← Health vs Hype with the American Medical Association
Health vs Hype with the American Medical Association
Better Sleep or Just Hype? The Truth About Viral Sleep Trends
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- [00:04]
Dr. Jose Colon
Ruby.
- [00:07]
Lucy Fink
I sleep with an eye mask to make it even darker. I tape my mouth closed. Then I also line my bed and like, cocoon my pillow around my head and I'm in a deep, dark slumber.
- [00:16]
Dr. Jose Colon
Sleep is one third of our life. If it wasn't made to be important, it would have been a pretty evolutionary blunder.
- [00:25]
Catherine Nicolai
It's so hard to fall asleep if
- [00:26]
Lucy Fink
we don't feel safe.
- [00:28]
Trace Dominguez
It can feel like the world is working against rest. Endless scrolling, constant notifications. Always that one more thing you gotta check before you can go to bed. So it's not surprising that people are looking for help. And some turn to storytellers like Catherine Nicolai, whose podcast Nothing Much Happens has helped people drift off more than 200 million times.
- [00:49]
Bedtime Story Narrator
Our story tonight is called Color Walk, and it's a story about a soft way to move through the world on a spring day.
- [00:59]
Trace Dominguez
Others, like content creator Lucy Fink, experiment with the latest viral sleep trends or reach for supplements like melatonin. Anything to squeeze just a little more rest out of a busy always on life.
- [01:12]
Lucy Fink
I think the 10 hours of sleep one was just kind of a selfish experiment. I wanted to try to get the
- [01:19]
Trace Dominguez
facts about these trends and the best ways to get a good night's sleep. A sleep medicine physician like Dr. Jose Colon has answers.
- [01:27]
Dr. Jose Colon
I really have a lot of people that have difficulty sleeping because something's bothering them and what's bothering them is that they're not asleep.
- [01:37]
Trace Dominguez
So let's get comfy.
- [01:40]
Bedtime Story Narrator
Lights out, friends. Get snuggled down into your sheets because
- [01:44]
Trace Dominguez
we've invited them all to dive into the world of online sleep trends. Welcome back to Health versus Hype with the American Medical Association. I'm your host, Trace Dimit. Today we're going to uncover the truth about viral sleep trends and answer the questions we're all curious about. Does taping your mouth really improve sleep quality? Can sleep trackers truly help to optimize sleep? And what does the science actually say about how to get better sleep? So join me as we find out whether recent online sleep trends are all health or just hype.
- [02:21]
Catherine Nicolai
This is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human.
- [02:25]
American Medical Association Announcer
Your social media feed delivers plenty of advice, but it doesn't know you. It doesn't ask questions. It doesn't give physical exams or order tests doctors do. At the American Medical association, we believe the best care starts with a real conversation, with someone who understands the science and your unique health. So stay curious, ask questions. But when it's time to make decisions, make them with a doctor. Learn more at amahealth versus hype.org that's amahealthvshipe.org.
- [03:04]
Trace Dominguez
Last year, more than half of adults in the United States said that they had tried at least one viral sleep trend. That's according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. So, to begin, I want to understand what the latest viral sleep trends are and why so many people are interested in. In trying them. For that, I spoke with Lucie Fink, a popular lifestyle influencer and content creator who recently got serious about optimizing her sleep health. She posts about her sleep trend experiments, which we'll get to in a second. But to set the scene, we really need to understand how Lucy thinks about social media as a source of information for sleep health.
- [03:41]
Lucy Fink
I feel like social media, for me, it's less of a place to gather the real facts and the science and more hearing anecdotal stories that people have about something that maybe helped them that I could implement and try. And I love trying things and tracking it and then seeing how it goes. Like, sometimes people in my life will be like, don't you just want to live and, like, enjoy instead of be constantly testing things out? And I'm like, you don't know how much joy it brings me to be like, I am in the middle of an experiment. Leave me alone. And that, to me is fun, is to be tracking and optimizing. Whereas for someone else that's overwhelmed.
- [04:20]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
Right. I actually think that makes a nice transition into, like. Okay, so let's talk about some of the experiments that you mentioned that you're, like, known for. The five days of learning to sleep better. The five days of sleeping on the floor, the five days of getting 10 hours of sleep.
