← Sleep Magic: Sleep Hypnosis & Meditation for Sleep Podcast
Sleep Magic: Sleep Hypnosis & Meditation for Sleep Podcast
Sleep & Insomnia With Dr Sophie Bostock 💌 ✨ Magic Mailbag
00:48:01
Loading summary
Transcript60 lines
- [00:00]
Jessica Porter
Hi everyone, it's Jessica at Sleep Magic. This week for the Mailbag we have a very special episode because I speak with Dr. Sophie Bostock, otherwise known as the sleep scientist, and she knows like everything there is to know about sleep. And on this episode she answers questions that you guys have sent in specifically about sleep and you will find it fascinating. So stay tuned and if you want to watch this episode on video, you you can check it out on Spotify. Enjoy. Before we get started, let's hear a quick word from our sponsors who make this free content possible. Your data is like gold to hackers and they'll sell it to the highest bidder.
- [00:43]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Are you protected?
- [00:44]
Jessica Porter
McAfee helps shield you blocking suspicious texts, malicious emails and fraudulent websites. McAfee Secure VPN lets you browse safely and its AI powered text gain scam.
- [00:55]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Detector spots threats instantly.
- [00:56]
Jessica Porter
You'll also get up to $2 million of award winning antivirus and identity theft protection, all for just $39.99 for your first year.
- [01:04]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Visit McAfee.com, cancel anytime terms apply.
- [01:08]
Jessica Porter
I can say to my new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, hey, find a keto.
- [01:13]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Friendly restaurant nearby and text it to Beth and Steve. And it does without me lifting a.
- [01:17]
Jessica Porter
Finger so I can get in more.
- [01:19]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Squats anywhere I can. 1, 2, 3.
- [01:23]
Jessica Porter
Will that be cash or credit? Credit. 4 Galaxy S25 Ultra, the AI companion that does the heavy lifting. So you can do you get yours@samsung.com compatible with select apps. Requires Google Gemini account. Results may vary based on input. Check responses for accuracy. Some people just know they could save hundreds on car insurance by checking all state first. Like you know to check the Jumbotron first before attempting to eat a stack of supreme nachos in one bite.
- [01:50]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Now you're just a meme that everyone.
- [01:51]
Jessica Porter
Shares on game day. Checking first is smart, so check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate Savings.
- [01:59]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Vary subject to terms, conditions and availability.
- [02:01]
Jessica Porter
Allstate Fire and Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates Northbrook, Illinois hi Sophie. I'm so glad to have you here on the podcast. It makes me really, really happy.
- [02:23]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
How are you as well? I am very well, thank you. It's a huge pleasure to be here. A real privilege.
- [02:28]
Jessica Porter
Well, thank you. I'm. We do these mailbag episodes regularly and we get questions from the listeners. And it is such a treat to have you here today because you are Dr. Sophie Bostock who specializes in sleep. You call yourself the sleep scientist. You yourself have Your own podcast, which you very graciously had me on as a guest, called Sleep On. And you've also created a bunch of content for the sleepiest app. So you are our go to brain on all things sleep. So I'm going to squeeze that brain tonight. I hope that's okay with you.
- [03:03]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
I can't wait.
- [03:05]
Jessica Porter
Great. Well, my first question is, how did you get into sleep?
- [03:11]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Probably, like most people working in the sleep field, by accident. Certainly when I was studying medicine, sleep was this tiny thing that people didn't really talk about. I don't think there was a real recognition of just how important it was. I think we probably got about 10 minutes at medical school about sleep and maybe sleeping pills, something like that. So it wasn't until later, when I was doing a PhD in a field called psychobiology, which is all about the interactions between how we think and feel and how that influences our physiological health, our biology. And I was fascinated by the fact that happy people seem to live longer. That seemed a great insight. I was like, great, well, how are we going to make people happier? So I got involved in some research where we actually tested mindfulness meditation as a route to improving positive emotions and regulating your emotions. And so we got a whole bunch of volunteers and they went off and learned to meditate for about eight weeks. And when they came back, many of them said, well, I don't really know if I know how to meditate, but I'm definitely sleeping better. And so when I looked at the data, I found that all these better sleepers, well, they not only felt happier, but they seemed more resilient to stress. And I thought, wow, I mean, this is a fantastic intervention. It's free, it's kind of effortless if you set things up right and people really enjoy it and it makes you feel good and it's really good for physical health. So I was, I was pretty hooked at that point and thought, okay, sleep, this is an area that I really want to get into.
