Fearlessly Facing Fifty And Beyond

EP208: Snooze or lose: Why women need their sleep and three things to start today for better zzz's

• Amy Schmidt • Season 3 • Episode 208

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And the F WORD IS: FATIGUE

Fearlessly Facing our sleep as we age. Sleep is a fundamental component of our health that dramatically impacts longevity, cognitive function and disease risk.

As the "Sleep Goddess," Dr. Matsumura brings her double-board certification and deep expertise to explain why sleep is particularly challenging for women navigating perimenopause and menopause. The hormonal roller coaster of this life stage directly impacts how melatonin functions in our brains, creating the perfect storm for sleep disturbances that many women mistakenly accept as an inevitable part of aging. She is a sought-after expert on women and sleep. She is the founder and CEO of Sleep Goddess MD offering individual consultations, public speaking, and workshops for practitioners. She also offers business consulting to improve team health and productivity for better sleep.

In this episode you will discover:

• Women who don't get enough sleep have up to 69% higher risk for cancer compared to men
• Hormonal changes during perimenopause and menopause significantly impact sleep quality through melatonin disruption
• Sleep archetypes are determined by our genetic "clock genes" - Artemis (early birds), Aphrodite (night owls), and Athena (societal norm)
• The DREAM formula addresses Daytime activities, Resting environment, Emotions, Archetype, and Medical conditions
• Nine out of ten women who are postmenopausal don't know they have sleep apnea because symptoms present differently than in men
• Going to bed and waking at consistent times trains your brain for better sleep
• Electronic devices should be turned off at least one hour before bedtime
• Commercial melatonin supplements are sold in doses millions of times higher than what our bodies naturally produce
• Quality sleep requires proper preparation - create an optimal sleep environment that's dark, cool and quiet
• Napping should complement good nighttime sleep, not compensate for poor sleep habits

Visit www.sleepgoddessmd.com to take Dr. Matsumura's quiz and discover your sleep archetype.

Ready to FEARLESSLY FACE all the F WORDS – be inspired and encouraged?

Get a copy of Amy’s Best selling book: CANNONBALL! FEARLESSLY Facing Midlife and Beyond here

Fearlessly Facing Fifty and Beyond has over 200 episodes with inspiration and stories to age fearlessly and connect confidently to others thriving at midlife and beyond.

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Speaker 1:

Hey, fearless Friends, it's Amy Schmidt and welcome to another episode of the Fearlessly Facing 50 and Beyond podcast. So super excited today for our show. But I wanted to start by just giving a huge thanks to all of you that have written reviews. Amazing, you know, I know that time is so valuable and so precious and there are a million more than a million podcasts for you out there to listen to. So thank you for popping in those earbuds and either taking a walk outside or cooking dinner or sharing it with a friend and taking time to write a review.

Speaker 1:

Remember, you can find me on all the socials. You can find me on the AmySchmidt on Instagram, also Instagram Fearlessly Facing 50, the F word series. That's a new one, so you can follow me there or go ahead and follow along at the website fearlesslyfacing50.com, and 50 is always spelled out. So I've got a great guest today. You know what? And we're going to be talking about the ultimate sleepover. You know, as we fearlessly face that F word of future, we need our sleep and today I've got the sleep goddess with us. Yep, exactly that's what she's known as, and it's Dr Andrea Matsumura, and we're going to be talking about this dream formula about how we can get better sleep and we know that, especially at this phase of life, if we are either perimenopausal or postmenopausal, sleep is so important and the statistics around that. Oh, we're going to dig into all of it.

Speaker 1:

So stay tuned for my episode and the podcast Fearlessly Facing 50, with my guest, dr Andrea Matsumura. Well, welcome to the show today. You know, I said a little bit in the intro about the fact that we are going to be having our best sleepover today and I got to just start off first of all by welcoming Dr Matsumura to the show today. I love your last name. I just said that, Matsumura, it's just beautiful.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you so much for having me today. I'm excited to talk to your audience about sleep and, specifically, women and their sleep habits.

