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The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 550: Four Years Later and 550 Episodes Later the Sleep Whisperer Returns| Dr. Chris Winter, The Rested Child
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See for yourself@botoxcosmetic.com welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Jenny Urich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And this is a really, really special episode because Dr. Chris Winter was our very first podcast guest. Very first. And he is back. It's been almost four years. Welcome back.
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B
Thank you so much for. I appreciate you having me. That's. I didn't realize I was the first. That's such an honor.
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A
Yeah. So I talk about you a lot because the situation currently is that we just hit 500 episodes, almost 12 million downloads. It is the number two parenting podcast in the entire country. And I wouldn't have even started it if not for you.
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B
I don't believe that, but that's very kind. Who's number one? How can we overtake number one? What do we need to do?
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A
Is Dr. Becky. So first of all, she's a doctor and also she's connected with Oprah, so I'm not really connected with anyone.
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B
Dr. Thing we can definitely overcome. Not a big deal, but maybe not so much. Kind of a juggernaut. Okay, well, we're gonna do our best.
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A
I'm okay to be number two. So this is a story. This is what I tell people. So I remember I had. I had started a podcast in 2019. I didn't know anything about it. I went on YouTube, you know, I watched a video by Pat Flynn of how to get it online, and I recorded six episodes with my Phone and a little microphone that I still have, and I just talked into it, and then I put it online, and I was like, I don't really know what I'm doing. The kids are crying. And so I set it aside. I did it in January of 2019. And then in 2021, you reached out and you were like, I'm publishing a book. It's called the Rested Child. Would you have me on your podcast? And I just remember thinking, no, I didn't say this to you, but I really didn't have one. Like, I had it, but I didn't really. And I can distinctly remember being out in our garden, because it was like, in the summer, August, ish. Being out in the garden and being really mad at myself because I was so nervous to do it and being like, I wish I would have said no. I can't believe I said yes. And then we had the conversation, and you were really gracious. Like, we talked about some things, about light and sleep in particular, like getting outdoors and the lumens and the Lux. And you were like, these were some of the parts that the publisher was like, maybe you shouldn't put that in there. The editor, you were so glad that you did. And I felt like they really connected, and that was the jumping point for the whole thing.
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B
Well, you know, it's interesting. I, you know, I love a good fake it till you make it story, you know, so you had me fooled. I would have never guessed that that was, you know, the. The origin of the whole thing. And you asked me a minute ago, what's changed since then, and I was thinking about that. So I've moved physically. My clinic is still in Virginia, but I live in Florida now. And so it's really interesting. Maybe something we can talk about. I've always been supportive of people being outside. Natural light, camping. All that stuff is just so great for your sleep. But, man, when you move to a place where there's so much sunlight and there's so much outdoor activity, it's even better. So, yeah, no, I think your platform is amazing, and that's such a great story that you share that I can't do this. I, you know, I put out there that I've got a podcast, but I really don't. And this guy's gonna be on it. But, no, you were outstanding. You're a natural.
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A
I know. I was like, do I tell him? Do I not tell him? And I didn't. I was like, I'm just gonna do it. And I. I learned how much I liked It. I really love coming alongside an author who has a very important message. I mean, our sleep is such a critical message, especially for our kids and our adolescents. And so to me, I guess I learned that podcasting is a win, win, win. Right? I get an opportunity to talk to an author, which I think is a phenomenal opportunity. And often there's a new book coming out about a passion about something that really matters for our world, and then an audience gets to hear about it and be encouraged and learn some things along the way. So it's such a wonderful thing. So thank you. Thank you for kicking it off. You have no idea. But I really do talk about you all the time. That moment in the garden where I was like, oh, you know, and then time passes. It's been four years, basically. And, I mean, I. You know, I could have never guessed where it would go. But let's talk about sleep. I mean, this is a really big deal. You've been called the sleep whisperer. You have these two phenomenal books, the Sleep Solution, the Rested Child, which are incredibly important for parents to read, especially now. Can you just talk about your entrance into that field?
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B
Sure, yeah. It was. It was accidental.
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A
It.
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B
I was an undergraduate student. I grew up in a sort of a rural part of southwest Virginia and decided, I think when I was in third grade, maybe before that I wanted to be a doctor. And you just say that a lot to people in your family, and people get pretty fired up about it. And so when I went to college, I really didn't know what to do and went to my advisor, and he kind of got me in touch with a physician that did sleep research, which I'd never even heard of before. I thought that was so interesting. And it paid money, and, you know, it was a fun thing to talk about. So I started working for a doctor as an undergraduate student. And just. What? You know, everything always led to the next thing. In fact, I just got back from Seattle. Every year there's a big sleep conference, and I remember going to some early sleep conferences because of this mentor physician. And it was really weird to be there and see, like, they had, like, a little display of the old sleep conference posters. And I was like, I've got that poster somewhere in my house. Like, I'm an old sleep person now, you know? So, you know, it just was kind of accidental. But the community is amazing. It's interesting, it's growing, and. Yeah, so I just kind of went through my medical. I'm a neurologist by training, but the sleep thing was Kind of always there. And when I finished up my neurology training, I did a fellowship in sleep down at Chapel Hill and have been in the field, I mean, literally since the early 90s. I've been in the field since before I could buy alcohol, I think, you know, legally, you know, so it's, it's, it's been a very long time. But it's such a rewarding and dynamic field. I can't imagine doing anything else. I love it.
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So it's an interesting field because, Dr. Winter, when you're growing up, and maybe it's a fair amount different now, but when you're growing up as a child, especially if you grew up in an era where there weren't as many screens. And I was just talking with someone about how, like, network television was over for kids by 8, 8:30 at night. You know, there was family programming and it ended and then it was onto the adult shows. So sort of naturally these things were ending. Maybe you had one TV in your home. So it's not like you could go to another TV and play or Nintendo. It was like, well, then your parents were using the television.
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Yeah.
