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To some guys, sleep can seem so easy, a baby…
Date Recorded
November 01, 2022 Health Topics (The Scope Radio)
Mens Health
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Sleep is crucial to being the healthiest you, but…
Date Recorded
March 31, 2020 Transcription
This content was originally created for audio. Some elements such as tone, sound effects, and music can be hard to translate to text. As such, the following is a summary of the episode and has been edited for clarity. For the full experience, we encourage you to subscribe and listen— it's more fun that way.
CBT-I Basics to Help You Sleep Better
Sleep is absolutely crucial to your health. A lack of sleep can contribute to an increase in stress, weight gain, and a whole slew of potential health problems. Getting a good night's sleep is so important to your health, we consider it one of our Core 4. For optimal health, adults should be getting seven to nine hours of restful sleep a night.
Yet, a recent Harvard study said that as many as 70% of people in the U.S. are getting less than six hours of sleep a night and experiencing "sleep difficulty" at least once a week. Considering so many people struggle to get a good night's rest, what are people to do?
Dr. Kelly Glazer Baron is a clinical psychologist specializing in sleep. She works with patients at University of Utah Health to improve their quality of sleep through behavioral modification rather than medications. It's called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) and it may prove beneficial to most people struggling with their sleep.
Dr. Baron suggests patients try following these four basic rules for CBT-I to start improving their sleep.
Spend the same number of hours in bed that you sleep.
Don't stay in bed unless you're actively sleeping.
Don't go to bed unless you're tired.
Wake up and get out of bed at the same time every morning.
Like any health journey like weight loss or getting in shape, the road to consistent good sleep takes time. Don't expect immediate results, but following the rules of CBT-I may help a person see significant improvement in their sleep in just a few short weeks.
If you are still struggling to get a good night's sleep, talk to your doctor and consider working with a sleep specialist.
Talk to Us
If you have any questions, comments, or thoughts, email us at hello@thescoperadio.com.
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Sleep is important for both our physical and…
Date Recorded
March 30, 2020 Transcription
Interviewer: You know, sleep is so critically important for both physical and mental health, and during times of stress and uncertainty, you might find that you're not able to sleep, which then starts the cycle of worrying about not sleeping which then leads to more sleepless nights which then can impact your physical and mental health.
It's a big circle, and Dr. Kelly Baron is a sleep expert at University of Utah Health, and she's here to help us to start sleeping better again. So Kelly, what can a person do when they're experiencing stress to the point that it's impacting their sleep?
Dr. Baron: So stress and sleep are really known to have a bidirectional or a two-way relationship. So if you're under stress, it affects your sleep. I would really describe the state that we're in right now as a state of hypervigilance or hyperawareness to what's going on, to the threats in our environment. You know, if you just think about it, at any moment we're going to get a text or a notification that our job has changed or that we're forced to work from home, that schools are canceled, ski resorts are closed. It seems like any moment of the day we're going to get an update of how our life is going to significantly change, and I don't know about you, but that has me totally on edge.
And so that sort of feeling of being under threat impacts how deeply you sleep, because if you think about it, we're really not supposed to sleep deeply when we're under stress. That's a basic survival mechanism that organisms have. You know, you would be someone's lunch if you're a little mouse in your hole and you're sleeping deeply and there's a fox outside. That's what I explain to my patients. It's just not normal to sleep under stress.
The problem is that we've been under this stress for weeks. You know, it was the anticipation and the planning and that sort of thing, and now that things are changing they change so rapidly. I know my clinic, for example, between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m. last Monday, went from optional, "Do you want to do a phone visit?" to, "We're canceling everyone. Everybody is over the phone. We've got to figure this out as we go." You know, it changes just hour by hour, which really, really leaves you feeling frazzled.
Interviewer: Yeah. Are you finding it's affecting your sleep as well?
