DoctorOz: 5 Solutions to Solve Your Sleep Problems | Oz Wellness

Not getting a good night's sleep may be one of the biggest stresses in your life and can leave you physically and emotionally exhausted. You can't focus. Your daily tasks get much harder. And the littlest things like sitting in traffic, they set you off. Take a look. You want it. You crave it. And 70 million of you just can't seem to get enough of it. Sleep. In fact, two out of three women say they suffer from sleep deprivation. The repercussions can be life-altering. Not only does lack of sleep affect your judgment and your mood, it also wreaks havoc on your health, increasing your risk of obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure. So, does your spouse keep you up with their snoring? Are you constantly tossing and turning in the middle of the night? Is it impossible for you to shut your brain off and get some sleep? Well, you don't need to fight fatigue any longer. Today, I'm giving you simple solutions for your biggest sleep complaints. Here to help us out is sleep expert, Dr. Michael Bruce. So, why is it that women live with all these sleep problems? You know, many women think that they just have a hectic, stressed-out lifestyle and they think, well, maybe this is normal. Or a lot of women might say, you know what? I don't have time to sleep. I've got too much going on in my life. Or they may say, you know what? I don't want to go to my doctor and talk about my sleep problem because it's going to cost money to go to the doctor. Or maybe they're going to give me some kind of pill. Could that pill be addictive? Could it not be? What's going on here? You know, it can really evolve very quickly into a very dangerous situation for women. Explain those dangers. I mean, how are they putting themselves at risk? So, a lot of times what people will do is they'll take matters into their own hands. And they may go into the medicine cabinet or may take something like melatonin or they may use alcohol to help them sleep. So, I wanted to find out what was keeping you up at night. And the results, frankly, they were stunning. The first thing you complained about was your partner's snoring. So, Lateece is here because her husband, Dan, snoring is keeping her awake all night long. Let's see just how bad his snoring really is. So, Lateece, what is going on there? How have you done this? I can't even hear myself stop. What have you done to try to stop that snoring? I do the nudge at first, you know. I try to switch the position for him, you know. And then it's just an ongoing cycle of me going from room to room. I end up downstairs falling asleep on the couch. But then my sleep is broken. Sure. Because then I'm waking up every hour, every hour and a half, because I can still hear him. And then it's turning up the TV. Oh, my goodness. Watching marathons of Murder, She Wrote. I get crazy. So, it drives me nuts. Dan, what do you have to say for yourself? Well, she snores, too. Oh, just not as loud as this one. So, it's just a race to fall asleep first. Yeah, pretty much. All right. So, a recent study showed that almost half of women don't get a good night's sleep because their partners are snoring. That's a big problem. How do we fix it? It's a huge problem. One of the first things I tell all of my patients is to decongest for better rest. Decongest for better rest. Absolutely. It's got a little rhythm to it. You can do that in the half zone. So, what works? What can be done today? So, one of the very first things I tell people to do is to try using nasal strips. So, you've probably seen them before. Lots of people have tried them out. But a lot of people don't realize that you need to place them appropriately on your nose. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to have everybody take their fingers like this and put them on your nose, okay? And then slowly breathe in while sliding your fingers down your nose. Wherever you feel that nasal constriction, wherever you feel the airflow starting to get a little bit less, that's where you place the strip. Once you've gotten the nasal strip in the right place, then we have them use a saline wash or a neti pot. And we've got some of those right over here. So, this will irrigate the entire nasal canal, flush out any of the allergens that might be in there, and help with overall nasal congestion. Part of the reason why that elbow to the side works so well is when you roll him to his side, his whole airway opens up inside his throat. And that's one of the reasons why people do that so much. These are in pharmacies all over the place, Dan. I'm giving you this box to take home with you. The next big complaint on our poll was that you can fall asleep, but you can't stay asleep. How many of you have that complaint? Put your hands up. I mean, just about everybody. It's amazing. It drives me crazy, too. So, you wake up middle of the night, now you're stuck. So, Doreen, thanks for joining us. You responded to our poll that when you fall asleep at night, which is not a problem for you, it's okay initially. Then you wake up and you can't get back to sleep again. Absolutely. It's