WHY LACK OF SLEEP IS AS DANGEROUS AS SMOKING - with SLEEP EXPERT, DR LINDSAY BROWNING

Summary

Great Company with Jamie Laing: Episode Summary

Title: WHY LACK OF SLEEP IS AS DANGEROUS AS SMOKING
Guest: Dr. Lindsay Browning, Sleep Expert
Release Date: May 6, 2025

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Introduction to Dr. Lindsay Browning

At [08:30], host Jamie Lang introduces Dr. Lindsay Browning, a renowned sleep expert with a doctorate from the University of Oxford specializing in insomnia. Dr. Browning shares her journey into sleep research, emphasizing the psychological aspects of sleep and her passion for helping those struggling with sleep disorders.

Dr. Lindsay Browning [08:33]: "I'm a sleep expert. I have a degree in psychology, a degree in neuroscience, and a doctorate from the University of Oxford in insomnia."

---

Understanding the Science of Sleep

Dr. Browning breaks down the complexities of sleep into its fundamental stages: REM, deep, and light sleep.

• REM Sleep: Characterized by rapid eye movements and high brain activity, often associated with vivid dreaming.

  Dr. Browning [10:33]: "REM sleep is amazing. If I was suck electrodes on your head, I wouldn't be able to tell by just looking at your brain activity if you were awake or asleep in REM sleep."

• Deep Sleep: Involves synchronized neuron activity important for growth hormone production and overall restoration.

• Light Sleep: Serves as a transitional phase, crucial for a balanced sleep cycle.

Dr. Browning emphasizes that all stages of sleep are essential, likening them to components of a balanced meal.

Dr. Browning [14:24]: "They're all important. There is no such thing as a good bit of sleep and a bad bit of sleep."

---

Sleep Disorders: Paralysis and Sleepwalking

The conversation delves into specific sleep disorders:

• Sleep Paralysis: Occurs when the brain wakes up while the body remains in REM-induced paralysis, often accompanied by terrifying hallucinations.

  Dr. Browning [16:11]: "Sleep paralysis is where you wake up from REM sleep. Your brain is awake, but your body is still in REM sleep and is paralyzed."

• Sleepwalking: Happens during deep sleep, leading individuals to perform complex behaviors while still asleep.

  Dr. Browning [19:22]: "Sleepwalking tends to happen in deep sleep... they might open the fridge or go to the toilet in the wardrobe."

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The Critical Importance of Sleep

Dr. Browning outlines the extensive health risks associated with inadequate sleep:

• Health Risks of Sleep Deprivation: Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, certain cancers, dementia, weakened immune system, and increased risk of accidents.

  Dr. Browning [22:21]: "People who get less than 6 hours have a whole host of negative health outcomes compared to those who get seven to nine hours."

• Comparative Risks: Lack of sleep is as detrimental as smoking, underscoring its severity.

  Jamie Lang [23:54]: "They're both terrible. I think that... they're both equally."

---

Insomnia: Causes, Effects, and Solutions

Insomnia is explored in-depth, highlighting its prevalence and psychological roots.

• Prevalence: Approximately one in three people experience short-term sleep issues, while around 10% suffer from chronic insomnia.

  Dr. Browning [30:52]: "About one in three are struggling with short term sleeping issues... about 10% have chronic insomnia."

• Psychological Impact: Described as a "phobia of not sleeping," where anxiety about sleep perpetuates insomnia.

  Dr. Browning [31:32]: "Insomnia is where your brain goes, oh my goodness, if I don't sleep, tomorrow is going to be a disaster."

• Treatment: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I) is recommended as a highly effective treatment.

  Dr. Browning [35:59]: "CBT-I is like, proven with countless studies to be incredibly effective."

---

Sleep Apnea: Identification and Risks

Sleep apnea, a serious condition often unnoticed, is discussed with emphasis on its symptoms and dangers.

• Symptoms: Loud snoring, waking up gasping for air, daytime fatigue.

  Jamie Lang [46:14]: "When I'm on a flight and I'm sleeping upright, I wake up and find I'm not breathing properly."

• Risks: Strain on the heart, poor sleep quality, increased risk of accidents.

  Dr. Browning [45:40]: "Sleep apnea is really dangerous because it causes strain on your heart... it's estimated that 85% of people with obstructive sleep apnea don't know that they have it."

• Advice: Encourages those suspecting sleep apnea to seek medical evaluation rather than attempting unverified remedies like mouth taping.

  Dr. Browning [71:00]: "Please don't mouth tape unless you've had your sleep apnea assessed."

---

Enhanced Sleep Hygiene and Habits

Practical tips for improving sleep quality are provided, focusing on creating an optimal sleep environment and establishing healthy habits.

• Sleep Environment: Importance of darkness, silence, and a cool temperature (16-19°C).

  Dr. Browning [65:25]: "Bedtime conditions are about having blackout curtains, double glazing, and a comfortable mattress."

• Avoid Clock-Watching: Keeping clocks out of sight to prevent anxiety-driven sleep disruptions.

  Dr. Browning [36:44]: "Never look at the clock. It just makes you stressed and anxious."

• Balanced Bedtime Routine: Encourages consistency in sleep schedules tailored to individual needs rather than adhering to an arbitrary eight-hour standard.

  Dr. Browning [21:04]: "It's very individual... you need the right amount of sleep for you."

---

Shift Work and Sleep Challenges

Dr. Browning addresses the unique sleep challenges faced by shift workers, offering strategies to mitigate sleep disruption.

• Circadian Rhythm Disruption: Shift work misaligns with the body's natural clock, leading to reduced sleep quality and quantity.

• Strategies:

  • Use of blackout blinds to create a dark sleep environment.
  • Taking strategic naps before shifts.
  • Exposure to bright light during shifts to stay alert, followed by avoiding it post-shift to aid sleep.

  Dr. Browning [73:50]: "People who work shifts need to avoid bright light at the end of their shift to suppress melatonin production and help them fall asleep."

---

Dreaming and Its Purpose

The episode explores the role of dreaming in emotional processing and memory consolidation.

• Emotional Processing: Dreams help process and deal with emotions, such as viewing traumatic events like PTSD.

  Dr. Browning [54:37]: "We think that it's a way of processing and dealing with emotion."

• Memory Consolidation: Dreams contribute to organizing and retaining memories.

  Dr. Browning [57:53]: "Dreaming sleep is really important for memory consolidation and for processing emotion."

---

Debunking Sleep Myths and Social Media Fads

Dr. Browning critiques popular sleep remedies propagated through social media, emphasizing evidence-based approaches over quick fixes.

• Skepticism Toward Fads: Warnings against unverified methods like mouth taping and expensive sleep gadgets.

  Dr. Browning [72:54]: "The sleep industry is worth millions... It's hard for a consumer to know the difference between what's genuine and what's a marketing stunt."

• Evidence-Based Practices: Reiterates the importance of scientifically proven methods like CBT-I for addressing sleep issues.

---

Conclusion and Key Takeaways

In the closing segment, Dr. Browning shares empowering messages and actionable advice for listeners struggling with sleep.

• Normalization of Sleep Issues: Encourages listeners to understand that occasional poor sleep is normal and not a reflection of personal failure.

  Dr. Browning [77:40]: "You don't need to get a great night's sleep every night. Not sleeping well one night is completely normal."

• Empowerment Through Knowledge: Highlights the availability of effective treatments and the importance of seeking professional help when needed.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Dr. Browning [10:33]: "REM sleep is amazing. If I was suck electrodes on your head, I wouldn't be able to tell by just looking at your brain activity if you were awake or asleep in REM sleep."

• Jamie Lang [22:21]: "People who get less than 6 hours have a whole host of negative health outcomes compared to those who get seven to nine hours."

• Dr. Browning [31:32]: "Insomnia is where your brain goes, oh my goodness, if I don't sleep, tomorrow is going to be a disaster."

• Dr. Browning [35:59]: "CBT-I is like, proven with countless studies to be incredibly effective."

• Dr. Browning [45:40]: "Sleep apnea is really dangerous because it causes strain on your heart... it's estimated that 85% of people with obstructive sleep apnea don't know that they have it."

• Dr. Browning [72:54]: "The sleep industry is worth millions... It's hard for a consumer to know the difference between what's genuine and what's a marketing stunt."

• Dr. Browning [77:40]: "You don't need to get a great night's sleep every night. Not sleeping well one night is completely normal."

---

Resources and Further Reading

Dr. Lindsay Browning’s book, “Navigating Sleeplessness: How to Sleep Deeper and Better for Longer”, is recommended for those seeking comprehensive guidance on improving sleep quality. Links to her work and additional resources are available in the podcast description.

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Remember: Prioritizing sleep is crucial for overall health and well-being. If you’re struggling with sleep issues, consider reaching out to a sleep specialist or exploring evidence-based treatments like CBT-I.

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This summary provides an overview of the key discussions and insights from the podcast episode. For a complete understanding, listening to the full episode is recommended.

Transcript

[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Jamie Lang]

A message for everyone paying Big wireless way too much.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Jamie Lang]

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[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Jamie Lang]

Okay, one judgment anyway.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Of $45 for three month plan equivalent.

[Ryan Reynolds]

To $15 per month required intro rate.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

First three months only, then full price.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full [e-mail] and now a next level moment from AT&T business. Say you've sent out a gigantic shipment of pillows and they need to be there in time for International Sleep day. You've got AT and T5G so you're fully confident, but the vendor isn't responding.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

And International Sleep Day is tomorrow.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Luckily, AT&T 5G lets you deal with any issues with ease so the pillows will get delivered and everyone can sleep soundly, especially you. AT&T 5G requires a compatible plan and device coverage not available everywhere. Learn more at att.com 5G [e-mail], we know some travelers crave an ocean breeze. Others don't want to deal with sand and oftentimes those two people end up together. Compare properties side by side to find yourself poolside, oceanside and still in a relationship. Find your Perfect somewhere with Hotels.com this podcast is brought to you by Aura. By the time you hear about a data breach, your information has already been exposed for months. On average, companies take 277 days to report a breach. That's nine months where hackers have access to your personal data. That's why we're thrilled to partner with Aura. Aura is an all in one digital safety solution that monitors the dark web for your phone number, email and Social Security number, sending real time alerts if your info is found. It also includes a vpn, password manager and data broker removal. To help keep you safe for a limited time, Aura is offering a 14 day free trial plus a dark web scan to check if your personal information has been leaked. All for free at aura.comsafety. that's aura.comsafety to sign up and protect your loved ones. That's a.comsafety. terms apply. Check the site for details.

