DoctorOz: Fix Your Sleep for Good by Knowing Your Sleep Type

Brand new research has revealed that what you eat may determine how well you sleep. The research has discovered four sleep types, all based on diet, and your sleep type determines your risk for diseases. Which one are you? We are all familiar with the saying, you are what you eat. But could what you eat play a role in how much you sleep? That's what one researcher and his team set out to uncover in a new study from the Perlman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. My alma mater. This is the very first study of its kind and what we've discovered could improve the way millions of Americans sleep. One of the things that we found was that there is a strong relationship between what you're eating and how you're sleeping. We analyzed sleep and nutrition data from about 4,500 Americans all across the country. We broke people up into four sleep categories based on the number of hours that they slept. We then examined their dietary patterns within a 24-hour period. What we discovered was that people who slept seven to eight hours overall had the healthiest diet, especially compared to the very short sleepers who slept less than five hours a night. And they lacked many of the nutrients such as proteins, vitamins, and minerals compared to those seven to eight hour sleepers. This reveals a lot about how the sleep diet connection is so important because it shows for the very first time how a person's sleep patterns could reflect some deficiencies in their diet. Today, find out exactly what sleep type you are. University of Pennsylvania researcher Dr. Michael Grandner and sleep specialist Dr. Michael Bruce are joining us. Dr. Grandner, you pioneered this breakthrough study. What is the most compelling, the biggest insight that you gained? So the great thing about this study is this was really the first time we were able to look at how overall dietary patterns and look at specific nutrients and vitamins and calories that are associated with optimal sleep. We can potentially use this to make a dent in the obesity epidemic. And we also found that even just an extra hour of sleep could make a big difference. What gave you the idea of trying to correlate the foods we ate, not just how much we ate, but the foods we ate, the nutrients in them with how well we would sleep. So sleep is critical for health. It's a critical factor for health in a lot of different areas and diet is too. And we've suspected for many years that these were related. It's just we never really had the opportunity to look at how sleep and diet were actually connected. Dr. Bruce, you've been a sleep expert for 13 years, world known in your own class. How important, how significant is Dr. Grandner's research? This is one of the most significant studies I've seen in my career. And here's why. It's the first time that we have a U.S. based population study being able to show how habitual sleep patterns actually have something to do with habitual eating patterns. And just like Dr. Grandner was saying, this has the potential to not only put a kink into the obesity epidemic that's going on, but also the insomnia epidemic that's going on. Just think about this, folks. Imagine that all those problems we're having sleeping are correlated with not getting enough of one nutrient or another in our food. That's why I'm so intrigued. So take us through what you did. You created four specific sleep types. What were they? Yeah, so the four types, you had the very short sleepers. So these are the ones who are getting either next to no sleep up to maybe four hours of sleep. So then you had the short sleepers. They were the ones getting five to six hours of sleep. You had the ideal sleepers who were getting seven to eight hours of sleep. And then you had the oversleepers who were getting nine hours or more. So everybody's covered, folks. You're in one of those groups. I want everybody at home to find themselves in that chart we just showed you. All you need to identify is roughly what's the hour that describes how well you sleep. Now we're going to find out what types of foods you ought to have in your diet and your sleep problems that you're having and how can we help you with them. We're going to start with the very short sleeper. People sleep just zero to four hours a night. Come on up. All right. Let's walk. We've got guests to participate. How are you? Greta, welcome to the show. Thank you. So Greta, my dear. Yes, sir. Less than five hours a night is the amount of sleep you're reporting with us. Correct. What is keeping you up? Well, I think stress and I care for my aging parents. And so worrying about them, making sure they're cared for before I go to work and make sure, you know, I have everything covered because I'm a single parent as well. So a lot of responsibility. Yes. What's a typical day like for you when you've only slept a few hours? Well, I get up, I fix breakfast for them and then I make sure my son gets off to school and