Participants: Don Miller, Agatha Thrash
Series Code: HYTH
Program Code: HYTH000152
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00:01 Hello, I'm Agatha Thrash
00:03 I'm from Uchee Pines Institute, one of the staff physicians 00:06 there and we deal with sleep problems quite a lot at 00:10 Uchee Pines. 00:11 We'll be talking about that during the next half an hour. 00:14 So we hope you will join us for that. 00:36 Welcome to "Help Yourself to Health" 00:38 with Dr. Agatha Thrash of Uchee Pines Institute. 00:42 And now, here's your host Dr. Thrash 00:46 What is sleep? 00:48 Is it just the absence of everything going on in the body? 00:52 Do you just sort of lie down and everything turns off 00:57 and your brain turns off 00:59 and you're just doing nothing... 01:01 You're doing nothing... Your body is doing nothing... 01:03 and your brain is doing nothing. 01:05 No... the people who have studied sleep tell us that 01:10 it's a very active period. 01:12 Very active for the body... Very active for the brain. 01:16 And we require this refreshing time, 01:20 this restoring time, 01:21 this restocking time... 01:23 It's a time when your resources are restocked. 01:28 And so we need that. 01:29 We need this time. 01:31 Now sleep comes in several stages. 01:33 And I'd like to show you these various stages and we can 01:37 discuss them each one point by point. 01:39 The first stage that you will see her in the graphic 01:42 is that of simple drowsiness. 01:45 We are actually in the first phase of sleep 01:50 when we start in with this drowsiness. 01:52 It begins to deepen and shortly you totally lose consciousness 01:58 But you're easily arousable from this second stage. 02:02 So that if a person touches you, or if something drops 02:06 in the room where you are, 02:07 then you're likely to wake up and be more or less alert. 02:14 It is also in this second stage type of sleep 02:18 that we have the REM sleep 02:20 but it doesn't come all the time right here... 02:22 ...most of the time it comes after we have already gone down 02:25 into the third stage of sleep 02:28 which is a deepening of the sleeping condition. 02:33 And even on down to deep sleep, we must go into the deepest 02:39 sleep that we have before we turn around and quickly go 02:45 back up to the second stage passing through the third stage 02:48 very quickly and then to the second stage where 02:52 REM sleep occurs. 02:54 Now let me just tell you a bit about what REM is. 02:58 REM means rapid eye movement sleep. 03:01 During REM sleep, the eyes do move. 03:05 It is also called paradoxical sleep. 03:09 Because although the eyes are moving, 03:11 the rest of the body is paralyzed. 03:15 Now it is felt by those who have researched in this area, 03:19 that probably the reason that the body is paralyzed 03:23 is so that the person will not act out what the eyes are 03:28 seeing inside the brain. 03:30 Some feel that the reason that the eyes are moving 03:34 is because they're searching this hemisphere and that 03:37 hemisphere and trying to find where to plug in 03:41 all of the experiences that you have had in the day that you 03:45 have just lived. 03:46 So the REM time is a time where we fasten 03:49 memories for the experiences that we have had in 03:52 the day just past... 03:53 We fasten those somewhere in the brain at a place 03:58 where we have already stored some material 04:01 on that particular subject. 04:03 Now with babies, they spend about 50% of their time 04:08 in REM sleep. 04:10 This 50% of their time is essential because they 04:14 are learning a lot of things... a lot of new things. 04:16 They go into that... they must be plugged in... 04:20 this place and that place... 04:23 and sometimes the slate is entirely new. 04:25 And so they must find a place to put something 04:28 that has not been put there before. 04:30 Now the brain directs that to some degree. 04:32 It says, make a highway over here, 04:34 or make a highway here. 04:36 So the direction that the brain gives 04:39 can determine to some degree 04:41 just where information is stored. 04:44 We have various chambers in the brain 04:47 so that the chambers of the mind will receive... 