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And so the screens were off for you. So as a kid, you just slept. You went to bed, 9 o', clock, 8 o', clock, and you slept and then you woke up and you never really thought about it. I mean, I never thought about it. I could remember times when we would camp. Like you talked about camping and remember how exhausted I would feel as soon as it was time for the campfire. Like, you think you're going to stay up and sing some songs, but you're so tired. So I have some experiences of that, but other than that, I mean, I don't think I thought about sleep once. What are some of the things that would be the impetus for someone to come see a sleep doctor? You know, come to a clinic, bring their kids.
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B
What's happening, Your little conversation there. Thinking we had this massive green, like, wooden case TV in our living room growing up, impossible to move. I think it. I think they built the house around it. Do you know what I mean? Like, I don't think. I can't imagine how it ever even got there. And then we had this little black and white television that my parents would move into your bedroom if you were sick. But otherwise it just, you know, you're right. It was just a different world back then. And I'm thinking about a lot of the research that I saw in Seattle this past week just about limiting screens for kids and how positive it can be that said, why do people come see me? It's generally one of two in the broadest sense. There are people who struggle to sleep and then there are people who are excessively sleepy. And that could be adults and kids. We see adults and kids in our clinic. In other words, I can't wake my child up. They are so ex. They are so exhausted, they will sometimes wake up in the morning, you know, wake up, you got to get the bus and get ready for school, Mom, I'm up, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then later on they go upstairs and the kids back to sleep and you wake them up again and they have no recollection whatsoever of being awakened the first time they're falling asleep in class, falling asleep during homework, blah, blah, blah. So these kids get shunted down the pathway of depression, the pathway of attention problems. But all along it was a sleep disorder. And it's unfortunate that the excessively sleepy people. That's sort of the goal for the average individual, you know. If you could fix your sleep, what would it be? Oh, I wish I could just get in bed and fall asleep really fast. Fast. That, that if you look at magazines and media, here's some simple tips and tricks for falling asleep fast. So we don't really consider falling asleep fast to be a problem. It's a huge problem like that, that it's almost like the goal. I wish I could. My husband, he gets in bed, he falls asleep right away. I wish I could be like that guy, you know, sort of. But not. That's not great to fall asleep really fast or fall asleep in any condition. And then the other group is, I get in bed and two hours later I'm still awake and I can't fall asle I do like. So, you know, sleep entails lots of other nuances. There's sleep apnea and breathing disorders, disorders of hypersomnia, timing disorders, circadian disorders. You're a shift worker or you're somebody who's really night oriented. Like you love to stay up late and sleep in late, but you got a job that needs you to be there at 6 o' clock in the morning. So you've got a mismatch from what your circadian rhythm is and what your job wants you to be, which once again, being outside, being around natural light can really help those things. Circadian disorders to some extent exist because of all the things that you were talking about before of we have televisions that are on round the clock news, round the clock entertainment. I always think when I was a kid, so Many memories when you were saying that, like, Star wars played on network television once a year, and if you didn't, if you missed it or your parents wouldn't let you stay up to watch it, that's it. That was your opportunity to see Star Wars. And I remember being, you know, so excited when it would come on. But now I can watch Star wars every day if I wanted to. Like, it just, it's all. Everything that's ever been made is right there at your fingertips. So it's a big deal. And we see a lot of kids who struggle with their sleep as well, too. That's a. It's a big, big problem. One of the pushes that we try to put out there is that if your kid is struggling with sleep and you feel it's an issue, but you're not being told it's an issue by the. The doctors that are taking care of you, trust your own instincts. The average. The average pediatrician's gotten, like an hour of sleep training in their career, so they've read, you know, two more articles than you have about sleep. You're like, so there's not a big difference there between your knowledge of sleep and a pediatrician's in a lot of cases. So, you know, again, trust your instincts if you think your kid might have a sleep disorder. I tell people all the time, I don't think kids should be diagnosed with depression. Any mood disturbance, any attention problem without some sort of sleep consultation doesn't mean you have to have a sleep study. But just a conversation of, could this be related to my child's poor sleep? Even if they're getting adequate opportunity to sleep, maybe there's something intrinsically wrong with their sleep.
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A
I mean, I think we all know how horrid we feel. And if we have had our sleep messed up, you know, travel or a certain situation, and you just. You feel horrid. So you're like, well, if this is happening often with kids or with teens, I mean, that could be contributing to so much. What should the falling asleep period look like? Because I totally relate with that. You know, when you have the one that hits the pillow and that kind of reminds you of childhood. Like, as a kid, you remember, you get in bed and you're asleep. So as an adult, you. It's more of a thing where if you're worried about something or you're, you know, your brain is replaying, like, I should have said that I'm super weird. Why did I do that? You know, like, you can't shut it off. So I Can see the, the draw toward being the person that just like hits the pillow and falls asleep. But what's the happy medium there?