then I go to work and I work 10 hours a day. And then by the time I come home, I have to fix dinner and so make sure everybody's, you know, gone to bed and make sure he's done his homework. And I'm exhausted hearing it. My goodness. I mean, you must be out of energy for most of the day. There's no way. My energy level does drop. And so. So Dr. Grandin, what did you learn about women like Greta in your study? Again, there are a lot of women in it. Yeah. So the very short sleepers, they consume the least variety of foods in their diet. They also drank less water and they consume less foods that are rich in lycopene, which is an important antioxidant. Dr. Bruce, what types of diets should super short, very short sleepers be eating in order to avoid what Greta's suffering through? One of the things I like to start my day with is a glass of grapefruit juice, which has got a ton of lycopene in it. So that's certainly one thing that you want to consider. But also some of the fruits and vegetables that we have here. So we're looking at the yellow and orange and red fruits. So like peppers and watermelon can be very helpful. You better get eating. Good luck with the family. Thank you. The next sleep type is the short sleeper. Welcome. How are you? And the short sleeper, well, it's like a tongue twist. The short sleeper will sleep five or six hours. So what's a typical night like for you? How many hours do you sleep? Usually five or six. I go to sleep around 1030 and then I'm awake about four o'clock in the morning and my mind gets racing and I can't go back to sleep. So you're waking early. Dr. Gratner, what did you learn about conditions like Andrea's, you know, five and six hour sleepers? So the five to six hour sleepers, the short sleepers, they're actually the ones who consume the most calories. Also relative to those ideal sleepers, they consume less vitamin C and also less selenium, which is an important nutrient that helps regulate inflammation. Does that sound like you? Very much so. So Dr. Bruce, what would you prescribe for these sleepers? So when we're talking about people who are low in vitamin C, one of the things we like to think about is citrus. A citrus infuser is one of the easiest ways for you to get more citrus in your diet. All you do is you unscrew the bottom, place either orange, lime, lemon into the bottom right here. Then you fill it up with water and then it stays under there and the pulp will actually stay there and infuse the water and you're not kind of getting bored drinking just water all the time. For selenium, we look at things like cooking with mushrooms and maybe even chomping on a few Brazil nuts throughout the day, which again are going to be very high in selenium, going to be great for inflammation. Think about that. Think about that. One selenium nut, which gives you a selenium nut. One Brazil nut has all the selenium you need for the day and that might be the difference between you waking up at four in the morning and not. To me, it's worth the experiment. Very much so. Easy. Present from me to you. All right, let's go to the next sleeper. It's the oversleeper. Now, the oversleepers are a smaller group. These are people who sleep nine, ten or more hours a night. Amy, how many hours do you sleep? I'd say averagely about nine. You're so lucky. Some would say, but actually folks who sleep nine hours don't always feel rested. How do you feel when you wake up? I actually feel tired. I actually get up and I get ready and I get back into bed for about 15 minutes fully dressed. And then I get out and I go to work and I'm on the train for an hour and I sleep. Oh my goodness. Dr. Grandin, what did you find out about oversleepers? So this group, they consumed less theobromine, which could function as a stimulant, and also less choline, which is an important nutrient for brain health. So these are two chemicals. They sound foreign to you, but they're in a lot of foods you eat, Dr. Bruce. What should oversleepers eat in order to address these concerns? So this is one of my favorite things I get to tell people is chocolate is a good thing here. Now, a lot of people oftentimes ask me, but chocolate has caffeine in it. Can that counteract some of the effects of sleep? There's not enough caffeine in this dark chocolate to do that. So I want you to eat an ounce of dark chocolate a day. That's great. I'll take it. I thought you'd like that. And as far as choline is concerned, you can find choline in eggs, turkey, even scallops. So trying to increase those in terms of protein and choline is going to be great for you. You are so lucky here. And the last type of sleeper is the ideal sleeper. The ideal sleeper is someone who sleeps seven or eight hours a night. That is our goal for everybody out there. The question is, can you all do what Jen is doing, which is to get those restful seven to eight hours? So let me ask you, what is the secret to doing that? What do you do day in and day out that allows you not to get up at four in the morning, not