04:51 ...one chamber will receive things that are heard, 04:55 that are read from a book 04:57 Another chamber will hear things that are 05:01 perhaps very loud, 05:03 or very disturbing and will have a different chamber for that. 05:07 And these chambers may be near to one another but 05:10 they are different chambers 05:12 And once a chamber starts being used for one type of thing 05:16 from then on, when we want to store some memory 05:19 in the brain, we always store it in that same chamber. 05:23 Marvelous are the workings of the human brain. 05:26 In fact, there are some people who say that the complexity 05:30 of the human brain is greater than the complexity 05:34 of the entire starry universe. 05:37 Well, that would be quite complex. 05:39 And of course, many people spend their entire lives studying 05:43 one tiny segment of the brain and never exhaust that segment. 05:48 So, sleep will restore the brain 05:53 It will reset various systems. 05:55 It will restock certain chemicals... 05:58 especially some of those that the body has to make itself. 06:01 Those will be restocked in the brain. 06:04 During sleep time, we are also refreshing, restoring and 06:08 restocking things in chemicals and systems and storage areas 06:16 in the human body. 06:18 So, sleep is required not only for to make us not feel tired. 06:22 It is also necessary for us to maintain good health... 06:27 ...good mental health, and good physical health. 06:29 Now, many things interfere with sleep... 06:32 and Don Miller is going to talk with you about 06:35 some of those things that interfere with sleep. 06:38 Don Miller is one of my associates at 06:40 Uchee Pines Institute and he will now talk with you about 06:44 things having to do with inference of sleep... Don Miller 06:47 There's lots of things, Dr. Thrash, 06:49 that interfere with sleep. 06:50 A lot of things that interfere with my sleep but 06:52 sometimes nothing can interfere with it... 06:54 When you're tired, your tired, and you go to sleep. 06:57 But there are things in our environment... 07:00 There are things that we do to ourselves... 07:02 that cause us not to get the sleep that we need. 07:05 There was a study done a few years ago above movies. 07:09 And we'll just use the word television also here. 07:11 And what they did is, they wanted to study 07:15 the reaction of the human body on watching different 07:19 types of films. 07:20 And so what they did is... they got a group of nurses 07:22 together and they let them watch a television program, or a movie 07:26 They first took some urine samples, 07:29 and they tested it for catecholamines... 07:32 basically adrenal hormones that came out... 07:36 that are basically stress hormones. 07:38 They measured them before the movie, 07:41 in the middle of the movie, 07:42 and some time after the movie was over. 07:45 And they found some very interesting things... 07:47 They showed them first, an adventure movie. 07:50 Very adventurous and, at first, they sort of graphed 07:55 the stress hormones in the urine and it was 07:58 down here somewhere. 08:00 In the middle of the movie, it was quite high 08:02 really caused some stress hormones to come into the body. 08:05 About an hour to 1-1/2 hours after the movie, 08:08 it had fallen back down, not quite down to the baseline 08:11 again but a little bit above that. 08:13 Then they showed them a horror movie. 08:15 And they said that was the most horrible movie ever made. 08:18 Who knows... there are lots of horrible movies... 08:20 I think they're all horrible. 08:21 But the people went off the scale with their stress hormones 08:25 during this particular movie. 08:26 And nowhere near got down to their beginning level 08:29 an hour after the movie. 08:31 Then they said... well, let's try a comedy... 08:33 maybe a comedy will just make them relax and everything. 08:36 So they let them watch a comedy. 08:38 The comedy had the same reaction as the adventure movie. 08:42 It still went up. 08:43 Stress hormones were still pouring into the body 08:46 and did not go back down after the movie for a while. 08:49 Then they said... well, let's try one more movie. 