THE INTERVIEW
- I had the absolute pleasure of chatting to my MUM!
- The impact of sleep on our health
- What 'sleep measuring' on your tech device is telling you, and how to ACTUALLY use it
- The stages of sleep, and how much you need of each (major myth busting here!)
- What sleep apnea is, and how to be properly diagnosed
- How to set yourself up for a successful night!
RESOURCES
*If you believe you have sleep apnea, make you sure consult with your family doctor to request a sleep study (Canada)
- Follow the pod @embodiedalchemy.pod
- Follow your host, Dom! @domchesh
SPONSORS/DISCOUNTS
- Pure Balanxed;
* ALCHEMY20 for 20% off www.purebalanxed.com
* @purebalanxed
- Carli Paintings;
* ALCHEMY15 for 15% off products, experiences, & creative services
* @carlipaintings
- Foli;
* FOLIPOD for 20% off your purchase www.shopfoli.ca
* @shop_foli
Transciptions available at www.embodiedalchemy.ca
THE INTERVIEW
- I had the absolute pleasure of chatting to my MUM!
- The impact of sleep on our health
- What 'sleep measuring' on your tech device is telling you, and how to ACTUALLY use it
- The stages of sleep, and how much you need of each (major myth busting here!)
- What sleep apnea is, and how to be properly diagnosed
- How to set yourself up for a successful night!
RESOURCES
*If you believe you have sleep apnea, make you sure consult with your family doctor to request a sleep study (Canada)
- Follow the pod @embodiedalchemy.pod
- Follow your host, Dom! @domchesh
SPONSORS/DISCOUNTS
- Pure Balanxed;
* ALCHEMY20 for 20% off www.purebalanxed.com
* @purebalanxed
- Carli Paintings;
* ALCHEMY15 for 15% off products, experiences, & creative services
* @carlipaintings
- Foli;
* FOLIPOD for 20% off your purchase www.shopfoli.ca
* @shop_foli
Transciptions available at www.embodiedalchemy.ca
Welcome to the embodied alchemy podcast. I'm your host Dominique Cheshire embodied alchemy. Started as a way to describe finding empowerment and has quickly grown into so much more. Embodied alchemy is about feeling the tough stuff and working through it. It's about sharing our stories, speaking our truths and hoping that there's someone out there who feels it too. We are here together to celebrate our ups and our downs because the tough stuff is where the magic happens. I am so excited to be here with you today. Are you ready? Let's go. All right y'all. I have a[inaudible] for you today. When I was putting my list together of what I wanted this season to look like for you and for me, um, it was really important to me that we address sleep. When I was going through all of my recovery with PTSD, diagnosing and like continued support, I was, every single time I was in a doctor's office, I was asked about my sleep and I was asked how I was sleeping, how I was feeling and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And at the beginning it was pretty easy to say, well I'm not sleeping at all because I was in a lot of pain. Um, and my whole body was like cast it and bruised and scraped. So getting comfortable, it was not really an option. But later on as we were looking at more specifically brain trauma related stuff, it was a lot harder to understand how sleep was impacting me. And I also think with looking at rest, and this is something I guess I should officially say we are doing a season two so rest is something I'm going to be looking at and interviewing some cool people on as well. But rest is something that our body really needs. And I think we all know that we hear that, but actually understanding like what our sleep is in our body can kind of be a bit of a blurry line. There are a lot of apps available, devices available available. Um, and I think it's what I have found anyway is it's sort of this twofold of like all of a sudden we have access to information but not really informed on what that information is. And lucky for me, my mum, Maureen Cheshire, happens to work in sleep medicine as she is a polysomnography list, which a broken down just means many sleep studies and she has worked in the field for, Oh my gosh, like I want to say at least 10 years actually, maybe more actually, maybe a little bit closer to 20 years at this point now. So she's built businesses she's worked for, she's worked in hospitals, shoots, worked for clinicians. So there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to be interviewing her to talk about this. I will give you a heads up if you are new to me or only know me from podcast land. Uh, my family's English. So my mom has a British accent and she does a very good job of being as clear as she can. When I, uh, when I'm interviewing her and in her professional life it gets a little Cray Cray in my house with like different accents and the N different people and all of those fun things. So I hope you enjoy today's episode with my, my mama. I um, I had a really good time with her sitting down and talking to her professionally and we got a little bit silly, a little bit giggly, but I hope you enjoy this episode and I would love to know what you think if you have a device, if this was helpful at all for understanding what you're looking at, understanding a little bit more about sleep apnea. I know that like that word is not necessarily a sexy thing to want to know about, but it's actually incredibly interesting when we're looking at the body and health and taking our health and our recovery into our own hands. Sleep is a huge thing that we can do for ourselves that is going to only benefit us in the long run. So buckle up. I will see you on the other side and I hope you enjoy. I am so excited to share this week's episode with you, but first a quick shout out to our amazing sponsors. Pure balanced, balanced with an X instead of a C is a brand I have personally loved for a little while. Now I have a shirt and a crew sweater and I love rocking them. Both. Pure balanced is an empowering apparel brand out of Toronto creating luxurious everyday pieces. All their clothing include a sewn in empowering statements. Simply flip the X to read the affirmation. They're a brand committed to community with 5% of sales donated going to netic and 5% of sales going to friends first. You can check everything out about them on Instagram at pure balanced as well as their blog and online store, which is pure balanced.com. We want you to be able to experience their incredible stuff yourself. So for our listeners, use code alchemy 20 for 20% off your purchase and be sure to listen to founder Alli's story on episode two of this season. I am so grateful to be supported by Carmen Darley of Carly D paintings. She is a resin based artist and Toronto entrepreneur who is excited to offer podcast listeners an exclusive discount on all products, services and experiences. Go to Carly paintings.com to see all the gorgeousness and use code alchemy 15 for 15% off anything under$100 make sure to tune into episode four of the pod where Carmen shares the journey behind her. Amazing art. We are supported by fully shipping houseplants in cool pots to doorsteps across Ontario student to be nationwide fully makes welcoming plants into your home or office. Easy and convenient. Choose your plant and pot of choice and within two to three days your fully will arrive to your doorstep. Plus 95% of all packaging is recyclable. That is important. Fully provides happy, healthy Hardy plants that are easy to care for. Many are locally grown in Ontario. Use code fully pod for 20% off your purchase at shop fully. Dot CA and join the plant obsession. I