Laptops, tablets and mobile phones produce blue light and just half an hour's use before bed has been shown to delay good REM sleep by a corresponding thirty minutes. Using these devices before bed to wind down or relax can send a very different message to your brain, resulting in you staying awake longer and disrupting your natural circadian rhythms leading to a host of health issues.
Listen in as Alice Hoagland, Ph.D explains the importance of a good nights sleep.
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Getting a Good Night’s Rest – Sleep Tips
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Learn more about Dr. Alice Hoagland
Alice Hoagland, Ph.D
Dr. Alice Hoagland specializes in sleep disorders including: daytime sleepiness, nighttime awakenings, nightmares and breathing irregularities. She works with patients to correct sleep apnea, insomnia and narcolepsy as well.Learn more about Dr. Alice Hoagland
Transcription:
Getting a Good Night’s Rest – Sleep Tips
Bill Klaproth (Host): Using electronic devices before bed to wind down or relax can actually have the opposite effect by sending very different messages to your brain resulting in you staying awake longer and disrupting your natural circadian rhythms leading to a host of health issues. Here to talk with us about getting a good night’s rest is Dr. Alice Hoagland who specializes in sleep disorders at Rochester Regional Health. Dr. Hoagland, thanks for your time today. What health issues are most common with poor sleep?
Dr. Alice Hoagland (Guest): A variety of conditions are involved with poor sleep. Interestingly, virtually any illness that you have can affect your sleep one way or another. Most people intuitively know this if they have a bad cold, they’re coughing through the night, but there are some particular sleep disorders that we are concerned about. The one that most people know quite a bit about now is something that’s called sleep apnea. In the United States, with the epidemic of obesity, we are starting to see increasing evidence of sleep apnea in the population. Sometimes the estimates are anywhere from 20 to 25% of the population have sleep apnea.
This is a condition where people stop breathing in their sleep because the tissues in the back of the throat collapse during sleep. One of the things that most sleep centers do -- we have a preponderance here -- is to take a look at whether or not people have sleep apnea, and then we actively attempt to treat it while we’re here.
Bill: That’s the most common symptom is the stopping of breathing for a short period of time. Are there other symptoms of sleep apnea?
Dr. Hoagland: Well, yes, actually, most patients interestingly, are not aware that they stop breathing. Their spouses are, and they will sit there and sometimes count behind their breath to see what time it is to poke them to wake them up. The most common symptom that we see when patients have obstructive sleep apnea is daytime fatigue and sleepiness. They will frequently come in say, “I get my seven to eight hours of sleep every night, but I’m just exhausted.”
Interestingly, also, sometimes patients, as they get older, they think that being sleepy in the daytime is a normal phenomenon associated with aging, but in fact, that’s not true. Being sleepy in the daytime has a lot of causes, but sleep apnea is certainly the number one.
Bill: Can you have a breathing irregularity and it not be sleep apnea?
Dr. Hoagland: Well, yes, you can. There are some people -- when we talk about breathing irregularities, we can talk about a variety of gas exchanges that go on in the body -- there are some people who are so obese that the tissues around their diaphragm push up, and don’t allow the diaphragm to fully expel out carbon dioxide. They retain what we call -- they retain carbon dioxide. We call this obesity hypo- or underventilation, so these are people -- by and large, they also have sleep apnea, but occasionally they don’t -- their oxygen levels are low because they can’t expel enough carbon dioxide.
Bill: Okay, got you. When we’re talking about sleep disorders and sleep irregularities, is there a difference, or are those one in the same?
Dr. Hoagland: Those are one in the same. It’s interesting, most people in sleep medicine treat either disorder that happens to you while you are asleep -- and that would be sleep apnea. Sometimes patients have seizure disorders. Sometimes patients have excessive body movements during sleep. But we also treat disorders of what we call wakefulness. These are people who have trouble actually staying awake. That would be a disorder such as narcolepsy, or something else that we call idiopathic hypersomnolence.
Bill: Ah ha! I knew it was that. Sleep apnea and narcolepsy, what else is there under the umbrella of sleep disorders, then?
Dr. Hoagland: Well, one of the number one sleep disorders in the world is actually insomnia. This is where people either have difficulty getting to sleep or difficulty staying asleep, and it is almost always bundled with profound tiredness in the daytime. That is the diagnostic criteria -- either difficulty getting to sleep, staying asleep, and being excessively sleepy.
Bill: Are those the big three, then? Sleep apnea, insomnia, and narcolepsy?
Dr. Hoagland: In general, they are. We have lots of other sleep disorders that we treat, but in general, those are the big three that we think about.
Bill: And now, today, with laptops, tablets, mobile phones -- having those in bed, reading those before going to bed, that only makes the problem worse, right?
