Sleep Your Way to a Sharper Brain

I am Dr. Rachel Heussner. I’m a natropathic doctor.

I’m Dr. Amy Tarquini. I’m also a naturopathic doctor.

So just to introduce us really quick, if you haven’t seen us before, we’re both practitioners here at Solcere, we’re both re code certified, so we do use the Bredesen protocol to work with Alzheimer’s, dementia, patients, all kind of dementia patients and just overall brain health.

And we both have a background in women’s health and environmental health and chronic illness. We’re gonna be talking a lot today about the link between sleep and dementia.

But Dr. Tarquini, do you want to kind of get a background on what else we’re going to be talking about today.

Yeah, so of course we’re gonna talk about the link between sleep and dementia and cognitive decline and sort of all of the sub notes underneath that, how sleep effects are emotional well-being, our immune health, our nervous system and our hormone system.

We’ll talk about testing options and why it can be really important to test, especially if we suspect any reduced oxygenation.

At night, sleep apnea. We’ll also talk about how to optimize sleep, what we as natural pathetic doctors tend to call it sleep hygiene.

And then we’ll talk about it’s kind of a buzz word these days, REM sleep, deep sleep.

We’ll talk all about those different stages and how to get more deep sleep. And then also our favorite supplements for sleep at the end and we’ll have some time for Q&A as well.

Okay, so why do we care so much about sleep? I don’t know about you guys, but when we talk to our patients, we’re asking about sleep, you know, for a good 5, 10 min.

We want to know. What time you go to bed at night, what time you wake up in the morning, we want to know if you’re waking feeling rested or how many hours of sleep did you get?

Did you? All asleep right away. Did you stay asleep through the night? So we really care about sleep because it’s so important for Sells regenerating, tissues growing, and muscles repairing.

It’s also, of course, important for a cognitive function like we’ll get into throughout the rest of this lecture, but during sleep is when we really the brain really consolidates memories, it processes information from throughout the day and it starts to make things connections.

So advocates adequate sleep is really important for enhancing. Just basic skills like decision making, concentration, problem solving.

It’s also really important for emotional well-being. We find that sleep in general can affect mood and emotional stimuli, chronic sleep deprivation.

Is chronically linked to mood disorders like depression and anxiety. And then it has a big function within the immune system itself.

Sleep supports the immune system in general by just allowing the body to have the strength to fight things off, infections and illnesses.

But when there’s insufficient sleep, it can really weaken the immune system and make people more susceptible.

I mean, it’s really common that. You go through a period of no sleep, if you’re staying up to later, working too much and then you can become still after that.

And then also with you detox vacation. So our brain itself has this glyphatic system, its own lymphatic system.

On the glyphatic system and it clears neuronal toxic waste products during sleep. So think of that as kind of like the garbage truck that takes out the trash at night.

If you don’t have that, you’re gonna have all this trash accumulating. So it’s really important that We get adequate sleep for the detox of our brain, which we know is important with cognitive health and all these things we’re going to be chatting about when it comes to the brain.

And then physical health. So there’s a big relationship between chronic sleep deprivation and risks of conditions like obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension.

So there’s a huge Chronic illness. Chronic immune system imbalance link there but then also just a metabolic health in general

Yeah, so specifically sleep and dementia. So like Dr. Heussner just mentioned, sleep affects many aspects of our physiology of our bodies including our immune system, our metabolism, our emotional well-being, our hormones, or our endocrine system.

So it’s actually not surprising that pours both poor seed quality and sleep duration are associated with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

And when we’re thinking about a root cause approach to cognitive decline, we tend to think of these root causes as little buckets or different categories.

So infections, nutrition, toxins, structure, so your airway, your stress, signaling, so like your hormones, vitamin D, which are all as Dr.

Houston just mentioned, largely affected by lack of sleep. Specifically, we also see neurono lost neurons are the brain cells that we’re talking about here in regions of the brain not that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease of the brain not that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease such as the brain that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease such as the posterior cingulate cortex and the

precunious. And also when you hear Alzheimer’s talked about, you’ll oftentimes hear it associated with something called beta amyloid plaque, which is basically a protein that can build up in your brain.

