:50] Speaker 2: staging of sleep, you've got to just know that it's
[13:55] Speaker 2: Those devices are great for sleep time, for example, but
[13:59] Speaker 2: the sleep stay I wouldn't rely on that. I wouldn't
[14:03] Speaker 2: worry about that.
[14:04] Speaker 1: So if I'm just in REM sleep there which sends
[14:09] Speaker 1: for rapid I movement movement as I understand, yes, why
[14:13] Speaker 1: is my is it my eyes actually moving rapidly? What
[14:18] Speaker 1: is that like? And what's making my eyes move quickly
[14:21] Speaker 1: because my eyes are closed, my eye lids are closed.
[14:24] Speaker 1: Why are my eyes moving quickly during rapid I movement?
[14:27] Speaker 2: It's a characteristic of REM sleep. So the the idea
[14:34] Speaker 2: really being that you're processing information during REM sleep. Your
[14:38] Speaker 2: eyes moving, but your muscle's not moving keeps you safe
[14:43] Speaker 2: during REM sleep. So we're looking at electrical activity of
[14:46] Speaker 2: the eyes. There's two types of REM sleep, phasic and tonic.
[14:51] Speaker 2: Phasic is where you have the rapid eye movements, but
[14:55] Speaker 2: tonic is when when you're not so not all sleep
[14:59] Speaker 2: has rapid eye movement. But what characterizes all of them
[15:03] Speaker 2: sleep is that loss of muscle.
[15:04] Speaker 1: Toe, which means nothing. My body is like dead. Yeah,
[15:09] Speaker 1: you can't completely.
[15:12] Speaker 2: Part from your breathing. You are you are not.
[15:14] Speaker 1: Moving Yeah, so yeah, obviously your brain and your heart's going,
[15:19] Speaker 1: and your lungs are going, but the rest of it's
[15:21] Speaker 1: nothing's going. Nothing's going on. And is that the is
[15:25] Speaker 1: that the bit of sleep you know when you first
[15:27] Speaker 1: go to sleep and twitch a little bit? Is that
[15:30] Speaker 1: that period?
[15:31] Speaker 2: Yeah, so hypnagogic and hypnopompic. That they're jerks that occur
[15:36] Speaker 2: when you're either falling asleep or wake up from sleep.
[15:39] Speaker 2: I used to be a shift worker, and sometimes when
[15:43] Speaker 2: you're sleeping out of sync of your circadian rhythm, you
[15:47] Speaker 2: have these kind of crossover sleep stages. And you know,
[15:52] Speaker 2: I mentioned before that sleep and weight can co exist,
[15:54] Speaker 2: but different sleep stages can intrude into wakefulness, and this
[15:59] Speaker 2: can happen when you're waiting up from sleep. So sometimes
[16:01] Speaker 2: you might wake up from sleep but you can't move.
[16:06] Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard that. During the day.
[16:07] Speaker 3: Yeah, during the day, I can't wake up.
[16:11] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[16:12] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[16:12] Speaker 2: So this again, is that the idea shifting in the
[16:16] Speaker 2: field anyway, or the understanding of sleep is that sleep
[16:20] Speaker 2: wake is more of a continuum rather than you're either
[16:23] Speaker 2: awake or you're asleep, and if you are asleep, you're
[16:26] Speaker 2: either in non rem or you're in REM. So it's
[16:29] Speaker 2: much more fluid now, and some of these experiences that
[16:33] Speaker 2: you mentioned are point towards that.
[16:36] Speaker 1: So rapidie movement, as I understand it too, doesn't just
[16:39] Speaker 1: actually happen in one chunk. It sort of happens over
[16:42] Speaker 1: the period you're asleep. I always sort of just but
[16:45] Speaker 1: I was looking at something else and just sort of
[16:48] Speaker 1: looking up stuff for today, and I just assume by
[16:51] Speaker 1: when you go sleep, you have REM for you know,
[16:54] Speaker 1: hour a half, two hours or is then you go
[16:56] Speaker 1: into deep But that's not how it works. It sort
[16:58] Speaker 1: of can be spread out over the whole eight hours
[17:01] Speaker 1: or whatever is it you're asleep for. Is that correct?
[17:03] Speaker 2: That's right?
[17:04] Speaker 1: And do you dream during that period? Is that when
[17:06] Speaker 1: you're RABBITI movement? Is that your dreaming period? Or do
[17:09] Speaker 1: you dream the whole time?
[17:10] Speaker 2: You dream more so in REM sleep, but you can
[17:14] Speaker 2: dream in non REM sleep. And you're absolutely right. So
[17:18] Speaker 2: when you fall asleep, you sleep in cycles every ninety minutes.
[17:22] Speaker 2: So when you fall asleep, you'll go into non REM sleep,
[17:25] Speaker 2: light sleep, and then your transition to deep sleep or
[17:28] Speaker 2: slow wave sleep. You'll come back to light sleep, and
[17:31] Speaker 2: then you'll go to REM sleep ninety minutes and you'll
[17:34] Speaker 2: have four off, four to six of those cycles through
[17:38] Speaker 2: the night. And so the first cycles of sleep first
[17:42] Speaker 2: part of the night very rich in slow wave sleep,
[17:45] Speaker 2: deep sleep, restorative sleep. So the brain kind of takes
[17:48] Speaker 2: what it needs first in terms of that restoration of
[17:52] Speaker 2: deep sleep, and the REM sleep is short and then
[17:56] Speaker 2: that flips around, so there's more REM sleep in the
[17:59] Speaker 2: second half of the night. Towards when you wake up,
[18:02] Speaker 2: and the REM sleep gets longer, so there's still that
[18:06] Speaker 2: every ninety minutes you've got these cycles, but the makeup
[18:08] Speaker 2: of that ninety minutes changes, which is why sometimes if
[18:13] Speaker 2: you wake up out of REM sleep, you might remember
[18:16] Speaker 2: your dream, or you might get that experience where you've
[18:18] Speaker 2: got that muscle atonia but your brain is waking up
[18:23] Speaker 2: slowly and hasn't quite caught up.
[18:24] Speaker 1: Well, I've definitely experienced it. It went in terms of
[18:30] Speaker 1: optimization obviously, patterns, including all those things you just talked
[18:35] Speaker 1: about light rem deep or non REM light and deep.
[18:45] Speaker 1: Is there is there such a thing that I can
[18:49] Speaker 1: build up a sleep debt? In other words, Let's say
[18:52] Speaker 1: I got it work really late late tonight, and I
[18:57] Speaker 1: missed out on one of those six cycles of ninety
[19:01] Speaker 1: minutes between the three stages of sleep. And let's say
[19:08] Speaker 1: I miss that on two of those cycles. In other words,
[19:13] Speaker 1: I'm only a sleep for four or five hours because
[19:15] Speaker 1: I got went to bed late at work whatever happened
[19:18] Speaker 1: to be, and then I had to get up early
[19:20] Speaker 1: because I had to be at work early for example,
[19:22] Speaker 1: which often happens to me. Have I built up a
[19:25] Speaker 1: sleep debt? Is this such a thing as sleep debt?
[19:27] Speaker 1: In other words, you know, I owe myself a bigger
[19:30] Speaker 1: sleep and then I can recover it the next night.
[19:32] Speaker 1: Is that such a thing? Is that a thing? Yeah?
[19:34] Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's a thing, So, yeah, we are. Sleep is
[19:38] Speaker 2: regulated by two processes. One is a homeostatic process, whereby
[19:44] Speaker 2: the pressure to sleep builds the longer you've been awake,
[19:47] Speaker 2: So you stay awake beyond your usual bedtime eight thirty,
[19:51] Speaker 2: nine thirty, that sleep pressure is going to continue to
[19:54] Speaker 2: build until you go to sleep and dissipate that pressure.
[20:00] Speaker 2: So absolutely, like the longer you stay awake, the more
[20:03] Speaker 2: pressure there is to sleep. When you finally go to sleep,
[20:08] Speaker 2: what will happen is that again the brain kind of
[20:10] Speaker 2: takes what it needs in terms to recover, So you'll
[20:13] Speaker 2: see more deep slow wave sleep in your recovery sleep.
[20:20] Speaker 1: And because we've interrupt for six because you're sleeping for
[20:23] Speaker 1: a shorter period, somehow your body knows to go and
[20:27] Speaker 1: get more deep sleep.
[20:29] Speaker 2: Is that what you're saying, Yes, So it's a marker
[20:31] Speaker 2: that the depth of sleep is a marker of how
[20:34] Speaker 2: long you've been awake. So if you think about sleep
[20:36] Speaker 2: deprivation or sleep restriction experiments, and we've kept people awake
[20:42] Speaker 2: for twenty four hours forty hours in the sleep lab
[20:45] Speaker 2: that when you allow someone to go to sleep and recover,
[20:50] Speaker 2: you will see a matching response in the depth of sleep.
[20:55] Speaker 2: So you're slow waves, those big high amplitude brain waves
[21:00] Speaker 2: much much higher, there's more of them, and that is
[21:04] Speaker 2: a correlate, a physiological correlate of sleep pressure. If you
[21:09] Speaker 2: flip that around and you take a nap and you
[21:12] Speaker 2: take away some of that sleep pressure that's been building
[21:15] Speaker 2: in the day, you won't be able to you won't
[21:18] Speaker 2: be able to go to sleep. So this is, you know,
[21:22] Speaker 2: going back to that issue of understanding about how sleep
[21:26] Speaker 2: works and what the processes are that regulate sleep. The
[21:30] Speaker 2: other factor is the circadian rhythm. So the second process
[21:33] Speaker 2: is the circadian rhythm. And so both sleep pressure and
[21:38] Speaker 2: circadian rhythm need to be at the right point for you.
[21:43] Speaker 1: To be able to sleep sort of aligned.
[21:45] Speaker 2: They have to be aligned, because the reason why you
[21:48] Speaker 2: don't fall asleep at seven point thirty or you're having
[21:50] Speaker 2: your dinner, even though your sleep pressure you've been awake
[21:53] Speaker 2: since five or whatever time you wake up very high.
[21:56] Speaker 2: That sleep pressure you're almost at the point where you
[21:59] Speaker 2: need to go to sleep, but you've got an alerting
[22:02] Speaker 2: signal from your circadian rhythm, and that alerting signal is
[22:06] Speaker 2: counteracting your sleep pressure. But when that circadian alerting signal dips,
[22:13] Speaker 2: so it's the darkness and melotonin that trigger that, then
[22:19] Speaker 2: you've got high sleep pressure, you've got low alerting signal.
[22:23] Speaker 2: Now you can go to sleep.
[22:24] Speaker 1: So I guess everybody's different. Is there like genetic differences
[22:29] Speaker 1: between people for some people's circadian rhythms, because we're talking
[22:33] Speaker 1: about al lining things, and if your cicadian rhythm perhaps
[22:37] Speaker 1: I don't you tell me if I'm right, If you're
[22:38] Speaker 1: the sort of person who's a cicadian rhythm, I don't
[22:42] Speaker 1: know if it's genetically or socially engineered through grow how
[22:46] Speaker 1: you grew up is late for midnight, you know, once
[22:50] Speaker 1: you go say midnight, that's not Maybe let's say that
[22:52] Speaker 1: it's someone else and it will starts. My question is, is
[23:01] Speaker 1: that circadian rhythm to get a bit at midnight and
[23:03] Speaker 1: some other people's situation genetically built or is it sort
[23:12] Speaker 1: of socially developed or both? Perhaps? Yeah?
[23:15] Speaker 2: Both really, so genetics play a part in that you
[23:19] Speaker 2: can be you know a morning person an evening person,
[23:24] Speaker 2: and there is a role for genetics, circadian genes that
[23:28] Speaker 2: modulate that internal rhythm and the body clock. All of
[23:32] Speaker 2: our cells have a clock as well, you know, it
[23:33] Speaker 2: governs pretty much all of our gain. Physiological process is
[23:36] Speaker 2: very important.
[23:38] Speaker 1: All of ourselves, not just their brain cells. All the
[23:41] Speaker 1: cells on my body have.
