The Truman Charities Podcast
Truman Charities is the only podcast that donates $250 to each of our guests' charity of choice.
Jamie Truman, connects with individuals who are making a significant impact in their communities. From New York Times bestselling authors to innovative farmers, we share the untold stories of those who are shaping the world around us. We feature trailblazers, influencers, and innovators who are driving positive change, such as the lawyer who fought Dupont for two decades to protect our water and the vital work of an organization dedicated to supporting women who have been trafficked within the United States.
Jamie Truman is the co-founder of Truman Charities, an entirely volunteer-run organization. Since its inception in 2010, Truman Charities has successfully raised over $2 million for a variety of charitable causes.
In addition to her work with Truman Charities, Jamie is also the author of the bestselling book "Vanishing Fathers: The Ripple Effect on Tomorrow's Generation." This book has generated over $80,000 for charities supporting at-risk youth, as 100% of the book's proceeds are donated to these vital organizations.
The Truman Charities Podcast
The Hidden Cost of Poor Sleep: Weight, Anxiety and More with Dr. Brown | Restful Sleep MD Ep. 148
Suffering from anxiety, weight gain, or brain fog? Poor sleep could be causing your biggest health issues — and your kids are just as vulnerable.
In this episode, Dr. Funke Afolabi-Brown, board-certified sleep physician and author of Beyond Tired: A Sleep Physician’s Guide to Solving Your Child’s Sleep Problems for Good, explains how sleep impacts our mood, hormones and long-term health. From unhealthy food cravings to hyperactivity in your kids, she shares surprising signs of poor sleep and how we can start to address them.
Dr. Brown also tackles some of the most common questions and misconceptions about sleep: Can you really “catch up” on sleep during the weekend? Is it worth waking up early to exercise if it means less rest? Does that nightly glass of wine help (or hurt) your sleep?
Whether it’s insomnia, sleep apnea, or bedwetting, tune in for practical, science-backed tips to get a better night’s rest!
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Email: info@trumancharities.com
This episode was post produced by Podcast Boutique https://podcastboutique.com/
Ever wonder if your child's hyperactivity might actually be a sleep issue? Why do you wake up groggy even after a full night in bed? Is your late night glass of wine really wrecking your REM sleep? And if you're trying to lose weight by sacrificing one hour of sleep to hit the gym, are you doing more harm than good?
Speaker 1:I'm joined by the incredible Dr Brown, board certified sleep medicine physician, mom and founder of Restful Sleep MD. She also is the author of Beyond Tired, a must read for anyone feeling burnt out and sleep deprived. We're busting myths about alcohol, insomnia, sleepwalking and more, plus practical tips to finally get better sleep, starting tonight. One of dr brown's quotes is sleep isn't a luxury, it's a biological necessity, and when we treat it that way, everything changes. Before we dive into this amazing information and tips about sleep, please take a moment to rate and review this podcast.
Speaker 1:Truman Charities is a 100% volunteer-based organization and the reviews are essential in growing our podcast. So please take a moment, scroll down, hit the five stars and rate a short review on why you enjoy this podcast. Also, don't forget to hit the subscribe button so you don't miss any future episodes. Okay, now let's welcome Dr Brown to Truman Charities. Dr Brown, thank you so much for coming on to talk with us today, because I think that a lot of people feel like me and sleep is kind of a mystery, and I want to dive a little bit deeper into that and know why it's important for children. I have great questions about that, and also with adults too, why it's so important and some, maybe some tips you could give us. But before that, I want to know a little bit about you, and why did you decide to focus on sleep.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, jamie. My focus on sleep came from my own experience with lack of sleep. That'll do it, I know right. So I'm someone who needs a lot of sleep, or at least enough sleep, and going through training, right from medical school all the way up to all my extra specialty trainings I did and combine that with starting a family, having kids, you know, and things like that, sleep was in short supply and I struggled and had significant anxiety, was just really struggling to parent, to just really thrive, and so navigating all of that, realizing what was really the missing link as far as I was concerned was getting good sleep and setting the right boundaries and honoring my sleep as something that I needed to perform. It became a mission of mine to help others because I realized if I can experience this as a physician who was telling everybody else to sleep was not sleeping myself. Imagine what other professional women are doing, other parents are doing, and so I think that's really what motivated me to decide to make this my career.