- [04:47]
Jessica Porter
That's amazing. And it reminds me of something I've thought as you and I have gotten to know each other, is that I think we're sort of the yin and yang of sleep here. Meaning you're very left hemisphere, data driven, evidence driven science about sleep facts and data, which totally provides these amazing insights for me. And two intuitive things I've discovered through hypnosis, you know, about as touchy feely as it gets. I mean, it's as right hemisphere as it gets. So that's.
- [05:19]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
But I would, I would say that my interest has definitely broadened since, since then. I mean I was driven to look at the value of sleep because it, what could, what it could do for the, the mind and body. And then you start to realize how many people struggle with it. And you can give people a detailed set of instructions and a whole lo them are still going to be struggling with sleep. And explaining why that happens is an art. It takes some science, some data, but it also takes understanding of emotion in the broader context in people's lives. So I would say that I'm very much learning from you as well. And there are. Every single person is different. I think that's what's important when it comes to sleep. So I would remind people of that as I give people evidence based recommendations. We very often rely on the data that has been collected through academic research, research and there's a whole bunch of stuff that hasn't been well researched. And I think when we chatted on a previous podcast we talked about how there is actually some emerging science that definitely hypnosis can be useful, but we're pretty low on the number of trials that have been conducted. So a lot of it relies on people's people testing it out. And, and although I call my business the sleep scientist, it's not really about me as a sleep scientist. It's about everyone becoming their own sleep scientist, trying things and testing them. And I think that is definitely some common ground between us that, you know, we want people to experiment and find the answers that work for them.
- [06:54]
Jessica Porter
Amen. I, I often say to people like you have the privilege of living in a human body with human consciousness and a relationship to your own body and your own mind. And I think we often, you know, relegate that relationship out to the media, you know, movies, whatever. Like even our relationships, we sort of hand our well being or we hand our consciousness all sorts of places we're encouraged to. But when you really let yourself go in and learn the principles of relaxation, I mean where you are in your own nervous system and play with it, there's so much, not only power in there, but as you said, pleasure and well being. So great. Look at us. Two sides of one brain. So speaking of really specific strategic tips for people, I watched a speech you gave at Google talk about brainiacs and you outlined an acronym, used an acronym to outline a set of ideas to help people help themselves sleep better. And the acronym was power. Can you explain that to us?
- [08:05]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Well, I love the word power. Who doesn't want to feel power? And I think the more that I learn about sleep, the more I learn about how it sort of unleashes your inner power, the best version of you. So I just coined that acronym to help people remember some of the key things. So P was for planning. So many of us just wait until we've finished everything else on our to do list before we get around to sleeping. And if you're rushing around all day, that very often doesn't come until much too late at night. So at a bare minimum, just looking ahead at your week in the same way that you might plan your meals or when you're going to go to the gym, think about, okay, so how much sleep do I personally want to have? How long does that mean that I need to spend in bed? Because it's not all going to be asleep. And where are the days where you might be a bit squeezed? Because everyone has their sleep time squeezed now and again. And if that's going to happen, just build in a little bit of time for recovery. And if you have the opportunity, build in a little bit of time for a bit of extra sleep, banking for a few nights the night before. That's going to make you more resilient to those sleep challenges. So P is for planning, O is for outdoors. Getting outdoors. I mean, we get natural light outside, which is probably one of the greatest values, but also very much people associate with being outside, with nature. And we know that that's calming. And we know that people who spend more time outdoor, at least up to two hours a week, seem to have better mental health, more energy, better sleep. So even if you take that dose of being in nature in little 15 or 20 minute increments, it all adds up, it all counts. So get outside. W is for winding down. And that really encapsulates the idea that we can't just rush around all day, switch off the light and expect to kind of jump into sleep. It doesn't work like that. And I would say that you are the queen of helping people wind down. So I won't go into much to that. E is for energizing naturally. And by that I mean if you're feeling a bit sluggish before you reach for sugar or for caffeine, think about moving your body, think about light. These are things that are going to give you an energizing effect without having a negative impact on your sleep later. And of course, that does come with a caveat, that if you're moving your body vigorously under bright light, that is going to delay your bedtime, probably it's going to delay your Circadian rhythm make it harder to fall asleep. So the last hour of the day I revert to W and the winding down being important. And then the final letter is for R, which is routine, which really represents consistency or regularity. And in terms of sleep science, I would say that that is the area where we have learned the most perhaps in the last 10 years about the importance of supporting your internal rhythms, your circadian rhythms or body clocks through as regular sleep and wake timing as you possibly can manage. And some people can manage it every day. For some people, they may be shift workers, they can't, they don't have control over their sleep, wake timing. But for the days that you do have control, aiming for consistency can be incredibly protective for your body.