- [04:33]
Lucy Fink
Yes.
- [04:34]
Trace Dominguez
Of those, what would you say you
- [04:35]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
took away from them? What did you learn from them? Did you try any others?
- [04:39]
Lucy Fink
I think the 10 hours of sleep one was just kind of a selfish experiment I wanted to try.
- [04:46]
Trace Dominguez
I wasn't gonna say anything.
- [04:47]
Lucy Fink
Yeah. I was like, how cool would this be? So I can't say I learned that much. Aside from the fact that I don't think I actually need 10 hours of sleep a night. It was more of, like, a kitschy experiment. Whereas, same with sleeping on the floor, because I would never do that. I love a plush, soft bed. I'm princess and the pea style, where, you know, even just a. A different pillow under my head is going to give me, like, a kink in my neck. So didn't love that one.
- [05:11]
Trace Dominguez
But Lucy's experiment that left the most lasting impression was an overall sleep hygiene study of sorts, where she Tested a bunch of sleep strategies over a short period of time to see which worked
- [05:22]
Lucy Fink
best for that was the one that probably taught me the most and that I took the most away from as far as like blacking out the room, making sure you don't have it too hot and wearing cooling clothing, stopping eating at a certain time, stopping drinking so you're not up peeing all night. Things like that that I really do take into every night and try to make sure I set up a sleep environment no matter where I am, as good as possible.
- [05:48]
Catherine Nicolai
Yeah.
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Trace Dominguez
Why? Why make work? Why make it hard on yourself? Exactly. It sounds like because you try so many things. Was there any specific trend that you were like, that's it. This is persuasive because it has some science behind it and I'm going to try it, or because it worked for me, or both. What trend kind of stuck out to you?
- [06:05]
Lucy Fink
I mean, I really had trouble falling asleep and then I was identifying as a person who had trouble falling asleep and then getting anxious about what was coming up the next day, and it was just making it all worse. So one of my good friends set me up on a course of melatonin to reset my circadian rhythm and, like, gave me specific things to do. And working with him, I was able to really get things back in order.
- [06:29]
Trace Dominguez
Your circadian rhythm is basically your body's built in 24 hour clock. It's what tells you when to feel sleepy or when to feel awake. Sleep supplements like melatonin are often pitched as a quick fix for better sleep. And we'll dig into those claims and what the science actually says with Dr. Colon a little later. But for now, Lucy found that her answer was a bit simpler. She leaned into relaxation techniques, the kind that you've probably heard of before. Counting sheep, running through the Alphabet in your head, just giving your mind something gentle to land on. Here's Lucy describing her version of the technique.
- [07:04]
Lucy Fink
You pick a word. So let's say you pick the word apple. Then you go through the word and you go through letter by letter and you start with A. And you say as many words in your head as you can that start with A while you're visualizing those objects or things, and then you move on. Once you're out of that, you move on to the P and you do it again. And supposedly, like a lot of us when we're trying to fall asleep, are trying to clear our minds and think of nothing. But when your brain falls into sleep, it's often like a very active state of like Seeing images and thinking of things. So you don't want to just lie there and be like, think of nothing, be blank, be gone. But if you just, like, let yourself think of random objects and picture them and whatever that can help lead you into sleep.
- [07:49]
Trace Dominguez
Lucy is describing something that we've probably all experienced. You're exhausted, but somehow, the second your head hits the pillow, boom, you're wide awake. And there's actually a reason that your brain seems to switch gears at exactly the wrong time and why falling asleep can feel hardest when you're trying the most. Our storyteller Catherine Nicolai, explains just how this works.
- [08:11]
Catherine Nicolai
When we're in that chaotic, spiraling spin of thoughts, it's sort of the background static of your brain, what your brain does when it doesn't have a job to do, that's where it's hardest to sleep. And that's why often you could be in bed in a really uncomfortable position, reading your book, but you cannot stay awake. You're moving your eyes forward. You're not absorbing what you're reading. Your book keeps falling in your face. Finally, you give up. You put your book down, you turn the light off. You get as comfortable as you have ever been, and now you cannot sleep. And that's because you went from the task positive mode now to default mode, and your brain didn't have a job to do, and it wandered away and got into trouble.
