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Stephanie Mulder
Hi, I'm Stephanie.

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Seth Mulder
I'm Seth, and this is the Forever Young show. The most powerful force in this world is a woman who knows who she is, why? She is here, and what she wants to accomplish.

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Stephanie Mulder
And that's where self-care comes in. As a woman, it is my opportunity and my responsibility to take care of me.

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Seth Mulder
Self-care for your mind.

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Stephanie Mulder
Self-care for your body.

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Seth Mulder
Self-care for your money.

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Stephanie Mulder
Our mission is to serve women as they fulfill their irreplaceable roles and families. Society. Business. The fabric of humanity.

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Seth Mulder
So let's get this show on the road. Where is the name Darlie from? Ethnically. Regionally.

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Dr. Catherine Darley
There's a very interesting story about Darlie. Darlie originated in the town of Earl in France. Two brothers went from Earl France to England. So that's, from Arles is d apostrophe Arles. So it was anglicized to Darlie. That was, you know, a long, long time ago. So that's how Darlie came to be.

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Seth Mulder
So anytime we see a D apostrophe, we know that it's it's the from right. Or of or of right. Right. Oh, beautiful.

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Stephanie Mulder
Very cool.

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Seth Mulder
That's awesome. We are here with doctor Catherine Darley. Catherine, you are in Seattle. Am I correct?

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Dr. Catherine Darley
That's right. Okay. Yes.

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Seth Mulder
This is it. Is there actually sunshine there today, or is it rainy and overcast?

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Dr. Catherine Darley
It is beautiful, actually. It's been beautiful the last couple days. Before that, we were sick in the middle of January.

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Seth Mulder
My dad actually grew up, not in Washington, but. But the same same story there in the Pacific Northwest in Eugene, Oregon. Right. So the whole Portland, South Portland area. And so we know what you guys deal with. How long have you been in Seattle, by the way?

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Dr. Catherine Darley
It's my hometown. It's my family's hometown.

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Seth Mulder
Okay. Wow. So we could say something like, d Seattle. Katherine darling, d Seattle I might. Okay. We won't even try to bring in that French. oh. My goodness. I thought I'd go for it.

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Stephanie Mulder
So good try.

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Seth Mulder
Doctor Darley is a leader in natural sleep medicine, which is something we want to talk about today on the show. For everybody listening and actually very personally because we got sleep problems or I've. I've got sleep problems. And because of my sleep problems, Stephanie has sleep problems.

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Stephanie Mulder
This is true.

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Seth Mulder
and we love the word natural. We love that that kind of the traditional. Sometimes it's natural, can be traditional. Sometimes we're unearthing new scientific discoveries that are natural that maybe we didn't know about before. But we're really big into personal ownership. You are the CEO of your own health and longevity from sustainability, right? So natural medicine, natural sleep medicine.

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Seth Mulder
She combines her knowledge of sleep and circadian disorders with her training as a naturopathy physician to bridge these two fields together. A little alchemy here.

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Stephanie Mulder
She's treated patients for over 20 years, along with training, health care providers and sleep medicine.

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Seth Mulder
Doctor Darley now focuses on teaching people the sleep skills they need to thrive at home, at work and have what we all want an absolute stellar and high quality of life.

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Stephanie Mulder
You can find her online at Skilled sleeper.com and on all social media at Skilled Sleeper, including YouTube and Substack.

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Seth Mulder
Hold on. What is Substack like? I feel we are pretty well versed in all of the platforms and that is above. I guess we are sub we? We just don't have that information. What is Substack Doctor darling?

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Dr. Catherine Darley
So Substack is a very cool online community for writers. So you can sign up for People's Newsletter. And they're on a wide, wide variety of topics. And it really allows people to go deeper in and still have that social media type community aspect.

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Seth Mulder
Oh, awesome.

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Stephanie Mulder
Awesome, cool. Yeah, I don't know about that.

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Seth Mulder
A social platform for writers.

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Dr. Catherine Darley
Yeah, I.

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Seth Mulder
Could probably oversimplified readers, right? Writers and readers. You if I have a I have a dear friend former I should say a former professor. He was a former professor and then and then quit to become a very wildly successful real estate investor. But, coming out of Florida State University, he was what I would call a publishing bandit.

00;04;51;04 - 00;05;12;16
Seth Mulder
he was in the family sciences realm. I actually took a break, retired from business in my late 30s, and decided maybe I want to do the whole study for PhD writing for the rest of my life. Holding myself up in some library, you know, and. And writing. I literally did have that thought, for sure. I'm glad. I'm glad I'm cured of that.

00;05;12;16 - 00;05;35;24
Seth Mulder
But but I did have this this idea. So I wrote and published actually, we peer reviewed and published an article in Psychology World, but he probably had I don't know the exact number, but it was crazy. 40 or 50 peer reviewed published articles, coming out of a post doctorate like so. So he's a PhD plus one year.

00;05;35;27 - 00;05;58;00
Seth Mulder
And I think all of the other professors at the university, when he came out, he came back out west, to teach and continue to write. And he was still publishing like crazy and, you know, he had published more in his, you know, doctorate studies and postdoc life than most of the professors, you know, had done in their entire careers.

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Seth Mulder
The point of the story being talking about readers and writers, he'd done all of this incredible research, and I think he was a little frustrated. And and probably his expectations weren't met, that he's doing all of this research and writing, and there weren't very many people doing the reading. And again, that's because he was publishing peer reviewed articles.

00;06;22;24 - 00;06;42;08
Seth Mulder
So it's not like it's out in the in the public. Right? You know, I think I think he then published, a very simple book, maybe a how to book, I can't remember it was on even publishing or something like that. He's writing a travel book right now. And, you know, he had more public he had more people in that initial launch of a very simple book than he did in all of his articles.

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Seth Mulder
You know, those years and an intense, high academic approach. So, yes, writers definitely need readers.

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Dr. Catherine Darley
Absolutely. And one thing I wanted, I'd like to, piggyback on that story is that we know that it takes an average 17 years for a finding in the research world to actually move into the public sphere and start being implemented and improving people's life, and that is way too long. I mean, here we are in 2024. That means that only now we're getting around to things that were discovered in, what, 20.

00;07;24;24 - 00;07;27;11
Seth Mulder
2007 early 2000? Yeah.

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Dr. Catherine Darley
Yeah, 20 2008. And, you know, that seems like a long time ago. And just now the practices that people are starting to use were discovered then. That's why I wanted to be a physician and not a researcher. Honestly.

00;07;43;16 - 00;08;08;18
Seth Mulder
That's fascinating. We have a, a good friend who is, you know, he's an MD, but but a but, a changed MD, maybe an evolved MD from, you know, moving from practicing what there were you might be told to do. Right, or an allopathic approach kind of fix it when it breaks to a much more proactive approach.

00;08;08;18 - 00;08;30;04
Seth Mulder
And he said the same thing. I'm so glad that you brought up that that piece of research, because I've never heard anybody else corroborate it until today. So I feel I mean, I'm feeling great. I've got this little closure. But he said, he said, he said 18 years, Seth, whatever it is, 17, 18, 18 years for. And he was specifically referring to, scientific, a scientific discovery, right.

00;08;30;07 - 00;08;51;15
Seth Mulder
Or a scientific approach, 18 years for it to get, into the mainstream. And, you know, Stefan, I can understand that because in our business, we invested in a biotech company, goodness, 15 years ago that had made an an early discovery. And we're talking about peer reviewed research and patents and a natural approach. And and you know what?

00;08;51;17 - 00;09;22;01
Seth Mulder
17 years later, although we've been wildly successful, we nobody would know pretty much anything that we've done. And I don't mean us alone, from an entrepreneurial standpoint, but but from the discovery itself, like, you know what? What is maybe at the, at the heart of, of what what Washington State University. And we actually talk just a tiny bit about this in the pre-show call a week or so ago, but maybe the, the, the most extraordinary therapeutic.

00;09;22;03 - 00;09;49;10
Seth Mulder
And, what did they say? It was Washington State University, and I'm just quoting it from memory right now on the spot, on the camera. No editing. Okay. We're not live. the most extraordinary therapeutic and preventative breakthrough in the history of medicine. And yet, as we as entrepreneurs and educators going around the world 19 years after the discovery, and it still nobody knows.

00;09;49;10 - 00;10;09;01
Seth Mulder
So we hope that today you're going to bring it. I don't know if you're going to bring in newer stuff than that, Katherine. We don't care. We just want help with the sleep. But, we're, we're grateful to have you. All right, well, let's let's get to probably, perhaps the most important question, because I think it's going to it's going to be the cascade effect that that puts us into a deep I was going to say a deep sleep.

00;10;09;01 - 00;10;16;29
Seth Mulder
I'm already like, I don't know what you're doing over there. I don't know, but, yeah, it's working.

00;10;17;01 - 00;10;22;08
Stephanie Mulder
so, Doctor Dali, what are you most passionate about right now? And what are you doing about it?

00;10;22;11 - 00;11;01;07
Dr. Catherine Darley
Well, what I'm really passionate about is how the the field of circadian medicine is really starting to be something that people talk about. And circadian rhythms are those 24 hour rhythms in our function that we all have. They previously have been pretty ignored by medical establishment, but we know that every organ in your body has a circadian rhythm where it does more or less of its function at different times of day, and that circadian rhythm is the connection between the natural world and our sleep.