- [11:38]
Jessica Porter
I love it. It's so simple. It covers so many things. I just want to say about the wind down, like, yes, I very much help people wind down, but what about the wind up? Like I can't wake up and just function in the world like caffeine or no caffeine, and I never have. So is there a wind up for many people?
- [12:02]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Great question. And a lot of people who struggle to get out of bed in the morning, you know, they ask, is that because I didn't get good enough sleep or is it just the wrong time of day? And I think this is where these circadian rhythms, these body clocks can help us because we all have our own internal clock and most of us are programmed to operate on about a 24 and a quarter hour rhythm. So if we were left to our own devices, if went to go and live in some dark cave somewhere, our body clock would actually start to sort of delay. We'd lose track of the light dark cycle of the sun. So we need bright light every day to bring our internal body clocks into sync with both each other and the light of the, of the world around us. You know, the sun's light, dark cycle. So when people struggle to get out of bed in the morning, there could be any number of things going on. One is that they had pretty poor quality sleep, or they didn't sleep for long enough. Another is that their body clocks are kind of out of sync. And a classic example of this is teenagers who very often have to get out of bed early for school. People will have heard debates about delaying school start times. The reason that that's so important is because as teenagers, our internal rhythms are slower than older adults. They kind of run on maybe a 25, 26 hour time zone. And that means that when you try and get your teenager out of bed at 7 o'clock in the morning. It's like me trying to wake up at 4am I really don't feel like it. Now. You can make it easier and the keys are to use bright light movement and also increasing body temperature as sort of alerting signals. We call them light gabers that help to reset your clock. So if you want to kick start your morning, a light alarm clock can be really useful. That gets gradually brighter the 30 minutes before you want to get out of bed. But you don't necessarily need one of those. You could put your alarm clock next to the light switch so that as soon as it goes off, you get out of bed, go and switch off that switch on the lights so that you have that alerting signal and then if possible, move your body or just have a warm shower, something that's going to get your internal rhythm going. And having breakfast perhaps within the first hour or so of the day is also quite helpful for kickstarting your rhythms.
- [14:36]
Jessica Porter
But I'm seeing for a teenager who doesn't want to go to bed like a big klieg light, maybe a siren and a heat lamp. Right?
- [14:45]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Yeah, I think certainly getting them out of bed. I can remember being woken up for school and just falling straight back to sleep again. You've actually got to get the body moving, I think. But my dad used to to come in and turn the bright lights and I'm not sure that he always got greeted by the kindest of responses from me, but it usually made me get to the school bus.
- [15:06]
Jessica Porter
Well, thank you so much for answering my question. I have one more possibly coming up, but otherwise we have questions from readers and we've been collecting these for a while and I'm so, so excited to get to them. From a reader named Rick. This may be simple, maybe complicated, but what's the ideal body position to fall asleep?
- [15:29]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
This is a great question and somewhat controversial. The reason I say controversial is because some people have some quite strong views on the meaning of particular body positions. But science will tell you that when you put someone in a sleep lab and you track their sleep over the night, they'll typically change their body position. They may roll over like 21 times. They are not conscious when they are doing that. So when you fall asleep, it's really important to put yourself into a comfortable position that eases any stress and strain, but is comfortable for you. And there is some thought that lying on your side, certainly perhaps with a pillow between your legs to sort of prop up your legs so that your spine Is as straight as possible, is comfortable for a lot of people. But having spoken to osteopaths, they mainly go, you just make sure that you're comfortable because that's going to help you get to sleep and get the best quality sleep that you can. Now, there are some exceptions. So if you suffer with loud snoring or sleep apnoea, which is a breathing disorder where people's airways can narrow during sleep, that can be brought on sometimes by gravity of if you lie on your back, your airways will sort of weigh down and make it harder to breathe. So very often sleeping on your side if you experience snoring or sleep apnea can be very helpful. And you can prop yourself up with pillows or even a tennis ball sewn in the back of your pajamas to stop you rolling onto your back. And then there may well be people with respiratory conditions who may want to sit a little bit more propped up so that they don't have a pooling of fluid in their lungs. But for most healthy people, I wouldn't worry too much. Just be comfortable and allow yourself to sort of move naturally.