Dr. Hoagland: It particularly makes things worse for patients with insomnia because as you opened up the podcast by talking about light -- just to be a little bit more specific about it, we, all of us, have a little gland in our brain that’s called the SCM gland. And this gland is regulated by light. This gland is our brain’s clock. It actually regulates everything in our body, not just our sleep, but it regulates everything on a 24-hour basis. When the bright light comes in your eyes and, through a chemical message, it strikes that gland, that gland turns off production of melatonin, which is a naturally occurring transmitter in your body that makes you sleepy.
When you’re using technology such as an iPhone or an iPad, the wavelength from those pieces of technology tend to suppress melatonin almost more than any other wavelength of light, and that's a blue wavelength. In general, in sleep medicine, when I’m working with patients who have insomnia, I stress quite vigorously that they should try to do their best to keep their iPhones and their iPads out of the bedroom.
Bill: What are some other home tips, then, we can do to have a better night’s sleep?
Dr. Hoagland: Honestly, one of the most important things that anybody can do is to do what we call get regular. By that I mean, you need to train your body and your brain to have a regular sleep and wake schedule, even on your days off. This is particularly hard for people who have shift work, but for the most part when people don’t, and they come in, and they see me in the insomnia clinic here, I will oftentimes take a look at their bedtime and their wake time. Any time that it is wildly varying, we know that we are having somebody who is having constant disruptions in their circadian rhythm. Getting regular is the first thing that I mention.
I also very commonly will stress for people that they need to start developing calming rituals before they go to bed. This goes back to the whole issue of using the technology. There’s something about technology other than the light that’s very seductive. When we sit down at night, before you go to bed, very frequently somebody will pick up their phone, and they’ll check the news, or they’ll check an instant message, or they’ll look at something that's psychologically grabbing, and that’s very stimulating. In order to help us all wind down and begin to give our bodies the message that it’s time to go to sleep, it’s also important to keep away from the technology at least an hour before bedtime.
Bill: And what about Kindle E-readers? Are those different?
Dr. Hoagland: The old Kindle -- that’s a good question -- the old Kindles that did not have backlight are perfectly safe. The newer ones, now some of them also have the blue wavelength to them, also. I will oftentimes tell patients good old-fashioned books and magazines don’t have any light-emitting diode [LAUGHTER], so if you want to read or if you like to read before you go to bed, maybe getting off of the newer Kindle would be just as wise.
Bill: And then, if someone tries your home tips, and they don't seem to be working, when is it time to see a doctor?
Dr. Hoagland: I think it’s always important if patients have worked for about a month to try and get their sleep regulated, to avoid over distracting sleep issues, keeping their daytime routine stable -- once patients have done all of these things and they’re feeling like things are out of control for about a month, then it’s time to come in and be evaluated to see whether or not you have a sleep disorder that’s contributing to this.
Bill: All right, well, that’s great advice, and Dr. Hoagland, thank you, so much for sharing your time with us today. You’re listening to Rock Your Health Radio with Rochester Regional Health. For more information, you can go to RochesterRegional.org, that’s RochesterRegional.org. I’m Bill Klaproth, thanks for listening.
Getting a Good Night’s Rest – Sleep Tips
Bill Klaproth (Host): Using electronic devices before bed to wind down or relax can actually have the opposite effect by sending very different messages to your brain resulting in you staying awake longer and disrupting your natural circadian rhythms leading to a host of health issues. Here to talk with us about getting a good night’s rest is Dr. Alice Hoagland who specializes in sleep disorders at Rochester Regional Health. Dr. Hoagland, thanks for your time today. What health issues are most common with poor sleep?
Dr. Alice Hoagland (Guest): A variety of conditions are involved with poor sleep. Interestingly, virtually any illness that you have can affect your sleep one way or another. Most people intuitively know this if they have a bad cold, they’re coughing through the night, but there are some particular sleep disorders that we are concerned about. The one that most people know quite a bit about now is something that’s called sleep apnea. In the United States, with the epidemic of obesity, we are starting to see increasing evidence of sleep apnea in the population. Sometimes the estimates are anywhere from 20 to 25% of the population have sleep apnea.
This is a condition where people stop breathing in their sleep because the tissues in the back of the throat collapse during sleep. One of the things that most sleep centers do -- we have a preponderance here -- is to take a look at whether or not people have sleep apnea, and then we actively attempt to treat it while we’re here.
Bill: That’s the most common symptom is the stopping of breathing for a short period of time. Are there other symptoms of sleep apnea?
Dr. Hoagland: Well, yes, actually, most patients interestingly, are not aware that they stop breathing. Their spouses are, and they will sit there and sometimes count behind their breath to see what time it is to poke them to wake them up. The most common symptom that we see when patients have obstructive sleep apnea is daytime fatigue and sleepiness. They will frequently come in say, “I get my seven to eight hours of sleep every night, but I’m just exhausted.”
Interestingly, also, sometimes patients, as they get older, they think that being sleepy in the daytime is a normal phenomenon associated with aging, but in fact, that’s not true. Being sleepy in the daytime has a lot of causes, but sleep apnea is certainly the number one.
Bill: Can you have a breathing irregularity and it not be sleep apnea?