[23:43] Speaker 2: A circadian rhythm. So there's an optimum time for all
[23:47] Speaker 2: of your organs, all of your cells in your body
[23:50] Speaker 2: to work and do what they do, whether that's about
[23:53] Speaker 2: immune system or whether that's about feeding, behavior, or alertness
[23:57] Speaker 2: or cognition. But there's a master clock, as a master clock,
[24:00] Speaker 2: it's in the brain. It's called the super chismatic nucleus,
[24:04] Speaker 2: and it's this that governs all of those peripheral clock clocks.
[24:09] Speaker 2: So that master clock receives light and dark signals.
[24:14] Speaker 1: From I guess three your eyes, yeah.
[24:16] Speaker 2: Three, your eyes exactly, and then the dark signals say,
[24:22] Speaker 2: produce melotonin, and that melotonin then gets released and that
[24:30] Speaker 2: sort of promotes promote sleep. And then the light in
[24:34] Speaker 2: the morning tells the brain to stop producing that melotonin.
[24:39] Speaker 2: So so I dark and light and really really important
[24:44] Speaker 2: for regulating your circadian rhythm. Genetics play a part in
[24:48] Speaker 2: that and determining when that phase, when that happens, whether
[24:53] Speaker 2: you like to go to bed early and you like
[24:55] Speaker 2: to be a morning you know you're a morning person
[24:57] Speaker 2: or the other the other way around. And then with
[25:00] Speaker 2: the sleep pressure or your brain activity during sleep. I
[25:04] Speaker 2: mentioned about slow wave activity being the a correlate brain
[25:08] Speaker 2: activity correla of sleep pressure, and so our EEG patterns
[25:13] Speaker 2: or our brain activity patterns are kind of like our
[25:16] Speaker 2: fingerprint as well. And so if I was to say, hey, Mark,
[25:21] Speaker 2: would you come into the sleep lab for two different
[25:23] Speaker 2: nights and I record your sleep, your brain activity, your patterns,
[25:29] Speaker 2: your profiles would be really you know, there'd be this
[25:32] Speaker 2: similar on both nights. But if I was to compare
[25:36] Speaker 2: you to somebody else, quite different, So that there is
[25:39] Speaker 2: Genetic makes up a big part of that, but the
[25:43] Speaker 2: social factors. So if you have exposure to light, if
[25:46] Speaker 2: you suppress the release of melotonin, if you're a shift
[25:50] Speaker 2: worker you've finished night shift and you don't wear sunglasses
[25:54] Speaker 2: on the way home, you allow to come into your eyes.
[25:57] Speaker 2: It's going to be hard to try and fall asleep
[26:00] Speaker 2: again because you're you know, you've got to try and
[26:02] Speaker 2: trick your body when you're working against your environment. So
[26:09] Speaker 2: both things really important.
[26:11] Speaker 1: So if how do you, let's call it trick your
[26:15] Speaker 1: brain in relation to light. So are we talking about devices,
[26:21] Speaker 1: because there's a lot written about you know, I think
[26:25] Speaker 1: it's blue light stimulation from devices, these sorts of things,
[26:29] Speaker 1: live phone, probably TVs, I guess, computer, laptops, et cetera.
[26:37] Speaker 1: Is that the light that our brain's receiving their sort
[26:40] Speaker 1: of tricking our cicadian rhythm into saying, well, it's still daytime.
[26:43] Speaker 1: Is that what you're talking about? Yep. So some people
[26:48] Speaker 1: put these glasses on with the red red lens on it.
[26:50] Speaker 1: Does that actually negate that or neutralize that effect?
[26:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, so that can block the alerting effects of right light.
[26:59] Speaker 2: And then the side of that is if you need
[27:02] Speaker 2: to realign your circadian rhythm, you might want to expose
[27:06] Speaker 2: yourself to light in the early morning, and so you
[27:11] Speaker 2: would go outside, you know, without your sunglasses in the
[27:14] Speaker 2: morning get a bit of light that sort of helps.
[27:17] Speaker 2: Or in the northern hemisphere like England where it can
[27:22] Speaker 2: be very dark in the morning, you can sit in
[27:24] Speaker 2: front of a light box and get that.
[27:28] Speaker 1: Light for such a thing. Yeah, yes, it's called a
[27:31] Speaker 1: light box. Yes, it's not like these sort of lights.
[27:35] Speaker 2: No, it's a little box. You'd put it, you know,
[27:37] Speaker 2: when you're having a breakfast in the morning. You just
[27:39] Speaker 2: put it on the table and it would give you
[27:41] Speaker 2: the light that you would have if you lived in
[27:43] Speaker 2: a sunnier climate. Of course, there's other devices now, so
[27:47] Speaker 2: glasses that you can wear that emit alerting blue light,
[27:54] Speaker 2: and so that can be used if you're traveling time zones,
[27:57] Speaker 2: realigned jet lag, or it can just be help realign
[28:04] Speaker 2: your your kind of circadian rhythm, particularly if you're working
[28:07] Speaker 2: out sync.
[28:08] Speaker 1: So because that's cicading rhythm, everyone keeps talking about it
[28:11] Speaker 1: and I'm just trying to work out in terms of
[28:16] Speaker 1: the light. So the cicadian rhythm rhythm. Is it just light?
[28:20] Speaker 1: By the way, is there any other senses that get alerted,
[28:24] Speaker 1: say in the morning, apart from sunlight or daylight? Are
[28:28] Speaker 1: there any other senses? Is it warm or colder? Is
[28:31] Speaker 1: there anything that our skin notices? Do we receive the
[28:35] Speaker 1: light anywhere else apart from our eyes, anywhere on our
[28:37] Speaker 1: skin for example, just our Are there any other things
[28:42] Speaker 1: that we might sense that will tell us? And then
[28:44] Speaker 1: I hear the birds in the morning that actually wakes
[28:46] Speaker 1: me up. They literally like there's cooker barrows around my house,
[28:49] Speaker 1: and they get up before the light comes up, before
[28:52] Speaker 1: the daylight comes up. They're the first birds to get
[28:54] Speaker 1: up and have a laugh, and they actually wake me
[28:57] Speaker 1: up before any dialogue there in the special fision the
[29:04] Speaker 1: higher part of summer, like like around the twenty second
[29:06] Speaker 1: of December when it's slide five o'clock in the morning,
[29:10] Speaker 1: but the birds wake me up before that is are
[29:13] Speaker 1: my ears playing a role?
[29:14] Speaker 2: Well, I mean, that's that's lovely that the birds wake
[29:17] Speaker 2: you up. But there are lights the most potent stimulator,
[29:20] Speaker 2: but things that are also important for in training your
[29:25] Speaker 2: circadian rhythm or readjusting it. If you've traveled time zones
[29:28] Speaker 2: would be when you eat, when you have breakfast, and
[29:31] Speaker 2: when you exercise as well. So all of those things
[29:34] Speaker 2: help your body think right, okay, yep, it's time to
[29:39] Speaker 2: get going now. But light is the thing that can
[29:44] Speaker 2: manipulate it the most potent, you know.
[29:49] Speaker 1: So when the like as received in my brain into
[29:52] Speaker 1: my eye, I should say, which I guess is part
[29:53] Speaker 1: of my brain and the sense of signal back to
[29:57] Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe it's the hyperthalmos or something your glana. Yeah,
[30:02] Speaker 1: and that sends a message to something else, as I
[30:05] Speaker 1: understand it, to release something like quartisole into my system.
[30:12] Speaker 2: Well, so the way around, so quartersole goes down, goes down.
[30:17] Speaker 1: In the morning. In the morning, the first the sun,
[30:20] Speaker 1: let's call it the sun coming up. Yes, let's sa.
[30:23] Speaker 1: I've got a window facing east and the sun comes
[30:26] Speaker 1: right and I don't have a blinds and that shines
[30:28] Speaker 1: on my face. The process is that it's so the
[30:32] Speaker 1: pinial gland is familiar tonin, isn't it. Yes, yes, So
[30:35] Speaker 1: like in the morning, there's some other gland it must
[30:37] Speaker 1: be must release the something into your some other gland
[30:42] Speaker 1: to release goal into your system. Is that what happens? Yes,
[30:45] Speaker 1: it does.
[30:46] Speaker 2: And so the photo, the light sensitive sounds in your
[30:51] Speaker 2: eyes send a signal to the CSM, the super chismatic nucleus,
[30:56] Speaker 2: which then sends a signal to suppress or release melotonin.
[31:04] Speaker 2: And then there's other temperature is regulated as well, and
[31:07] Speaker 2: then quartisole is also regulated, and other hormones too, and
[31:12] Speaker 2: all of those kind of working synchrony to say, okay,
[31:17] Speaker 2: it up, time to wake up. Yeah, we're ready to go.
[31:20] Speaker 2: I mean the quartsole thing is interesting, right, it's the
[31:23] Speaker 2: sort of stress hormone and thought to be quite high
[31:28] Speaker 2: in people with insomnia that struggle to fall asleep and
[31:30] Speaker 2: don't have that dampening. Yeah, of that sort.
[31:33] Speaker 1: Of that's why someone's saying anxious or stressed at night,
[31:36] Speaker 1: they're not going to get to sleep.
[31:38] Speaker 2: Exactly right, And so allowing that two to three hours
[31:41] Speaker 2: like you do, wind down, have some time rather than
[31:44] Speaker 2: going to bed just on four go is sort of
[31:47] Speaker 2: really important to do that.
[31:49] Speaker 1: And it's not just stress or well it's not actual
[31:52] Speaker 1: like stressed out or I'm really anxious about something and
[31:56] Speaker 1: I'm worried about it can be. But the cause ole
[31:59] Speaker 1: can you flush around your system at night if you like,
[32:02] Speaker 1: in my case, go to watch my football team and
[32:05] Speaker 1: we might be losing a winning and even if we're winning,
[32:08] Speaker 1: I can get equally excited. So the quartersole gets released
[32:11] Speaker 1: even if you're excited, and then it sort of sits
[32:13] Speaker 1: in your system for a bit that doesn't just come
[32:15] Speaker 1: and go like that. Like. So that's why I find
[32:18] Speaker 1: like if I go the footy and I get home
[32:21] Speaker 1: ten at night, it takes me a couple of hour,
[32:24] Speaker 1: especially if we win. It takes me a couple of
[32:26] Speaker 1: hours to get to sleep because I got to get
[32:29] Speaker 1: rid of that cortisol and I've got to sort of
[32:31] Speaker 1: somehow get my circadian rhythm back into think I've got
[32:34] Speaker 1: to release melatonin and all that sort of stuff. The
[32:36] Speaker 1: body's going, well, what the fuck is going on here?
[32:39] Speaker 1: How do I turn this around in that? There's nothing
[32:44] Speaker 1: wrong with that? Though? Where there is it? Because sometimes
[32:46] Speaker 1: I think to myself, that wasn't a good sleep mark
[32:50] Speaker 1: you had last night because you got too excited when
[32:52] Speaker 1: you come home from the football. You didn't get a
[32:54] Speaker 1: good night's sleep. There's nothing really damaging in that regard.
[32:59] Speaker 1: I mean if you I did every night the week,
[33:00] Speaker 1: but I don't want to once a week, for example,
[33:02] Speaker 1: once a fortnight.
[33:03] Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I think we Again, it's about having realistic
[33:08] Speaker 2: expectations about our sleep, knowing that from time to time
[33:11] Speaker 2: we're going to have some difficulty sleeping for whatever reason
[33:14] Speaker 2: it is, or we might wake up, or we might
[33:16] Speaker 2: have some worries for that particular time. And I think
[33:19] Speaker 2: just knowing that that that's okay and that that's normal,
[33:24] Speaker 2: and not getting yourself stuck in a bit of a
[33:25] Speaker 2: rut about that because you don't want to get to
[33:27] Speaker 2: the point where you're worried about going to bed or
[33:31] Speaker 2: that you've trained yourself to be awake in bed. You
[33:34] Speaker 2: know that you don't want that. You want to be
[33:36] Speaker 2: a good sleeper and you want to be confident about
[33:38] Speaker 2: going to sleep and the goodness that it can do
[33:41] Speaker 2: for you and not get yourself worried about sleep. So again,
[33:46] Speaker 2: coming back to that, how the information that we now
[33:49] Speaker 2: have access to doesn't lead us down the path of
[33:55] Speaker 2: being overly worried and all of the things that we
[34:00] Speaker 2: about Alwa's sleeping less and society we're not prioritizing sleep
[34:06] Speaker 2: and you know, I think it worse. It makes it worse,
[34:09] Speaker 2: and this I must have eight hours. Well you might not.