Speaker 1:

I mean, we're fearlessly facing our future health right here when we're talking about sleep and I think I may have mentioned this in the intro, but I'm going to just say it again, because these statistics are unbelievable You're 70% more accident prone if you're not sleeping well, 69% higher risk for cancer and a reduced lifespan of 4.7 years if you're not getting good sleep. What is going on? You know that silly statement that says oh, I'll sleep when I'm dead. That's not what we should be saying.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there is so much data being published now around not getting enough sleep, so that study, in particular the one that reports up to 69% increased risk for cancer, that's a longitudinal study. It was a big population study done in China of 14,000 people, and specifically what's important is that it focused on women. Women were at higher risk than men were if they did not get enough sleep and there was this increased incidence of cancer within that population, and so that's a really it was a startling statistic for me to read through, and what it did for me is it made me realize that it's even more important for me to educate people, especially women, especially women who are in their menopausal phase of life, to really harness their sleep power and their potential, because it lives within every single person. We just stop listening to our cues and so then we have trouble sleeping.

Speaker 1:

We stop listening to our cues. You know, I had Dr Morgan on a few weeks ago and we talked about heart health and she said you know, a woman's first heart attack is most likely more fatal than a man's just because of the fact we put symptoms off for so long. We don't listen to our bodies and I think this is the same type of thing around sleep. You know, one thing I'd like to share is that my mom has passed, but she used to say and I can remember so many times all the wonderful things she used to talk about but I always remember my mom saying I had a terrible night's sleep. I do my best work at night. I would get up. She would write letters in the middle of the night. She was not a good sleeper. And then I kind of think about it and I can remember days in high school when I could hear her tiptoeing around, which might even mean that I'm not a good sleeper and I don't think I am a good sleeper. But is there a genetic link to this?

Speaker 2:

I'm not a good sleeper and I don't think I am a good sleeper, but is there a genetic link to this? So there is a genetic link in regards to the type of circadian rhythm that you have. So I developed this system where you can figure out what your archetype is. It's really just a way of figuring out what your circadian rhythm is. So we're all born with clock genes that live in the hypothalamus of the brain. So we're all born with clock genes that live in the hypothalamus of the brain and basically they're set for a particular time when your body wants to go to bed and when it wants to wake up, and that may not be in line with our societal norm. So some people are early birds, or what I call an Artemis, some people are night owls, or what I call an Aphrodite, and then other people fall into societal norm, which are my Athenas, and societal norm is going to bed around 10, waking up at around 6, going to bed at 11, waking up at 7.

Speaker 2:

Some people are night owls and it sounds like your mom may have been a night owl. They want to go to bed after midnight. They want to wake up at 8. They want to go to bed at midnight. They want to wake up at eight. They want to go to bed at one, wake up at nine. Society does not do. We don't plan for those type of folks, unless we lived in a place like Spain or France, where the society wakes up later, right. So then what happens is you have this person that's living in an earlier society, and then they develop sleep anxiety, and then they develop hypervigilance in their sleep, so they not only have a delayed circadian rhythm, they in addition develop insomnia because they don't want to miss waking up. So then they become hypervigilant in their sleep and they're waking up all night long because they don't want to miss waking up the next day.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that's so interesting. Sleep anxiety We've got to dig into that more. I think back to having my kids being little and I had a husband who traveled a lot and so I would say, well, I'm just going to put them to bed later, because then they'll sleep in more, and that always backfired it always backfired, it always backfired.

Speaker 2:

Kids are. Typically children are early, early to bed, early to rise. They require a whole lot more sleep and, generally speaking, they will wake up early, although those night owls who are born with the later clock genes. They tend to follow that rhythm where they will say when they were little that they would hide under their covers and read books or that they were having trouble going to sleep. But most of the time kids need to wake up early and it doesn't really matter how late you go to sleep. Your body clock will wake you up. So that's why people who are early birds, you know, you tell them hey, we have this, you know, reservation at this wonderful restaurant. But it's not until nine and they say I'm out, I'm not going to go.

Speaker 2:

I have to get up. I wake up naturally at five o'clock in the morning and I am going to be falling over my food at 930. So they just don't ever go there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, very interesting. Let's talk about this dream formula. I think this is amazing and you've developed this. I mean, this is all science.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I see your little dog back there, yeah.

Speaker 1:

There's my dog. I love it. Hey, it's real life and that's what's awesome. Let's talk about this. Can you walk me through the dream formula, because I was reading about it? It's incredible.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So you know, it's the work that pretty much every sleep medicine physician does. I just kind of developed it for my own, this method, because it allows me to teach people how complex sleep really is. We are always looking for quick solutions, and, especially with social media, there are all these quick fixes online, thinking that well, if I just do this one thing, my sleep is going to be completely fixed. But it's more complex than that.