And we see it in folks with Alzheimer’s disease. And actually just one night of poor sleep causes the ability of your brain reduced clearance of your body to clear this protein.

So we see amyloid plaque start to accumulate. And all of these factors, the kind of loss of our ability to repair and restore causes this thing called neuroinflammation, which basically means that your brain is, it has a fire and it’s having a hard time putting it out.

It’s having a hard time allocating resources appropriately to fight infections or to repair and incorporate new memories and things like that.

And specifically we see your hippocampus which is a region of your brain and that’s crucial for memory and learning.

We see that this is a part piece of your brain that’s particularly sensitive to the effects of sleep disruption.

So there’s a couple different ways that sleep can or poor sleep quality can predispose us to issues with cognitive impairment.

So sleep optimization like Dr. Tarquini said we love this word sleep hygiene. It’s our way of listening out just basic foundational things that we can have our patients do for.

Adequate sleep at night for maintaining that nice healthy environment for sleep. So One of the first things I talk about with my patients is is creating a consistent sleep schedule and bedtime routine.

So one, because the nervous system loves routines. We love some, our body kind of gets used to something to look forward to.

We’re similar to animals, right? We just, we like that routine and our system gets used to it.

But we also want to facilitate those restful brain waves and tune into that parasympathetic for that rest and digest of our nervous system.

Put that switch over from this synthetic. To the parasympathetic. So when I talk with patients, I’m often talking about this bedtime routine to calm them down.

You know, doing a yoga needra or a meditation, some breath work to calm them down, you know, doing a yoga needra or a meditation, some breath work, a nice warm bath or shower.

You but also knowing the flip side. It’s not the time to be watching something really stressful.

It’s not that time to be putting on the news, getting really stressed out about what’s going on.

Putting on a stressful movie or show, it’s a time to really relax. So creating that sleep schedule, with a consistent wake and sleep time and then also some ways to wind down at night.

Also getting some sunshine in the morning. So we talk a lot about the circadian rhythm.

That is when cortisol, our stress hormone is spiking in the morning. That’s natural response.

That’s actually, I mean, it’s caused from light coming into our eyes. Simulating our cortisol to be released and that’s going to keep us awake and alert and that will naturally fall throughout the day and then at night we have darkness coming in through the eyes.

And that simulates melatonin to be released and that’s going to facilitate sleep.

And that should naturally then fall through the morning. So it’s this that is our circadian rhythm on a biological level.

Sunshine in the morning actually will help us sleep at sleep at night and keep that rhythm on track.

It also helps to regulate. We talked about melatonin, but also serotonin. So mood can also be played around with our morning sunshine.

It energizes us and gets us happy. Making a comfortable sleep environment is also pretty important. We want it to be cool, dark, and quiet.

So optimal temperature temperature would probably be around 65 to 68°F. Probably a little bit cooler than what most people would think.

We don’t wanna be too hot. Dr. Tarquini taught me our nail trick to see if it’s dark enough so if you have your hand out in front of you and you can still see your fingernails and it’s not dark enough so often Like I said, those light, that light that comes in through the eyes can stimulate cortisol to be released too early and then disrupt sleep.

So getting blackout curtains using eye mask, removing electronics that might have some weight. That’ll be important to create that sleep environment.

Limiting exposure to screens so going back to that circadian rhythm We don’t want to stimulate that cortisol at any regular time and even blue light tends to do that.

So blue light from screens that’s going to disrupt our, I’m trying to avoid that about 2 h before bedtime.

And same with caffeine. If we can try to avoid that, I like to say no later than 2 p.

M. And then heavy meals about an hour to 2 before bedtime. Again, we’re just trying to do our best to put our body into that rest and and digest phase with a parasympathetic.

Not stimulate us and then also not take too much energy away. From coming down, which can go to digestion if you need a nice bake heavy meal.

You do need to be careful though for some patients that have some blood sugar issues. That there might be a little bit of a blood sugar drop at night which can disrupt sleep.

So for some of my patients. If there is a roller coaster throughout the day. You also can have that going on at night with your blood sugar.

We’re talking about having a protein snack before bed, having some fat before bed, something to help keep that a little bit more stable.

And that could look like. Some college cheese, a hard boiled egg, maybe even just some pieces of cheese or some nut butter.