08:52 They took a movie of just nature... 08:54 It had been taken from a train just going through the 08:57 countryside. 08:58 And in almost every case, the stress hormones fell 09:02 during the movie. 09:03 So, this is what happens... 09:05 You probably had this situation. 09:07 You're sitting there watching TV at night 09:08 and you're getting drowsy because 09:10 TV has a hypnotic effect. 09:12 You're getting drowsy, 09:13 you turn off the TV, you go to bed... 09:14 and now you can't go to sleep because 09:16 all the stress hormones are in there 09:18 and you are no longer being hypnotized 09:21 by that one-eyed monster sitting there in the living room 09:23 And so TV can be one of those things that causes us 09:26 to lose our sleep. 09:29 Another thing can be large meals before we go to bed. 09:32 And many people eat their main meal at nighttime 09:35 and a main meal at night is going to disturb your sleep. 09:38 First of all, you cannot properly digest your food 09:42 when you're in a horizontal position. 09:44 Now you may feel drowsy after a meal, 09:46 but that will soon pass and you will become very 09:48 shallow in your sleep, or you can't sleep at all 09:51 And, if you are sleeping, 09:52 you're not getting into the REM sleep that 09:54 Dr. Thrash just mentioned. 09:55 So the quality of your sleep... 09:57 when we talk about sleep, 09:59 we're talking about the entire gambit of sleep. 10:02 If you just get one section, or one phase of it, 10:05 you might as well be in a coma, or drugged-out. 10:07 You've got to get all of them to really have sleep. 10:09 Other things can disturb your sleep at nighttime... 10:12 One could be noises, or the lack thereof. 10:15 You know, you hear that dripping faucet 10:19 in the next room. 10:20 How many people can sleep during a dripping faucet? 10:23 You've got to get up and go looking all around the house 10:26 for the dripping faucet. 10:27 But we have people come to Uchee Pines from 10:29 New York City, from Chicago, from L.A. 10:31 They get into our Lifestyle Center and they can't 10:34 sleep because... "I've never heard quiet before" 10:37 It's too quiet for them there after a while. 10:39 And so, depending on what your situation is, 10:42 if it's too noisy in your environment, 10:44 I'd recommend you get a couple of earplugs. 10:47 These are quite nice... 10:48 you just sit there and depress them, curl them in your fingers 10:51 poke them in your ears and it sort of deadens some of the 10:55 noises in your room. 10:56 If you are in an environment where there is just a noise 10:59 that will not go away, you can do this. 11:01 I've had to do this when I've been on trips before 11:03 sharing bedrooms with men who snore. 11:06 It's hard for me to sleep with the man over there 11:08 snoring and so I just sit there and put earplugs in my ears. 11:11 Now there's another thing you can do for the person 11:13 who's snoring that might help them not to snore so much. 11:16 And we sort of recommend you get a Nerf ball or 11:19 some type of a soft ball and you sew it into the back of their 11:22 pajamas, so every time they roll onto their back, 11:24 it disturbs them and they keep on rolling 11:26 because it's hard to snore on your side or on your stomach. 11:30 But it's on the back, so you just put something back there 11:32 so they can't lay on their backs and you will 11:34 pretty much stop the snoring. 11:36 Other things that can disturb your sleep is light. 11:39 And, sometimes you can do something about the lights... 11:42 sometimes you can't. 11:43 And so, I carry with me, when I'm in different places, 11:46 little eye shades. 11:48 I just put these on my eyes so I can't see the light. 11:51 In my home, I've got a little clock radio by my bed, 11:55 I've got to put a magazine over the little lights on there 11:58 because it's too much. 11:59 I've got to have it dark. 12:01 I cannot have any artificial light. 12:03 Now the moon shining through... no problem, I can sleep, 12:06 but I cannot sleep during artificial light. 12:08 People disturbing you and this really happens when I'm 12:10 flying on airplanes a lot. 12:12 You're on the airplane... 