Tag: sleep

How to Sleep Better: Prescriptions From Your Psychiatrist

I will talk about sedative and hypnotic medications in future videos, but I want to start a discussion on sleep with sleep hygiene. I recommend all my patients start here and follow this process at least 90% of the time prior to talking about medication. I find most patients are not doing these things and if they are it’s not consistent enough to see a noticeable improvement. 

  1. Stick to a routine by waking up at approximately the same time each day. Do this for seven days, and do not alter the time on weekends. This will help you gradually set your internal clock. You have more control over your wake times than your sleep time as you may not feel tired. Try to avoid taking a nap during the day even on nights where you do not get much sleep.
  2. Avoid all caffeine after 12 PM, the effects of caffeine are long lasting and can interrupt sleep. If you can completely stop caffeine that would be best, but at the very least minimize consumption before 12 PM. 
  3. Try to exercise daily (seven days per week), preferably early in the day and not too close to bedtime. Start with 15 minutes per day and gradually work your way up. A combination of resistance training and cardiovascular training is best.
  4. Stop doing active mental work at least one hour before bed. 
  5. Avoid watching TV, using a phone, laptop, or tablet before bed. The blue light from screens has been shown to worsen sleep. The bed should be used for sleep and sex only. 
  6. Create a bedtime ritual to follow every night before bed, warm bath, mindfulness exercise, gratitude journal, reading, or listening to music. 
  7. Do not use alcohol as a way to promote sleep. Alcohol negatively impacts sleep architecture and the sleep you do get will be unsatisfying. 
  8. The bedroom should be dark, quiet, and the temperature should be cool but not cold around 65 degrees is ideal. Consider blackout curtains, a fan to cool the room, and ear plugs to facilitate these conditions. 
  9. Restrict Food and drink 2-3 hours prior to bedtime. This will reduce the chances of sleep being interrupted to use the bathroom.
  10. If you have any pain, take appropriate pain medications prior to bed. 
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Election Anxiety Solutions

Anxiety is a part of life; we all experience it. The amount of anxiety a person experiences is to some degree related to how important a particular outcome is to that person. It seems like everything these days is high stakes and anxiety provoking. There is a global pandemic that continues to create chaos around the world, economic uncertainty, gender and racial inequality, and now a presidential election.

People are more anxious than ever about this presidential election. According to a recent article by the American Psychological Association 68% of U.S. adults say the 2020 U.S. presidential election is a significant source of stress. This is compared to the 2016 election where 52% of U.S. adults found the election stressful. It might just be a symptom of the times, but it remains a significant concern. If you are having election anxiety here are some simple ways to reduce stress and anxiety during this election cycle. 

  1. Make sure you are getting enough sleep. Set a regular sleep time and wake time. Make sure the room you sleep in is as conducive to sleep as possible (e.g. dark room with no ambient light). Limit the bed to sleep and sex only, do not play games on your phone or read in bed. If you can’t sleep get out of the bed and do a mildly strenuous activity. A good example is a crossword puzzle, then come back to bed when you feel tired. If you are not sleeping well it can cause problems in other areas of life such as mood and cognitive function. 
  2. Get outside or stay inside whichever you prefer, but make sure to move. Exercise is a great way to cope with stress and anxiety. There are countless free guided exercise routines on sites like YouTube that require little or no equipment to perform. If you do not like that option, take a walk in your favorite park, take a bike ride, or go for a hike on your favorite trail. 
  3. Limit your consumption of news throughout the day. Set aside one or two times per day to check the news and see what is going on with the election. Resist the urge to continually check in and get play by play updates. This simple, but difficult to follow advice will save you a lot of stress and anxiety. 
  4. Avoid talking to people in your life about the election who are unable to keep their emotions under control while discussing the topic. You should have a good idea of who these people are in your life. This will save you a lot of stress and anxiety by simply choosing to talk about other topics with those individuals.
  5. The last thing I recommend for people who want an activity they can perform to reduce stress is a thought journal . This can be as simple as a piece of paper that you record the thoughts on. There are printable versions of this online. I will provide a link to one such example here. This is a common technique used in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) all the time.

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Diagnosis Depression: Sleep Dysregulation

One of the most common symptoms found in multiple psychiatric disorders is sleep disturbance. In fact, sleep disturbance is one of the criteria for the diagnosis of major depression. This post will offer an explanation of some of the changes observed in the sleep patterns of depressed patients.

Much of this information comes from sleep studies in patients who have a diagnosis of major depressive disorder. Without getting too technical there are two primary types of sleep, non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM) and rapid eye movement sleep (REM). The NREM sleep can be broken down further but for the sake of simplicity we will consider these two categories. 

What we notice in sleep studies of patients who suffer from major depression is a much faster onset of REM sleep. The body usually cycles through these stages 4-6 times throughout the night, averaging 90 minutes in each stage. As the night progress NREM sleep decreases and REM sleep increases. A person with normal sleep architecture will enter REM after 90 minutes, in patients with depression this time period is shorter and can be observed on the sleep study results.

Other changes include decrease NREM sleep which can be thought of as restorative sleep. Increased REM density reduced total sleep time, and decreased sleep continuity are also present. 

Any single change in sleep architecture is not diagnostic of major depression. However, taken together decreased onset to REM, increased REM density, and decrease sleep efficiency can separate patients with major depression from a control group. 

Given all of this information, routine sleep studies are not diagnostic for major depression and are not routinely ordered unless you suspect another sleep disorder. 

Hopefully this provides a basis for why questions about sleep in depressed patients are important. The sleep changes also provide some objective evidence of altered sleeping patterns in patients with depression. 

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