00;11;01;07 - 00;11;16;26
Dr. Catherine Darley
Circadian rhythm is in the middle of that. And I'm just really excited to share that with people. I'm writing a book called Living in Rhythm hope to come out in 2025. And so that is exciting for me.

00;11;16;29 - 00;11;44;17
Seth Mulder
That was beautiful. And that's I seriously feel like that was every organ. This hit me. I was a pre-med major, Katherine. So and that went into business and then has been involved in the health world pretty much my entire career. And I have a real passion and love for the human body and how it works. And just that the absolute masterful creation of the body.

00;11;44;19 - 00;12;04;14
Seth Mulder
And I've never heard this put this way, every organ has its rhythm, has its circadian rhythm. I'm just I don't know, it's almost like there's this like it's I don't want to go to Ant-Man and like, like the, you know, you know, like shrinking people, you know, and all the little whatever they call that the metaverse or whatever, I don't know.

00;12;04;14 - 00;12;07;04
Seth Mulder
But anyway, I don't know where that came from, but I can't.

00;12;07;04 - 00;12;09;29
Stephanie Mulder
Believe you just went to Art. Marilyn.

00;12;10;01 - 00;12;29;13
Seth Mulder
I know, I'm sorry, I just butchered. I just butchered Doctor Dali's, beautiful treatise here by bringing in Marvel now, it's beautiful. Just that every organ is is kind of like a, I don't know, like a planet in, in, in the solar system of the body in its own time, its own revolution. I don't know, that's deep.

00;12;29;17 - 00;12;41;11
Stephanie Mulder
Well, it's so interesting because the other day on Instagram, I saw somebody post about how each organ has a time of day that it cleanses. And so this just brings up full circle for me.

00;12;41;13 - 00;13;10;10
Dr. Catherine Darley
So earlier we were talking about cheesecake, right. And to really enjoy our cheesecake we need to have our digestive system on. Right. And if we eat that cheesecake in the middle of the night at a time that we're usually sleeping, our digestive system is not on. It's not ready to digest. There's not the, enzymes, the digestive enzymes.

00;13;10;18 - 00;13;40;19
Dr. Catherine Darley
There's not the same movement of the stomach and the intestine, and we just can't digest, digest. A really super common complaint. More than 50% of people who do shift work have digestive complaints because they're upset, they're hungry. They want to eat something at 3:00 in the morning. They they, you know, swallow it. But their digestive system just really isn't prepared to work with it and digest as typical.

00;13;40;23 - 00;13;46;28
Dr. Catherine Darley
So that's just one example of a system that has a circadian rhythm to it.

00;13;47;05 - 00;14;06;21
Stephanie Mulder
That makes sense for me because, you know, almost anything that I eat late at night, the next morning I'm like, oh, I'm just sick because obviously my body wasn't ready to to digest that. I will say, the only thing that I have been able to eat is sourdough. Like a really good four ingredient sourdough. That one does not make me sick, but I don't eat that late at night very often.

00;14;06;21 - 00;14;07;23
Stephanie Mulder
So.

00;14;07;26 - 00;14;40;28
Seth Mulder
So you brought something up that that is interesting. It's like we've got this rhythm going, even though you're in Seattle and we're in Utah, because I wrote the same question. I feel like we are at the beginning stages based on what what we're just seeing in, in conversations and in the media platforms and specifically we run in, you know, with Women's Health, so much discussion about sleep, it's like we're at the beginning, waves of a massive new movement, right?

00;14;41;04 - 00;15;01;20
Seth Mulder
You know, every decade you might we might be able to label every decade and last, you know, handful of decades. Are we really we talked about this, right. We maybe in the early 2000s it was gut health. And then in, you know, in the teens, it's going to be mitochondrial health or whatever. Right. But I feel like one of those topics right now is sleep.

00;15;01;20 - 00;15;13;11
Seth Mulder
Some call it sleep fitness. Why are we seeing such an intense focus and increased discussion and repetition with with sleep?

00;15;13;13 - 00;15;40;08
Dr. Catherine Darley
I think that sleep has always been an issue. Is just that it wasn't recognized. You know, I think about our health like the foundation of our health as a triangle. We've got our physical fitness, our diet and our sleep. But most of my career, I've been doing this my whole life. Since halfway through college, there was the discussion about diet, there was the discussion about physical fitness.

00;15;40;08 - 00;16;07;11
Dr. Catherine Darley
But that third leg sleep just wasn't included. And a two legged stool, it's not very stable, right? You've got to have that third leg. And then I'd say that there's other concerns like healthy relationships, community, joy, you know, security, all of those other things really make it very multifactorial. But the basic ones are sleep, physical exercise, movement and, diet.

00;16;07;14 - 00;16;31;00
Seth Mulder
Well, it's hard to get any rest when you're trying to balance on a two legged stool. It's hard to feel rested in life when when you ignore that sleep factor, I'll tell you, I know that women have a different approach, probably to sleep. I've always had this thought about, you know, and kind of like this macho, kind of like, I'm going to wear it on my chest.

00;16;31;00 - 00;17;00;13
Seth Mulder
And that's definitely not like a women's approach, right? Like sleep is for the dead. It's time to grind. It's time to get more done, you know, and sleep. Sleep's kind of a luxury. And if you love sleep, then you know you're they're lazy or unmotivated or unhealthy or something. What are your thoughts about some of those cultural programing that's floating out there and prevalent?

00;17;00;15 - 00;17;17;21
Dr. Catherine Darley
Well, the first thing to be a little cheeky is that when people say, I'll sleep when I'm dead, and people often say that to me, or at least in the past when I'm at a networking event or a social event and I say what I do. But the research actually shows that people.

00;17;17;21 - 00;17;18;26
Seth Mulder
Who.

00;17;18;28 - 00;17;42;00
Dr. Catherine Darley
Are chronically short in their sleep and they're chronically sleep deprived, they actually do have a shorter lifespan. so, you know, their body is telling them, okay, we need that sleep now. And that's something, you know, for people to be aware of, that there is a connection between sleep and longevity. And I know that's one of your focuses here.

00;17;42;02 - 00;18;09;06
Dr. Catherine Darley
it's really a false equivalency that people think, well, if I truncate my sleep, I'll have a longer day and I'll get more done. But because of the really significant performance deficits that we have when we're not well rested, you don't actually get more done. You are ineffective for more hours a day. But that doesn't translate into getting more done.

00;18;09;08 - 00;18;12;06
Seth Mulder
Where?

00;18;12;08 - 00;18;14;12
Dr. Catherine Darley
Am I seeing some pushback on your face?

00;18;14;13 - 00;18;16;08
Seth Mulder
No, no, no, this.

00;18;16;10 - 00;18;17;16
Stephanie Mulder
He's taking it in.

00;18;17;16 - 00;18;53;15
Seth Mulder
This is the. Okay, I've heard this message 17 times in the last three months about my approach to life. Maybe I need to start paying attention, you know, slow it down. Says I'm a high performer. I'm super ambitious, super active, and, so, so this is just like, I don't know, God's telling everybody in my life, hey, why don't you put it to him this way, and then maybe he'll actually listen to what Stephanie told him.

00;18;53;17 - 00;19;15;13
Dr. Catherine Darley
So I have a couple further thoughts on that. If we could go a little deeper, please do. One thing that I think about is that sleep impacts us in five domains. So a great place to start is to identify, okay, which one of these domains am I personally struggling with? And those five domains would be our physical health things like blood pressure, arthritis.

00;19;15;13 - 00;19;41;10
Dr. Catherine Darley
Those are going to be worse when we're not getting adequate rest, mental health things, conditions like anxiety, depression, panic attacks, all of those are worse when we're not getting adequate sleep. Then we've got the performance domains, our physical performance. Are we safe and attentive on the road? Do we have a quick reaction time when we're playing sports or doing, you know, building tasks where there's a, potential for injury?

00;19;41;12 - 00;20;08;13
Dr. Catherine Darley
Our cognitive function, are we cognitive lead, snappy, or are we feeling a little bit in a in the fog? And then the last one that is newly getting more recognition. And I'm so thankful it is, is our relationships and our emotional intelligence. When we are not well rested, we are not as in tune with the emotional experience of the others around us and therefore we can't respond appropriately to them.

00;20;08;16 - 00;20;33;11
Dr. Catherine Darley
So the first step is to think, okay, choose out one of those areas where you know you have some deficits and then do a ten day optimal sleep experiment, where you think back to a time when you were really well rested, or the weekends that you don't set the alarm. How much sleep do you get? How much sleep do you think you really do best with?

00;20;33;13 - 00;21;01;23
Dr. Catherine Darley
Get that amount of sleep for ten days and then check back in on that area where you may have had some deficits. Is my anxiety better? Is my cognitive function better? You know, for you, since you are a high performing, high productive person, at least you think you are. Now maybe you check back in and say, wow! Actually, when I got more rest, I actually got more, even more done.

00;21;01;28 - 00;21;04;16
Dr. Catherine Darley
That would be profound, right?

00;21;04;16 - 00;21;05;23
Seth Mulder
I love it.

00;21;05;28 - 00;21;10;06
Stephanie Mulder
I do too. I want to start tonight.