I like to have if I’m really hungry, a little bit of the Just said, what are they?

Bee sticks. Those things are nice. They’re high protein and they’re just a quick little stack.

Even just like a handful of nuts would be nice. And then getting to, some of the issues that are underlined of insomnia and sleep disregulation so working on the adrenals working on stress management.

Also addressing sleep apnea probably one of the biggest things that we’re gonna highlight here so reduce oxygenation at night to the brain is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s for dementia and we want to do our best to negate that.

So this can be a structural cause of dementia because you know the airway is actually structurally not getting enough air in, but it can also really decrease.

Just the oxygenation in the blood flow to the brain. So looking at that vascular level as well.

We want your nighttime oxygenation levels to really be close to that update time. So you can even test that with an oxygen.

And we’ll go into more of that when we talk about testing in particular. But That’s one of the biggest things that we write right off the bat.

We’re asking our dementia patients. Even patients with hypertension, there’s a big link there.

With sleep app. And it can easily be fixed. Corrected the underlying hormonal and balance.

So we want to correct imbalances of our sex hormones, specifically of estrogen, progesterone, testosterone.

It’s often that we see women in that per minute applause, menopausal state, really suffering with insomnia.

We just have a little bit of progesterone, especially oral progression, cause that can cross the blood brain barrier, go into the brain and help create GABA, which is our calming, more inhibitory neurotransmitter.

And really promote relaxation and sleep.

So that is one of the easiest things that we can do for our women patients and then just hopping with testosterone and estrogen as well.

Yeah, so one of the questions that we’ve been getting recently is how can I get better deep sleep or how can I improve my REM sleep?

And I think it’s we’re gonna dive into that but I think it’s really important to start by saying that all stages of sleep are important and they work together.

So if you’ve ever done a sleep test or you have one of those fancy little bio tracking devices, you can see that our sleep actually goes in a in a rhythm and all stages of sleep are really important.

So I’m gonna talk specifically about REM sleep and deep sleep here, but know that when we’re talking about optimizing sleep, we’re really talking about having fully fully functional sleep cycles really.

So to start REM sleep stands for rapid eye movement. This is the time when your body is consolidating.

So we’re really taking our procedural and our emotional memories and consolidating them together. We’re also in integrating new memories and existing knowledge.

So by doing this we facilitate learning and then we this REM sleep is also essential for brain plasticity, which I’m actually going to circle back to in just a moment.

Deep sleep also sometimes called slow wave sleep because it’s the time of time of sleep when our brain is actually moving through the slowest brainwave patterns is also essential for memory consolidation.

So this is when we transfer short term memories into long term memories. And this is also essential for memory consolidation.

So this is when we transfer short term memories into long term memories. And this is when we transfer short term memories into long term memories. And this is also when we do neurological restoration.

So this is when we transfer short term memories into long term memories. This is also when we do neurological restoration.

So that’s kind of a fancy term for cellular repair, growth, and consolidation. And then we also see slow wave sleep being beneficial for synoptic plasticity.

And what your synapses are are the little connections in between your brain cells. And we see that deep sleep helps us actually strengthen or weaken these synapses over And then some kind of like our top sleep strategies because Dr.

Houston just went through so many great ones. But when we’re thinking about kind of overall ways to boost all stages of sleep, we’re thinking about movement, regular exercise, and it’s actually important sometimes exercise can be really stimulating for folks.

So oftentimes we recommend if that’s the case for you not doing it too close to bedtime doing it when you wake up or in the afternoon earlier in the day tends to help us not be so energized right before bed.

Stress management is a huge one. So of course we talk about addressing underlying cause with any condition that we’re treating.

But oftentimes when we’re when we are dealing with insomnia or something like that, there’s a big stress component.

And so as Dr. Heussner mentioned, Typically, before bad isn’t the time to listen to a great crime podcast or do something that can that can feel a little bit stressful.

We wanna work on those restful brain waves, those rest and relaxation, arm of the nervous system.

And so I love meditation. I love deep breathing. Dr. Heussner also just mentioned yoga.

That’s another personal favorite of mine. And then another strategy. So, avoiding alcohol and nicotine, especially before bed.

I have a lot of people talk to me about how a glass of wine at night can help them fall asleep and help them wind down.