Speaker 2:

So DREAM is the acronym that stands for your daytime activities. So what are you doing during the day that may be affecting your sleep? Then your resting environment. Believe it or not, lots of people have issues with their resting environment not being ideal. You know, it might be too loud, or they have too many lights on, or they have a TV in their bedroom or their phone in their bedroom. Then E stands for emotions we all struggle with bringing our anxiety to bed sometimes and then A is your archetype. So what is your circadian rhythm? And then the last one is M stands for medical conditions, and there's many medical conditions that can affect one's sleep. There's lots of chronic issues that people do not realize can affect your sleep. One of them is becoming menopausal, and if you have a change in your hormones, then that can certainly affect your sleep, because estrogen and progesterone play a role in how melatonin works in our brain.

Speaker 1:

So we have melatonin in our brain right now. Without taking melatonin, we haven't.

Speaker 2:

Oh, yeah, yeah. So we naturally produce melatonin from the pineal gland about four hours before we actually go to sleep, so it is what we call a chronobiotic. It is not a sleep inducer. We, we, it is sold, you know, supplements are not regulated, so you can pretty much sell anything I, I, I'm. That's not to say that supplements are bad. You just need to be cautious. It's caveat emptor, you have to really know what you're buying and and so there's all of these doses of melatonin that are out for sale over the counter and we really shouldn't be taking high doses of melatonin at bedtime. We make it in picograms. It is sold in milligrams, that's 10 to the sixth grader power.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that's a fun fact. If I'm ever on Jeopardy, I'm going to pull that one out of my back pocket. That's fascinating. Well, you know, and I think, when you're talking about supplements and, and you know, you scroll through social media and a lot of women are doing this that are postmenopausal or perimenopausal or whatever age, and they're looking at, you know, a type of mushroom that makes you sleep, or a type of sleep gummy, or a type of Advil PM, and then they'll take two because one didn't work, and then they're groggy. I mean, we're hearing it all the time. So, you know, proceed with caution around that, for sure what you're ordering. But let's talk about a good. Is there a sleep routine that we all should be doing as women that are, you know, menopausal? Is there something we should be doing every night? That would be consistent, that would create better sleep for us?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean it's pretty, it's it's. It's quite basic, but a lot of people actually do not follow this. So the first thing is to go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time every day, and it sounds simple. However, a lot of people actually don't do that. They might stay up later on the weekends or whatever their day off is. They may go to bed later or stay in bed later, and our brains really like routine.

Speaker 2:

Our brain likes to go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time. Then you want to make sure that your room is dark, cool and quiet. A lot of people have electronics in their bedroom. I like to say we have too much light in our life, so we need to actually put away electronics an hour before bed. You want to develop a routine.

Speaker 2:

Another analogy I provide is you know when we're hungry, we don't just open the refrigerator door and start shoveling food in our mouth. Right, we plan a meal. We say we're going to be hungry, I'm going to prepare food, or I'm going to go to a restaurant and it takes time to get the food You're preparing yourself to eat. We have to prepare our brains for sleep, so we can't just go, go, go, go, go, go go and then plop into bed and expect our brain to say, okay, I'm going to go to sleep. You can.

Speaker 2:

If you're chronically sleep deprived, your brain is going to be starved for sleep. You can. If you're chronically sleep deprived, your brain is going to be starved for sleep and then you'll. You may go to sleep easily, but most of us really need a wind down period. The other thing is making sure that you are understanding how your body reacts to food, to alcohol, to caffeine. You should not be drinking caffeine at least six hours before bed. It actually does have alerting effects and when people say that, well, I can drink an entire cup of coffee and go right to bed, that just proves to me that you're chronically sleep deprived.

Speaker 1:

Really, oh my gosh. I'm sharing that with my husband, who will order a double espresso at dinner and be like, oh like, but he does fall asleep. But that is interesting and I think it's so true. You have to put some thought into it. Now, I'm just thinking back to the other night when I watched the White Lotus, which I'm watching that right now with my husband and we watched it before we went to bed.

Speaker 1:

And then, of course, I'm wide awake talking about it because I'm so intrigued by the show and who did what. And that was dumb, like I should have shut that down an hour, an hour before.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you don't wanna read something that's extremely entertaining or stressful, right we you know. Right now I don't wanna watch the news before.

Speaker 1:

I go to bed Right, exactly, yeah.

Speaker 2:

You know you don't wanna watch some sort of horror flick or something that you know everybody's different. Some people may say, in fact, that listening to heavy metal music before bed relaxes them. Great. The point is that you want to do something that you know relaxes your brain and provides some sort of soothing technique if you will. That then prepares you for sleep, and that's different for everybody.

