Sleep. What to do to get deep refreshing sleep

It is critical nowadays to watch what we are eating so we stay healthy and strong. Dr. Michael Grossman shares exactly how to do that. You may view the YouTube video here.

Hi, I'm Dr. Michael Grossman, anti aging physician. And I am thrilled to talk with you today give you some thoughts about the value of sleep and how to get refreshing rejuvenating sleep. As an anti aging physician, I am always looking for ways to make people healthier, more vibrant, more youthful. And one of the areas that often is overlooked, is the area of rejuvenating sleep, affective Sleep. Sleep is so important to our wellness and our ability to feel youthful sleepers necessary for our health and well being. If we don't sleep well, for a day, we feel poor, we don't sleep well, for two or three days, our brain stops working, we can't function.

We need to go through cycles when we're sleeping, where we get deeper and deeper rest. And then we have a dream. And then we go through another cycle of deeper, deeper rest. And then we have a dream, the dream is a dissolving of stress. The drain is a way of rejuvenating the brain, kind of like a computer that needs to be defragged that needs to be cleaned up on a regular basis so that it can function effectively. So we need to go through these sleeping cycles every night. And they can be many things that affect that sleeping cycle that doesn't allow it to work, right. So let's go through some of these things that can cause that and what we can do about it. So one of the things that happens is that as we get older, we don't go through the sleeping cycle so much. And there's a problem that occurs as we get older that we lose certain hormones in our body, particularly growth hormone.

So growth hormone is a hormone that's produced by the pineal gland and inside the forehead, at the base of the brain. And that gland, as we get older does not release growth hormone. And this is a gradual thing that occurs over the years. So when we're 30, it starts going down. Athletes don't function as well, when they're 40 and 50, and 60. Every every few years, there's less and less of this growth hormone released. And that is a big cause of aging in general. But particularly with sleep. When when we lose growth hormone, we don't get deep sleep, we don't get a rejuvenating sleep and get the brain restored to its healthy. youthful state. We can replace growth hormone, but it's very expensive. more easy is to use growth hormone releasing factors.

We have these factors available now from compounding pharmacies where you can inject or take sublingually peptides, little amino acid groups that will tell the body release growth hormone while you're sleeping. And that creates deeper, healthier sleep and more brain rejuvenation and it has many other beneficial side effects have more energy and more muscle strength less fat. So we have lots of good things we can do in that arena. Now the other things that happens with aging is that men and women lose other hormones most important for sleep is progesterone. Now women make a lot of progesterone men not so much. So for women when they go into menopause, they can all of a sudden not sleep good and a whole life they were sleeping fine. This is frequently from the progesterone loss.

So if a woman is fairly quick go into menopause, you lose the progesterone hormone fairly rapidly. And then you just don't sleep good. So many women out there will notice that, you know, I just don't sleep good. I don't know why frequently is progesterone. Easy to replace it, we have prescription tablets, I like the sustained release from the compounding pharmacies. Very, very important for normal sleeping. Now men can use it to, but a much lower amount like 1/10 of what a woman would use. But it can be very, very effective. Now, other things that can cause a sleeping problem. One we know lifestyle. For young people, they get busy, they don't need to sleep so much, not the end of the world. But for older people, you get to be 40. and older, the body doesn't like this funny scheduling and needs to have a firm schedule, this is the time to go to sleep, the hormones are used to that routine and need that routine. We like to think that normal sleep for most people would be a minimum of seven hours. As you get older, you need less and less.

But that's also because you don't sleep as well. Young people need eight or nine hours young people being below 20. Now another big cause of not sleeping well, we all know is stress. Stress is a huge problem for sleeping. So when you don't deal with stress, well, you start thinking a lot, you worry a lot, you're anxious a lot different hormones will change in the body stress hormones increase, and then you don't sleep go. And then you get up a lot and you can't fall asleep. There's a lot of things to do to help that that are natural. There are prescription things that I'm not crazy about a case when we have to use them. But the natural things are what I'm more excited about. So some of these natural things to help stress and sleeping would be Melatonin is one of my favorite things. Melatonin is produced by the pineal gland, a little gland also in the forehead. And when it's dark out, the pineal gland secretes melatonin. And melatonin makes you sleepy. That's why when you travel to other time zones, the sleep gets all confused because the light and dogs are changing and the whole physiology gets a little confused.