[Jamie Lang]

Hello everyone, my name is Jamie Lang and this is Great company. Hello Jemima.

[Jemima]

Hello. This is our third try at opening this.

[Jamie Lang]

What a tin.

[Jemima]

It's We've just got a jar in front of us guys. You join us. We're trying to open some jam and we're just really struggling. This is the third attempt. Go on.

[Jamie Lang]

Oh, God, it's really hard to open. It opened like our jam pop. Well, hello, Jemima.

[Jemima]

Hello, Jamie. You're the presenter. I'm the producer.

[Jamie Lang]

That's exactly it.

[Jemima]

And you guys are our owls, our wonderful listeners.

[Jamie Lang]

We haven't mentioned this in a while, but we can mention it now. Hold on one second. Sorry. These headphones are not nice.

[Jemima]

So Jamie has been wearing earbuds, which Sophie and Melissa like to wear. But we're. We like the big ear covers, don't we? Yeah, Happier.

[Jamie Lang]

Way happier. It's terrible.

[Jemima]

I can't share buds. I'm waxy.

[Jamie Lang]

But I have really sensitive ears, so I have to like. I. I want it to be like Mr. Tinnitus.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yeah.

[Jamie Lang]

But you know what?

[Jemima]

Tin Man.

[Jamie Lang]

Tin Man. I went and had my hearing tested. Yeah, there is absolutely fine.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Really.

[Jamie Lang]

So I don't know where the tinnitus is from.

[Jemima]

I had. We had our ears tested at another company I worked at because we worked in audio. They were like, want to make sure your ears are okay. And my. And so how old were we? He was like 29. And he. His hearing, he couldn't. Had like high frequencies. Couldn't hear, which. And that came back and it was like, you've got the hearing. High frequencies of a 50 year old, which means you can't hear women and children. And he was like, well, well, there we go.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Suppose I can't.

[Jemima]

What were you had to say you can't talk about until now. You just started. Something sounded very intriguing.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

What?

[Jamie Lang]

I said I can't talk about it.

[Jemima]

Well, we can talk about it now.

[Jamie Lang]

Did I say that?

[Jemima]

Oh, my God. You can't remember?

[Jamie Lang]

There was nothing.

[Jemima]

What an eluding. You know when someone goes to you.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Oh, my gosh.

[Jemima]

I was talking. You know, if someone starts speaking that way, I'm like.

[Jamie Lang]

I thought I was gonna say, I know.

[Jemima]

Immediately hooked it.

[Jamie Lang]

Can I. Can I understand that? What does that do for. So when I say something, when I say to Sophie, you'll never guess what happened. It's like nectar to her.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Like, what?

[Jamie Lang]

Is it the same to you?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jemima]

But what was that thing you were going to tell us? The listeners. Me and the listeners. We're sat here waiting.

[Jamie Lang]

I don't know what it was.

[Jemima]

Was it to do with Riordan?

[Jamie Lang]

No, there was nothing. But Riordan was amazing. One of our greatest episodes.

[Jemima]

Boy, oh, boy. Thanks, guys, for trusting us with that one.

[Jamie Lang]

Yeah. And to be honest, I would love to hear you, the lovely owls. That's what I was going to say about the owls. We haven't said that for a while.

[Jemima]

Oh, my God. That was so not worth it.

[Jamie Lang]

I know, I'm sorry.

[Jemima]

But we haven't spoken to our owls, our wonderful listeners.

[Jamie Lang]

Owls, our wonderful listener. If you like Reardon and you want to hear more stories like that, let us know because we are thinking about getting more of those guests on I've.

[Jemima]

Got Dates, I've got Jamie's dates. I'm going to check them with Reardon. We're going to get a part two for you, but can you guys send me some questions? Because everyone's like, I want a part two. I want a part two.

[Jamie Lang]

And I'm like, oh, there's lots, there's lots to talk about. So today's episode is a great one because.

[Jemima]

Oh, I'm excited.

[Jamie Lang]

Why are you excited?

[Jemima]

Because we all do this. We all sleep.

[Jamie Lang]

We all sleep.

[Jemima]

And I want, I'm really interested in. I, I want to know for me if I sleep well, because I think I sleep well, but maybe I don't.

[Jamie Lang]

We have today, Dr. Lindsay Browning on. Lindsay is a sleep expert.

[Jemima]

Yes.

[Jamie Lang]

She's a psychologist when it comes to sleep.

[Jemima]

Yes. So previously people have problems with sleep. You'd go to the doctor and you get prescribed medication.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Correct.

[Jemima]

However, Lindsay. So like back when Dr. Lindsay first started studying sleep, it was. It was that you just go to Dr. And you get prescribed medication.

[Jamie Lang]

Exactly.

[Jemima]

However, she was interested in kind of the psychological side sleep and that you can, you know, like the medication might help you, but it might not be really tackle the problem as to why you're not sleeping. So that's the angle she comes from.

[Jamie Lang]

And it's fascinating because as you said, we all do it.

[Jemima]

We all should be doing it.

[Jamie Lang]

We all should be doing it. We all probably don't do it as much as we should be doing. The importance of sleep is crazy fascinating. It truly is. You know, the science behind it, why we need it, why some people sleep better than others, insomnia, sleep terrors, all these things, which is like a really exciting thing. And with Dr. Lindsay Browning, I want to discuss everything.

[Jemima]

Yes, it's probably worth saying if you are struggle to sleep, it can be quite triggering to listen to people talk about sleep. If you do struggle with your sleep, there are absolutely tons of things that you can do to help. So hopefully you won't find this. If you do struggle with sleep, you'll find this like a reassuring lesson.

[Jamie Lang]

Yeah. And so the big thing is Is that everything is curable.

[Jemima]

Yeah. And really easily.

[Jamie Lang]

And really easily. So you can be helped, which is fascinating. Now also, we're going to put links in the description of the podcast. So go and check out those things. If you're struggling with your sleep or want help or want more information on Lindsay Browning. Everything's down there. She also has her books and all those things, which is incredible.

[Jemima]

Yes, yes. We'll leave a link to her company.

[Jamie Lang]

Called Trouble Sleeping, which is going to be amazing. Also, before we start the show, we hope that you like this podcast and you keep coming back. If you could please subscribe, that would be amazing. A lot of you are listening to this, but not a huge amount of you have subscribed. So there's people who haven't subscribed yet.

[Jemima]

A little slap on the wrist from Jamie.

[Jamie Lang]

I know. Please click that button because it does us absolute wonders.

[Jemima]

Can I just tell you a little side quest story? I worked on a show, one of the first shows I ever produced, and it was with a group of, like, young people. Anyway, there are about 30 young people working on this show. And one day after we'd released about five episodes, someone turned around and was like, can you please ask the people who working on the show to subscribe to the episode? And we were like, yeah. And they were like, do you know how many subscribers we've got? Bearing in mind, there's at least 30 contributors to the show, let alone all the production team making it, and hopefully listeners. 11 people subscribed.

[Jamie Lang]

There you go. No one. You don't click the button.

[Jemima]

People don't subscribe.

[Jamie Lang]

You don't subscribe, and I can't tell you how much it does for us. So if you can click that button or tell your friends or your loved ones, whoever is to click the button, that would be amazing. Okay, are you ready for this?

[Jemima]

I'm so excited.

[Jamie Lang]

If you're trying to sleep, this might be a good one. But if you're also trying to stay awake, this is maybe a good one as well. Here we go.

[Jemima]

That's a weird intro.

[Jamie Lang]

It's a really weird intro. Please enjoy this episode of great company with Dr. Lindsay Browning.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Hi, I'm Dr. Lindsay Browning and I'm in great company.

[Jamie Lang]

Before we start, can you explain to everyone who you are and what you do?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Sure. So I. I'm a sleep expert. I have a degree in psychology, a degree in neuroscience, and a doctorate from the University of Oxford in insomnia. And I specialize in helping people with sleeping problem and educating people on better Sleep and working with different industries like schools and the NHS police about shift work and anything sleep related, basically.

[Jamie Lang]

It's funny because it's one of those things that sort of growing up, you want to be a police officer or you want to be an actor or a singer, but it's kind of a unique thing to get into especially, especially back then.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So, you know, I did a degree in psychology and neuroscience and sleep is one of those things that especially, you know, almost 20 years ago when I graduated, it was really not very well researched. I mean, now it's everywhere. But back then sleep was even seen as a bit of an inconvenience, you know, a nothing kind of subject. It's something that we do as a waste of time. But, you know, I knew and it was really interesting to understand, you know, what's going on in the brain, especially neuroscience wise. So I just fell into looking at sleep, researching sleep. And as I researched it more and learned more about it, I found that there was a huge amount of people who really struggle with their sleep. And that's where my interest in insomnia and helping people with their sleeping problems came from.

[Jamie Lang]

Normally, I say normally when people find sort of an interest in something, it means that it's probably affected themselves. Growing up, did you. Was your sleep affected?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yeah, so loads of people ask that. But actually I'm genuinely a really good sleeper. I've always been a really good sleeper. I love sleep. I dream loads. I remember my dreams. I've always been really interested in sleep and dreaming, but it's just really the aspect of people struggling with their sleep sleep that I really wanted to go into helping. It's like counseling or, you know, being a medical doctor, it's going into something where you can help people. And that's just the niche where I saw like there was a bit I could help with.

[Jamie Lang]

What actually is sleep?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Great question. So when we fall asleep, our brain doesn't just turn off. It's not like when you turn your phone off, it's more like a scan and a. It's amazing. It is the most active time of your brain. It's incredible. So we have different parts of sleep, light sleep sleep, deep sleep and REM sleep.

