Improving Sleep Quality

October 12, 2012

Interview with Dr. Michael Breus, author of the book Good Night: The Sleep Doctor's 4-Week Program to Better Sleep and Better Health

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Mike Carruthers:
Did you know that driving when you're tired can be very dangerous?

Michael Breus, PhD:
If you look at the research you'll see that reaction time slows down - so if you're driving a car with less than five and a half to six hours’ worth of sleep, your reaction time is equal to that of somebody having had two or three cocktails.
 

Sleep specialist Dr. Michael Breus author of the book, Good Night, says there's a fascinating connection between sleep and weight loss.

And what we have found is that when you don't sleep well, your ability to lose weight is severely hampered. And what I mean by that is your metabolism slows down if you are sleep-deprived. The second factor is when you don't sleep well you have higher levels of cortisol, which increases your appetite. So what they're finding now is you've got high appetite with low metabolism and you know what?- that equals weight gain.

Reading in bed can help you get sleepy so you can fall asleep - however Dr. Breus says…

What I recommend for people is: instead of having an overhead light on or even a bedside table lamp, I ask them to get these little book lights that you can actually attach to the book - because the light from your bedside table can actually affect your ability to fall asleep.

There are lots of tricks to help people fall asleep when they're tossing and turning…

But the one that I've found that works the most - and you're going to think that this is a little weird, but it actually works quite well - is I tell my patients to count backwards from three hundred by threes. It keeps you from thinking about the things that you were thinking about and it's so doggone boring, it ends up putting you to sleep.