12:13 you're flying from Atlanta to London... 12:16 It's always a night flight. 12:18 And for some reason, they wake you up in the middle 12:20 of the night and ask you if you're ready to eat. 12:21 And so what I like to do there, 12:23 is I carry with me a little sign... 12:26 I just sit there and put it on myself 12:27 "Do not disturb. " 12:29 I've got my eye things on. 12:30 I've got my ear things in. 12:31 And I've got my sign that says "Do not disturb. " 12:33 And I just sleep my way across... 12:35 And they will not disturb you. 12:36 And so you can ask them not to disturb you 12:38 in those situations. 12:40 Caffeine can interfere with your sleep. 12:42 That means coffee, tea, cola or chocolate. 12:45 Any of these things are sleep interferers... 12:48 And we need to stay away from them. 12:49 Worry! 12:50 People who worry. 12:51 They're going to bed worrying. 12:52 DON'T WORRY. 12:54 Worry is blind and cannot discern the future. 12:57 Let God take care of tomorrow... 12:58 You get some sleep. 13:00 And, also, doing anything very vigorous before you go to bed 13:03 It's not a good time to do your workouts... 13:05 you get all these things worked up and everything is going 13:08 If you want to get some sleep, 13:10 about an hour before you go to bed, start to relax. 13:14 And we'll talk about some sleep promoters in a few 13:16 minutes, Dr. Thrash, but those are some of the greater 13:19 sleep destroyers. 13:21 Yes, those sound very good and I think paying attention 13:25 to those can help you to get a better night of sleep. 13:27 There are, of course, some people... sort of like myself, 13:31 who can just sleep almost anywhere. 13:33 If it's light or if it's dark, if it's noisy, some of us 13:39 can sleep during any of that. 13:40 But, if you're the kind of person who cannot sleep well 13:44 with noise or light, then pay attention to this kind of 13:48 counsel because you need to know just how to deal 13:52 with these kinds of things. 13:54 Now sleep deprivation is a serious problem in this country. 13:59 We have those things that interfere with our sleep 14:02 We have people who work a night shift 14:05 We have projects that are carried on after work 14:08 that extend well beyond midnight. 14:11 And all of those kinds of things can cause sleep deprivation. 14:15 We need to go all the way down from light sleep to deep sleep 14:19 and back up again to REM sleep. 14:21 The first time takes about 90 minutes... 14:25 The second time may take about half an hour. 14:27 And we continue to cycle all night long... 14:30 ...from light sleep to deep sleep and back up again. 14:32 When we get to the second stage of sleep or REM sleep 14:37 the first time, at that point, that whole cycle needs to be 14:43 done before midnight for you to have the greatest probability 14:47 of relaxation... 14:49 Because after midnight, we only have tiny increments of 14:52 growth hormone that are excreted into the bloodstream 14:58 And growth hormone is essential in adults for 15:03 our maintenance of good health, 15:05 having a good immune system, 15:07 being well-organized in the mind. 15:10 Growth hormone has some very important functions 15:13 for the adult. 15:14 So everybody needs to get that sleep before midnight. 15:20 So 90 minutes, as a minimum, before midnight, 15:24 you need to be going to bed. 15:26 So set your bedtime... whatever time that may be, 15:29 ...set that at least 90 minutes before the hour of midnight. 15:36 And I think that probably ideal would be some time between 15:40 8:30 and 10 o'clock... that might be the most ideal time. 15:45 Now with sleep deprivation, what things can happen? 15:48 Well, a loss of memory... 15:50 We can get in a stressful situation... 15:53 We can have body stress. 15:55 Emotional stress. 15:57 We can have forgetfulness that makes it so that we cannot 16:01 organize ourselves well. 16:03 Or, keep our program going forward... 16:06 so we become less efficient. 16:08 So it behooves us to get a good night of sleep, 16:11 so that we can be more efficient in our daytime labor. 16:14 And people who stay up till all hours of morning... 