[Music] [Music] hi i'm dr christina connolly and welcome again to our mcps video series waymaking our goal is to help families make their way through many of the emotional challenges that we are faced with today i have with me today mr jeff backer who is a licensed counselor or therapist with the mcps employee assistance program or what we call eap he is here to discuss a big topic that is on most people's minds during a pandemic sleep thank you for joining us today well thanks so much for having me christina absolutely so let's get started
so my first question is so people around the world are sharing that are either having trouble sleeping or sleeping too much during the pandemic what are some of the signs that they are having difficulty with their sleep patterns yeah so let me start off by saying uh adding a few things ahead of that so i don't know if you got to see the posts in the local living section there was an article about wuhan china and in it was a research piece they looked at um 2600 residents there to see how they're doing and what
they found out in speaking to them is uh insomnia is way on the rise with that group and the reason they're having insomnia is all the reasons you might think that they're having an increase in anxiety and depression they're worried about catching the virus they're worried about financial issues so it's the same thing we would work about worry about here in montgomery county same stuff um so i wanted to start off by saying that and just say a few brief things just about sleep okay and the importance of sleep we spend one third of our
lives sleeping so um sleeping and working are the two main things that we do and sleep is super important because a lot of healing and repair takes place at night okay our brains get get rid of toxins our bodies are are getting fixed up and uh there's a cost to not sleeping and some of the costs are higher risks for uh diabetes type 2 diabetes obesity depression and high blood pressure for instance a problem in this country is that prior to the pandemic there were already a large number of people with sleeping disorders so according
to the american sleep association 50 to 70 million people already have a sleeping disorder another 20 million have intermittent sleeping disorders so now we have this thing laid on top of what we already had okay so with that in mind let's talk about uh what are the signs of difficulty sleeping and problem sleeping so if you think about sleep there's different layers of problems so there's problems during sleep and then there's problems when you're awake okay so if you think about going to bed so you lie down so the first level of problem is problems
falling asleep so if you are if it takes you more than 30 minutes most of the time that's considered a problem okay um then let's say once you're asleep everyone wakes up a little bit you know but if you find that all of a sudden you're waking up and you're up for hours okay so that's a problem if you're up for hours i think what's going on is people are getting all stirred up because there's so much going on people are anxious about so much stuff you know school is kind of off than usual all
routines are off uh people don't know what's happening this summer camps are not open you know no one wants knows how to go on vacation you know some people have financial problems now so everything is um off right now and then at the tail end of sleep you might be waking up too early and again your mind is all stirred up so you can't go back to sleep so those are where the sleep is part of it and then you wake up and that's what your sleep was like so now your day starts and you
may find these are common things everyone would kind of be aware of everyone's a little different you could be more irritable you could be more anxious you could start actually becoming depressed or getting an anxiety disorder you could be sleepy even though you're lying in bed for seven eight hours because the quality of your sleep is no longer good you also could have difficulty concentrating at work and you also may find that you need caffeine and other kind of things to get through the day so those are a lot of signs of of a general
sleep kind of disorder more specifically if you are having loud snoring or uh gasping noises at night that could be an indication of sleep apnea which is another frequent sleep disorder if you're having an irresistible urge to move your legs that's restless leg syndrome and that's another sign but mostly what we talk about when people say they can't sleep they usually talk about insomnia i think so those are some signs of difficult sleeping those aren't all the signs but that's a good range of them all right thank you sure i think it definitely helps to
clarify you know some of the unique issues that happen within sleep it's not all just one type of sleep issue but there are multiple things that can occur for individuals to help them to be aware of that and so then my next question is so if people are listening to this and thinking like well that sounds like me um so then what are um some strategies that people can follow that get help so they can sleep better yeah and and i'm sure everybody tries their best so um to sleep better this category is called uh
sleep hygiene that's what you call it sleep hygiene it's a funny funny phrase and if you think of sleep hygiene um you could divide this up too in categories of what do you do during the day what do you do right before bed and what do you do when you hit the pillow okay so those are the things you're you are trying to um get things done so you can sleep better so let's go start with during the day so during the day things that help are exercise um trying to get exposure to daylight so
going out and taking those walks which is like the only thing anyone can seem to do right now you know again even though the sun's not out it'll be out someday you know it's been very cloudy recently um so getting out and taking walks um avoiding daytime napping so this is a tricky issue okay because we have a natural what's called the circadian rhythm that's our internal 24-hour clock going on um and it has a natural dip in the middle from 1 to 3 p.m so many people feel like oh man i could take a
nap like it's 1 30 time to snooze now if you don't work you can't usually do that but it's um it's okay to do that okay so that's an okay thing to do in terms of helping you um what what you should avoid doing which is um naps at 10 a.m naps around dinner time these things mess up your sleep so you really don't want to do that if you want to have good sleep you also want to generally have practice of relaxation and stress management stuff going on in your life i think you want