[34:12] Speaker 2: You might be one of those people. That's absolutely fine,
[34:14] Speaker 2: and you've got to listen. You've got to think about
[34:16] Speaker 2: how you feel the next day and whether that's right
[34:18] Speaker 2: for you. You know that you can recover sleep, Oh.
[34:23] Speaker 1: You can recover, so the next night you can pick
[34:25] Speaker 1: it up.
[34:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, you can do that. So there's some very elegant
[34:28] Speaker 2: experiments where they sleep to five people for four nights, sorry,
[34:35] Speaker 2: four hours for seven nights or fourteen nights for example,
[34:38] Speaker 2: and then six hours, then eight hours, and they look
[34:40] Speaker 2: at kind of the dose response of sleep deprivation and
[34:44] Speaker 2: then the recovery. How many nights sleep does it take
[34:48] Speaker 2: to recover, So you're back to baseline after you've had
[34:52] Speaker 2: chronic sleep restriction, which you might have if you've had
[34:55] Speaker 2: a really busy week, or if you're adjusting to something
[34:57] Speaker 2: where you're just not able.
[34:59] Speaker 1: To get travel.
[35:00] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's exactly right, and you just need to be
[35:04] Speaker 2: aware that that there's a cumulative effect of that in
[35:08] Speaker 2: terms of your performance. So if you're used to having
[35:12] Speaker 2: eight hours and you function really well at eight and
[35:15] Speaker 2: then now you're having four hours, that that's going to
[35:17] Speaker 2: build and build. But the good news is you can
[35:21] Speaker 2: recover it. You might need two eight hour or ten
[35:25] Speaker 2: hour sleep opportunities to do that, but experimentally, I mean
[35:28] Speaker 2: it's in the sleep lab. It's all kind of artificial,
[35:31] Speaker 2: but that you can return back to baseline. And I
[35:34] Speaker 2: think we all know that if we've had a bad
[35:36] Speaker 2: night's sleep and we sleep well the next night, we're
[35:39] Speaker 2: you know, fully charged again and back to normal. I mean,
[35:45] Speaker 2: I think that the interesting thing there was a study
[35:49] Speaker 2: looking at people, you know, this whole kind of concept
[35:52] Speaker 2: that we should be having eight hours, and that there's
[35:56] Speaker 2: a problem now that we're not sleeping as well as
[35:59] Speaker 2: what we used to twenty fifty years ago, certainly before
[36:03] Speaker 2: artificial electricity was introduced into our homes and disrupted everything,
[36:07] Speaker 2: And there was this lovely study where they looked at
[36:11] Speaker 2: people who didn't have electricity, So in Africa, Central America,
[36:16] Speaker 2: I think, Tanzania, Bolivia, one other place, and so the
[36:21] Speaker 2: average duration of sleep in those pre industrialized communities, if
[36:26] Speaker 2: you like, six point four hours, and then an extra
[36:30] Speaker 2: hour during winter.
[36:32] Speaker 1: So all of this.
[36:33] Speaker 2: Kind of this worry, I think we just need to
[36:36] Speaker 2: we need to balance, and we need to think everyone's
[36:38] Speaker 2: different and not know that for ourselves how we feel.
[36:44] Speaker 2: If you have a genuine sleep complaint, of course you
[36:46] Speaker 2: absolutely need to go and see sleep specialists. But waking
[36:49] Speaker 2: up is normal. We don't all need eight hours, and
[36:52] Speaker 2: that this kind of scaring. I think we've just got
[36:57] Speaker 2: to measure that with the evidence.
[37:00] Speaker 1: Would you be able to sketch out for me though,
[37:02] Speaker 1: where would where it would be considered chronic or acute
[37:07] Speaker 1: sleep patterns chronically bad, acutely bad? Why are we talking
[37:12] Speaker 1: about someone who waits every hour or someone who only
[37:15] Speaker 1: managed to get three hours is a sort of like
[37:17] Speaker 1: a baseline for where it's if someone's listening to this
[37:20] Speaker 1: and then you know they I don't want to walk
[37:22] Speaker 1: away think oh well, it's I don't say, probably not well,
[37:25] Speaker 1: is there a point of which they should go and
[37:27] Speaker 1: seek help?
[37:29] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think if they're having chronic, chronic problems falling asleep,
[37:35] Speaker 2: maintaining their sleep, and that's affecting them in terms of
[37:38] Speaker 2: their daytime function at work, fatigue, irritability, mood, all of
[37:44] Speaker 2: those things, and that's not right, need to seek help.
[37:48] Speaker 2: So one in ten Australians has a sleep disorder and
[37:51] Speaker 2: we shouldn't forget that. So I'm kind of talking about
[37:54] Speaker 2: the boundaries of normal sleep physiology. Typically, if you look
[37:57] Speaker 2: at associations between extreme sleepers, very short sleepers, very long
[38:03] Speaker 2: sleepers less than five hours, less than ten or more
[38:08] Speaker 2: than ten, more than twelve, you know, those kind of
[38:10] Speaker 2: extremes that that's.
[38:12] Speaker 1: Sort of unusual, that's indigative, and those who.
[38:15] Speaker 2: Have been linked with poor health outcomes, right, and poor
[38:18] Speaker 2: brain health outcomes as.
[38:19] Speaker 1: Well, both sides, but both long end short. Yeah, exactly.
[38:23] Speaker 2: But if you're in that middle bit, like most of
[38:25] Speaker 2: us are, and then you've got to think about what
[38:27] Speaker 2: is it that's causing that sleep disruption or those problems
[38:30] Speaker 2: with your sleep. Has someone said that you snore? Are
[38:33] Speaker 2: you waking up with a dry mouth for headache? You know,
[38:36] Speaker 2: if you know it's a change in your mood, all
[38:38] Speaker 2: of those things could be indicative of a sleep disorder
[38:41] Speaker 2: that can be treated and turn things around for you.
[38:44] Speaker 2: So understanding that, dispelling the myths about sleep, understanding how
[38:50] Speaker 2: sleep is regulated, and what we can do ourselves to
[38:53] Speaker 2: manage our sleep, making sure we go to bed when
[38:56] Speaker 2: we feel sleepy, and those that sleep pressure is high
[39:00] Speaker 2: and the alerting signal is low. There's no point thinking,
[39:02] Speaker 2: I had a really bad night last night, I'm going
[39:04] Speaker 2: to go to bed at seven or eight when because
[39:07] Speaker 2: your alerting signal is going to be high, and then
[39:09] Speaker 2: you're going to get yourself all stressed out because you
[39:11] Speaker 2: can't fall asleep again. So you've got to have that
[39:15] Speaker 2: understanding about that, but also follow up on any any
[39:21] Speaker 2: indication that you might have a sleep problem chronically, because
[39:28] Speaker 2: then that becomes yeah, it has massive impacts on how
[39:33] Speaker 2: you're feeling, what you're able to do short term and
[39:37] Speaker 2: long term consequences.
[39:39] Speaker 1: Great guys, Mike Porous here now, if you're a regular listener,
[39:42] Speaker 1: you'll know I'm always looking for ways to stay at
[39:45] Speaker 1: my best, whether that's through training, recovery, or just making
[39:47] Speaker 1: sure I can back up day after day with my
[39:50] Speaker 1: current regime. One of the simplest ways I can make
[39:52] Speaker 1: steps towards that goal is by using Bulk Nutrients BCA recovery.
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[40:09] Speaker 1: coming from the gym, boxing or just pushing through the
[40:12] Speaker 1: daily grind. These aminos help me show up again tomorrow,
[40:15] Speaker 1: and that's most important thing for me, and the best
[40:17] Speaker 1: part it's made in house right here in Australia. Head
[40:20] Speaker 1: to Bulk Nutrients dot com, dot you and check out
[40:23] Speaker 1: their limited edition Burble Grape Flavor out now. As we
[40:28] Speaker 1: get older, and I don't know what older means. It
[40:32] Speaker 1: could be fifty, sixty, seventy eighty, but does our capacity
[40:37] Speaker 1: does our need for sleep diminished? In other words, his
[40:41] Speaker 1: stories about older people don't do as much sleep a's
[40:46] Speaker 1: are true. And if it's true, why is it so?
[40:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. So our sleep changes as we get older.
[40:58] Speaker 1: How does it mean? How do you mean?
[41:00] Speaker 2: So we tend to sleep less, we have less slow
[41:04] Speaker 2: wave sleep, we have more lighter sleep, there's more sleep fragmentation.
[41:09] Speaker 2: So there's more sleep fragmentation. It's fragmented, it's disrupted. You
[41:15] Speaker 2: wake more, and those periods are wakefulness are longer, so
[41:21] Speaker 2: that we know that happens part of the normal aging process,
[41:25] Speaker 2: just like our skin changes or our hearing changes, that
[41:28] Speaker 2: sleep changes. And then some of those brain waves, the
[41:33] Speaker 2: brain activity that I mentioned before, the spin doors and
[41:36] Speaker 2: the slow waves, those that have been linked with cognitive
[41:40] Speaker 2: or the functional processes of sleep, they also diminish. And
[41:45] Speaker 2: so with the advances of how we can measure sleep
[41:50] Speaker 2: and measure the brain during sleep, we're trying to understand
[41:53] Speaker 2: more about what those brain changes mean in terms of
[41:57] Speaker 2: brain health, accelerated brain aging, and whether, of course, then
[42:01] Speaker 2: we can target those changes, boost enhance those aspects of
[42:08] Speaker 2: sleep that we know diminish with aging, to ultimately improve
[42:14] Speaker 2: how we function and our brain health. So if you
[42:21] Speaker 2: have if you're considered at risk for developing dementia if
[42:25] Speaker 2: you have mild cognitive impairment or for all of the
[42:29] Speaker 2: dementia's sleep disturbance is is really commonly reported?
[42:34] Speaker 1: Each problem? Is that? Are you saying that I've got
[42:40] Speaker 1: to give this right now? If you have any indicator
[42:45] Speaker 1: could be familiar in relation genetically in any indicator for
[42:50] Speaker 1: dementia of any type, because there's lots of different types
[42:52] Speaker 1: of dementia, but let's call it what a vascular dementia
[42:55] Speaker 1: of one of those? If you have any indication in
[42:59] Speaker 1: your history familiar or maybe you have received a lot
[43:03] Speaker 1: of head trauma for example, you know, if you're a
[43:06] Speaker 1: boxer or a UFC fire or a rugby lead player
[43:08] Speaker 1: or something like that. Are you saying that you might
[43:13] Speaker 1: not having symptoms, but if all of a sudden you
[43:17] Speaker 1: stop sleeping well and start sleeping badly, does that then
[43:20] Speaker 1: sort of inform you, guys that that particular pation or
[43:26] Speaker 1: that particular individual might be heading down towards dementia or
[43:29] Speaker 1: might be getting towards Alzheimer's or having some cognitively cognitive impairment.
[43:36] Speaker 1: Or is it worth the other way because you've got
[43:38] Speaker 1: cognitive im because you got dementia, you don't sleep well
[43:42] Speaker 1: or is it.
[43:43] Speaker 2: Both so bidirectional. If you have dementia, you have sleep disturbance.
[43:53] Speaker 2: If you have sleep disturbance or sleep disorders, you are
[43:56] Speaker 2: more likely to develop dementia. So the evidence, the evidence
[44:03] Speaker 2: is suggesting that you know, for example, if you have
[44:06] Speaker 2: sleep disordered breathing, you have twenty six percent higher.
[44:10] Speaker 1: Risks in sleep for example. Yeah, as an.