Speaker 1:

So if you're waking up like you know going to bed, say you're going to bed at 10 and you're waking up every day at 7, that kind of means without an alarm, that means you're probably doing stuff, right, right.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

So that's a good thing for people to you know that are watching and listening. If they're getting into that rhythm of going to bed and waking up without an alarm, right that's showing that they're getting enough sleep. Is that true?

Speaker 2:

Yes, Most people. If you go, if you give yourself enough hours of sleep, you're going to naturally wake up around seven to nine hours later. Everybody knows what their their set point is. Some people only need seven, Some people need a little more than eight. You kind of know what your body needs, but most of us don't give ourselves enough sleep, what I call sleep opportunity. We are burning the candle at both ends. We're trying to wake up earlier than our body wants to wake up and we're going to bed later than our body wants to go to bed.

Speaker 1:

Yep, yep Interesting. Let's dig into two other things. One is sleep apnea. You know there's all sorts of funny skits now on SNL and there was a movie I think with I can't remember who it was, but you know they had their sleep apnea masks and all of that Wine country. Yes, yes, it was. You know, is this something that is more common with menopausal women? Because I read that somewhere and I don't know if there's science to back that up. But is sleep apnea really a thing?

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, sleep apnea is really a thing. Unfortunately, it's been consumerized for quick fixes in the media. There's always, you know, this oral appliance that's going to work Really. Somebody needs to be evaluated officially by a clinician or a physician who understands how to interpret a sleep study. So nine out of 10 women who are postmenopausal do not know that they have sleep apnea because women do not present the same way as men do.

Speaker 2:

So much like everything else in medicine, the screening tools that we use to help determine risk for people women don't fit into those boxes, because most of the screening tools that are developed are developed with men in mind, so they didn't test women. So women don't typically have loud snoring or have a bed partner that says, oh my gosh, I'm hearing that person stop breathing, or they're snoring really loudly. Women typically have fragmented sleep, wake up feeling tired or what we call having malaise. They don't know why they feel bad, but they do. They may wake up with headaches and they sometimes say things like I don't know if I'm depressed because I'm tired, or I'm tired because I'm depressed, or I'm tired because I'm depressed. Oh wow, so it's way less specific these symptoms around women and sleep apnea. Why is this important Because sleep apnea is potentially a risk factor for heart attacks and strokes.

Speaker 1:

I have read that. So for women listening, should they be asking their primary care doctor to have a sleep study, or how would they begin that process?

Speaker 2:

So the first thing is figuring out what is causing poor sleep, and so that's why I developed the dream method, because you have to unpack a lot. It's not well. Are you getting enough hours of sleep? Most people will say they're not getting enough hours of sleep. Most people will say they're not getting enough hours of sleep. But it's all of those pieces to figure out. Do I need to have a sleep study? Because not everybody needs a sleep study. So you have to really again ask a lot of questions. It's all about the person's history. That's where I get all of the details to determine whether or not somebody really needs a sleep study or not.

Speaker 2:

If you go down the path of sleep study, most insurance companies will only allow what is called a type 3 home sleep apnea test. Most insurance companies do not approve a type 1 study, which is in the Sleep Center Sleep Study. Why am I bringing that up? Because there are more false negatives in women in home sleep study testing. So if you have a lot of symptoms and it sounds like you might be at moderate to high risk for sleep apnea and you have a home sleep study or a type three, then that is room for you to you know, if that is comes back negative, there may be room for you to actually then move forward with an in lab sleep study. So a lot of people will say, well, I got tested and I'm negative, and I have seen this over and over again, that women have mild sleep apnea. But it is really severe during dream sleep, or what we call REM sleep, and it's much more difficult to capture on a home study or a type three.

Speaker 2:

There's a different type of study called a type two sleep study. That is more likely to capture that data and you don't have to sleep somewhere else. But hardly anybody uses those types of studies and so, again, it's more complex than people think. People want to have a sleep study done and they kind of come in sometimes ordering it like they're at a fast food restaurant, and so my response to that is similar to if you have an entry of a joint you don't know what you need. Do you need an x-ray? Do you need an MRI? Do you need a CAT scan? We don't know what. We have to talk to you first to figure out what type of diagnostic study you need. It's the same thing with sleep. It's not that a home study is going to be great for everyone. We might have to look further and do a different type of study so interesting.

Speaker 1:

You know there are these TikTok crazes where you know people are taping their mouth at night, so they're you know. I mean all of these crazy things that people are doing, but I mean that's just so interesting around sleep apnea and it's also something that you shouldn't put off and you shouldn't be embarrassed about. If you have sleep apnea and you're apnea and you're a woman, then you know take the right course of action to help you so it doesn't you know, result in a stroke or heart attack.

