Why We Can’t Sleep (And What Actually Works) with Morgan Adams

Dustin Grinnell (00:00:00 --> 00:00:02)
I'm Dustin Grinnell, and this is Curiously.

Morgan Adams (00:00:04 --> 00:00:16)
I think people sometimes think there's something fancy or complicated or some kind of expensive device technology that's going to solve their problems.

Morgan Adams (00:00:17 --> 00:00:23)
So they do look at me sometimes with a certain degree of skepticism when I talk about getting the morning light.

Morgan Adams (00:00:23 --> 00:00:39)
9 times out of 10, they are reporting, okay, yeah, I'm doing better. What they notice first, Dustin, tends to be their mood is better, their energy is better, and sleep starts getting better usually pretty soon.

Morgan Adams (00:00:39 --> 00:00:44)
But I feel like, at least in my experience with my clients, that the mood and energy picks up faster.

Morgan Adams (00:00:44 --> 00:00:47)
That's a win because they're wanting that too.

Morgan Adams (00:00:47 --> 00:00:58)
They're wanting a better mood and more energy during the day. I think when I'm recommending to people like where they should start, if they could only do one thing, that's the thing to, to try to do.

Morgan Adams (00:00:59 --> 00:01:24)
And what I love about it is it's accessible to most people, it's free, And, you know, again, starting with the basics, I think, is critical with any kind of health optimization, you know, plan. I mean, I love my gadgets, don't get me wrong, but without those fundamental practices in place, those gadgets aren't going to work as well. So really kind of think about—

Morgan Adams (00:01:24 --> 00:01:36)
I kind of have this phrase, the basics before the biohacks. You know, let's get— let's really dial in the basics and then weave in these other interventions if you want more sleep optimization.

Dustin Grinnell (00:01:38 --> 00:02:43)
Doctor after doctor gave her the same advice: just relax, go to bed earlier. But it wasn't until she dug into the science of sleep herself that things started to change. After two breast cancer diagnoses forced her to take her health seriously, Morgan became a holistic sleep coach and created her Sleep Easy Method. Now she helps people escape the insomnia trap and finally sleep well again. Most of us already know the basics about getting good sleep: creating a bedtime routine, avoiding screens, keep our room cool, steering clear of caffeine or heavy meals late in the day, and so on.

And yet 1 in 8 Americans has chronic insomnia, and over half report frequent sleep difficulties. So what's the disconnect? In this conversation, I explore that very question with Morgan. Together, we dig into what's really getting in the way of good sleep, the misconceptions that keep us stuck, and the practical, sustainable solutions that actually work. I hope you enjoy.

Dustin Grinnell (00:02:44 --> 00:02:46)
Morgan Adams, welcome to the show.

Morgan Adams (00:02:47 --> 00:02:50)
Thank you. It's great to be here with you, Dustin. Appreciate it.

Dustin Grinnell (00:02:50 --> 00:03:34)
So, uh, a lot of people, I think, know the fundamentals of good sleep. They know creating a regular bedtime routine, limiting screens in bed, keeping the bedroom cool. And I assume that everybody who will listen to this is smart and probably well-informed, and they generally want to sleep better, but they still might be struggling. And I wanted to start off the conversation by kind of asking, from your experience, what's really behind the gap between knowing how to sleep better and actually sleeping better and getting results? Is it like truly a lack of knowledge or a lack of willpower, or are there deeper factors at play?

Morgan Adams (00:03:35 --> 00:04:01)
Hmm, that's a great question. I think there's a multitude of answers for that. So I think, um, at this point in the game, most people have the basics of sleep hygiene. I mean, I'm coming at this from, you know, my client base are people who have insomnia, and they've typically exhausted all of the sleep hygiene. So like, I can kind of speak from my experience working with that particular population.

Morgan Adams (00:04:02 --> 00:04:17)
I do think that like among the general population, there are certain things that people do understand about sleep hygiene, but some things get overlooked. And I think that there's just I don't know, like there is, there is somewhat of a gap.

Morgan Adams (00:04:17 --> 00:05:03)
I think that there's sometimes information disseminated to the public that is actually not very helpful or not very accurate. One of the things that comes to mind immediately is this whole concept of 8 hours of sleep. People are kind of drilled in this message that 8 hours is like some kind of magic number. And I think the reason why people are so attached to this 8 hours is because The National Sleep Foundation recommends 7 to 9 hours of sleep for an adult 18 to 64. So I think 8 comes in the middle. When you look at the fine print of the National Sleep Foundation's sleep recommendations, you see that, you know, 6 hours up to 10 could be appropriate for certain people.

Morgan Adams (00:05:04 --> 00:05:06)
So I think people miss that part.

Morgan Adams (00:05:06 --> 00:06:20)
And I think what happens is there's a lot of, um, stress and pressure for some people to meet that 8 hours. And I kind of understand why they're kind of putting these guidelines on sleep hours or sleep duration rather. And I think it's because they want to overshoot a little bit to make up for the people who are really kind of burning the candle at both ends, who are like, yeah, 5 hours, no big deal, I'm totally fine. So The reality is, is that everyone has their own sleep need. Like, not everyone is going to need 8 hours. Some people might need a little more. Some people might need a little less. And I think that that message, that public health message of the sleep duration, I think needs to be a little bit tweaked or changed. And I think it's starting to, because what we're finding is that the consistency piece of sleep is actually more indicative of health outcomes than the duration. And that's like a whole other thread. But I really do feel like a lot of people are misguided into thinking 8 hours is some kind of magical number that like they're going to be just completely golden if they meet that number.

Dustin Grinnell (00:06:20 --> 00:06:25)
Yeah, I think it's like a saying of the boomer generation, like, get your 8 hours.

Morgan Adams (00:06:25 --> 00:06:26)
Yeah, yeah.

Dustin Grinnell (00:06:26 --> 00:06:43)
If there's that range, how do we know which is best for us? Because, you know, I know some people can get 5 hours of sleep. And be rock and roll in the morning, and some people need 8 to 9. Is it genetics? Is it lifestyle factors? How do we, like, know our sleep need?