00;21;10;08 - 00;21;13;02
Seth Mulder
Are you saying, are you planning anything you want me to start tonight? Go on, both.

00;21;13;02 - 00;21;13;21
Stephanie Mulder
Of us to start.

00;21;13;21 - 00;21;34;19
Seth Mulder
Tonight. That's powerful. We are actually, you know, we work with, we actually work with an acrobatic physician, out of Canada. And one of the one of the things that that we've been working on is our sleep. Yeah, right. Like. All right, Seth, you need to be working on getting this, you know, basically taking this, you know, an approach that you need to be getting more sleep.

00;21;34;19 - 00;21;51;25
Seth Mulder
Because I do like, if we just got our aura rings, I'd love to get your feedback on on devices. Maybe we'll get to that. I'll write a note. Maybe we'll get to it in a bit. But but yeah, I love this idea of just, hey, what can I do a ten day, the ten day optimal sleep experiment? Where did you come up with that?

00;21;51;27 - 00;22;12;24
Dr. Catherine Darley
I came up with that. I think, you know, whenever you're talking about making behavioral change, it's is it can feel hard and it can be hard. And to frame it that you're going to try it for a certain amount of time and then you're going to assess what's did this add to my quality of life more or not?

00;22;12;24 - 00;22;38;12
Dr. Catherine Darley
Right. And one of the things that is really challenging when you've been chronically sleep restricted is that you're going to have to have less wake time, right? It's it's a 24 hour formula sleep plus wake. So if you've been shrinking your sleep to expand your your wake hours, you're going to have to reverse that. And it's hard, right?

00;22;38;12 - 00;23;03;15
Dr. Catherine Darley
What you know, if you need two hours more sleep at night, what two hours of stuff that you're doing now, are you going to say bye bye to right isn't if you're scrolling or watching TV a lot? That might be relatively easy to shift if you're doing other things there, they may not be as easy to shift. So, you know, I think everybody can do something for ten days and just really take in the information.

00;23;03;15 - 00;23;27;13
Dr. Catherine Darley
And what I hear from people is that they did not realize how impaired they've been, that they really, you know, they thought they were performing well, but they're not performing well. And actually, the research shows that too, is that after about three days of being sleep deprived, people lose awareness of how their performance is continuing to deteriorate day after day.

00;23;27;17 - 00;23;54;05
Seth Mulder
Is there any research suggesting how many of us are and let's say, how many women? I mean, if it goes steady, our sleep deprived? And how do you, number one, how do you define sleep deprivation? Because that might be a wake up call for us. And and how many of us really are, are undernourished when it comes to our sleep?

00;23;54;08 - 00;24;26;13
Dr. Catherine Darley
It's about 36% of adults are not getting enough sleep on work nights. We think that the typical adult falls somewhere between 7 to 9 hours, but that doesn't does not mean that 100% of adults will be fine with seven hours. It's a bell curve, and the three of us probably each fall somewhere different on that bell curve. I personally do best with about 8.25 hours, and so I just try to I don't try, I do schedule enough time to be in bed.

00;24;26;15 - 00;24;40;25
Dr. Catherine Darley
one indication that you are sleep deprived is if you are waking up with an alarm, either an old school little alarm like this, or you're using your phone alarm pans down. If you are waking up to an alarm, you did not get enough sleep.

00;24;40;28 - 00;24;47;07
Stephanie Mulder
I have never heard that before. I do feel called out again.

00;24;47;09 - 00;24;54;12
Seth Mulder
I don't feel called out. I just feel like I'm gonna have to make some changes or die young.

00;24;54;14 - 00;25;02;06
Stephanie Mulder
Make the changes, please. So what are the sleep differences? The needs of sleep. for women versus men?

00;25;02;08 - 00;25;36;04
Dr. Catherine Darley
Well, women start to have more sleep complaints than men do at the beginning of puberty, actually, which is, you know, a lifelong, experience than of having more sleep complaints. We see women tend to need a little bit more sleep than men do. We also see one of the things that I'm concerned about is the number of women who say that they're tired, they need to go to bed, but they push through to get more tasks done.

00;25;36;07 - 00;26;02;14
Dr. Catherine Darley
they're, you know, they're buying into the idea of staying up late to get more done. And that's really compromising their health long term. And then, of course, we also know women with their monthly and over the lifespan, hormonal changes. We do see sleep changes, PMS related, sleep changes can be either insomnia or needing to sleep longer.

00;26;02;14 - 00;26;31;18
Dr. Catherine Darley
That's really pretty typical. We also see, of course, sleep changes during each trimester of pregnancy. And those are very important not only changes in the amount of sleep that women are needing and how tired fatigue they're feeling, but actually the prevalence of sleep disorders. One thing I'd love for your listeners to know is that in that third trimester of pregnancy, the rate of obstructive sleep apnea increases significantly.

00;26;31;23 - 00;27;02;10
Dr. Catherine Darley
And restless leg syndrome, both of those are sleep disorders. And they if untreated, they can have potentially not. In every case, I don't want to scare anyone, but they can potentially have some impacts for the women's health, the baby's health after the birth. So you do want to, you know, if your bed partner says, wow, your snoring has changed to these long breath pauses, that is something that you do want to get treated in pregnancy or any other time of life.

00;27;02;12 - 00;27;25;21
Seth Mulder
So talking about our our ten day notice, how we just made it ours, our ten day. It's working. Katherine is working wonderful. Our ten day optimal sleep experiment as we go into that experiment, what advice or tools might we have to evaluate which one of those areas like like how do I evaluate maybe how I'm doing in my physical opinion?

00;27;25;21 - 00;27;36;13
Seth Mulder
I mean, my my physical performance or my cognition or I mean, do you have any any thoughts about how to I don't want to quantify that or just make it easy, like, you know what I mean?

00;27;36;15 - 00;28;01;20
Dr. Catherine Darley
Yeah. People could, you know, do on a ten point scale or, you know, if you're someone whose blood pressure is high, you can simply be monitoring your blood pressure, as you usually do, and see if there's a change or if you're someone who experiences arthritis and you're taking medication, see if there's more days that you don't need to take the medication as you become more well rested.

00;28;01;22 - 00;28;24;00
Dr. Catherine Darley
I think the first part in that ten day optimal sleep plan is to really identify how much sleep you do best with, and there's a couple ways that people could do that. You can think back to a time when you were really well rested. Might be the last time you were not employed, the last time, you know, before your children were born, last time you took a long vacation.

00;28;24;02 - 00;29;05;11
Dr. Catherine Darley
That wasn't necessarily a busy sightseeing trip that can be very sleep depriving, but, you know, a vacation that was actually a rest. Or you can think about your weekends or days off when you're not setting the alarm. How much sleep are you getting? That's probably closer to how much sleep you need on a regular basis. And then the last thing is, if you just have really no idea how much sleep you need, and I regularly hear from people who are in that position, you can increase your sleep time by 15 minutes every 3 or 4 nights and just keep increasing, increasing, increasing until you feel like you don't need to wake up with an alarm.

00;29;05;11 - 00;29;06;16
Dr. Catherine Darley
You're waking up on your own.

00;29;06;22 - 00;29;07;19
Stephanie Mulder
I like that approach.

00;29;07;19 - 00;29;19;21
Seth Mulder
Yeah, yeah. Do you feel like there are psychological inhibitions that people have in allowing themselves to get more sleep?

00;29;19;28 - 00;29;51;29
Dr. Catherine Darley
Have solutely. You know, we have had the construct of sleep, sleep when we're dead or that sleep is laziness or it is, you know, it's not necessary. Thankfully, I think there's more awareness now about all the things that sleep does do for us and that it really is essential. One of the things I've been really involved in is the effort across the country and and in Seattle, I was the co-leader of this effort to have high school start later.

00;29;51;29 - 00;30;14;11
Dr. Catherine Darley
The recommendation actually, is that middle schools and high schools don't start any earlier than 830 in the morning because teens body clocks, their circadian rhythm is shifted later and they're just more naturally night owls. The reason this is important is that eight out of ten high school students does not get enough sleep, and, you know, sometimes there's push back.

00;30;14;11 - 00;30;34;19
Dr. Catherine Darley
And one of my colleagues says in his, lectures, you know, would it make sense to say, oh, sure, it's fine. Just give your kid only 75% of the food they need. Monday through Friday. They can have a feast on the weekend. Nobody would say that's okay, not about food. So why do we say that about sleep? It really?

00;30;34;19 - 00;30;40;00
Dr. Catherine Darley
You know, if you didn't get enough sleep last night, you will be impaired somehow today.

00;30;40;03 - 00;30;47;26
Stephanie Mulder
I wish, that were the case when I were in high school. That would have been great to sleep in for sure. Would have helped me.

00;30;48;00 - 00;31;07;15
Dr. Catherine Darley
Yeah. And the thing is, you young people don't stay up late. Or when school starts later, they go to sleep at the same time because they're going to sleep now when they're sleepy. So they end up getting 35, 40 minutes more of sleep every single night. And that really adds up to positive emotions.