[Jamie Lang]

Okay, break this down for me.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So, so REM sleep, start with that. That stands for rapid eye movement sleep. And that's because during that part of sleep, your eyes, like under your shut, you know, your eyelids are shut but your eyeballs themselves are moving rapidly from side to side. So if you are with a partner and you look at them and they're asleep. You can tell if they're in REM sleep because their eyeballs, you can see them moving quickly behind your eyelids. And REM sleep is amazing. And your brain activity. If I was, you know, suck electrodes on your head and I was monitoring your brain, I wouldn't be able to tell by just looking at your brain activity if you were awake or asleep in REM sleep because your brain is so active and we tend to have vivid dreams at that time. You know, our brain is processing, it's simulating, it's sort of practicing for the future. You might have dreams about turning up for like one of these, not wearing any clothes or turning up for an exam naked, or not having revised or you're running away from someone. Because our dreaming sleep is often a time for our brain to kind of simulate and practice things that it worries might happen to us. So that's REM sleep and then deep sleep. Our brain looks completely different in deep sleep. And our neurons in our brain are synchronized. They're all kind of firing at the same time, whereas REM sleep and, and our brain activity right now, our neurons are firing all over the place and it's all really random. But in deep sleep, all our neurons are firing in like waves. And if you look at, you know, the brain activity of our sleep, it's. It looks amazing. It's just like you can see the waves literally of all the neurons firing together. And it's associated with. We're producing different hormones. Children produce growth hormone during deep sleep. And it's a time when our brain is. We don't fully understand every single thing that's going on in the different parts of sleep, but we know that it's associated with a whole host of benefits. And light sleep is where the brain activity looks very, very similar, but the waves are less deep and a little bit faster. So the difference between light sleep and deep sleep is more of a continuum where we can sort of like break it up based on the power of the brain waves. But REM sleep, the brain activity is completely different. And we tend to spend as an adult around 55% of the night in light sleep about when we were 21 years old, about 21, 22% of the night in deep sleep and about 25ish in REM sleep. But lots of people think that light sleep is bad, that it's the bad part. And I get calls all the time from people saying, Dr. Browning, can you help me? Because my sleep tracker tells me I get 50% of the night in light sleep, and that's terrible. I need to eliminate light sleep and only have the good quality deep sleep or REM sleep. To which I say to them that's complete nonsense because they're all good. There is no such thing as a good bit of sleep and a bad bit of sleep. They're all important. It's like a plate of food, you know, think about a balanced meal. A balanced meal doesn't involve just one type of food, like broccoli. Deep sleep is kind of like broccoli. It's really good for you. But if you only had deep sleep, you wouldn't be healthy at all because you're missing out on the other parts of sleep that are also just as valuable. Just like a plate of food, you need protein, carbohydrate, calcium. You need all the different parts of food to be healthy. You need all the different parts of sleep to be healthy.

[Jamie Lang]

Really?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yeah. And don't know that I was, because.

[Jamie Lang]

I used to have a whoop, right? I used to track my sleep and I would wake up and it would say this light sleep and things that I would just be furious. And so I stopped wearing it because I was only having so much light sleep and I was having broken sleep. But you're saying that it's, it's. You need it because it's the full plate of food.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yeah, absolutely. And actually the.

[Jamie Lang]

Are you sure?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yes, I promise, I promise. It's. It's really easy for us to kind of fixate on one thing, you know, but actually, as with much of life, like you know, eating healthily and exercising, it's all about a balance. And our night sleep is all about a balance. And we need the different parts of sleep to enable us to get all the benefits of that. And to fixate on one part is just. Is just silly because, well, frankly, we can't control it anyway. There's no way we can change the proportion of. You can't decide, well, tonight I'm only going to have deep sleep. It's just simply not possible.

[Jamie Lang]

So REM sleep, if you were to track it, you wouldn't be able to tell if I'm asleep or awake just by tracking it. Because your brain is so active just.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

By just looking at your brain activity for sure. That's why we have to. When we look at polysonography, which is a psg, it's a overnight sleep assessment, we put monitors on your eyes to track your eye movement. We put monitors on your heart rate, on your breathing, on your muscle tone. Because during rem sleep? Yes. Your brain activity itself, we can't tell the difference, but your body, we can, because during REM sleep, your body tone, your muscle tone becomes paralyzed so that you don't act out your dreams. Basically, because when we're dreaming, we need to be paralyzed so that we don't start, you know, whacking our partners in the middle of the night and fighting imaginary ninjas that we're dreaming about. So you can tell from these other indicators what's going on and which part of sleep you're in.

[Jamie Lang]

As a kid, I used to sleepwalk. And I remember. I can sort of remember certain times when I slept, walk weirdly enough, and it felt like a dream, but I was obviously sleepwalking. And I've also experienced night terrors where I've been lying in bed and I feel like I'm awake. My body becomes completely rigid and still, and I can't move. And what I can only describe is sort of like a figure.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

That's not a night terror. That's sleep paralysis.

[Jamie Lang]

Is it?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So sleep paralysis is where you wake up from REM sleep. So if you remember, we talked earlier about the fact that when we're in REM sleep, REM sleep, our body becomes paralyzed. So what can happen is when you're in REM sleep, you can wake up. Part of your brain can be awake, but the part of your brain is still asleep and in REM sleep. So you wake up and you're conscious and your brain is awake, and you open your eyes and you can see the bedroom, but your body is still in the middle of REM sleep and is paralyzed. And it's almost entirely petrifying. So did you feel extremely scared at that point?

[Jamie Lang]

Couldn't move. And it was almost like I was trying to pull a weight up.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yeah. And people with sleep paralysis. And it's really fascinating that across the globe, people report the same things. They report seeing a figure at the foot of the bed, or they'll see some kind of figure in the room, and it's really dark. Maybe it's like they'll describe it as a. As a ghost or the devil or a witch or something, or even an alien. And it's always really bad. And they can't move and they're struggling. They can't scream, they can't make a noise, and they're fighting against it. It's really petrifying. And then after a while, you'll come out of it. But it's really, really scary. And that can trigger insomnia because people don't want to experience that because it's so petrifying. But actually, sleep paralysis isn't either. Scientifically, there isn't a demon in your room. It's just your brain interpreting the fact that you were in REM sleep, dreaming kind of sleep, but you were physically paralyzed because your body was still asleep, which is what happens at that point. So what I tell people who experience sleep paralysis is, rather than trying to fight it, because you're trying to fight it and wake up, you can't is try and concentrate on moving your little finger, just one finger. Just. Just lie there and think, okay, I know what's going on. I'm. I'm having REM sleep, but my consciousness. I am awake, but I'm still trapped in REM sleep. So it's scientifically that's what's going on. There isn't really a scary figure. I'm just going to try and concentrate on moving my little finger. And if you can, then once you move your little finger, you'll break it and you'll wake up. But that's an easy way. Just keep yourself calm, concentrate on moving one part of your body, and then you'll be able to wake up.

[Jamie Lang]

When it first happens, it's the scariest thing. And if you look at images from sort of Tudor times, it's the same image of this devil standing above you, almost sitting on your chest. The devil sits on your chest. That's why you can't move. It's so strange that the brain goes to sort of a witch, a sort of figure that scares you. And everyone across the globe has the same thing.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

And I love to talk to people about alien abduction stories. So if you think about alien abduction stories, they are almost always an alien came into my bedroom in the middle of the night and paralyzed me. And I'm like, it's sleep paralysis. That's what happened.

[Jamie Lang]

Sleepwalking, what happens when we sleepwalk.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So sleepwalking happens in a different part of sleep. So if you imagine, you know, REM sleep, our body is paralyzed. Sleepwalking tends to happen in deep sleep. And when we sleep, what? We're not really dreaming. Because sleepwalkers aren't running around the house trying to, you know, do exciting stuff. They just walk calmly down the stairs. They might open the fridge, get some food, or they might go to the toilet, possibly in the wardrobe, because they're kind of asleep. You know, it's not a great thing. So sleepwalking, it is more common in children than in adults. There's nothing wrong with it, nothing sort of, you know, but it can be dangerous if you're sleepwalking and you might be at danger of falling down the stairs or climbing out of a window. So if you or someone, you know. Yeah, yeah. Because if you're asleep in your bedroom, you might, during sleepwalking, open the window. And so it's really important to sort of proof your sleepwalking, proof your house if you think that you're at risk of sleepwalking by locking the windows, maybe even putting a stair gate at the top of the stairs to help protect you from that, these kinds of things.

[Jamie Lang]

But I always told if you wake up a sleepwalker, it's dangerous.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

It's not, it can't be. Right?

[Jamie Lang]

Producer Jemima's written that said, this is what producer Jemima's written said. Is it dangerous to wake up a sleepwalker? Will it make them go mad?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

No, absolutely not. It's fine. But you don't need to wake them up. You could just gently just know, push them back, you know, get them back into bed. There's no, you need to wake them up, but it's not going to be dangerous if you do. But they're in deep sleep, so it's quite hard to wake a sleepwalker because they're so deeply asleep. So just generally guide them back to bed, Put them in bed.

[Jamie Lang]

So how many hours a night should we sleep?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So for an adult, 18 to 64, the recommendations are somewhere between seven to nine hours. And this is where like a really huge misconception comes in. Because eight hours sleep is often banded around as the perfect amount of sleep. But that's so unhelpful because it's just the average, you know, we're not the same height, we're not the same weight. People don't all have the same sleep needs. So if you're trying to get eight hours sleep, because you think that's the magic number, if you only need seven hours sleep, you're going to be tossing and turning for an hour every night, night. Because you don't need eight hours sleep. Or if you need more, and I'm someone who definitely needs more than eight hours, I can function fine on eight hours sleep, but I'm really good on just under nine. And that's where the whole partner thing, going back to the beginning, you can get disparity. Because if your partner only needs seven hours, but you need nine and you're both going to bed at the same time and trying to get eight hours sleep, you're both going to be unhappy. So it's about trying to get the right amount of sleep for you. And that might be different to your partner, to your siblings. It's just, it's very individual.

[Jamie Lang]

And then what happens if we don't get enough sleep? What is if we're sleeping three, four, five hours a night so we can.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Survive on less sleep? For sure. And as humans, of course we can, because there are times in our life when we have to, we've got a brand new baby, or if you're, you know, faced with a crisis, you know, God forbid, you're in a war zone or something, we can't get enough sleep. But that doesn't mean to say that we're thriving, just like we can survive on eating absolute rubbish. It doesn't mean that we're doing good for our bodies. So people who get less than 6 hours, 6 hours sleep a night have a whole host of more negative health outcomes than those who get seven to nine hours. So. So like before I mentioned, you're more likely to be obese, to get diabetes, to have heart disease, stroke, to get certain types of cancers, to get dementia. It disrupts your immune system. It means you're more at risk of car accidents. It's huge. But equally and interestingly, if people sleep for way too much, there's also an associated risk of poor health outcomes. But people who sleep for a lot, like 10 hours, 11 hours often, that's, that's not because they're sleeping too much is causing them to be ill, but it's more likely that they're sleeping too much because they're already ill. If that makes sense.