And while in might feel like it helps you fall asleep and initially when you when you drink alcohol it actually lowers your body temperature and then that’s only temporary so it can go back up again and then sometimes that increased wakes us up so that disrupts that rhythm that we’re talking about here.

Which is why in the morning, even though it might have felt like you fell asleep quicker, you probably won’t feel like you’re waking rested.

Along with the stress management, it’s important to have an environment that feels conducive to sleep.

So I always tell people to make their bedroom really lovely and nourishing. You can get a candle.

And blackout curtains are really lovely. If you know that there’s a lot of light coming into your room.

I love to talk to people about non-toxic betting that feels really comfortable and we’re not getting any other exposures there.

And also going to bed earlier. So we research has actually demonstrated that the hours before midnight are actually the most restorative.

So sometimes it might be that the duration of sleep is okay but you’re still not feeling totally rusted when you wake up and sometimes just shifting that a little bit earlier going to bad at 9 or 9 30 or even 10 can actually help you.

With the same amount of hours feel a little bit more invigorated when you wake up.

Okay, testing. So it’s important for testing at least from our point of view because number one we want to rule out sleep app yeah like I was saying before it’s a huge risk factor for Alzheimer’s and dementia, you’re decreasing the amount of oxygen that’s getting to the brain.

So the gold standard for any kind of sleep testing is still PSG or polysomography, which is when you’re going into some type of sleep laboratory or sleep center, if they’re monitoring different parameters such as your brainwaves, eye movements, muscle activities, your heart rhythm, breathing patterns, oxygen levels of course, and they can even look at your limb movement.

So that one is the most intense one, obviously, but that is the gold standard because you’re getting a lot of information from that.

But we can use some new advancements in technology for at home testing. They’re more affordable.

They’re way more convenient for a lot of people. So these are great options. For people if they wanna just track for them.

They’re not necessarily diagnostic because we’re not seeing all components of sleep like in that PSG, but they’re going to be the good for tracking just your own biometrics over time.

So we like the watch pat this one it has a wrist sensor, it has oxygen saturation on the finger and then it also has a chest sensor and so it’s looking at again those different parameters like your oxygenation, your heart rate.

I think that one also is looking at your sleep position. Sleep images similar a pole socks is just again it’s one of those things that you put on your finger when you go to the doctor and they’re looking at your polls, but they’re also looking at the oxygenation of your red blood cells.

So it’s telling us how many oxygen molecules are actually being cared, carried in the red blood cells and we care about that because it’s telling us how oxygenated your blood is.

So, again, like Dr. Tarquini and I were saying before, we want it to be close to the same oxygenation that you’re getting during throughout the day.

Which is about 96 to a hundred percent oxygenation. The or in the Garmin, those are the new fancy ones.

I have mine on. That one connects to an app, it uses Bluetooth and it’s going to be looking at it’s going to give you a sleep score and it’s looking at how many hours total you got of sleep.

It’s looking at how many hours you got in REM or in deep sleep. And it’s it can then score based off of that and it also takes into account like your HRV and your readiness.

It does. I believe look at your oxygenation as well but probably not as accurate as the ones that go on the finger or the other sensors.

That we discuss like the watch pat. The nice thing about the or in the Garmin though is that we’re looking at a trend.

So you’re looking at a score that they’re they’re creating off different data points. And we’re not trying to look at that as just that one score that we need to get to a hundred.

But more is a trend. So it’s nice for patients to try out different techniques to their sleep hygiene or adding in a different supplement and then see how their sleep score is affected by that.

Again, it’s not perfect and it’s going to be based on different parameters and It’s all gonna be based on.

How you interpret those results. So again, it’s looking at the trend. So don’t, take everything with a grain of salt is what I’m trying to say here with that.

And then lastly, just to reiterate the nighttime oxidation is very important. So number one thing we want to do is rule in or out that sleep appia.

Okay, our favorite supplements. Before we go into this, we would be remiss if we didn’t say, please always check with your doctor or health care provider before adding in any new supplements.

The reason is that supplements can interact with other things. You’re taking like medications or even other supplements or herbs.

And so it’s just always good to make sure that you’re in the clear before starting any of these things, especially when they affect sleep.