to have trouble falling asleep, but to truly get those seven to eight hours? I think what we do is try to handle our stressful situations, bill paying, whatnot, in the morning. And then my husband and I have four kids, and we put them down by 8.30, 9 o'clock, and then 9 to 10 is really our time to de-stress, relax. And then I'm upstairs in bed by 10.30 reading, so. About the granure. When you've dealt with these very happy participants in the trial, what do they do in terms of what they're eating that the rest of the folks don't? So this group, this is the group that has the least likely of developing a number of different chronic diseases. So they're the most healthy, and we found that in their diet too. Okay, so here's the reality. The brain requires diverse nutrients and enough hydration to sleep normally. But if you do those things, it rewards you by not insisting that you eat more food. That is the goal of following through on these ideas. Let me remind you of the four basic sleep types. Either a very short sleeper, sleeping zero, one, two, three, or four hours. You're a short sleeper, which means five or six hours. You could be an ideal sleeper, that's our goal today, seven or eight hours. Or you're an over sleeper, someone who sleeps nine, 10, or even more hours. So I want you to circle the number that represents you, and then pay close attention, because we're going to give you some clues about how to manage it. And we're asking the big question, is your sleep type putting you at risk for disease? The answer, Dr. Bruce? Absolutely. It's yes. And I'm going to just say one thing. Dr. Bruce is an expert in this area, but these are diseases that we're not talking about theoretical links. These are real, hardcore problems. So what's the risk of sleeping too little or too much? Well, when we find people who are sleeping too much, oftentimes that's a quality of sleep issue. So could they have sleep apnea? Could they have narcolepsy? Could they have some type of immune function that's causing their bodies to want to sleep longer? People who are sleeping too little, oftentimes it's either anxiety, like we heard from before, or pain. So sleep, it's essential to preventing disease. I'm going to explain to you why and how you should think about this. So I built a little model. This platform here is your body. When you're awake, your body has a flat platform and is trying desperately to juggle all these different balls. They represent hormone imbalance. Your cells try to renew themselves, reducing inflammation, removing toxins, tissue repair, all these different obligations that your body has. And it's trying to keep these balls in the air and balance out these processes because you've got to stay alive and disease-free. And that's what this allows you to do. When you don't sleep right, the body can't bring these ideas together. None of these processes work well. So when you get your sleep, which is what we're focused on today, you allow everything to balance. But you need ideal sleep, the seven to eight hours we're talking about. And if you don't get this, these balls, they don't come together well. None of these processes will work well. So let's get specific about the health risks of each type of problem. The very short sleeper, zero to four hours. Walk me through their issues. What do you have to worry about? So you have to worry about things like diabetes and obesity, obesity being a big one. One of the things we know is that obesity has to do with hormone imbalance or dysregulation of hormones. We know that when people aren't sleeping much and zero to four hours is not a whole lot of sleep, we see an increase in cortisol levels, which increases your appetite and a lowering of metabolism. So what does that high appetite, low metabolism? It's a recipe for weight gain, right? When we talk about diabetes, same thing can happen. Well, remember diabetes is kind of like the doorman for the apartment building, right? So when you walk into the apartment building, the doorman tells you where you can go and where you shouldn't go. However, with insulin, it works the same way. Insulin takes sugar and brings it into the different cells in a certain way. When you're sleep deprived, guess what happens? The doorman went out to lunch and he didn't come back. And so what happens is you end up with blood sugar, high blood sugar, and that in fact can be a pre-diabetic state. So you're here kicking yourself, blaming yourself, but in fact, some of these simple problems with sleep can be causing it and making it a much bigger problem for you. All right. How many nights of inadequate sleep would you need to have in a week, for example, in order to fall prey to this problem? So the numbers to remember here are four and four, right? So four nights of four hours or less, and the research will tell you, you can end up in a pre-diabetic state. Four nights of poor sleep. My goodness. How about very short sleep? You know, the six, five hour group. So this group of people