Morgan Adams (00:06:43 --> 00:06:56)
Yeah, there's a multitude of factors. There is some degree of genetic predisposition. Now, I will say that, you know, for the people who are saying, I'm doing great with 5 hours, I will—

Morgan Adams (00:06:56 --> 00:06:57)
I would question that.

Morgan Adams (00:06:57 --> 00:07:18)
And basically, probably 1% of the population has the genetics for what we call short sleeping. Short sleepers, and that they actually are adequately replenished by that 5 hours of sleep. Most people are going to need, I would say, safely 6.5 to 7.

Morgan Adams (00:07:19 --> 00:07:21)
So what you can do—

Morgan Adams (00:07:21 --> 00:08:32)
this is an interesting experiment for people who have the time to do this and the willingness to do it— is take a week out of your life where maybe you don't have any obligations. Like, maybe it's a vacation week. And go to bed and wake up at just sort of the time that feels normal for you. Like, just kind of don't put any parameters on it. Sleep as late as you want.

And then take like the first or the last 4 days and average the amount of hours you slept for that last 4 days. That's roughly probably your sleep need. And the reason why we're not looking at really the first 3 days is because you could potentially be a little bit sleep deprived. And so you're getting some catch-up sleep. So those first 3 days might be including a little bit bit more sleep to make up for that sleep, that accumulated sleep debt.

Dustin Grinnell (00:08:33 --> 00:08:37)
Okay. So that's the hygiene sleep schedule piece of it.

Morgan Adams (00:08:37 --> 00:08:57)
Yeah, that's, that's really, you know, the scheduling piece is something that I mentioned earlier. It's just, I think it's going to become more part of our sleep vernacular and in terms of like sleep health messaging from a public health standpoint, because there was a very, very big study a few years ago, like actually 2023.

Morgan Adams (00:08:58 --> 00:09:02)
So not long ago at all, where they looked at thousands of people.

Morgan Adams (00:09:02 --> 00:09:11)
And what they found was that the people who had the most regular sleep-wake cycles had the lowest risk of mortality and chronic disease.

Morgan Adams (00:09:12 --> 00:09:14)
So not to say that duration doesn't matter at all.

Morgan Adams (00:09:14 --> 00:10:10)
I mean, they do. In this study, they were sort of pointing to the fact that 6.5 hours is sort of like the minimum that you would want. But in essence, you would, you would be better off sleeping 6.5 hours with a really consistently tight schedule versus 8 hours that's kind of floppy and all over the place. So when I'm talking about consistency, I'm really talking about the same wake time and bedtime plus or minus 30 minutes. And the wake time is actually even more important than the going to bed time. And quite interestingly, if you have the same wake time every day, you're more likely to become sleepy around the same time each night. Because you're building up this chemical called adenosine in your brain, which is sort of like our sleepy chemical. And that needs to be released at a certain point. So just by virtue of that stable wake time, you're going to get sleepy around the same time.

Dustin Grinnell (00:10:11 --> 00:10:54)
Okay. I want to get more into some of those behaviors and habits a little bit later. One of the things I wanted to talk about earlier on is kind of like your story a little bit. And in doing some of my reading, listening to other appearances you've had, you talked about going through two cancer diagnoses and how that changed sleep from, you said, something optional to something that was foundational for you. And I wanted, if you can say a little bit more about what that experience was like, and what did you notice in your body that made you that made that shift so clear in your mind?

Morgan Adams (00:10:54 --> 00:11:21)
Yeah, well, I think for me, the cancer diagnosis did provoke a little bit of a sleep disruption in the beginning. When I first got diagnosed the first time, I had sort of like, I guess, acute insomnia, not, not, not in the way that I needed to like get help for it. I mean, previously, I'd had chronic insomnia, which was like a whole separate issue many years ago.

Morgan Adams (00:11:21 --> 00:11:30)
Um, but really, you know, the, the breast cancer experience, um, it didn't so much change my sleep, Dustin.

Morgan Adams (00:11:30 --> 00:12:05)
It changed really my viewpoint on what I wanted to do professionally with my life moving forward. The diagnosis really was a wake-up call to pay attention to my own health, and it was also a wake-up call to really think about what I wanted to do in the last half of my life as far as like a job. And what I really understood was that sleep was such a crucial health aspect that so many people were struggling with.

Morgan Adams (00:12:05 --> 00:12:09)
And I had kind of, I think, cracked the code on getting better sleep.

Morgan Adams (00:12:09 --> 00:12:15)
You know, during the pandemic, I had a little bit of a rumble with sleep and I was able to fix that pretty quickly.

Morgan Adams (00:12:15 --> 00:12:21)
So I've been able to really, you know, do the research on sleep and apply it to myself. And I thought, you know, I really—

Morgan Adams (00:12:21 --> 00:12:53)
I just want to help women have better health overall. And so many women are struggling with their sleep. And that's really kind of how this whole thing took off. It was more of like a pain-to-purpose type of story. And I think what you'll find and what you've probably found from interviewing a lot of people in the space of health coaching is that they've had their own health struggles. And they've used those struggles as sort of a platform to help other people get, get, you know, their healing in order.

Dustin Grinnell (00:12:54 --> 00:13:20)
Sure, sure. I wanted to talk a little bit about like insomnia and like get some key terms defined a little bit. And in some of your materials, you talked about like, quote, retraining the brain to break the insomnia cycle. And I was wondering if you could just kind of walk me through what that cycle looks like? And at what point does normal, like, troubled sleeping turn into chronic insomnia?

Morgan Adams (00:13:20 --> 00:14:04)
Yeah, I think it's a really good place to start to get the foundational definition of insomnia on the table because I think there's, just in talking to a lot of people, there seems to be like a little bit of a confusion as to what it really is. So what insomnia is clinically as defined by the DSM It's trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up too early at least 3 days a week or more for 3 or more months, and also having some kind of daytime consequences of the poor sleep and also just feeling unsatisfied with their sleep. So 3 months is sort of the cutoff threshold for it to be chronic.