Dr. Baron: I think in two ways. First of all, it's affecting my sleep that I'm home more and I'm actually . . . I think I'm sleeping a little more because I'm making an effort to wind things down. I've got more time to do the little things at home that I normally don't have time to do, like just put everything away, to get my laundry done. So I have a little bit more time to sleep because I'm not commuting, and my work day is kind of chopped up in a weird way that it just leaves me a little more time to unwind and go to sleep.
The other thing though is . . .
Interviewer: I hadn't considered that. Yeah.
Dr. Baron: . . . these like notifications and constant vigilance that I think we're all experiencing right now, I find that that's impacting my sleep because I wake up in the night and I think, "What's going on in Italy?" Or I think, you know, "What's going on, what's going to change today or, you know, what do I need to cancel or reschedule?" So there's certainly a sense of anxiety.
Now the other direction, though, is that if you're not sleeping, that affects how you perceive stress. There's actually a lot more data showing that if you sleep poorly or if you don't sleep enough, you interpret stress differently. You're affected by it differently. It makes you more emotional. You handle it worse. I don't know if you've felt like that before, but even in a normal day, if I sleep poorly, I'm more easily irritated by things that don't normally get under my skin, or I might get more emotional when something happens during the day. On the other hand, if you sleep better, you can more go with the flow. And so, you know, at a time like this is that we're kind of getting wound down. You know, over time, we're getting more and more sleepless and stressed. That can lead to just a cascade really of effects.
Interviewer: So are there two kinds of concerns when it comes to sleep when you're stressed, one not being able to fall asleep at all, and two, you might fall asleep, but you're just not getting that deep sleep?
Dr. Baron: Stress can affect your sleep by either trouble getting to sleep, because you're thinking, you're ruminating, or maybe you're doing things to prepare, you're working later or trying to get things done, like behaviorally. It can cause awakenings during the night. It can also cause people to feel like their sleep is less restful. So even if you aren't up for large periods of time, perhaps you're not sleeping as deeply as you normally would, or you're more restless in your sleep. Also people do have early morning awakenings. So that means you're waking up an hour or two before you intend to wake up and you're struggling to get back to sleep.
Interviewer: So what is the solution if somebody is having difficulty sleeping or feeling like perhaps they're not getting the sleep that they need?
Dr. Baron: The first thing that I talk about with my patients is that when you're under times of stress like this, it's normal to have some disruption to your sleep. That's a normal human thing. So being stressed about being stressed is never going to help anyone. So just accepting that some people are more vulnerable to having stress-induced sleep disruption. That's just a characteristic of who you are. I tend to be one of those people that was, you know, having trouble sleeping before my first day of school or those sorts of things. I mean, that's just a feature that some individuals are more sensitive to that than others.
But then on top of it, you know, if you can't sleep, we say don't force yourself to sleep. You know, wind down, turn off the news, give yourself a good hour to relax before you go to sleep. If you're not ready to fall asleep, then do some reading, do some other things, but don't get stressed about not sleeping.
The other thing to think about too is that we're all off of our schedules, our schedules for eating, for exercise, for sleeping. You know, our routines are totally shooken up right now, and that can have a big implication for sleep. And so I recommend that people stay on a routine and kids as well to have a consistent bedtime, rise time, to make sure that you're having a regular eating pattern, and then also getting physical activity during the day. Now that I'm working from home, especially I'm trying to intersperse that throughout my day. So I'm getting up and working out as I normally would in the morning before work, and then also trying to get a little lunchtime walk and get a walk in the evening with the kids so we're all getting some activity, some sunlight, some stress relief, that sort of thing.
Interviewer: Yeah. I like that because keeping that routine can be so important, and I never considered that exercise and eating could also contribute to an inability to get the kind of sleep that you need. And during stressful times, a lot of times we don't have an appetite, or we decide, oh, I don't have time to work out. And I guess it's in times like that that really you should almost double down on those things and just really commit to them.