know I have. Um, so I'm really excited to get to interview you. I feel like I would almost like to do a separate podcast where we just do like family stuff and we can like go to Scotland and set up for my accent. It has to be seriously edited or not. We'd have to cut out all the good stuff. Um, but I feel like you have some very special insight into sleep and sleep medicine and to sleep hygiene in a more medical capacity. Plus I just like talking to you, so I thought it would be really fun to bring you on here. Okie dokie. Are you excited? This is my man. I'm going to call her mom, but her name is not mum. Even though maybe at one point in life it starts out that way. This is my mom and her name is Maureen and she does a thing that I, it's very medical, I don't want to say it properly so you can say it. I'm what's called a polysomnography test. And what does that mean? That means that I work in sleep medicine. I work in the sleep lab and study people in their sleep and help interpret it for the doctors. Okay. And I got distracted for a second. Um, and so like what even you're interpreting people in their sleep and stuff. So what does, what does that even look like? What, what are regular, what are you looking at when you do that? Looking at brainwaves, when you go through different sleep stages, your brain waves change. So when you're awake they're very tiny. And then as you transition through different sleep stages, they get bigger. So the, we call the amplitude of that. So the amplitude increases. And then as you're going to Ram, which is very light sleep stage again, not a deep sleep, the brain waves come smaller again. So we can tell how people sleep through the sleep cycle through the brainwaves. We look at their breathing with them. It's fine. Jack to got a breathing disorder. We check their heart. Different Muslim movements. Yeah. So I feel like already there, there's so much to kind of break down. So you just said that REM is a light sleep. I feel like we need like big flashing lights on that. That's misunderstood sometimes. Yeah. A lot of people think that, Oh, I didn't get enough REM sleep last night and I didn't get a enough deep REM sleep. I miss[inaudible] sleep stage. It is a light sleep stage and you always get good quality sleep. You need to cycle through the different sleep stages and the cycle lost between 90 to 120 minutes. Um, so your sleep quality could be affected because one or more of those sleep stages are missing. Or maybe you have too much of one certain sleep stage and the sleep city's change as you go through different ages and as you're doing different things. And we were also talking last night a little bit about how we generally are. I always thought that sleep was sort of like one cycle of I start falling asleep, then I'm asleep, then I have Ram and then I have deep sleep and then I wake up and then I'm awake. But it doesn't actually work that way. No it doesn't. So sleep will change based on your age. She'll have children, they have a lot of deep sleep, they're very energetic and whatever you're doing
Speaker 2:during the day will potentially affect your deep sleep. So think of deep sleep as vested in your physical body. Kids are very active, they go to sleep, they have a lot of deep sleep and you know, that means you can pick them up and move them from place to place and they never wake up that deep sleep stages, but they still cycling through difference through a sleep cycle the same way that we are. Um, as we get older we get less deep sleep. And if you think about it logically, we're not running around like little kids anymore. Um, and older people that become a little bit even less active, get even less deep sleep. So the key there is activity will increase your sleep quality and we'll make sure that your sleep cycle is, is as you're cycling through all the deep, deep, all the different cycles. Do we want to have an even amount of all of those cycles? Like, are we looking to have the maximum amount of deep sleep here or are we like day to day? It could be different depending on, as you said, your age or could be different like okay, there are live apps out there that just tell us information that I feel like is a lot of information without a lot of information, if that makes sense. So using, if we think about the evolution of sleep, like a long, long time ago before we had electricity, you think about farmers that would go to bed when the sun went down and then they would get up when the sun came up. So they were getting a lot of sleep and they were very active during the day. And then we have the developments of the light bulb and we are getting more and more light pollution. And then that extends the working day. So now we're getting shift workers. So as we've evolved, as humans, we've been getting less and less quality sleep over a long period of time. But even more recently about an electronic devices that monitor your sleep. Everybody's getting hooked on them, but they're an electronic device. You know, as I said at the beginning, we read brainwaves in the sleep lab and electronic device can not read your blood brain brainwave. So then how does it know how you've slept? I feel like I interviewed someone today and we did this moment, but I feel like I want to do it again for the people in the back, your electronic device cannot measure your brain waves. What it's doing is called an actograph and it's measuring your activity in sleep. So if you're in a deep sleep, you're not necessarily moving. Um, but then you're not doing that when you're in REM. So when you're in REM, REM is your most vivid dream sleep. You can dream in any sleep stages. So when you're in your REM stage, your body goes into a state of paralysis and then you're not moving. Then again, so how does it know which is which? And then you've got, it's monitoring your heart rate as well. So in, if you think about, maybe it's what it's doing is when you're in REM, it's like you're watching a movie. So your heart may change a lot more. When you're in a deep sleep. Your heart will be, your heart rate might be a lot more stable. You're about to be like, your heart won't beat at all. And it would be scary. That would not be good that, yeah. So, but at the end of the day, you need to not rely, if you think you have a problem, you need to not rely on your electronic device, but there are ways that you can use it to help you. So we used to have people keep a sleep diary to help them understand their own sleep hygiene. So an electronic device can help you pay attention to, are you getting enough? Are you giving your body enough hours in bed? And that's what you're always want to start with. So you know, like you, you as an, as a grown adult, somebody may just survive off six hours asleep and somebody else may need nine hours sleep. So it's so it's knowing and understanding your own body and what your own body needs. And if you're constantly waking up tired, but you're only giving your body six hours in bed, that's where your problem is. So there's no need to necessarily go to a sleep lab for something like that. But if you're in bed and you're, you're in bed and you have really good sleep hygiene, which is what I mean, excuse me, you're going to bed at similar time every night. You're getting up at the similar time in the morning. So when you're, you're, you know, you've reduced external stimuli such as light pollution, noise, pollution, um, then, and you're still feeling really tired then, then yeah, like