Melatonin is very helpful for that. When you're traveling, if you take a big dose of melatonin, when you want to go to bed, now you reset the dials of the of the brain. high doses would be six milligrams, sometimes even 12 milligrams. So for melatonin, some people when you want to just go to sleep every night and you're not sleeping well. You can take one or two or three milligrams and that will solve the problem. There are some people who need six milligrams or even up to 12 or even as much as 18 milligrams. Melatonin is harmless if you take a lot. You may get a little groggy in the morning, but it's not a service thing. Melatonin occasionally causes very vivid dreams, which again, it's not a service thing. So I love melatonin to help the sleep cycle and to establish a good time schedule for sleeping. Other things that can help we have nutritional supplements like GABA, which is a natural kind of a nutrient that's naturally in the brain. And you can buy this anywhere to health food stores is very helpful for sleeping. There are many other hormones for Larian, and and other herbs that are naturally calming herbs. I use a variety of different herbs that are very helpful for calming the mind and relaxing you in a natural way. And these are not addictive.

These are very, very helpful kind of herbs. We have actually gone dry we have rhodiola and we have a variety of other herbs. They're all very, very healthy herbs to kind of calm down the agitation of of stress. Now one of my favorite things to take is L theanine, l l theanine is a amino acid that's naturally found in green tea. Green tea has caffeine and also this other calming substance l theanine. When we isolate just the healthy any, you can take that two or three times a day. I usually use 200 milligrams. It's the very calming, but it doesn't make you sleepy. It just calms down the overactive mind. So your mind is not moving, moving, moving. And because of that, you can actually think, clearer and have more focus because your mind is not jumping around so much. So that's great for people who are worrying and constantly agitated. What are the other things I like using is L tryptophan. tryptophan is naturally found in a lot of food we eat. It's an amino acid is one of the essential amino acids, when we take a trip to fan, you will take 500 to 1000 milligrams at bedtime. And it's very calming, very relaxing, no side effects from it.

It's very, very easy to use at bedtime, and many people do very, very well with. Another thing I like to use is magnesium. Magnesium is a mineral. And it's also very common mineral you can take different doses of magnesium 100 milligrams, 200 milligrams, it's very common. If you take a lot of major side effects as you can get them some loose stool. So you may want to split it up rather than taking it all at once if you're getting some loose stool. But magnesium is very common. And we like it for a variety of things. It also helps restless legs. restless leg syndrome is a problem that many people have when they try to go sleep at night, their legs just jump. And as the legs jump, it constantly wakes them up and they don't get a deep sleep. Magnesium is very helpful for that. In addition, you can take D ribose. The ribose is a ring of sugars and natural kind of a sugar that is very calming to muscles. It helps muscle inflammation, muscle pain from exercise, but it also gives muscles energy and that jumping from restless legs is greatly diminished.

Very natural, no side effects. It's very easy to take, usually take a couple of tablespoons at bedtime. Very, very helpful. Now another big issue with sleeping is sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a mechanical problems not treated with any nutrients or vitamins. Sleep apnea is a mechanical issue when you're breathing at nighttime, as you get older, the tissues are not so elastic. And when you try to breathe in and out the air gets stuck there because that though the opening is collapsing. And then you wake yourself up trying to breathe. And you may not even totally wake up you may just take a breath and you're sleeping and you never even what a woken up but it interrupts the the deep sleep cycle. And then you feel sleepy on and off through the day. So if you're having a problem of being sleepy during the day, and you don't know why you need to get tested for sleep apnea, so now I'm able to test people at home with a sleep study. And if you have sleep apnea, we have a lot of different ways to treat it.

So you can you can use a mask of various kinds of masks either just a nose or over the face. We have different kinds of mouthpieces that you go to the dentist and wear mouthpieces, we have different implants to put in your mouth that can help to keep the domain pipe and the the opening of the bronchial tubes. So there's a lot of different things to do to help sleep apnea very important to treat because sleep apnea not only makes you sleepy, but it raises your blood pressure shortens your life. So it's real important thing. Now one other thing that I'll add is that it's very important. When you're you have a lot of stress, you're not sleeping good to consider meditation. I teach meditations Thursday night at 730. Sunday afternoon at 1230. Meditation is very easy to learn.

Nothing replaces meditation because meditation gives you so many benefits both in terms of calming, relaxing, reducing stress, and waking up your brain making you more creative giving you more energy. So I encourage you to think about meditation as a very important lifestyle change both for healthy sleep and just for general germination. So that's the big picture of sleep, and sleep health. So I encourage you all to take to heart the different things I'm talking about your world Come to ask me some questions if you want to email my office am Grossman MD at body logic MD comm you can send me some questions or inquiries, and my office phone number is 949-222-0232. Happy to think things out and answer questions. So look forward to hearing from you and we'll be speaking to you again. So for now, this is Dr. Michael Grossman, anti aging specialists wishing you health.