Morgan Adams (00:14:04 --> 00:14:09)
Anything under 3 is called acute. And quite frankly, you know, I've heard other—

Morgan Adams (00:14:09 --> 00:15:25)
I've heard sleep researchers talk about this 3-month, you know, that's officially chronic. Like, it doesn't make a lot of sense, like, to, like, define it by 3 months. But that's just what I think for coding and insurance purposes, we need to have some kind of, like, clear boundaries, you know, for the billing and whatnot. But I always, you know, urge people to not wait 3 months if they've got, like, really severe struggles with sleeping. Don't wait 3 months. Months. You know, you don't have to necessarily call a professional then at 2 weeks, but if it's, if it's going on for over a month or so, I think it's really important to, you know, look into it, get help, or do some research on it. I've talked to a lot of people who mistakenly think that insomnia only means having trouble falling asleep, because when I go over this definition with a lot of other podcast hosts, they're like, wait, I thought it was just having trouble falling asleep. So I, I actually have insomnia myself because they wake up at night, you know, and they're like, wow, I had no idea that I had insomnia. So I think it's a good thing to get the definition kind of clear for people who are not understanding.

Dustin Grinnell (00:15:25 --> 00:15:57)
This is probably like such a complicated question to untangle, but if you've got those three aspects of insomnia, What is the similarities and differences between their causes? And, you know, like, what's the sleep profile of someone who wakes up early but doesn't have trouble falling asleep, and vice versa? Or, you know, they're waking up in the middle of the night, but they have no problem waking up on time in the morning. Those are 3 different permutations. Yeah, some could have 2 or 1 and all 3.

Morgan Adams (00:15:57 --> 00:16:02)
Yeah, yeah, I see people who have 1 or all 3 mixed in together.

Morgan Adams (00:16:02 --> 00:16:30)
Now, this is a gross overgeneralization, but it was something that I was taught in a training that, that I kind of look at from a framework. It doesn't always ring true, but when we're thinking about trouble falling asleep, it's usually more of an issue of anxiety. That tends to be sort of the, the— if I had to generalize, that's sort of like the main presentation is anxious thoughts, ruminating thoughts, busy brain, can't shut it off.

Dustin Grinnell (00:16:30 --> 00:16:33)
That's sort of the profile.

Morgan Adams (00:16:33 --> 00:16:33)
Hyperarousal. Yeah.

Dustin Grinnell (00:16:33 --> 00:16:34)
Yeah.

Morgan Adams (00:16:34 --> 00:17:42)
Yeah. Okay. And then the middle of the night awakenings are really— they're interesting because they tend to be mainly— now, again, a generalization— they tend to mainly be rooted in more like physical or environmental reasons. So, I mean, there's, you know, I would venture to guess there's probably about 20 different reasons why people wake up in the middle of the night. And they vary from something as simple as this is a little bit mind-blowing, but sometimes when people wake up at like 2:20— I'm actually literally using a client example here. A client messaged me the other day, Morgan, for the past two nights I've woken up at 2:20 on the dot. And the first thing I said to her was, how did you know what time it was? And she said, well, I looked at the clock and I said, okay, From now on, clock is hidden from view, hidden from view. Because what happens is we often will perpetuate a behavioral loop with looking at the clock, and that kind of conditions our brain because our brains are smart.

Morgan Adams (00:17:42 --> 00:17:42)
They can—

Morgan Adams (00:17:42 --> 00:19:04)
And so you get caught in this loop of waking up at the same time. So if you stop looking at the clock, there's a high chance that you may break the cycle of waking up at the exact same time. Night after night after night. Now, that's not to say that's going to solve the whole issue, because a few days later she emailed me and was like, I woke up again. So, but, but so with her, you know, a great example of a very poignant example is she is 57, somewhere around late 50s, maybe close to 60.

And she's dealing with a lot of hormonal issues. And she's also dealing with what I'm suspecting might be a sleep breathing issue. And those tend to be quite common, both of those, um, obviously with women, the hormones, but sleep breathing issues in midlife and beyond for both genders can present an issue with the wakeups. So whenever a client is coming to me and they're having multiple wakeups, I'm really pushing for that sleep study to see if we can rule out the sleep breathing issues. Because that needs to be addressed pretty quickly.

Dustin Grinnell (00:19:04 --> 00:19:09)
Yeah, it's so they're having obstructive events potentially, and you want to find out how many.

Morgan Adams (00:19:09 --> 00:19:53)
Yeah, yeah, that's sort of out of my— like, I know some about sleep apnea, but it's a little bit out of my wheelhouse. That's really more for a doctor. But I really am very keen to screen those people or to have them get screened and to point them in the right direction. Other, I mean, there's other physical issues of wake-ups. One that's very common in my population is blood sugar dips. So that 3 AM wake-up can often be caused by someone having unstable blood sugar throughout the day that tracks into the night. So when you have that blood sugar dip in the middle of the night, it creates this little cortisol spike and wakes you up.

Dustin Grinnell (00:19:53 --> 00:20:03)
So that's another reason for the wake-ups. That can be preempted by more, what, stable— like not having as many spikes during the day?

Morgan Adams (00:20:03 --> 00:20:03)
Yeah.

Morgan Adams (00:20:03 --> 00:21:24)
I mean, not obsessively. I'm not like a nutritionist and tracking macros and that type of thing, but I'm, I'm looking to see that they're, you know, having protein at each meal, that they're having some healthy fat. They're not just like having oatmeal 3 times a day or like cake and cookies at 10:00 PM because those would cause the spikes. Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. So yeah, multiple reasons for the wake-ups. So working with clients, it's sort of a series of troubleshooting and coming up with different experiments that we may want to do. For example, with the blood sugar dip, sometimes I'll have people have a very small snack like an hour before bed. And that snack is a very small snack.