[Jamie Lang]

If I was to say to you, I get eight hours sleep a night, but I smoke 40 cigarettes a day, or I would say to you, I live a really clean life, but I get four hours sleep a night, what is better?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

They're both not good. They're both not good. I think that. Goodness, that's really hard. One. They're both terrible. I would say. Yeah, they're both equally.

[Jamie Lang]

But they're both equally as bad as.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Each other, I think. So, yeah.

[Jamie Lang]

So the four hour sleep night, but I live a really healthy life, but I'm getting four hours sleep a night. That is awful for you.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Absolutely. It really is. It shortens your life expectancy. It puts you at huge risk of so many things, of depression or of anxiety. Yeah, it's massive. And people who think, well, I'm fine, I can function on four hours. Yeah, yeah, you can function on four hours sleep, but you can also function smoking 60 cigarettes a day, but it's not good for you.

[Jamie Lang]

It's amazing because it's, we look at alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, you know, there's a big thing with, you know, fast food and all this ultra processed food, ultra processed food, everything. But we're not really looking at sleep as the lack of sleep that we're getting because of our lives, our stressful lives, the city life, whatever it is. And it's, it's sort of the easiest thing which is out there, but we're not focusing on it and it's free.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

That's what's crazy. You just have to go to bed. And so there are two groups of people. There are people with insomnia who know this and listen to this. They're just, right now, they're listening, going, oh, I'm so angry because I know sleep's important, I'm trying but I can't. But there are a huge amount of people who aren't prioritizing their sleep. They just genuinely aren't. And they're scrolling through sleep. Procrastination is when you go to bed and you meant to go to sleep, but before you know it you spent an hour or two scrolling through TikTok or Snapchat or whatever and then oops, it's one in the morning, I better go to bed. And then you've got to be up at seven for work. Well, one until seven is only six hours. So there's no way you can get the recommended seven to nine hours sleep. If you're only trying to sleep for six hours.

[Jamie Lang]

What can lead to death quicker? Lack of food or lack of sleep?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Well, I think that no one has made it past five days of no sleep sleep before dying. It's like you, you cannot, you can survive, you know, water, if you have water but no food, you can survive several weeks with no food. But no one's made it like a week or so with no sleep because you, you die basically. Or, or people just sleep, they can't be kept awake, they just can't.

[Jamie Lang]

What happens?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

But you start hallucinating. People go completely. There are people who've done experiments, they've tried to stay awake for a certain amount of time and they start to hallucinate. It's, it's really bad. And basically your body, even if you're trying to stay awake, it just, you start having micro sleeps, you just start falling asleep, you just cannot, you cannot stay awake. But it's, it's, you can't keep yourself awake because your body is going to sleep whether you want to or not. And I use this example a lot in my, with my clients actually, because lots of my clients think that they're never going to sleep again. But of course, of course you will. Well, you're going to fall asleep whether you want to or not. Because even if there was a, if you're stuck in a room with a tiger. This example I use a lot about how anxiety affects our sleep. So if you were in bed and you're really calm and relaxed and suddenly there was a tiger in your bedroom, well, you'd be wide awake because there's a tiger in your bedroom, basically. Because if you are anxious, there's no way you can sleep. And, and we would all know that there's no way we would fall asleep for a second. And if that tiger stayed in our bedroom for 24 hours, we would be wide awake 48 hours, wide awake 72 hours. At this point, like we're starting to get sleepy. And at some point I would think by day four, definitely by day five, I would fall asleep in a room if I stuck there with the tiger. Even though I know that when I fall asleep the tiger's gonna eat me. Because you cannot stay awake even if your life literally depends on it.

[Jamie Lang]

It's interesting cause I think this is the moment we should talk about insomnia because it affects so many people. I mean so many people. My mother in law talks about it a lot. I've had it. And it's a really scary thing. And it's a self sort of, it's a self sort of acting thing that you, as soon as you, you start thinking about sleep, you're worried about going to bed. It becomes a cycle in your head. I'm not going to sleep, I'm not going to sleep. And then ultimately what happens is you don't sleep, you wake up the next day. But I have to go to work, I have to look after the kids, I have to do a sports thing. Oh God. And then you don't sleep and it becomes worse and worse, worse. And then you get yourself in a real pickle. And I think the scary thing about it is that we don't really know anything about it. And it's the anxiety within our body that really scares us. And then we see bed as fear rather than seeing it as a comfort place, which is really important. So I want to talk about it, but I also want to make sure that anyone listening right now who is, is perhaps being triggered or does, is going through insomnia. There are ways to get through it. There are Ways to cure it, to make it feel better and you're not going to be stuck in this for the rest of your life, isn't that right?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Definitely. I mean, I've had clients who've had insomnia who've been terrible sleepers for 40 plus years. Just thought that was just who they were, there was nothing they could do about it. But once they do cbt, I basically Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia. Once they address their problems and fix their behaviors that are causing it and deal with those anxieties, their sleep is fine. So yeah, there really is a lot we can do to. There really is a lot to do physically.

[Jamie Lang]

Give me an example of someone who came to see you who was really bad and I want to know sort of what their sleep was like and you managed to help them.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yeah, so I have people who've come to see me who had literally quit their jobs. They felt that they couldn't, couldn't have a job because they couldn't guarantee they were going to sleep the night before. So rather than, you know, they'd been not going to work on time. And then after a while it just became unsustainable. So they quit their job thinking that would help. And they also thought maybe, well, it's the job stress that's causing my sleeping problem, so I'll quit my job. And of course the sleeping problem remained. So working with them to, to, to fix their sleep, the sleep's now fine and they're able to live their life again.

[Jamie Lang]

It's such an isolating thing as well.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yeah.

[Jamie Lang]

Because you're alone at night.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yes, absolutely. And it's jealousy of your partner that they're asleep and you feel like you're the only person in the world. And so when I talk to them and they explain their fears and what's going on, I say, yeah, you're, I really feel for you, but you're really normal. For someone with sleeping problems. This is exactly what people go through and the, the worries that you have, the fears you have, are completely normal. And that's great because we can fix that and get you through that.

[Jamie Lang]

Wow, that is so comforting. Yeah, that is so comforting. I remember when I, when I have tinnitus and when it first started, it's just, and it's, in some ways it's a little bit like insomnia, just it's not ending with sleep, but it's the same sort of anxiety driving thing that you have. And I remember I went to see a specialist and they said, don't Worry, you'll get through it, I promise you. And it was those words that made me think, oh my God. What is the percentage of people in the world in the UK that have insomnia?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So at any one time, I think it's about one in three who are struggling with short term sleeping issues. But. But chronic. Yeah, who have some kind of problem sleeping. So I'm sure, you know, in this room there's probably people who are not sleeping brilliantly, but about 10% of people have or have had chronic insomnia, which is where it's not just a period of poor sleep because you're a bit stressed about something. And yeah, my sleep isn't great right now, but it'll be okay later. Chronic insomnia is where it's become an ongoing issue that people are really struggling with their sleep and it's, you know, every week, every month, and they really need more help with it.

[Jamie Lang]

Insomnia, where does it come from?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So as you said, it's sort of anxiety. So I like to think of insomnia or describe it as a phobia of not sleeping. So if you think about it, insomnia is where your brain goes, oh my goodness, if I don't sleep, tomorrow is going to be a disaster. And that thought process, that fear of not sleeping then causes such anxiety that you then don't sleep. It's, it's like you said, self actualizing it, it makes itself happen because you're so worried that you're not going to sleep well, that then you're so anxious like that tiger in your bedroom that you can't sleep.

[Jamie Lang]

We have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Well, eight, including you now, but six people in the room, hands up. Who struggles with their sleep out of the team? 1, 2, 3, 4. 4 out of 6. Wow, that is a lot.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yeah, it really is. And the trouble is lots of people just think it's just who they are, they can't do anything about it. And there really is so much they can do about it, which is, you know, sad.

[Jamie Lang]

If someone is struggling with their sleep and they're listening to this, right, and they're going, please help Me, you know, Dr. Lindsay, please help me. What should they do in order to make things better for you? Them?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Okay, so really, really common thing people do when they're not sleeping well is to start going to bed much earlier and sleeping in the morning because they think, well, I'm not getting enough sleep, so I will give myself more time in bed to give me more opportunity to sleep, which Seems like it makes sense. But just as you described earlier, what you're doing then is you're spending more time in bed, not sleeping. So your bed starts to become this really negative place where you're frustrated because you're spending all this time in bed, unable to sleep, frustrate, anxious, and then it becomes that you're, when you go to bed, you're now you're stressed and anxious because you're in this negative place. So sometimes going to bed much earlier and sleeping in much later in the morning isn't helpful. So have a think about how much you, how much time are you spending in your bed and how much sleep are you getting? And if there is a huge difference in that, maybe try and bring them a bit nearer. I'd, you know, if you're, if you're going to bed at nine, getting up at seven, but only sleeping for six hours, that's what, 10 hours in bed, which is crazy. So maybe go to bed at 11 and get up at half six or seven just to shrink a bit of that time off. And then secondly is people just lie in bed trying to force sleep. And people think, well, at least if I'm in bed and resting or I don't want to get up because then I'll wake myself up. So people spend huge amounts of time just lying in bed, bed trying to force themselves to sleep because that anxiety, that fear of, well, I have to sleep, otherwise I won't be able to cope tomorrow. So they're trying to force sleep so much and actually just getting out of bed. If you can't sleep, if you've been lying in bed either at the beginning of the night or you wake up in the middle of the night and you just can't fall back to sleep again. You can't fall asleep and you've been lying there for what feels like about 20 minutes, you don't need to look at a clock, but that sort of gut feel of, of, yeah, it's probably been about 20 minutes. It's been long enough that, yeah, I've given it a shot and it's not happening. Then just get up, just get up out of bed and go and do something else for a little while. Go and read a book, go and paint a picture, go and do something calming things and something to distract you, to make you not think about sleep anymore. What I don't want you to do is to get out of bed and go and read a boring book because people do that. Or go and do some meditation out of bed because that can actually just make you. You were in bed trying to sleep and now you're in your lounge reading a book that's really boring. And now you're just like thinking, oh, this is such a boring book, but I have to read it because my sleep's bad and I'm so annoyed you're still thinking about sleep. I want you to think about like having a break. So get out of bed and go and have a break from trying to sleep. Think about if you job, whatever your job is, if, if you were doing a project, you were working on your computer trying to do a project and the words weren't coming, you just couldn't do it. You wouldn't just sit there at your computer trying to force it. You go, oh, it's not working for me right now. And you'd get up and you'd go and have a cup of tea and you go and watch a bit of telly and you'd have a break and then you'd come back and you're like, ah, I can do it now. That's what you're trying to achieve in the middle of the night. You're trying to get out of bed to have a break from trying to force sleep and failing. So that when you go back to bed again, when you're feeling sleepier, you've got to reset and you're calmer and you're in a better place to sleep.

