How To Sleep Better At Night

Slumber, shuteye, repose, siesta, snooze…Sometimes we have a love-hate relationship with it…we love it when it’s good and curse it when it’s bad, but we all need it. Whatever you call it, one complaint I hear from patients day in and day out is that they have difficulty sleeping. It’s so prevalent that I want to discuss how to  get better sleep. In my 30 years of practice, I’ve compiled a list of 14 things in no specific order that you can do that should have you snoozing at night night in no time. 

Rule 1: Bright light during the day.  Your body has to have bright light during the day; sunshine is best, but even sitting in a bright room, like by a window, is helpful. Bright light tells your brain that it is day time, time to be awake. Darkness or the absence of bright light tells the brain it is night time, time to sleep. If you’re in a dark room all day, you probably won’t sleep well at night. So remember, in the day time, bright light is right. 

Rule 2: Limit blue light. What is blue light? Blue light is what is emitted from your computer, laptop, and smartphone. The more blue light you are exposed to, especially at night, the more disruption you’ll have in sleep, as it disrupts circadian rhythm. Lots of people climb into bed with their cell phone or iPad, and that’s the worst thing to do. You should avoid looking at bright screens beginning two to three hours before bed. There are apps you can install on your phone that filter out the blue light. There’s also something called “F. Lux” that you can put on your computer or iPad which will block out the blue light. You never hear about it, but blue light exposure, especially at night, is a major factor in hindering sleep. 

Rule 3: Captain Obvious here with a newsflash. Caffeine will keep you up at night. Don’t think you’re going to have coffee or tea after dinner or before bed and expect to sleep. And if you’re drinking sodas, coffee, or iced tea all day, it’ll still disrupt your sleep. I tell patients to limit caffeine consumption to under 250 – 300mg a day. As a guide, an 8oz cup of coffee has about 100mg caffeine, the same amount of tea has 24mg, a 12oz can of soda has 34mg, and those gnarly energy shots have 200mg of caffeine! I strongly advise against consuming caffeine after lunch if you plan on a bedtime between 10pm and midnight.  

Rule 4: No naps! Boo! Hiss! Why is it that as kids, just the word nap sent us into a tizzy tantrum, but as adults we love naps? If anyone has an answer, please let me know. Anyway, as satisfying as it is, napping disrupts your sleep-wake cycle, temporarily resetting it to where you’re not likely to be able to go to bed between 10pm and midnight. Bummer. 

Rule 5: Melatonin. I recommend 2 to 4mg of melatonin at bedtime; it really seems to help a lot of my patients. I do find that some patients get daytime hangover from it though, so you’ll have to see where you fall on that one. But it’s definitely worth a shot if you’re suffering from insomnia. 

Rule 6: Get up at the same time every day, and go to bed at the same time every day. Yeah, it’s kind of a drag not sleeping in on weekends, but a sleep routine can make a big difference in your relationship with Mr. Sandman. You can’t regulate when you’ll fall asleep, but you can regulate when you wake up. So set your alarm and get up at the same time every day, no matter how tired you are. Don’t nap and go to sleep between 10pm and midnight, and you should fall asleep. If sleep still eludes you, stick to the same plan, and you should surely sleep the second night. You can’t decide when you’ll fall asleep at night, but you can regulate your sleep-wake cycle by deciding when you wake up. Stick to setting your alarm for the same time every day, and hopefully your brain will get the idea. 

Rule 7: I recommend taking a glycine or magnesium supplement at night as well as L-theanine and lavender. They don’t make lavender teas, pillow sprays, lotions, and sachets for nothing. I have heard from people that swear by lavender as part of their wind down routine before bed. You can find these supplements on Amazon.com. Shameless plug: handily enough, you can also find my book, Tales from the Couch for sale there too. Check it out. 

Rule 8: This is the Mac Daddy, numero uno, absolute, not-to-be-broken rule. Alcohol. If you consume alcohol before sleep, you will not sleep. Why? As the body metabolizes the alcohol, it goes into a withdrawl-like reaction and disrupts sleep. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that a little nightcap helps you sleep. Wrong. Some people will tell you differently, but trust me…alcohol and sleep do not play well together. 