maybe it needs to be taken further, but you don't take that further by talking to your electronic device. You don't ask Siri, Siri, so let's see what do I do now? Like what you've got to do is try and do something yourself. And then if that's not resolving the problem, then definitely don't hesitate to seek medical device. So medical device advice. So when you're saying hours in bed, that's not just exclusively asleep. Well, I like to refer to it as, as I was in bed because if you refer to it as, you know, I get, I get six hours sleep at night or eight hours sleep a night. You know, if you're going to bed at 11 o'clock and your alarm set for like five o'clock, you're giving yourself six hours in bed, but you might not necessarily like a normal sleep, um, percentage, um, which is, you know, defined as your hours in bed. Like in the sleep lab, we'll, we'll take your hours, like your lights out to your lights on. And then from that we'll calculate your sleep latency, your sleep efficiency, your sleep percentage. And that's enormously percentage, about 85% of what you're spending in bed. So if you are only spending six hours in bed, you're probably not getting exactly six hours sleep. So you're getting a lot less than what you think you are. So, you know, it's, it's, we're such busy people these days and it is a problem. But, um, you know, it's something that perhaps people can start with doing themselves and changing their own habits. So I know getting hooked on series on Netflix and it can get really exciting, but you know, we have control over what we do before we go to bed as well. So having a lot of stimuli, um, a lot of different music with TV and the lights on in the house, like shutting all that off, I've got half an hour to an hour before you go to bed can help your body kind of start to wind before you go to bed. Um, and that can help improve your sleep quality as well. Hm. It's interesting. I, I, I thought that living in this city would make sleeping tricky anyway and it kind of does, but our apartment in general, like the TV isn't really on when people come home. And I really do notice the nights where I've been out and then come back and maybe I eat, maybe I like do some work on the computer, but then make a really strong attempt to like be done whatever I'm going to do that requires that might require a computer or if I'm on a computer be done with screens an hour before I go to bed. That's a great way of doing things. And then I try to be in bed a half an hour before I would like to sleep. And then I read for a little bit. And then sometimes I'm up for ages and sometimes I'm not. But I do find that even though there's like city noises outside, just giving myself that extra time and that it's almost like my body has a chance to be like, okay, it's going to be a bit noisy, but we're sleeping and I'm reading this book and that's nice anyway. And I almost feel like wearing a device and thinking like consciously like, okay, I'm going to sleep now and I wonder what my device is going to say. I feel like that would be disruptive. Yeah. And some people might find it disruptive and not forgetting that, you know, the devices, usually people have invested in the devices not to evaluate their sleep, but to help their activity. So usually a lot of these devices when you move you on the Luminate, so keeping that on June the night and you're moving you on that illumination of the watch face can, you know, cut your eye and wake you up. So you could be creating more disturbances by, by wearing that. Um, you know, the, the devices are great to help people, um, if they don't have good sleep hygiene. I see that as a bonus of using it, like seeing and reading it as a sleep diary and pay more attention to what they're doing themselves. Or if for some people that are saying, well, I'm not sleeping, I'm not sleeping. And then they read their device and their devices telling them that the ice sleeping, that could completely change the mindset. So you know, those, those goods and bads to them. But at the end of the day you have to take it as an entertainment value and not as as a gospel according to sleepover. The refrain from using any, any things of what the do Pisces cause that's what I have. Um, so when you're saying like using it as a sleep diary, I feel like devices have different bits of information on them. Is there anything in particular that's just like, look, if you were going to look at one thing, if you are curious about your sleep, this is the thing you want to look at and this is what it means. So if you have a device that gives you like a bar graph of different, it'll say like, it'll say like this is your sleep for last night and it gives you time in different sleep stages. Um, don't really pay attention to that. I would say look for the woman that gives you like the Biograph and it will show you how you're cycling through your different sleep stages and maybe look at that, you know, daily for two to three weeks and see if it's normal from day to day. And that will help you then identify if it's kind of constantly changing. It's all over the place that may identify that you do, you know, like maybe it's not, um, maybe it needs further investigation, but be very careful because to go into a doctor's office and say, I've got a sleep disorder because my watch has told me, so will not be embraced but, but look, look to see what the watch is interpreting for you as what your normal is. And that can be different for everybody, right. Might be different just because someone else is getting eight hours sleep and like 30% of that is deep sleep doesn't mean that that's what your body needs basically. Right? Yeah. Because it can like say can vary from issue age and medications can can vary it. So, you know, um, a lot of people might be misdiagnosed as being depressed and they actually have a problem with their sleep staging. So, um, or vice versa. Um, so people that are suffering from depression, they have a lot of REM sleep stage and I'm normal. Our light sleep, that's a light sleep. But that's your most vivid dream sleep. So they have enough normal amount. So when you're on an antidepressant, it's a REM suppressant. So if people like your, your watch is not going to tell you that in the instruction book. So if you reading it in this and saying well I'm not getting any red, I'm not going anywhere. I'm, there must be something wrong with me. It might just be the medications that you're on because some of them will affect your, your different stages of sleep as well. Is that taken into consideration when someone comes in and has talks about maybe having symptoms of depression now? Like is there communication between doctors and the medical field in that diagnosing process and the, yeah, the M um, the college of physicians and surgeons have a section on sleep medicine now and that's for Terrio Canada. What does that, the Ontario oncology college of physicians and surgeons, yeah. So, so definitely if I'm a physician, physicians are more educated. But, um, you know, if you think about it logically, if you've ever traveled and you've got jet lag, how do you feel like you feel very sad as you feel like moody, tired or this kind of stuff, you know. So if you have ongoing sleep deprivation, those are some of the symptoms that you can have. So you can be misdiagnosed or being constantly depressed when you're natural affects, you could actually have a sleep disorder. And how would you say you're not using a watch or whatever.