Speaker 2:

Right, and there are other methods to treat sleep apnea. Outside of continuous positive airway pressure or CPAP, there are oral appliances. However, again, you want to have that full conversation to understand what type of sleep apnea you have, because the one that everybody knows about is simple, obstructive sleep apnea. But there are different types of sleep apnea that people don't really realize that are out there, and and then you want to figure out what is the best treatment for you. Right, the my one PSA today is please don't use tape if you think that you are helping yourself because you're snoring, because you may, in fact, be causing your body to have worse apnea. If you're taping your mouth because you're trying to prevent snoring.

Speaker 1:

I love that. Thank you for sharing that, because there are, and that's what people are going to. They're going to social media for answers to these things and you know there's no scientific research to back it and it's dangerous. I've got on with me today Dr Andrea Matsumura. You can find her I'll link everything in the episode notes, but it's sleepgoddessmdcom. There's a great quiz on there that you can take to find out your sleep archetype, which I think is amazing. You can take to find out your sleep archetype, which I think is amazing. You know we're digging into a lot today and there's a lot of questions, so I will have that in the episode notes so you can reach out to her directly, because I think sleep is so important and you know we undervalue it, I think, way too much, and not prioritizing it as we should. Let's talk about naps. You know a lot of people say power naps. I'll take a 20-minute power nap and I still sleep great. Are naps important? Should we be taking a nap every day?

Speaker 2:

So it all depends, right? So if you're using a nap to make up for not getting enough sleep at night, then no, you need to just figure out how to give yourself more hours of sleep. If you want to take a quick nap, the recommendation is 20 minutes, at most 30 minutes. That can be helpful, it can be restorative, but if, again, it's if you're using it to make up for not getting enough sleep, then no. So it's, it's a little bit of both in In those later societies.

Speaker 2:

You know, in Spain they use naps because they aren't getting enough sleep at night. So they built this into their culture so that they can get enough hours of sleep. So a lot of people will come to me and say well, you know, this society takes naps. And I'll say they're also eating dinner at 9 o'clock at night. You know, if you go and try to eat dinner at 5 or 6, they look at you funny. Yes, right, their society runs later, but people still get up early. So they built in this middle of the day rest period to make up for not getting enough sleep at night.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, have we always trended this? I mean, is this a new trend that we're just not sleeping as well? I mean, in the 1960s, if we look at data, were we sleeping more sound.

Speaker 2:

You know, yes, so we were getting better sleep. We were getting better sleep. Really. The advent of handheld electronic devices has fast-forwarded our inability to get enough sleep. And when you really look at the pre-Victorian era, so when we were using candles, people went to sleep when the candles blew out because it was dark. People went to sleep when the candles blew out because it was dark. Another example is that people will tell me that they get their best sleep when they go camping, because they're going to sleep when the sun goes down and they're waking up when the sun comes up.

Speaker 1:

That's interesting Wow.

Speaker 2:

And it makes sense? Yeah, because we push our bedtimes too late is what happens for most of us.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we're staying up too late. We're trying. Yeah, exactly. Another question I had and this is from somebody that actually wrote in because I said I was doing something around sleep. She asked about dreams and she said I get so frustrated. She's a twin and she said I'm 56 years old, I have a twin sister and we talk every day and she remembers every dream she ever has had and I don't remember any, why is?

Speaker 2:

that. So you know, dreaming is different for everyone. Because you don't remember your dreams does not mean that you're not dreaming. We absolutely need to dream in order to survive, because REM sleep that's our dream state is when we are cleaning all the waste products out of our brain for the day. And so a lot of people will think that because they do not remember their dreams, they're not dreaming. Well, they did do studies on rats and after about six to eight weeks, the rats pretty much imploded. They'll never do these studies on humans, but that's because that's when we are cleaning out those waste products. But we're also doing all the muscle repair, all of the repair in the body, and if we're not getting dream sleep, then we will basically our immune system shuts down, all the repair mechanisms in the body stop working. It can be frustrating, sure, but I try to allay people's fear and say you know you're here, talking to me today. That tells me that you're dreaming Interesting Because you're alive. You're alive.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, Doctor, walk me through when this really happened for you, when you were like you know what? This is very interesting to me. Now I think you're double board certified and I'm sorry I don't have your bio right in front of me open on my computer.

Speaker 2:

But that's, all right.

Speaker 1:

But when did this? When did you become so passionate about this?