[44:13] Speaker 2: Example obstructive sleep apenia of developing cognitive impairment. If you
[44:19] Speaker 2: have sleep disordered breathing as in sleep apenea, you have
[44:25] Speaker 2: mild cognitive impairment formal diagnosis of a decade earlier than
[44:31] Speaker 2: if you didn't have sleep disorder breathing. That's what makes
[44:33] Speaker 2: sense seventy two eighty exactly. So when you think about
[44:36] Speaker 2: what that might mean for the.
[44:37] Speaker 1: Brain, because I'm not getting enough nutrition and oxygen into
[44:40] Speaker 1: the brain.
[44:40] Speaker 2: General, when we think that the dips in oxygen is
[44:43] Speaker 2: the biggest skin.
[44:44] Speaker 1: Neuterones like die off or something, and neurons might die
[44:47] Speaker 1: off or just over time diminished not working so well.
[44:51] Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, So there's that aspect of sleep disturbance sleep
[44:57] Speaker 2: disorders conferring a greater risk of developing dementia. I mean,
[45:01] Speaker 2: I think what you were also talking about was that
[45:04] Speaker 2: what are the early markers. By the time we see
[45:06] Speaker 2: a cognitive impairment, a cognitive symptom someone's not functioning well,
[45:12] Speaker 2: it's a bit too late. If you look at other
[45:15] Speaker 2: brain based indicators, accumulation of beta amyloid, the toxic metabolite
[45:21] Speaker 2: that builds up makes parks in the brain for Alzheimer's,
[45:24] Speaker 2: for Alzheimer's or tau pathology, but they're occurring ten to
[45:28] Speaker 2: twenty years earlier before the symptoms appear. So what we're
[45:31] Speaker 2: trying to understand is whether changes to sleep, brain activity, neurophysiology,
[45:37] Speaker 2: So those reductions in slow waves that are linked with
[45:40] Speaker 2: the clearance of clearing out the brain the housekeeper of
[45:45] Speaker 2: all the staff, like the exactly the spin doors important
[45:49] Speaker 2: for laying down our memories and helping us retain what
[45:53] Speaker 2: we learn, Whether those are early indicators of conversion to
[45:58] Speaker 2: dementia poorer cognitive outcomes. So that's kind of where where
[46:03] Speaker 2: the field is.
[46:04] Speaker 1: So that's like one step before someone going into doing
[46:09] Speaker 1: whatever it is they do, they see what your amyloids
[46:11] Speaker 1: or yeah, just one step. It's like years before you
[46:17] Speaker 1: can sort of say, listen, mark your sleep, your disturbed
[46:22] Speaker 1: sleep or your lack of sleep. They're different things committed
[46:26] Speaker 1: at both could well lay down some sort of marker
[46:31] Speaker 1: that over time you might get some diminution in your
[46:39] Speaker 1: cognitive ability, whether it's dementia or Alzheimer's or any other thing.
[46:45] Speaker 1: And therefore, and how then how that takes it right
[46:50] Speaker 1: back to the beginning. We've got to somehow, we've got
[46:54] Speaker 1: to sort of sem your self, diagnose ourselves as to
[46:57] Speaker 1: how well we sleep, and what are we looking for
[47:01] Speaker 1: so late, Let's say, as a fifty year old man
[47:03] Speaker 1: or a fifty year old woman or sixty year old,
[47:05] Speaker 1: et cetera. What are they looking for in terms of
[47:09] Speaker 1: what you just described. And let's say, by the way,
[47:11] Speaker 1: in the family, they've got one or two uncles and
[47:14] Speaker 1: aunties or whatever. We've got dementia, so there's some maybe
[47:18] Speaker 1: some genetic linkage. What are they sort of looking for
[47:24] Speaker 1: as signs that they should be careful and perapsco and
[47:27] Speaker 1: consult with somebody. What are they thinking about what's going
[47:29] Speaker 1: through the head, what should go through the head?
[47:31] Speaker 2: Well, I guess what I'm kind of saying is is
[47:34] Speaker 2: that we're trying to understand the risk factors or the predictors,
[47:38] Speaker 2: the biomarkers much much earlier than that, before someone's experiencing
[47:43] Speaker 2: the sleep disturbance.
[47:45] Speaker 1: Well even before that, you're going even before that.
[47:48] Speaker 2: So imagine we can screen, we can scam. We already
[47:52] Speaker 2: can record brain activity, we can record it from the
[47:54] Speaker 2: whole brain, and we go, Okay, if you've got deficits
[47:58] Speaker 2: in slow waves or a loss of spins in this
[48:00] Speaker 2: particular region of the brain, there's problem here. We've got
[48:04] Speaker 2: to intervene with time.
[48:05] Speaker 1: How would I come to see about that? How would
[48:07] Speaker 1: I know? If I'm a personal listening to this, I
[48:10] Speaker 1: bet I will see these guys because they should test
[48:15] Speaker 1: this stuff.
[48:15] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, wouldn't that be wonderful that we could
[48:18] Speaker 2: offer such a I mean that we're quite far away from.
[48:21] Speaker 1: From doing that story searching this exactly.
[48:23] Speaker 2: So what are the markers? Importantly, it doesn't just stop there, right,
[48:28] Speaker 2: because if you think that something is indicating a risk factor,
[48:33] Speaker 2: we say, okay, we've got to step in here. Can
[48:35] Speaker 2: we move that marker? Can we improve what your trajectory,
[48:40] Speaker 2: what your cognitive trajectory might be, so that you've got
[48:43] Speaker 2: ten more years of good quality life. And so it's
[48:48] Speaker 2: more about whether we can manipulate. So it comes back
[48:51] Speaker 2: to kind of sleep engineering. Can we boost that activity
[48:55] Speaker 2: in the brain, Can we focus in localize that abnormality,
[48:59] Speaker 2: can we reverse it? And then does that have a
[49:02] Speaker 2: knock on effect? So that's the evidence that we're trying
[49:04] Speaker 2: to build and we're doing some of that at the moment.
[49:07] Speaker 2: Neur and modulation. We're stimulating the brain on invasively. Can
[49:11] Speaker 2: we boost those slow waves that push out those wins?
[49:16] Speaker 2: Can we well, in principle we can, yes, and electrical input, Yeah,
[49:24] Speaker 2: and we're running you know, patients at the moment and
[49:27] Speaker 2: participants at the moment looking at this. So it's about
[49:32] Speaker 2: building the evidence because very hard to cause an effect, right,
[49:35] Speaker 2: it's ethically unsound if you try and bring about a
[49:40] Speaker 2: new redegenerative process by constantly perturbing someone's sleep right ethics
[49:45] Speaker 2: committee and going to let you do that, because that's
[49:48] Speaker 2: going to be the consequences might be great for that person,
[49:52] Speaker 2: but you can flip it the other way around.
[49:54] Speaker 1: Have they already got it, Yeah, you've.
[49:55] Speaker 2: Got the sleep disorder or that you're you're cognitively intact
[49:59] Speaker 2: and healthy, but you're interested, you want to come in
[50:01] Speaker 2: and participate, and we're going to boost We're going to
[50:03] Speaker 2: go the other way around. We're going to boost your
[50:05] Speaker 2: slow waves, and we're going to see if it improves
[50:09] Speaker 2: the clearance of topic. What do you do do like
[50:11] Speaker 2: if we you know, improves your memory consolidation. So those
[50:14] Speaker 2: are some of the things that we.
[50:15] Speaker 1: Can any boost my hen you boost my slow waves?
[50:21] Speaker 1: I mean it's it's sort of a bit of a
[50:24] Speaker 1: non sequit of boosting slow waves because the slow my definition.
[50:27] Speaker 1: But how do you increase my slow wave?
[50:30] Speaker 2: Yes?
[50:31] Speaker 1: What do you do? Do you mind sharing? Is?
[50:33] Speaker 2: No?
[50:34] Speaker 1: You do?
[50:34] Speaker 2: You're welcome to come into the lab.
[50:37] Speaker 1: I am coming into lab. What do you do, like
[50:39] Speaker 1: give me an injection or is it chemic chemic chemistry,
[50:42] Speaker 1: chemicals or is it some electrical thing around my head?
[50:45] Speaker 2: Yeah, you just put a cap on and we send
[50:48] Speaker 2: electrical signals through your scalp.
[50:51] Speaker 3: Well, i'm asleep or I'm waking while you're asleep. Y,
[50:54] Speaker 3: So we've been trialing this during sleep.
[50:56] Speaker 2: Of course, many electrical brain stimulation is use for treatment
[51:00] Speaker 2: of depression right during wakefulness.
[51:02] Speaker 1: Boost.
[51:02] Speaker 2: The therapeutic potential there is well acknowledged in some disorders
[51:09] Speaker 2: that's TMS, but this isn't TMS. This is called tDCS.
[51:12] Speaker 2: So it specifically sends a signal, an electrical signal the
[51:17] Speaker 2: same frequency as your slow wave and sort of jumps
[51:20] Speaker 2: on it and makes it.
[51:22] Speaker 1: Bigger, amplers more energy into it.
[51:24] Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly right, electrical energy, and so that's really exciting.
[51:29] Speaker 2: And so we're trialing that because though we can treat
[51:32] Speaker 2: some sleep disorders, particularly sleep apnea SEPAP continuous positive airway
[51:37] Speaker 2: pressure pressure therapy gold standard treatment, but not everyone can
[51:41] Speaker 2: tolerate it, and so what do we do for the
[51:45] Speaker 2: people with sleep apenia that can't They just can't wear
[51:47] Speaker 2: their SEAPAP mask. We need other we need other approaches
[51:52] Speaker 2: to protect the brain, and so one of them is
[51:54] Speaker 2: using pharmacology. So some drugs boost sleep spindles and we're
[52:00] Speaker 2: also just completed a study looking at that. So if
[52:03] Speaker 2: you can boos your sleep spindles, does that confer in
[52:06] Speaker 2: in you know, increase memory benefit. So we're engineering wore,
[52:11] Speaker 2: manipulating sleep in that way to try and get to
[52:15] Speaker 2: the bottom of what can we do about it With
[52:17] Speaker 2: all these changes that happen with aging, with those changes
[52:21] Speaker 2: that are even more marked or further exacerbated if you're
[52:25] Speaker 2: at risk for developing dementia, which was the point that
[52:28] Speaker 2: I was trying to make before that if you're at
[52:31] Speaker 2: greater risk of developing dementia, the changes in sleep that
[52:34] Speaker 2: I explained that are normal everyone experiences are more prominent,
[52:40] Speaker 2: and so if we can detect that early, we can
[52:43] Speaker 2: potentially intervene. This would be you know, the future hopefully
[52:48] Speaker 2: of trying to do something about that.
[52:50] Speaker 1: And we did have an episode on the show with
[52:53] Speaker 1: Professor Mathew Kin from Europe where Matthew talked about dementia
[52:57] Speaker 1: and in particularly talk about vascular dementia where you know,
[53:02] Speaker 1: you might have a blockage in your crowded arteries which
[53:06] Speaker 1: creates a situation where you don't get enough blood flow
[53:09] Speaker 1: into your brain and as a result of that, over time,
[53:14] Speaker 1: your brain cells, your neurons don't receive enough oxygen, nutrition,
[53:20] Speaker 1: and everything else that they're supposed to get. Not so
[53:22] Speaker 1: much the clearing out process, but just that that process
[53:25] Speaker 1: and dementia, bascular dementia can set in over time and
[53:32] Speaker 1: if and then, of course, his response was, you know,
[53:36] Speaker 1: if you can what's good for your heart's good for
[53:38] Speaker 1: your brains. In other words, make sure the blockage isn't there,
[53:41] Speaker 1: and you do that by beating well and living well
[53:44] Speaker 1: and exercising well on those sort of things, you won't
[53:47] Speaker 1: have this vasculat you're less likely to have this vascular dementia,
[53:50] Speaker 1: or you'll have a lesser progression of such a dementia
[53:55] Speaker 1: that happened over a slower at a slower rate, or
[53:57] Speaker 1: over a longer period of time. In the in your brain,
[54:03] Speaker 1: when all your cells, all your neurons are all sort
[54:07] Speaker 1: of connected to each other, and they're all sort of
[54:09] Speaker 1: talking to each other, and over time they're dying off.