Speaker 1:Are there any things, I guess, how do I want to word this? So say that there is someone out there who finds that they're like maybe having trouble with weight loss or like are gaining weight and they're feeling really moody and tired and unmotivated and they're worried about it being depression but it likely could be sleep. Like how do you even go about figuring that all out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you have to start with talking to your family physician and then your family physician would refer you to a sleep physician. And that's when we were doing a sleep study. And you know, we look at things like sleep apnea. So if you have, if you're carrying us your weight and it's high ticket rid of the weight and it doesn't matter what you've done during the day to try and do that, if you're not breathing properly during the night, that's affecting your metabolism. So therefore getting weights, very easy, losing weight is very difficult. So those are things that would have to be dealt with but could only be dealt with by sleep physician. And what happens when you go to a sleep physician? So when you go to a sleep physician and, and you'll talk to them, they'll obviously determine that you'll need a sleep study. So you'd stay overnight in the sleep lab and you get hooked up with lots of different wires. Um, part of the EEG montage, we look at the brain waves. That's the difference between us and electronic device because as you get tucked in, you don't get breakfast in the morning though. I mean, let's face it, if these electronic devices were really accurate, you wouldn't need to go for a sleep study, right? So we'll, we'll put different equipment on that. We'll look at your, your blood level while you use your oxygen blood oxygen level while you sleep, your heart rate, like different abnormal muscle movements. And so there's a lot of information we can gather from a sleep study. Um, you're not sleeping in your own bed, you are sleeping with all these wires on. So we take that into consideration. We know that the sleep efficiency is going to be a little bit more reduced, but it's really not as bad as what people think. And if you really want help to try and figure stuff out, it's you just, it's just something that you're just gonna have to suck up. But on the grand scale of things, it's not as bad as what people think. And that whole process is covered in Ontario by Ohio, right? It gets referred through your doctor and you just go through it that way. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. So there's no cost to the patient in Ontario, but other parts of Canada, there may be,
Speaker 1:and generally speaking, when we're talking about sleep apnea,
Speaker 2:is this snoring? Are we talking about snoring primarily? So snoring is an indication that your AOA is collapsing, but you need to, once again, you know, if you're always snoring, that's something that has to be dealt with. But if it's just your occasionally snoring, is it cause you've just got a cold or you know your nasal passages just a little bit blocked up or did you just have a nosebleed or you know, so, so but snowing, you have to, you know, take into consideration. But the atmosphere actually occurs. The gap between snoring so, so when you're snoring, your airflow is still, you're still breathing. If you're making noise to make any noise, you're still breathing. But it's a very collapsed airway. So it was only a little bit of air coming in and out. And then if you snore and then it stops and it goes really quiet and then you do of these, we've all been there. That is happening at the end of the apnea. That is, that is the airways suddenly waking up because the brain has told them to wake up. It's told you to breathe. So I saw constant, just constant storing. All the way through may just be due to sinus issues. Um, you know, seasonal languages. Um, but if it just, if you have a suspected underline in sleep apnea and it doesn't get investigated and then treat it, if it needs to be, then um, it's gonna get worse. Do people die from snoring apnea, snoring? Don't know what snoring, sleep apnea.
Speaker 1:I like just having a moment of panic of like everyone who's ever story, are they at risk to die cause they're not[inaudible]
Speaker 2:breathing. Yeah. Well if you're not breathing, you're dead. But you know, if it continues to go and diagnose, you're putting your body at risk of other things developing. So, um, you know, if you're not breathing, you're not oxygenating your body and therefore you depriving vital oxygen, vital organs of oxygen. So you're at risk for having a heart attack, having a stroke or things from developing. And so think of it like here in Ontario, we do take sleep medicine quite seriously and we see it as preventative. So, you know, if you have sleep apnea and you get it treated and you're, you're, you're using your CPAP machine, which is what we use primarily to treat sleep apnea, you are preventing something more serious from happening and there's nothing harmful in it.