Speaker 1:Right, because when you go onto your website, restful Sleep MD, I did love that you mentioned that sleep is your superpower, so let's talk a little bit. And you also wrote a book which we'll talk a little bit about, that which is Beyond Tired, which I'm sure a lot of parents would need to read, that along with, I think, probably everybody. But let's talk a little bit about some of the pediatric sleep disorders. So first, what are some signs that your child is experiencing a sleep disorder?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they could seem a little bit non-specific to start Like. You might have a child who has focus issues, for instance, so they have a hard time sitting. Still, they're irritable, they may be impulsive, they may be difficult to wake up. You might have kids who just wake up multiple times in the middle of the night. They may have a hard time falling asleep and then when you delve into more detail, you may notice that maybe their sleep is restless. They might be snoring. So I would say there's symptoms you might notice during the night, right in the middle of the night, and then you tend to see daytime manifestations of those things and while many times people think, oh, maybe this is ADHD, I would say oftentimes than not, there's some sleep components that's contributing to the issues.
Speaker 1:You know what that's so funny that you mentioned that? Because I interviewed Dr Sachs. He's a pediatrician and he said that lack of sleep he saw a lot of times with children that were not sleeping well, mimicked ADHD a lot of times, and once they were able to fix their sleep that those symptoms started to fade. That is really interesting to me. So tell me a little bit about what you can do as a parent to help improve the sleep of your child.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I would say basics are just so fundamental, it's so important and many times we just bypass that and we're looking for the big, scary things. So start with a healthy sleep routine. Start with having a consistent bedtime routine. As much as our kids, especially if they're toddlers, might fight, you know, going to bed at a certain time. They may have FOMO until they're toddlers might fight, you know, going to bed at a certain time. They may have FOMO until they're getting out of bed frequently or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:You really want to try to help set those boundaries and set them early, Because when you set them up with a healthy sleep habit, it's really going to pay off on the long run. So, making sure they go to bed at a certain time, making sure they wake up at a certain time, making sure that they have, you know, a routine calming activities before bed whether it's PJs and they brush their teeth and they read a book and you cuddle, whatever that looks like and then making sure that you know you're watching what the environment looks like. The environment needs to be cool, it needs to be dark, because all those things will disrupt their sleep. Okay, they're too hot. They will not sleep well.
Speaker 1:So there's two questions from when you were talking. Is that okay? So is it really important for you know, children and adults too, to try to go to sleep and wake up at the same time? And then, why is it because I have heard that several times that it's better for you to sleep in a cooler environment? Why is that?
Speaker 2:Because I have heard that several times that it's better for you to sleep in a cooler environment. Why is that? Yeah, those are great questions. So for the cooler environment? What happens when we're sleeping is your core body temperature actually drops, and so this is so essential for you to really get that deep, restorative sleep. So when you sleep in an environment that's cool, guess what? It helps your core body temperature drop faster.
Speaker 2:Another thing that could help is taking a bath. A warm bath will help drop your core body temperature. Having a fan in the room, you know, having air conditioning, making sure that you're wearing breathable pajamas and things like that so all of that can improve your sleep quality. So think about when you're you know you're in a room where maybe the AC is broken You're not going to sleep well. You sleep in fits, and our kids do the same as well. They're clammy, they're sweaty, they're uncomfortable, and it impacts their sleep quality.
Speaker 2:Now, with the consistent bedtime and wake-up time, that is really important because our bodies have what we call an internal clock or circadian rhythm, and that really controls not just our sleep and wake cycle.