- [08:46]
Trace Dominguez
If you've had a bad night's sleep, the signs are usually pretty obvious, right? We wake up and we're still feeling tired. As many as one in three people are exhausted before even starting their day. But there are ways to understand what kind of sleep you're getting each night. And this is where sleep tracking enters the picture. You've probably seen these before. Smartwatches, smart rings, all promising to turn your sleep into data. Lucy spent plenty of time experimenting with different sleep trackers and now has one as part of her regular sleep routine.
- [09:17]
Lucy Fink
I mean, everyone needs a different amount of sleep and is going to have different biometric markers. So I think healthy sleep is sleep that the next morning you feel good. Like that's purely what it is. And the. The trackers and the markers can just give you more information and more data that probably confirm things for you. Like, one thing I've tried a lot is on nights that I do have a glass of wine, my HRV is plummeting, and I just don't feel as well the next day. So people can say, scientifically, wine's going to give you a hangover or make you feel ill the next day. But it's like there's the data of what it's doing, and then I can feel it. And so, you know, it's hard to tell someone to be chasing certain markers or certain metrics. But do these experiments and see what sleep environment and what lifestyle habits the night before make you feel noticeably different the next morning. And that's what matters for you.
- [10:09]
Trace Dominguez
You heard Lucy mention hrv, that is heart rate variability. Your heart rate, how many times your heart beats per minute, changes depending on what you are doing. If you're calm and relaxed, it slows down. If you're stressed or active, it speeds up. HRV is just the tiny differences in time between each of those beats. We're talking milliseconds. And here's why people care. Generally, a higher HRV means that your body is more flexible. Say it's better at adapting to stress. And often that means you're getting more restorative sleep. But on the flip side, low heart rate variability, that can be a warning sign. It may mean that your body isn't adapting as easily as it could and it might be under more strain, which sometimes can be linked to health issues.
- [10:56]
Lucy Fink
I've had a completely new relationship with sleep, where I have just fallen in love with it and with taking care of it and with prioritizing it over other things. And it's now in my life, especially with the tracker and being able to see exactly how much sleep I got on a morning when I feel good, I have the most clarity every morning of I know I slept well and I feel it in my body. And when I don't get it, I don't even need to look at the tracker. I could tell you I didn't get it.
- [11:28]
Trace Dominguez
Katherine has a similar, although slightly more blunt, take on sleep trackers.
- [11:33]
Catherine Nicolai
I'm tired of being bossed around by my watch. I don't wear it anymore. My wife, when she wakes up in the morning, she checks right away her sleep score and stuff. But I often found then it creates this external sort of analytical relationship. Did I do it right? Did I somehow fail at sleeping? And I feel like sleep isn't a performance to be optimized. It is just a biological experience to have. And
- [12:00]
Trace Dominguez
with that, I think it's finally time to bring in our sleep medicine expert. Dr. Jose Colon is the medical director of sleep medicine at Lee Health in southwest Florida, and he's triple board certified in sleep medicine, child neurology, and lifestyle medicine. Dr. Colon knows his stuff when it comes to getting healthy. Sleep. He also has a lot to say about sleep trackers and whether all that data is healthy helping or hurting your sleep. But let's start with the basics first, like why is sleep so important?
- [12:33]
Dr. Jose Colon
In sleep, we repair our body. Our immune system is activated, we're cleaning our brain. We're also consolidating memories during sleep. So it's vitally important what happens to
- [12:46]
Trace Dominguez
our bodies while we're sleeping.
- [12:48]
Dr. Jose Colon
The brain activity does slow down. In the same way that everyone has a heart rate. Well, we also have a brain. And our brain does slow down and cycles every 90 minutes into a different sleep cycle.