Speaker 1:Well I feel like thank you for that smooth transition cause I feel like the next thing after people like your sleep apnea and then they're like, Ooh, that's the snoring thing. And then they go, I don't want to put a big mask on my face. And I have had the privilege of weirdly knowing a lot about this from growing up with you in the fields. And I can definitely attest to the fact that that's not always true. Um, can we, can we debunk that myth right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So there are lots of different types of masks out there, but you, but what you've got to remember is the treatment is not about the mask and it's not about the machine. It's how you breathe and interacts with it. So if your body is being deprived of breathing, if he's not breathing properly and then we give it something to help him breathe, it's welcomed. Yes, there are a climate in climatization issues. Um, but usually I just say to people, if you're having a hard time with it, she put it on and practice during the day. When you're watching TV, anything you do for your body that's helpful. The more you do it, the easier it gets. Practice makes better. It just makes perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's mind over matter. So some people put it on and they're, you know, their immediate, before they even put it on the side, I'm not gonna be able to breathe with that arm. No sweetheart, you're not without it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's going to help you breathe. Do you find that because you're English, people just listen to you? I don't know that like British nanny syndrome, it talks about, I don't know what I'm saying and they don't want to walk you with me or anyone who's curious but can't understand what my mom is saying. There is a full transcription that you speak Brit, that you can find on the website. Do you feel like there are any other sort of like sleep myths out there that people really cling to that when they come in to see you, you sort of have to walk them through it's truth or untruth? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, we don't know what's going on with always sleep. We're asleep. We only know how w how sleep makes us feel. So, you know, very often in the sleep lab, people will wake up in the morning, go, Oh well that was a waste of time. I didn't sleep at all. Well, no, you did. And we know you did because you can't control your brainwaves. So, um, you know, always somebody, I'll say it like it takes me, it takes me about an hour to go to sleep and their sleep. Within three minutes they're carrying asleep, they're sleep deprived. And so, you know, sometimes we just gotta let it play out. And the pro, the, the differences, like if you, if you have to take, you go to a dentist, you know you've got to get your going for help. But what's happening in medical field is you're, you're, you're speaking to your doctor about how you're feeling or maybe your wife has said you're snoring. Go and get it sorted. You're asleep. You don't know what's kinda going on. So you have to trust us when we're saying this is what's going on, but you can't argue it. Whereas you know, like you're feeling too fake. You know, you're feeling tired the next day but you don't know what's going on from, from, you know, lights out to lights on necessarily. You just know how, how you, what you think's going on. So very often people are asleep and they don't think they're asleep and maybe because this is, they're in a light, very light sleep stage or they're constantly waking up. Maybe the apnea is constantly waking in them up, but they w they don't know that. All they know is I'm just constantly awake. So sometimes there are things going on that we can pick upon. Cause it would make no sense to say, well I don't sleep. So why go to a sleep lab? Yeah. But sometimes what we can do is pick up on reasons why their sleep is very fragmented, which in the action of that will cause them to feel like they're not sleeping.
Speaker 1:What about really wild sleeping? Not to point fingers at myself. I like will scream sometimes I like super talking. My sleep, I feel like I've always been that way. I'm depending on, it's usually worse if I've taught at night and then I go to sleep and it's like I'm still teaching so I'm like[inaudible].
Speaker 2:So some of that is hereditary. We're wedges. So you know if you have a parent that did a lot of sleep walking and sleep talking, then you're an increased chance of you continue to do that. And if you have both parents that today you're even further did I have two parents that did that and I don't think daddy did. I think just me. So yeah. So what you've got to remember is that's not happening in your REM sleep, in your most vivid dream sleep, because your body is in a state of process. It's happening in a deep sleep. So you're, you know, if you have ever, um, if you're, for instance, if you're, if you're having a dream and you're like having a bad dream and you're trying to shout and it's not coming out, that that usually is happening in REM. That's you being aware that you're dreaming in rent because your body's in a state of paralysis. You can't scream. But when you, you're talking to you sleep, walking nuts, nodding, redness actually occurring in a deep, in your deep sleep stage. So, um, so yeah, we just need to put handcuffs to you and then just tie down. I have a weighted blanket. Yeah. Yeah. And that's really interesting. So weighted blankets are frilly new, and that's what's really, really interesting about that is if you think about like a hundred years ago in the bedding that people used, they were very weighty. Oh, I never thought about that. Yeah. And then we transitioned to the Watsu fish was the continental quilt in Europe, whereas here it's a du Bay. And the whole reason why that transitioned was you can make a bed quicker. So, so women were, we're going, we're in the workforce and needed to do more housework quicker and you can make a bed in like, you know, 15 seconds compared to the previous way of making a bed. But if you think about a weighted, now we're getting special weighted blankets to help keep your body still like we're going. Oh, it's so fascinating to me how like everything is connected, even if even something so seemingly innocent as let's change our quilts so that it's easier to like make our beds in the morning, it's suddenly impacting our sleep and there's a whole industry on sleep and then now there's a whole industry for weighted blankets and yeah, I think we all like our, our primitive self knows what we need. Yeah. And we'll, no matter how we evolve through time will ultimately always come back to those basic needs because we're primitive beings. It does help though, the weighted blanket, I think. Yeah. You like that I just tuck in and then it's also really warm, which is nice actually. Got it for T wear. But um, then I started flailing a lot on these, put it on you become my now. Yeah. So that's really interesting cause that's something that I, I have not explored. And you know, I wonder if that would help children with add and ADHD cause they are, if they're moving around a lot in their sleep, if they have a weighted blanket, would that help them