An Integrative Look at Sleep Issues

Dr. Amy Lazar: Welcome back, everyone. Good morning. This is Dr. Amy Lazar, host of Health Dimensions, with Dr. Michael Schiesser, and we are back. We represent the Creekside Center in Bellevue where we both practice. I'm a psychiatrist and he's an internist.

This is Health Dimensions, a community service of Creekside Sleep Medicine, Bellevue. Each show features local and national experts to address the latest scientific advances for addressing sleep problems, including treatments other than medications. Come visit us at www.CreeksideMedicine.com for podcasts of this show and previously aired shows.

Dr. Michael Schiesser: Well, I think today's show has been really interesting. And I want to talk a little bit about Health Dimensions. Because Health Dimensions, the name comes from really our interest in bringing people issues of health, putting words on issues of health, and approaches to issues of health that go beyond just medications.

So, we started at some common problems with sleep problems a couple weeks ago. And we got very specific with sleep related breathing problems last week. Which if you haven't heard any of these shows you can go to our website at CreeksideMedicine.com.

But this week's show really, I think, has been very unique as far as helping people explore how the bed is a nest and how sex relates to sleep.

And the really great show that we have coming up; Amy, can you tell folks a little bit about who is going to be on the show next week?

Dr. Lazar: Yes, we have a great show next week. We are actually having a show on sleep and dreams, and we have a national expert--Dr. Judith Orloff, who is a psychiatrist and has written many books, and lectures all over the country on sleep and dream interpretation. In addition, she is known as an intuitive healer in the area of psychiatry. She's a fascinating speaker and it will be a very excellent show to hear.

Dr. Schiesser: So, you can kind of look at the whole map that we're focusing on some really specific and traditional problems in sleep, like snoring, and also some topics that don't get a lot of airplay in your traditional sleep medicine center. But Dr. Lazar and I really represent a large part of the medical spectrum anyway, me being an internal medicine specialist. And here on Health Dimensions we widen out to the psychiatric dimension and beyond.

So, we appreciate you listening, and if your friends want to listen they can go to CreeksideMedicine.com on the Health Dimensions page.

So, Dr. Lazar, did you have more thoughts about today's show and things, to sort of fill in the gaps for the listeners?

Dr. Lazar: What I'd just like to say is both for men and women, we live busy lives and most of us don't get enough sleep that we need, which is sort of the topic of the month--sleep. And this can not only affect our health, it can affect our relationships, it can affect our everyday lives and add to additional stressors creating psychological problems. So, we need our sleep to eat right and function.

We also have questions that get emailed to our website, which Dr. Schiesser is going to address a couple.

Dr. Schiesser: Yeah, I've got, actually last week an anonymous questioner emailed a question to me. And if you want to email questions you can of course go to the Health Dimensions page at CreeksideMedicine.com.

But somebody wondered what, they heard us talking about the relationship between reflux and sleep apnea or snoring, and how is that the case and how can treating sleep apnea help reflux. And that's a really great question because even as somebody who focuses on sleep and sleep apnea in his practice, being me, it took me a while to sort of get that connection in any sort of way that made sense.

And it's sort of a little disgusting to talk about. But if you can imagine plugging up your throat or your nose, and you can do this right now, try to plug up your throat and your nose or your mouth and your nose, and take a deep breath or try to take a deep breath. It kind of creates a little bit of a suction in your lungs. And if you can't get air through your nose and your mouth, it's going to suck whatever out of anywhere else and it's going to bring air and whatever else is in your stomach out of your stomach.

So, if you're lying horizontal, where you're already sort of in a position where fluid can easily come out of your stomach if it's not held in there tight, and then you add this vacuum that happens every time you take a deep breath because you've got a blockage in your airway, which is what snoring or sleep apnea would be considered, then you're going to have more reflux. So, that's the answer to that question.

I also got an interesting question about light therapy. We touched on light therapy in the first show on May 5th. And what's interesting is that, if people haven't noticed, maybe I'm a little bit more awake today than I have been in past shows and I've got a little bit more of my words. It's been kind of a surprise how little I'm able to talk and think at six o'clock in the morning.

But what I've been doing the last few days is not only getting up earlier, but also exposing my brain and my retina to light early in the morning, in a certain wavelength and frequency that's known to stimulate the retina and the part of the brain that regulates sleep and wake. What a lot of studies have shown is that you can, just like when you travel to a different time zone it takes time to get adjusted, your body clock is stimulated and cued by these light cues.