- [17:19]
Jessica Porter
Great. Now this is where I have my own little nerd alert question. Okay, this is going to sound really strange, but I saw a documentary about dolphins, and dolphins experience what they call uni hemispheric sleep. You know, so as they're swimming along and they never really stop swimming, one side of their brain can sleep while the other one remains alert, and one eye will be open while the other one is closed. And I was fascinated by this. And it made me think when I get up in the middle of the night to say, take a pee and I come back to bed, I almost always go on my other side, you know, the other fetal position that I wasn't in before. And I think it's, you know, easy to assume that that would just be a comfort issue. Like maybe, you know, my previous side was just done with the, you know, touching the bed and needed a rest. But it suddenly occurred to me, maybe the other hemisphere of my brain needs more blood.
- [18:23]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Okay, well, this is one of those areas where science is not going to help me because I do not believe that that study has necessarily been done. But generally speaking, your circulation is pretty effective at pumping blood all around your body and your brain throughout the night. But I think that observation that dolphins have uni hemispheric sleep, it's fascinating. And lots of people often ask, you know, can humans do that? Can we do that? And we can't really. It we don't divide up the Functionality of our brain with that amount of precision. You know, there's a lot of cross talk throughout our brain. So it's not that only one side will be active at one time or another, But I think it's helpful to understand something that we call the first night effect. So this is what happens when you go and stay in a lovely hotel and you think you're going to have the best night's sleep ever and you find yourself having a bit of a restless night. And this is a well known phenomenon that whenever you go and sleep in a new place, part of your brain actually stays more alert, which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. You know, if you're in a new environment, maybe it's not safe. And so you have this greater awareness, even though you are asleep, you have a sort of lighter sleep rhythm than you might have than if you were in your normal sleep environment. So it's not quite the same as having half of your brain awake, but we certainly are capable of sleeping at different levels.
- [19:57]
Jessica Porter
Fascinating. So would you agree if that study ever happens, we can call it the Jessica Porter effect?
- [20:04]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
100%.
- [20:05]
Jessica Porter
Okay, thank you. Okay, no, back to the questions from the listeners. All right, and thank you. That was amazing from Marianne. My mom and I have always struggled with insomnia, but the rest of the family sleeps through anything. Why do some people struggle more than others? Is it hereditary?
- [20:26]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Again, a great question. And it's hard to tease out genetics from beliefs and behaviors. So it's interesting that, you know, this lady and her mother have similar traits. Now, there are some genetic studies that have tried to tease out how important are genes for insomnia, and they tend to find, you know, it could be up to 50%, but it's probably less than half of what controls whether or not you get insomnia. But we might be overestimating the impact of genetics because very often the environment that you grow up in trains you, whether it's consciously or subconsciously for your sleep behaviors and your sleep beliefs. And if you grew up with your mum saying, you know, sleep is really hard and I struggle with sleep and sleep is, sleep is the enemy. And then these beliefs and cognitions can kind of filter in in ways that we don't even necessarily recognize. And we know for insomnia, and I'm sure you have experiences of this, that if someone puts their head down on the pillow and says, I'm going to have a terrible night's sleep tonight, the chances are they're going to have a terrible night's sleep. So if you believe that you're an insomnia sufferer and your mum's an insomnia sufferer and this is something that cannot be changed, that it's a kind core belief or part of your identity, it's more than likely that you're not going to sleep well. So part of any therapeutic process is often challenging those beliefs as well as some perhaps unhelpful habits. So I would say it's a contributing factor, but it doesn't mean that you can't improve your sleep just because you have a genetic predisposition.
- [22:16]
Jessica Porter
Great. You know, in hypnosis we call parents waking hypnotists, meaning they don't need like a pocket watch or a hypnotic induction to influence your subconscious mind. So as you said, the environment itself is, has models, belief systems, et cetera. And I know that in your speech you were talking about, you know, the cognitive behavioral therapy right now around sleep and that's a developing sort of area. And I have on sleep magic an episode called Making Friends with Sleep and it attacks, you know, it tries to rewire the attitudes and opinions about sleep because once they have a momentum, and you mentioned this in your speech, like there's this self fulfilling prophecy of the anxiety around sleep, like sleep becomes an issue and then sleep becomes more of an issue. And that's just because we're amazing learning machines. The problem is sometimes we learn stuff that doesn't help us.