settle into their sleep more? I don't know. So is that, is that a correlation? ADHD and sleep and those are, yeah, it's like a misdiagnosing I want to say because of course there's people that have age. Yeah. So potentially. So what we saw children can express that. Um, you know, once again, let's come back to the, the jetlag analogy. Um, you can't concentrate, your attention is really poor, but let's put that in a child's perspective. They're getting poor quality sleep and the, you know, think about the, the, they're just feeling jetlagged everyday. How are they going to behave? That behavior is going to be completely different and if they're getting constant poor quality sleep. So it's, it's something to um, you know, to, to be cautious of particularly if they're, if the ice snowing, maybe they do have apnea and that's what's disturbing their sleep. Is it then helpful as a parent then to, even though we know that they're not super accurate cause our devices can't measure our brain waves, that would also actually be kind of freaky if they cut. But so would it be at all helpful if you were a parent with a child and you were suspicious about that to put a watch on them, monitor it for a couple of weeks and see if the graph gets all scattery and if their graph is all scattery then take them to do the whole asleep process thing. I think it will be better if they just take videos or videos. Yeah, everybody's got a cell phone with a video these days. Just just take her, take her a video or just set up a camera and do a time-lapse. Something like that. Like the video is more particularly, it's got audio on the video is way more helpful. Oh, interesting. And would you just do that one night or where do you do it? Over a series? If I, you know, if I, you know, if I was a parent of a young child, I would do it over a series and then I just would have, I would be able to show it would back me up on what I was showing. Um, my family doctor or pediatrician and, uh, you know, there's, there's a lot of knowledge out there. So if you've got a child that is moving around an awful lot is getting poor grades at school, attention is an issue. Behavior is an issue, you know it and there is snoring particularly as well as it might be very much worth looking into. Now. It could be something as simple as their tonsils and adenoids have been launched and that would cause snoring or that would just cause problems with them breathing. So therefore resulting in different things happening. So, you know, we might approach it differently. Um, but, um, it's, it's something that, um, should be looked at. Can you take a child then to just like a regular old wa I'm not walking clinic, um, sleep clinic or are there like specialty places for children? So what you want to be careful. So basically it depends on where people live geographically, to be honest. Yeah. You can't just take, you can't just go to a clinic and demand the sleep study. It's got go through your family, talk to her. People try and do that. Uh, we, yeah, sometimes they'll just, they'll just phone at like three o'clock in the night and say, I'm not sleeping. I think I need to come in and have a sleep study, you know. Well, you're like, well, not right now. Yeah. We can't just phone and book yourself an X Ray if you don't have a prescription and Kenya. So, um, yeah. So it's, it's something to take into consideration. Um, if you have a pediatric sleep lab accessible to you, that's where you would want to primarily go. Um, because that's where the specialists are. So a lot of adults sleep labs would be cautious of running sleep studies usually on children 12 and and lower because first of all, if the technician doesn't have experience with children, you know, you've got to get all this equipment on them, the same as adults and, and then it's got to be interpreted properly. So on how we interpret sleep data in children is, is can be slightly different titles. So if, um, if it is a sleep physician that's never seen pediatric sleep studies before, you know, and you don't want something to slip through the cracks, but the accessibility to pediatric sleep bombs so are very small. So, um, I do think more and more sleep positions or I definitely making sure that their thorough knowledge is covered for pediatric sleep medicine as well.
Speaker 1:I have a personal question for you and you can[inaudible] you can say no and if you don't want to answer it, but I'm wondering because you've done sleep, you had a whole career with sleep studies on adults and you also have a career or part of your career is sleep studies with children. Do you have a preference? Like if[inaudible]
Speaker 2:yes, children. Can I ask why? Oh, they don't want as much. It's no way. It's way, way more fun. Don't get me wrong. It can be very challenging, but you know, sometimes it's not the children, it's the, it's the parents and they're just more fun. They're just more effort. You can make it a lot of fun. You can make it a game and you know, it's, it can be not a big deal. But I mean, I've certainly had my challenges where I get all my equipment's on and five minutes late, it's all being ripped off
Speaker 1:what I can do. Oh, that's so funny.
Speaker 2:That's, yes, that's, we know that can happen. It's very annoying when an adult does that.
Speaker 1:Can you just say, when a kid does it is probably more excusable because you're a child, but an adult does it, you're like, you know better. So how does, why am I, I mean I feel like you had a very interesting weaving path into it, but how does one get into respiratory medicine? Is it like a sexy field to get into?
Speaker 2:You can get into respiratory medicine, respiratory medicine covers, all sorts of, of different things, not just sleep. So, you know, this is um, uh, you can get into sleep medicine is, it comes under respiratory medicine category, but you can get into it different sorts of ways. So you usually come into it with some sort of background of knowledge and that could be medical knowledge that could be, um, you know, this, those, I've worked with all sorts of different people from different backgrounds. So I've worked with, um, there was a leader which with for a number of years from the Philippines, she was a pharmacist. Um, I've worked with several people that were doctors from different countries and while they were going back to school here and we taking their exams, this is one of the jobs that they could get that was closest to, to their medical field. And they found it very interesting. And you know, nurses can get into it. Um, there's all sorts of different backgrounds that you can get into. So not just kind of one.
Speaker 1:Do you feel like it's a field that's worthwhile? Like, is there a lot of opportunity here? I don't know. I never thought sleep could be interesting and then you got into sleep and we weren't allowed to nap ever, which was annoying. But I remember you saying to Katie and I that if we ever were stuck on what to do, go into respiratory medicine.
Speaker 2:Respiratory medicine I think is a good thing to get into. Um, that, that would cover not just sleep, but it covers lots of different things and you know, there's a lot of pollution out there and it's leading to breathing problems.