Speaker 2:It actually controls so many other activities what we call physiological activities in our lives. So when you use a bathroom, when your blood pressure rises and drops your hormones, how they're regulated, all those things are dictated by the circadian rhythm. So when you put that circadian rhythm on a clock that's fixed, it actually helps all those other processes. It helps them work well and then it also helps your body to anticipate sleep at the right time, right. Your body's not wondering are we going to sleep right now? Is it 10 pm today or is it 2 am? Is it 7 pm or is it 9 pm, right? So when you have that regularity with when you go to sleep and then when you wake up, you're literally because that circadian rhythm or internal clock is 24 hours, about 24 hours a little bit longer than 24 hours. So every morning it sort of resets, so it starts counting again, so that's why that regularity is so important.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's interesting, and so I had a question about kids, and I had this issue with one of my sons a little while ago, which is sleepwalking. What causes that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so sleepwalking is what we call a sleep-related behavior or what we call parasomnia. There's sleep talking, sleepwalking, sleep terror all of those things fall under that umbrella and these are just behaviors that children experience, some adults as well. That typically occurs when you're transitioning from one stage of sleep to another, and so the brain is almost like caught between sleep and wake. But they're asleep, right. If you try to stop or wake them or you say, wait, what are you doing here, they're going to look so confused, right. So they're really stuck in that. It's just that phenomenon where they're almost like between that sleep and wake phase.
Speaker 2:Many times it tends to just go away on its own. If there's safety issues like you have kids who are trying to go down the steps you don't want them to hurt themselves you may need to set up, like precautions or, like you know, a gate or whatever. If they're sleep deprived or under a lot of stress, that might also contribute to sleepwalking. So you want to make sure you address that, get them enough sleep and things like that. But most times it just goes away on its own.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were trying to figure that out and I asked my pediatrician and he said you know, is there anything stressful going on with my son? And I was like no, he's like five. And then I thought about it and my stepson was actually moving and going to college and it was stressing him out that his brother was leaving and it didn't click for us until we were really thinking about it. So that makes a lot of sense. And then once he went away to college and he kind of got used to the new routine, it went away. But I have one more question that I want to ask you about kids and that's bedwetting. So some parents have no problems with it and the kids just sort of naturally stop doing that, and then other parents seem to have a real difficulty with it with their children. So can you tell us a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Yes, so bedwetting is a very you know it could be a very difficult thing to deal with. There are many reasons why some kids might have bedwetting. Sometimes it might be because they have an underlying sleep disorder. So if they have something like sleep apnea, where they have pauses in breathing and snoring during sleep, they might manifest with bedwetting, in which case you really want to address that underlying cause. Sometimes it may be, you know, things like they're just not very aware of that sensation of a full bladder, and so some of the strategies we would recommend in that situation is around almost like retraining their bladder, so avoiding drinking excessively at bedtime, making them do what we call a double void, so they use the bathroom before they get into bed and then, just before they fall asleep, they use the bathroom again, and then, you know, sometimes you may need to wake them up in the middle of the night to use it just again to train them to not hold so much urine at once. And then there are other things. There's structural reasons Some children who have chronic constipation.
Speaker 2:In fact, I see that a lot, especially with kids with, like, autism and ADHD and things like that, where maybe they're not eating that really super robust, high fiber diet right, and so constipation may actually contribute to them wetting their bed. It's a very interesting phenomenon. So you want to teach them how to empty well, and things like that. In some situations we may need to use medications, but oftentimes, once we work with some of these behavioral strategies, there are other things like using a bell we call it the bell and pad technique, where they literally wear underwear that alarms a little bit when they are about to go, and so it kind of teaches them to get up and use the bathroom. So there are different, mainly behavioral things that we can use to address it. There are medical conditions that we need to address which might contribute to bedwetting, and in some very rare situations we may need to use medications.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's really interesting. I never heard about kind of the constipation, but I would assume maybe it's just the pressure and that might push onto the bladder. Oh, that's fascinating. So you were mentioning kids with sleep apnea, like excessive snoring. So what exactly is that and what causes it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So sleep apnea is when you have pauses in your breathing during sleep, snoring and pauses in your breathing during sleep. That's not a good thing to do because when you're pausing you're not getting oxygen into your body, which means your brain is not getting the oxygen it needs. It puts the body under a lot of stress. It's quite common in adults. It's actually common in children, but it's often underdiagnosed because we hear snoring and we think, oh okay, they just snore, it sounds kind of cute, right? No, it's a sign that they're not breathing. So if your child is snoring and the reason why they can't have. So what causes sleep apnea?