Dr. Baron: Or the appetite can go the other way. You know, being home I have more availability of snack foods and things like that. You know, and some people might have a tendency to graze. So I made sure to position my office on the far other side of the house from the kitchen so I'm not tempted to go in there for the Fruit Roll-Ups or other things we got for the kids so they could help themselves while we're working. But on the other hand, you know, when you're under stress, you do have more of a craving sometimes for these comfort foods. You know, if your sleep is off, your eating is off, you know, it can just lead to generally feeling worn down and stressed out. And so trying to pay attention to these routines, healthy eating . . . you know, an interesting thing I noticed was that in the grocery store they're not out of lettuce. You know, there's no run on carrots.
Interviewer: No. Right.
Dr. Baron: You know? I mean, so I'm actually having plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables in my diet right now. You know, they're not out of that stuff, apples and that sort of thing. So, you know, people should take this as an opportunity. I don't know if you've seen the blogs from Korea, how people who have never cooked in their life, these sort of young adults who are mostly focused on take-out, they're learning how to cook and they're sharing this, and this is how they're bonding over Instagram and different recipes. I think that's great. I mean, people should really focus on getting a healthful diet. Again, you have a little bit more time if you're not commuting, so focusing on these routines of having regular meal times, healthy foods, getting adequate time in bed, it's actually an opportunity for some people.
You know, but I don't want to be insensitive to the fact that there are some people who are being extremely disrupted right now, that they've lost their jobs, their hours have been cut way back. You know, that's an enormous stressor, and it can really contribute to insomnia, especially if they don't know how long this is going to go. In those situations, we really talk about trying to, you know, make sure that you're getting through the day, kind of stay in the moment. You know, you can only deal with the information that you have.
Interviewer: So managing stress, those types of skills, mindfulness during the day, trying as much as possible to not, you know, I guess not let it affect you is not the right word, and then just accepting that maybe you might not sleep as well as you should, and that's okay. Don't get stressed. Don't add that to the stress, because then that just is that vicious circle.
Dr. Baron: Absolutely.
Interviewer: Is that a fair summary?
Dr. Baron: That is a fair summary.
Interviewer: All right.
Dr. Baron: It's an extremely stressful time for a lot of people right now, and it's going to understandably affect your sleep. MetaDescription
What you can do if stress or anxiety is affecting your sleep.
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Want better sleep? Spend less time laying in bed…
Date Recorded
August 06, 2019 Transcription
This content was originally created for audio. Some elements such as tone, sound effects, and music can be hard to translate to text. As such, the following is a summary of the episode and has been edited for clarity. For the full experience, we encourage you to subscribe and listen— it's more fun that way.
What is Insomnia?
Dr. Kelly Baron, is a clinical psychologist in behavioral sleep medicine from the University of Utah sleep center. According to Dr. Baron, while many people have trouble sleeping for one reason or another, insomnia is a very specific sleep disorder that is characterized by:
Difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up too early
Difficulty sleeping occurs at least three times a week
Lack of sleep could cause negative effects in your daily life
If these symptoms last for longer than three months, it is considered chronic insomnia.
Acute, or short-term, insomnia may be triggered by stressful life events. Whether it be a major exam or a big presentation at work, you may understandably have difficulty falling asleep with stressors.
The problem is that insomnia can take on a life of its own. Those nights of lost sleep from a stressful event can become a "precipitating event." After a person loses sleep for a couple of nights, they can become stressed about getting sleep. They may try short term fixes like taking naps and drinking more coffee just to get through the day, but these fixes actually further harm a person's ability to sleep. It can quickly become a cycle that's hard to break.
"A person can't 'try to sleep'," says Dr. Baron, "You just have to let it happen."
CBTI is the Best Treatment for Insomnia
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia, or CBTI, is the top rated treatment for the American College of Physicians. As many as 80% of insomnia patients see an improvement in their sleep after CBTI therapy. It's been proven to be even more effective than sleep medication and is used as a first line treatment for most sleep disorders.
CBTI focuses on changing a patient's relationship with sleep. It focuses on getting a person on the sleep schedule their body needs, then training them to relax and fall asleep. This is achieved through:
Sleep restriction
Stimulus control
Cognitive intervention
Relaxation training
Don't Lie in Bed Trying to Sleep
CBTI begins with working towards sleeping on a schedule that actually works for a patient. A physician will look at when the person is actually sleeping and go from there.