16:17 doing some kind of project and then have a very sensitive 16:21 or delicate work to do the next day, 16:23 they actually deprive their work of their very best effort. 16:29 So be always mindful of the fact that you owe it to your 16:36 daytime work to get a good night of sleep. 16:38 And now Don Miller is going to cover another aspect of sleep. 16:41 of sleep... Don. 16:43 Okay, we've talked about how not to disturb your sleep 16:47 But, how do you promote the sleep? 16:49 How do you get to sleep at night? 16:50 There are a few things that we can do. 16:52 First of all, we don't do the things I told you about already. 16:55 You stay away from the caffeine... 16:57 You stay away from the stimulating things. 16:59 And you stay away from sleeping aids also because they 17:01 rob you again from REM sleep. 17:03 But here are some things you can do... 17:05 First of all, go to God. 17:07 The Bible says, "He giveth His beloved sleep. " 17:11 So take to Him, His promise. 17:13 Say, "Lord, I've done everything you've asked me to do. " 17:16 and you've promised that You give me rest. You give me sleep" 17:20 And you take it to Him. 17:21 Now, some people say... Well, if you can't sleep, 17:24 count sheep. 17:26 Have you ever tried that? 17:27 I can't get up to 5... not that I say awake that long, 17:31 it's just that pretty soon another sheep jumps this way 17:34 and here comes a wolf, and here comes a cow... 17:36 I can't keep my mind on counting sheep. 17:38 And so... don't count the sheep... 17:40 Talk to the Shepherd. 17:41 So if you can't sleep, open the Word, 17:45 and read the Word. 17:46 But if you've already gone to bed, 17:48 don't turn the light back on, and I'll talk about 17:50 that in a few minutes. 17:51 Don't turn the light back on 17:53 but sit there and talk to the Lord... 17:55 ...in the quietness of your mind, go over Scripture. 17:58 He also says, here's another key for 18:00 for getting a good night's sleep... 18:01 "The sleep of a laboring man is sweet" 18:05 So, do something during the daytime that makes you 18:09 tired enough to sleep at night. 18:11 Most people can't sleep at night because they 18:13 haven't done anything in the daytime to make them 18:15 tired enough to make them sleep at night, 18:16 or they spend half the day sleeping... 18:18 and so, don't take naps in the daytime. 18:20 If you're going to take a nap, it's before lunch 18:23 No naps in the afternoon. 18:25 And many people say... "Oh, I can't sleep at night" 18:27 But every time you see them in the daytime, they're sleeping. 18:29 Stay away from the sleeping in the daytime thing. 18:32 Other things... you can take some herbal teas. 18:35 Hops is a very good tea. Chamomile, catnip. 18:40 Now there's another tea that I'm going to mention to you... 18:43 It's called valerian... 18:44 It's a good sedative tea... 18:46 but you'll want to go to sleep because it smells so bad. 18:49 But anyone of those teas will help you. 18:52 You can take a tepid bath... 18:54 Now when I say "tepid," it's got to be just about 18:57 your temperature. 18:58 So that when you get into it, there's no stimulation... 19:00 it's not cold, it's not hot... It's just tepid. 19:03 And I've seen this thing work like a miracle on people. 19:06 They get into the bathtub in just tepid water, 19:08 about 95, 96, 97 degrees... 19:11 They sit there for a half an hour or 45 minutes... 19:14 They get up and they PAT themselves dry. 19:16 They don't sit there and give a big vigorous rubbing 19:18 Pat themselves dry and go in and lay down and it's 19:22 a good way to promote some sleep at night. 19:24 You can also do one other thing... 19:27 When you're laying there in bed, 19:29 start with any part of your body... maybe your leg 19:32 You TENSE your foot and your calf muscle... just tense them 19:36 and hold them there for about 10 seconds and then relax them. 19:39 And then do your thigh muscles on one side... 19:42 and you tense those things, 10 seconds, relax. 19:44 Start up the other leg, 19:46 then you do one arm. 19:47 Maybe you just do your fist, your forearm, 19:49 then your upper arm, the other side... 19:52 your abdominal muscles. 