Speaker 1:Do you feel like there's anything else like, like I also think as much as we talk about sleep, because that's been part of your life, I, it still surprises me that there's people that know or don't know I should say as much because I don't know, maybe it's just not like maybe people are embarrassed to share that they're on sleep therapy or it's just not normal conversation. There
Speaker 2:must be. Yeah. It's really interesting because more and more TV programs shows movies. You'll, you'll see the CPAP machine will creep up and there's more commercials about it these days and different cleaning machines to clean your seat, pap machine and different styles are like talking about it. So it's becoming less and less kind of embarrassing. And I think one of the reasons for that is, is you know, 2030 years ago we used to think that sleep apnea was very isolated to middle aged, overweight men. And that is not true. And you know, like if you have a very narrow airway, you could be, you know, it's horrible. Snorer and you know, so there's lots of reasons for it going on and it's no longer just isolated to that kind of age group. Um, the bottom line is, um, and you know, every year we have new research coming out that backs up why sleep is why treating sleep apnea is so important. Why, why really? You know, paying attention to sleep is so important. And I think, you know, the more that we have got electronic devices and light pollution and noise pollution around us, that is interrupting our sleep more and more. And so it's like a constant battle, you know, um, when you think about it, when you were a child, your parents will develop your own sleep routine, they'll have a bath, you'll have a story, you turn off the lights, you go to sleep. As you become an adult and you take control obviously pattern. That's where it starts to get more and more out of control. Um, but then we've got all sorts of problems these days with phones in bedrooms because they're using you using your phone as you rely on. Well, do you really need to, like you've got your device, you can just set the vibration on that. So Wiki, well, Siri will wake you up. Yeah. Um, things have become more affordable. So when I was growing up, we only had like one TV downstairs and that's where you watch TV. And then as TVs became more and more affordable, they're in every single bedroom. But now people don't have TVs in the bedroom anymore. They were have tablets or computers or their cell phones. And you know, if you're on that constantly before you go to bed, that is light stimulation. And you know, instead of just having a book where you've got a soft light on and you're reading a book. So you know, we really have to take responsibility ourselves because more, you know, like you're only responsible for you and kind of your own sleep pattern. But we could probably all make more of an effort to do something to improve it. If you think about, you know, when I was a child who sleep really well, what did you do? What was your sleep routine when you were a child and what is your sleep routine now? It might help you identify to make some sort of your own changes and I'm sure not just not just sleep, but like you were saying about being more active as children, you're out and about. That's I think a nice thing to assess as well as what am I doing? Not just, not just like narrowing in on sleep, but for my mental health, for my physical health. So it's not as tricky. Yeah. And same thing, you know, we could use the same analogy for cars. There's more cars out on the road. So, you know, like your, you're maybe leaving the house, going into a car, driving to work, sitting in an office job, getting back in your car, driving home, make dinner, have dinner, sit down and watch TV. Like, like, where's the activity? How can you have a good quality sleep if you're not being very active? So is there a change that you can make there? Like maybe, you know, not parking at the car park at work, like maybe parking in a car, park away from work and making that a little bit of a walk or try like, like exercise has become something we've got to do on top of our daily routine instead of as part of our daily routine. So, you know, riding a bike to work is not an option. Instead of, you know, driving, um, you know, I can let you know, like I was, so I climbed to Machu Picchu in September and as part of my, my training for that, I just bought a second time bike off Kijiji,$150 and started biking to work, which for the record, how many miles slash kilometers was that 30 kilometers there, 30 kilometers back. And I can tell you I slept pretty well. So, you know, you think, well, no I can't, it's too far away. But you know, and it was, it was, uh, you have to organize yourself. So because I was so tired, I could go to bed very early and have a really good night's sleep, therefore get up early the next morning and then back to work again. So it's, it's, you know, it's that kind of stuff. But, you know, we've become shift workers. That's, that's also a problem, um, for sleep deprivation. You know, it's part of the, the irony is when you're working sleep medicine, you're, you become a shift to work yourself. So you know, you staying up 12 hours a night to evaluate somebody else's sleep problem while you're creating your own sleep problems.
Speaker 1:I mean, I feel like that's so many fields. So like I have to be really conscious about my own personal practice because I'm always helping other people like that kind of that kind of work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did your mom's on our days a lot more, but to try and make things, um, if you kind of, you know, we did an exercise, um, I used to work for a community, live in Oakville, worked with children with special needs and we did an exercise over 20 years ago, was about 25 years ago. It would have been, we had to write down what we did every single minute of the day. Now we were doing this exercise because we were union, unionized company and we had to prove that there was a difference between male and female pay scale, pay grades. But if you actually did that, like eh, you know, it's a bit of an eye opener, you know, like from, from like, you know, seven, seven, 15 I had a shower and then like seven, 15 to seven 30 I got my, I got my food ready for the next day and he actually like take a look at that. And then if you broke that down, what can I be doing to, to stop making things separate? So can I be doing grocery shopping on the way home from work instead of doing as a separate thing on the weekends? Like I think one of the worst things that happened to us was Sunday shopping. You know, if the shops were not opened on a Sunday, like I remember we used to get to put a Sunday, I'd have a coffee with the newspaper, have the radio warm, you know, it was a very relaxing day and we don't give ourselves a relaxing day during the week anymore. And what we do is we save up all of our choice for our day off. And then you don't feel like you're having a day off anymore. So, you know, can you do things like put a lot of laundry in overnight on a timer so that it's done for the morning. And now, personally I don't use a dryer cause I think it destroys clothes. So I hung my high home, my clothes up, and then when I get home at the end of the day, the clothes are dry. So I've saved myself, you know, like you've built it into like your routine and I think, you know, when you're growing up, once again, somebody going to help you with that routine and then you become an adult and you have to figure out when is he out and nobody's taught you how to do it.