It may seem backwards, but CBTI starts with reducing the amount of time a person spends in bed. It doesn't help to lay in bed for 10 hours or more, when they only get six hours of sleep. That's a lot of wasted time spent stressing about falling asleep and not getting any. It's more important to work on getting a sleep schedule where you go to bed and then fall asleep.
Try CBTI Yourself
Dr. Baron shares a few resources on CBTI that a patient can try at home before seeking professional help.
She highly recommends The Insomnia Workbook by Stephanie Silberman or Quiet Your Mind and Get to Sleep by Colleen Camey. Both are books that help walk you through CBTI and provides exercises to help you finally get to sleep.
For people interested in a more tech savvy approach, there are apps like CBTI Coach, Sleepio, and SHUTi that all turn the tenets of CBTI into fun coaching apps that help you track your progress.
It's important to know that a lot of the techniques in CBTI can be difficult when you first start doing them. The exercises can take a few weeks to see any results. They require commitment and a bit of discipline to be effective. Your sleep health is a lot like you physical health. You can't go to the gym twice and assume you'll be fit, it takes work, repetition, and forming good habits to reap the benefits of the therapy.
If You're Still having Trouble Sleeping, Seek Help
If self guided CBTI doesn't seem to be working for you, you may want to seek professional help. Meeting with a sleep doctor make sure they don't have any other serious sleep problems besides insomnia. They can also act as a coach assisting in further CBTI help.
It can take a few weeks to get into a sleep clinic. Dr. Baron suggests that while you wait you start logging your sleep, so that you can discuss the results with your doctor on your first visit.
Treatment at a sleep clinic usually takes 3-4 visits, and over 70% of patients see improvements in their sleep at the end of the series of treatments.
Sleep clinics are covered by most insurance providers.
ER or Not: Mountain Biking Went over the Handlebars
Say you're soaring down the trail on a mountain bike. You hit a rock going a bit too fast, and go up and over the handlebars. Should you go to the ER?
Troy says it depends on your injury.
Any road rash, scrapes, or minor cuts are not an emergency and can be treated by yourself or at an urgent care clinic.
Broken bones, twisted ankles, or injured joints can be serious, but can be scanned and treated at an urgent care. The clinic physician at these facilities can take an x-ray and determine if you need emergency care.
The most serious injury in a mountain bike accident is a concussion. If you hit your head and are experiencing confusion, vomiting or you lost consciousness, go the the ER immediately. Concussions can be potentially life threatening and need to be assessed by a doctor as soon as possible.
Facebook Changes Algorithm to Reduce Reach of Sensational Health Claims
Medical misinformation is spread mostly through social media. These stories often have no evidence and can promote remedies that can be downright harmful. These stories include stories about smoothies that can cure cancer, essential oils as alternatives to important medical intervention, and - in a more dire situation - a series of articles that claimed that drinking bleach could cure children of autism.
According to a recent pair of articles by INC.com and FastCompany, the sharing of these stories have become such a problem that Facebook has been retooling its algorithm to help reduce the spread of medical misinformation.
Troy admits that even physicians can have trouble making sense of scientific and medical claims, especially those shared online. Bad science can sometimes even be published by trusted news outlets. So how can you make sure the information you read online is real?
Make sure the article references a study with a link that you can read yourself. Often a quick read of just the abstract of a study will show serious problems with the research the article is based on.
Check to make sure the article is based on multiple studies from reputable journals. Single studies are often proven wrong by additional tests and more exhaustive studies. Additionally, there are scientific journals that will publish anything for money. Make sure the study isn't from one of those.
If the article wants you to click on a link or buy something, it probably isn't real.
Be skeptical. Always. The internet is full of more bad information than good. You should assume an article is fake until proven otherwise.
Google the medical claim. If there's been a medical breakthrough, other places online will be publishing about it. Double check it isn't a one-off study.