00;31;07;21 - 00;31;34;00
Seth Mulder
I'm just thinking. I'm thinking about my own sleep right now, and I heard, and I don't know if this is true, that we don't talk about women. It's so interesting to me. And and again, maybe, maybe you'll just say, Seth. Yeah, that's totally unfounded. That'll be great. And we'll just put that to rest. I don't sense that with the differences in the genders, in the sexes, men and women, there are obviously apparent differences.

00;31;34;00 - 00;32;09;22
Seth Mulder
And we often talk about those and we talk about those from a health perspective. You know, we have women's health physicians and health care, you know, approaches and protocols and men's health and but when it comes to sleep, I almost feel like the discussion has largely been unisex. And I heard somebody put it this way recently, and I wanted to ask you this, that much of the research has been on men, and we don't have as many of the details about the research in the needs of women's sleep, but women need more sleep.

00;32;09;22 - 00;32;20;23
Seth Mulder
So we've kind of got this disparity between the need women's need for sleep and sleep, health and sleep, fitness, and the actual research, which is skewed on the men's side.

00;32;20;26 - 00;32;47;14
Dr. Catherine Darley
That's right. Absolutely. And, you know, the hormonal cycling makes research a little bit trickier because you need to you, you need to schedule people at the right time in their month. And that can be more difficult. So it has been easier from a research standpoint point, just to include only men. And then you don't have to do these more complex protocols.

00;32;47;14 - 00;33;15;28
Dr. Catherine Darley
But that doesn't serve because women are not simply small men. They are they have unique physiological characteristics. so thankfully it is changing. There is more research now. One of the areas that we know there's some difference is, in obstructive sleep apnea. Obstructive sleep apnea is is common in women as well as in men, particularly after menopause.

00;33;16;00 - 00;33;40;22
Dr. Catherine Darley
The rate of obstructive sleep apnea in women really increases, but women have slightly different symptoms. They're more likely, and actually they're more likely to have, heart health consequences than men are. So it seems like the diagnosis and treatment of obstructive sleep apnea in women might be even more important than it is in men.

00;33;40;22 - 00;33;44;10
Seth Mulder
Interesting. Interesting. So do women need more sleep?

00;33;44;13 - 00;34;12;22
Dr. Catherine Darley
They do not a lot more, but ten minutes or so more. I think that we're at the beginning of those findings. There's not a lot of studies, but there are a few, and I think that will get more nuanced and fine tune that answer. The other thing that's interesting about women's sleep is that women tend to have a slightly earlier body clock, so they're more likely to be morning types than evening types.

00;34;12;22 - 00;34;34;26
Dr. Catherine Darley
Men tend to be more evening types, so that influences the time that women should go to bed, the time that women are ready to get up, and also some of their risks. We know that, for instance, people who do shift work, who are morning types are going to have more, shift work complaints and difficulties than evening types.

00;34;35;01 - 00;34;39;03
Dr. Catherine Darley
So women tend to have more difficulty with shift work than men do.

00;34;39;04 - 00;34;41;06
Seth Mulder
Interesting, interesting.

00;34;41;08 - 00;34;59;15
Stephanie Mulder
It's so interesting that you say that women, typically want to go to bed earlier because I am total opposite. I am a night owl and it's something I'm working on. I was just telling my doctor the other day because she's like, oh, you don't want to wake up early, do I? I was like, no, I do. My body's just not following yet.

00;34;59;15 - 00;35;05;17
Stephanie Mulder
So I'm I'm in the midst of figuring out why and training it so that I can be more of a morning person.

00;35;05;20 - 00;35;28;08
Dr. Catherine Darley
Can I, just give a little background about our chronotype? That's what it's called. If we're a morning type evening type or neither, it's about a third of human beings fall in each of those categories that is really set deep in your brain, in an area of the brain called the super charismatic nucleus. It's called also the central pacemaker.

00;35;28;10 - 00;35;55;04
Dr. Catherine Darley
We also have clock genes in every cell that make that cell do more or less of its function at different times of day, which means cell populations build the tissue, which builds the organ, which makes your organs do what they do at different times of day. And really being a morning person or being a night person is pretty immutable because it is so hard wired into us.

00;35;55;04 - 00;36;08;25
Dr. Catherine Darley
It's kind of like, do you have green eyes or do you have brown eyes? It's hard to change, right? You can with a sleep specialist guidance, you can do a treatment that will.

00;36;08;27 - 00;36;09;21
Seth Mulder

00;36;09;24 - 00;36;31;22
Dr. Catherine Darley
Shift you a bit one way or the other. But as soon as you stop doing that treatment, your body clock is going to bounce right back to its set point. I think of it kind of like putting contacts in, you know, I've got green eyes. I can put contacts in that make my eyes look blue. But as soon as I take those contacts out, the eyes are green and it's the same thing.

00;36;31;22 - 00;37;03;05
Dr. Catherine Darley
I. I'm strongly a morning person. I could do treatments to make me be more of a night owl, but as soon as I with with withdraw from those treatments, I'd be right back to being a morning person. So I like as best people can. And I know this is not always possible, but if you can design your lifestyle around your body clock rather than trying to put your body clock into a lifestyle that just doesn't fit, I feel very validated.

00;37;03;07 - 00;37;03;29
Dr. Catherine Darley
Oh good.

00;37;03;29 - 00;37;24;12
Stephanie Mulder
I love that the aura ring, it actually did start at least. You know, with mine. I don't know if yours has done that yet. The app, but it did the. I'm sorry. How do you say the on the chronotype. Yes. And it did say that I was very much a night person and I was like, well, is that just because of, you know, how I am like that?

00;37;24;12 - 00;37;34;06
Stephanie Mulder
That's just what, I've been like, you know, with the ring the last few months, but, I feel very validated by all of your, knowledge that. No.

00;37;34;09 - 00;38;02;09
Dr. Catherine Darley
Well, and I, I'd like to say that, you know, at a societal level, we really benefit from having people at different chrono types. There's a super cool, study that was done, I don't know, five years. Time flies. Could have been ten years ago where they looked at the. They measured the sleep of everybody in a small village for a month, and they found that there was only 15 minute.

00;38;02;10 - 00;38;34;00
Dr. Catherine Darley
There was maybe something like 50 or 60 people in this village. There was no electric light, in this village. So pretty rustic, unnatural conditions, natural to most of human history. So this small village of around 50 adults, there was only 15 minutes in the entire month that all of the adults were asleep. And just think about that in terms of how it's protective for a group that something's always awake.

00;38;34;00 - 00;38;54;25
Dr. Catherine Darley
Somebody is watching out for, you know, predators back in human history, keeping, a log on the fire for warmth, watching over the young ones, the elders, you know, it's it's really quite adaptive and a good idea for us to have this, variation in the human population.

00;38;55;01 - 00;39;18;03
Seth Mulder
That's interesting. Fascinating. What are your thoughts on devices that people are utilizing? You know, we've got you know, we wear the aura ring primarily because it's actually a low EMF kind of a device. Stephanie's super sensitive. Some people are more sensitive to emfs than others. You know, I don't know that I recognize it. I used to have an Apple Watch, and now I'm watch free.

00;39;18;03 - 00;39;22;29
Seth Mulder
I'll be listing that on Craigslist. If anybody would like my Apple.

00;39;23;02 - 00;39;26;15
Stephanie Mulder
Your age is showing.

00;39;26;17 - 00;39;29;06
Seth Mulder
excellent. Craigslist. yeah.

00;39;29;06 - 00;39;55;23
Dr. Catherine Darley
So I think there's pros and cons of the sleep trackers. One of the pros is that it really helps people, do a deep dive in, assess their sleep, and think more about how to improve it. And just, you know, awareness itself often brings improvement. And so I do love that. one of the concerns is that many of the trackers aren't actually very well validated.

00;39;56;00 - 00;40;25;23
Dr. Catherine Darley
So we don't know how accurate they are. I think that the field overall is getting better, but is still not 100% accurate. and so the one thing that I do like people to keep in mind is go with your experience of your sleep first. And if there's ever a time where your sleep tracker is saying you're sleeping horribly but you know you're sleeping well, go with your own experience and not the sleep tracker.

00;40;25;23 - 00;40;42;02
Dr. Catherine Darley
I have had a few patients come in. They feel like they're sleeping well. Their energy is good. How? All other health parameters are good, but they get really worried because their sleep tracker says that there's a problem. And if that's the case, I would disregard it.

00;40;42;09 - 00;41;07;19
Seth Mulder
I think it's important that that comes down to the to the the issue that we talk about all the time. You know, when you're the CEO of your own health is I mean, everybody everything else is, is dialog or or perspective. of course you can't necessarily ignore like blaring data. but really to start communicating with yourself, right?

00;41;07;19 - 00;41;18;16
Seth Mulder
Having a dialog with yourself and, and and learn to learn to talk to yourself, if you will learn to learn to be able to calibrate the body is is as important as is perhaps any any diagnostic.

00;41;18;16 - 00;41;30;19
Dr. Catherine Darley
Yeah. And if you do that ten day optimal sleep then you'll have, you'll have a better idea of how good you can feel when you're well-rested. And that can be a good baseline.

00;41;30;22 - 00;41;34;11
Seth Mulder
So if you were to use a device what device would you use?

00;41;34;16 - 00;41;41;29
Dr. Catherine Darley
Probably the aura rings. Yeah, I don't, but, I don't have any sleep problems, so I don't really need to.