[54:11] Speaker 1: Are they naturally dying off irrespective of anything that might
[54:15] Speaker 1: be blocking there? Are they just dying off because they're old?
[54:18] Speaker 1: You know, Like we're just getting old, you know, like
[54:21] Speaker 1: and like just like we shrink andur cartilage reduces and
[54:25] Speaker 1: we stop producing that amount of cartilage between our bones
[54:28] Speaker 1: and as a result of it get shorter and less
[54:31] Speaker 1: this way, hopefully not more this way. But you know,
[54:33] Speaker 1: but that those things are natural consequences of aging. Is
[54:38] Speaker 1: it fair to say then therefore, as you age, your
[54:44] Speaker 1: brain will get your your brain cells, neurons and everything
[54:50] Speaker 1: else that's going on in there you get less of,
[54:52] Speaker 1: and as a result of that, over time, you will
[54:54] Speaker 1: sleep less anyway, because you've got less need to clear
[54:57] Speaker 1: it out business. You know, less stress is less pressure
[55:03] Speaker 1: on the things that are in there because there's less
[55:04] Speaker 1: of them, you know, like we you know, I can
[55:07] Speaker 1: imagine someone one hundred and fifty. I don't know, I
[55:09] Speaker 1: don't know if anyone's ever made that. Allegedly Abraham got there.
[55:13] Speaker 1: But let's say at one hundred and fifty, you're going
[55:15] Speaker 1: to have so many less brain cells unless someone comes
[55:18] Speaker 1: up with some great invention, that you probably won't need
[55:21] Speaker 1: that much sleep. Yeah, is that sort of I mean,
[55:24] Speaker 1: I'm giving a ridiculous why we sleep less as we
[55:29] Speaker 1: get older?
[55:30] Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, I think it's an interesting concept because this
[55:33] Speaker 2: comes back to that we sleep less as we get older.
[55:37] Speaker 2: But is that so bad?
[55:40] Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying, Not so bad, it's not.
[55:42] Speaker 2: It's just part of normal. And that's sort of part
[55:44] Speaker 2: of the message that I'm trying to get across, just
[55:46] Speaker 2: normal and the sleep. So older people are more resilient
[55:53] Speaker 2: to the effects of sleep restriction or sleep deprivation, Is
[55:56] Speaker 2: that right? And they The thought is that build up
[56:01] Speaker 2: of sleep pressure that happens in everyone is less prominent
[56:06] Speaker 2: in older compared to younger people and therefore, okay, well,
[56:09] Speaker 2: they they're either their brain is adapted, they're better able
[56:15] Speaker 2: to respond, there's more cognitive reserve, their brains are all
[56:19] Speaker 2: connected that they can respond without using the same amount
[56:21] Speaker 2: of energy as a younger brain. Lots of different theories
[56:24] Speaker 2: of which way to look at it. Is it good,
[56:25] Speaker 2: is it bad? But that loss of slow wave sleep
[56:30] Speaker 2: might also just bebe because, just like with lots of
[56:33] Speaker 2: things in our body, that sleep homeostatic process just starts
[56:37] Speaker 2: to dampen down. Now you would then think, okay, you
[56:42] Speaker 2: need less sleep to recover. But what does that mean?
[56:45] Speaker 2: Is your brain more efficient or is it just that
[56:47] Speaker 2: you've got less time, less depth of sleep to repair
[56:50] Speaker 2: all those cells and that eventually you're going to start
[56:53] Speaker 2: losing them. And I mean that's the case for dementia,
[56:58] Speaker 2: but I'm not sure, or I mean it's that there's
[57:01] Speaker 2: not that many experiments that have really examined this, and
[57:06] Speaker 2: certainly not looking at the recovery sleep and slow wave
[57:10] Speaker 2: sleep with whole brain measures, which we can do now
[57:15] Speaker 2: in older and younger people. And I think that would
[57:17] Speaker 2: be you know, a fascinating experiment just to understand that
[57:22] Speaker 2: the resilience in aging or the lower sleep pressure and
[57:25] Speaker 2: the need to sleep less or the fact that we
[57:29] Speaker 2: sleep less is just part of our the biological process,
[57:36] Speaker 2: So it might not be a bad thing.
[57:39] Speaker 1: And not someboding you should worry too much about something,
[57:42] Speaker 1: you should worry more naturally. It's sort of more natural. Yeah,
[57:45] Speaker 1: it's a natural part of it's a part of that.
[57:48] Speaker 1: It's a natural part of the process of aging.
[57:50] Speaker 2: Yes, I think so. And I think that the literature
[57:54] Speaker 2: or the research around older people not having as many
[57:59] Speaker 2: performance eras, or when they're tested on these tasks of
[58:03] Speaker 2: performance after sleep deprivation, that there their brains are kind
[58:08] Speaker 2: of they're better able to be more resilient, yeah, but
[58:11] Speaker 2: better able to respond. They know what brain areas. They've
[58:14] Speaker 2: got to recruit they they're they're been tried and tested,
[58:18] Speaker 2: and there's some evidence of that for sleep happena as well,
[58:23] Speaker 2: Like a little bit of sleep happen near a little
[58:25] Speaker 2: bit of hYP hypoxia is good because you can adapt,
[58:29] Speaker 2: your brain can adapt to.
[58:31] Speaker 1: It hypoxia meaning that you're not.
[58:34] Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, and that you your your brain is strengthened
[58:40] Speaker 2: because of that, it's better able to respond. It's it's
[58:46] Speaker 2: a bit like I guess muscle, you know, muscle.
[58:49] Speaker 1: Training or memory.
[58:50] Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly that. But of course there becomes a point
[58:53] Speaker 2: where we're very we're really concerned about severe dips in
[58:58] Speaker 2: oxygen level that we see in people with severe sleep apnea.
[59:01] Speaker 2: We know then that can cause a whole cascade of events,
[59:04] Speaker 2: neurodegenerative processes that we're concerned about, nearer inflammation, and that
[59:09] Speaker 2: that's been linked to one of the potential pathways by
[59:13] Speaker 2: which severe sleep disorder breathing confers that greater risk of
[59:17] Speaker 2: accelerated brain aging.
[59:19] Speaker 1: How do we know if we're not getting enough oxygen
[59:21] Speaker 1: whilst we're sleeping. So let's say we're a good sleeper,
[59:24] Speaker 1: that is the meaning that we don't really have we
[59:27] Speaker 1: don't wake up and stuff like that. You know, we
[59:29] Speaker 1: sleep the whole night, for IGN's sake. How do we
[59:32] Speaker 1: know we're not getting enough oxygen? I mean, and not
[59:35] Speaker 1: not in a severe case like sleep apnear where someone's
[59:38] Speaker 1: got to wear one of those seapap masks. Actually, we
[59:43] Speaker 1: had a senior leadership team for one of my other
[59:47] Speaker 1: businesses retreat last week, and one of my guys actually
[59:50] Speaker 1: carries his machine everywhere with him and it's only his
[59:54] Speaker 1: small sort of thing. And he's not that old, he's
[59:57] Speaker 1: only in his fifties, but he he swears that by it.
[1:00:02] Speaker 1: He says that his ability to function the next day
[1:00:05] Speaker 1: is like one hundred percent better than what it was.
[1:00:10] Speaker 1: And he even thought he did sleep properly, but he
[1:00:12] Speaker 1: didn't realize that he wasn't sleeping properly. But if we
[1:00:15] Speaker 1: just park sleep apnea where you need a mask, how
[1:00:18] Speaker 1: do we know if we're getting enough oxygen? Just as
[1:00:20] Speaker 1: a general person, just generally speaking, I mean, is there
[1:00:25] Speaker 1: is there a symptom the next day that we're not
[1:00:27] Speaker 1: getting enough oxygen during sleep? You?
[1:00:31] Speaker 2: I mean, the easiest way to measure is is something
[1:00:33] Speaker 2: like an oximiter. You know a probe that you can
[1:00:35] Speaker 2: put on your finger that measures blood oxygen levels. Yeah,
[1:00:38] Speaker 2: finger probe. So we can use those, but.
[1:00:41] Speaker 1: They pretty by by the man in the chemistry. Yeah,
[1:00:43] Speaker 1: there's a little thing without a little light on it.
[1:00:45] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing that they put on if you're
[1:00:47] Speaker 2: in the ambulance or hospital or whatever. But you you
[1:00:51] Speaker 2: will be getting enough oxygen because if you haven't got
[1:00:55] Speaker 2: sleep apnea, you've got lots of chemo receptors, you've got
[1:00:58] Speaker 2: mechanisms in your body even when you're sleeping. That will
[1:01:02] Speaker 2: make sure that you wake up even if you have
[1:01:04] Speaker 2: a paus in breathing, like if you have sleep happenia,
[1:01:07] Speaker 2: your oxygen levels will only dip to a certain point
[1:01:10] Speaker 2: and then everything will go, Hey, you've got away. You
[1:01:14] Speaker 2: need to yeh, yep, we need to activate your muscles,
[1:01:17] Speaker 2: We need to get that tone back, so that will
[1:01:19] Speaker 2: always that will happen to protect naturally.
[1:01:23] Speaker 1: But let's say, let's say, yeah.
[1:01:25] Speaker 2: Headache in the morning. Yeah, I was classic sort of symptom.
[1:01:28] Speaker 2: But yeah, I think generally speaking that you a healthy
[1:01:34] Speaker 2: older person wouldn't not get enough oxygen unless perhaps they
[1:01:40] Speaker 2: had a respiratory respiratory disorder or compromise lung function, and
[1:01:44] Speaker 2: then they'd know about that, you know, with breathlessness.
[1:01:46] Speaker 1: And yeah, because you mentioned something before about having a
[1:01:49] Speaker 1: dry mouth when you wake up, Yes, I know that
[1:01:52] Speaker 1: happened to me if I sleep on my back yep.
[1:01:55] Speaker 1: Whereas is there is dry mouths in the head of
[1:02:00] Speaker 1: anything and one and two is there a better way
[1:02:03] Speaker 1: to sleep on any side or your back or any
[1:02:05] Speaker 1: stomach even some people are no sleep on the stomach,
[1:02:07] Speaker 1: but kids do.
[1:02:08] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so on your back. You tend to have
[1:02:14] Speaker 2: more weight when you're sleeping, so you can tend to
[1:02:17] Speaker 2: snore more on your back. And if you have sleep appena,
[1:02:20] Speaker 2: some people have position or sleep happen here, they only
[1:02:22] Speaker 2: have it when they're on their back. When they're on
[1:02:24] Speaker 2: their side, they haven't got that weight or indeed just
[1:02:29] Speaker 2: gravity pushing everything down. So snoring often makes you wake
[1:02:34] Speaker 2: with a dry mouth, unless, of course you've had a
[1:02:37] Speaker 2: heavy night on the booze or something like that. But yeah,
[1:02:41] Speaker 2: and then you can wake with a dry mouth.
[1:02:43] Speaker 1: But there's no research that says sleepy on your side
[1:02:46] Speaker 1: is preferable in terms of getting a bitter nighte in
[1:02:49] Speaker 1: terms of slow waves and all the other stuff. Deep sleep,
[1:02:52] Speaker 1: no sleep, No, not to my knowledge. Okay, And can
[1:02:58] Speaker 1: we just talk about what we eat and drink before
[1:03:01] Speaker 1: we go to sleep, because I'm been trying to build
[1:03:04] Speaker 1: a sleep strategy, so to speak, you know, like, not
[1:03:07] Speaker 1: just go I'm trying to go to sleep, go sleep,
[1:03:09] Speaker 1: not just relying on my circadian rhythms to give me
[1:03:11] Speaker 1: some sort of an instinctive boost that markets is ready,
[1:03:15] Speaker 1: but thinking about the process, having a process before I
[1:03:19] Speaker 1: go to sleep. And part of that is obviously nine
[1:03:22] Speaker 1: times when you eat. So is there any things you
[1:03:28] Speaker 1: recommend not to do not to eat or not to drink,
[1:03:31] Speaker 1: or not to have too much of and not Maybe
[1:03:34] Speaker 1: should you not have too much water because I hear
[1:03:36] Speaker 1: people say I don't drink water after six pm, that's
[1:03:38] Speaker 1: what they say. Or alternally, I try not to have
[1:03:40] Speaker 1: too salt to your meal because it makes my mouth
[1:03:42] Speaker 1: trying to kiss me awake. Or I don't drink booze
[1:03:45] Speaker 1: after a certain time. I don't have too much food
[1:03:50] Speaker 1: at night, and I try to have my meal before
[1:03:52] Speaker 1: the sun goes down. For argument's sake, are there is there?