It's not like a sec— it's like a second dinner, but it's, you know, higher in protein. It has a little bit of fat, a little bit of complex carbs. To see if that can stave off the wake-up in the middle of the night. And sometimes it does. So then we know, okay, we have a deeper issue we need to look at, and that's really balancing your blood sugar from the moment you wake up all throughout the day and into the evening.

Dustin Grinnell (00:21:25 --> 00:21:35)
That's really interesting. And then also, not to belabor the point of waking up in the middle of the night, but you mentioned environment too, like probably heat is one.

Morgan Adams (00:21:35 --> 00:21:37)
Yeah, yeah. But the heat—

Morgan Adams (00:21:37 --> 00:22:51)
so a lot of my clients being women in midlife, their, their thermodynamics or their, their system for cooling their bodies is a little bit off because of that menopausal issue, the estrogen decline that helps women maintain their temperature stabilization. So quite often, and with men too, even though they're not menopausal, they're still often overheating. Quite often the culprit is a big thick comforter. So when clients are telling me they, they have a thick comforter that they sleep with, I usually say let's, let's potentially rethink the comforter and think about like a comforter or like a bed covering that has less bulk because that huge comforter just traps the heat so much. It's just very good at doing that. So lighter layers like cotton muslin kind of like bedspreads that are just thinner are often helpful when people are overheating. We also have to think about noises in the middle of the night, like random cat noises. You know, our cats, they're nocturnal creatures. We have to—

Dustin Grinnell (00:22:51 --> 00:22:52)
I know you have one.

Morgan Adams (00:22:52 --> 00:24:30)
Makes herself known. Yeah. And they're like, hey, I'm playing. It's 3 a.m., but what are you doing, Mom and Dad? So we've got those little critters, you know, wreaking havoc at night.

We've got sirens. I mean, all sorts of random house creaks. So one of the things that people can do is mask those noises with like a white noise machine or earplugs if they feel like those are good for them. I personally can't stand anything in my ear like that overnight, so that's like off the table. But then there's also light in our sleeping environment.

We really need to make sure that our sleep environment is pitch black, or as pitch black as we can get it. Because even just very innocuous street lamps from the outside, or even if the sun is rising early, we find that those can definitely create these little micro— micro-awakenings, which can sometimes lead to actually waking up and being cognizant of the fact that you're awake. So we, generally speaking, we want to think about our bedrooms like a cave, cool, dark, and quiet. So those are all things that, you know, I definitely look at with my clients. But quite frankly, they, they have almost mastered that art of their bedroom being like a cave because they've— they are so well attuned to the sleep hygiene and the bedroom setup.

Dustin Grinnell (00:24:30 --> 00:25:17)
I want to talk about this anxiety component a little bit more. I guess it's the first part of insomnia. It's, you know, getting to sleep and dealing with the anxious thoughts, the rumination. I know I've heard before people will say something like, it's almost like they develop a complex around sleeping. They have this like fear around bedtime when insomnia has gotten really bad. They say something like, what if I can't sleep again tonight? And then you get really kind of like nervous. And so I guess, how does that anxiety itself become the problem? And how do you kind of short circuit that issue and break the pattern?

Morgan Adams (00:25:17 --> 00:27:40)
Yeah, that's a huge issue with a lot of my clients. Called conditioned arousal. So basically, the bed has become this— the bed in the bedroom has become this object of projected anxiety. So they think about going to bed and they're like, oh no, not another night. Right.

So, you know, my recommendation for people who are going through that is that it does require a lot of comforting yourself and talking to yourself about safety and the fact that you are safe. Because quite often our bodies go through this like fight-or-flight response. Our heart may be beating faster, we might feel overheated. And really, you know, some— there's different, so many different techniques, but the crux of it is really reassuring yourself that your body is safe, you're, you're safe, and that the sleep will come when it's ready to come. Like, sleep will unfold when it's ready.

I think the biggest mistake people make in these scenarios, Dustin, is they try to exert a lot of effort into sleeping. They're like, I'm going to try harder. And what the reality is, is that effort is the enemy of sleep. So the harder you try, the harder it is to sleep. So letting go of that effort and relaxing and kind of like dropping the rope is sort of a mindset we want to cultivate with people over time.

And it's really, it's quite an interesting phenomenon to encounter and to help people with because it's a, it's It's a process. It's not like overnight, like the— it's not like the light bulb goes off and they're like, oh yeah, I totally get it now. It's like you have to kind of test yourself and you have to also, what's very important, understand that despite a bad night of sleep, you are capable the next day of doing things. So quite often I will challenge my clients after a bad night to go ahead and do the thing that they feel like they don't have the energy to do. Because when they can show up the next day and they can live by their values and accomplish the things that need to be done for the day, it actually helps them the next night because they're like, "Okay, I got through that on a bad night of sleep." It just gives them this softening of that pressure to sleep, I find.

Dustin Grinnell (00:27:40 --> 00:28:29)
Yeah, instead of going to bed thinking, "I hope I don't wreck another day and therefore I'm not productive, and then it's going to be a habit and a cycle and I'm screwed." Right, right, right. I guess Another thing I wanted to ask too is kind of like going back just a second, like walk me through if that experience, walk me through that process of trying to talk to yourself and make yourself feel safer and comfort yourself and give yourself reassurance that even if you are tired, you'll be able to do what you need to do. And how concretely do you do that? Is this talking to yourself and, you know, maybe you had a patient who did this, just kind of really thinking like, this is something I'll try later if you—

Morgan Adams (00:28:29 --> 00:28:33)
Yeah, yeah. So one way that I would approach this is talking to yourself.

Morgan Adams (00:28:33 --> 00:29:04)
I mean, you don't have to literally talk it loud, but like kind of internally talk. Talking to yourself in the third person is often very helpful. So refer to yourself as Dustin, you know, like, because what it does is it kind of, um, it takes you a little bit out of the situation as if you're maybe talking to a friend so that you're not so attached to like, okay, me, me, me. Like you're taking yourself a little bit out of the equation. Distance. Yeah, exactly.