So, what I've been doing for the last two or three days in preparation for today's show, so I can be kind of on my toes and have all of my mental faculties available to me that I typically have during daylight hours, is giving myself a little burst of light about a half an hour before the sun typically has been coming up these days, or at least dawn. Somewhere around five or so I start it. But you don't want to start it too early.

Anyway, so light therapy does work for that.

So, that was another question that a listener has: "Is that safe?" And, yes, it is. You probably want to look into the specific device that you're using. And there are safety issues around exposing your eyes to certain wavelengths of light and the intensity of that. But what I've discovered is that most of the devices out there today are, in fact. tested and safe.

So, this is AM 1090 KPTK in Seattle, Health Dimensions. And what we're talking about today is sleep health and sexual health and how that relates to sleep.

Dr. Lazar: I hope that everyone has been listening. If we have any other callers at this point, we have a few minutes left this morning.

What I would like to mention is that a big part of this month, we're trying to get across to people to pay attention to their sleep cycles. To pay attention if they feel tired. To pay attention if they're getting less than seven hours sleep a night; what's interfering with that.

And that there are resources they can come to be evaluated for sleep difficulties. Not only for snoring, but for just general fatigue. We have a host of doctors at our clinic that work both from the medical side to the psychological side to the area of just general body wellness.

Dr. Schiesser: Now I'd like Amy actually to talk a little bit more about what's coming up in our June program, because she's been making a lot of phone calls, contacting a lot of folks throughout the country to talk about...

Dr. Lazar: We have a great show for the entire month of June coming up, and everyone should tune in. And remember, we have our podcasts. We're going to discuss a huge topic--addiction. And including addiction to prescription drugs, sex, the internet, and other addictions.

Again, for details on treatment for addiction you can visit CreeksideMedicine.com.

We have some national experts that will be talking about tobacco addiction, as well as sex addiction, as well as prescription drug addiction; which we all know is a huge issue at this time, especially very much so around the teenage years.

Dr. Schiesser: One of our guests that was with us during our first show--Dr. Leslie Lundt, who I thought had an excellent segment on insomnia--will be back with us on, I think it's June 2nd is our first show on addiction. And she's going to kick that off.

And I've asked her to talk about... She has an interest in sleep and she has an interest in addiction, more than an interest, she really has some very hard-core credentials in those areas. And I'm going to ask her the question, "How is it that you're interested in both of these areas?"

Because I'm interested in both of these areas and I have advanced training in both of these areas. And it's kind of like, even to myself, but to most people there's like "Well, what does sleep have to do with addiction?" So, I think that's a really cool question; and she's going to address that.

Dr. Lazar: And what does sleep have to do with psychological problems.

Dr. Schiesser: Right. Exactly. So, a lot of this stuff, we're going to be connecting the dots.

But just one little teaser I can leave you with here is like, what does it feel like to you when you haven't slept and you're tired and you've been working all day and the night is coming along and it's time to go to bed but you can't because something... Not like you can't because something is keeping you up like "Oh, I'm thinking about work or my checkbook or whatever."

I'm talking about like there is something going on like a baby is crying or you have work to finish, or maybe you're at work and you work the late shift. What does it feel like to you to actually want to sleep but you can't because you're driving and you have to get where you need to go because there's no rest stop and it's a snowstorm?

Everybody has had the situation of being deprived of sleep. And I want you to consider that what's happening in your body is your brain is starting to really orient towards the survival need for sleep and the survival need to shut down and rest.

And for people who haven't experienced addiction, there is really a strong corollary here. Because when somebody is addicted to something their whole brain starts to organize around the need for that substance or that activity; whether it's gambling or whether it's the internet pornography or whether it's a substance like a prescription drug or alcohol. A lot of times there's a lot of shame that's put into this.

But next month we're going to talk a lot about what happens to people when they can't get what they need, such as sleep or something that they're addicted to.

This is Dr. Michael Schiesser. I appreciate having a chance to talk with you today about sleep and sexual health.

Dr. Lazar: And this is Dr. Amy Lazar. Thank you for listening this morning on our show--Health Dimensions, progressive talk, Seattle's AM 1090. And we will see you next week for sleep and dreams.

Dr. Schiesser: Please check out our podcast at www.CreeksideMedicine.com.

[music]