The Concierge Doc Podcast with Dr. Jason Littleton, M.D.
The Concierge Doc Podcast is hosted by Dr Jason Littleton, M.D., where he features medical content to make smart lifestyle choices for optimal health, wellness, energy, youthfulness, longevity, balance, and happiness.
The Concierge Doc Podcast with Dr. Jason Littleton, M.D.
Mastering Sleep Hygiene: Energize Your Life with Dr. Littleton's 7 Restful Secrets
Could mastering sleep hygiene be the key to unlocking a more energized and fulfilling life? On this episode of the Concierge Doc Podcast, I, Dr. Jason Littleton, am here to guide you through the vital secrets of enhancing your sleep routine, drawing from insights in my book "Wellspring: The Energized Secrets to Do the Good Life." Discover practical techniques to set a consistent bedtime and learn the art of relaxation to tackle sleep anxiety, especially for those with flexible schedules like retirees. By tuning into your body's signals and creating an ideal sleep environment, you can transform both your nights and days.
Part of my MEDS protocol—Move, Eat, Drink, Sleep—this episode places special emphasis on transforming your bedroom into a sanctuary for rest. We explore how eliminating distractions, like TVs, can foster a spa-like atmosphere, while reducing caffeine and engaging in calming rituals can further enhance sleep quality. Beyond the podcast, I’m eager to connect with you on social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. Your questions and comments are always welcome as we journey together towards a well-rested and energized life. Don't miss catching me this week on Good Day Orlando at 8:45 as we continue exploring the path to wellness.
Visit Dr Jason Littleton's website: https://www.jasonmd.com/
Follow Dr Jason Littleton on Instagram and Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/therealdoctorjason/
Watch Dr Jason Littleton on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@therealdoctorjason3340
Disclaimer:
Access to the Information and materials contained in this podcast is at your own risk. The information contained is presented for the purpose of educating the consumer on a variety of wellness and health care topics (the “Information”). Nothing contained is intended to be instructional for medical diagnosis or treatment. The Information contained is compiled from a variety of sources. The Information should not be considered complete and not exhaustive and should not be in place of a visit or consultation with your own primary care doctor.
Hey friends, welcome to the Concierge Doc Podcast. I'm your host, dr Jason Littleton. I'm CEO and founder of Littleton Concierge Medicine. Welcome to the podcast. Really excited today because we're gonna talk about the fourth metric or the fourth point of the MEDS protocol sleep. I get a chance to talk to you about my sleep personal hygiene tips.
Speaker 1:I wrote in my book Wellspring the Energized Secrets to Do the Good Life. Second version Energize Again. If you don't have this book, please go ahead and go to jasonmdcom. Get this book. I think this book can change your life. I love this book. Now, one of the things I love about what I wrote and I wrote this back in 2012, is that it's simple to read and these are tips that you can use to change your life, and I think it makes a huge difference. So I'm really excited. Before we dive into this, I want to go ahead and read a little message from my compliance team.
Speaker 1:Access to the information and materials contained in this podcast is at your own risk. The information contained is presented for the purpose of educating the consumer on a variety of wellness and healthcare topics and information. Nothing contained is intended to be instructional for medical diagnosis or treatment. The information contained is compiled from a variety of sources. The information should not be considered complete and exhaustive and should not be in place of a visit or consultation with your own primary care doctor. Friends, I say this every week. It's so important to be instinctive. You know that you need to get with your PCP. Or, better yet, come make an appointment with me at Littleton Concierge Medicine so that I can hear your story and make accurate diagnosis and treatment. That's so important, so that you don't just take a snippet of something that I said or something that you heard someone else say and then run your life by that. You want to get in front of your doctor and, better yet, like I said, come make an appointment with me. Come see me in Orlando at Littleton Concierge Medicine so I can hear your story and tailor a plan just for you. It's so important. All right, so let's dive into this, and I just want to give you a couple updates before we do jump in the water here. You can catch this podcast on Apple, spotify, amazon, audible and more. You can find me on YouTube, please subscribe, click the button. Instagram, of course, facebook. Not just that. I'm pretty excited. Last Sunday we were on Fox Now and this Monday we're going to be on Good Day Orlando at 845. So please check me out there. A couple other updates In our new office that we are putting together at Littleton Concierge Medicine, our hyperbaric chamber just came in, so I'm pretty excited about that. I am ready to jump in. Let's get going. All right.
Speaker 1:Sleep hygiene. I want to talk about some of my personal tips about sleep hygiene. I think that a lot of people are not energized because they don't get great sleep and I think they don't get great sleep for a variety of reasons. But there are some things that you can do to help promote better sleep and in my book my sleep hygiene habit number one that I wrote is go to bed at the same time each night or go to bed when tired. And you know it seems like those that statement I just said go to bed at the same time each night or go to bed when tired is contradictory. But it's not really contradictory. You know it's about listening to your body. You know you can get in a routine where you know that you always seem to get tired at 10 pm and you seem to wake up at 6 am. Keep that routine.