[1:03:57] Speaker 1: Is that just a pot puri of old husband's tails?
[1:04:03] Speaker 1: Or is it? Or is any truth inny of those
[1:04:06] Speaker 1: things in terms of the research that you've been exposed to.
[1:04:08] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the water thing is interesting. I mean
[1:04:12] Speaker 2: it might be depending on how many times you're waking
[1:04:16] Speaker 2: to go to the toilet. If you're waking just once, fine,
[1:04:19] Speaker 2: but if you're waking regularly, you might want to curb that.
[1:04:23] Speaker 2: I mean, I personally have a glass of water before
[1:04:26] Speaker 2: I go to sleep. I think it depends, you know,
[1:04:28] Speaker 2: And no problem. You don't want to eat really too
[1:04:32] Speaker 2: close to bedtime. So you know, two hours before is
[1:04:36] Speaker 2: a good rule of thumb.
[1:04:37] Speaker 1: Is it because your stomach is too busy digestion?
[1:04:40] Speaker 3: Yeah?
[1:04:41] Speaker 2: Yeah, And it can be uncomfortable as well, depending on
[1:04:43] Speaker 2: what you eat, if you have a heavy meal and
[1:04:46] Speaker 2: then try yeah, just try not to eat too big
[1:04:50] Speaker 2: a meal too close to bedtime?
[1:04:52] Speaker 1: Is one tile of food? Is one type of food
[1:04:54] Speaker 1: better than another. So in other words, because I've heard
[1:04:56] Speaker 1: people say I don't need any progenant and I only
[1:04:59] Speaker 1: eat before I go to sleep, I know they go,
[1:05:02] Speaker 1: I leat carbs at six pm, I go sleep, not
[1:05:06] Speaker 1: ten o'clock. I don't need any protein. I just eat
[1:05:09] Speaker 1: carbohydrates because it makes me sleep better. Does carbs have
[1:05:12] Speaker 1: a greater effect on us in terms of allowing us
[1:05:15] Speaker 1: to sleep, say, compared to proteins or is there any
[1:05:17] Speaker 1: studies on those sorts of things?
[1:05:19] Speaker 2: Not? To my knowledge, I don't know. I mean I
[1:05:21] Speaker 2: think that that would there are experiments that look at
[1:05:25] Speaker 2: particular food types and their effects on performance, daytime function
[1:05:30] Speaker 2: and then sleep. But I do not know protein rich
[1:05:33] Speaker 2: versus carbohydrate rich, and wouldn't in generalist terms that there's
[1:05:40] Speaker 2: that isn't advocated as such. You know, in terms of
[1:05:43] Speaker 2: good sleeping habits, that making sure you have this type
[1:05:47] Speaker 2: of food, rich meal before sleep. But there might be
[1:05:53] Speaker 2: some literature out there to say that one is better
[1:05:56] Speaker 2: than the other.
[1:05:57] Speaker 3: But yeah, I've heard a bit of I don't know
[1:05:59] Speaker 3: if I've heard both strong evidence.
[1:06:01] Speaker 1: But yeah, i've heard them arguments for both. And what
[1:06:04] Speaker 1: about things like melatonin? So these days in Australia you
[1:06:08] Speaker 1: can go off to the pharmacy and if you're over
[1:06:10] Speaker 1: fifty five, I think it is they automatically give you
[1:06:13] Speaker 1: a prescription, not a prescription. They give you behind the
[1:06:15] Speaker 1: counter melatonin two milo grounds per tablet in a blister
[1:06:19] Speaker 1: back of melotona. You get it without a prescription if
[1:06:21] Speaker 1: you're over fifty five. And I think the recommended doses
[1:06:26] Speaker 1: one tablet which is two milligrounds meltone and they say
[1:06:28] Speaker 1: take it at you know, six o'clock in the afternoon,
[1:06:32] Speaker 1: where it is, whatever it is. What's the deal with
[1:06:36] Speaker 1: taking melotone and tablet? As we get older is we're
[1:06:39] Speaker 1: producing less is our pinni or gland we're producing less melotonin?
[1:06:43] Speaker 1: Is that what happens? Yeah?
[1:06:44] Speaker 2: And also the time at which that happens also changes
[1:06:49] Speaker 2: with aging, So like in teenagers, there's a delay in
[1:06:54] Speaker 2: our ccadian rhythm. So everyone says teenagers are lazy, they
[1:06:57] Speaker 2: can't get up, but of course it's just that they're
[1:06:59] Speaker 2: circadian rhythm shifted. And then as we get older, it
[1:07:02] Speaker 2: tends to go the other way. So older people tend
[1:07:04] Speaker 2: to go to bed earlier and rise earlier, and so.
[1:07:07] Speaker 1: That might be were boring.
[1:07:10] Speaker 2: Yeah, it might be all right if you're not working
[1:07:12] Speaker 2: or that that fits with what you want to do,
[1:07:14] Speaker 2: but it might not be, and so you might want
[1:07:17] Speaker 2: to use light and melotonin to re entrain your rhythm.
[1:07:21] Speaker 2: I mean, melotonin is interesting, right if you need to,
[1:07:26] Speaker 2: I take it if I've been traveling time zones and
[1:07:29] Speaker 2: I find it, you know, it quite quite good to
[1:07:33] Speaker 2: take just before I'm ready to go to sleep, and
[1:07:35] Speaker 2: that helps me. But I don't think there's any strong
[1:07:38] Speaker 2: evidence to say that as you get older you should
[1:07:41] Speaker 2: be taking melatonin. I mean, there's some studies that we're
[1:07:44] Speaker 2: doing at the moment looking at the neuroprotective properties of
[1:07:47] Speaker 2: melotonin as well as the soporific or the sleep inducing properties,
[1:07:52] Speaker 2: and a whole host of other neuroprotective agents as well,
[1:07:55] Speaker 2: because we're you know, interested in exploring that aspect of
[1:07:58] Speaker 2: brain health.
[1:08:00] Speaker 1: You're retaining you know which ones, which ones, which ones
[1:08:03] Speaker 1: you're protective. If you have you got any evidence of
[1:08:05] Speaker 1: anything yet or anything that's statistically important, study is still underway.
[1:08:10] Speaker 2: So inhaled melotonin, so novel ways to deliver drugs to
[1:08:14] Speaker 2: the brain rather than ingesting.
[1:08:17] Speaker 1: Is that because it's more bioavailable if you take it
[1:08:19] Speaker 1: up through much.
[1:08:21] Speaker 2: Much smaller dose, but it gets there much more efficient.
[1:08:25] Speaker 2: And then doras so dual erexin receptor antagonists. Okay, so
[1:08:34] Speaker 2: promote sleep. So rexing is an alerting neurotransmitter. Lots of
[1:08:40] Speaker 2: arousal inducing neurotransmitters in the brain are rex In is
[1:08:43] Speaker 2: one of them, and so if you block that, you
[1:08:47] Speaker 2: can bring about sleep. If you activate that, you can
[1:08:50] Speaker 2: promote wakefulness. So rex in agonis being tried for the
[1:08:55] Speaker 2: treatment of narcolepsy.
[1:08:57] Speaker 1: Medafinal yes, for example.
[1:09:00] Speaker 2: But different mode of action. But yeah, wakefulness promoter if
[1:09:04] Speaker 2: it's an agonist. But if it's an antagonist then then no,
[1:09:07] Speaker 2: so and that's also meant to have some neuroprotective properties.
[1:09:12] Speaker 3: So we're exploring that the agonist is or the antagonist antagonists. Yeah,
[1:09:17] Speaker 3: and then which.
[1:09:18] Speaker 1: Is probably the reason why people shouldn't be taken a
[1:09:20] Speaker 1: definitel unless they absolutely need it because people take it.
[1:09:25] Speaker 1: I mean it was originally designed for snipers in the army,
[1:09:28] Speaker 1: me definite so they could stay not for also even
[1:09:31] Speaker 1: stay alert, but at the same time not be spiked
[1:09:35] Speaker 1: like they're on an amphetamine. It's sort of like a
[1:09:38] Speaker 1: but it's now since been prescribed for people to study
[1:09:41] Speaker 1: all night for example. People use them, particularly the United States.
[1:09:45] Speaker 1: You can get it to your doctor can prescribe it
[1:09:47] Speaker 1: to you if you particularly suffer from narcalypse, shift work disorders.
[1:09:51] Speaker 1: Shift work. Yeah, but there's but I was reading the
[1:09:53] Speaker 1: other day that something like medafiniteal can actually be a
[1:09:56] Speaker 1: problem over time. It can cause your a degener from
[1:10:01] Speaker 1: in your brain. So you're saying those things are worth
[1:10:04] Speaker 1: the opposite that could be perhaps neuroprotective.
[1:10:07] Speaker 2: Yes, and indeed even the agonist as well. So it's
[1:10:10] Speaker 2: about understanding what that pathway is, the neurotransmitter, and then
[1:10:16] Speaker 2: what's happening with respect to aging, and then targeting using
[1:10:20] Speaker 2: drugs to target that particular system. And in this case
[1:10:23] Speaker 2: it happens to be a rexin. And then the other
[1:10:25] Speaker 2: thing that's of interest is sleep happena are really common
[1:10:31] Speaker 2: comin as you get older. We've talked about CEPAP, mandibilo, advancement, splints,
[1:10:36] Speaker 2: positional therapy, lots of approaches, but now of course weight loss,
[1:10:40] Speaker 2: weight loss but through in credit therapy, so the GLP one.
[1:10:44] Speaker 2: So these are things like what's it called a zepic.
[1:10:49] Speaker 1: To induce weight loss, to induce.
[1:10:51] Speaker 2: Weight loss to therefore reduce the severity of sleep happenia,
[1:10:56] Speaker 2: because obesity is a big risk factor for sleep happening
[1:11:00] Speaker 2: in middle aged people so much and older people. But
[1:11:03] Speaker 2: also the properties of that the gop one drug also showing.
[1:11:10] Speaker 1: Which is as an example.
[1:11:14] Speaker 2: Neuroprotective properties, protecting the heart, protecting the brain, and so
[1:11:18] Speaker 2: some really recent studies showing that when they pulled data
[1:11:23] Speaker 2: from lots of small studies and looked at whether those
[1:11:27] Speaker 2: that received the treatment the in credit therapy like as
[1:11:30] Speaker 2: MPIC and those that didn't, what the risk was of
[1:11:36] Speaker 2: developing or cause dementia for example, and some really interesting
[1:11:42] Speaker 2: results supporting what I think the field already knew from
[1:11:47] Speaker 2: animal research but in humans that there seems to be
[1:11:52] Speaker 2: some neuroprotective properties as well for that particular agent. So
[1:11:57] Speaker 2: there's lots of staff happening in the the drug sort
[1:12:01] Speaker 2: of intervention space as well. And of course why it's
[1:12:05] Speaker 2: still about prevention, isn't it one of the risk factors.
[1:12:08] Speaker 2: What can we do to prevent them? How can we
[1:12:10] Speaker 2: target sleep? And that's our area that exploring all of
[1:12:14] Speaker 2: these approaches to try and improve the functions of sleepy
[1:12:17] Speaker 2: neuromodulation that we talked about, or protecting the brain from
[1:12:22] Speaker 2: the insults that happened during sleep through some of these
[1:12:26] Speaker 2: classes of drugs is kind of where things are out
[1:12:31] Speaker 2: where the new stuff is happening now.
[1:12:34] Speaker 1: It's interesting because I don't want anyone to who's listening
[1:12:38] Speaker 1: to misinterpret. I think I want to make sure that
[1:12:41] Speaker 1: I got it right. Yeah, then you're not saying in
[1:12:45] Speaker 1: terms of research that oh, we'll get a normal, healthy
[1:12:48] Speaker 1: person has got who's not overweight. Everything else is going okay,
[1:12:51] Speaker 1: the hardscoot, et cetera, and you know, the fear or whatever.