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B
Yeah, so I mean, we typically think of a normal, what we call sleep latency. The time from lights out until you go to bed. And again, that's lights out. Not watching an episode of Friends, it's lights out, my eyes are closed, I'm trying to fall asleep. I mean, typically we think of it being normal, around 15, 20 minutes, something or there. I mean, if somebody falls asleep a bit faster than that, that's fine. If it's a little longer, that's okay too. So, you know, there is sort of this kind of, like you said, a happy medium of it's okay to be awake in bed. I think that's an important message to give kids. You know, what does a bedtime look like for kids? And I think the bedtime for kids probably starts around dinner. Although you could make the argument that the sleep routine starts when you wake up. You know, how consistent are your meals? Did you get a lot of access to, you know, light during the day and activity, you're moving your body. It always, I don't know what to do with it. I mean, I feel very old when I say this, but I, you know, I'll talk to a parent and just casually say like, tell me what your kids are into. What's your kid into? And it always sort of makes my heart sink a little bit when they're like, oh, they're big gamers. Because then my thought is, okay, well they're sitting in their room and it's dark and they're playing this video game and they're not getting access to anything that's giving, giving their brain a sense of time. You know, when you go outside and the sun starts to go down, your bodies respond to that and you're, you know, it's funny you said, you know, how quickly you fall asleep. Like when we were kids, like because of all the things you said, there's nothing really to do. Like we go out and dig a hole. Like I remember spending an entire summer with some friends just out in the woods digging this massive hole had no point. We just wanted to see how deep we could dig. So when we got home, it was like working in the mines all day. Like we were exhausted, filthy and exhausted and went right to sleep. So, you know, to me, I think the biggest thing for what sleep should look like when, when, you know, kids go to bed is it's a relatively stress free time. And that's Easier said than done sometimes. So, you know, one of the conversations we had with all of our kids, I have three when they were younger was, you know, we need you to be in your bedroom at this time. This is the time where we're going to wind down, we have our dinner, you know, maybe we watch one show together, lights start to dim, temperature starts to go down. Okay, now it's time for you to be in your bedroom. There were no screens in their bedrooms. Phones were not allowed in the bedroom even when they were in high school, which was a fun battle to fight, but that was, but even the parents, we all plugged our phones up in the kitchen. There they are. If you need it, you can use it, but you're not going to bring it up to your bedroom. So when they were young, we would tell them, look, we, we want you in bed at this or in your bedroom at this time. You choose. When you go to bed, it doesn't matter if you're reading your Magic Treehouse Junie B. Jones book and you're really interested in it, keep reading it if you want, or you can turn the light out and go to bed. But you're, you're six, six years old, you can choose when you go to bed. Now, what we didn't really tell them was we're going to wake you up at the same time every day, kindly, compassionately, nicely. But you chose to read your Junie B. Jones book until 11 o' clock last night, which is fine, but we're going to start our day off at 7 o' clock or whatever time our wake up time was, that there wasn't a flexibility there. And that's what you really, what it's that perfect balance of teaching your kids to respect sleep and value it, that it's important. But if you go to bed tonight and you've got some things on your mind, and my guess is kids have all kinds of things on their mind, these minds these days, and it prevents you from falling asleep right away. That's not only not a bad thing, that's normal. Like sometimes you're going to go to lunch and you're not going to feel hungry. You know, you don't need to call me at work to tell me you don't feel hungry for lunch and you're going to skip it. Now, if it continues, we can talk about that. But it's natural for our appetite to have ebbs and flows and you eat a lot of dinner one night, the other night, yeah, I had a big lunch. I'm not that hungry for dinner, whatever. But we get really worked up sometimes when it comes to sleep. And so we've got this very weird situation of so much interest in sleep, so much information out there, both good and bad, that tends to put people under a pressure. Man, you better sleep well tonight or bad things are going to happen to you. You're going to get dementia and heart disease and. And you're going to fail your spelling test and not make the varsity volleyball team or whatever you got going on in your life. So it's important that it's kind of like nutrition. Like, nutrition is important and exercise is really important. But if tomorrow you don't exercise, past 28 days you've exercised every day, but tomorrow you're just kind of feeling under weather, you don't exercise, that's okay. You don't have to exercise every day. Like it's. You can take a day off every now and then, especially if you're not feeling well or tweak your back or something like that. So I think the pendulum is swung really hard into. Sleep is so important, and it's everything. And God help you if you're not sleeping well. Like, we just need to bring it back a little bit that you control the variables that you can control. You know, we're going to put you in bed. You have a comfortable bed and the room is dark and no screens in your bedroom. Here are some books to read if you can't fall asleep right away. Or you could draw a picture or play with your toys, whatever. And then, you know, just kind of keep people on a regular schedule and understand that, you know, hey, Mom, I didn't sleep well last night. Took me a while to fall asleep. You know, the response is, well, I'm sorry that happened, but that's. That's normal. And if you go outside and play and dig your hole, you know, today and get a plenty of sunlight, like it's going to correct itself. You don't need to, you know, you don't need to worry about that. That's the way we are built. We're built to not sleep perfectly every night.
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A
There is a lot of pressure.
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B
So much pressure.
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I mean, because when you think about, you know, when I was a kid, I mean, nobody talked about it. No, I had never heard anyone.
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B
I just said that. We were out at dinner and we were around some people. I said, do you remember that little house on the prairie where Pa couldn't sleep? Everybody's like, no, I don't remember that episode. I said, that's right. Because it didn't exist. But I remember the Family Ties episode where Michael, Michael J. Fox character, he, or Alex, sorry, Alex Keaton, couldn't sleep as a whole episode built on his insomnia. And it's, it's a, it's a tour de force. It's so wonderful. But you're right that, that certain things had to exist before insomnia was a thing, you know, and, and you're out there like mowing fields and seeing all your crops get eaten by locusts. Yeah, you probably got a lot on your mind. So it wasn't a stress thing. I mean, those people were probably stressed out of their minds, but they slept because you didn't really think about anything really being outside the norm. And everybody sleeps. It's impossible not to sleep. So we've really created this entire can't sleep industry on something that doesn't really exist in nature. Like, ask me how many people I've treated, my clinic who can't sleep. It's zero. Everybody sleeps. It's like breathing, eating, drinking fluid, sleeping. These are biological certainties. Now, you may not sleep well, you may not sleep consistently, you may wake up a lot during the night, but the idea that somebody out there is not sleeping. I've got a kid who won't sleep. No, you don't have a kid who won't sleep, that it's never been seen before.