Cause as we know, it affects sleep effects so many different aspects of our life. But the first supplement that is very common, you’ll hear talked about in all the sleep circles is melatonin and that’s because melatonin is that chemical that actually is responsible for regulating our sleep wake cycle, our circadian rhythm as you’ve heard us mention a couple times.

So in the day when you wake up and your eyes are exposed to morning sunlight your body produces serotonin which helps us have energy and feel really good and robust for our day and then in the evening that lack of sunlight helps our body take that serotonin and convert it into melatonin.

And melatonin is what we associate with helping us fall asleep. So this can be really helpful if you’re someone who travels a lot and you have a lot of jet lag or you’re kind of jumping time zones or if you do shift work because often times our circadian rhythm can get a little bit out of whack when that happens.

The next supplement that we have here is magnesium. So my museum, our beloved, mineral, it’s utilized in over 300 different enzymatic processes in the body and actually there’s many different forms of magnesium.

If you’ve ever worked with any of us, you’ll hear us talk about how we like to use specific forms of magnesium for specific areas of your body.

But largely, magnesium is a relaxing mineral, so it helps us kind of calm down in terms of our heart, our mind, our muscles.

And so for that reason, because it’s so good at relaxing, it’s really nice to have in the evening time.

And I typically think of magnesium as helping us sleep through the night. So rather than sleep onset like melatonin, this is helping us stay asleep throughout the night.

And then also Valerian. So sometimes you’ll actually see these a couple of these. Compounds actually in together in the same product.

And so usually when you see like an herbal sleep support, you’ll notice Valerian is in there.

Valerian Roo is an herbal medicine that’s known for its ability to help. Kind of calm us down. It’s a sedative.

It’s what’s known as an Irvine, which means that it has ability to help our nervous system.

So it kind of helps us tone down that stimulated anxious quality so that we’re able to move into the parasympathetic rest and digest state that Dr.

Husner has been talking about.

I love Alfie and Ian so I’m glad that I get to pick up here. I take this sometimes as a supple, but also sometimes fun fact I like to put this in my coffee.

So this is a component that’s naturally found in green tea. It’s very calming. That’s why when you drink green tea when you drink matcha you don’t get so jittery.

But with coffee they it doesn’t have that so I like to always just make that little connection there and then of course you can take it at night to also get that coming.

Sedative effect of it. The the GABA we’ve talked about before this is our common neurotransmitter.

I love this as well. You can take it as a supplement. We talked about before how progesterone can increase GABA.

So optimizing hormones, especially that in post menopausal women, we’re mostly going to be focusing on progesterone there for sleep since projection itself doesn’t have a sedative effect it’s more of increasing that GABA.

And then going back up to phosphopatal ceremon. This helps to, it helps with stress because what it’s doing is it’s helping to metabolize cortisol better so break down cortisol throughout the night when we don’t want those spikes.

So going back to the circadian rhythm and those people who might have. Cortisol increasing throughout the night or earlier than it should be and into the night versus in the morning.

This is a really wonderful nutrient to help break that down. And clear that so that we can restore a normal circadian rhythm.

But again, we always want to check with your doctor, healthcare provider, before adding in any new relevance.

And that’s it.

Yeah. Here’s our summary slide. Sleep quality sleep is really foundational to all aspects of your health.

Your nervous system, your immune system, your hormone system, your metabolic, your blood sugar, and even your about your ability to repair muscles and and so if you’re someone who does a lot of activity during the day that’s when your body helps kind of clear that that lactic acid and things like that that can build up.

And we do see because sleep is so foundational to so many aspects of our health, Alzheimer’s disease and climate of our health.

Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline or dementia are associated with poor sleep quality and duration and this is a bidirectional relationship so when you get less sleep it certainly I know that when I get one night of less than 8 h of sleep I can feel it and so it it’s a bit of a bi-directional relationship there.

In that they sort of forget one another. Best practices, prevention is always key, so we love to regulate your circadian rhythm with stress.

Management, getting morning, sun exposure, and then always addressing the rest of your body in any underlying imbalance because that’s of course going to help sleep fall right into place.

And then getting any airway, sleep apnea or reduced oxygenation, and check because that’s huge.

I think I froze for a moment. I’m sorry. Okay. Does anyone have any questions?

Let me check the QA.