Speaker 1:But there are some people whether it's because of a sleep disorder or a medical problem or another issue that have trouble going to sleep on a scheduled time frame, and to them I say look, don't get anxious about that. I think it's easy to get anxious when you're not falling asleep, because you start asking yourself why am I not falling asleep? And then you start looking at your clock and you realize that the sun's about to come up and you realize you haven't slept yet and that can be very anxiety provoking and that can turn into a snowball effect where you just don't sleep. Instead, relax as best as you can and don't worry about the time that you're going to sleep. Just go when your body gets tired. Lay down, relax, don't worry, don't keep on checking the clock. Of course, set your time clock if you have to get up and go to work, but relax and let your body go to sleep when it's tired. And I find that I give this tip a lot of times to some of my geriatric patients who have trouble sleeping. If they're retired, if they don't have a job to report to, then it doesn't matter if they fall asleep at six in the morning they still went to sleep, so so don't make yourself anxious or nervous by what time it is, if you don't have a deadline, if you don't have a job to report to, if you're retired, let your body tell you when to go to sleep, all right, so that's tip number one. Tip number two and this goes along with number one before you go to bed, relax.
Speaker 1:I tell my patients all the time that your mind is like a pond that needs to be stilled. Like a pond, even in the most serene pond, there are always ripples going on in the water. Likewise, your brain is always undergoing activity. However, when we sleep, the activity slows as compared to full wakefulness. In deep sleep, delta wave activity are the predominant waves recorded by an EEG electroencephalogram. These waves are high amplitude, very low frequency waves that are registered on an EEG recording mostly in stage four sleep, the deepest phase. When we are wide awake, beta waves predominate, which are waves that are high frequency. As we relax and eventually fall asleep, our brain waveforms go from beta wave between 15 to 30 hertz to alpha waves 9 to 14 hertz, to theta waves 4 to 8 hertz and finally to delta waves 1 to 3 hertz. Concomitantly, the decrease in waveform frequency coincides with our increasing relaxed state as we eventually sleep off. As we eventually slip off to sleep.
Speaker 1:I always make an analogy that if you're looking at a pond that's serene, still moving, and a frog next to you jumps in the water and all of a sudden creates this ripple effect, it's almost like you know having racing thoughts. Instead of it being serene and smooth, that frog jumping in the water is like that racing thoughts that keeps things high frequency and it keeps you from relaxing. So you want to get to a state where you can relax. You want to get to a state where you can have that serene pond sort of like setting in your mind. I think it's so important to relax so that you can focus and get sleep. Sleep hygiene habit three think on something good. Okay, I love this tip. Let me read a little bit about this.
Speaker 1:One of the top three complaints I hear when it comes to insomnia is racing thoughts, and we just talked about that. Racing thoughts only seem to bother us when we are still. During the day. They shuffle around like sediment in a juice bottle, virtually going unnoticed. However, it is when we get still, like when we are trying to go to bed, that these thoughts rise to the top of our minds like sediment falling to the bottom of a bottle of juice previously shaken. Now we have to deal with Aunt Sue's issues, the broken washing machine and the worry about the health concern. These racing thoughts can and will prevent you from getting into delta sleep. So what do you do? You deal with them. You deal with the racing thoughts.
Speaker 1:My suggestion is to keep a journal and make two columns On the left, write down the concern. On the right, put down a possible solution. Then close the book and start to relax and eventually go to sleep knowing when you wake up you are going to act on the possible solutions you wrote down in the right column. You know, on the possible solutions you wrote down in the right column, you know your mind can work with that. If you start writing down possible solutions to the racing thoughts that you've been having, your mind can work with that All right. And your mind's like, okay, okay, we got, we got a plan going, we got, we're working on this. So I'm going to go ahead and relax and go to sleep. Okay, I think when we don't try to deal with the problems, when we ignore the problems, our mind keeps reminding us that hey, there's an issue going on, there's an issue going on. There's an issue going on. It's just like that frog jumping into the pine, creating those ripples. You have that continual ripple effect in your mind. No, stop, get your journal out and deal with it. Write a possible solution. You may not know all the answers, but write something so we can get a working construct going. This is one of my favorite tips. I'm about to talk about Sleep hygiene.
Speaker 1:Habit four kick out the TV. Kick out the TV. Now look, that's if you're having sleep problems. If you're having sleep problems, kick the TV out, because it's better that you get some sleep than you have the TV in your bedroom. What you want to do is make your and this is one of my tips later. But you want to make your bedroom so comfortable. You almost feel like you're in a spa, okay, and notice in spots they don't. They don't have a TV where a person's getting massage therapy going on. They usually just have a very simple room with a massage bed, maybe some organic paintings or something that causes a person to relax, and they go about the therapy session. But when you have a TV in the room, there's a temptation to see what's on the news, what's on the sports channel, what was the latest score? And that can act like that frog jumping in the pond, creating that ripple effect. And now you have something else to think about instead of thinking about relaxing and getting some sleep.