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A
Well, it would be like a cow that won't sleep or a dog. I mean all the other animals. That's so interesting. One of the hardest parts about parenting today is the constant wondering, are they safe? Did they make it? Do they need me? That quiet worry can creep into everything. And while we want to give our kids more freedom, we also want the peace of mind that comes with knowing they're okay. That is why we love Cosmo. Cosmo makes a kid smartwatch called the Junior Track. And their newest model, the Junior Track 5, has real time GPS tracking, messaging, calling and even step counts all packed into one simple, safe device. It gives your kids a taste of independence while giving you the confidence to say, go ahead, you've got this. What makes it so different? You stay in the driver's seat, there's no Internet, no social media, and every contact must be parent approved. It's thoughtful tech that helps parents relax and kids thrive, especially when they're out exploring, playing and growing up in the real world. Right now, Cosmo is running an amazing back to school deal, plus free shipping and a risk free 30 day guarantee. Head to cosmotogether.com 1kho to grab one today, that's cosmotogether.com 1k ho as the summer winds down, I'm feeling that bittersweet shift, saying goodbye to lazy days and getting back into the rhythm of a routine. And you know what? That change inspires me to refresh our space so it reflects our style and and makes daily life feel just a little bit smoother. If you're in the same boat, Wayfair is the perfect place to kick off your back to school and fall season prep. Wayfair has everything we need to get our home organized and ready for the season ahead, inside and outside. Two of our girls needed new beds, so that's where we started. And I can't believe how much they've made bedtime easier. From cozy bedding and linens to storage solutions for every room to playground sets, they have us covered. Plus their huge selection of outdoor items makes it easy to find just what we need to transition smoothly into fall. Whether you're refresh, refreshing your workspace with a new desk, or making weeknight dinners a breeze with quality cookware, Wayfair has it all. And with free fast and hassle free delivery, even on big stuff like sofas and dining tables, there's no better time to shop, get organized, refreshed and back into routine. For way less, head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F A I R.com Wayfair Every style, every home. I love getting our kids outside. The sun, the dirt, the fresh air, but also sometimes the sneezing and the watery eyes that used to be our reality. Most falls and springs using allergy medications and lots of tissues. Then I found Earthly. They have herbal remedies for everything with pure real ingredients. Nothing weird, nothing synthetic. I was out there living this beautiful natural life, but we were also taking some unnatural stuff to survive it. Now that's no more. Our cabinet is full of tinctures that support our out in nature life. Even my husband's on board, probably because they're so affordable. My favorite tincture is sinus saver. From September 10th to the 15th, Earthly is having their huge six dollar tincture sale. It's a perfect time to stock up, try something new or toss out some of those guilt causing things in your medicine cabinet. And if you don't love what you get, they will refund you. Honestly, you have absolutely nothing to lose. Well, except your pharmacy reward points. Use the code 1000 hours to get 10 off your next purchase at Earthly.com. that's Earth with an L E-Y.com Earth L-E-Y.com but so then there's been this big shift though, because like you, like you said, it was like, you know, there's a period of time where no one's really talking about it. And then all of a sudden, I mean, it's talked about quite a bit, the digging. The whole thing is so interesting, Dr. Winter, because that is a heavy work that all of the occupational therapists talk about, which is like when you have that pressure on your joints and it helps develop the proprioceptive sense. My midwife would always say, you know, if her kids were kind of dysregulated or she worked with all these different clients, she was like, you know, just have a pile of bricks or some big logs and just say, you know, I really need you to move those from one spot to the other. And you know, and they love that. It feels good on their joints. To dig a huge hole is actually really good for a child. And, and amazingly, I think they drive themselves into. No one has to tell them to do that. It's a self driven action that aids development. I mean, it's pretty wonderful. So the fact that that's what you were doing on your own because there's nothing else to do is a good depiction of how kids can drive a lot of their own development in ways that are good for them. So you've been in this, you talked about, you go to this convention. You've been going to this convention for years. You've got the old posters. Has there been major changes because of screens? Like what does it look like now versus then?
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B
Yeah, I mean I've. This is a, this is probably a warped perception, but I remember when I went as a young person, a. My impression was back in the day it just seemed like a whole bunch of old men. Look, you like 12 old men in a room talking about CPAPs and sleep apnea. Like that's my memory of the current conference. And now it is just so big, so multifaceted, so many seats at the table. Pediatrician, psychiatrists, ear, nose and throat dentist, internal medicine, cardiology, neurology, pulmonary. Everybody's there. The women in the space run the show. It's, it's awesome to see so many young people, young researchers, so much fascinating research. Like, I just love to go to the hall where everybody presents their posters of their research. Some grad student at Penn State, you know, doing research on sleep and kids and mood. I was really struck at this meeting by the attention to mood disturbances in adolescence. I thought that was fascinating. And that really kicked off around Covid. And there's so much information there about how sleep and screens and exercise, all these things tend to. To really affect people's mood. I. You know, I do think there's something to be said for moving those bricks. You're exactly right. Plus, exercise and body movement develops the neurochemistry that allows for sleep. There's a reason why when you get out there, move those bricks. You know, I remember working at a strawberry field one summer. God, it was the. Oh, man, it was awful. I'll never forget. I'm sort of traumatized by it. Like, my, you know, I didn't have a job. My parents, I guess, knew somebody had a strawberry farm. Like, oh, we got your job picking strawberry, man, hardest work ever. And psychologically damaging because it never ended. Whenever you finish picking that row that you thought you'd never get to the end of, there's always another row to pick. It wasn't like, okay, I finished up, done. It's like, when I watch people who work at Chipotle, I get anxious because the. They're always slammed. It's never like, okay, well, that's the last customer for a while. It looks like we're pretty dead for right now. I've never seen that before in a Chipotle. But anyway, so that movement really does inspire sleep. So I saw a lot about mood. Yes. Light is a big one. You know, blue light. People are kind of backing off on that a little bit in terms of, you know, how awful blue light is. But I think it's important for people to understand just because maybe we don't think blue light is as important or as negative as we thought it was. Light is still a problem for sleep. Like, it. Whether it's blue or blue, green or the purple spectrum of the reds, whatever, light is an issue. So we really want to make sure that, you know, kids are not exposed to a lot of light at night. Which really kind of circles back to, you know, the arguments that always hear is that, well, our kids, all their works on their computer. This. The. You know, if you're. If they're reading Old Yeller in school, there's no book Old Yeller anymore. No, I'm sorry. Where the red fern grows. Always get this. That's the one that do. You know, it's just. It's. Everything's on the computer. So it's really a problem, you know, in terms of trying to disconnect like you said when we were young, dad just took the Atari, or Dad just unplugged the TV or dad was watching 60 Minutes even though you wanted to watch the, you know, the Muppet show or whatever that was on at the exact same time. That was always a conflict in the family. But nowadays it's. It's really hard to pull kids away from it. But I was really struck by just the overwhelming amount of research that's saying this is not good. Anything you can do to limit that screen time is really positive for sleep and for mood. Absolutely. For sleep and for mood. And probably for a lot of other things too. Because if you're on your phone, you're not moving bricks, developing your body, you're not practicing your free throws or your stick handling skills and field hockey or sewing, if you're into design. Like, it just takes so much time out of people's life. And. And I was talking to a patient yesterday and he said, yeah, I will work on my computer. And then I think it's 10 o' clock at night and I look up and it's actually almost midnight. So I think there's also this kind of weird, like what you said, don't you think that TV back then really served to kind of. It was a timing thing. Okay. Family Ties comes on at 8:30 and it ends at 9.