- [13:05]
Trace Dominguez
It's easy to think of sleep like a simple on, off switch. You're either asleep or you're not. But it's a lot more layered than that. It's not just about how much sleep you get, it's about the kind of sleep that you're getting. Also, you've probably heard of REM sleep. It's short for rapid eye movement. That's the stage where your brain is basically doing all the overnight reset tasks. It's processing your memories, it's sorting through emotions, it's tightening up the connections between your brain cells. REM sleep is so important that studies show getting less of it is linked to higher risks of dementia. REM is also when dreaming happens. Your eyes are moving, your heart rate is picking up a bit, and your body is temporarily paralyzed, thank goodness. So you're not physically running from whatever's chasing you in your dreams or whatever. Maybe that's just me. REM doesn't happen only one time throughout the night. It comes in phases, and altogether it makes up roughly 20% of your night's sleep.
- [13:57]
Dr. Jose Colon
Now, there's another stage of sleep that's not rem, and it's called non rem. I make things simple. And the first half of the night is where the deepest non REM sleep is, where our brain is very slow. It's called slow wave sleep.
- [14:13]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
What can prevent people from having that good night's sleep?
- [14:17]
Dr. Jose Colon
One of them really is actually irregular rhythms or daytime napping. We go through these different cycles, and in the first half of the night is when we have the deepest sleep, that deep slow wave sleep. That's the part that actually washes away all of the fatigue and sleepiness that we have. So that's why daytime sleep is one of the cardinal problems with regular sleep at night. I give an example that if someone is on their way to a restaurant and they eat a sandwich on the way to the restaurant, they're not Going to be hungry when they get there?
- [14:49]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
Sure.
- [14:50]
Dr. Jose Colon
Well, just like we need to develop an appetite, we need to develop a sleep appetite or a sleep drive. Now, there's a misconception that if I didn't sleep well one night, oh, let me sleep after school or after work. And really, actually this phenomenon is remarkable. What you really need when you're sleep deprived is just a regular, normal sleep. If our brain has a lot of fatigue, the next time that you go to sleep, you go into that deep sleep deeper, and you're going to stay in it longer.
- [15:23]
Trace Dominguez
That makes so much sense when you really think about it. Actually, Dr. Colon, your brain kind of knows that you're going to get sleep deprived sometimes and it fixes it on its own without us ever having to over manage it.
- [15:36]
Dr. Jose Colon
Correct. And the definition of chronic sleep deprivation is chronically getting five hours or less, for example. All right, look, daylight savings, all this emphasis, oh my God, you're going to lose one hour of sleep, really, on a Saturday night when people sleep in on Sunday anyways, you don't even go to work till Monday. That loss of one hour sleep does no harm. The serious harm comes in the fact that you shifted the environmental cues, that you shifted the time and now it's light later, making it so that you stay up later. And guess what? Work time didn't change. So now you're creating a circadian pattern that increases heart attacks, that increases strokes. You're a little bit more sleep deprived and you're driving in, in the dark. The one hour of sleep that you missed that Saturday night is not as significant as what society has induced and irregularity. Going back to your question, you know, what, what are some of the things that, that cause us to, to not sleep? Well, yes, you know, anxieties and racing thoughts are one of them. But daytime sleep and irregularities is one of the biggest things that we see.
- [16:56]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
So should I not be, you know, taking an afternoon nap?
- [17:00]
Dr. Jose Colon
Naps do have a place and in particular they've noticed this in the workplace. If someone has a 20 minute nap, they have increased productivity. If you hit 40 minutes, you start to get that deep sleep and you get that sleep inertia. And it's hard to wake up after, after the nap. But in general, you know, we try to avoid napping. Unless you have something that you need your vigilance for later in that day.
- [17:27]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
Yeah. There's a term that gets thrown around a lot when we talk about sleep, sleep hygiene, you know, setting up your environment for optimal sleep for you.
- [17:36]
Trace Dominguez
Do you support that Idea.
- [17:38]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
Can you talk a little bit about what sleep hygiene might mean?
- [17:42]
Dr. Jose Colon
So sleep hygiene are a list of do's and don'ts that nobody wants to do. Okay. What I find is that explanations are really more important than instructions. Instructions of sleep hygiene. Go to bed on time, wake up on time, wear something comfortable, stay in the dark, have a cool atmosphere. Avoid electronics, avoid television. You know, don't do anything fun. Everyone's already read them on the Internet when they can't sleep at night. You know, I'm going to ask you some questions, and I promise that they're not hard questions. Okay, I'm sure.