Morgan Adams (00:29:04 --> 00:29:13)
A little bit of distance is helpful. And then, you know, really paying attention to the thoughts that come up.

Morgan Adams (00:29:13 --> 00:29:41)
And sometimes we'll do this in a, in a way that's, you know, an exercise, like during the day even, is challenging the unhelpful thoughts about sleep that people have. For example, I'm thinking of one client who I had her look at or list out her unhelpful thoughts about sleep that would happen from time to time. And one of them was, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to take leave from work again.

Morgan Adams (00:29:41 --> 00:29:41)
Right?

Morgan Adams (00:29:41 --> 00:30:17)
So we, we kind of like played that out, you know, or in her situation, she was interesting because she's— she said one of her unhelpful thoughts is, what if I'll never sleep again? Wow. And she had been through a previous bout of insomnia in 2021, and she got herself out of it on her own. And I said, well, we have evidence that you got— that you were able to sleep again because you got— you got out of that loop of the insomnia and it just came back. But you, you, you have evidence that you have the ability to sleep.

Dustin Grinnell (00:30:17 --> 00:30:50)
You've done it before, you can do it again. Exactly. Interesting. Yeah, again, getting to your story a little bit more, you, you wrote about having 8 years of, uh, on sleep medication, And I'm sure you learned a lot in that time period, but I want to frame it— the question a different way. What do you think, like, doctors or healthcare professionals were missing all that time? Like, what do you— what should they have been addressing instead of prescribing pills like Ambien or others?

Morgan Adams (00:30:50 --> 00:30:52)
Oh my gosh.

Morgan Adams (00:30:52 --> 00:30:57)
Yeah, this is a rampant problem amongst primary care doctors.

Morgan Adams (00:30:57 --> 00:30:57)
And I—

Morgan Adams (00:30:57 --> 00:32:48)
The unfortunate thing, Dustin, is that they have been given about 2 hours of sleep science training in medical school. So they're coming into the situation with not a lot of resources to offer the patient. So what ends up happening usually is that the primary care doctor will offer, you know, a list of sleep hygiene tips, which quite honestly, the patient has usually already tried. Or they'll give them a prescription for a sleeping pill, which, you know, I have some pretty strong opinions on that, as you might imagine, just having been dependent on the sleeping pills for 8 years. I will— I'll use the brand name.

So Ambien is probably the most common one. Um, something that a lot of people don't really realize about Ambien is that in 2014, I believe, 2013, 2014, Ambien's manufacturers was, was forced to change their dosing schedule for women. So essentially, I was getting overdosed for that whole stretch of time that I was on Ambien, and I was very groggy the next morning. I felt hungover every morning. I was foggy at work.

Morgan Adams (00:32:48 --> 00:32:51)
It was basically the medication didn't leave my body in time.

Morgan Adams (00:32:52 --> 00:33:02)
So I mean, to think about the fact that I was driving downtown to work every morning, like basically still with the impaired. It was like drunk driving every morning. That's wild.

Morgan Adams (00:33:02 --> 00:33:05)
I mean, it's— it was, it was crazy.

Morgan Adams (00:33:05 --> 00:33:57)
And then I would, I would eat at night, um, you know, uh, those sleep eating issues. Thank goodness I didn't drive at night when I had taken the pills. Um, but segueing a little bit onto, um, I think that it's, it's I think it's okay for a physician to prescribe a sleeping pill in a situation where there's a crisis. You've had a death in the family, you know, there's a tragedy or something very acute. But I feel like it's important for the doctor to coordinate with the patient when the sleeping pills should be stopped and develop a plan for that. That's where I think a lot of things are going wrong, is I've worked with clients who have been on sleeping pills for like 10, 15, upwards of 20 years.

Morgan Adams (00:33:57 --> 00:34:05)
And the doctors just give refill after refill because they don't know what else to do. They don't have the tools.

Morgan Adams (00:34:05 --> 00:35:07)
They don't know about, um, CBTI. So CBTI, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, is actually the gold standard treatment for insomnia above sleeping pills, as, as deemed as effective or more effective than sleeping pills as, as per the American Academy of Physicians. But they don't know how to do CBT-I. They haven't been trained on it, and they also might not know who to refer to. And there are not very many CBT providers nationally.

So there's often a long waitlist for a physician or a psychologist who is trained in CBT-I. And so that's why I got trained in CBT-I, is because there's a need for it. So I feel like it's something that people should know exists. I mean, half of the people that I talk to who want to work with me don't know what it is. You know, they've never been told it's an option.

Dustin Grinnell (00:35:07 --> 00:35:10)
What is it involved briefly and why does it work?

Morgan Adams (00:35:10 --> 00:35:13)
Yeah. So it's really at the crux of it.

Morgan Adams (00:35:13 --> 00:35:46)
It's changing your beliefs, behaviors, and attitudes around sleep. And so what we find is that the behavior changes tend to be the most potent changes that you can make. And there are two main behavioral interventions that we work on in CBT-I. And quite honestly, they have terrible names. So, so we're working on, you know, different names. The first intervention is called sleep restriction. Sounds awful, doesn't it? Like if you're not sleeping well already, you're like, wait, less sleep.

Dustin Grinnell (00:35:46 --> 00:35:49)
Yeah, and no one wants to be restricted or constrained.

Morgan Adams (00:35:49 --> 00:35:50)
No, no, no, no.

Dustin Grinnell (00:35:50 --> 00:35:52)
I mean, you worked in PR, you should—

Dustin Grinnell (00:35:52 --> 00:35:52)
the message—

Morgan Adams (00:35:52 --> 00:35:54)
I know the messaging here.

Morgan Adams (00:35:54 --> 00:36:06)
I am going to have to like take a new project of renaming these things. But basically, some people are calling it time in bed restriction or sleep efficiency training.

Morgan Adams (00:36:06 --> 00:36:10)
Those are more palatable terms.