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A
Yeah.
- [30:50]
B
There is no second. There's not another episode of Family Ties right after another and another and another. Or you start it whenever you want to. If you weren't there at 8:30, you missed the beginning of Family Ties and you didn't see the episode with Alex having insomnia. And I found that there, the television, it was probably never positive, but it did serve sort of a timing purpose. When I heard the tick, tick, tick, tick, tick of 60 minutes, I remember thinking, oh, I better get my math homework done. It's coming Sunday, 7 o', clock, school is coming. And if it's not going to snow, and we're not getting a snow day, I better have my work done because it's seven o'. Clock. I'll be in school 12 hours from now. So I feel like TV and all of its negative that we have today in media, it's definitely lost that zeitgeber time cue that it used to have when we were young. Okay, Johnny Carson's on and you're still up. It's 11:30. You know, those things are just burned into my brain. Like Johnny Carson came on at 11:30, went off at 12:30. If you stayed up, you could watch Letterman and that was a real, you know, dangerous thing to do. To be up when David Letterman was doing his top 10 list or whatever. Saturday Night Live, 11:35, right after the local news. Like it had that timing that it just doesn't have anymore.
- [32:04]
A
Wow, that is really an interesting take, isn't it? That at some, I mean, I do believe that at some point, however the screens were built, it protected childhood, however the shows were, you know, however they were put on the schedule, however they were scheduled in these shows, it protected a lot of the secret spaces of childhood. So it was like you knew that the cartoons ended at noon on Saturday, done. You knew that on Sunday there was nothing on. And so you were going to have to figure out what you wanted to do and you wanted to play. I was actually just telling the story about when we were kids and we'd go, my dad was in the military, we'd go on these different, sometimes weekend things with him. And you know, we'd. We'd be in these like motels or hotels. And I've got two siblings, so there's three of us, right? So, you know, I got me and my younger brothers and you know, by 9 o' clock at night and you're all stuck in this hotel room with your parents. They would watch Cheers and I could sing you the song. I have never watched one episode in my life of Cheers. I wouldn't be able to tell you who the character, you know, who are the different characters? I don't know. But I could sing you the song because that show would come on and then my parents would go, turn your head, you know, we have to look the other way in the hotel room. And so it, it was this sort of cyclical nature. Or you come in, you'd watch Full House or Home Improvement and you come in and it would end at 8 or 8:30. You watched it together as a family and then you knew there's not going to be another one till next week or in the summer. There's not going to be a new one at all. You know, it, it went sort of with the school system, the school year, and there's no new episodes in the summer, just reruns. And those are kind of boring. So it's interesting how societal structures, on purpose, not on purpose, who knows, Were more family oriented, protected childhood to a degree and now those don't exist. So it makes it a lot trickier to have like you talked about this sort of internal timing and just a better sense of like, how does the day run Absolutely, yeah. Wow. So interesting. And so I, I think that that is a solution if you were to look back at how things were programmed in the. You know, they say there was only 27 hours of kids programming, and by something like that in the 1960s, that's it. Like, that was the extent of what you could have watched. And now obviously it's limitless. There is so much programming that you could watch forever and not watch all of it. So kind of an interesting thing to think about and maybe to structure your family in similar ways. Can you talk about. So this is something that we did. It was really eye opening for me, Dr. Winter. So we, obviously, we get outside quite a bit, but I had never learned about the lux and the lumens. So I learned about this in your book, the Rested Child.
- [34:38]
B
Yes, yes.
- [34:40]
A
It was so interesting to me. And we actually bought this, like a lumen.
- [34:44]
B
Yes, yes.
- [34:45]
A
Detector.
- [34:47]
B
Little meter.
- [34:47]
A
Yeah, yeah. And it's pretty cool looking. I remember going outside with my kids because I'm sitting indoors right now. You're indoors. It's pretty bright. So if I, you know, your room is pretty bright. My room's pretty bright. And I would have thought, well, I can see and it's pretty bright in here. But when I actually, after reading your book, tested the lumens, the lux, I might be mixing those up and totally botching, because I know the words mean different things, but it was like the number inside was something like 500. I can see it's 500. But as soon as I stepped outside. Now you're in Florida, I'm in Michigan. So we don't have the sunshine State situation here. But even on a cloudy day, it's jumping into the thousands. And that was really impactful for me to see those numbers of the difference. So can you talk about, especially in the morning, you know, it's like, well, I can see. I'm walking around my house. I'm getting breakfast on it. It seems pretty light. But when you step outside, you talk about the superheated plasma we call the sun, that source of light is really different than the indoor lights. Yeah.