- [23:11]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Yeah, 100%. And there's a really nice example of that actually. I was once contacted by, and I'm sure she won't mind me saying this, but by a journalist called Miranda Levy. And she was writing a column for a newspaper here in the UK called the Insomnia Diaries. And every week she would interview people about her terrible insomnia and potential solutions. And I had to smile as she explained what she was doing. And I said to her that if you want to solve, if you really want to cure your insomnia, you need to stop writing a column called the Insomnia Diaries because you're just reinforcing this belief that you have insomnia. And she'd really struggled in a very serious way with insomnia. And in fact, over time, I'm not going to pretend it was just the result of our conversation, she did improve it and she wrote a book called the Insomnia Diary. So if anyone's really interested, they can find out more. But she doesn't write that column anymore. And delighted to say that she is a good sleeper.
- [24:09]
Jessica Porter
I love that. I love that. Yeah, that's hypnosis 101 too, which is don't, you know, reinforce the negative and there's all. The subconscious mind loves positive framing of things and it can move behind positive framing. Like, I'm good at relaxing, I love relaxing, I love sleeping. You know, to, you know, suggest those positive suggestions to ourselves is very, very powerful. Okay, from Luke. I tend to sleep eight hours every night, but still wake up feeling tired. Do I need more sleep? Do different people need different hours of sleep? You've addressed this slightly, but can we talk about the process of aging and where we are in our lives and why, more or less?
- [24:53]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Yeah, so he. Age is a huge factor here. So we know that a newborn baby will have huge variation how much sleep it needs. But generally speaking, anything between sort of 14 and 18 hours might be completely normal. And as we age, gradually, our sleep need seems to decline, and it is a very gradual decline. But the recommendation from scientists who've tried to collate hundreds, thousands of different studies about how much sleep the average adult needs has coalesced around a minimum of seven hours sleep. And some experts say seven to nine is healthy. Others will say aim for seven, but that is very much an average. And at any age there's this kind of bell shaped curve where you have most people need between seven and nine, but there will be a minority who can thrive on a little bit less, maybe even five hours sleep. They're very unusual. There is a certain population that carry a short sleep gene, but without caffeine and without sugar, they can still wake up feeling fully refreshed after five hours. We'd all like to be them, but there aren't many of them. But on the other side of the coin, there are also people who really do need a little bit more than nine to really function at their best. And you often hear of professional footballers saying, you know, I aim for nine or ten hours of sleep and they'll sleep for maybe eight or nine hours at night and then get a supplementary nap. So if you're physically active, that's another thing that will drive up, up your sleep need. But as we get older, the quality of our sleep tends to deteriorate a little bit. And by that I mean it's a bit harder to get to sleep and we're more likely to wake up multiple times through the night. This does not mean that we have a sleep problem. It's perfectly natural that our sleep becomes a little bit lighter and it just means that we have to work a little bit harder on good sleep habits. To have as good sleep quality as we did when we're younger. So in answer to this gentleman's question, he might just need a little bit more sleep. And there's a very easy way to test that, which is give yourself an extra 15 minutes in bed every night for two weeks and see whether that makes a difference. Because that little 15 minute extra over a week or two, that's going to really accumulate into quite a gift of sleep. But if you're still struggling, then it may be that something else is going on. It's actually interfering with the quality of your sleep. And I mentioned briefly sleep apnea before, that is a major culprit for people who are sleeping eight or nine hours during the night thinking that they've had pretty uninterrupted sleep, but they still can't keep their eyes open during the day, then it may be that actually these apneas are called, they're breathlessness. They're a natural temporary pause in breathing during the night. And what happens is that your oxygen levels in your brain start to drop a little bit and that's a stimulus to wake you up, but it doesn't wake you up fully. It just wakes you into a lighter, less restorative phase of sleep. So you've got nine hours sleep, but it's all pretty shoddy sleep. So if you're in that situation where you're thinking, I get nine hours of sleep every night, I can't keep my eyes open during the day. And perhaps you're a loud snorer or you have a thick set neck. Those are very often risk factors for sleep apnea, which you can get checked out with your doctor.
- [28:24]
Jessica Porter
Next question is from Oliver. It's interesting. When I first saw this, I thought it was from a woman. I just projected, I think that it was for a woman. Now I'm seeing the name. So, Oliver, ever Since I turned 40, this is back to age. But ever since I turned 40, I can't sleep in anymore. Even if I go to sleep at 1am, I wake up at 6.30am and can't get back to sleep. Why is this? And I totally relate, after 40, I would just pop awake, you know, early in the morning, regardless of how well, well, I'd slept the night before.