Speaker 2:There are many reasons. Sometimes it's being overweight and just having that excess fat in the neck and fat in the tongue can contribute to sleep apnea. No-transcript child is going to sleep, the airway gets blocked, they're not able to sleep. We might also see it in children who have what we call cranial deformity. So sometimes you have children who maybe have a smaller chin. They may have a sort of mid face that's a little bit more crowded and so that crowds the upper airway. Or some children have larger tongues. You might also have children who have syndromes like Down syndrome.
Speaker 2:So there are many risk factors, but at the end of the day, what is happening is not good. They're not breathing well. If they don't breathe well, they don't get oxygen. If their brain doesn't get oxygen, they act out during the day. It's not good, and so the way we tend to diagnose it through what we call a sleep study, and so this is just a test that has multiple channels, that monitors their breathing all night long, and so it's usually done in a sleep lab for children.
Speaker 2:For adults, you could do it at home. Few practices like mine will do a home sleep test at home for the right patient, which is very convenient. And then, once you get that diagnosis of sleep apnea, then we start to talk through treatment. There are different treatment options. It might be surgery, where you take out the tonsils and adenoids. It might be what we call maxillary palatal expansion with the orthodontics. So we work very closely with our dentists and our orthodontists. Where these children, because of the way their face is formed, they are at risk for sleep apnea, so we help with changing that using this really cool and very special devices that bring down that hard palate and so it allows there to be more room when they're breathing. And then the other thing sometimes we'll do some medications and you know, treating allergies and some of the other things that might contribute to sleep apnea.
Speaker 1:And so let's talk a little bit about sleep apnea in adults, then. Is it typically the same kind of the same thing that you do with children? Is it the same type of test that you'll do with adults?
Speaker 2:It's a little different For adults. It's a little more straightforward. You usually almost always will get a sleep study. That can be done at home For children. If you have a child who has some other medical conditions, you probably want to do the test in the sleep lab and so when you get the results, the treatment also is different for adults a little bit. So instead of going straight to surgery, you might do something like what we call CPAP, or continuous positive airway pressure, where a lot of people have heard of that.
Speaker 2:It's that machine. Many people don't like it, but it is life-saving. It is life-saving Just like keep your mind open. If you think about it, it kind of stents open the airway and allows you to breathe. We do oral appliance therapy, which are this very personalized and fabricated, I would say, devices that you put in your mouth kind of looks like a night guard, but it's definitely it's custom for you, and it advances the jaw forward so that you can read better at night. And then you know. We have worked with our orthodontists as well, where they're kind of creating more room in the airway. In some situations we might do surgery, and then for those who have overweight or obesity, we now have the weight loss medications, which some of them have been actually approved for improving sleep apnea in patients with obesity.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, yeah, that may be intense then. Yeah, because it typically improves with weight loss as well. So let's talk about insomnia. So I hear this all the time from a lot of my friends. It seems to be a lot of people in like 40s, 50s and up that seem to deal with insomnia. So tell me a little bit about what causes that and what's happening.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So insomnia pure and simple is defined as difficulties falling asleep, staying asleep or early morning awakening, meaning that there's something is wrong going on. Now, whatever it is that could have triggered insomnia may have been long gone, meaning like maybe you had a new job, loss of a loved one, you moved, whatever, and it triggered a few sleepless nights. And now a few sleepless nights has become months, sometimes years, of not sleeping well. And so it creates this cycle where, as soon as your head hits the pillow, you know all bets are off. You really cannot guarantee that you're able to sleep, and so you can imagine going into bed, not sure if you're able to sleep, what that does with what I call your sleep confidence. You don't know, you don't trust your body to sleep. Sleep confidence you don't know. You don't trust your body to sleep. And so, before we know it, you start relying on supplements, you start relying on sleep medications, you start changing medications and increasing the doses and going from pillar to post.
