Participants: James Marcum & Charles Mills
Series Code: UP
Program Code: UP00047A
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00:16 Thomas Edison, scientist, inventor, visionary!
00:21 We live our lives surrounded by his creative genius, 00:24 but there's one Edison invention that can help make us sick. 00:29 Stay tuned... 00:31 I'm Dr. James Marcum 00:33 Are you interested in discovering the reason why? 00:37 Do you want solutions to your healthcare problem? 00:39 Are you tired of taking medications? 00:42 Well, you're about to be given the "Ultimate Prescription" 00:51 What would we do without the light bulb? 00:54 Well, we'd wander around in the dark a lot. 00:57 We couldn't take flash pictures or watch television. 01:00 We couldn't, metaphorically, have a good idea. 01:02 Yes, our lives would change dramatically, 01:05 but sometimes change is needed. 01:07 Sometimes being in the dark is a perfectly good thing, 01:11 right, Dr. Marcum? 01:12 Absolutely Charles, I would agree with you. 01:16 Being in the dark IS good if you're 01:18 doing the right things in the dark... Good point 01:21 And, one of the things that we were designed to do is... 01:25 we were designed to rest and sleep at night, 01:28 and when we're resting and sleeping at night, 01:31 we're doing a good thing. 01:32 This has gotten a lot of attention... 01:35 You know, we've been talking about the importance of 01:37 rest for years, but in the media there has 01:40 been some stirrings recently. 01:43 Recently, "The Centers for Disease Control" 01:46 they came out with this statistic and they said, 01:49 ...1 in 25 or about 4% of Americans are now using 01:55 sleeping pills. 01:57 Dr. Farkas in the recent "New England Journal of Medicine" 02:03 reported that Zolpidem, that's a sleeping pill, 02:06 is the most widely used prescription drug for insomnia 02:10 and one of the most commonly used drugs in the United States, 02:15 and in his editorial in the "New England Journal of Medicine" 02:18 he goes on to point that this problem, 02:20 ...this people taking sleeping pills, 02:22 is a public health problem. Wow... 02:25 So we've crossed the line from being a little problem 02:27 to a public health problem. 02:28 It has significant consequences. 02:31 There is a growing concern that after years and years of use 02:35 of these medicines, that there is impairment in 02:37 cognition - the way you think, Charles, 02:40 especially as it relates to motor vehicle driving. 02:44 So people that take sleeping pills don't drive as well, 02:47 it's a problem... 02:49 And there's a debate right now on the dosing in men and women, 02:53 as well as the metabolism. 02:55 So a lot of people are questioning 02:57 if these things are good things to have, 02:59 if these sleeping pills are good. 03:01 Now, if you think about things, 03:03 let's go back 300 years ago... 03:05 Now I wasn't around 300 years ago, 03:08 did we have this problem? 03:09 I don't remember reading about that, I mean a few 03:12 have an occasional not sleep well, but to have a chronic 03:16 can't sleep good - across the board in the 03:18 population... no, that wasn't happening. 03:20 We worked in the day and it got night, 03:22 more or less, we went to bed. Yes, it got dark! 03:25 This was before Edison and made electricity... 03:29 This was before people stayed up with cell phones, iPads, 03:33 computers, texting, all those things that keep us awake; 03:37 those late night snacks, all those stimulants 03:40 that keep us going, all the violent things that 03:43 we would see on television sometimes 03:45 that would keep us going... 03:46 So, sleeping pills were originally meant, 03:50 as pointed out, for a short period of time 03:53 until basically the underlying problem could be addressed, 03:57 BUT with the numbers and scope of the problem, 04:02 1 in 25 now are using sleeping pills, 04:05 that's 4% of the population, 04:08 and all of a sudden we're having cognition problems, 04:11 we're not sleeping very good, we're not thinking very good. 04:14 There's that parallel climb we were 04:15 talking about in an earlier show... Yes-yes 04:17 This problem is happening, so this response is happening. 04:20 Yes-yes, and you hate to talk about problems 04:25 and another stressor that's out there that's not being 04:28 addressed, but here's another one... 04:30 we're not resting well. 04:32 When we don't rest well, our body can't heal itself, 04:35 the body parts don't rest; 04:37 everything is staying up all the time; 04:40 our metabolism is altered; 04:42 the circadian rhythms are messed up; 04:44 our hormonal system is damaged; 04:47 the way we think, as we found out, is damaged. 04:49 But FINALLY, I applaud the media, 04:52 The New England Journal, The Centers for Disease Control, 04:55 at least NOW, we're writing about the topic, 04:59 and we're talking about this. 05:01 Now, I wonder what would Thomas Edison recommend, 05:05 you know, in all this. 05:07 He was a smart guy! 05:09 Well he wasn't a good example because he was up all night 05:12 and all day and all night making these inventions. 