Morgan Adams (00:36:10 --> 00:36:30)
But essentially what we're doing here in this quote sleep restriction is we are finding out through having people write in a sleep journal. So I have all my clients record some of their metrics into a Google Doc so that we can see kind of like when they're going to bed, how long it's taking to fall asleep, when they get up.

Morgan Adams (00:36:32 --> 00:36:32)
So if we—

Morgan Adams (00:36:32 --> 00:37:13)
what we do is we determine pretty much the, the amount of sleep that their body is able to produce. So let's just say they're able to produce 7 hours of sleep reliably on a nightly basis on average. What we want to do is we want to prescribe sort of a time in bed that's a 7-hour period. What ends up happening quite often to people who have insomnia is that they spend a lot of time in bed just kind of hoping that they catch some sleep, right? So they'll like maybe go to bed super early Or maybe they'll just sort of linger in bed for a long time in the morning hoping they'll get more sleep.

Morgan Adams (00:37:14 --> 00:37:14)
That doesn't really—

Morgan Adams (00:37:14 --> 00:38:43)
And so what we do over time is we start to track their sleep efficiency. Once we've designated that time in bed restriction, we then begin to look at, okay, how much of the time are you actually asleep when you're in bed? And what we're aiming to do is we're aiming to get them asleep 85% of the time that they're in bed. That's sort of like the benchmark of like healthy sleep. And once we've reached like 85 or maybe even 90% of the time that they're in bed sleeping, we will sort of extend their time in bed period gradually.

So if I've instructed a client to go to bed at like 11:30, and then all of a sudden— not all of a sudden, it doesn't happen suddenly, but gradually they've reached the, you know, 87% sleep efficiency. Then what we may do is we may add back 15 more minutes in bed. So then they may be going to bed at 11:15. And then we just kind of play around with these different sleep-wake times to figure out when they're feeling their best. So quite often what I'll see in my practice is that someone will say, I need 9 hours of sleep.

Morgan Adams (00:38:43 --> 00:38:44)
Like, you kind of like—

Morgan Adams (00:38:44 --> 00:39:00)
and doing the work, you're able to kind of figure out really where you land. That is sleep restriction. The other major technique that's from the behavioral standpoint in CBT-I is called stimulus control.

Dustin Grinnell (00:39:00 --> 00:39:07)
Again, a terribly clinical term. It's very, uh, B.F. Skinner, like, yeah, science.

Morgan Adams (00:39:07 --> 00:40:41)
Pavlov's dog, all of it, right? Um, some people are calling it sleep reconditioning, which sounds a lot more palatable. Um, basically what we're trying to achieve here is having people only sleep and be intimate in their bed. All the other activities in their bed are kind of off the table. So no more lounging in bed in the morning for an hour, you know, drinking your coffee and reading your newspaper.

No more getting into bed early in the evening to read or watch TV. And there is this other rule with stimulus control that I, I don't quite adhere to. I don't quite agree with it. In its essence. But you will hear this quite a bit is if you're in bed and you're not sleeping and it's been about 20 minutes, the directions are to get out of bed and do something in another room that's quiet and dim light.

And then you're basically waiting till the sleepiness cues hit you again and then you go back into the bed. Where I differ in that approach is I don't necessarily agree that you need to wait 20 minutes. Like, who said 20 minutes is like the magical number? Because what it also does, in my opinion— I mean, I'm sure that there are other people who will debate me, but this is just kind of where I land. If we're saying, okay, if it's been 20 minutes and you're not asleep, get up, well, how do you know it's 20 minutes?

Morgan Adams (00:40:41 --> 00:40:41)
You're—

Morgan Adams (00:40:41 --> 00:40:45)
it— I feel like, I feel like it reinforces people to look at the clock.

Dustin Grinnell (00:40:45 --> 00:40:45)
Yeah.

Dustin Grinnell (00:40:45 --> 00:40:53)
And if you're that preoccupied with like timing, then you may be creating a whole other problem.

Morgan Adams (00:40:54 --> 00:40:55)
Like, exactly.

Dustin Grinnell (00:40:55 --> 00:40:55)
Yeah, exactly.

Morgan Adams (00:40:55 --> 00:40:56)
So what I—

Morgan Adams (00:40:56 --> 00:41:52)
how I instruct my clients to do this is, okay, if you've been in bed, um, you wake up at 3 AM, for example, and it's— it seems like it's been a while and you're starting to get frustrated and anxious and you're tossing and turning, it's good to remove yourself from the situation because you don't want to pair your bed with the anxious feelings. You want to unpair those two. So that's, that's again, the behavioral component is we don't want to mesh the anxiety and the bed together. We want to separate the two. So that's kind of my little spin. And I'm not the only one who has that spin. I think other people follow that as well. But from the very pure purist, you know, the training that I got, they were like the OGs, you know, from the 1980s. And they were like 20 minutes. And, you know, I'm just not the OG kind of— I'm a little bit more flexible in my approach than I think some CBT-I providers out there.

Dustin Grinnell (00:41:52 --> 00:42:20)
Yeah. And I like the idea of just making it a little more intuitive, you know. So another thing I want to talk about is like how daytime affects sleep, how the day affects the night. And I was hoping you could unpack this phrase circadian on rhythm optimization. Yes. And kind of like what we are getting wrong about daytime, daytime habits that sabotage our nights.

Morgan Adams (00:42:20 --> 00:42:21)
Yes. I love this thread.

Morgan Adams (00:42:21 --> 00:42:23)
This is, this is good.

Morgan Adams (00:42:23 --> 00:47:02)
So our biology has been preconditioned to respond to those light cues. But then we have artificial light now, as of, you know, 130 years. And that's great for many reasons, but it also kind of tricks us into thinking that we can pretend it's daytime when it's nighttime. By turning on all the lights at night. So essentially what's happening to us right now is we are in this situation where our days are too dark and our nights are too bright.