19:53 If you're doing this through this process, 19:55 normally before you get up to your abdominal muscles, 19:57 you are so relaxed... 19:59 you can fall off to sleep. 20:01 So here are some of the nice things you can do to help 20:03 promote some sleep... Dr. Thrash 20:05 Now I'm sure there are some other things you know about... 20:06 Yes... Everybody who has any problem sleeping develops 20:12 certain techniques that make it so that they can 20:14 fall asleep well. 20:15 I was at Wildwood Institute one time with my mother 20:20 who was a very poor sleeper. 20:22 One of the dear nurses there at Wildwood, said... 20:25 "I can do a little backrub for your mother that I think 20:29 will make her go to sleep. " 20:30 So I said, "What will you do?" 20:31 And she said, "Well, the one that I do is very simple. " 20:35 "It's just a hand over hand. Hand over hand, 200 strokes. " 20:41 I said, "You think that will make my mother go to sleep?" 20:43 She said, "We could try it. " 20:45 So she, just very quietly, did for my mother... 200 strokes. 20:50 And, the next morning, I asked my mother how she slept... 20:53 and she said, "Just like a baby. " 20:55 Well, there are many other techniques that you can use... 20:59 massage techniques that can help people to sleep, 21:02 and I've asked my associate at Uchee Pines, Valerie Schreiber, 21:07 who is a massage therapist. 21:09 I've asked her to show us, on my granddaughter, Melissa, 21:13 some techniques that she uses when she helps people 21:17 go to sleep. 21:18 Valerie Schreiber... Thank you 21:20 Okay, we're going to put Melissa up here on the table 21:24 In fact, we just had a patient at Uchee Pines, 21:27 a couple of weeks ago who had a very difficult time sleeping 21:31 and so I took her in the back room and gave her 21:35 a REAL good massage and she slept that night for 3 hours 21:39 and so she was a very happy patient. 21:43 But you know, you can do massage in a number of ways. 21:45 You don't have to be a massage therapist to massage on somebody 21:50 In fact, you can put oil on their body. 21:54 You can use a light olive oil. 21:56 You can go to the health food store actually, 21:59 and get a massage oil. 22:00 But I'll tell you one thing, that's real good is 22:03 old "Pond's Cold Cream," the cleanser, not the moisturizer 22:06 is EXCELLENT to massage the body with 22:09 and feels real good to them when you massage them. 22:12 But what you can do is... you can just put your hands on 22:15 their body and just rub up and down like this... 22:18 and come around their arms and come back down and massage 22:24 And, I tell you, sometimes it feels real good to massage 22:28 over clothes... Um hm.. you know... 22:30 And then you can just kind of just squeeze the body 22:34 in various ways like this. 22:36 You don't want to do anything real vigorous if you're going 22:38 to try and put them to sleep. 22:40 You just kind of want to do a calming type and 22:42 squeeze a little bit like this, 22:45 and soothing strokes like this. 22:48 And then you can keep right on going down and you can 22:52 run your hands like this down the body 22:55 and then you can just sooth them back up. 22:58 And then you can do a squeezing or you can do a pressure... 23:02 like this... this also feels real good to them. 23:06 And you can just keep right on going right on down the body 23:12 ...like this and then you can massage up and you can just 23:16 do all various things on the body... 23:18 You can just make up... 23:20 Almost just touching and... just touching and rubbing... 23:23 And, as you mentioned, you don't really have to be 23:26 a skilled massage therapist to do this... No... 23:30 Anyone can do it in the home. 23:31 And you can just do... sometimes just light strokes... 23:35 ...just like this... Yes 23:36 It will feel SO soothing to them. 23:40 Very good... wake up... 23:47 Massage stroking is so simple, so easy and anyone can do it 23:53 But if you know someone who is really skilled with it, 23:58 they can put you to sleep very nicely. 24:02 Now, Don Miller is going to talk with you about another 24:06 aspect of sleep which you will find very helpful 24:10 and I know that after our program, 24:12 you'll be a better sleeper than you were... Don Miller. 