- [18:19]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
Yeah, I'm game.
- [18:21]
Dr. Jose Colon
Do you drive?
- [18:22]
Trace Dominguez
I do.
- [18:23]
Dr. Jose Colon
All right. When you drive, are you trying to fall asleep or are you trying to stay awake, alert and look at the road?
- [18:30]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
I'm trying to stay awake, alert and
- [18:33]
Dr. Jose Colon
look at the road, yeah. When you drive, do you sometimes listen to the radio?
- [18:37]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
Often I listen to podcasts and I listen to the radio.
- [18:40]
Dr. Jose Colon
Okay. Can you see how you're learning to associate that radio with being alert? Some people when they're driving and they're tired, they turn up the radio. Does that make sense?
- [18:51]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
That does make sense.
- [18:52]
Dr. Jose Colon
Okay.
- [18:52]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
You turn the radio up, you listen
- [18:53]
Trace Dominguez
to something more energetic.
- [18:54]
Dr. Jose Colon
All right, so let's just say that you are in bed and that you are not asleep. Can you see how it would be a bad idea to listen to that stimulating radio?
- [19:07]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
Yeah, I could see that. That wouldn't. Wouldn't really work.
- [19:10]
Dr. Jose Colon
Okay, so do people check their work email? Do they get on a group chat because it is a boring thing to do or because it is stimulating?
- [19:22]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
It's stimulating. I love being in the group chat.
- [19:24]
Dr. Jose Colon
So explanations. You know, we try to avoid activity that is stimulating. I don't like to tell people, do something boring. Nobody wants to be bored in life, you know, so I. I say do things that are calming.
- [19:42]
Trace Dominguez
That reminds me of Lucy and her sleep experiments. I'm going to play you a clip from my talk with her. She has developed a pretty elaborate ritual for her bedtime.
- [19:52]
Lucy Fink
I kind of need to set up barriers in place and systems in place and have a routine. No computer is coming in the bedroom, so I just have more of a time that the computer is closed and I'm heading upstairs. And then once I get in bed, we have kind of a very select list of shows and content that we can watch to make sure that we're not watching something that's going to totally ruin my mind before bed. These are not as new. These are things I've been doing before, but like some other general sleep hygiene things that I do. You know, our room, we have blackout shade, blackout curtains. The room is dark. We set the temperature to somewhere between 68, 67 and 69 degrees. Make sure it's nice and cool in here. I sleep with an eye mask to make it even darker. I tape my mouth closed, and then I also lie in my bed and like, cocoon my pillow around my head, and I'm in a deep, dark slumber.
- [20:44]
Trace Dominguez
So, Dr. Colon, do you feel that as long as that's something that's helping Lucy, it's okay? Or is that something that you would take issue with?
- [20:51]
Dr. Jose Colon
If it helps her, that's okay. Having activity that's calming is really the key. And I'm not saying things that are boring. Eliminating things half an hour before bedtime that, you know, we feel are gonna, you know, activate your brain.
- [21:06]
Trace Dominguez
Dr. Clone, I want to go to something else that she said, and maybe you can comment on that for us. She noticed an interesting bit of data from her sleep tracker. And we'll get into the data in a second, but I want to hear what you think of this one trend that she noticed. Let me play you the clip.
- [21:23]
Lucy Fink
It tells you the amount of time that you slept for, like, the exact hours, which will take into account any awake time that you had, which we have a lot of awake time in the middle of the night, just random pockets of it. And I would say, on average, throughout the course of a night, I'm awake for about an hour around the night.
- [21:42]
Trace Dominguez
So is that normal?
- [21:44]
Dr. Jose Colon
An awakening at night can be normal. And everyone has an awakening, whether they remember it or not. And how you react during that awakening is going to influence when you get back to sleep. Nobody sleeps through the night. Everyone has some degree of awakenings. When we have these awakenings, everyone has to have also an individualized routine. Some patients will go to the bathroom, others will get a swig of water. Here's a trend that I'm creating when. When you go to bed at night, set your alarm for either what time you're going to wake up or what time you're not going to be in bed past that particular time. Okay? Now, when you have an awakening at night, and I didn't say if. When you have an awakening at night, don't look at the time. The only thing that happens when you look at the time is more thoughts. I've only slept for this long. I only have this much longer to sleep. I'm going to be up for this long. We're Doing this again. What's wrong with me? We impose self judgment. I actually do discourage both television and phone during these awakenings because both of them emit light which can activate your brain. But the television serves as a surrogate marker of time. One episode has been half an hour, a movie's been two hours.