[Jamie Lang]

And go and try some CBT I.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yes. So CBT I, if you have like chronic insomnia, if you're really struggling. So good sleep hygiene is the sort of have a wind down time before bed, all the good sleep rules that you know, which is great for normal sleepers whose sleep maybe is just a bit iffy. But if you feel that you're someone with chronic insomnia who's really struggling, then CBTI is not the same as just sleep hygiene. It's a program that you should be able to get access to, probably for your gp. You can get access to it, you can read a book and follow a plan. You can speak to a private therapist, like someone like myself. But there are options available to you for, you know, free or minimal cost. Go through that program and it is sort of 80, 85, 90% effective at curing insomnia. It's really amazing.

[Jamie Lang]

I was always told, because I used to have broken seats, I'd wake up in the middle of the night, I need to go to the bathroom or I just wake up. I was told to never look at the clock.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Definitely Never look at the clock. It's just so unhelpful. Because always everyone should have an alarm set in the morning, even if you're someone who goes, well, I don't need an alarm because I'm always awake before the alarm. Well, if you don't have an alarm set, then when you wake up, you have to look at the time to see if it's morning yet. And every time you look at the time, your brain goes, oh, that means we've had, oh, this amount of sleep, and that means it's this long till we have to get up. And you're doing these mental calculations which make you stressed and anxious. So do not have a clock that you can see from bed. If you wake up in the night, all you have to do is think, has my alarm gone off? Yes or no? If no, okay, I'll see if I can go back to sleep again. And if it has, we'll get up.

[Jamie Lang]

Is having sex before you sleep a good thing?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Always, as long as you're with someone you love. So when we have sex, we do produce hormones, the oxytocin, that might be helpful for sleep. It helps us to be calmer. Now, depending how you do it, if it's very vigorous, then vigorous exercise right before bed isn't, you know, might make you a bit too awake. So if it's not so vigorous, I can't believe I'm discussing this, but basically there are lots of hormones we produce when we love someone and we are intimate that. That help us to feel relaxed and safe and loved and calm, which is great. But if you're too hot, then you might struggle to fall asleep. So you might want to do it, you know, a little before bed so that you're not too hot.

[Jamie Lang]

I heard that there is a. I think they do it in the Nordic countries where people sleep in different beds. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So there's lots of evidence to show that bed sharing is a poor person's issue, basically, and that rich people tend to sleep in separate beds, or if not, separate rooms, or if you are the late queen and, you know, Prince Philip, separate wings of the house, I believe. But us mere poor mortals, we have to share a bed because the kids have got all the other bedrooms. If you do sleep separately, then if you move around, you're going to be able to not be disrupted by somebody else. You're going to be able to feel less worried that you're going to interfere with somebody else. Especially if you have sleeping difficulty. You might feel that you don't want to interrupt your partner by moving. And also temperature regulation maybe like the Scandinavian sleep method isn't having two separate beds, but having two separate duvets. And that's a really good compromise. So you can share a bed but have two single duvets. And if you're someone who gets too cold in the night and your partner gets too hot, then you can have different togs. You can throw one off and without disrupting them too much. And they don't steal the duvet as well.

[Jamie Lang]

I think most of us can agree though, in a relationship, when you know your partner's out of town or you're sleeping by yourself, you think this is gonna be a great night's sleep. We all agree with that. It's unbelievable. And you can just roll onto any side of the bed that you want.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

And get the cool side and then go back to the warm side. Yes.

[Jamie Lang]

Oh, yeah. That's the best. That is the best. Apparently a huge amount of breakups happen from sleep patterns.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

I don't have the stats for that, but I do know that I deal with, in my clinical work a lot of people who massively struggle in their relationships, for sure, because of sleep issues. Either one partner needs or wants a lot more sleep than the other. And then there's this disparity. You're both trying to go to bed at the same time and get up at the same time, which naturally happens with couples. But if one of you doesn't need as much sleep as the other, then one of you is going to be tossing and turning and frustrated. Or if you're different times of the day, like, like you said, nocturnal. But it's kind of like larks and owls. Some of us are early birds, some of us are later. Lots of people are in the middle. But if you're a couple and one of you wants to get up early and go to bed early and the other one wants to stay up late and sleep in, that can cause a daily conflict where you're not in the same sort of time zone as each other. So, yeah, it's a really common issue.

[Jamie Lang]

And the problem with that, I suppose, is what happens is that when you're in a couple and say, I'm an early writer and my partner likes to sleep late, I see that as lazy. But actually, no, it's just a different sleep pattern.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a late person. I'm a night out owl for sure. And my husband here, he's. He's an early person. So we have that Conflict, but it's about understanding and compromise, but not making it a problem. So, for example, me being a late person, I like to stay up late and going to bed isn't something that I naturally think, oh, I should go to bed early. But that's not great because I have to be up for work, I have to be up for the kids, I have to be up for life things. So I have to remind myself to go to bed early. So having someone who's on the other end of the spectrum can kind of help nudge you into the better frame of mind. But equally, first thing in the morning, I'm not fun to be with because I'm a, you know, mornings aren't my friend. So as a couple, it's that understanding that, yeah, Lindsay isn't going to be the best bright and early. She's not going to jump out of bed and go make a cup of tea first thing in the morning because that's just not who she is. But if you want someone to get things done at half 10, 11 o'clock at night, I'm that person.

[Jamie Lang]

What we're talking about is something. Is it called the chronotype.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Chronotype.

[Jamie Lang]

Chronotype type. And you have what I can see here, but this might be wrong. We have the lion.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yep.

[Jamie Lang]

The bear and the owls or wolves.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So there is a. Owls and larks are like. Larks are the early people who go to bed early, wake up early and owls are. Go to bed late, wake up late. And then you have animals. So the bear, the wolf, the lion and the dolphin, which is another way of looking at it.

[Jamie Lang]

Dolphin out of nowhere.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jamie Lang]

Dolphin out of nowhere.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So. So if we go with the animal, because, you know, larks and owls is very pivotal. It's like, you know, early or late. Whereas the other. The animal chronotypes, they cover the same content but in a bit more niche. So the lion is. Is kind of the lark. It's someone who gets up early and goes to bed early. The wolf is kind of like the owl who goes to bed late, wakes up late. The bear is the majority of people, basically, and that's people who. They get up at the normal kind of time, go to bed at normal kind of time, and they're feeling their most energized, most awake in the middle of the day, day. And the dolphin, that sort of weird one out of the side, is someone who is a short sleeper, someone whose sleep is really bad quality. So those are people who really struggle with sleep. Maybe they. They can't fall asleep easily. They wake up throughout the night and they're not getting enough sleep and they're just always tired. So you might think of new parents or someone going through a really stressful time, or a menopausal woman who's really struggling with night sweats and hot flashes. Those are sort of the dolphins.

[Jamie Lang]

How do couples overcome difference in sleep cycles? How do you do that in a couple? If someone's listening right now and they're saying that my partner snores, or someone says that my partner goes to bed at one in the morning or whatever, because there'll be loads of people listening right now. How do you counter that in a relationship?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So those are two different things. So the snoring, to be fair, people think, oh, snoring's just annoying. But often snoring is a sign of. Of a greater issue. So often it's a sign of sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is when someone stopped breathing during the night. They have some kind of either obstructive sleep apnea. Where they're breathing, the airway is blocked for some reason. So maybe it's enlarged tonsils or adenoids, maybe the weight of your throat. Especially when people are overweight, they can physically close up and stop you breathing during the night. And snoring is a partial blockage of the airway. If you imagine it's like your airway isn't fully closed, but it's a bit close, so the air, the throat vibrates and you get that noise of snoring, which, as a partner, is really frustrating and annoying. But for the person experiencing it, actually, they're not getting great, good quality sleep. So if somebody does have a snoring partner, rather than just nudging them or being angry with them about it, it's a really good idea to. To make sure that there isn't something else. It's not a sign of a deeper issue like obstructive sleep apnea, which actually is really dangerous because it causes strain on your heart, it causes sleep deprivation, it ruins the quality of your sleep and it really is, I think, 85%. It's estimated that 85% of people with obstructive sleep apnea don't know that they have it. So they're just going through life snoring, feeling chronically fatigued and just thinking, that's just who I am. But actually there's likely to be this issue. But 1.5 million people have sleep apnea in the UK. There's a huge amount of people and a Huge issue that if we get it treated and resolved, they'll be able to sleep better. They'll wake up feeling more refreshed, and their partner won't be really angry with them that they can't sleep because of the snoring. Partner.