- [35:49]
B
And just to, to, to clarify, the lux and lumens, the only difference is, like, if you have a flashlight and you turn it on, lumens is how much light it's producing. Now if I'm standing on one side of a room and shining it across the room onto a picture that's hanging on the wall, that device you were talking about, that lux meter, you click it and it says, okay, right here where the Picture is there is X number of lux. So lux is a measurement of light in a space. Lumens is how much a source is producing. Now if your lux meter is right up against the source of a thing, it might be, you know, similar numbers, but you know, the, the sun is producing a certain number of lumens and we get the lux when we walk outside. So you're right, it's, it's really shocking. I always carry that little lux meter around because you're like, well, this environment's pretty bright and it's 4:30 is the luck. And then you walk outside and it's 4,000 on a cloudy day, you know, and you know, it's such an important thing to think about. You know, where are your kids doing their homework when they come home from school? It's four o'. Clock. They're kind of on the downward side of their energy level, you know, dealing with kids who have some concentration issues and they're working in an environment that's 200 lux, or they're sitting outside on a screen porch and it's 20,000. You know, it's just those things can really make a difference in terms of focus and attention and also with sleep. So we want to try to create a pattern of lots of light during the day. I've got two lights that are shining on me. I've got two bright windows, it's sunny here in Florida. I'm always outside in between patients picking peppers out of my garden and stuff like that. Letting the dog see if the male person has brought them a treat. Like we're outside all the time, so you want that light during the day. And then as the light starts to dim and we get closer to bed, dimming lights, turning lights off and things like that are really important. And so, yeah, it's fun to walk around with those little meters and take a look at, you know, A, how much lights being produced in environment. But B, what kinds of lights are you using in light bulbs and things like that? Are they, you know, the, the full spectrum light bulbs we all used to grow up with, where you get a light that more mirrors the sun or is it an energy efficient bulb, which are awesome, I'm super, you know, in favor of those. However, sometimes they don't produce a particularly high quality light that can be important. Like, so get your energy efficient bulbs all through your house, your closets, your workspaces, but for where your kids are doing their homework or where you're doing your work in the evening, you know, a better, more wakefulness promoting bulb can be helpful and then thinking about, you know, maybe that dimmer lights or those lights that are more sleep promoting in a child's bedroom. We went through and I took out all the light bulbs of our kids bedroom and put in bulbs that were more sleep promoting. They're not expensive anymore. It's a very easy thing to do. I didn't even tell them I did it. So when they're in there in their rooms, they're turning on lights and messing around with stuff that at least that light is trying to help them move closer to a place where they're ready to sleep than maybe, you know, a bunch of really bright lights and things like that. I'm huge into dimmer switches. You know, I taught all how to put a dimmer switch on your, you know, and how to understand if you have two different switches. Charlie light or one. And the dimmer switches are awesome. You know, give you that ability to like, well I need a light but it doesn't have to be oh, that bright. Like bright's great during the day but maybe not so much during the, during the evening. Like so that ability to tone it down is really awesome.
- [39:30]
A
I mean these are really practical solutions. This episode is brought to you by JCPenney. Yes, JCPenney. And if you've been there recently, you know it's the place to go for jaw dropping looks at brag worthy prices. They've got something special for every style and budget. Not to mention rewards and deals that make finding those hidden gems even sweeter. If you already shop JCPenney, you're already in on the secret. But if not, it's time to ask. Wait, am I sleeping on JCPenney? Shop jcpenney.com yes jcpenney. You say you'll never join the Navy. That living on a submarine would be too hard. You'd never power a whole ship with nuclear energy. Never bring a patient back to life or play the national anthem for a sold out crowd. Joining the Navy sounds crazy. Saying never actually is. Start your journey@navy.com America's Navy forged by the sea.
- [40:33]
B
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- [40:50]
A
One of the things I still remember, I mean this is pretty wild. It's been four years and I there were so many things in the book as I was kind of going back through and getting ready that I was like these Things really stuck with me. I mean, it's a fantastic book. I know you have two, but the rested child, if you're a parent, listening. I mean, I learned so much from that book. Things that I have, like I said, kept with me for years at this point, including that Lux meter. I mean, it really is a powerful tool and I think it's something that you could do with your family so that they would be inspired, I think, to get outside in the morning to actually like step out the door and be underneath the sun's light because it is so the number is so drastically higher even if you're in a pretty bright room. So another thing that you talked about was, I mean, a lot of moms, they've got babies, dads, they're listening and they've got babies and you're like first thing in the morning, like, if you really want to try and help get them on a schedule, they have to be exposed to bright light. So you had even talked about having one of those big, maybe not big, but bright lights at the changing table.