- [28:59]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Well, the positive here, Jessica Oliver, is that actually waking up at the same time every day is probably a sign that your circadian rhythms are in pretty good shape. You know, as I talked about earlier, sleep regularity is really good for our health. It protects our physiology. It's really good for our mental health. So just waking up at the same time is maybe not a bad thing, but the time I recognize is maybe not ideal. So this comes back to our internal rhythms. Some people have a little bit more of an early bird chronotype. Chronotype is the word that we use to describe the natural tendency of the timing of our clocks. And I said earlier that teenagers tend to be night owls. Their rhythm runs a little bit slower, but as we get older we can end up reverting. So we tend to get very young. Children have a very early bird chronotype and most parents will be well aware that they very rarely get a lion. And then the kids get a bit older and you have to drag them out of bed. And then typically sometime in your 20s things will sort of consolidate so that for most people, not everyone, but for most people it becomes a little bit easier to fit in with society's norms around the kind of the nine to five. And then as we get older again, we tend to readopt that early bird chronotype. And for a lot of people it doesn't happen until they hit retirement, but it may well happen a little bit earlier. But I would genuinely say that if you're managing to wake up at the same time each day, use that stimulus, you know, you're naturally waking up, get up, move your body, make the most of the day, that's probably going to be the best thing for your health.
- [30:45]
Jessica Porter
You know, I also learned when I was deep into type of health and health and lifestyle, diet just was based on sort of eastern medicine, the idea that in the morning it's really upward rising energy. And it's quite difficult once you've awoken in the morning to go back to sleep because the entire atmosphere is sort of lifting. And if you can get through the morning and have the luxury of taking a nap after noon, which is when the energy starts to fall, that's a much more. I don't know, it's just I suddenly was less worried if I couldn't get back to sleep because I knew I was working against the grain anyway to even try.
- [31:31]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Well, that's a lovely marriage between the sort of eastern philosophy, but the western style science will tell you that we have an internal rhythm in the stress hormone cortisol. And our natural rhythm is especially if you wake up at the same time every day. But for everyone, waking is a massive sort of stimulus. It's a stressor on the body. And so we get this peak in cortisol and it typically starts maybe half an hour before you wake up. But it really peaks in that first half hour after you've woken up. And so as you say, you know that that tells us rising energy, your body is designed to flood the body with glucose, fill you with energy, give you the kickstart that you, you need to get out of bed. So very often going back to sleep when you've had that natural wake up can be very difficult. But that energy gain, we tend to see this pattern where we gradually increase in energy during the morning, which has nothing to do with how much caffeine you've drunk. That's just what's going to happen to you naturally. And then maybe between about 1 and 3, depending on your chronotype, you'll have this natural lull, this little dip in your energy levels and that is prime nap time, definitely. Then things tend to pick up around about 4 or 5pm, which coincides with a peak in core body temperature. And then we'll tend to see as it gets dark that your energy levels start to shift again. But it's useful to know about these rhythms because as you say, if you wake up feeling really tired, you can rest assured, even if you do not very much much, you're going, your alertness is going to improve, you don't have to rely on caffeine, it's gonna happen naturally. And you can help it with light. But equally around that sort of post lunch dip, a lot of people feel a little bit sluggish, Great, time for a nap. But if you do need to keep going, light and movement again can be helpful to just see you through that and social contact as well. That's very naturally energizing. Go for a walk instead of sitting at your desk.
- [33:33]
Jessica Porter
Great. I love it. Next question from Jenna. I usually have a hot shower before bed, but sometimes I skip it if I've already had one after the gym. On those nights I can't fall asleep. Have I conditioned myself? In other words, has she conditioned herself to have a shower in order to get her to go to sleep?
- [33:54]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Could be, absolutely could be. We do know that that warm water immersion, whether it's through a shower or a warm bath, is really good for sleep. And it has this magical effect. Well, I think it's magic. When I was growing up, my mum always used to tell me to have a bath before I went to bed because it would really help me sleep. And of course I ignored her and was really quite surprised when I saw this systematic review looking at the effects of warm water immersion, which it turned out that when you immerse even part of your body in warm water. What happens is that it encourages an increase in blood flow to the extremities to your skin, and that's what makes it look pink. And because your core blood flow is being pushed to the outside of your body, what happens when you get out of the warm bath or shower is quite a rapid fall in deep body temperature. And we need a full and deep body temperature to get into a deep sleep. So Jenna may well have been not only getting clean, but also preparing herself for bed. So the evidence suggests that a warm bath or shower about an hour before you get into bed can help with getting into deep sleep.