Speaker 2:So the main way we treat insomnia is really look at what we call cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. It's a technique where we look at the thoughts. So remember I told you about your sleep confidence, right? So we address the thoughts, we address certain behaviors that you're doing that might be getting in the way of your sleep. So maybe you think, oh well, I don't sleep, so I'm going to lay in bed for 12 hours and hope I get six hours of sleep. That's actually counterproductive. So we change your behavior. So we're trying to do a special technique we call it stimulus control where you're limit, actually limiting the amount of time you spend in bed while awake. Yeah, because imagine laying in bed for 12 hours and hoping you sleep.
Speaker 2:Before you know it, your brain starts to make associations that the bed is where we stay awake. And so, even though your intention is to sleep, your brain starts to learn what we call a conditioned arousal to stay in bed and you know, just be awake. So we retrain your brain to learn that the bed is for sleep and you only sleep in bed. And then we also do different things, like the sleep hygiene. So if you're drinking caffeine, you want to cut back. If you're taking alcohol, you want to cut back.
Speaker 2:So we start to work on some of the you know, those sleep habits that do not promote good sleep. So that's really typically the gold standard, and you can do it with the apps now that do CBTI. There are workbooks that you can buy online, and then there are providers like myself, or what we call sleep psychologists, that also offer this treatment. You definitely want to make sure, especially if you've done more of the sort of the DIY, that you still feel stuck and you're getting to that point where you're needing medication. Then it might be time to speak with a sleep specialist.
Speaker 1:So I heard that you mentioned alcohol and I hear this. I hear conflicting things from different people. Does even one glass of wine affect your sleep and your REM cycle?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So here's the thing about alcohol it's a sedative, so it puts you to sleep, and so some people, especially people with insomnia, use it as a sedative. If they have a hard time sleeping, they just take a glass or two of wine to sleep. Now, the problem with that is that it may put you to sleep quickly, but the way it's processed in our system, especially our liver, is that it may put you to sleep quickly, but the way it's processed in our system, especially our liver, is that it processes very, very quickly. It's metabolized very quickly.
Speaker 2:So by the second half of the night, you get what we call a rebound phenomenon, because what you get at the beginning of the night is, even though you're asleep, you're not necessarily getting all the right cycles of sleep, and so now, once it's left your system, you now have this.
Speaker 2:Everything's just out of whack because your body's now trying to make up for what it's missed during that first half of the night. You start to have really, really weird dreams. You may notice that you're waking up a lot. You're tossing and turning more, you may wake up a lot to use the bathroom, and you wake up exhausted because you're really not getting very consolidated, good quality sleep, which is what most people will call that hangover effect, right? So ideally we would say a few hours before bed you want to avoid significant, any you know, amount of alcohol. I mean of course I don't want you taking drinking alcohol at lunch, you know, with the really just big I mean, especially with all the research we've heard about alcohol, I would say you just really do want to drink responsibly and really look at those health consequences, not just within the sphere of your sleep, right?
Speaker 1:And I've also heard a lot of different information when it comes to sleep deprivation and your increase in dementia and Alzheimer's. Is that correlated with lack of sleep, with the brain health?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. We're seeing a lot of that. So there's studies now that show that when you miss out on certain stages of sleep, especially deep sleep, what you're missing out on is the ability of your brain to do a cleansing work, and there's certain channels that have been discovered. It's called the glymphatic system. G-ly do a cleansing work and there's certain channels that have been discovered. It's called the glymphatic system, g-lymphatic system. So it's similar to the lymphatic system in our bodies and what it does is in about deep sleep. It kind of opens up those channels to get rid of any buildup of materials that have accumulated over the course of the day.
Speaker 2:So if you don't sleep well, those products are there, and some of those products those waste products, have been found to be a contributor to the development of Alzheimer's. So things like amyloid beta is one of them. So you do start to see over time, even us right, like after a night of poor sleep, you feel like you're already like wait, where are my keys? Again, wait, what did I say? What's that person's name? You start to notice that fogginess already. So you can imagine what this does just over time.