Doubt articles that make you emotional. If an article aims to make you fearful, frustrated, or upset, there's a good chance they're trying to sell you something. Good science isn't overly emotional.
Read more than the headlines.
According to the article by Fast Company, 75% of the top 10 most shared health articles were false or based on bad information. In fact, some of these articles included advice that was potentially harmful.
One study about depression was shared in The Guardian. It claimed that depression was not due to a chemical imbalance, but by a lack of fulfillment in one's life. Researchers found that the claims made were not backed by and research. The article was actually based on an excerpt from a book by a lay person who was vehemently against psychiatry.
Be diligent and a critical online consumer. If you read something, don't act on it, don't share it until after you see if it's worthwhile.
Just Going to Leave This Here
On this episode's Just Going to Leave This Here, Scot is still doing Tai Chi and learning the most challenging part of learning something new and Troy bought new socks as a treat for his feet.
Talk to Us
If you have any questions, comments, or thoughts, email us at hello@thescoperadio.com.
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Does that expensive sleep tracker on your…
Date Recorded
July 02, 2019 Health Topics (The Scope Radio)
Mens Health
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Twice a year in the United States we change our…
Date Recorded
March 07, 2019 Health Topics (The Scope Radio)
Family Health and Wellness Transcription
Announcer: Health information from experts supported by research. From University of Utah Health, this is thescoperadio.com.
Interviewer: There are a lot of jokes out there about spring forward Daylight Savings Time, lose that hour of sleep. Is there actually a significant health impact to losing that hour of sleep? Well, we're going to find out right now. Dr. Kelly Baron is a clinical psychologist with specialty training in behavioral sleep medicine. Losing this hour of sleep, is it going to affect me?
Dr. Baron: The most interesting thing is that twice a year we have this Daylight Saving Time, either spring forward or fall back, and it's like a giant experiment in the population about what happens when you gain or lose an hour of sleep. And so what we notice is there's actually an increase in heart attacks, an increase in motor vehicle accidents in the couple of days surrounding that spring forward.
And actually, in the fall, there's the opposite effect, a decrease for a few days. And, you know, I notice that I'm early for things over the fall back and then late a little bit, you know. So it does affect your body's clock. So you lose an hour, but also you're waking up at a time your body thinks you should be sleeping, and in the fall you enjoy that extra extension of your sleep. And so it's a really good time to bring awareness to what sleep does for our health because everybody feels it so acutely for those few days, and it's across the whole population.
Interviewer: You know, I think most of us know that sleep's important, but maybe we just kind of don't realize how important to our health it is beyond just feeling a little drowsy the next day if we don't get enough sleep. But, man, your story about the two time changes and how it affects people, that's crazy. So what is a good strategy for dealing with the time change?
Dr. Baron: You're really best off to maintain a consistent schedule, to get up at the same time because that morning is really the anchor of your sleep schedule. And then, you could even think, if you'd like to, to gradually move your sleep schedule forward. Most people probably aren't going to do that, but the best thing you can really do is not oversleep too much over the weekend of Daylight Saving Time.
Interviewer: How long does it usually take for somebody to kind of acclimate to that time change?
Dr. Baron: It may take you three or four days.
Interviewer: Okay. So don't beat yourself up too much about it.
Dr. Baron: Wednesday or Thursday. I mean, so you're going to be tired in the morning, or maybe you'll be a little bit late to work.
Interviewer: At least you got an excuse once a year, right?
Dr. Baron: Tell them I told you it's okay.
Interviewer: All right. Well, sounds fair, and I think maybe Daylight Savings Time a good opportunity for all of us, maybe, to reevaluate and take a look at our sleep habits, our sleep schedules, and make sure that we're getting all that healthy sleep that we need.
Announcer: Have a question about a medical procedure? Want to learn more about a health condition? With over 2,000 interviews with our physicians and specialists, there's a pretty good chance you'll find what you want to know. Check it out at thescoperadio.com. MetaDescription
How to get your daily routine back on track after daylight savings time in the United States.
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