very frustrating. I can fall asleep and I'm awake in about an hour and a half. I look at the clock. I check the BlackBerry, you know, go to the bathroom. So, my sleep is always very broken. And I'm, you know, I'm tired in the morning and it's frustrating. Yeah, I can imagine. Dr. Bruce has a brand new solution, and I'm fascinated. So, please explain how so many folks out there who wake up can get back to sleep again. So, it's interesting. When people wake up in the middle of the night, and by the way, everybody is supposed to wake up one or two times in the middle of the night. That's normal. That's perfectly normal for people to do. But it's the anxiety that comes with being awake that we have to be very careful of. So, a lot of people, here's what they do, is they look at the alarm clock, right? And they say, and they do the mental math almost instantly, right? And they say, oh my gosh, I've got to get up at 6.30. It's 3.30. I've only got three more hours of sleep. Okay, I'm going to try really hard, really hard. Oh, oh. And, you know, it doesn't work very well, right? So, there's a tremendous amount of anxiety associated with this. So, believe it or not, magnolia bark is something that can be very helpful for sleep. Magnolia bark has been used in Chinese herbal medicine for hundreds and hundreds of years. And what we know about magnolia bark is that it helps reduce anxiety, right? And so, anxiety being that component that's fueling this inability to fall back asleep. So, a lot of times, I'll recommend magnolia bark for people. It runs in about 30 milligrams as a dose. People can take it for up to six weeks at a time. And the studies are actually pretty interesting to show is that it helps reduce anxiety. How is it possible? There's something as powerful as that to help us get back asleep again that we have not heard of before. Well, it's interesting because, you know, there's a lot of marketing out there. And there's a lot of people out there who are trying to push different things. So, you know, melatonin is a perfect example. A lot of people are taking melatonin when, in fact, that's not the right thing to be taking when you're waking up in the middle of the night. So, this is something that I've been researching for quite a while. And it is a little bit surprising to me that people haven't come across this as of yet. And how often should you take magnolia bark? You can actually take it nightly. And you can take it for up to six weeks. The thing to be careful of is you don't want to take it in conjunction with another sleeping pill, right? And you don't want to take it in conjunction with alcohol because that can make you very, very drowsy. It's the moment you dread every morning, the minute your alarm goes off. And then after a good night's sleep, you ought to feel energized and refreshed. But instead, you wake up feeling exhausted, which happens to be the third biggest complaint on our DrRoz.com poll. So, Dr. Bruce, explain this for me. We slept, so many of us, a full night, eight hours. When you wake up, you feel exhausted. A lot of people don't remember, but sleep is not just a quantity issue. It's a quality issue as well. So what's the part of the evening sleep that's most important? What makes it quality? Well, people can get into deep sleep. So they go through the stages of sleep. They get into deep sleep. And then they go into REM sleep and complete a full sleep cycle. So this is very interesting. A lot of people may have experienced this at some point in time. You ever take a nap in the afternoon, wake up, and feel worse than when you started? Yes. Right? People know what that feeling is like? That's because you didn't complete a sleep cycle. You actually slept only half of a cycle. Like, a 45-minute nap would be sleeping for half of a sleep cycle. And you wake up out of deep sleep, and you're like, oh my gosh, I feel worse than when I started. I mean, there are tons of distractions every night. So many of us have them. They can disrupt that sleep cycle you spoke to. So let's walk over here. Sure. I want to demonstrate for everybody why that 90-minute sleep cycle is so important. So I built you all a racetrack, and this racetrack represents one of those sleep cycles that Dr. Bruce spoke about, the 90-minute cycles that we spoke to earlier. The goal at the end of the track is REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep. That's the kind of sleep that you dream in. That's the finish line of a fully restorative sleep cycle. Again, it's quality, and that's what you need for quality. So here I am. I'll be the sleeper. You be the roadblocks. You got it. We've got so many roadblocks to prevent us from getting that night's sleep. So I'm marching along here, and boom, bam, caffeine. So a lot of people don't realize this, but caffeine has a half-life of between 8 and 10 hours. So if you had an afternoon cup of coffee or iced tea or whatever, it could absolutely have an effect not only on your falling asleep, but on the quality of that sleep. All right. So I cut the caffeine out of my life. I'm marching along, getting further on. Alcohol. So