- [35:08]
Jessica Porter
So Jenna is a genius.
- [35:12]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
But there could be an element of conditioning there as well. You know, we talked about winding down and, and routine. If you do the same thing every night, it's hugely reassuring for your brain. Just as all parents of young children will know, having a wind down routine that contains the same ingredients in the same order every night before bed is very calming, particularly if those activities are calming. So the typical bath, read a bath, brush your teeth. I just say read a bath, have a bath, brush your teeth, read a book, and then turn out the light. That sequence can condition people. They know what's coming next and it's easier to wind down and switch off.
- [36:00]
Jessica Porter
Back to my groovy eastern hippie previous life, there was a technique for when people couldn't sleep. We, it was called the hot foot bath. And we would encourage people to put their feet in hot water, sometimes salted hot water. And the thinking was not understanding that the core body temperature may be reduced by that. It was that part of what impedes people's ability to sleep, as we know, and both of you and I address this in similar ways, in different ways, is just excessive thinking. And so the idea was, the belief was, and I wonder if there's any truth in this, that by pulling energy down into the feet, you're literally pulling the activity, the circulation, even the mental awareness down into the feet. You were kind of draining the brain of all that excess activity. Now it would take, you know, 10 or 20 minutes. It wasn't like just instantly put your feet in hot water and boom, you're out. But I did find that that was really helpful. Does that make sense at all or is that just something that we intuit and no one's done the study? And it would be a Jessica Porter.
- [37:11]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Study number two, I think given that we know that warm baths and warm showers seem to have this same physiological effect on sleep, maybe not from the physiological perspective, but I always think that these studies underestimate the psychological value. I mean, I think getting into a shower, washing away the strains of the day, sitting in a bath where you're very unlikely to be on your phone, like, there are lots of advantages in these activities in addition to the warm water immersion. So you could absolutely be right. You know, you don't tend to sit in a warm foot bath and stress about stuff. It probably smells good, it's going to relax you. So I think there are multiple benefits.
- [38:00]
Jessica Porter
Someone writes anonymous naps make me feel terrible. Are there ways to benefit from naps or nap quote better?
- [38:10]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Yeah, I'm quite a big fan of napping. It used to be quite controversial in the literature. There's various studies which were published, particularly in older populations, saying that those people who napped nap tend to die earlier. And that didn't seem to be a good thing. No, no, no, no. I think those studies underestimated the impact of potentially people who were unwell or having very disrupted circadian rhythms. So they might have said nap, but maybe they weren't sleeping at night and they were sleeping during the day instead. Because what we tend to see in most of the more recent research is that napping is performance enhancing tool. We're getting this micro dosing of sleep. So that's not to say that it replaces nighttime sleep, it absolutely doesn't. But if you take particularly that window after lunch, you know, early PM and you have a nap of around 20 to maximum 30 minutes, that is enough to give you the lighter stages of sleep. So stage one sleep is not very restorative, that we usually stay in that for less than 10 minutes. But stage two sleep, which is a little bit deeper, heart rate, breathing rates start to go down, we start, muscles start to relax, our stress hormones go down. That's when we start to consolidate memories. So it's very good for cognitive alertness. And in sports performance studies, as little as 20 minutes can help also to restore our physical performance. So I am a fan of naps, but you can get them, they can be a disadvantage. So this particular individual sounds like they may be sleeping for more than half an hour. Now if you sleep for more than half an hour, you may get into stage three or deep slow wave sleep, which is deliciously juicy and physically restorative. But if you wake someone from stage three sleep, they get this very groggy sleep inertia and it can take a full hour to wake up again afterwards. So with naps, the key is to keep them Short, so that you are just having those lighter stages of sleep. Or you can try and aim for a full sleep cycle which could be anything between 70 and 120 minutes. So that's a bit difficult to estimate.
- [40:25]
Jessica Porter
I have a friend named Helen and we, we very regularly will call each other and say, I just woke up from a crap nap. And that's the too long nap. And we use each other to get out of it. It's like, help me get out of the crap nap. So that explains it. I'll have to tell her that. That's fantastic. Another question here from Carolina or Carolina. Can you condition yourself to sleep in certain situations? Like I'm a student and I cannot stay awake in lectures. From the first few minutes, I'm fighting to keep my eyes open. What can I do to fix it and why does this happen?