00;41;42;01 - 00;42;04;06
Seth Mulder
What about mattresses? That's a big thing right now is, you know, are these kind of, I don't want to say high tech mattresses, but sleep mattresses. Right? Sleep fitness, we're going to, you know, we're going to separate your temperature and the left side and the right side depending on, on, you know, your own type, body type and sleep style.

00;42;04;06 - 00;42;09;24
Seth Mulder
Where's the science there. And what have you seen like case studies wise? I,

00;42;09;27 - 00;42;38;00
Dr. Catherine Darley
I feel like if somebody's mattress is comfortable for them, then it's fine actually, in that you don't need to get a really high end mattress. That said, one area that I usually do a tuneup is a bedroom tuneup with people, and it is the one area that most likely people will say, wow, that made a bigger difference than I realized.

00;42;38;00 - 00;43;01;12
Dr. Catherine Darley
So I empower people. If there is something in your bedroom that is disturbing your sleep, go ahead and eliminate it. Whether it's, you know, an annoying little LED light that's on the light switch or a fan that comes off and on in the night, you know, whatever it is. And if it's your mattress, you know the things about mattresses is that you want to be sure that they are clean.

00;43;01;14 - 00;43;28;21
Dr. Catherine Darley
We can have, an allergic reaction to dust and dust mites. and that can be an increase in histamine. You've probably heard of people taking antihistamines for sleep, right? The thing is that if we're having an allergic reaction, it releases histamine. And histamine is an alerting neurotransmitter in our brain and in our body. And that's why antihistamines help make us drowsy.

00;43;28;21 - 00;43;57;06
Dr. Catherine Darley
Because they block the histamine. So you want to make sure that your bed is clean. The sheets and pillowcases should be washed once weekly, maybe more if you have pets sleeping in the bed. You know, pet fur, pet dander. You want to wash all other bedding at least quarterly and hot water and then, change mattresses every ten years, at least for the, old school, coil mattresses.

00;43;57;08 - 00;44;01;24
Dr. Catherine Darley
And, you know, there are a lot of high tech beds.

00;44;01;26 - 00;44;03;04
Seth Mulder

00;44;03;07 - 00;44;23;08
Dr. Catherine Darley
That's out of reach for some people financially. And I think a lot can be done by some of these more simple, less expensive measures. That said, if you know that you're in pain and your bed is not right for your body, then for sure get, a bed that is going to suit you.

00;44;23;13 - 00;44;27;22
Stephanie Mulder
For those that are looking for a high tech bed, are there any that you recommend?

00;44;27;25 - 00;44;43;03
Dr. Catherine Darley
I'm not an expert in that area, so I wouldn't have a brand to to recommend. Like you, I am concerned about the EMF, and so I prefer a bed that's not, you know, wired to the gills.

00;44;43;05 - 00;45;15;29
Seth Mulder
And without a, a note from our sponsors. Today's episode is sponsored by the 16 Hours of Sleep mattress. So now I'm just kidding. I'm like, what? You're like, why? What's going on? that go. That's a huge market right now, right? like all the devices, as always. Right? I mean, there's the research comes out, then, you know, then the early adopters get involved in sleep and then, you know, there's more research and, and marketing comes and, and I'm sure we'll continue to see a lot more of that.

00;45;16;02 - 00;45;39;19
Seth Mulder
you talked about the bed makeover or, pardon me, the bedroom makeover. Can you give us, like, what's one super easy. I mean, you gave us a couple of ideas, but what what's like one super easy thing that you can do to make your, you know, make your make a difference today. And what's more of maybe an intermediate or advanced activity or you know, to do.

00;45;39;22 - 00;46;00;24
Dr. Catherine Darley
Yeah, that is a great question. The first thing I would have people do is know that your bedroom needs to be very, very dark. It needs to be cave like when you're sleeping. If you can hold your hand out at arm's distance and see your fingers wiggling, that is too much light for sleep. a cool app on your phone.

00;46;00;24 - 00;46;25;11
Dr. Catherine Darley
You can download a lux meter. It should be one lux or less. A lux is equal to one candle flame. so make your bedroom so that it is very, very dark. Whether you need to get blackout curtains or just put something over the windows, try it out, you know, for a few nights, see how much of a difference it makes before you take the time to get blackout curtains.

00;46;25;13 - 00;46;39;11
Dr. Catherine Darley
Make sure that you know, if you have a lit clock or something, you turn it to the wall, or put a washcloth or something over it so that it is just dark in your bedroom, that will make a huge difference.

00;46;39;13 - 00;46;46;04
Seth Mulder
Have you noticed or what differences have you noticed since we made some of those changes?

00;46;46;06 - 00;47;00;10
Stephanie Mulder
well, I can say that since sleeping in the other room and we got those blinds or blackout blinds. Yes, it is very, very dark in there. And I sleep better when I'm in that room.

00;47;00;13 - 00;47;00;27
Dr. Catherine Darley
Do you sleep?

00;47;00;27 - 00;47;03;04
Stephanie Mulder
Absolutely, I do sleep better.

00;47;03;06 - 00;47;36;04
Dr. Catherine Darley
So then the other thing, which, is not actually that much more advanced is but to turn down the thermostat, people sleep much better when it's cool. A cooler than 65 or 18 degrees C. one of the things I love is for people to use multiple thin blankets rather than one thick duvet, because the multiple thin blankets can be more carefully titrated and adjusted really easily, rather than the duvet, which is kind of on or off.

00;47;36;10 - 00;47;39;05
Seth Mulder
Could you say 65°F?

00;47;39;07 - 00;47;40;17
Dr. Catherine Darley
I said 60 cooler.

00;47;40;17 - 00;47;43;23
Seth Mulder
Than 65?

00;47;43;25 - 00;47;47;05
Dr. Catherine Darley
Yeah, that sounds cold.

00;47;47;07 - 00;47;55;16
Seth Mulder
But it sounds cold. Yes, it does sound cold. Could you handle that?

00;47;55;18 - 00;48;04;09
Dr. Catherine Darley
Well, I am in the Pacific Northwest, which is a little cooler, but that's what the research shows. Cooler than 65. Cooler than 67 at the warmest.

00;48;04;12 - 00;48;05;25
Stephanie Mulder
I say we try it for the ten days.

00;48;05;25 - 00;48;25;21
Seth Mulder
10,030. There we go. Like like I'm not opposed to that. It just it jumped out at me. I think, of course we've got the fluctuations, although we don't have to because we can program the thermostat. But, you know, fluctuations in the seasons here in Utah because we have, you know, four true seasons and then eight mini seasons in between.

00;48;25;23 - 00;48;26;19
Seth Mulder
You don't know what it is.

00;48;26;19 - 00;48;27;14
Stephanie Mulder
But Monday.

00;48;27;15 - 00;48;40;20
Seth Mulder
Yeah. Or in the day. But I would say that our thermostat probably is right now. Well, in the summer we're getting into summer sits at about 72 to 73 at night.

00;48;40;22 - 00;48;42;00
Stephanie Mulder
Yeah, it's been warm.

00;48;42;03 - 00;49;08;22
Seth Mulder
It's, it's definitely and and actually, I think in the winter we probably have it set to 70, 72 as well. We should try the other challenge. This. This is neither here nor there. And everybody who wants to know how our, our house is heated, but we just the differences, you know, in in heat between different rooms right where thermostats are placed and where, you know, central air forced forced air heating or cooling.

00;49;08;24 - 00;49;19;07
Seth Mulder
You know, our room is way different than the the room on the other side of the wall, the family room with the thermostat. You know, it's just maybe dialing some of that in. Okay, well, let's turn it down and see.

00;49;19;07 - 00;49;20;16
Stephanie Mulder
I'm excited to try it out.

00;49;20;16 - 00;49;21;16
Seth Mulder
I'm excited to see.

00;49;21;23 - 00;49;42;09
Dr. Catherine Darley
Right. And just treat any of these recommendations like an experiment. Right. And then you decide what adds more to your quality of life. Does it make a difference in your sleep or no? Did it make a difference in your sleep? But your bill is now $1,200 a month? Maybe not so worth it, you know? Just decide what's worth it for you.

00;49;42;13 - 00;50;08;19
Seth Mulder
This is something that's hard to learn, I think, at least for me. I don't know how the women here feel. I'm again, I'm the rook. This is the show for women. I'm the rookie. It's hard to create new habits. I feel like with sleep, almost more than any other habits from from a physical health standpoint. You know, we preach health like, wow, oh, I need to change this how I eat.

00;50;08;19 - 00;50;34;13
Seth Mulder
Oh, okay, maybe I'll do that or I can change. Maybe you want me to change how I sleep when I go to bed. Like, it just seems like it's it's it's hard. So can you, can you draw us again into the research about why this is so important? Early benefits from adopting a better sleep lifestyle, right?

00;50;34;13 - 00;50;55;08
Dr. Catherine Darley
I think about it as a sleep healthy lifestyle that that's what we're going for. And that's what we want to create. And it is, you know, when these concepts are new to you and you're just starting to build a sleep healthy lifestyle, it is it is not necessary, easy. And I certainly don't want to minimize that. Change is hard, right.