[Jamie Lang]

Dr. Lindsay I think I have a slight bit of sleep apnea, because two examples. So when I'm on a flight and it's typically. And I'm a flight and I'm sleeping and I'm sleeping upright like this, when I'm on a flight, for some whatever reason, I wake up and I find I'm not breathing properly. And then the other night I had, when I was sleeping, I had a dream that I wasn't breathing and I woke up and I wasn't breathing and it was really scary and I couldn't catch my breath. And then I came out of it and I could catch my breath. Is that sleep apnea? Is that a nightmare?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So it does sound like sleep apnea. So. So apnea, the word apnea means it's sort of that pause in breathing. And many people will have an apnea or two during the night, and that's kind of normal. But if they're happening a lot, it becomes a sort of a chronic and actually diagnosable issue that needs to be resolved. So the fact that you've reported signs of sleep apnea are waking up gasping breath, waking up choking, having dreams about choking, having dreams that there's something stuck in your throat, feeling chronically fatigued during the daytime, falling asleep really, really, really quickly at night, which people might think is, oh, it's really great. You know, I'm such a great sleeper, I fall asleep within seconds. But actually, that's often a sign of sleep deprivation, that the sleep you're getting isn't good enough quality, so you fall straight to sleep. So do you fall straight to sleep really quickly?

[Jamie Lang]

Straight to sleep.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Okay. So as a sleep expert, that doesn't make me happy. That makes me worry. You know, if someone says I fall instantly asleep, I first of all think, gosh, you know, is there, is there a reason for that? Are you sleep deprived? And it could be that you're not giving yourself enough time to sleep, or it could be that when you do sleep, you keep waking up throughout the night, stopping breathing. Sleep apnea, which is causing you to not have good quality sleep, meaning that you fall asleep really, really quickly. So I would suggest it's definitely worth getting it checked out. You can speak to your doctor, but the symptoms of, you know, snoring, waking up feeling like you haven't been breathing. Waking up, gasping for breath are definitely signs that indicate sleep apnea.

[Jamie Lang]

But the tricky thing, right? So I'm, I'm here listening to this, right? And I fall asleep straight away.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yeah.

[Jamie Lang]

And then I've had this sort of slight problem, which I've noticed maybe a couple of times where I'm sort of gasping for breath when I sleep. I definitely feel jaded and tired throughout the day sometimes, but I still have a lot of energy. But I put that down to that. I'm just working and doing a lot. My life is sort of constant entertainment. Someone listening right now will say, well, of course I fall asleep straight away. I have a really hard day. I have kids, I have to teach, I have to do this, I have to do that, whatever it is. So how can you differentiate the two?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yeah, it's really difficult. So I would say, you know, your partner, are they awake when you're asleep? Can they look at you and say, oh, actually I have noticed that you stop breathing during the night. These kinds of things you can get sleep trackers, especially modern things like the modern Apple Watch, that measure your oximetry, which means the oxygen content in your blood, blood as well as sleep tracking. And they're not diagnostic, you know, they're not the same as having a doctor overnight sort of sleep assessment, but they can give an indication of sleep apnea because if you're wearing this device and through the night, it notices that your oxygen content in your blood keeps dropping and that you keep waking up throughout the night. These are indicators of, of obstructive sleep apnea. But yeah, for some people, they will fall straight to sleep because they're in a season of life where they're just so busy and that's, you know, that's not necessarily a worry at all. But if you do fall straight to sleep, it's often a sign that you aren't getting enough sleep. And if you are only sleeping for like seven hours a night, say, maybe you actually need a bit more sleep than that. So maybe try going to bed a bit earlier, giving yourself a bit more time to sleep in the morning and see if then you do feel more rested and less tired during the day.

[Jamie Lang]

I try and get into bed a little earlier and I try and do the thing where I sit, switch my screen up so I don't look at screen and now read a book. I mean, my mother would be so proud. I now read before I go to bed. But I also wake up early and I. The sun comes through or something happens. But I wake up at sort of around six, even without my alarm. I just do wake up at that time, even if I'm slightly tired. And it's sort of, I'm in this regime where I can't get out of that and I don't know why. And I'm sure a lot of people feel the same way. When I was a teenager I could sleep.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Sleep, yeah.

[Jamie Lang]

Until two in the afternoon. I was absolutely great. Now I'm lucky if I get seven, if I get eight hours sleep a night. I'm lucky not because I have a busy life or because I need to get up early, just because that's my sort of rhythm that I have.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that. The fact that teenagers sleep in is a biological fact. Basically lots of people think, oh, teenagers are so lazy. But actually when we hit the sort of 12, 11, 11, 12, 13 years of of age, our circadian rhythm, our biological kind of internal clock starts to shift a bit. So naturally teenagers start to produce melatonin a bit later in the day. So they're genetically like biologically supposed to go to bed and go to sleep a bit later and sleep in in the morning. That's what's happening. And we think evolutionarily it's so that teenagers could have a bit of time at night when all the adults were asleep. You know, when we were cavemen, the teenagers would stay up a bit later so they would have a bit of a teenager time to find themselves when the parents were all asleep and then they would sleep in in the morning and that was fine. But modern day society doesn't work like that because school still starts at the same time and loads of teenagers are going to bed really late because they, their bodies want them to, you know, to stay up late and do stuff like be on social media or gaming or talk to their friends, but they still have to get up for school. And I was just reading just recently, just under 3/4 of teenagers don't get the recommended amount of sleep. It should be like eight to 10 hours. And almost three quarters of our teens aren't getting the recommended amount of sleep. And it's partly because of that shift to that later sleep wake cycle which you experienced as a teenager. And then when we hit adulthood it kind of goes back to normal again. Lots of us will find that we become more early people again, whereas when we were teenagers we were going to bed at 2 in the morning and sleeping until midday happily.

[Jamie Lang]

Do women and men need different amounts of sleep?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yes, yes, Actually the studies have shown that women need about 11 minutes more. It's not a lot, but around sort of 11 minutes more sleep. So women tend to need a little bit more sleep than men. But women are much more likely to have insomnia and have sleeping difficulties than men. And that's partly because of maybe a disproportionate amount of childcare responsibilities that tend to fall on women, which maybe in the future won't be such a disparity, but also hormonal fluctuations, which is a massive thing. So you know, women tend to have they have a menstrual cycle once a month if they get pregnant, if they stop being pregnant, if they have perimenopause menopause at all these times, their hormones change and fluctuate and that can have a significant impact on sleep sleep. So yeah, that's why women tend to have worse sleep than men. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile I.

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[Jamie Lang]

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[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

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[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

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[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

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[Jamie Lang]

Dr. Lindsay, why do we dream?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Oh, that's a great question. Lots of reasons. We think that it's a, a way of processing and dealing with emotion. So for example, ptsd, if you've had a. Something traumatic happen, like a car accident, often people will dream repeatedly about feeling that car accident and they'll keep reliving the trauma, which is really sad, really terrible because it's the last thing you want to be experiencing. But so we think it's our brain's way of kind of trying to process what happened and come to terms with it and understand it and the content of our dreams that. Let's put PTSD dreams to one side. But for people who just normal dreamers, the content of the dream maybe isn't quite so important as the emotional sort of underlying themes.

[Jamie Lang]

Explain that to me. So give me an example.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So because you dream about a teapot doesn't really mean as much as the fact that you know the teapot was breaking and that you're really sad about it breaking. It's more probably more like about the motions going on and the, the. Because there is lots of dream interpretation and again, scientifically there is no evidence about dream interpretation. But it doesn't mean to say you, I'm open to anything. What do you believe I. On that side? I'm more of a scientist about it. So people say to me, what does it mean that I dreamt that I flew an airplane and it turned into a dragon? Like, I don't know, it just means that you like dragons. I don't know, but some people. But, but it doesn't mean to say that there aren't people who maybe. I don't know. Yeah, but I'm, I'm a scientist, so I'm like, yeah, let's not worry about that.

[Jamie Lang]

But then when I dream about losing my teeth, does that mean I'm worried about money again?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

I think losing your teeth is probably one of those dreams that could be sleep apnea related because again, it's about the dryness in your mouth and maybe a choking.

[Jamie Lang]

I do choke sometimes in my sleep, in my dreams.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

I think that might come back to again, the fact that you're potentially at risk of sleep apnea rather than you're losing money.

[Jamie Lang]

Wow, this is simply fascinating. Do some people not dream? Dream?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

No, Everyone dreams. That's a great question because I have lots of people say, oh, I never dream. You. Everyone dreams. So my husband, when I stuck the electrodes on his head, so he never Almost never dreams. He never remembers dreaming. I always remember dreaming. But it's because we tend to dream. We're more likely to dream during REM sleep, so we don't dream the whole night. We'll have dreams throughout the night. And if you wake up from a part of sleep where you weren't dreaming, you just won't remember that dream. And if you've ever had a dream and you wake up, you'll know that the second you woke up, it was already vivid. And then as you're awake, it's almost like it starts to, like, smoke just drift away. And you're like, oh, my goodness, I can't even remember my dream. It only happened a minute ago. So if you don't tend to wake up from within a dreaming part of sleep, you won't remember your dreams. So I did polysemography. I stuck electrodes on my husband's head. He doesn't wake up from REM sleep. He wakes up from a different part of sleep, which, which, which is in line with the reality of what he says, which is, I never really remember my dreams. But everyone dreams you. Just, Just because you don't remember them doesn't mean they aren't happening. It doesn't mean they aren't doing good. Because dreaming sleep is really important for memory, we think, for memory consolidation and for processing emotion and processing all sorts of stuff.

[Jamie Lang]

I haven't drunk in about four months now, since I haven't drunk in 2025. And I have. I'm dreaming way more, I think, probably because my sleep pattern is better, so I'm probably having more REM sleep. That means.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

And alcohol affects REM sleep. So by not drinking alcohol, you're likely to have better and more REM sleep.

[Jamie Lang]

As a doctor and, you know, looking at sort of science, when you have things which are more sort of homeopathic in a way, and you kind of want to lean into that, maybe drinking lavender tea, maybe having acupuncture, whatever it is. But also. So you have your sort of logical brain, which goes, well, it hasn't been scientifically proven. So then you, you're sort of juggling your ideas.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So that's why in the sleep world, recently, especially the sleep world, has become full of people who are out to get your money. And that makes me really sad because.