- [41:06]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Okay, so I'm gonna guess here, I mean, I'm gonna kind of guess that your lecturers might not be very good. Not very charismatic perhaps, but also when you go into lecture theatre, very often the first thing that lecturer will do is turn the lights down low. Now if you are sleep deprived and you go into a dark, dark, quiet environment that feels safe and secure, then more than likely your sleep hungry brain is going to want to go back to sleep. So if you're feeling very sleepy during the day, that does tell me that either the quality or quantity of your sleep could be better. So I'm going to suggest maybe a little bit more nighttime sleep and you would feel a little bit more alert. But interesting about the point about conditioning and, and you could well be right. You know, if you consistently fall asleep in lectures, then it's more than likely that your brain recognizes all of those cues and starts to relax and drop off. So I'm going to suggest that you go and sit on the front row. Go and sit on the front row where the, hopefully the screen is a little bit brighter and make sure you do a bit of note writing so that you're kind of a little bit more physically and cognitively active.
- [42:17]
Jessica Porter
That's a fantastic suggestion. And I think her grades will go up like that. That might be the added benefit. Sophie, I want to thank you so much. It's been really, really helpful and nourishing. And I'm sure for the listeners who are all at sleep magic to improve their sleep, they've just learned a ton. And for me, so much of help, helping people help themselves with sleep is to sort of take them off the hook of things, you know what I mean? Because our Problems become highly personalized. I mean, I spoke to someone recently who was like, you know, I want, for instance, based on what you said, like, I. My first night in a hotel, I can't sleep. And I'm like, you know what?
- [43:00]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
That's not, that's normal.
- [43:02]
Jessica Porter
Yeah. Or like, you know, someone said the other day, you know, I was really stressed out before I had a job interview the next day and I couldn't sleep that well. And I was like, you know, for this interview today, I didn't sleep that well last night because I, my brain was focused on this and wanting very badly to, you know, make this as good as possible. And my sleep took second. Second fiddle. I see I didn't sleep enough. I can't put together words, but you know what I mean? Like it was deprioritized. So when we help people understand the normal parameters, I think it helps them take themselves off the hook and just go, oh, wow, this is a moving target. It changes throughout my lifetime. It can change within a week. I can support it in many, many more ways than I knew. And I'm not some, you know, freak that has this problem that's attractable.
- [43:59]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
Your sleep is not broken. I think I probably, like you spend a lot of my time reassuring people that their reactions to things are perfectly natural. And when you recognize that perhaps you're in an environment that is out of your control, that's unpredictable, maybe you're feeling a little bit overwhelmed and threatened. From an evolutionary perspective, the best thing that your ancestors in that situation could have done would be to evolve, stayed alert and awake all night. So your body, your brain is just responding to what has happened over hundreds of thousands of years. So it does mean that maybe we've got to work a little bit harder to convince that anxious brain that it's safe, that it's okay to relax. But at the same time, part of that is just understanding, acknowledging, and also knowing that if we have a rubbish night's sleep, the chances are, are because of the buildup of what we call sleep pressure, the following night we're going to sleep better. And sometimes that's all I can say to myself. I've had exactly the same experiences, particularly if I have to go and just very occasionally have to go and speak on tv. And of course the last thing that a sleep expert wants to do is to turn up on TV with these big bags under their eyes, feeling utterly exhausted. And so I have to just have a little chuckle to myself on those nights, particularly if I've had to travel to go to an interview or something and just, just laugh at myself and just kind of go, well, this is ironic, isn't it? You know, it's hard to sleep for me as well, but I know that the following night I'm going to catch up. And I also know that one night of poor sleep is not going to do me too much harm. You know, I might be a bit tired, might be a little bit less patient, but I'm going to be okay. And I really want people to take away the message that everyone has poor sleep every now and again. And if we don't worry about it too much, it'll be very easy for our brains, bodies to get back on track of the sort of normal sleep.
- [46:01]
Jessica Porter
That is a wonderful message for us to end on today. I want to thank you so much for all your insights. I want to direct the listeners to your podcast, Sleep On. If you want to learn more about Sophie, you can also go to your website. There's lots of videos of your, you know, appearances on different things. Your Google Talk, which was fascinating. And next week we will be back on Wednesday with our episode called Calming a Chattering Mind. And I'm sure there's a scientific word for that, no? You even mentioned that in your Google thing, the whole idea that the mind just chatters and we need to work with that in order to relax through it. So thank you again. I hope you have a great evening. It's evening for you now, so I hope you sleep well tonight and I really, really appreciate your time and attention.
- [46:54]
Dr. Sophie Bostock
My real pleasure. Lovely to speak to you again, Jessica. Thank you for having me.