Rule 9: A comfortable bedroom. Your bedroom should be an oasis of calm serenity. There should be no office or desk in the bedroom. It should be uncluttered. Anything not conducive to sleep should be out. Make sure it’s dark and quiet at bedtime. The weight of multiple blankets can help sleep. You can even purchase weighted blankets expressly for this purpose. The weight is comforting and relaxing to the body. 

Rule 10: This sort of goes hand in hand with #9 above. Try a low temperature in the bedroom. I personally make sure my bedroom is at 70 degrees. The blankets from rule number 9 come into play here too. There’s something very comforting about burrowing under fluffy blankets to go to sleep. I mean, they’re called comforters for a good reason. 

Rule 10: No eating late at night. People seem to mostly make terrible food choices at night, all in the name of snacks…chips, candies, baked goods. Sugary foods are especially bad. When you eat, the body goes into digestive mode, not sleep mode; it is very interfering to sleep. Sugars especially are no bueno. Evening or night snacking is one of the worst things you can do If you want to sleep.  

Rule 11: Relax and clear your mind. There’s an older pop song that has a lyric, Free your mind and the rest will follow. It’s true. We all have problems and stresses throughout the day, and they seem to pop up when your head hits the pillow. You have to come to some resolution on how you’re going to handle the problems in your life and put them to bed so that you can put the rest of you to bed.  

Rule 12: Spend money on a comfortable quality mattress. You’re going to spend a third of your life in your bed. Just suck it up and spend the money on the mattress. Don’t cheap out. Another place to spend money is on good linens. Few things are as inviting as a comfortable mattress covered in minimum 1,000 thread count all-cotton sheets. If you’ve never had nice linens, try them.You can pick them up on a white sale or online. You can thank me later. 

Rule 13: No exercising late at night.  When you exercise late at night, you raise blood pressure and heart rate, which will hype up the body, which is the antithesis of what you want when it’s time to sleep.  

Rule 14: No liquids prior to sleeping. No rocket science here. If you put liquids in, you’re going to need to get liquids out. In other words, you’re going to have to get up in the middle of the night to pee. And you’re probably going to stub your toe. Not good. 

This is my handy dandy guide on the do’s and don’ts when it comes to sleep. Anything is better than counting sheep. I don’t know who came up with that, but I would like to inform them that I have never in 30 years heard of it working. I’ve never before wanted people to fall asleep as a result of reading something I wrote, so this is a first! I hope you’ve learned some things here that will put you out like a light.

What Ever Happened To Dating

Whatever happened to dating? I’m part of a lot of talk on this particular topic. Day in and day out, patients tell me about their trials and tribulations in the dating world, and the dialog has definitely changed over the years. So, as an unofficial-official expert, I want to talk about dating. There are discrepancies as to who hit on the idea first, but computer-assisted dating sites came into play as personal computers gained popularity in homes everywhere. Remember the Tom Hanks movie You’ve Got Mail? That romanticized the idea of online dating and spawned sites like Match in the early 2000’s. The advent of Facebook kept people checking for “friends” as a hobby, linking people all over creation. However and whomever launched what doesn’t matter much anymore, dating sites and dating apps are here to stay. The list goes on and on and on, and now sites and apps are getting more specific. They target groups: SilverSingles, OurTime, JDate, BlackPeopleMeet, and Farmers Match…if you can be grouped into a subset, you will be. So what’s the impact of dating sites and apps? They’ve changed the game. If you listen to your grandparents tell their love story, it often includes a meeting of eyes, maybe across a crowded bar or restaurant, hence love at ‘first sight.” Now, if you manage to find love, it may be more like at “first site” or “first swipe.” 