00;50;55;08 - 00;51;16;19
Dr. Catherine Darley
We are in many ways creatures of habits and learning new habits. takes stamina and it takes trying again because you're not it's not going to be a straight line. You know, you hear this podcast and you do all the stuff and you're golden. It's going to be you try it, it doesn't work. You try a different variation.

00;51;16;19 - 00;51;45;05
Dr. Catherine Darley
You get tired of it, you know, whatever. It's not like any journey, not a straight line. I like to, take a step back and have people relate sleep to whatever struggle you're having. You know, lots of people for instance, have some, you know, relationships that are not going great or, you know, whether it's your coworker or whether it's at home, you've got some conflict.

00;51;45;05 - 00;52;18;18
Dr. Catherine Darley
There's, you know, grit and grit in this you kind of feeling. And, one of the things I mentioned earlier was this emotional intelligence and how our emotional intelligence declines when we're not getting enough rest. And this this research is so interesting. Things like how kind we are decrease when we're sleep deprived. So whether it's you being sleep deprived or the other person in the relationship or the both of you, that's going to shape your relationship over time.

00;52;18;20 - 00;53;01;06
Dr. Catherine Darley
If you're just not feeling as kind as when you're well-rested, other things that happen. So if I look at you when I'm sleep deprived, I can't tell if you're happy or angry. If you're angry, I probably need to respond to you a little bit differently than if you look really happy. Right? And if people are time after time, day after day, week after week, missing that information because they're chronically sleep deprived, that's going to have potentially an impact on your relationships, that you are seen as insensitive or not caring or whatever because you're you're literally missing that information that is shown in someone's face about their emotions.

00;53;01;08 - 00;53;30;09
Dr. Catherine Darley
so, you know, that would be an example of some of the research and how we see it play out in one of those five domains. you know, the other one that I'm very concerned about is drowsy driving. this research is actually pretty darn scary. They did a poll of people, asking them if they felt, drowsy when they were driving in the last year.

00;53;30;12 - 00;53;50;22
Dr. Catherine Darley
High number 67, 67%, I think, said yes. They felt drowsy. And then they asked a truly scary question. Have you fallen asleep at the wheel in the last year? Any idea how many what percentage of people said, yes, I fallen asleep at the wheel in the last year.

00;53;50;22 - 00;53;54;09
Stephanie Mulder
I'm thinking around 50%, but probably higher.

00;53;54;16 - 00;54;16;04
Dr. Catherine Darley
Yes, 50. So it was, 37%. So next time you are getting in the car and on the road, think, you know, you yourself, the driver in front of you, or heaven forbid, the driver behind you, one of you is aware of falling asleep at the wheel in the last year. That's really, you know, scary and life changing.

00;54;16;04 - 00;54;40;28
Dr. Catherine Darley
And the thing about when we're drowsy, if you measure the brainwaves, when a person is drowsy, they actually have these little periods of sleep. We call them a micro sleep where they're asleep for 10s 30s a minute, not long enough to be aware that they fell asleep. But can you have a collision or a serious collision in 30s?

00;54;41;00 - 00;54;53;20
Dr. Catherine Darley
Sure, you can. Right? And that's one of the things we see with drowsy driving, is that it's much more likely to be fatal because, you know, people hit the barrier straight on, they're asleep. They cannot respond.

00;54;53;24 - 00;54;54;18
Stephanie Mulder
That is scary.

00;54;54;24 - 00;55;15;27
Seth Mulder
Thank you, thank you. Pun intended. This is a wake up call. Actually, it's a reverse pun because you should be really going to bed. But you know what? I'm saying? to to pay attention, I heard I heard it put this way that sleep and get this is ironic because there's nothing new about sleep. But sleep is the new longevity drug.

00;55;15;29 - 00;55;17;09
Seth Mulder
Oh, yeah.

00;55;17;11 - 00;55;44;29
Dr. Catherine Darley
Absolutely. We could go into that a little bit if you'd like. If there's time, there's time. Okay, great. So one of the things that is really important for our overall health as relates to sleep is melatonin. I'm sure people have heard about melatonin. I'm really talking about our internal melatonin, our melatonin that's released from our brain and and goes throughout our body.

00;55;45;01 - 00;56;14;02
Dr. Catherine Darley
The way that our melatonin system works is that when our eye perceives light, particularly blue light, it tells the brain, don't make melatonin. Melatonin is called the hormone of darkness. So in the natural world, as the sun sets and the light dims, our brain will start. Our pineal gland deep in the brain will start to make melatonin, and melatonin levels peak in the middle of the night.

00;56;14;04 - 00;56;37;18
Dr. Catherine Darley
They decline in the second part of the light night. When we wake up, though, our natural melatonin is still somewhat elevated, we open our eyes, open the shades, go outside, get some bright light on our eyes and that will suppress whatever melatonin is still present. The actions of melatonin in our body are really important. First of all, it does.

00;56;37;25 - 00;57;09;13
Dr. Catherine Darley
When it's released in the brain. It goes around the brain, makes us drowsy. Then it enters the circulation, goats gets into our bloodstream and goes around our body. And most cells have melatonin receptors. So this nightly pulse of melatonin goes through our body and signals to the cells. It is nighttime time to switch into nighttime physiology. When we're asleep, our blood pressure decreases, our respiratory rate decreases, our heart rate decreases.

00;57;09;13 - 00;57;44;19
Dr. Catherine Darley
Bunch of changes. The other thing about melatonin beyond sleep, beyond circadian rhythms, is that it is a very powerful antioxidant. It's a very powerful anti-inflammatory. It is protective of our bone strength and our bone health. It is neuroprotective in the brain. It, has a role in our immune system. So all of those for all of those reasons, melatonin is a great anti-aging compound that we want every night to have those eight hours or whatever.

00;57;44;19 - 00;57;58;08
Dr. Catherine Darley
Your set point is where your melatonin is very high. And so you can have all these anti-aging effects throughout the body in addition to the sleep effects, the circadian rhythm effects.

00;57;58;11 - 00;58;19;22
Seth Mulder
Would you if we were. So we're talking about about antioxidants. We're talking about that that kind of health promotion anti-inflammatory. Would you be comfortable in taking it even one step further and talking about like the actual like I've heard that sleep is, is when we the body heals. Is there any substance to that?

00;58;19;23 - 00;58;50;20
Dr. Catherine Darley
Oh, totally. Yeah. So there's a couple, a couple things. Two ways that the body heals during sleep. one of them is that we've got two main categories of sleep REM and non-REM. non-REM sleep is stages one, two and three. Stage three sleep is really important for physical repair and restoration. Stage three sleep is also called deep sleep or slow wave sleep.

00;58;50;20 - 00;59;17;22
Dr. Catherine Darley
The brainwaves are very high amplitude, very slow. And that's why it feels like we really are deeply asleep. And it's the kind of sleep. If you get woken up out of deep sleep, it takes about 20 minutes to be fully oriented and functional and all that. So during deep sleep, a couple things happen. One is 75 to 85% of our total growth hormone is secreted during deep sleep.

00;59;17;25 - 00;59;45;22
Dr. Catherine Darley
And you know, I'm not growing any taller. But even as I'm just talking with my hands here on this podcast, little micro terrors are happening in my muscles. And tonight, eight when I'm in deep sleep, growth hormone is going to come on and repair those micro terrors. So that is one of the reasons that, one of the ways that sleep actually is restorative.

00;59;45;24 - 01;00;13;25
Dr. Catherine Darley
The other thing that happens in deep sleep, which is just fascinating, is that we have a lymph system in our brain called the lymphatic system. And this lymph system basically opens up to about twice its size during sleep and helps clear out all the metabolic waste products from our brain. one of those that's very important is what's called beta amyloid protein.

01;00;13;28 - 01;00;42;20
Dr. Catherine Darley
Beta amyloid protein. If it's not sufficiently cleared out of the brain during sleep, can build up into plaques, beta amyloid plaques, which is associated with Alzheimer's disease. So we definitely need those sleep hours to to clear out our brain. And recently, and, a little, I'm thinking about how recently a bunch of people have told me that I look young for my age.

01;00;42;23 - 01;01;07;25
Dr. Catherine Darley
I'm 54, and, and I don't dye my hair like my hair. This is my natural hair color. I'm not getting gray, and I, I'm starting to think it might be because I have gotten enough sleep for the last 30 years. I mean, not always. I'm a single mom of a 20 year old, so I've done my years of parenting kids in the middle of the night when I wish we were all sleeping.

01;01;07;28 - 01;01;22;15
Dr. Catherine Darley
So, you know, I haven't always had perfect sleep, but it's been kind of striking and, and I just wonder, you know, if the sleep getting enough sleep for the last 30 years has started to show.

01;01;22;18 - 01;01;50;28
Stephanie Mulder
Okay, so I have a question about growth hormone. we actually have a child who barely produces any growth hormone. And so we're giving her growth hormone shots daily. And the doctor said that she'll stop taking those growth hormone shots when her growth plates close. So what will happen to her afterwards when she stops those shots? But her body doesn't really create much growth hormone.

01;01;51;00 - 01;01;51;21
Dr. Catherine Darley
That.

01;01;51;21 - 01;01;52;29
Seth Mulder

01;01;53;01 - 01;02;26;26
Dr. Catherine Darley
That is not my area of expertise in older people. When when, people enter their senior years, we see a decrease in both deep sleep and growth hormone. You can increase somebody deep sleep by exercise. So there's some research where, seniors do an exercise program and then their sleep and their growth hormone is measured and both increase with the exercise program for a child.