[Jamie Lang]

You know, explain this more, though. I'm interested in this.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Like the, the sleep industry is worth millions. If not, I don't know, probably not billions, but it's, it's worth a lot of money. People make a Lot of money selling you things that are going to help you sleep. Sleep. And their motivation, some, for some people, is to make money and therefore it's really hard as a consumer to know the difference. You know, is this product that I'm being told is going to really help my sleep, is it really going to help my sleep? And, you know, and I deal with people with chronic insomnia, people who are really genuinely struggling with their mental health. Lots of people, my clients, they've. They've quit their jobs because their sleep is so bad they. They can't cope day to day. And lots of the clients that I see have spent a huge amount of money on gadgets and supplements and accessories that they've read somewhere been promised it's going to fix their sleep. But scientifically, you know, the gold standard treatment for chronic insomnia is a thing called cognitive Behavioral therapy for insomnia, cbti, which is robust, it's like, proven with countless studies to be incredibly effective. Whereas things like a particular, I don't know, particular kind of pillow or a.

[Jamie Lang]

Particular honey that you spread on.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yeah. Or. Or supplements like, you know, magnesium is really, really popular, for example. All these supplements that there are, there are elements of truth to most of these things, for sure. But if you're saying this is going to massively help your sleep, it's not like drinking milk. Milk. Milk contains tryptophan, which we turn into melatonin. So that's a good thing. If you want a warm glass of milk before bed, in theory, the warmth of the drink is going to help your. It sort of raises your body temperature ever so slightly and then as you cool down, your body temperature starts to drop, which helps you to fall asleep. The tryptophan in the milk, we can turn to melatonin. So it's, you know, it's. It's got science behind it, it. But the effect size is so tiny and there is no way that warm glass of milk before bed is going to fix chronic insomnia. But of course, it's very cheap. So I'm very happy for people to try things if they have the money to spend and they want to try them. Brilliant. But if someone's selling you a special milk that cost £300 and they say, oh, this is going to cure your insomnia, well, the science just isn't there. But if you'd want to warm up a glass of milk and have it before bed, please do so, because is, there's nothing, you've got nothing to lose.

[Jamie Lang]

And the issue is And I want to talk about insomnia. The tricky thing about insomnia is a lot of insomnia is probably developed through anxiety. And when you're anxious about not being able to sleep and then you're given, hey, you know, you're typically going to say, well, if you eat this bit of chocolate before you go to bed, that's going to help you sleep, or drink this milk or whatever it is. You then get it in your brain that if you're not going to eat that or drink that, then that becomes a problem, then that's more anxiety driven towards the sleep, sleep. And actually you want to sort of cut out all of that in lots of ways. If I had to, or you had to give an A star grade to sleeping conditions, what would the A star sleeping conditions be?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So we sleep best when it's dark and silent. So having good quality curtains. Now, blackout blinds do give you the best sleep, it's true, because it blocks out all light. However, if you get used to sleeping with blackout curtains, then when you go on holiday or you go to a Tinder date, for example, and you meet someone else and they don't have blackout curtains, you might struggle to sleep because you've been used to perfection. So there's, you know, a star sleeping conditions are blackout blinds, but I'd rather have the A conditions so that you're not used to perfection because then you'll be disappointed when you go somewhere else. So, yeah, so dark curtains are important and double glazing so that it's not too noisy outside and having a, a fairly cool bedroom. So sort of 16 to 18, 19 degrees Celsius is a good temperature. Lots of people have their bedrooms too hot because they have the heating on through the day and then they don't turn it off overnight or their bedrooms have got too hot. And we'll all have experienced it in the UK if we, you know, because we don't have air conditioning. In a heat wave, most people struggle to sleep because their bedrooms are suddenly way too hot. And obviously, mattress, you need to have a, a comfortable mattress and lots of us, we might splash out and buy a really fancy mattress. But they do have a finite lifespan and we might need to replace our mattress. Even if you think, well, I did buy it in the millennium, the turn of the millennium. So it's quite new, actually. That was quite a long time ago. And if you change weight, so if you, if you start, if you have a partner, so maybe you were single and you had a double mattress, but now you've got a partner actually that mattress that was fine for you maybe doesn't hold the weight of two people children as they grow. We don't replace their mattresses. And a teenage boy who's 16 weighs a lot more than when he was 12. So we really want to be looking at conditions and how we've changed or if we put on a lot of weight or have lost a lot of weight. We might need to change our mattress and pillows. We should definitely replace those much more frequently than our mattress. And make sure that your pillow is comfortable for your sleeping style while. Because if you sleep on your back or your side or your front, you'll need probably very different pillows than, you know, generic pillows that if you, you and your partner, maybe one of you sleeps on your back and one of you sleeps on your front and you've got the same pillows, that's unlikely to be good for both of you.

[Jamie Lang]

I got recently told that you should flip your mattress.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yeah, well, it depends on the kind of mattress. If you have an inbuilt topper in it, that's not going to work. But yeah, as a general rule, normal mattresses, yes, you're supposed to flip them. You're supposed to turn them like over and back to front so that you're wearing out the mattress nice and evenly. Otherwise you might find a body shaped, you know, divot in the bed where you normally sleep. So flipping your mattress does extend its life and it's really good. You should also rehoover it to get rid of dead skin cells and other ick that we, you know, we shed a lot of dead skin cells and sweat in the night and if we don't change our bed covers regularly and we don't, you know, mat clean hoover our mattress and we don't clean our duvets and that kind of thing, then we're sleeping in a lot of built up gunk which can cause allergies and can cause, you know, breathing difficulties during the night because we've basically the dust mites live off all the dead skin cells. It's really gross. And also if you do have your bed covers that are cut, that are full of all this yuck, then the air isn't going to flow through them and you might find that you're getting, you're overheating in the night because, because basically you just can't, the air can't flow to keep you cool because it's trapped in a layer of gunk.

[Jamie Lang]

I do sleep naked. Should I sleep in pajamas or should I sleep naked?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

It's up to you. There are positives to both, basically. Okay, so if you do have nightwear, then it means that it will extend the life of your bed covers because you've got a, you know, protection there. And also it means that if you get too hot, you can sort of throw the covers off and you've still got a bit of layer of protection there. But equally, if you tend to overheat, then sleeping naked allows you to expose that and cool down really quickly. So there's positives and negatives to both. If it works for you, brilliant. There was, interestingly, a sort of study recently that said that sleeping in bed socks can be helpful because it warms, helps with the vasodilation, helps with our sort of temperature regulation, helps us to cool down as we're trying to fall asleep.

[Jamie Lang]

Sleep.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So you could try naked with bed socks.

[Jamie Lang]

That might be good before you go to bed. What are the harmful things we can take before sleeping? How harmful is alcohol?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yep. So lots, my clients, lots of them genuinely will actively drink more before bed because they think it will help their sleep. Because if you have a couple of drinks, you fall asleep more quickly, which is true, but you don't really fall asleep. You kind of pass out. It's not the same kind of thing. And alcohol, alcohol especially disrupts REM sleep. REM sleep. So although you might fall asleep more quickly, the sleep quality that you get once you're asleep after having alcohol fueled sleep isn't as good. And if you've ever got drunk, which I'm sure you've never got drunk ever, never, what happens is you kind of pass out for two, three hours, but then the rest of the night your sleep is so fragmented and disrupted because that's how you're metabolizing the alcohol. And it really is messing up your REM sleep. So I would really recommend people don't. Don't drink deliberately to help them sleep.

[Jamie Lang]

But I have drunk and I have fallen asleep and it's impossible to wake me up. That is solid REM sleep.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Surely maybe your alcohol hadn't quite. Maybe you drunk so much that it was still in your system. You hadn't metabolized it yet at that point.

[Jamie Lang]

So that idea of a nightcap is not a good idea.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

No, it's not. It's not really. If you're struggling with your sleep and you try and do something to help it, I would say there are much better options than having a deliberate nightcap before bed.

[Jamie Lang]

Okay, well, then that leads me on to things like taking melatonin or taking sleeping pills or a Xanax, these sort of things that people unfortunately get in the habit of taking. And especially if they have something like insomnia, which we're going to talk about, you sort of get caught up in this system if you do take a sleeping pill, if you do take a Xanax or continue to take Melatonin, bad. All good for thing.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So sleeping pills, like pharmaceutical sleeping pills like Zopiclone, the zed drugs, these kinds of things prescribed by the doctor, they do help you to fall asleep and stay asleep better in the short term. But the trouble is you start to become tolerant to the medication very quickly. So within a couple of weeks, maybe three weeks to start with, and day one or two of taking the sleeping pill you like. Oh goodness, this is great. I can sleep for seven hours hours. But after two, three weeks, maybe you're only getting five hours sleep, it starts to become less effective. Kind of like we become tolerant to alcohol. If you're tea total and you have a drink, you're like woo, party, party. But if you have a drink every single day for a week, it doesn't have the same effect. And you have to then up the alcohol and have two drinks to get the same buzz. Same with sleeping pills. You start to need more of the sleeping medication to get the same effect. And of course it's not curing or fixing the problem as to why you weren't sleeping in the first place. Place. So there is a place for sleeping pills if you've got a, I don't know, you're going on an overnight flight somewhere or you have something has gone wrong, like a really critical issue, maybe you in pain. Sleeping pills prescribed by the doctor can be helpful for that short term blip or to get you. If you're really freaking out about your sleep, you're really stressed, it can kind of help just calm you down. Okay, good. I've had a night's sleep, I feel better. And then your sleep can get back to normal. But as a way to solve long term sleeping problems, they don't solve it at all because they're not a solution. Melatonin in the UK you're not allowed, you can't buy over the counter, but you can in lots of other countries. Yeah, absolutely. And melatonin, it is the sleep hormone that we produce before bed. So it kind of makes sense that we would use it as a sleeping aid. However, it's more of a timing issue issue. So melatonin tells our body when to sleep and for most adults so under 55s neurotypical adults. For most neurotypical adults, we're producing enough melatonin at night that taking more isn't going to do anything else. And melatonin is often in that sort of group of people, more like a placebo. So you might take it and think it works, but it's probably not really doing anything. When we get a bit older and the elderly, and not, I'm saying over 55 is elderly, but once we get to the older age bracket, our melatonin production can start to wane. And therefore melatonin can sometimes be more helpful and we can get it prescribed. And for people with adhd, especially children with adhd, maybe autism, they can have sometimes melatonin issues with producing melatonin, and they can get prescribed melatonin. So for some groups of people, melatonin can be helpful, but again, as a cure for insomnia, it's generally not very effective as a cure because it's not really often the reason why people aren't sleeping. The reason why people aren't sleeping is, as you've said, anxiety.