And what we want to do is flip that. So remembering to have brighter days and darker nights is really sort of the place where we want to start. I always talk about, you know, circadian rhythm being the foundation of good sleep. That's like a critical thing. And that's really what I work with people on in the very beginning, stabilizing their circadian rhythm, because from that you're much more likely to get better sleep.

If your circadian rhythm is all out of whack, the chances of sleeping well are almost nil. So how do we really manage this light-dark environment? Well, it starts literally in the morning when you wake up. So, you know, everybody, you know, if they have the ability physically to do this, is remove yourself and go outside and literally be outside seeing the natural light as soon as possible when you wake up so that you can get those really beneficial light rays around sunrise. Now, I realize everyone has different times that they get up and not everyone, you know, when I tell this to people, they're like, well, gosh, You know, half of the year I sleep, you know, until 7:30.

I've missed the sunrise. It's okay. Like, there's other— there's really other beneficial rays after the sun comes up, and it's called the UVA rise. And generally speaking, that happens depending on the time of year and where you live, roughly an hour after sunrise is this time called UVA rise. And it's when the sun is at 10 to 30-degree angle above the horizon.

And we have these amino acids in our eyes, and when the natural light hits our eyes, those amino acids get converted into neurotransmitters like dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin to help with energy, mood, and focus. Those, those rays of UVA light also help with thyroid balance. And appetite regulation and a host of other really awesome things. I call it your internal pharmacy. So in a lot of circles of circadian health that I follow, some of the thought leaders, they're now saying that that UVA light is even more impactful than the sunrise light because the sunrise light is primarily responsible for anchoring your circadian rhythm, helping you with that cortisol and melatonin pulse.

Helping you essentially kind of naturally boost that morning's morning cortisol, um, and tampering down the residual melatonin from the night before. So don't worry if you've missed the sunrise, you still have this beautiful opportunity to get some really healing sunlight. Now, two things to remember about this light situation is number one, you don't want to have anything covering your eyes. So I see glasses. Yeah.

I mean, I take my walks religiously. Husband, pups, we're all out there together because even animals need to, you know, be looking out for their— they can't look out for it. We have to look out for them. But it matters for them, too. So we're all out there doing this thing together.

And I see a lot of other people walking in the neighborhood with sunglasses on. Even when it's, even when it's quite, you know, gray outside, overcast, they're still wearing their sunglasses. So you need— when you have something over your eyes, that signal is blocked. You've essentially cut off that signal from happening and sending it to your circadian pacemaker. So sunglasses and glasses off.

Morgan Adams (00:47:02 --> 00:47:04)
What if, you know, am I still—

Morgan Adams (00:47:04 --> 00:47:12)
like, a lot of times people have this mindset of like, like, well, it's really cloudy, I can't see the sun, so I'm not getting any benefits, so I won't go outside.

Morgan Adams (00:47:12 --> 00:47:13)
It's still UV rays.

Morgan Adams (00:47:13 --> 00:47:26)
You are still getting benefits even penetrating clouds. Yes, the rays, they still get through, they still benefit you. You just might, just might need to spend a little bit more time outside.

Dustin Grinnell (00:47:26 --> 00:47:40)
So make this real. So I wake up in the morning, can I take a shower, eat breakfast, then go walk around for 10 minutes without my sunglasses, or Do I need to— what's the routine that people can implement?

Morgan Adams (00:47:40 --> 00:47:45)
Yeah, well, I would actually do it by kind of a case-by-case basis.

Morgan Adams (00:47:45 --> 00:48:09)
There's an app that I would urge people to download. It's a free app. It's called My Circadian App. And that app actually lays out for you all of those beneficial time periods. So where I live right now, the sun is rising at, like, 7:45. Wait, no, wait, 6:45. Yeah, I'm sorry.

Morgan Adams (00:48:09 --> 00:48:11)
Yeah, 6:45, whatever, whatever time it is.

Morgan Adams (00:48:11 --> 00:48:22)
So you want to like, you want to kind of plan your morning if you can. I mean, there, people have different degrees of flexibility that they can have during the day, during the morning.

Morgan Adams (00:48:22 --> 00:48:29)
I mean, with kids and jobs, it can get really confusing and hectic.

Morgan Adams (00:48:29 --> 00:49:19)
So don't, don't like overly stress about it. But if you have the ability to, you know, look at that app and then plan your morning accordingly, I would probably say wake up, go for your 10-minute walk if it's in accordance with that natural, you know, light time of either sunrise or UVA, and then do your activities, your shower and your coffee. For the people who are en route to taking kids to school and to drive into work. People are like, oh no, you know, I can't, I've got to get from point A to point B. Here's a little cheat for you. You can actually crack your window. And that actually counts because the light photons bend and it can come into your car. So you have that ability to still get the beneficial light.

Dustin Grinnell (00:49:20 --> 00:49:34)
Even while driving. And so the whole idea here is these are things you're doing during the day that help during the night. Exactly. Are there any other things that come to mind in that genre of thing?

Morgan Adams (00:49:34 --> 00:49:47)
Yeah, yeah. So a couple other things I would point to is, uh, number one, we, we kind of touched on this earlier, but having, um, a diet that's able to balance your blood sugar.

Morgan Adams (00:49:47 --> 00:51:42)
Starting off, you know, usually in the morning, having a protein-rich breakfast is a really good way to stabilize your circadian rhythm. The protein is very satiating, gives you energy. So I recommend for folks to have their breakfast within like an hour of sunrise and then having, you know, regular meals throughout the day, like not, not skipping meals. I'm not a fan of This is a really hot topic, but I used to intermittent fast myself. I used to not eat until about 11:30, noon.

And I changed my tune on that a couple of years ago after I started learning about the circadian science. And now I have breakfast and I feel like it's made a world of difference with my nervous system regulation and my circadian rhythm. So having a breakfast, a lunch, and a dinner, you know, 3 meals protein-rich. So daytime eating matters, you know, that's, it's really important to consider that. And then another thing that I would say is, especially for busy professionals or busy parents for that matter, who maybe be, they might be staying at home, is to really consider taking some what I call mindfulness snacks during the day.