Speaker 1:Right. It sounds like when you're sleeping is kind of when your body cleans everything out. So if you're not able to do that, it just sort of accumulates. So does that have anything to do with? So I hear this from you, hear this from different people all the time. They say, okay, when it comes to weight loss, you should get up really early and even if you lose an hour or two or sleep, it's better for you to work out to get your body moving. And then other people are saying that no sleep, and quality sleep is way better for weight loss. So tell us a little bit about sleep and trying to lose weight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I love that we're busting so many myths today, Jamie.
Speaker 1:I love it. Well, there's so many and I hear from you know clips from different you know specialists and doctors and all this stuff, and it gets a little overwhelming and confusing.
Speaker 2:It is especially for someone who's like I, just want to do what's right by myself, right? So when it comes to weight loss and sleep, what we know is that sleep regulates our metabolism, right. So that's one of the functions of sleep. You have hormones that are released. Some certain hormones get higher during sleep, some certain hormones get lower. So all that regulatory process cortisol, for instance, should be low when you sleep. And so you can imagine if, for instance, cortisol, instead of being low, is high because you're stressed and you're up all night either trying to fight to breathe because you have sleep apnea, or you know you have insomnia or you have something else that's really putting you under a lot of stress, then what happens? Cortisol is high. That's the fight-flight hormone, right? So you need rest and digest, not fight-flight. So all that can spill over into our day and impact our metabolism, because now you're looking for ways to conserve energy and accumulate energy, because you didn't get that natural restorative energy with good sleep. So what are you going to do? You're more likely going to pick up high carb foods, something sugars, something that gives you energy quickly. So that's one of the first things we start to see. Then another piece is hormones like insulin. Those hormones are also regulated during sleep. So if you don't get good sleep, you get what we call impaired. You can't develop what we call impaired glucose tolerance, where your insulin channels are just not working well.
Speaker 2:And then there are two special hormones. They call them the appetite hormones. One is called you know, we're getting a little nerdy here One is called leptin. Leptin is what we call the satiety hormone. It's what lets you know you're full. Right, we all have it. You feel full. Because that leptin is high. It's saying, okay, we're full. Ghrelin is what we call our hunger hormone. Right, it's what lets you know oh my, I guess I haven't eaten in a while. I better go grab a sandwich. Right, when you sleep you're supposed to have sort of a higher leptin right, and a higher leptin to say you're full and a lower ghrelin to say you're not hungry. And you almost get a reversal of that pretty much when you don't sleep well. So guess what? You're hungry and if you look at your experiences when you're not sleeping, you're craving more and you're craving again.
Speaker 2:Executive function is impaired by poor sleep, so you're not necessarily making the best executive decision at 3 am when you say, oh my gosh, I need a snack. Literally, you're not going to the fridge and looking for a carrot. You're going to go and grab that carrot cake right. And so between that decision-making capacity right, between needing something fast to help fix your energy, depleted energy, and then those hormonal changes, it's going to be hard to lose weight effectively. And another thing is during sleep. Again, resilience is built in sleep. Emotional intelligence is built in sleep, the ability to make executive decisions. You will not be motivated after a bad night of sleep to get up and go work out. You're just like no, I'm tired, I'm just going to conserve my energy. So now you have this vicious cycle where you seem to be eating more, probably eating less of what is desirable for your body, and you're exercising less, and then, with the hormone changes, weight loss becomes a struggle.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, that makes so much sense once you explained it. So tell me what are a few things that a lot of people do that are terrible right before if they're trying to get good sleep, like a couple habits that some people have that are just not a good idea and do not promote healthy sleep.
Speaker 2:Few things, I'll keep it few because I'm kind. So I would say starting with, let's start with caffeine. Right, a lot of us are drinking caffeine too late. Caffeine is a stimulant. It takes about six to has a very long, what we call a half life, meaning the amount of time it takes for it to be expelled from our bodies. So taking caffeine for lunch or iced tea for dinner can affect your sleep quality a lot. Right, oh, even tea, okay, iced tea.