- [41:51]
B
Absolutely. So we had that all. I was just talking to a staff member of one of the teams I work for who has a child and one of the things that we always talked about was, you know, with our, with our kids, you know, I'll just say sort of at the front. I always feel like people try to make this very polarized. You're a cry it out person or you're a loving parent, you know. So like for instance, when our kids would wake up, we wanted our, our family to kind of get going, let's say around 6, 7. But sometimes the baby would wake up at, you know, 6 or 5, 45. And so my goal was I would go in there and I would sit with the baby and maybe take it out of its crib. I would keep all the blinds closed and just sit. But I would try to be quiet. I wouldn't say a lot, you know, just touch its face or whatever. Now if the baby was beside itself and really upset, eventually I might go get my wife and say, I think we probably need to nurse him. He's, he's really, I can't console him sitting here in the dark. But. So she would nurse him in the dark and maybe very quiet. So we would try to push the nursing off and the light and the diaper change and the play time until the time we wanted things to get going. And so, you know, we would sit there in the dark or whatever. And then at 7 o' clock we'd open up the windows. Baby goes on the changing table. I would turn the light on so it was nice and bright in the room. So the baby starts to understand that at seven o' clock their day begins. You know, temperature goes up, we go for a little walk, change the diaper, we're playing and looking at little flashcards or whatever you do with your baby. And so, but it was, that was the, that was the guideline. Let's try to wait till 7 for all these things to happen. Are we going to make our child scream for an hour and 15 minutes if they're. No, of course not. You know, but if we could push it, you know, okay, it's 5:45. Can we make it to 6:15 before we do all this? You know, so it's that kind of gentle movement. But yeah. So every morning when we changed our diaper over top of the diaper table was a little lux light that we had. And so we turn it on and it just really, you know, that light in that baby's eyes is telling it, oh, the sun is up, it's daytime. And on the flip side, as we were getting the baby ready to go to bed, it would be really dark and quiet and, you know, softer lights and stuff like that. So I think, you know, babies respond very strongly to those types of things. You know, really trying to get outside with the baby even if it's cold or, you know, because like you said, even on a cloudy day, that bright sunshine is really important for them to understand the difference between their days and nights. You know, if you have to deal with your baby in the middle of the night, is there a way to turn on a little red light or something in the baby's room so you're not blasting it with a whole lot of light? If you have kids who share a room, you know, and the one wakes up but the other doesn't or whatever, like the little tents you can get and put on top of a, you know, one kid's bed so the light the other kid is using if they have to stay up and read something for school or whatever, the little tent is blocking the light for the younger child who doesn't need to stay up and, and they can have a nice dark environment. So even it's funny, I just got that lux light out because there's this little thing called zden that allows one person in bed to have a little personal sleeping tent. If you don't want to wear an eye mask. Eye mask could probably do the same thing too. And it says blocks 99% of light. So we took it out. I took it outside on a Florida like the brightest Florida day ever and measured it, like went off the meter. It was so bright outside. And then inside it was, it blocked like 99.7 of the light. So it, it truly did, you know, block a lot of light. So, you know, those little things are very. Sleep masks and things like that can be really helpful for people. It's amazing what happens when you, you know, start to pay attention to the light in your environment over a 24 hour period.
- [45:52]
A
It's a fun thing to do too. I mean, it is.
- [45:54]
B
I loved your kids because they were getting into it. They were like, you know, so it becomes like a science experiment. But it's sort of. I love science that relates to your life. Like I'm all about Saturn's rings and what's in there or whatever. But I can't say that Saturn's rings, the constitutional parts of the ring matter to my life day to day. But I love those videos you made your kids because they're learning about light and light intensities and how to measure it. But then you're relating it back to. And this is why you feel more awake. This is why you want to take your spelling test. In a bright environment, your school should be designed to have bright classrooms. If you're a homeschooler, where do you talk to your kid? What do you teach? You know that brighter environment, Teach outside. That'd be the great thing about being a homeschool. You could go outside and have math class if you wanted to. And that brighter environment really helps with attention, focus and concentration.
- [46:48]
A
It is amazing. If you read a book and you're like years later, you're like, all of these things really stuck with me. It was such a fantastic book. The Arrested Child.
- [46:56]
B
That's very kind of you.
- [46:56]
A
I highly, highly recommend it because I have in my mind's eye a picture of the graphs. So maybe we can hit this as a last topic. But you know, you're talking about light as a wave and there's a lot of waves in nature. We talk about how some of the light depending on if it's like a fluorescent bulb, it doesn't look like a wave, it looks like a peak.
- [47:15]
B
Yeah.
- [47:15]
A
You know, all these interesting things that you can learn that you maybe didn't even know existed. But you also talk about this temperature wave and how it was just so mind blowing to me because I didn't know about it. And it just goes to show like how you might, you Kind of have a set wave and it would be tricky to move it. You know, everyone has a wave that's a kind of in the same wavelength. But this is like what in a night owl or someone's a who's up early. This is what's affecting that. It's their temperature thing.
- [47:45]
B
And it's pretty hard to change is and recognize that. We talk a lot about, we've talked a lot about light on this podcast. Temperature is, is probably equally, if not more influential on sleep. We just A, didn't understand that and B, tend to have a little bit less capacity to adjust that. Unless, you know, one of my kids went to a school up in Cascade, Idaho for a semester called Alzar School. And it was like, if you're a good student, you can go up there and you do your school, but then you do all these other outdoor activities. Like, it's amazing like that you should be on their board of directors or something. Like, it's just they even like do school Tuesday through Sunday and then Monday, I'm sorry, Wednesday through Sunday is their school week because then Monday and Tuesday they can get into ski areas, natural places for free. Like, nobody's rafting or doing these things on Monday and Tuesday. So the students have big access to stuff rather than fighting crowds on the weekend. Like, so they just shift every. It was brilliant. And I think they spend half their time in Idaho and after time in like Chile or something. It's crazy. But anyway. But I just remember like, you live in yurts, go out there and chop your own firewood and heat your yurt and you're doing all these like AP classes and these crazy expeditions down rivers and kayaks. They all get all these crazy outdoor certifications of life saving and kayak handling and rafting. And it's just amazing. I mean, they're. I bet nobody sleeps better than kids in that school. So to me, temperature is a big one, you know, so when you start looking at living in something like that, you're living in a yurt that's being heated by fire, that the fire goes out at night and things get cooler and you're in your, your bunk in your sleeping bag or whatever, we tend to sleep really well. So yeah, you don't have to sleep outside if you live in, you know, listening to this podcast and you live in, you know, Boston, Massachusetts. But you know, trying to create like smart thermostats are, is so easy now just program it that, you know, when you get home it's a little bit higher and then around Dinner time, when the sun would go down outside, naturally the temperature in your house starts to go down a little bit. So that we, you know, we create that wave that you're talking about properly timing. Like a hot shower. If you're into cold plunging, you know those saunas, you know, these little portable saunas are so cheap now and they're so much fun. Like you put one outside in the wintertime, you go out there and you sit in the sauna and get a little steam going or whatever, or just a hot bath or a hot shower. But when you, when timing those things. Exercise. When do you exercise? First thing in the morning, when you get home from work in the evening, because that causes your body temperature to go up. So by paying attention to when we're body temperatures are high and when it's low, you can really create much better sleep in people. There's even devices that heat and cool your bed very efficiently. They use water and you just plug it in and it circulates water through a pad that you sleep on. And you can make your bed really cold. And about an hour before you wake up, it'll start to warm you up. So if you have a child, that or you have trouble waking up in the morning, have a lot of that sleep inertia warming your body about an hour before you wake up. Which sort of mirrors that natural trend of our body temperature wanting to go up. But if you have a kid who's more of a night owl, I'm telling you, warming them before they get up can do way more than any alarm clock in the world. Like, I have a lot of sleep inertia. I like to stay up late and sleep late, but unfortunately I have to get up early and using this little device that warms me, wakes me up almost better than any alarm clock. If you can get around the idea that sometimes you wake up and think, oh, I think I wet the bed. I'm pretty sure I've wet the bed now. It is very warm around. But it's, it's fascinating. And, and, and those things can be so helpful to parents that are like, we just can't get our kid up in the morning. You know, like in the summertime he goes to bed at, you know, 2 o' clock and wakes up at noon and, or whatever, you know, that's your choice to allow those kinds of things to happen. I mean, kids, some kids are just more circadianly delayed, but there are ways to draw them back. If they're in some sort of public school that starts at 7 o' clock in the morning, gotta catch a bus at 6. Like you can do these things that can be very helpful that are all temperature related. And I did an Instagram post one time, I got a temp, a thermometer. And every 15 minutes for 24 hours I check my temperature and it makes that perfect curve that you're talking about. So manipulating that curve can be really helpful.