- [23:06]
Trace Dominguez
So what are your thoughts around sleep trackers? They are clearly very popular. Nearly half of Americans reported using one. Are they as helpful as people seem to think they are?
- [23:17]
Dr. Jose Colon
Sleep trackers are, Are they hype or are they health? They're both. I describe them as as neat but not always validated. And from one tracker to the next, every technology is different. Now I will say this. It is through the sleep trackers that we've been able to find out that regularity is more important than duration when it comes to mortality and health.
- [23:42]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
Yeah. How accurate are they and how should people interpret them?
- [23:47]
Dr. Jose Colon
With a grain of salt. And these are always studied in people that are completely healthy, you know, which is not the majority of our population sometimes. The other thing is that, you know, they're studied for the people who have the money for them, you know, so they're, they're studied in people who are middle aged and mostly female that use these. But I've listened to lectures from the scientists at Fitbit and you know, they show the data in a typical population about a 70% accuracy. And as I say, I, you know, they're mostly neat, not, not completely validated. I do wake up and I take a look at my tracking. I ended up getting Fitbit a number of years ago just because of the amount of people that came to me with the tracking. I'm like, I don't know what this is, but there's been some times that I don't feel like I'm going to go back to sleep when I have an awakening. And then the next thing I realize is that there's an alarm and I'm dreaming. Oh, wow. I did get back to sleep. And my tracker does accurately tell me that I'm, that I'm in rem. There's also been some times that I know for a fact I didn't go back to sleep. I know this, but my tracker not only tells me that I was asleep, but it tells me that I was in the deep sleep. That deep sleep that you get in the first half of the night, it's inaccurately telling me that I'm in the second half of the night in deep sleep when I was awake. Now is, is the tracker a damn liar? No, it's measuring heart rates and. And movements.
- [25:20]
Trace Dominguez
Interesting. Okay, I want to play another clip from Lucy. This one's about mouth taping. There are a ton of social media influencers who promote mouth taping as a sleep strategy.
- [25:31]
Lucy Fink
So I tried the mouth tape, and I pretty much strictly use 3M medical tape. Like, it's not the fancy mouth tape in the shape of a lip. It's like a little piece of tape that just keeps my mouth closed. And I started doing it mostly because I know that I slept with my mouth open. And almost every morning when I would wake up, my mouth was extremely dry. We're meant to be breathing through our nose. The hairs in our nostrils filter out the air more effectively. And that's just how we're meant to be breathing, but a lot of us are not. And now when I go somewhere, if I forget to bring the mouth tape, it's a rough night for me, so I'm going to keep doing my tape.
- [26:11]
Trace Dominguez
Clearly, Lucy feels like this is something that works. And I'm guessing she's not the only one. I'm curious, what are your thoughts about this trend? Does it concern you at all?
- [26:21]
Dr. Jose Colon
You can't just give a general set of rules to everyone. If someone has adenoid hypertrophy or turbinate hypertrophy, and, and you tape their mouth, you know, you can suffocate them.
- [26:35]
Trace Dominguez
You know, I just wanted to pop in and define those terms. Adenoid hypertrophy and turbinate hypertrophy. Both are conditions where tissues in your nose or throat grow larger than normal due to illness or some other health issue. The swelling can make it much harder to breathe, which is what Dr. Colon is talking about. Okay, back to his answer.
- [26:55]
Dr. Jose Colon
If someone's mouth breathing, it could be that they have chronic congestion, and maybe we need to get the congestion taken care of. Whether it's medical therapy or anti inflammatory diets. I do have some patients that their mouth opens when they have the CPAP on. And those patients, I do use the mouth tape with the CPAP so that they have less dry mouth in the morning. And the CPAP is pressure that opens up their airway and they are able to breathe with that pressure. But mouth taping alone, cologne as monotherapy doesn't really have any benefits that I'm aware of.