24:15 Okay... I'm one of the people like you, Dr. Thrash... 24:17 I can fall asleep anywhere... 24:19 I once fell asleep standing up in a bus and dropped 24:21 my jacket on a lady and she thought she was getting mugged 24:23 and screamed, woke me up and we had a wonderful time! 24:25 But one of the greatest interferers of sleep 24:29 is the electric light bulb. 24:31 Now, it's a great blessing to mankind... 24:33 But it has also really changed the way we live. 24:36 It's changed basically night into day. 24:39 I've been in cities where you would never know that it's 24:41 nighttime because it's so bright. 24:43 But here's what Edison's little light bulb has done... 24:46 It has moved the people's biological clock 24:50 from somewhere where it should be, nighttime, 24:54 to somewhere between California and Hawaii... 24:58 is where their biological clock is set because 25:01 now they can stay up a whole lot later. 25:03 They've done some studies on college students. 25:06 And this is quite an interesting study... 25:07 because for some reason college students like to 25:10 stay up late and study. 25:12 For whatever reason they're doing this, 25:14 ...I did it too. 25:15 But they find that the circadian nadir 25:18 ...the lowest level of their body temperature 25:22 is about 5:30 to 6 o'clock in the morning... 25:25 which is about 5 or 6 hours later than it should be. 25:29 It should be really in the wee, wee hours, 25:32 midnight, 1 o'clock in the morning when they are 25:34 in the lowest little phase. 25:36 SO, we wonder and they wonder why we can't 25:40 stay awake in math class... 25:41 It's because our nadir has been moved away 25:44 because we have used the light bulb. 25:46 You know the old saying, "Early to bed, early to rise, 25:49 makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise" 25:51 Try something very interesting... 25:53 Go to sleep when the sun goes down, when it gets dark. 25:57 As a matter of fact, I tried it recently... 25:59 As a matter of fact, for a period of time, I tried it. 26:01 I was going to be in bed when it got dark. 26:03 Now, it's very hard to do that in the wintertime 26:05 when it's dark at 4:30... 26:07 Maybe we have to do some fudging in the wintertime... 26:10 But in the summertime, when the sun is setting at 9 o'clock, 26:14 go to bed at 9 o'clock and see if it doesn't do some 26:16 real good things for you. 26:17 There are some other things about this circadian rhythm 26:20 that's quite interesting... or about the light bulb. 26:24 What we do when we use the light bulbs at night 26:27 and we're going to sleep in the morning, 26:29 is now we have heavy shades in our rooms. 26:32 Now, it's the natural light that comes from the sun 26:35 that will reset our fouled up circadian rhythm and our 26:40 biological clock. 26:41 But we really mess things up... we have the light bulb on 26:45 at night and in the morning time, we've got our blinds drawn 26:48 so we can't see the first thing when the light comes in 26:51 and so when we finally drag out of bed at 9 or 10 o'clock 26:54 in the morning, our biological clock is completely messed up 26:58 and we've got some real problems on our hands 27:00 and so, basically I'd recommend that we try as much as 27:04 possible... and one last thing, Dr. Thrash, 27:06 at nighttime, if you have to get up and go to the 27:08 bathroom, don't turn on the light... 27:10 That will completely reset your biological clock. 27:13 Get little nightlights in plugs.. 27:16 ...know where the bathroom is, 27:17 but as soon as you turn on the light, 27:19 everything is upside-down. 27:20 Yes... so the nightlight which will not usually disturb anyone, 27:26 can be your helper at night. 27:28 Now in some climates where they do not have good light 27:33 in the daytime, in these areas we are more likely to see 27:37 disturbances of the mind because of a lack of sleep. 27:41 And one of those is the seasonal affective disorder 27:46 that comes on because we don't have enough sunshine. 27:49 So the sun is our great friend... 27:52 Make it your companion. |
Revised 2014-12-17