05:13 He ruined his health trying to make these things 05:17 that make our life easier. 05:18 Yep, you're right and this goes back to the old baseball player. 05:21 If you're throwing baseballs and your arm hurts, 05:23 you're going to quit throwing baseballs... 05:25 And if you're not sleeping well at night, 05:28 taking sleep pills does not seem to be the long-term answer 05:32 especially when we see rising problems of mental issues 05:36 as the population gets older. 05:38 Now let me ask you a question, Dr. Marcum, 05:40 from a medical standpoint, what exactly does a 05:42 sleeping pill do, what changes take place 05:45 in our bodies that are essential for sleep that these pills 05:48 are able to mimic and apparently not very well. 05:51 Yeah, well remember, these pills really don't make you rest; 05:56 these pills don't make you live longer; 05:58 they don't make you rest better. 06:00 They do knock you out. 06:02 And how do they do that, how do they knock you out? 06:04 There's a bunch of chemicals that they mess with in the brain 06:07 It's an ARTIFICIAL sleep! 06:08 Yes, it's artificial that they sort of tranquilize you, 06:10 and put you out. 06:12 A bunch of fancy chemical mechanisms... 06:15 It's not as good as banging you in the head, putting you out, 06:17 but it basically puts you out. 06:19 You know, in all these medicines you see the anesthetic agents. 06:23 They put you to sleep too. 06:24 A lot of the chemical pathways that they do, 06:27 we don't fully understand everything that it does, 06:30 we just know that these chemicals 06:31 seem to put you to sleep. 06:32 This is another thing that kind of scares me... 06:36 You have said that over a great deal of time that sleeping pills 06:41 have been shown to be a real problem. 06:44 What else are we going to find out about - statins? 06:46 You know, we've been taking those now for 06:48 about a couple of dozen years, 06:49 what's going to happen 40-50 years from now 06:51 when we realize what these things are doing? 06:54 High blood pressure medicines, all these things! 06:56 We don't know and that's why everything is going to be about 06:59 the risk and benefits. 07:00 So in this issue, we talked about Dr. Farkas said, 07:04 we have a public health problem. 07:07 It's costing a lot of money when so many people 07:09 are taking it - hurting the cognition, 07:11 damaging people in the cars; it's a problem, 07:14 so that's step #1. 07:15 #2- Is the RISK of a medicine worth the benefit 07:20 and are there other alternatives? 07:22 And we have to realize there is a LONG-TERM risk 07:26 to taking medicines that we take so freely today. 07:28 We don't even know what those long-terms risks are. 07:30 No we do not and that's one of 07:31 the risks because we don't know the risks. 07:33 Another thing is there are alternatives to use. 07:37 You know, we sort of broke the sleep patterns, 07:39 the circadian rhythms; 07:41 we have too many stimulants in our life that's keeping us 07:45 up all the time. 07:46 Yes, you would not sit here telling us 07:48 about sleep pills if you didn't 07:49 have an alternative, you wouldn't even try it. 07:52 Right, no, no, and we talk about it, 07:54 you know, what disrupts a person so they don't sleep well? 07:58 You know, that's a great question. 07:59 It might be a physical thing like sleep apnea, 08:01 where they quit breathing at night. 08:03 In that case, you want to give them some oxygen. 08:05 It might be a stimulant that keeps them up. 08:09 One of the largest stimulants we see right now 08:11 is that stimulant called "television" 08:15 Television - guess what? 08:16 It gets the brains thinking and fired up. 08:18 It makes a lot of these stress-type chemistry. 08:22 The stress chemistry - guess what? 08:24 It turns off the relaxing chemistries, 08:26 so it self-defeats itself and when you have so much of that, 08:30 you can't really rest well, you can't go to sleep well. 08:33 You mix that in with a little late night snacky, 08:36 maybe some stimulants that we take... 08:39 You know, we talked about energy drinks before, 08:41 caffeine before, some stress in the life and all of a sudden 08:46 we've disrupted the balance. 08:48 Now, there are certain things that you need for good sleep. 08:50 There are certain chemicals that you need for good sleep, 08:53 and sometimes our DIET is not even getting some of those 08:56 things that we need for good sleep. 08:58 You know like, for instance, bananas are great 09:00 because they have a substance called L-tryptophan. 09:03 Bananas also have chemicals that convert to melatonin 09:07 which is a natural sleep aid. 09:09 So all of these things, Charles, are out there that could help 09:12 us sleep better. 