[Jamie Lang]

Mouth taping is a big thing at the moment. I tried to do it the other night and I woke up.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Please don't. Please don't what? Because mouth taping. So if you snore, the idea is that taping your mouth shut forces you to breathe through your nose. Yes. Which, and, you know, breathing through your nose is probably better. It humidifies the air, you know, that's good. However, if you have some kind of blockage to your airway, like nasal congestion, taping one source of airflow shut, forcing you to breathe through your nose, maybe you have a nasal congestion issue, which is causing a blockage to your airway during the night, for example, in which case taping a mountain. Mouth shut is tabulated. So basically, mouth taping as a, As a craze, there are advantages to it, but serious, serious drawbacks, especially if people have sleep apnea, then mouth taping is a horrific thing. And I'm really worried about that. And I've talked actually a lot about the dangers of mouth taping, because if your airway is fine, then it's okay. But if you have another condition, then mouth taping is. It's gonna block. Yeah, it's dangerous, basically. So please don't mouth tape unless you've had your sleep apnea assessed.

[Jamie Lang]

I thought I was gonna get a really good jawline from it. That was a. Oh, I thought you.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Meant you taped your mouth shut.

[Jamie Lang]

Yeah, I tape it shut. But Then apparently gives you a good jawline. Don't, Lizzie. What? This is what I was going for.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

TikTok. It's TikTok craze. There's loads of sleep stuff on TikTok. TikTok is great. But again, it's like, where are you getting your information from? And everyone wants a quick fix. Everyone wants the, ah, this sleepy mocktail is. Sleepy girl Mocktail is going to fix my sleep. Or this, you know, sleep tape or this particular thing is going to fix my sleep. But the reality is sleeping well is about doing the right things, you know, eating well, exercising well, not being too stressed. And if you think you might be struggling with sleep apnea, please do not mouth tape.

[Jamie Lang]

So you think the sort of TikTok crazes that come up on social media are all marketing stunts?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Well, everyone wants a quick fix, don't they? I mean, it sounds great. Just like, you know, I'd love a six pack if, oh, buy this cream and rub it on. I've got a six pack. Oh, brilliant. But what the reality is, I need to do a lot of sit ups, I need lots of salad to get a six pack and that's a lot of work. And actually fixing your sleep is about doing the right things, not necessarily the, the easy things.

[Jamie Lang]

You do a lot of work with people who have different work patterns. So shifts work typically in the police or in the NHS where they're working mornings or late at nights and it's on a cycle and so. And people in the UK and around the world have this a lot where they're constantly shifting and changing. It's like they're flying to Australia and spending three days in Australia and then flying back. How does someone in that job help themselves?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yes, it's really difficult because our circadian rhythm is our body's, you know, 24 hour clock. And that's the thing that some of us are like larks and owls and, you know, different times of the day. But generally speaking, we're all on a UK time zone, say in the time zone that you're in. But when you're doing shift work, it's just like you've been plumped into another country like Australia from here and you're trying to work when your body is saying, no, no, it's producing melatonin, it's saying, no, we should be asleep. It's really hard, hard. And then when you finish that shift, you come home, the. The sun is up, people are outside, kids are screaming, going to school, there's noise, there's activity and then it's that sense of I shouldn't sleep because I really should pop to the shops or go and pick up that parcel. And really you need to sleep, but the world isn't allowing it. So shift work is really difficult. What we need to do with shift workers is to understand that they need to avoid as much as they can, bright light at the end of their shift, especially a night shift worker, because you finish your night shift and you go home and that's when the sun's coming up. And if you expose yourself to loads of bright light before you want to go to bed, that's going to suppress melatonin production and wake you up even more. People who do shift work have to be really careful about their bedrooms. So unlike nine to five workers, we can, you know, our curtains don't have to be 100% blackout blinds say, but for shift workers they do. And before your shift, before you start the shift, it's a really good idea to go and have a deliberate nap, like a top up nap just before your shift, just to like a 20, 30 minute nap.

[Jamie Lang]

That helps?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Take the edge off that tiredness. Because if you do go and start doing a night shift, your body, even if you've had loads of sleep, it's still thinking it's the middle of the night and it's really hard. So a top up nap at that point can really, really help. And get bright light during your shift shift, but avoid it after the shift and at the end of it so that you can fall asleep when you get home.

[Jamie Lang]

Can shift work be dangerous?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So night workers tend to get about, I think it's two hours less sleep on average than people who work nine to five, a daytime worker, and that's huge in itself because that's not enough sleep. You know, if you're getting two hours less than average, you're probably not getting the recommended seven to nine hours sleep sleep, which puts you at higher risk of everything. So people who work shifts, it's really important that they take more effort to prioritize their sleep than there may be nine to five people who don't need to think about it as much.

[Jamie Lang]

God, it's tough, isn't it?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yeah, it is. But we need people to be awake all night. If we have a car accident at 2 in the morning, we need doctors and nurses. And of course the shift timing can be really critical as well.

[Jamie Lang]

One thing you have your book, which is Navigating Sleeplessness, how to Sleep Deeper and Better for Longer and the COVID is lots of sheep.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

It is.

[Jamie Lang]

Tell me about it really quick.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Yeah, so it's a sort of self help sleep book and I wrote it as a guide basically to help people who are stressed and anxious about their sleep just to be calm and give them some advice that is in a really user friendly way that isn't going to freak them out. Because sometimes there's a lot of advice about, oh my goodness, if you don't sleep well, then all this terrible stuff will happen to you. So I wrote this book to be a sort of a kind, calm friend to help you and give you some tips if you're not sleeping very well.

[Jamie Lang]

And it's honestly a calming cover which I quite like.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Not that counting sheep is like the best solution to sleep, but obviously it's a, you know, it's cute.

[Jamie Lang]

We're going to leave the link to the description in the podcast. If you want to go and get this book, you can just click on the link and you can get it there.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Thank you, Dr. Nancy.

[Jamie Lang]

This has been amazing. Really. Thank you so much for this. We'd like to end the conversation with eight questions and they're as quick as you want. So here we go. What's a saying or phrase that you'd want people to come away from this interview with?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Well, that you don't need to get a great night's sleep every night. Not sleeping well one night is completely normal. It's okay. Just get on with your day. Don't worry about it. Because stressing and fixating on trying to force yourself to have a good night's sleep one night is just going to make it even less likely to happen.

[Jamie Lang]

Best compliment anyone's ever given you for your work.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Oh, just that they changed their life like genuinely then that's just amazing. I'm really happy to be able to do something that has that kind of impact.

[Jamie Lang]

What scares you most about your work?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Not having enough hours to help people. Because I have more people that want to have help than I can physically do it. So yeah, that's. I don't want people to notice. Get the help that I know I can give them, but I'm only one human.

[Jamie Lang]

When was the last time you cried?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Probably yesterday. I'm quite an emotional person.

[Jamie Lang]

What's something you can't let go of?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

How about my, my, my teddy bear that I still sleep with every night? He's called Mel.

[Jamie Lang]

What's a sleeping guilty pleasure? Well, your teddy bear that you still have.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

I do, I do, I do like to sleep a lot and if you let me, I'LL probably sleep until midday day. Sometimes I like sleeping.

[Jamie Lang]

Biggest turn off people who smell bad.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Please have a shower.

[Jamie Lang]

Very good.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Not you.

[Jamie Lang]

Okay, I'll take it. I'll take a shower. I got it. Biggest turn on people who smell nice. It's a good combination. And what do you like most about yourself?

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

I think that I am very honest. And, yeah, I don't come into anything with an agenda. So if you speak to me, I'm gonna try and help you because that's the right thing to do.

[Jamie Lang]

Dr. Lindsay Browning, this has been so amazing. You're going to help so many people, and this has been fascinating. We're going to put every single link that is about you and your work in our description. So please go to it. Thank you so much for that. That was fantastic. Thank you. That was amazing. Honestly, that was amazing. What did you learn? Give it to me.

[Jemima]

I learned that if you fall asleep immediately.

[Jamie Lang]

Yes.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

This.

[Jemima]

That's not a good thing.

[Jamie Lang]

I do that all the time.

[Jemima]

I do it all the time, and I pride myself on it. So do I. I strut around.

[Jamie Lang]

Yeah.

[Jemima]

The house, my life. Like, I'm an excellent sleeper because straight away, put a pillow under my head, I'm gone.

[Jamie Lang]

Is that because we're exhausted?

[Jemima]

It's not good.

[Jamie Lang]

But I also think we're the same type of people where we. Zoo. Exube. Exude. Exude a lot of energy in the. Because we're quite upbeat and energetic. So perhaps that's why we're tired. It was just all round. Really interesting in so many ways.

[Jemima]

A personal highlight for me was when you announced like a newsreader, you went, I do sleep naked. Yeah, I was sleep naked. And you said it so loud.

[Jamie Lang]

Straight in there.

[Jemima]

And then she's like, brilliant. Okay. Is that a question?

[Jamie Lang]

Brilliant. Okay. That's good news.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

All right.

[Jamie Lang]

Right. I want to say a big th. You. I want to say a big th. You. Big Th. You.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Like you.

[Jamie Lang]

A big th. You. I say thank. And I said th.

[Jemima]

What two words are you good? Thank and what?

[Jamie Lang]

Thank you, Sock.

[Jemima]

Oh, right. Go on.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

So many people don't listen to the.

[Jemima]

End of the show and they're missing out on this gold. Guys. If you listen to the end of the show and you know people who listen to it, tell them to listen to the very end because you're missing absolute gold like that.

[Jamie Lang]

Gold like that. Right.

[Jemima]

What are you trying to say?

[Jamie Lang]

Thank you to Dr. Lindsay Browning again. If you. If you want to find her books and her studies and just her. The way she works, everything is in the show description. Yeah. And once again, if you haven't subscribed to the show, please do. That would be really amazing. And remember, on social media, great company podcast. Or you can send us an email great companyproductions.co.uk. everything is in the show description again. All right, we're going to see you next week for another episode on Wednesday with Jemima and I. But until then, this has been you.

[Jemima]

You for listening.

[Jamie Lang]

Thank you for listening. It's been great company.

[Ryan Reynolds]

When you're part of Navy Medicine, you.

[Dr. Lindsay Browning]

Know that medicine makes the mission. It's why we let you focus on.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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