Dr. Hoagland: Well, yes, you can. There are some people -- when we talk about breathing irregularities, we can talk about a variety of gas exchanges that go on in the body -- there are some people who are so obese that the tissues around their diaphragm push up, and don’t allow the diaphragm to fully expel out carbon dioxide. They retain what we call -- they retain carbon dioxide. We call this obesity hypo- or underventilation, so these are people -- by and large, they also have sleep apnea, but occasionally they don’t -- their oxygen levels are low because they can’t expel enough carbon dioxide.
Bill: Okay, got you. When we’re talking about sleep disorders and sleep irregularities, is there a difference, or are those one in the same?
Dr. Hoagland: Those are one in the same. It’s interesting, most people in sleep medicine treat either disorder that happens to you while you are asleep -- and that would be sleep apnea. Sometimes patients have seizure disorders. Sometimes patients have excessive body movements during sleep. But we also treat disorders of what we call wakefulness. These are people who have trouble actually staying awake. That would be a disorder such as narcolepsy, or something else that we call idiopathic hypersomnolence.
Bill: Ah ha! I knew it was that. Sleep apnea and narcolepsy, what else is there under the umbrella of sleep disorders, then?
Dr. Hoagland: Well, one of the number one sleep disorders in the world is actually insomnia. This is where people either have difficulty getting to sleep or difficulty staying asleep, and it is almost always bundled with profound tiredness in the daytime. That is the diagnostic criteria -- either difficulty getting to sleep, staying asleep, and being excessively sleepy.
Bill: Are those the big three, then? Sleep apnea, insomnia, and narcolepsy?
Dr. Hoagland: In general, they are. We have lots of other sleep disorders that we treat, but in general, those are the big three that we think about.
Bill: And now, today, with laptops, tablets, mobile phones -- having those in bed, reading those before going to bed, that only makes the problem worse, right?
Dr. Hoagland: It particularly makes things worse for patients with insomnia because as you opened up the podcast by talking about light -- just to be a little bit more specific about it, we, all of us, have a little gland in our brain that’s called the SCM gland. And this gland is regulated by light. This gland is our brain’s clock. It actually regulates everything in our body, not just our sleep, but it regulates everything on a 24-hour basis. When the bright light comes in your eyes and, through a chemical message, it strikes that gland, that gland turns off production of melatonin, which is a naturally occurring transmitter in your body that makes you sleepy.
When you’re using technology such as an iPhone or an iPad, the wavelength from those pieces of technology tend to suppress melatonin almost more than any other wavelength of light, and that's a blue wavelength. In general, in sleep medicine, when I’m working with patients who have insomnia, I stress quite vigorously that they should try to do their best to keep their iPhones and their iPads out of the bedroom.
Bill: What are some other home tips, then, we can do to have a better night’s sleep?
Dr. Hoagland: Honestly, one of the most important things that anybody can do is to do what we call get regular. By that I mean, you need to train your body and your brain to have a regular sleep and wake schedule, even on your days off. This is particularly hard for people who have shift work, but for the most part when people don’t, and they come in, and they see me in the insomnia clinic here, I will oftentimes take a look at their bedtime and their wake time. Any time that it is wildly varying, we know that we are having somebody who is having constant disruptions in their circadian rhythm. Getting regular is the first thing that I mention.
I also very commonly will stress for people that they need to start developing calming rituals before they go to bed. This goes back to the whole issue of using the technology. There’s something about technology other than the light that’s very seductive. When we sit down at night, before you go to bed, very frequently somebody will pick up their phone, and they’ll check the news, or they’ll check an instant message, or they’ll look at something that's psychologically grabbing, and that’s very stimulating. In order to help us all wind down and begin to give our bodies the message that it’s time to go to sleep, it’s also important to keep away from the technology at least an hour before bedtime.
Bill: And what about Kindle E-readers? Are those different?
Dr. Hoagland: The old Kindle -- that’s a good question -- the old Kindles that did not have backlight are perfectly safe. The newer ones, now some of them also have the blue wavelength to them, also. I will oftentimes tell patients good old-fashioned books and magazines don’t have any light-emitting diode [LAUGHTER], so if you want to read or if you like to read before you go to bed, maybe getting off of the newer Kindle would be just as wise.
Bill: And then, if someone tries your home tips, and they don't seem to be working, when is it time to see a doctor?
Dr. Hoagland: I think it’s always important if patients have worked for about a month to try and get their sleep regulated, to avoid over distracting sleep issues, keeping their daytime routine stable -- once patients have done all of these things and they’re feeling like things are out of control for about a month, then it’s time to come in and be evaluated to see whether or not you have a sleep disorder that’s contributing to this.
Bill: All right, well, that’s great advice, and Dr. Hoagland, thank you, so much for sharing your time with us today. You’re listening to Rock Your Health Radio with Rochester Regional Health. For more information, you can go to RochesterRegional.org, that’s RochesterRegional.org. I’m Bill Klaproth, thanks for listening.