01;02;26;26 - 01;02;42;24
Dr. Catherine Darley
I am not sure how that will, will work. You know, the growth hormone and the deep sleep really go together. So that might be something to, you know, talk with your physician further about and just, you know, see what they would recommend. Okay.

01;02;42;24 - 01;02;43;08
Stephanie Mulder
Thank you.

01;02;43;13 - 01;03;11;10
Seth Mulder
We've been we I hear a lot about Alzheimer's and dementia. Obviously we run in the health world. So that that's a it's it's been a hot topic for 2030 years. Right. but it's it seems to be one of those issues. And maybe it's because the prevalence of, of neurological disorders and conditions, including dementia and Alzheimer's, are just on the rise.

01;03;11;13 - 01;03;31;12
Seth Mulder
we hear about walking. I heard some research recently about how, about, patients who walked 30 minutes a day or, pardon me, 30 minutes, three times a week had a 30% decrease in dementia. what? And you talked about about, this section of the brain that doubles in size. That's crazy to me, by the way.

01;03;31;12 - 01;03;57;00
Seth Mulder
Just like awesome diagram, right? It's nighttime. Let's go to work. any any, any harder studies? I, I don't want to put it that way, but do we see any studies that show how sleep, and proper amount of sleep or not? The proper amount of sleep is really affecting our long term brain health. And those concerned with dementia and Alzheimer's.

01;03;57;01 - 01;04;34;09
Dr. Catherine Darley
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. We've known for years that people who are chronically sleep deprived or chronic short sleepers in midlife are at increased risk of cognitive decline and Alzheimer's later in life. The same is true for people who have insomnia. unfortunately, people who have insomnia are at greater risk of developing Alzheimer's disease later on. So that is really, you know, another reason, in addition to having good, productive day, good emotional intelligence day by day.

01;04;34;09 - 01;04;56;20
Dr. Catherine Darley
But the long term health and and you know, this is this goes this is true for many chronic diseases. You know, metabolic disease, diabetes, blood sugar control problems are so prevalent in people as they age. And if you're not getting enough sleep, it absolutely increases your risk of metabolic disorders.

01;04;56;27 - 01;05;07;25
Seth Mulder
So in the research, where's the line? This is me. This is so mean. Like, where's the line? How far can I go? How little. And I know this is the wrong this is the wrong way to approach it to stop.

01;05;07;25 - 01;05;08;13
Stephanie Mulder
You right.

01;05;08;13 - 01;05;35;25
Seth Mulder
Now. but again, my mind is like, okay. And again, oh, guess we are going to do. We are on. We are on the doctor Dali ten day optimal sleep experiment protocol. But maybe maybe this is just bad conditioning on my part. Like, tell it to me easy. Like, how do I know if I'm sleep deprived? Or maybe the fact that I'm asking this question for the third time on this podcast is the evidence.

01;05;36;00 - 01;05;45;06
Dr. Catherine Darley
If you're waking up to an alarm, could be a mechanical alarm or a person or a pet, you haven't gotten enough rest.

01;05;45;08 - 01;05;50;06
Seth Mulder
Wait wait wait. Can I have a different answer? No.

01;05;50;08 - 01;05;54;24
Dr. Catherine Darley
You said you wanted it straight and easy. I think that's for the easy.

01;05;54;27 - 01;06;01;09
Stephanie Mulder
So give it to you straight.

01;06;01;11 - 01;06;05;09
Seth Mulder
So we're good? that's two one.

01;06;05;16 - 01;06;37;16
Dr. Catherine Darley
So says it sounds like you are very successful. Right. But I would suspect almost everybody I've ever met has something in their life that they wish would be better. Whether it's a health thing or a goal thing or some kind of new skill trying to learn or whatnot. And I certainly don't want you to share that. But, you know, if there's even just one thing that you would like to go a little bit better, just identify that thing.

01;06;37;16 - 01;06;54;21
Dr. Catherine Darley
Do the ten days of no alarm, just letting yourself sleep as much as you need to sleep and just check in afterwards on that one issue. Did it move the needle or not? And if it didn't, then you can have me back and I will record your.

01;06;54;23 - 01;07;19;04
Seth Mulder
your experience. So funny that the physical and emotional response that I'm going through right now, I'm breaking out in a sweat. My you said no alarm. You said no alarm. And I'm like, what am I going to miss? I'm starting to sweat right now. My, my my heart, like my blood. I don't want my blood pressure, but my heart rate went up.

01;07;19;06 - 01;07;43;00
Seth Mulder
And then I'm just like, wait a second, how counter-intuitive is this? I want something, you know, I want to improve this part of my life or grow our business this way, or in this relationship, which I typically associate with. Grind it out more energy. Just do it right. And it's this is all this whole stinking yoga stuff that you got me on.

01;07;43;02 - 01;07;45;27
Seth Mulder
I just completed 100 straight days of yoga.

01;07;45;29 - 01;07;46;24
Stephanie Mulder
Now you do.

01;07;47;00 - 01;07;50;04
Dr. Catherine Darley
Oh, my goodness, good for you. That's an a hundred.

01;07;50;04 - 01;07;51;25
Stephanie Mulder
Straight days without an alarm.

01;07;51;25 - 01;07;53;00
Seth Mulder
That's too hard.

01;07;53;02 - 01;07;54;22
Dr. Catherine Darley
Oh no, I think ten days.

01;07;54;22 - 01;07;55;27
Seth Mulder
Yeah yeah yeah.

01;07;56;00 - 01;08;28;28
Dr. Catherine Darley
Because yeah, just ten days. And you know, that's something to think about. Like, you know, there is it's really common to feel like if I sleep more, I am going to be giving up stuff. And, you know, that's not unusual at all. And to, you know, work through that, like, you know, for all of us. I mean, sometimes I end up staying up too late and I'm, you know, in that mode of, I worked so hard today, I just need a little bit of time to myself.

01;08;28;28 - 01;08;49;04
Dr. Catherine Darley
Right. That's a really common thing for women to report, is that they're pushing bedtime later, because they just need to have a little bit of time to themselves without interruption, without being on task like hobby time. Me time. so you know, what are you feeling like you're giving up if you get the sleep that you need?

01;08;49;07 - 01;09;09;17
Seth Mulder
I guess the way I'm starting to see this, and it's kind of a slow roll, but today's all my reading and research and just thoughts and kind of the direction we're heading is, is a healthy slap in the face. I know it's healthy and it's enjoyable like, but just just like like again, a wake up call, like, no, this is really important.

01;09;09;17 - 01;09;40;29
Seth Mulder
Stuff like this is really important. Not scared night. And you got to be scared about it and you know like but this is really like, wait a second. You're going to be a better husband. You're going to be kinder. I'm actually not. I'm a super kind person. But wait a second. Like this sleep thing. Like, I feel like I'm waking up like in the matrix or out of the matrix, right out of, you know, for those who are Star Trek fans, like way, way back here, the Borg or something like.

01;09;41;01 - 01;10;00;08
Seth Mulder
But wait a second, like there's a total life outside of what you may have thought, which was like, you know, go to bed late because you got to get you got to get stuff done and get up early because it's like I forgot. It's like, and I don't know if women do this, maybe. Is it just me? I'm sure that it can't just be me.

01;10;00;08 - 01;10;21;26
Seth Mulder
Right. But you know, Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's almanac, right. Early to bed, early to rise, you know, makes a woman healthy, wealthy and wise. actually sad man. But I have believed in half of that getting up early. Don't ask me to go to bed early right like that, because that's hard.

01;10;21;29 - 01;10;47;18
Dr. Catherine Darley
So one of the things that has really changed very, very significantly in the last just 150 years, actually last 130 years or so of human history, is that we now have electric lights in our home in the evenings and all of our devices. And I'm sure you have heard your listeners have probably heard about avoiding blue light at night.

01;10;47;20 - 01;11;14;11
Dr. Catherine Darley
in my experience, when I mention that, people often say, oh yeah, how big of a difference can it really make? And there's some really cool research coming out of some sleep circadian research labs in Colorado. So a little closer to where you are, where they measure people's sleep and melatonin in a built environment, which means they're in the office during the day.

01;11;14;11 - 01;11;38;19
Dr. Catherine Darley
They're in their homes with electricity and devices and all that during the evenings and nights. And then they take those same folks and have them go camping for a weekend or a week and, to an area where there's no electricity. So there's no after sunset. They might have a campfire, but they don't have any electric lights of any kind.

01;11;38;21 - 01;12;15;18
Dr. Catherine Darley
And then again, they measure their sleep, their melatonin levels, both in summer and winter. In that naturalistic environment, people sleep a little bit longer and their sleep and the sun pattern and the, melatonin is more aligned than it is in the built environment. What's really interesting is that in the winter, people will sleep 2.3 hours more a night than when they're camping, than when they're in the built environment.

01;12;15;24 - 01;12;44;10
Dr. Catherine Darley
So that makes that indicates that people really would sleep a lot longer without all this electric light. so I the recommendation and again, you can use your phone and get a lux meter. The recommendation is ten lux or less for three hours before bed. You really want to replicate that sunset experience? We need that. if you can't dim the lights, turn off your devices.