Speaker 1:I didn't think about iced tea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you even have to pay attention, because some people will say well, I only drink decaf. Decaf does not mean caffeine free. Decaf means they reduce the caffeine content. So if you're someone who's super sensitive, you have to be careful. You might need to just completely go for caffeine free or just choose another beverage altogether. So that's one Alcohol we talked about already.
Speaker 2:Right, eating like heavy meals before bed will contribute to poor sleep quality, because your body again needs to go into rest and digest, not like actively trying to process this thing. So many people may start to feel reflux, heartburn, things like that if they eat too close to bedtime. That being said, going to bed hungry will affect your sleep as well. So here's what I usually will recommend. You know, have your dinner, depending on what bedtime is. Have your dinner about two or three hours before bed. But if you have a child or if you're, you know if you're busy or things like that, you might start to feel hungry again. I don't want you going to bed hungry. Grab a handful of nuts, grab a little healthy snack, some slices of meat, grab like slices of apple and maybe some peanut butter. Just a little bedtime snack is good. So that's something that I would say to fix that.
Speaker 2:And then, of course, there's the phone. Right, the phone, the phone. You knew I was going to come there. So you know, using that just before bed for most people impacts their sleep, right, if you're scrolling on Instagram or watching videos on TikTok, all those things are very stimulating and activating for you and you need to be able to wind down, not wind yourself up for sleep.
Speaker 2:And then another thing with the phones is, you know, the screen, the lights, the blue, attractive light that keeps us plugged in. It really impacts our sleep. It decreases our brain's ability to produce melatonin and so there might be a delay in how your brain produces melatonin. I'm not even as concerned about that piece as I am about just that activation that you get from what you're watching. It's very hard to say, oh, I'm just going to watch for five minutes. Many people you're like, oh, five minutes. And then an hour later you're like, oh, my gosh, I'm still here, right, and it's nighttime, you're tired, so that self-control is also harder to regulate. So, so many things, put your phone away, I would say, 30 to 60 minutes before bed, have a nice bedtime routine and read a paper book or do some journaling or other things that would actually nourish you and help you feel better, so you can get good sleep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I noticed when I had both of my sons that when I was nursing throughout the night if I picked up my phone it disrupted, I couldn't go right back to sleep. And so I nixed that. Like right away, no TV, no phone or anything, yeah, and then also reading a book right before going to bed, you know, for 30 minutes or something like that has really been helpful as well, but it is very tempting. But I have heard that the phone is not good. Okay, so tell me a little bit about Restful Sleep, md. I know you have a really great concierge service and some other services that you have for people, and then I want to know kind of what inspired you to write your book Beyond Tired book, and then who could benefit from that book.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, so my company is Restful Sleep MD and really our mission is to deliver sleep services in any capacity we can to as many people as we can, and our goal is to help individuals optimize sleep so that they can thrive and reach their fullest potential. And I do this multiple ways. I do this through my speaking so I do have a lot of speaking opportunities where I teach, train, conduct workshops and things and consultation services for sleep and then also through my practice. That's the Restful Sleep Place. So that's our very highly personalized concierge sleep practice for children and adults with various sleep disorders. So a lot of patients like we talk about sleep apnea, insomnia, narcolepsy, all these sleep disorders really is what we address there, and we use very, very holistic strategies to make this happen. We don't do, you know, a lot of sometimes you want to just get a pill or medication or something to fix it. We really go after the root cause. So that's really the practice and we see patients in California, in Pennsylvania as well as in New Jersey. And then, finally, my book is just my gift to the world. Honestly, it was a real when it's a work, a labor of love, but it just really gave me so much joy to be able to put that out there.
Speaker 2:It's called Beyond Tired A Sleep Physician's Guide to Solving your Child Sleep Problems for Good, and the reason why I wrote it was because I had a lot of folks coming. First of all, of course, I am not licensed in all states, so I couldn't see everybody. Even if I was, it's not possible. But I mean, a lot of times people would come with questions that I felt like, oh my goodness, I wish you know your pediatrician had told you this. I wish your primary care doctor had told you this. I wish you knew this, you had made these choices and maybe you wouldn't even be here today, right?