Speaker 1:It is really, I mean, I feel like you said something there really quickly about 20 years ago, you guys were documenting your minute for pay purposes, which I would love to revisit that on another day, honestly. Um, but it's, it's interesting you say that. I remember. So when, when T when I first started living together, I was so used to cleaning on a Sunday because I feel like that's what we used to do. Yeah. Which totally makes sense. It was the day everybody was home. Everybody had their thing to do and I quite liked that. I felt like it was a really nice way to close off, like literally sweep out ran or John to a new week. Yeah. And you where would always be dragging his feet about it. And at first I was like this is funny. And then I was like this is annoying. We both live here, we both have to clean like what's the problem? And he said to me, I, it's not the cleaning, it's the doing it on the Sunday. Sunday is the day where I want to just like do nothing, do nothing. And I thought that that was a really good point cause that's what was happening was Monday to Saturday we were like working or busy because Saturday felt like a very do things day and then Sunday cleaning. So we just like sat down and figured out between our schedules and of course it changes but like okay, what feels good for you? You really like cleaning on a Saturday. Okay cool. We also don't want to be cleaning and have our laundry racks out. So then let's look at doing laundry somewhere between one. And it was just interesting to like literally look at the week that way to consider keeping Sunday a day off. I think that's great. Yeah, it was really interest. I mean I'm so glad it wasn't just that he didn't want to clean cause that would've probably been a deal breaker. But do you have anything else about sleep you'd like to share? I think it would be nice to maybe close off talking about like everyone's sleep hygiene will be different, but if we're looking at like you kind of want to blueprint leaving people with maybe a blueprint of what that, what a nice sleep hygiene cycle would look like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I try and make sure you're giving yourself enough hour sleep a night. Now, personally I know that I like eight to nine hours. Somebody else might might be fine on six to seven hours. Be aware of your, of your own, how much, how much sleep does your own body needs. So, so if you don't, if you're a Monday to Friday, work a nine to five and you're getting up at like seven o'clock every single day, don't set an alarm on the weekend and see what time your body wakes up at. And if your body is naturally waking up at seven o'clock, then you're probably into a good thing. But if your body's not waking up to like nine or 10, you probably, I've got some sleep deprivation things going on there. And so that's a simple thing that people can do and be consistent and try not to. I know it's difficult, but try not to wave more than an hour outside of your regular bedtime on the weekends because I could get you into a whole other ballgame. And so try and stick to a normal bed time. And um, if you do have a late nights, as hard as it might be, try to not nap more than 20 minutes the next day. And because once again, that could open a whole kind of wounds for you and affect the quality of sleep you get at that night. And remember that even though you might be feeling very, very tired, actually going out for a walk for 20 minutes can make you feel just as good as having it up for 20 minutes.
Speaker 1:I have a question I was going to finish and then I changed my mind. I have one, I think this will be the final question. So we've talked about sleep, like sleep deprivation has come up a bunch. So if we're not napping more than 20 minutes and we're keeping a regular cycle but we're sleep deprived, how do you make up that deprivation?
Speaker 2:Uh, that's, yeah.
Speaker 1:Is that like a restorative yoga type scenario? I was just curious cause we were talking about it. So it's like, okay great. I can't nap and I can't sleep longer. How do I make up that deprivation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you should be like, if you can't sleep longer in the morning, try and go to bed 15 minutes earlier every night and try and add on more at that time and, and you know, really attention. Really be honest with yourself because if you're kind of like, well no I can't do that because I'm just too busy. Are you really or are you watching you know, TV or Netflix. So are you, are you just mindlessly scrolling online for a time when really you could be just relaxing in bed, reading a book, preparing your body to sleep. So really be honest with yourself because I think the majority of people, I think the majority of us, we're not being honest with ourselves. We were saying we don't have enough time to get eight hours sleep a night. But you know if you really be honest with yourself can you, we organize yourself so that you are giving your body that chance because it is just as important. Then then going to work from nine to five every day so you need to take it as important
Speaker 1:Q for all the sleep facts. You're very welcome. Thank you for being on podcast. You're very welcome. I hope you have a really great night. Literally tonight. I have had a really lovely four FORO asleep this afternoon shift working
Speaker 2:cause I have to now stay up until eight o'clock tomorrow morning. Oh, something we didn't touch on. Maybe we should have podcast too is caffeine and how that's affecting your sleep using using that to stay awake, things like that. Um, is that a good thing? It's not a good thing, but maybe that should be part two.
Speaker 1:Okay. Let's make that part too because I already feel like there's a lot of sleep information, but I really appreciate you doing this. You're very welcome. And we'll do part two. Okay. Okay. Bye. All right y'all. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed that episode with my, with my mama. It was, it was pretty special to get to talk to her and interview her and um, I'm really proud that I got to have her to look up to and, and yeah. So I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you learned something if not lots of some things. And I would love to know what you loved out of this episode. So please feel free to send us a message on Instagram. Our Instagram account account is at embodied alchemy dot pod or you can reach out to me. I'm at Dom Chesh. We have transcriptions of every single episode on embodied alchemy.ca and you just go under the tab for the podcast. There's a blog there as well. If you've been loving this season, if you've been loving what you've been listening to, please feel free to give us five stars, make sure you're subscribed, and I would love to read a review if you feel like leaving one. I've been getting amazing messages personally from people. Thank you so, so much for sending them to me. It really, it really makes my day. Um, and so if you feel called to want to share that publicly, then having those reviews there is really awesome. I hope you have a savvy fab rest of your day and I'll see you next week. Bye.
Speaker 3:[inaudible].