Whole movies are made of dating in the modern world. The process of meeting someone has now moved away from social contact, which is sort of oxymoronic in the age of ‘social’ media. The old rules don’t apply anymore. It used to be that to get a date, you got all gussied up to go out and attract a date. Now you can sit home on your couch in your boxers or fat pants and dangle an electronic lure to attract someone. Sadly, romance is now largely a thing of the past, replaced by an electronic algorithm. You have to be a wordsmith to get a date, not a romantic. Pickup lines aren’t spontaneous. Now someone trolling an app for a date can use a line that it took them a month to come up with, and they can use it over and over until the payoff, the date. Social media can also be very manipulative as well. When my patients tell me about failed dates arranged through social media, one of the most popular reasons they give me is that the person didn’t look like their picture. Blah blah blah… I hear that ALL the time. My only reply is usually “Duh!!! It took that guy / girl three hours to take that picture!” I marvel at how they’re shocked by not getting what they were expecting! And these sites and apps are too easy. Going out to attract a date used to require a little effort and forthought. Where am I going? What should I wear? How’s my hair? Is my breath okay? On sites and apps, it doesn’t matter. They’re a numbers game. Send a line out to enough people and you’re bound to hit on a date at some point. And what happens on that date? Social media has stripped away the art of conversation. It’s been reduced to memes, a series of easily textable phrases and lines. Those aren’t conducive toward building the foundation of a relationship. And there can be a darker side to the use of these sites and apps. Some people believe that participation on these dating sites and apps is essentially implied consent or positive acceptance of sexual advances. If you met someone In the real world, not all advances are welcome. The same is true with participation on an app or site. But the flip side of that coin are the apps where advanves are welcome. There are an increasing number of mobile apps that will let you know when a person of like mind is in the vicinity. Of like mind on these apps usually means down to hook up, which has inherant risks in and of itself. These transactional apps seeking sexual relations really take the human touch out of the whole equation. They’re all about the easy hookup, people as commodities. Phone on, date out. Social media has really changed the idea of participating with one’s community. Now you see young people with no interests beyond their phones. What’s going on in their electronic world takes precedent over what’s happening right in front of them. I discuss this at length in my book, Tales from the Couch. People miss so much of what’s going on around them because they’re buried in their phones. Human interaction goes by the wayside. Another consequence of social media is the downfall of commitment. With more relationships being non-committal, I’ve seen marriage rates among my patients go down. When I ask people about that, they essentially tell me that they’re not into commitment because why should they be? Why settle down and buy one cow when you can have all the milk from all the cows on the internet for free? 

Some of these issues can be troubling. I especially wonder what happens to the people who don’t have profiles posted everywhere, who don’t want to swipe right or left to get dates and find companionship. Are they doomed to forever be single? Will they miss out on their happily ever after? Maybe.They may need to bite the bullet and throw a line into the electronic world of dating. For all it’s foibles and downfalls, social media doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. Good, bad, or indifferent, that’s dating today. For more on the world of social media, check out my book Tales from the Couch, available on Amazon.com.

Material Possessions

Dr. Mark Agresti discusses how material possessions can affect our health negatively.

Dr. Mark Agresti, West Palm Beach Drug & Alcohol Detox Specialist, Psychiatrist

Call (561) 842-9550 or email: info@206.189.200.158 Dr. Agresti today to get psychiatric help today.

How to Live a Healthier Life

You have to think it before you can do it, so living a healthy life starts out as  a psychological issue. That is why I’m giving you some general rules to keep in mind. If you remember to keep it simple, you will change your behavior and live healthier.

1.  Don’t smoke cigarettes or use tobacco products. The latest research tells us that even second-hand smoke — being around someone who is smoking — is dangerous. When polycyclic-aromatic hydrocarbon, a substance in tobacco — is burned, it changes your DNA, causing cancer-forming agents within 20 minutes of taking it. That’s the latest research and follows 20 years of earlier research showing that smoking cigarettes, as well as being around others when they are smoking, affects us immediately and is dangerous to our system.  Clearly, this is the one thing you can do if you want to live a healthier life. Don’t smoke.

2. Exercise. I don’t care what you do, but  do it every day. Everyone needs to exercise. Make the time to do it. Get up in the morning and do something —  it doesn’t matter what. New studies show that the amount of exercise we need is much more than we thought — about six hours of fairly rigorous activity a week. From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense. We are animals and animals spend all day in movement looking for food and trying to survive. We need a lot of exercise to stay healthy, much more than the average American does. Studies that look at cultures where the people live long lives show that heavy physical activity is one of the key components in addition to being born with good genes. (more…)