09:14 So in thinking about things is if a person came to me 09:18 on a sleeping pill, it might be for a short period of time 09:22 they need a sleeping pill, for a short period of time. 09:24 But for the long-term, I would say, 09:26 "Well let's see why you're not sleeping well at night, 09:30 and then let's see if we can get at the cause, 09:33 and figure out other things" 09:34 Now, a lot of people don't realize it, 09:36 but most people wake up about 2 or 3 times a night. 09:41 You only need about 3 hours of sleep at a time. 09:45 You want to sleep through a cycle of sleep. 09:48 So a cycle sleep is about 3 hours. About that... 09:50 So if you sleep and then you wake up, 09:53 and then you go back to sleep again, 09:54 you're going to still get your cycles of sleep... Got ya 09:57 So, you know, it might take you a lot longer 09:59 especially if you get up and do something 10:00 for a couple of more hours until you get to go to sleep again, 10:04 but these are things that people need to know. 10:06 I would much rather tackle sleep naturally 10:11 than take a medicine that I don't know what it does to 10:13 my brain and could damage my brain over long periods of time. 10:17 Not to mention, these medicines when mixed 10:20 with other medications, we don't really 10:23 understand fully what they do. 10:25 They don't help very much, but you start mixing 10:27 and matching drugs and alcohol, sleeping pills and pain pills, 10:33 and before long, you get a cascade that can be dangerous 10:37 that an athlete could actually kill somebody. 10:40 It's scary, Charles. It certainly is, it certainly is 10:43 Well you know, if sleep is so important and I just want to 10:47 stay with this 3-hour cycle... 10:49 So, 3-hour cycle and then a few minutes awake, 10:51 3- hour cycle, a few minutes awake, 10:53 can it be 3-hour cycle, an hour awake, 10:56 3- hour cycle, because a lot of people have 10:59 sleep problems/sleep patterns. Well no, you have to be 11:00 asleep about 3 hours to go through a cycle of sleep. 11:03 So you need to sort of stay out, if you can, about 3 hours. 11:06 But remember, everybody is unique; 11:08 there's no rule that works for everybody... 11:11 And someone might feel better with just 2 hours 11:14 here or 2 hours there. 11:15 Some people, as a general rule, it takes 3 hours 11:18 to get through a cycle of sleep. 11:20 Some people can sleep 6-9 hours, 11:22 so it varies from an individual, 11:25 but the bottom line is we want people sleeping. 11:27 And I don't think of sleep as sleep, 11:30 I think of it as REST. 11:32 There's a treatment that comes when your body is resting; 11:37 there are biblical principles behind this. 11:39 The God of the universe worked 6 days, He rested. 11:43 So rest INCLUDES sleep, but is not exclusive to it. 11:46 It could include but might NOT only include sleep, 11:48 but sleep, rest - also these rhythms that were 11:53 supposed to be made to rev down at night, to turn it down, 11:56 to rest the digestive tract, to rest the brain, 12:00 so rest and sleep might be the same thing, 12:03 or it might be something different. 12:04 We don't always acquaint those 2 together, you see what I mean? 12:07 Yeah, I do, I do... So just because you're not 12:09 sleeping, doesn't mean you're not resting. 12:12 Now of course, when you go all the way out, 12:15 you can rest those deeper functions of your brain 12:17 that you're not when you rest. 12:18 So of course, you get better sleep 12:20 when you're all the way out, 12:21 but that doesn't mean you still 12:22 can't get good rest along the way. 12:25 Well that will be good news for a lot of people I'm sure 12:26 because there are those of us in this world who 12:31 struggle with getting what we THINK is, 12:34 what we've been TOLD is "a good night's sleep" 12:36 but that may simply be a good night's rest. Right 12:40 We should look at it that way. 12:41 And that rest can be just kicking back and sleeping maybe, 12:45 and listening to pretty music or reading a book or something; 12:48 something that calms us down, that's the rest we need. 12:50 And you are your own best doctor, 12:52 who to let someone else define the definition of health for YOU 12:58 You have a brain, you can figure out things; 13:00 maybe your body needs this much, maybe it doesn't. 13:03 So if you are doing great on this amount of sleep, 13:07 and I come and say, "You have to have this, the rules say so," 13:09 and I disrupt your sleep, that might not be 13:12 the way your body works in cycles. 13:14 So everyone has a little bit different plan. 13:17 A lot of it has to do with the night and day cycles, 13:20 the circadian rhythms, where you live at 13:22 in relation to the equator, 13:24 the environment that you sleep in, 13:26 the noise, the water; all sorts of variables 13:29 come when it comes to rest. All right 13:31 We have a website heartwiseministries. org 13:34 We have people send in questions on different topics 13:37 and we have had a lot of questions now about sleep, 13:40 and we'll be talking about those on our return. 13:43 We invite you to leave your questions there... that's 13:45 heartwiseministries. org 13:46 Stay right where you are, we'll be right back! |
Revised 2014-12-17