What time of the day do you recommend taking the pants? Okay, so Fasil, Cyrene, we like to say around 30 min prior to sleep.

So similar to when you take like a melatonin or magnesium.

Hmm. We have another question here. What is our number one recommended supplement? That’s a million dollar question, right?

Cool.

You know, as a true, not about the doctor, I have to say I don’t have one recommend the supplement because it totally depends on what’s going on with the individual, right, and why they’re not sleeping.

For instance, someone might feel tired and wired, in which case it might be that there’s too much cortisol or not enough cord is all during the day.

Someone else might be having too much light exposure in the bedroom like LED lights from like an alarm clock or any any plug in device and so if that’s the case then I always tell people they can duct tape over those devices or invest in an eye mask or something like that.

So. It’s hard to say once. I don’t know. Dr.

Houstoner, do you have a number one?

Yeah. I recommend fossil title serene a lot. We just got a question how much possible.

It’s around. Is it a thousand milligrams? I can’t remember if it’s a hundred or a thousand.

I’m trying to imagine the bottle. I can quickly let that out. But can you look that up actually for me?

Okay.

Thank you. I often recommending the positive story because a lot of people are distressed and they I can tell have cortisolis regulation and we’re often testing cortisol especially in morning cortisol for some patients we’re actually doing a 4 point cortisol throughout the day where we can look at the trend of it.

So that’s typically one of the more common ones I’m recommending, but like Dr. Tarquini was saying again it depends on the person depends on the cause if this is someone who’s a night shift worker I’m might be trying to get them to take some melatonin to get that, and then back in check.

If they have a lot of muscle aches or they are a woman with heavy menstrual periods and cramping, then I’m going to try to get them on more magnesium.

So I would say first fossil fetal syringes because everyone’s stressed and then from there and just depending on what else is going on.

Okay.

And you are right, Dr. H, and it is a thousand milligrams. So one gram is the dope and cap of the hospital.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah.

Good questions, guys. Anything else?

Let me check.

We are gonna have this recording sent out to everyone via email. Just gonna look up with that if you want to rewatch any of it.

That’ll be sent out tomorrow.

Okay.

Really?

Okay.

What is?

So exactly what is the Garmin? Sorry, you can go Dr.

Oh, Garmin, so I don’t know. Maybe I’m dating myself.

At GPS.

The Garmin used to be that directional navigation assistance, right? Yeah, the, yes.

So, now they have iterations where it’s like a wearable device that tracks your activity.

And just like the orring, it can track your sleep. So it tells you if you’re moving throughout the night or if it can detect that you’re waking up.

So it kind of gives you a just like the, it gives you a, kind of like a readout of how much time you’re in deep sleep versus REM sleep, etc.

We got another question about, we spoke a lot about posts on a puzzle, females, and what about androposal nails with insomnia. So that’s a great question.

If you go back, we do talk about hormones, testosterone is one of the hormones that can affect sleep as well.

So looking at testosterone levels, sometimes suboptimal testosterone, but there’s also could be some other things going on here.

Blood sugar, cortisol, and everything. So we want to do a full workout, but definitely looking at the male types of hormones.

DHA is also another one that’s produced from the adrenal glands and it’s in androgen so it is a male pattern hormone.

Sometimes that can also be extremely low as we get older and adding a little bit of DJ is good for mood, it helps save these energy libido and then sleep at night.

Yeah.

We have a lot of receptors for hormones in our brain. So, it’s really important to make sure that your hormones are optimized.

I would say throughout your whole life.

Okay, we’ll give it another minute or so. See you if anyone can come up with some questions.

But I do wanna thank everyone for coming tonight and for. Supporting us and then also just being interested in sleep and brain health.

Questions.

Okay, Dr. Tarquini, do you have any closing remarks?

Okay.

No, I just I would just reiterate what Dr. Heussner said. Thank you all for being here with us and listening to us talk about how much we love sleep and what you in sleeping.

Maybe you can even try out one of these techniques tonight and let us know how it goes. And stay tuned because if you guys have any, techniques tonight and let us know how it goes.

And stay tuned because if you guys have any, also thoughts about future things that we can discuss, we would love to talk about them with you.

So, we’re here for you and I hope you get an amazing night’s sleep.

Thank you all.