don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with having a glass of wine with dinner or a beer with dinner, but you need to be able to have that early enough in the night so that it doesn't affect your sleep cycle. Alcohol will make you feel sleepy, but you know what it is? It's a diuretic. So it'll make you wake up in the middle of the night after you metabolize it to get up to go to the bathroom, but also it can make you dehydrated. And that's part of the reason that people get a hangover in the morning is the dehydration. The other is it keeps you out of deep sleep. Remember, quality, deep sleep. That's what we're looking for. All right. So I cut the alcohol out. So caffeine and alcohol, at least for a couple hours before I go to bed are gone. Yep. Going through pretty well. Lights. So a lot of people fall asleep with the television on. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but use the TV timer because you know what happens? In the middle of the light, those lights come in, right? And they can affect your ability and the sound can affect your ability to stay asleep. All right. Cut that out of the way. I'm marching along here. I'm almost at the end. A pet. So lots and lots of people sleep with pets in the bed. Okay. Now, don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with, you know, a chihuahua. Chihuahua, right. Right. Small, can kind of have the seat. But I've actually talked to patients who've had a great Dane sleeping in the bed next to them. I kid you not. I was shocked. But you know, a lot of people have a real affinity towards that pet. And that helps them. That helps them fall asleep. But remember, the pets can have their bed or have their part of your bed. That's not going to be disruptive to you. Pets are out. I actually lock our pets out because they'll always join us. And I'm marching along. I'm almost there. And temperature. So a lot of people don't know this, but if you get too hot or too cold, they can pull you out of deep sleep. So what happens if you get too hot? Your body pulls you out of deep sleep to ventilate and move the covers. Or if your body gets too cold, your internal thermostat kicks on, right? And that can be a problem as well. And that will wake you up and have you move around to cause friction to heat you up. All right. Right. Temperature as well. We just gave you five roadblocks. There's many more we've got to come up with. Finally, I get past the finish line. I start my next cycle. Right. So you may have slept eight hours. But at the end of the day, with the distractions we showed here, we never completed the restorative cycle that we spoke to earlier. And don't forget, people need five sleep cycles a night. Four to five sleep cycles a night is where we want them to be. So come on over. Let's talk about guidelines here, because there's so many of them that we should be keeping in mind. Absolutely. If you want to really be smart about avoiding these distracting items that hold us back from getting those sleep cycles, what are the guidelines to help us get there? So one of the first things I tell all my patients is keep a consistent bedtime. We know that a consistency in bedtime not only tells your internal biological clock that it's time for bed, but also all bodies work better on consistent schedules. We know that in many, many areas of medicine, sleep is one of them that we want to think about. We talked a little bit about caffeine. We want people to reduce or eliminate caffeine by about 2 p.m. Notice I didn't say you couldn't have your morning cup of coffee. You can still have something at lunch. But by 2 o'clock, you really want to go decaf or be caffeine free. The final one, let's talk about alcohol. Again, it's OK to have a little bit of alcohol with dinner. And we know that there's some benefits to red wine and things like that. But you want to stop drinking alcohol three to four hours before lights out so that it doesn't affect your sleep. And you do that for a day or two. And then you roll that. Well, you'll see differences immediately. And if you continue to do that, you'll have great sleep habits and you'll sleep better. Your next sleep complaint is that you could not turn your brain off. But Terry, what's keeping you up? You're one of the complainers in that category. What are you thinking about before you go to bed? I'm thinking about everything. I have four kids. I'm thinking about their schedule. I'm thinking about my daughter who has ADHD who's constantly going and thinking about my bills. I'm a homeowner. Just everything that goes along with that. So I'm just constantly thinking. And Terry, what have you tried to do to calm your mind down, your brain down so you can get to sleep? Well, I try to take a nice warm shower. I play words with friends. And I have old movies on my DVR that I play. And I like to listen to the sound of the music. And then I try to fall asleep. So Dr. Bruce, help Terry here and the many folks like her who have difficulty falling asleep. So this is incredibly common, Terry. And I don't want you to feel like you're alone in this because from an insomnia perspective, this is one of the biggest complaints