we actually know is at increased risk for stroke and heart attack, right? Now, follow me with this. There was a study done that looked at stroke and what they found was that people who slept six hours or less had a four times greater likelihood of having a stroke, even though they had no genetic history for stroke and weren't overweight. Four times higher, four times higher heart attack. Interesting as well, for people who slept less than six hours, they had two times greater likelihood of having a heart attack. I'm going to sleep right now. Yeah, I'm telling you. I don't know why you guys are still up. All right, what about the group that sleeps too much? Again, we think they're lucky, but as we just learned, they're not always lucky. Nine, 10, 11 hours, what's going on with them? Yeah, that's a bad sign, believe it or not. That's not something that we want to see in the sleep world. That usually means, for example, long sleepers, there could be a big quality sleep issue there, right? So that's where we're talking about something called hypothyroidism, okay? So remember, the thyroid gland is something that produces specific hormones that help regulate all kinds of different systems within your body. People who are hypothyroid means that their gland is not producing enough, and oftentimes they appear tired. They have no energy during the day. They're fatigued. What do they end up doing? Staying in bed and trying to sleep, thinking that they're sleepy when, in fact, they actually need to get their thyroid checked. The first calculation for sleep is to set your body's best bedtime. So why is that so important? Well, because it's one of the only things we can actually control. I mean, think about it. Your wake-up time is usually determined by work, kids, something else, but we can all control what time we go to bed within limits. So show everybody what they should be doing. Okay, so we know that the average sleep cycles combined equal about seven and a half hours of sleep. So if you have a socially determined wake-up time, let's say you wake up at 6 a.m., I want you to count back seven and a half hours and set your alarm clock for that time at night, okay? So we're not using the alarm clock to wake up. We're using the alarm clock to tell us when to go into the bedroom and to get ready to turn out the light. So in that instance, it would be 10.30. 10.30. So be clear about this. The alarm clock is set now at 10.30 at night, so you can wake up by 6 in the morning. And how do you know actually that's the right amount of time for you to sleep? So if you start waking up about 5 or 10 minutes before 6, you've found your ideal sleep need. If it takes you a while to do that, more than a week, then maybe you need to scoot that bedtime a little bit further back to maybe 10 o'clock. All right. Next simple calculation is to help you figure out your sleep efficiency. Why is this calculation so important? Sleep efficiency is very interesting because it's one of the few measures of sleep quality that we have that are out there. It's a measure that's been used in sleep science for years, but it's important for everybody out here to understand it. How many people out there have had eight hours of sleep and then all of a sudden wake up and say, I still feel tired. It's not working for me. What could have happened? Put your hands up if you feel like that. Yeah, everybody. Right, right. Exactly. One person is not answering. He's asleep. Right, exactly. So here's what we know is if we take a very simple calculation, okay, which is the total sleep time that you have divided by your time in bed, this will give you a number or a ratio. We want that number to be greater than 85%. So in our previous example, we wanted people to have seven and a half hours of sleep. So let's say you got in bed for seven and a half hours. It took you 15, 20 minutes to fall asleep. Maybe you woke up once to go to the bathroom. It took about five minutes. We subtract that out. So what do we have? We have basically seven hours divided by that eight hours, which equals 88%. And there you have it. More than 85%. More than the 85%. So what happens if it's not perfect for you? What if you're having to take more than 15, 20 minutes to fall asleep? If you're having to take longer than 15 or 20 minutes to fall asleep, there are a couple of things you should do. Number one, if it takes longer than that to fall asleep, it's probably a good idea to get up and get out of bed because all you're doing is getting frustrated. You're staring at the ceiling. You're counting sheep. You're saying, this really stinks, right? Or the other thing that you can do is make sure that you go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time every single night, including the weekends. Why? Because that consistency helps our internal biological clock, and that's good for sleep. Excellent advice. Be sure to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss anything. And remember to check back often to see what's new.