- [27:36]
Trace Dominguez
CPAP, as Dr. Colon just mentioned, stands for continuous positive airway pressure. You've probably heard of it, especially if you've ever lived with someone who snores like a freight train. If it's new to you, a CPAP machine is Basically, a mask and a tube setup that gently pushes air through your nose or mouth to keep your airway open while you're sleeping. It's most commonly used for a condition called obstructive sleep apnea, where breathing can actually start and stop throughout the night. And, yeah, as you can imagine, that leads to some pretty poor sleep. So if this is something that you're dealing with, it's definitely worth getting medical support. If you can't breathe, you're probably not going to be sleeping very well, which is interesting. Almost everyone I talk to mentions some form of breath work or meditation to help them fall asleep or improve sleep quality. For example, here's what Lucy had to say.
- [28:27]
Lucy Fink
What I found is more useful to me than just sitting in silence is to do 10 minutes of a specific breathwork exercise. And when I do that, I feel as if I'm a different person at the end of the 10 minutes, and I just, like, feel tension gone from my body. And then that contributes to a way better night's sleep.
- [28:46]
Trace Dominguez
Katherine also believes in the power of breathwork.
- [28:49]
Catherine Nicolai
Even if you did something as simple as laying in bed and. And scan through your body, temples to toes a couple times, take a few deep breaths. You're just speaking the language of your body and showing it. Hey, danger has passed. We don't need to be vigilant. It's time for rest and digest. I always walk people through a couple of deep breaths, do that for two minutes, turn your story on.
- [29:10]
Bedtime Story Narrator
I betcha I'll get you to go to sleep.
- [29:14]
Trace Dominguez
Even Dr. Colon agrees that breath work and meditation help with sleep.
- [29:19]
Dr. Jose Colon
I actually want to make a plug. Okay. This is the power of meditation. And I do either an awareness of breath meditation or a body scan meditation. And that's the power of meditation, that it can put your body in that same quiescent state. So even if I didn't sleep, you still get R and R. You still get rest and restoration.
- [29:43]
Trace Dominguez
Dr. Colon, why is it eight hours of sleep? Why is that the gold standard? Is that a number that we should all be shooting for?
- [29:50]
Dr. Jose Colon
Well, everybody's different, and eight hours is what you shoot for. But one thing that. Before I talk about sleep timing. Okay. I need to emphasize that sleep is probably equally as important as it is also overemphasized. And what Overemphasize. I really have a lot of people that have difficulty sleeping because something's bothering them, and what's bothering them is that they're not asleep. I can't tell people, don't worry about sleep. But I have to tell everyone the opposite. The more that you worry about it, the less of it that you're going to get. More than just saying the word eight, I like things that are easy to remember. And I see all ages, from pediatric to geriatric. A 12 month old should get 11 plus 1, 11 hours of sleep, plus one nap. A 10 year old should be getting about 10 hours of sleep. A 9th grader through high school should be getting about 9 hours. Adults working 8 hour days should be getting about 8 hours. Elderly into your 70s should be getting about 7 hours of sleep. All of this is plus or minus one hour. So in my typical adult population, I don't always emphasize that that eight hour, seven hours is, is more than adequate for majority of adults. Some may need that that eighth hour. The other thing that's really, really interesting, okay. Is if you take a look at people who have short sleep time, chronically sleeping five hours or less, and you take a look at people who have long sleep time, they're getting 12 hours of sleep or more, the long sleep time actually has a higher mortality and they're actually dying twice more than the short sleep time is. So more sleep is not always necessarily better. The quality of the sleep is more important than the quantity. Number, number.
- [32:09]
Trace Dominguez
Okay, I'd love to get your take on a bunch of different health claims around sleep trends now so we can go through these pretty quickly. Think of it as a health versus hype rapid fire round. So first one, let's put a bow on mouth taping. Health or hype?
- [32:23]
Dr. Jose Colon
Hype.
- [32:24]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
Melatonin Health or hype?
- [32:27]
Dr. Jose Colon
A bit of both. You know, melatonin is safe, it's effective, it's not habit forming. But if you're having a racing mind and you're not addressing the racing mind, you know, you're not addressing the underlying issue.