Speaker 2:And so these are very practical, evidence-based strategies that I share on how to improve sleep right from pregnancy. So it goes all the way across, from pregnancy all the way to adulthood. I actually have a chapter on there also on parent sleep, on mom's sleep when you're parenting, if you're co-parenting. I also have a chapter there on children who have autism and ADHD. And then the beauty of it is, you know if you have a child who's a newborn, you know you have strategies on what to expect and what's normal, what's not normal, and if you have a child who's on their way to college. We also share strategies on that, so it kind of covers the whole breadth. I usually say it's kind of like the sleep manual they should have sent you home with when you had your baby.
Speaker 1:You were talking and the first word that came to me was manual. I'm like this is the manual for sleep that everyone needs to read and I wish I would have had when I was pregnant, oh my gosh. So, dr Ren, how can people follow you and look at what you're offering and get in contact with you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I'm on. You know my website. I think that's the first place to go restfulsleepmdcom. You'll find there links to my. I have a YouTube channel where I share tips on sleep and things like that. I have a blog as well, as you know. Just that you could sign up for a newsletter where you'll get weekly information on sleep around what's new, what's latest, what's changing within the sleep space. And then also I'm on social media, so on TikTok, on Instagram and on Facebook, as at RestfulSleepMD. So those will be places to find me.
Speaker 1:And of course, you can find everything in the show notes Dr Brown's book Restful Sleep, md, and all of her socials. So before I let you go, is there anything that we haven't covered that you think someone should know?
Speaker 2:I think we've covered quite a breadth. I would say just do it. That's the beautiful thing about sleep is, if you didn't do it right last night, you could try again tonight. It happens every single day.
Speaker 1:You could always start over.
Speaker 2:You can always start over, so pick one. You may just pick one and say, okay, I'm going to work on consistency and that's it, and just stay with that until you're able to go to the next step.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. Well, thank you for everything that you do for so many people. And you know, as a thank you to our guests, truman Charities donates, on their behalf, $250 to a charity of their choice. Dr Brown, you chose Hope, inspire, love. Tell us a little bit about that charity and why it's meaningful to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and this is just so generous of Truman and Tara Days. Thank you so much. So Hope Inspire Love is an incredible organization here in Pennsylvania where their main focus is really combating the issue of human trafficking with children and young women, and so they have this fantastic organizations where they go alongside these victims to help them sort of readjust to so many challenges they might be going through, and so, whether it's learning new skills, whether it's supporting them through maybe some of the legal issues, whatever it is, they really come alongside them and it's a faith-based organization. So this was really they'd come to my church, and I know a few people in my church who are part of it, and just their mission, their hearts, is just so inspiring. So I'm thankful that they get to receive this gift.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. All right, we will definitely have that in the show notes so everybody can take a look at that organization and then they can really learn a lot about it and really find out why you love this organization so much and why you're so connected to it. So I want to thank you again, dr Brown, for everything that you do and for coming on here to chat with us, and I want to thank everybody for tuning in to another episode of the Truman Charities Podcast. Wasn't that really fun Just busting all of these myths.
Speaker 1:You hear so many things from so many different people about what you should and shouldn't do for a good night's sleep, so I'm so glad that I was introduced to Dr Brown. So if you liked this episode, again, please make sure to rate and view this podcast. It really is the best way to help us grow our podcast. So and I read each and every one of them so please do that. And while you're at it, if you'd like to follow us on our socials, you can follow me on Instagram at Jamie underscore, truman Charities. You can follow me on Facebook at Truman Charities. You can follow me on LinkedIn at Jamie Truman, and so you don't miss any of our future upcoming Truman Charities events or Bethesda's Best Happy Hours. Go to TrumanCharitiescom and sign up for our newsletter there. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Truman Charities podcast. Until next time.