that I hear in my office. People do have a hard time turning off their mind. And here's why. It's the first time a day that somebody isn't talking to you, right? Asking you to do something. There isn't a child or a spouse walking through the door saying, hey, we need to do this. We need to do that. And so as soon as the lights turn off, all the thoughts come flooding in. And a lot of times people say, oh my gosh, I got to remember this. I don't want to wake up and write something down. I'm just going to think about it, think about it, think about it, think about it. And they try to burn it into their brain. Really not the best idea. So what we want to do is we want to tell people about something called a worry journal. So this is a very simple technique where you actually take a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle, and this is before you go to sleep. And you write down every single thing that you're thinking about. Then you write a solution for each one. And the solution could be, I'm going to think about this tomorrow at lunch. Give yourself permission to not have to worry at night before bed and allow yourself to relax. And I love the idea of you having a hot bath or shower before bed because there's a lot of data to show that that can be helpful. Is that helpful, Terry? I'm going to try it, thank you. Good try, the worry journal. All right, the final sleep complaint is that you cannot get comfortable. And Jen's joining us to help bring that alive for everybody. Hi, Dr. Oz. You know, when I lay down at night to go to sleep, I do not have that ah moment when I climb under the covers. My knees hurt, my hips hurt, my neck hurts. I can't find a position that feels right. And then I'm just laying there in pain. Sure. Again, there's a lot of reasons for this. Let me show an animation. I think that'll help elucidate why this happens. And these are the aches and pains that keep you awake. And they can be fairly mundane things. For example, let's say you're lying down in bed and you've got something in your leg. Maybe you stumped it, but your body's telling you something that's not right. The muscles will send nerve messages up through the spinal column, up way up to the head. And once you get to the brain, they start to fire off the neurons, the nerve cells, and they become irritated. They short-circuit and they set a brain saying, fire, fire, wake up, wake up, something's wrong. And that awakens you from that deep sleep. That 90-minute cycle you were trying to have gets broken. So Dr. Bruce, what's the solution? It's called bed yoga. Bed yoga? Bed yoga. That sounds pretty easy to do. I just lie there? No, you don't just lie there, should we? Yeah, please. Okay, Jay, come on over. Join us if you don't mind. So how does this work, Dr. Bruce? So what we do, and this can be done in bed. So if you find yourself not being able to be comfortable when lying in your bed, here's what I want you to do. Let's pretend that these mats are our mattresses, okay? We're going to go ahead and sit down right here. So the first one is what I call the twist, all right? So you have your feet out in front of you. There's two ways that you can do this. You can either cross your leg just like this or you can cross your legs like this. Either way, whatever feels most comfortable for you. Then what I want you to do is take your right hand and slowly place it around and twist. And you're going to look as far back as you possibly can. And you should feel tension in your back. But slowly, you don't want to overdo this. You don't want to hurt yourself, but you want to feel the tension and then breathe. In, two, three, out, two, three. That opens up your whole lower back, takes the tension out where so many folks hold it. Absolutely. And there's a second yoga pose for the bed. There is. So a lot of people who get in bed, they experience low back pain. They can't get comfortable because they've been walking around all day and they're carrying all that tension in their pelvis and in their hips. So this is what I call the figure four stretch. So go ahead and put your leg like this and it looks like a four, okay? Then reach in between your legs, grab the back of your thigh, and slowly bring it up towards you. Now, you should feel a lot of tension right across your glutes, right here in the back, okay? Big time. This is one of the best stretches you can do if you have any type of tension in your lower kind of buttocks region, okay? And while you're doing this, again, you're going to breathe in, two, three, out, two. The best part about this is you won't wake up your spouse. Absolutely not. Now, actually, people in the audience could try this if they want to while they're sitting there. So everybody go ahead and cross their leg. The other side. Don't fall asleep, anybody. And again, grab down and slowly bring it up closer and closer to your chest. Breathe in, two, three, out, two, three. In, two, three, out, two, three. Anybody feel it? They're feeling it. They're dozing off. Be sure to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss anything. And remember to check back often to see what's new.