- [32:40]
Trace Dominguez
The sleepy girl mocktail. A magnesium cocktail before bed which contains cherry juice, magnesium powder and sparkling water. Health or hype?
- [32:49]
Dr. Jose Colon
It's fine. It's health in the right person. You know, magnesium can help reduce anxiety and magnesium also can reduce symptoms of restless legs. But if you're taking a bunch of magnesium because you're having late caffeine, you're not getting to the underlying root cause.
- [33:08]
Trace Dominguez
Okay. Blue light, panic, staring at a device or computer before bed. Health or hype?
- [33:13]
Dr. Jose Colon
Avoiding blue light before sleep is helpful. So that's health.
- [33:18]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
Okay, but being overly worried about it might be hype.
- [33:22]
Dr. Jose Colon
Yeah, I mean, being overly worried about anything can, you know, affect you.
- [33:27]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
This one's important to me. I think Sleep divorce. Sleeping in separate rooms from your partner. Is this health or hype?
- [33:34]
Dr. Jose Colon
It's individualized. It really is. If the sleep divorce is because there's untreated snoring and sleep apnea, you know, that's, that's, that's not healthy.
- [33:44]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
Hypothetically speaking, if one of your people sleeping in a bed starfishes and hits everybody else in the face, that would maybe be okay.
- [33:52]
Dr. Jose Colon
But, you know, patients tell me that, you know, they have their. There's sleep divorce with conjugal visits. That's fine.
- [34:02]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
So, okay, the Scandinavian sleep method, which, if you're not aware, I wasn't. But is separate blankets while sleeping, is that health or hype?
- [34:09]
Dr. Jose Colon
That's fine. That all depends on the individual. I mean, you get less cuddling, less oxytocin being released by the touch.
- [34:18]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
What about sleeping nude versus sleeping with clothing? Is there health or hype advice behind that?
- [34:23]
Dr. Jose Colon
It has to be individualized. One thing is temperature. Okay, so ideal temperature and studies is around 69, 68 degrees. But that has to be individualized to both the patient and the family. My wife will not do it. We have thermostat wars at our house. She likes it at 74. I like it at 70.
- [34:50]
Trace Dominguez
What about bedtime stories?
- [34:51]
Trace Dominguez (Guest or Co-host)
Is that helpful?
- [34:53]
Trace Dominguez
Health hype?
- [34:53]
Dr. Jose Colon
If it's calming, yeah, that's, that's fine.
- [34:58]
Bedtime Story Narrator
Now I'm going to tell you a bedtime story. It's a soft, simple place to rest your mind, a way to keep you from wandering.
- [35:09]
Trace Dominguez
If you had to put sleep trends on a health versus hype scale, it really depends on the trend and the person. A few things do stand out, though. Sleep quality matters just as much, if not more, as how long you sleep for. And tools like melatonin or calming bedtime routines, they can help for the right person. Other trends may be less convincing. Mouth taping is a tough sell, and sleep trackers can sometimes create more stress than they solve. Overall, though, most of these trends do lean more toward health than height. At the end of the day, it's really about finding what helps your body and mind settle into a deep, restful sleep, whether that's supplements, breathwork, or just a few minutes of quiet away from screens and bright lights and the stress of your day. Sleep trends are not a one size fits all solution, which means you should have a conversation with your physician. Let me know in the comments what works for you. And thanks again to Dr. Colon for walking us through what healthy sleep really looks like. And thanks to Lucy and Catherine for sharing their stories and experiences with us we got to the bottom of yet another trend, but there are many more to come. In this next episode, we're going to explore the very popular supplement Creatine and all of the online claims surrounding the benefits of taking it hit. Subscribe if you haven't already for more information on all of the topics where you visit amahealth versus hype.org that's amahealth v s hype.org Sweet dreams. Health versus hype is a production of Ruby Studio from iheartmedia and the American Medical Association. I'm Trace Dominguez. Our producers are Matt Stillo and Pamela Lawrence. Michael Depot Wilson is our writer. The show is engineered and features original music by Matthew Ernest Filler. Health versus Hype is intended for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.