[1:12:54] Speaker 1: But there might be in the sixties and might be
[1:12:56] Speaker 1: and you're not saying, well, we want to see whether
[1:12:59] Speaker 1: or ZEMBIGI is in Europe detective for them. I think
[1:13:01] Speaker 1: I think what you're saying is it's you're a protective
[1:13:03] Speaker 1: of someone that might be weight and by and by
[1:13:07] Speaker 1: virtual the fact that it helps them to lose weight
[1:13:10] Speaker 1: that they become it therefore becomes your protective In other words,
[1:13:14] Speaker 1: there's a correlation between being unfit and unhealthy, and you're
[1:13:18] Speaker 1: the quality of how your your brain is operating, Yes,
[1:13:23] Speaker 1: relative to sleep and.
[1:13:25] Speaker 2: No important to tease that apart obesity, diabetes. You know,
[1:13:34] Speaker 2: known risk factors for neurodegenerative disease are being addressed with
[1:13:41] Speaker 2: this drug. And so if you reduce those risk factors
[1:13:47] Speaker 2: the yeah, and indeed sleep apnea, that the outcomes look better.
[1:13:52] Speaker 2: That's from some of the early work. Whether the neuroprotective
[1:13:58] Speaker 2: properties exist independently remains to be seen, of course, because
[1:14:02] Speaker 2: you've got all these confounders and all these comorbidities that
[1:14:05] Speaker 2: are in the mix, like with a lot of this research,
[1:14:07] Speaker 2: lots of aging research, lots of comorbidities, very hard to
[1:14:11] Speaker 2: tease it all apart. But there appears to be neuroprotective properties.
[1:14:19] Speaker 1: Of these things and these particular drugs. Yeah, so to
[1:14:23] Speaker 1: be yeah, maybe that's what you're testing. Are you guys
[1:14:25] Speaker 1: looking at this at in your research and.
[1:14:28] Speaker 2: Marquary, we are looking at the doors and we're looking
[1:14:32] Speaker 2: at the melotonin, the GLP ones. Not yet we've been
[1:14:36] Speaker 2: involved in the GLP ones for a weight loss for
[1:14:38] Speaker 2: sleep up near of course, but not assessing the neuroprotective properties.
[1:14:42] Speaker 1: In its own right, in its own right. Wow, So
[1:14:46] Speaker 1: where do you see? Like, I know you'd probably been
[1:14:49] Speaker 1: hard to say, but do you think in ten years time,
[1:14:52] Speaker 1: given the big interest in sleep today, the big interests
[1:14:55] Speaker 1: in exercise, and the big interest in nutrition, but there's
[1:14:57] Speaker 1: a big interest in sleep. We never really talked, none
[1:14:59] Speaker 1: of we talked about sleep before all of a suddenly
[1:15:01] Speaker 1: I was talking about it, including us. Do you think
[1:15:05] Speaker 1: that maybe in ten years time, with the research and
[1:15:08] Speaker 1: perhaps more grants and money being allocated this type of research,
[1:15:11] Speaker 1: that you might be able to squeeze for all of
[1:15:15] Speaker 1: us a few more years of non neurodegeneration as a
[1:15:21] Speaker 1: result of sleeping better. Do you think that's what you
[1:15:23] Speaker 1: guys are going to come up with? Like, because I'm like,
[1:15:26] Speaker 1: you know, I'm hanging out for this, Like I've got
[1:15:28] Speaker 1: that long ago. So I'm thinking to myself, can you
[1:15:31] Speaker 1: hurry up? But more seriously, do you think in the
[1:15:34] Speaker 1: next ten years the speed of this research will start
[1:15:36] Speaker 1: to develop some things that will be neuroprotective.
[1:15:40] Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's exactly why we're doing it, so that
[1:15:43] Speaker 2: we can give that extra decade of quality of life.
[1:15:48] Speaker 2: That's absolutely why all of this research is taking place.
[1:15:53] Speaker 2: So I think it's going to take is that investment
[1:15:55] Speaker 2: in funding, isn't It always comes back to that. So
[1:15:58] Speaker 2: we have research grants for be that funds our research.
[1:16:01] Speaker 2: We have Center for Chronic Diseases of aging. Everything needs
[1:16:04] Speaker 2: to kind of come together to make that happen. But
[1:16:07] Speaker 2: all of the proof of concept type of stuff, some
[1:16:10] Speaker 2: of which I've mentioned today, will then go on if
[1:16:14] Speaker 2: it's got legs. So I think some of them a
[1:16:16] Speaker 2: bit more established. Others are we need to wait and see.
[1:16:20] Speaker 2: And then it's about accelerating that so that we can
[1:16:23] Speaker 2: translate it because there's one thing doing the experiments in
[1:16:26] Speaker 2: the sleep laboratory completely other, which is the end goal
[1:16:30] Speaker 2: is to translate into new therapies. But that is the
[1:16:33] Speaker 2: long term goal, to improve brain health by tuggeting sleep.
[1:16:38] Speaker 1: And in the absence of those call it discoveries, and
[1:16:45] Speaker 1: obviously you know they've got to be tested, etc. But
[1:16:49] Speaker 1: in the absence of those, so for the next ten years,
[1:16:51] Speaker 1: for argument's sake, what is perhaps an optimum but broad
[1:17:01] Speaker 1: based because everyone's going to be individualized, but an optimum
[1:17:05] Speaker 1: strategy that someone should try and adopt in order to
[1:17:11] Speaker 1: take the best advantage of their ability to sleep. So
[1:17:15] Speaker 1: you know, like maybe I'll use the word strategy, maybe
[1:17:19] Speaker 1: that is the answer, But what is the way People
[1:17:21] Speaker 1: will say they're sixty and over and they should be
[1:17:24] Speaker 1: thinking about in terms of their sleep patterns, what should
[1:17:27] Speaker 1: they be doing well?
[1:17:29] Speaker 2: I think maybe you need to coin your marks healthy
[1:17:33] Speaker 2: sleeping habits. Some of the things that you mentioned earlier
[1:17:36] Speaker 2: are what they should be doing as well. So I
[1:17:38] Speaker 2: have a strategy, yeah, thinking about how important sleep is
[1:17:42] Speaker 2: and recognizing that, but not putting too much pressure on yourself, right,
[1:17:45] Speaker 2: being confident about your sleep, asking for help when there's
[1:17:48] Speaker 2: a problem, and recognizing that. So if you are really
[1:17:53] Speaker 2: suffering in the day you had poor night step, you've
[1:17:55] Speaker 2: got into a bad habit that there are approaches to
[1:17:59] Speaker 2: help you get out of that, whether it's cognitive behavioral therapy,
[1:18:02] Speaker 2: whether it's sleep restriction, whatever it might be, or just
[1:18:06] Speaker 2: a better understanding of the sleep process. So you know
[1:18:08] Speaker 2: that if you do have an app, don't have it
[1:18:11] Speaker 2: too late in the afternoon, have it in the morning,
[1:18:12] Speaker 2: keep it short or if you do, know that you're
[1:18:15] Speaker 2: not going to sleep well at night and that's okay,
[1:18:17] Speaker 2: but you're going to count all of.
[1:18:18] Speaker 1: Your sleep time in a twenty four our cycle.
[1:18:22] Speaker 2: Yeah, and then avoiding alcohol. Don't use it as a
[1:18:25] Speaker 2: way to get to sleep at least anyway. I think
[1:18:29] Speaker 2: that that though it might put you to sleep earlier,
[1:18:33] Speaker 2: like your sleep latency decreases, it disrupts your sleep. It
[1:18:37] Speaker 2: disrupts the second part of the night, and you get
[1:18:39] Speaker 2: kind of a rebound in your sleep. So try not
[1:18:41] Speaker 2: to use the wrong aids you know, to go to sleep,
[1:18:46] Speaker 2: but just think about going to sleep at the right
[1:18:48] Speaker 2: time when you've got that sleep pressure and you're working
[1:18:51] Speaker 2: with your circadian rhythm, exercise, nutrition, looking after yourself. Being
[1:18:57] Speaker 2: socially involved is also really important general general, you know,
[1:19:04] Speaker 2: ways to stay engaged and to keep active because the
[1:19:08] Speaker 2: more you do in the day, the more you need
[1:19:12] Speaker 2: your sleep. And you know, I touched on that a
[1:19:15] Speaker 2: little bit, but that if you're going a long drive
[1:19:18] Speaker 2: or if you're busy working with you know, listening now
[1:19:21] Speaker 2: and doing this podcast, that the parts of the brain
[1:19:26] Speaker 2: that you're using a lot, you will have deep sleep
[1:19:30] Speaker 2: in those parts of the brain. So the more active
[1:19:32] Speaker 2: and the more engaged you are, the better your sleep
[1:19:36] Speaker 2: is going to be as well. But just some of
[1:19:37] Speaker 2: those kind of concepts around sleep is just important to
[1:19:41] Speaker 2: know and know that you're an individual and you don't
[1:19:45] Speaker 2: what what's the general rule might not be the rule
[1:19:48] Speaker 2: for you.
[1:19:49] Speaker 1: So I think what you're sort of saying that as
[1:19:51] Speaker 1: a contribute as a non doctor, is that non non
[1:19:58] Speaker 1: and non scientifically as well, I would say, I think
[1:20:02] Speaker 1: what you're saying is be aware of yourself. Just don't
[1:20:06] Speaker 1: plod along and just never think about it, but don't
[1:20:08] Speaker 1: be overaware about it. Aware of it otherways, none of
[1:20:11] Speaker 1: that to dominate your life, but be aware of it.
[1:20:14] Speaker 1: And for me, once I have awareness, then you're gonna
[1:20:19] Speaker 1: do something about You've got to have a strategy. It
[1:20:22] Speaker 1: might mean don't drink water after six pm, it might not,
[1:20:26] Speaker 1: but just try things out on yourself over a period
[1:20:29] Speaker 1: of times. Are going to not have an overnight but
[1:20:30] Speaker 1: try things over a period of time. What works for
[1:20:33] Speaker 1: you best. Because we're all individuals and you shouldn't be
[1:20:38] Speaker 1: comparing yourself to anybody else or the population out there.
[1:20:42] Speaker 1: What works best for you, Try different things. There are
[1:20:46] Speaker 1: some things which are non negotiable. In other words, too
[1:20:49] Speaker 1: much booze and blah blah blah, too much stimulation. They're
[1:20:53] Speaker 1: pretty obvious. But what this means is engage with yourself
[1:20:57] Speaker 1: and have the strategy, but then probably most importantly, execute
[1:21:02] Speaker 1: on it. Be consistent with your execution, and you'll know
[1:21:07] Speaker 1: over time when there any little nuances happened, and something
[1:21:09] Speaker 1: happens to you that night, or either good or bad,
[1:21:12] Speaker 1: you are a better agency. Better note that and build
[1:21:16] Speaker 1: that back into your strategy. So it's sort of like
[1:21:19] Speaker 1: you're reviewing your strategy over months, and maybe over a
[1:21:24] Speaker 1: couple of months time you can actually get your strategy
[1:21:27] Speaker 1: that works for you at that time. Is that about right?
[1:21:31] Speaker 2: Yeah, and have a strategy, strategy and then some other
[1:21:34] Speaker 2: things to add to that strategy. So waking up at
[1:21:41] Speaker 2: the same time is more important than going to bed
[1:21:44] Speaker 2: at the same time. So the regularity of sleep has
[1:21:46] Speaker 2: been shown to be important, so not having sleeping patterns
[1:21:51] Speaker 2: that are all over the place. Thinking about your environment,
[1:21:54] Speaker 2: is it cool enough? Temperature is really important?
[1:21:57] Speaker 1: Is it dark enoughture being cooler? Cooler?
[1:22:00] Speaker 2: You don't want to be too hot, and you know,
[1:22:02] Speaker 2: very hard to sleep when it's really hot. But thinking
[1:22:04] Speaker 2: about those dark dark and light cues and how that
[1:22:08] Speaker 2: modulates your how that affects your body clock, your internal.