to keep your baseline kind of level and not so it's elevating all day long because you're worried about everything which you could if you let your mind run with it there's a lot to be nervous about right now but you want to bring the baseline down so by time you get to evening you're not in a frenzy or lying there wondering how you're going to get through tomorrow you know so so those are some of the daytime things uh in terms of pre-bed stuff uh what you want to do is the goal is to calm
the mind down okay so you certainly don't want uh late day caffeine caffeine or nicotine it doesn't help you actually want to avoid drinking alcohol so this is a funny one because many people feel like you know well if i have a drink i'm going to be calm and i'll help you go to sleep right that's usual stuff you know but it sort of works backwards because the alcohol uh interferes with rem sleep is which is when you recover and uh alcohol drinks metabolized at one drink per hour so when it's done metabolizing you sort
of it can wake you up you know so you have to watch uh taking in alcohol at that time you want to do things that relax you before bedtime that's a wide range some people like to read um reading's a little tricky now because many people read on devices you know you're on your kindle you're on your ipad but uh i don't know that that interferes with everybody if that's what you're reading you know because there's advice to not expose yourself to light before bed you know but you know if reading the kindle works for
you it's not a problem you some people do a little meditation thing a little prayer thing before bed try to get centered and get the brain calm and not be sitting there uh fretting about everything that's going to make you nervous you also want to restrict nighttime liquids so you don't have to get up too much at night and go to the bathroom things like that so it's just a practical kind of thing to do and then once you hit the bed there's a couple of things to be uh mindful of i think what's happened
in the world right now is our routines are off you know so what you really want to have is make sure you have a routine once again so this is our pandemic routine of uh you know have a regular time that you go to bed and wake up and we're talking seven days a week especially if you haven't sleeping problems you know don't there's not much to do on the weekend now anyway you know so it's a little easier to keep the monday through friday schedule going all week um so that would be a good
thing to do then some core things to do have to do with how the bedroom is so you want the bedroom to be quiet cool and dark so by cool usually 60 to 67 degrees works for most people because to go to sleep the body has to cool down you know if you're having trouble cooling down you have trouble sleeping all right um now in addition to those things there are things you can take over the counter in herbal remedies that are available that you could try to take um some things like a valerian root
chamomile lavender melatonin um the usual tylenol pn the only thing i would say about that stuff is um read the labels carefully and if you're taking medicine please check with your doctor to make sure there's not going to be some kind of funny interaction with that and the final piece is to actually call your doctor if nothing is working you know if you you're not sleeping for a couple of weeks you're gonna feel terrible so it's um you know at this point it'll be a telehealth consult for that kind of thing you could do it
from home you should call your doctor and at least run the symptoms by and see what the doctor says and those are the main things to do all right well thank you jeff you know i really appreciate you know all the suggestions um that you've provided i know for me i was listening like okay yeah i could do that oh yeah you know i noticed that because i try to get off my phone before i go to bed because the the glare and stuff you know even if it's like playing like a game or something
like no or trying to get my daughter and i back to our normal sleep routine because because we're you know up and you know school is at home it's like oh well you know all of a sudden i'm looking like it's midnight wait no it's throwing us off like i gotta get back like okay we gotta go back upstairs and start going to bed at nine o'clock not at midnight so let's you know because it's impacting things so what can we do to try to get back on our normal schedule because like you said our
circadian rhythms are off because we're working from home and we don't have our normal schedule like you get up at six you get yourself dressed you know now it's like what's the new normal schedule right right so and trying to figure out what that is um for all of us so absolutely so great thank you so then my last question is so what are some community resources that are available to people who need help with their sleep yeah so i'm going to actually look at something here i have a little list in front of me
to distress so one thing is you know one of good sources for information to start with so uh some of these things are online but the good resources are uh national institute of health national sleep foundation american sleep apnea association american sleep association um the mcps wellness program uh which lisa cooperstein the wellness coordinator has that's the public information and and she has a nice video collection with a lot of recent information on sleep so that's a really good resource there are apps and um podcasts to listen to for calming down kind of stuff apps
like bootify headspace calm mind shift podcasts like meditation break three minute hypnosis my meditation station etc um again if things aren't working for you then you contact your primary care physician or whatever doctor you're going to maybe talk to them about a sleep study that kind of thing um and if it's being driven by anxiety or depression you can also maybe speak to a mental health provider whether it's a psychiatrist psychologist clinical social worker stuff like that or if you happen to you know if you work for mcps you can call the eap if you
don't work for mcps you may also have an eap if you're working with montgomery county government or montgomery college they all have eaps if you work for large companies so that could be a good starting point for anybody so so those are the main resources i would say okay thank you so at least that'll get people started yeah on their pathway of trying to get a good night's sleep yeah who doesn't want a good night's sleep that's right right we all want a good night's sleep that's right yeah all right all right so so jeff
i want to thank you for spending time with us today and we always want to thank our viewers for joining us for waymaking to send us additional questions and topics to discuss on the show please visit the link on your screen also please visit our waymaking playlist on youtube for additional videos that we have within our library and please join us next time on mcps [Music] waymaking [Music] you