Speaker 2:

So I I trained as an internal medicine doc, so doctor for adults and after about 12 years of practicing and trying to manage people's chronic medical conditions so diabetes, hypertension, abnormal heart rhythms, chronic muscle pain I realized that at the end of every appointment most people would say, oh, you know, I'm not getting good sleep, can I get a sleep aid? And so for years I was typically providing people with a sleep aid. That is the absolute wrong thing that we should be doing. So you talked about White Lotus, that lorazepam no, no, no lorazepam.

Speaker 2:

So I kind of had this epiphany that sleep was the core of what was missing. It makes everything else harder to manage in your life, and so then I went back to school a midlife crisis, if you will, I don't know. I was in my 40s and I went back to school to do a fellowship in sleep medicine, and I've been practicing sleep medicine ever since, and it is quite rewarding when I'm able to talk with someone about the fact that sleep is the juggernaut for everything else to fall into place in their life. It just makes things easier to manage if you're getting quality sleep.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, oh, that makes so much sense. Oh, I applaud you for that. I admire you even more. I mean, that's amazing. I love that part of the sense. Oh, I applaud you for that. I admire you even more. I mean, that's, that's amazing. I love that part of the story. You went back to school, you studied this, you knew it was important, it was on your heart and you made it happen and you're changing lives for people. Do you work with people all over the country if they reach out on the website, which I'll have you know, put in the episode notes here?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so right now I I am seeing people mostly in Oregon. That's where I live. I am working on getting a multi. It's a multi-state, interstate license to be able to see people in more states, but I do consulting otherwise. So I consult with companies or do workshops for people. I have done a workshop for other practitioners to teach other practitioners about sleep. So that's really. What I'm focusing on now is public speaking.

Speaker 1:

Yep, that's great, and so I'll have everything there in the notes. You know we touched on it briefly. I've got two things left to ask you before we go, because this is just fascinating and there's some great takeaways for our listeners. Today we talked a little bit about the importance of a routine. So if there's a woman today that's listening and has really struggled around sleep and she's listening and saying, yeah, I'm doing that and that and that you know I'm doing that wrong, what are three things she can do tonight to start working toward better sleep?

Speaker 2:

So the first thing is, if you're using any electronics, make sure that you turn all electronics off an hour before bed. The other piece is to make sure that your sleeping environment is optimal. So make sure that, if it's too cold or if it's too warm, that you feel comfortable. Make sure that it's dark and make sure that, if you like to use an eye mask, explore what makes me feel comfortable, what makes me feel cozy in my bed. That's the second thing, and then the third thing is take a look at what you're doing throughout the day. Are you winding down? Are you allowing yourself to prepare for sleep? Do you have sleep anxiety? That's something to then explore. Maybe you didn't make the connection and realize that you're bringing this desire to sleep and the anxiety of not getting sleep into your bed, and then it's kind of this little cycle that you have developed that you didn't realize. So, exploring what is happening during the day that you're bringing into your bed that may be affecting your sleep.

Speaker 1:

Those are great things we can do. Thank you, I wanted to dive more into sleep anxiety. We'll have to get into that next time. So great you know. The last question I want to ask you is something I ask everybody. And if you were sitting on the couch and you looked over and there you were, at 30, what advice would you give yourself? What advice would you give your younger self?

Speaker 2:

Hmm, well, uh, I would. The advice I would give my younger self is to uh, be more direct, uh, and have less Fs to give to people, I mean you know, after. This is all about, you know, living after 50. By the time I reached 50, and I think that's too old I just had no more Fs left in my jar and I basically stopped putting up with people's bad behavior that society allows people to have, for women especially, and it has actually served me quite well.

Speaker 1:

I like that. That is a mic drop and a great way to end this. Thank you for that.

Speaker 1:

I applaud what you're doing so many great nuggets in there and takeaways around sleep that are so important and you know it needs to be a priority at this phase of life, you know you kind of hit it then at the end we have got to treat ourself as a guest of honor. We've worked hard, We've earned this and we can't say I'm going to sleep when I'm dead. No, that's silly. No, we have to have good quality sleep every night to enhance our health and our longevity and everything. So thank you for just all your wisdom today. I learned so much. I took a zillion notes, so I really appreciate your time.

Speaker 2:

Thanks so much for listening today.

Speaker 1:

We know how valuable your time is and that's why we keep it short and sweet. Don't forget to follow us on all the socials, and you can check out all the links and resources in the show notes. Until next time, go forth and be awesome, Thank you.