[1:22:14] Speaker 1: Telling when you go to sleep. Don't have a light the.
[1:22:17] Speaker 2: Bedroom, you know, for sleeping and intimacy, don't don't watch TV.
[1:22:23] Speaker 2: Don't be on your phone in there, like keep that
[1:22:25] Speaker 2: out of the bedroom. You don't want to. If you
[1:22:27] Speaker 2: can't sleep, don't lie there. If after fifteen twenty minutes,
[1:22:31] Speaker 2: get up, you know, go and do something. Don't go
[1:22:34] Speaker 2: and go on your phone, but go and go and
[1:22:36] Speaker 2: do something else. So that there are some strategies that
[1:22:40] Speaker 2: you can do to promote your sleep. And then importantly,
[1:22:45] Speaker 2: as you mentioned, if you have a bad night, understand
[1:22:48] Speaker 2: why that was, but don't don't beat yourself up about it.
[1:22:52] Speaker 2: Just you know, okay, you know today is another day.
[1:22:55] Speaker 1: And but try not to repeat whatever it was you
[1:22:58] Speaker 1: think was a verys that actually made you have the
[1:23:02] Speaker 1: crappy night. Yeah, or try to at least think about, well, yeah,
[1:23:05] Speaker 1: but I drank the whiskey at ten o'clock and I'll
[1:23:09] Speaker 1: work up at one o'clock.
[1:23:10] Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, perfect example. And then that's the reason why
[1:23:13] Speaker 2: that you have this wake rebound with alcohol, it's out
[1:23:15] Speaker 2: of your system now and you're going to be you're
[1:23:17] Speaker 2: going to have second half part of your sleep going
[1:23:20] Speaker 2: to be awful. And then the other thing as you
[1:23:23] Speaker 2: get older and you're taking more medications, so something like
[1:23:26] Speaker 2: more than a third of older Australians over seventy have
[1:23:30] Speaker 2: more than five medications, so polypharmacy, and so if you
[1:23:34] Speaker 2: think about the interactions of all those medications that they
[1:23:38] Speaker 2: might have on your sleep, it might also be important
[1:23:40] Speaker 2: to have think about what else, not just about your environment,
[1:23:43] Speaker 2: but what else is happening with your other aspects of
[1:23:46] Speaker 2: your health or the interactions of those medications, and seeking
[1:23:51] Speaker 2: review with your GP. And then importantly, if you're having
[1:23:54] Speaker 2: problems with your sleep, chronically seek some professional.
[1:23:58] Speaker 1: That's interesting though, because some beginning of this year I
[1:24:01] Speaker 1: had I had an accident and I tore some some
[1:24:05] Speaker 1: muscles and tendons in a sensitive area my glute. And
[1:24:11] Speaker 1: when I try to sleep, I go to see no problem,
[1:24:15] Speaker 1: but maybe four or five hours in it would start
[1:24:18] Speaker 1: to ache and it would wake me up. So I
[1:24:22] Speaker 1: didn't know anything about it. So basically put up with
[1:24:25] Speaker 1: this for a month or so. Then I thought I've
[1:24:27] Speaker 1: got to get this fixed. So then we went and
[1:24:29] Speaker 1: saw an orthopedic surgeon and who sorted it out for
[1:24:34] Speaker 1: me over a period of time. Now I don't have
[1:24:36] Speaker 1: those ages and pains, and I sleep bleak one hundred
[1:24:38] Speaker 1: times better, not perfect, but one hundred times much better.
[1:24:42] Speaker 1: So I think the point that you're trying to make,
[1:24:45] Speaker 1: is you have made, is that be aware of what's
[1:24:51] Speaker 1: going on in your life. You know, maybe you're you're
[1:24:55] Speaker 1: a man over sixty and you have to get up
[1:24:57] Speaker 1: it three times ago the bathroom, and because you're probably statement,
[1:25:00] Speaker 1: you might have benign prostrate high pleasure, which means go
[1:25:05] Speaker 1: to your doctor or go to the urologist and get
[1:25:08] Speaker 1: a prescription for whatever it is that he recommends. It
[1:25:10] Speaker 1: might help relieve that the prostrate issue. Because as we
[1:25:15] Speaker 1: get old, there's always something that's getting in the way,
[1:25:19] Speaker 1: and you can't have a sleep strategy if there's a
[1:25:21] Speaker 1: you know, there's a roadblock being pushed in front of
[1:25:24] Speaker 1: you all the time, recognize the roadblock because you know,
[1:25:27] Speaker 1: like most men, I don't know about women, but most
[1:25:29] Speaker 1: men that I know, we get dramas and we just
[1:25:32] Speaker 1: don't do anying about it. On one of them to
[1:25:33] Speaker 1: be right, and then I just suffer the drama. But
[1:25:38] Speaker 1: these days I now recognize the drama and I go
[1:25:41] Speaker 1: and see somebody about it and get it addressed as
[1:25:44] Speaker 1: best I can. And generally speaking, like if the way
[1:25:47] Speaker 1: medicine is these days, there's usually something that can address
[1:25:50] Speaker 1: nearly everything, but especially when it affects your sleep, you
[1:25:53] Speaker 1: must get it addressed. And I think that's a really
[1:25:56] Speaker 1: important point for people to take home. We don't need
[1:26:00] Speaker 1: to not sleep properly because you know, we're out of weight,
[1:26:04] Speaker 1: or we need you know, we need a mask and
[1:26:07] Speaker 1: we're not we refuse to wear one, or we can't
[1:26:10] Speaker 1: wear one, but we haven't sought any advice as to
[1:26:12] Speaker 1: what we can do as an alternative. Or we've got
[1:26:15] Speaker 1: an injury that's causing us to wake, we've got a
[1:26:19] Speaker 1: condition that's causing us to wake often, or we're just
[1:26:23] Speaker 1: doing self inflicted issues like we're drinking too much, or
[1:26:26] Speaker 1: we're eating the wrong foods. You know, we don't a
[1:26:28] Speaker 1: lot of crap or something before we go to bed,
[1:26:30] Speaker 1: or we're eating it right up into the moment we
[1:26:32] Speaker 1: go to bed. We need chocolates and biscuits or whatever.
[1:26:36] Speaker 1: These are easy fixes, but we just got to be
[1:26:38] Speaker 1: prepared to do it, and it goes right back to
[1:26:41] Speaker 1: where I started. And we've got to have a strategy.
[1:26:43] Speaker 1: We've got straights around excise. We all go to the
[1:26:44] Speaker 1: gym knowing I'm going to do these exos because I
[1:26:46] Speaker 1: want to build those muscles to keep this strong and
[1:26:48] Speaker 1: have this hard. So I'm going to do this on
[1:26:51] Speaker 1: this day. Is something else another day another day, going
[1:26:53] Speaker 1: to run another day, and going to swim another day,
[1:26:54] Speaker 1: to yoga and stretching. We have these excise strateges, and
[1:26:58] Speaker 1: we definitely know our food stretch jeez, because we all
[1:27:01] Speaker 1: know what we should and should need. But no one's
[1:27:03] Speaker 1: ever thought about sleep strategy.
[1:27:05] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And then lots of
[1:27:08] Speaker 2: those things you can address in.
[1:27:10] Speaker 1: Yeah, and pain mostly you can fix yeah yeah yeah.
[1:27:14] Speaker 2: And it might not be about multiple medications just one, yeah,
[1:27:17] Speaker 2: you know, and just understanding oh that might be the
[1:27:18] Speaker 2: reason why, and is there other alternatives to manage whatever
[1:27:22] Speaker 2: that condition is? And you're right, you know, as we
[1:27:24] Speaker 2: get older, there's things that are going to go wrong
[1:27:27] Speaker 2: that needs to be managed, and it's just about how
[1:27:29] Speaker 2: that manages.
[1:27:30] Speaker 1: That's up to us. Yeah, no one else going to
[1:27:32] Speaker 1: do it for you. You've got to take control, like
[1:27:35] Speaker 1: the problem in this country and probably are other countries.
[1:27:37] Speaker 1: And you can know pine on this relation to the
[1:27:40] Speaker 1: country you come from, Bert New England. But it seems
[1:27:44] Speaker 1: like when we have problems, we don't do anything about
[1:27:49] Speaker 1: it because we always always expect our gp to fix
[1:27:52] Speaker 1: up problems. We don't take control of our life, our
[1:27:56] Speaker 1: our own health. Now, sure, if I've got like you know,
[1:28:01] Speaker 1: I've got the chest infection, I have to go the doctor.
[1:28:03] Speaker 1: Doctor has to take control of that. But these day
[1:28:06] Speaker 1: to day things like health, exercise, sleep, exercise, nutrition, the
[1:28:10] Speaker 1: doctor's not going to control that. That's up to us.
[1:28:13] Speaker 1: And that's what this show's about, by the way, is
[1:28:15] Speaker 1: to be able to bring people like you onto the
[1:28:17] Speaker 1: show and explain to everybody you know, how important sleep
[1:28:20] Speaker 1: is and thinking about the process of your sleeping. And
[1:28:25] Speaker 1: you've just explained a whole lot of stuff to us,
[1:28:28] Speaker 1: some of which most of us will understand, some of
[1:28:30] Speaker 1: which some of us don't really really understand. But it doesn't matter.
[1:28:33] Speaker 1: We're not meant to understand everything that you understand, but
[1:28:36] Speaker 1: at least you're bringing awareness to the program. That's like
[1:28:40] Speaker 1: critical I think for Australians to control or take control
[1:28:45] Speaker 1: of their own health. Medicare is not going to do it.
[1:28:48] Speaker 1: Government's not going to do it. Your GPS too busy
[1:28:50] Speaker 1: doing it looking after patience. He or she's not going
[1:28:52] Speaker 1: to do it. Your husband and wife's not going to
[1:28:54] Speaker 1: do it, your kids aren't going to do it. You
[1:28:57] Speaker 1: have to do it. And it is pretty confusing out
[1:29:00] Speaker 1: there though, you know, somebody might be going this and
[1:29:03] Speaker 1: a whole lot different. You know, people talk about sleep
[1:29:06] Speaker 1: and various other things, but the idea of this show
[1:29:08] Speaker 1: is to sort of relate it back to people over fifty,
[1:29:11] Speaker 1: say in my case, I'm a little bit more than fifty,
[1:29:15] Speaker 1: but just people just slightly over fifty. So and this
[1:29:19] Speaker 1: is very specific. So I really appreciate you coming in today, Angelo,
[1:29:23] Speaker 1: I think that, and I'm definitely coming into your clinic
[1:29:26] Speaker 1: to do the nighttime sleep test. I don't know how
[1:29:30] Speaker 1: I'm going to sleep with all these things stuck to
[1:29:31] Speaker 1: my head in the ring.
[1:29:32] Speaker 2: But everyone says that, but they do.
[1:29:34] Speaker 1: Yeah, eventually, when all these things aligned, and my tiredness
[1:29:39] Speaker 1: and the accumulation whatever the chemical is in your brain
[1:29:43] Speaker 1: that you accumulate when you're getting tired, and my my
[1:29:47] Speaker 1: sircurding rhythms. When they all line eventually, I'll fall asleep
[1:29:50] Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, and you'll be able to tell me
[1:29:52] Speaker 1: how big my waves are. But I look forward to that.
[1:29:55] Speaker 1: I really do look forward to that, and I will
[1:29:58] Speaker 1: film that and we'll share the outcomes with everybody. It's
[1:30:02] Speaker 1: not for everybody to go and try, but I'm fortunate
[1:30:04] Speaker 1: enough and be in a position to do it. But
[1:30:06] Speaker 1: I think people need to start to get their heads
[1:30:08] Speaker 1: around this stuff. Life exists beyond your GP. Not putting
[1:30:12] Speaker 1: any down on the GP, but life exists beyond that.
[1:30:16] Speaker 1: Life exists way beyond that stuff, and we must take control. So,
[1:30:21] Speaker 1: doctor Angelo de Rosario, thanks very much for coming on
[1:30:23] Speaker 1: to talk to us.
[1:30:24] Speaker 2: Thanks very much.

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