01;12;44;10 - 01;13;13;16
Dr. Catherine Darley
I think many of us myself included, I'm in a pretty active part of my day. Three hours before bed. so it's not super realistic to turn off all devices, but if you can't, you can wear blue blocking glasses like these for that 2 or 3 hours before bed. and that can really help you feel drowsy. I think one of the problems that people get in with all of this electric light and devices is suppresses our melatonin.

01;13;13;18 - 01;13;40;13
Dr. Catherine Darley
We need our melatonin to start to rise before we get into bed so we feel drowsy. It may be that you're just not feeling drowsy at the time. You typically would because of all the electric light. So this you know, if I had to say the one thing that would be the most impactful, if people could only do one thing, it would be to wear blue blocking glasses for 2 to 3 hours before bed.

01;13;40;15 - 01;14;00;08
Dr. Catherine Darley
I see you have some. They need to be for people who are listening and don't have a pair. If you want to get a pair, they need to be a very strong reddish orange color. The lens needs to be that strong reddish orange, so that it's blocking the correct wave wavelength of blue light.

01;14;00;10 - 01;14;23;26
Seth Mulder
So we, as I've been using these blue lights, from Swanwick for years because I had a good friend who said, hey, I love Swann again, I trusted her. You know how it is. You get a recommendation. So we have these that are super light that I use sometimes in the day. And then when we get into the evening, I'll throw on my Elton John, version here.

01;14;23;29 - 01;14;34;22
Seth Mulder
So I'm happy to hear you talking about blue light and blue light blockers, because there, there is. You know, there's a contingency out there that that doesn't think it's necessary.

01;14;34;24 - 01;14;56;09
Dr. Catherine Darley
I think it's the, the most overlooked, factor actually. And, and I've had actually many patients tell me too, that they sleep the best when they go camping. Part of it is the light. Another smaller part is probably the temperature changes at night.

01;14;56;12 - 01;15;21;28
Seth Mulder
We have had an incredible discussion about sleep. Thank you so much. We're not done, folks. We're not done. This is not this is just a breath. We're just transitioning from deep sleep back into summary some some REM. what we'd like to do, Doctor Donnelly, is talk a little more personally about your approaches, to self-care, independent of sleep or including sleep.

01;15;22;05 - 01;15;41;26
Seth Mulder
Right. So maybe just a question or two, a couple of questions about, about some of these approaches, to health and mindset. And maybe we'll let's start with that one right there, because you said something incredible third 20 years, did you say 20 years of getting amazing sleep or was it 30?

01;15;41;27 - 01;15;43;07
Stephanie Mulder
It was 30.

01;15;43;10 - 01;15;45;15
Seth Mulder
Yeah. I think I'm in shock. I had short term memory.

01;15;45;15 - 01;15;54;13
Dr. Catherine Darley
Loss being interested in sleep in college and I'm 54. So yeah, most of my life I've really gotten the sleep that I need.

01;15;54;13 - 01;16;17;23
Stephanie Mulder
I mean, even when you were saying think back to a time when you got good sleep and I was like, oh, before kids, oh wait, I got married super young and like, I don't I was a teenager right before that. I don't know that I ever had great sleep. anyways, so can you share with us your personal journey towards better health and well-being and any key insights or turning points along the way?

01;16;17;25 - 01;16;59;05
Dr. Catherine Darley
Yeah, I, with my food, I like to eat food that I can envision where it came from. Like, you know, a Cheeto or some kind of purple drink or blue drink, like a blue Gatorade that came from a factory. And so I try to always get food that I can envision it in a field or, yeah, in a field either I do eat animal meat, so either on the hoof in the field or growing in the field.

01;16;59;07 - 01;17;37;00
Dr. Catherine Darley
But, yeah, that I think is really key to eat food. That is food that's not chemically produced or manufactured in a factory field over factory. That is important. And, I try not to buy into, being on all the time. One of the things I'm concerned about with women's health is that typically around the world, women do an hour and a half to two hours more work a day than men do.

01;17;37;00 - 01;18;22;19
Dr. Catherine Darley
So they have less leisure time, and they're more likely to push off sleep so that they can get more work done. And I think, you know, we benefit from having hobbies and from having time to, like, sit in a lounge chair and look at the sky, or just close our eyes and do nothing. And I think giving yourself permission to do nothing and that is right and proper is, is really helpful and, you know, then when you're on task, I for me, it makes it a lot easier to really focus because I've kind of had some time to let my thoughts drift or to putter around.

01;18;22;21 - 01;18;37;05
Seth Mulder
That, that just rests. That just rests on the heart. Really good. I've been I've had this idea. We've not even talked about it. So I'm going to throw it out right here. You know, I well, we've talked about it a little bit. You know, we saw a women's conference. We should throw a women's conference.

01;18;37;06 - 01;18;37;27
Stephanie Mulder
We've talked about.

01;18;37;27 - 01;18;43;19
Seth Mulder
That. You don't remember? There's no do a women's.

01;18;43;19 - 01;18;43;23
Dr. Catherine Darley
Yeah.

01;18;43;23 - 01;19;12;02
Seth Mulder
We should do a women's. Can we talk about doing, retreats? A conference is kind of like a retreat, but, no, I'm just imagining doing a women's conference. I don't know, here in Salt Lake City. I was going to say Vegas because it's so easy to get to Vegas. But Vegas isn't my favorite place. But for the purpose, the purposes is, you know, to come have women come in and get inspired, have some education, but also to get this learning that we're going to do nothing right.

01;19;12;05 - 01;19;13;21
Seth Mulder
You know, I.

01;19;13;22 - 01;19;30;29
Stephanie Mulder
Find that women have a really hard time, though, when they go to a retreat or they go to a conference or they go anywhere, it's like, I'm away from the kids, I can do something instead of, hey, I'm going to take some time to relax. It's a great idea. We might have to have like a class on relaxation.

01;19;31;01 - 01;19;31;26
Seth Mulder
There would be, there would.

01;19;31;26 - 01;19;47;26
Stephanie Mulder
Be, I think, like one of the only times that I can think of is like, hey, let's go to a spa night. Now that would be relaxing, but at least the retreats I've been on or the different, you know, girls nights or different things that I've done, I don't necessarily know that. Relax. That's been the priority.

01;19;47;26 - 01;20;06;05
Seth Mulder
I just love that concept. Catherine. That is like just to be a little more back, but yeah, do nothing back. Yeah. And yesterday afternoon, you and you and my mom, my mom, my parents live with us. That's kind of a new addition and again, kind of get into the old ways but just sitting on.

01;20;06;05 - 01;20;15;06
Stephanie Mulder
And I love it. Just for all our listeners to know, I am one of those very blessed women who I love, my in-laws, and they love me. So it's a very good thing.

01;20;15;08 - 01;20;31;29
Seth Mulder
Just on a on an old wood back porch, you know, looking out at the mountain and the sun going down and the flowers and the birds and do nothing and there is something to doing nothing.

01;20;32;02 - 01;20;34;25
Stephanie Mulder
Well oh even I mean.

01;20;34;27 - 01;20;45;05
Dr. Catherine Darley
Yeah I think about you know, sleep, rest work. Those are my three chunks of the day. And I try to make sure that they all happen.

01;20;45;07 - 01;21;04;15
Stephanie Mulder
that's that's good. Yeah. When I typically when we go on the back porch at least lately it's spring. It's obviously gorgeous right now. And the birds are just, you know, chirping away. And we're on our rocking chairs, which I've just discovered and learns is very good for your nervous system. The birds chirping and the rocking chair.

01;21;04;17 - 01;21;19;05
Dr. Catherine Darley
that sounds blissful. And yeah, bringing in the healing power of nature. The light changing your melatonin might be starting to rise, which is going to help you feel kind of drowsy and relaxed. And that's awesome.

01;21;19;05 - 01;21;20;05
Stephanie Mulder
Definitely at peace.

01;21;20;05 - 01;21;43;24
Seth Mulder
So when you come out here, when you come out here, we're going to do a little trifecta. number one, we're going to get some, some amazing Momo's gourmet cheesecake. Number two, you're going to imagine when you when you bite into, you can choose your cut. I'm just going to say rib eye, rib eye steak that that we raise right here in the pasture, just just like, outside of the studio here.

01;21;43;26 - 01;21;51;04
Seth Mulder
we raise our own beef for our family, and then we're going to sit on the back porch rock and absolutely do nothing. So.

01;21;51;06 - 01;21;57;09
Dr. Catherine Darley
Sounds like a good shape, healthy lifestyle and healthy overall.

01;21;57;12 - 01;22;01;08
Seth Mulder
And cut. It's a wrap.

01;22;01;11 - 01;22;16;13
Stephanie Mulder
Thank you so much for being here today. And thank you for sharing this episode with that one friend who needs this conversation. Thank you for all the ratings, the reviews, the comments, and especially the support. We so appreciate you.

01;22;16;15 - 01;22;30;17
Seth Mulder
Now, if you want to take a peek behind the curtain and be the first to know about special previews, backstage updates here at the show, and especially some private collection content that doesn't come out in the regular show.

01;22;30;19 - 01;22;35;15
Stephanie Mulder
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