Speaker 1:Sleep hygiene habit number five stop reading in bed. Now, I think that goes against everything that we've been told since we were young Stop reading in bed. Yeah, actually, I'm going to say that I wrote this in my book, because what I'm trying to do here is use the bed to get sleep and not for study. You can actually read in your library or you can read in another room, and you can use your library or another room associated with learning, reading and look, you should read before bed because it helps relax you, but you don't have to read in the bed. Okay, use your bed to get some sleep and to get some rest.
Speaker 1:Sleep habit. Sleep hygiene habit number six eliminate caffeine. Eliminate caffeine. Now, that can be very hard for some because caffeine is in coffee and I know that a lot of people they can't do away with their coffee, and I get it. I understand that. It was a choice that I recently made. I've discussed this on other podcasts. I no longer am a caffeine drinker. But the thing about coffee is that caffeine can stay in the blood up to 10 to 12 hours. So that coffee that you had at nine in the morning you can still have some caffeinated effect at 9 pm, and that might be the time where you're trying to get sleep. So I'm not going to talk about caffeine. I'm not going to talk about caffeine, I'm not going to.
Speaker 1:One of the things you may want to do is reduce your caffeine load or get rid of coffee altogether. Now, I know that might cause some people to cringe when I say get rid of coffee altogether, but you know what I feel, more energized on the other side. It's something to consider. If you're having sleep problems, you should consider getting rid of coffee Now. If you're not having sleep problems and going to sleep is like flicking on a light switch, you can disregard that. But if you're having sleep problems, you may want to take that drastic move so that you can get better sleep. Sleep hygiene. Habit number seven.
Speaker 1:I said in my book go to a massage room, literally go to a spa, and I alluded to this earlier in one of my other points. Not for a massage, though you might as well, since you're there, but go to a massage room and look. What do you see? Usually what you'll find is a relaxing environment with dim lights and gentle music, the perfect relaxation environment. Question why isn't your bedroom a carbon copy? You get my point. That's what I was trying to say Make your room like a spa, make your setting a situation where you can relax and get some rest, and that's so, so important. You know one of the things that I do, and I've had times. Now, look, I've had times where I couldn't get sleep. And you know one of the things.
Speaker 1:There's a favorite passage in the Bible that I love to go to, and I'm a Christian. Jesus is my risen Lord and Savior. And you know, I like to turn to scripture when I feel anxious, when I feel like, you know, something's just not right in my life, and one of the things that I wanted to share was in Psalms 3, 5. I lay down and slept, yet I woke up in safety, for the Lord was watching over me. I want to read one more Psalms 4, 8. In peace, I will lie down and sleep. For you alone, o Lord, will keep me safe. Sleep for you alone, o Lord, will keep me safe.
Speaker 1:What I like about those two passages of scripture, psalms 3.5 and Psalms 4.8,. You know it talks about going to sleep, the Lord watching over you, the Lord keeping you safe, and I think sometimes you can feel anxious about tomorrow, you can feel anxious about your life right now, and that can keep you from getting sleep. And one of the things that, as I was reading today, that really stuck out to me Psalms 4.8 says in peace, I will, I will, I will it's a decision I will lie down and sleep. So sometimes, when I have had trouble sleeping in the past, I'll just, you know, I'll read that verse or I'll say to myself in peace, I will lie down to sleep and I'll say it till it happens. You know, every day I'll say it until I get the sleep that I'm looking for. And so I wanted to share that because you know that just resonates with me and it also lets me know that the Lord, that the Lord Jesus Christ, wants me to have good sleep, wants me to have good sleep. So I go to those scriptures when I need to so I can get the best sleep that I can. And that's what I personally do.
Speaker 1:And you know, these tips that I gave today are part of my meds protocol move, eat, drink, sleep and sleep is a part of having good wellness. Like I always say, when you are well, you'll have energy. When you are not well, you'll feel tired, you'll feel like something's missing, you'll feel like something's lacking, you'll feel like something's wanting. Movie, drink, sleep are my elite laws to getting and to having the best energy of your life, and these are things that are all natural, without pharmaceuticals, and you can use the meds protocol to just be well, feel well and be more energized. You can learn more about that in my book Wellspring the Energy Secrets to Do Good Life Energize. Again, I just want to hold this up for you. Wellspring the Energy Secrets to Do Good Life Energize. Again, I just want to hold this up for you. I mean, this book is simple to read and it can be life-changing, and it's something that I personally crafted so that I can hand this to my patients at the end of the visit, so that they could take me home with them and they can continue some of the advice and tips that we shared in our consultation. So check the book out, jasonmdcom.
Speaker 1:Well, really excited. I really uh enjoyed talking with you guys today about sleep, and I'm excited to talk with you again next time. I want you to subscribe on my YouTube channel. Okay, I want you to go to Instagram, leave a comment, leave questions. I look forward to answer them. Um, and go to Facebook and all my other applications and sign up and follow me. I can't wait. Follow me, uh, this week on good day, orlando at eight, 45. I'm looking forward to seeing you guys. I can't wait to do this with you guys again.