- [52:35]
A
And when it's at the lowest nadir, this is what I learned from your book, that that's when maybe you're in your deepest sleep. I can't totally remember the details, but that, or, but that nadir, that lowest temperature, it could shift a little bit between family members. And so it makes sense that if you, if you do things as a family, like how people may be used to, which is like they go play catch after dinner, they go for a family walk, they all watch TV at the same time that you almost have, you've almost sort of synchronized your waves to a degree. And now with everybody doing their own things, they're on their own screens, they have their own homework. It's on a screen too. And no one is having those connection points even around screen time that those wavelengths can be off. And then it's just a little trick. It's really a fantastic book. I learned so much. And you know, some books and they come and go, but I'm like, all of this stuck with me. And you have given so many practical, practical. Put in a dimmer switch, get these different light bulbs for where you do your homework, try a lux meter and just see how you know how much better. Put water in your bed, heat it up. These are just amazing things. Have bright lights for when your baby wakes up at 7am and so that they know that it's the day. And so I just, I mean, these are the things, especially since it affects mood so much that parents need to know about. And I mean, we just scratched the surface. I mean there are so many things you talk in this book about melatonin, serotonin, the biology of sleep. You talk about lifelong sleep skills. Because the book, the Rested Childhood is about the crib to college all the way along. You talk about all of those different ages. You talk about anxiety, you talk about dopamine screens and addiction. And there is just a lot, a lot to learn. And all of these things help us live better lives.
- [54:13]
B
Real quick, if you don't want to invest in the really expensive bed cooling heating system. I remember a sleep researcher that she would, when she woke up, she woke up early and she had, you know, preteen and teen kids. She would Prepare like the 1940s water bottle. You know, the little soft thing that you fill with hot water. Hot water bottles is what they're called. And, and she would fill it up with really warm water and she would just walk around about 30 minutes before her kids needed to wake up and like slide it into bed with them.
- [54:46]
A
Wow. So it's raising your temperature and that's what helps you to, that's what helps.
- [54:53]
B
You to get up, raising that temperature. Because like you said, you're right, the nadir of your sleep, the lowest temperature is usually about an hour or two before you wake up.
- [55:02]
A
Okay.
- [55:03]
B
And so naturally we start to kind of wake up. So if you notice when your kids wake up, they're hard to wake up and they're walking around cold, it's because their body temperature is still very low. Like their body temperature is not coming up. That's kind of how I feel when I wake up. My what? My wife is like a hot potato. She's the opposite. When she wakes up at 6 o', clock, she's like ready to go. Enthusiastic, annoying, you know what I mean? Like, ah, let's go, go, go. And like you're like, oh, just, honey, just turn it down like three notches for the next hour or two until I can get my senses about me and a cup of coffee. Like, because her body temperature is coming up, she's on an earlier cycle wave like you said. And so going in there and shoving those water bottles in your kids beds if they have trouble waking up is forcing their body temperature to start coming up, which is the beginning of wakefulness in a human.
- [55:55]
A
Wow. So if you look back centuries ago and then the sun was coming up and that would warm things up. That was the natural way it would happen. So temperature matters. People would love to look at the graphs. Nader. I was pronouncing it wrong, but that was so interesting to me. And that's an hour before. It's so many, so many, so many fascinating things. And it's amazing that I could have learned that much then and then learned so much more now. So people can follow you. I'll make sure, I'll put all the links in the notes. But especially, you know, it's like the summer, but then it had head back into the school year. What are you going to do about sleep and your kids mood and this matters so much that school that you talked about, how fascinating. What if we design life like that? Wednesday to Sunday, so then Monday and Tuesday. Everything's empty. I totally. I totally get that. What a brilliant thing. Do it different. Do it different. Thank you. Thank you. I'm, like, literally here with the number two parenting podcast because of that first episode.
- [56:46]
B
No, that's a lie. That is not a true statement. It's. It's. That is what I call true. True and unrelated.
- [56:54]
A
It's true.
- [56:55]
B
I was your first guest. True. You're the number two podcast. Don't think those two necessarily related.
- [57:00]
A
Well, I'm so glad you reached out. I talk about you, like I said, all the time. Thank you so much for all of this that you've shared and for helping parents everywhere. Thank you. With their kids and their sleep and their moods.
- [57:09]
B
You bet, Jenny. Thank you so much.