Dustin Grinnell (00:51:42 --> 00:51:58)
I've also heard people, some people schedule this type of thing. Yeah. Like they say at 6:30, I will start, I will just deliberately worry for 15 minutes or whatever because it's going to come up when you lay down. So just put time in the calendar.

Morgan Adams (00:51:58 --> 00:53:19)
And it actually does come from— it's one of the techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. So you essentially do designate a worry time. Like, it's a period of time where you sit down for 10, 15 minutes and you write it all out. You, you brain dump, you write your worries, and then you write your next solution in solving that worry or that problem.. And it is really effective when you do it consistently to get, to, to get all those things out onto paper so that they're not popping up at night.

And then finally, the daytime behavior that I think a lot of people overlook for sleep is exercise. We have so much data pointing to the fact that consistent exercise helps us sleep better. It's helping us stabilize our circadian rhythm. It's helping us build sleep drive, and it's helping us reduce cortisol. So, I mean, the, the, this, the data is irrefutable on that.

Dustin Grinnell (00:53:19 --> 00:54:03)
How do you manage the flip side of that? Especially with like intense exercise, some people find that really intense exercise leaves them, leaves them feeling wired at bedtime rather than tired. And I know for myself, even if I exercise at 7:30 in the morning and I do something really intense, I sort of pay for it a little bit. And sometimes not a little bit, sometimes I'll be very wired and restless and sleep poorly.. And so I didn't necessarily get the benefit of exercise because maybe I went too hard or there's something unique about my physiology. But that's always been an interesting dichotomy. You know, it's like it's good for sleep, but if you go too hard, it sometimes disrupts sleep. So how do we get the benefits without sacrificing sleep?

Morgan Adams (00:54:03 --> 00:54:06)
Yeah, that's a, that's a good nuanced point there.

Morgan Adams (00:54:06 --> 00:54:38)
So they, they did a recent study showing that exercise intensely for a long duration 4 hours before bed is actually really impacting our sleep negatively. So, I mean, I think the most ideal scenario from a circadian perspective is to have your exercise in the morning to really help solidify your circadian rhythm. But I realize not everyone has that luxury of morning-time exercise. Hold off on the evening exercise.

Morgan Adams (00:54:38 --> 00:54:41)
Like, if if it's going to be too intense.

Morgan Adams (00:54:41 --> 00:55:42)
And it sounds like your body may be a little bit more physiologically sensitive to maybe dialing it back a little bit. I don't know how hard you're working out, but maybe just notching it back a little bit could be helpful. Another thing that I encourage people to think about is gym exercise or going to the gym at night. So The problem with that is that the bright— those huge big blue lights in the gym overhead are really not good for us, you know, so close to bedtime. And so if people are working out in a gym that late at night, I'm like talking to them about like, okay, what can we do to get you still working out but not in the gym that late? So we may switch times or I may even suggest wearing blue light blocking glasses to the gym. And yeah, you may stand out, but like you may create a trend among your gym friends.

Dustin Grinnell (00:55:42 --> 00:56:29)
Yeah, it's, it's important. One thing I feel like I couldn't, you know, not ask about here is this whole mouth breathing, nasal breathing. Discussion that I feel like we're having these days. So there's been a lot of talk about mouth breathing and sleep quality. And I was wondering if I could just get you to kind of weigh in on the science here.

And should people be concerned if they're mouth breathers? I am a mouth breather. And sometimes I do feel weird about it. When I'm falling asleep, it's a little complex, you know, oh, I should be breathing out of my nose right now. And then yeah, But it feels more familiar and comfortable to breathe out my mouth.

Morgan Adams (00:56:30 --> 00:56:37)
And yeah, what are we to do about this? Yeah, there's some shaming for mouth breathing.

Dustin Grinnell (00:56:37 --> 00:56:40)
Mouth breathers are getting shamed left and right. They are. Yeah.

Morgan Adams (00:56:40 --> 00:56:44)
It's something pejorative these days. You know, I don't—

Morgan Adams (00:56:44 --> 00:56:50)
I'm not really up on the latest research on like what could happen if you are mouth breathing.

Dustin Grinnell (00:56:50 --> 00:56:53)
I think they cause these micro-awakenings.

Morgan Adams (00:56:53 --> 00:56:53)
Is the—

Morgan Adams (00:56:53 --> 00:57:00)
yeah, I mean, I think, I think that's definitely— I mean, nasal breathing is better.

Morgan Adams (00:57:00 --> 00:57:11)
So, you know, from a perspective of you're getting more nitric oxide when you're nasal breathing, it's, it's really helping your parasympathetic nervous system work better.

Morgan Adams (00:57:11 --> 00:57:17)
Here's the thing, it's like the, the mouth tape has gotten to be like a thing I personally use mouth tape.

Morgan Adams (00:57:17 --> 00:57:26)
I've been using it for like 3 years or so, and I am kind of addicted to now, to now using it.

Morgan Adams (00:57:26 --> 00:57:31)
And when I first started working as a sleep coach, I was talking to all my clients about it.

Morgan Adams (00:57:31 --> 00:58:12)
But what I didn't realize as a newbie is that you have to really be careful to ensure that your nasal passages are working correctly before you try mouth tape. So, so these days I'm not actually recommending that everybody use mouth tape until they have figured out if their nasal passages are correctly working. And you can, you know, you can go to an ENT doctor and find that out pretty easily. But I mean, I don't think, I don't think that it's like, I mean, I could be wrong. This is again, not my complete area of expertise, but I don't think the sky is going to fall if you sleep with your mouth open.

Morgan Adams (00:58:12 --> 00:58:13)
I mean, if you—

Morgan Adams (00:58:13 --> 00:58:19)
it could be a bothersome thing if you wake up and your mouth is really dry and your throat is sore.

Morgan Adams (00:58:19 --> 00:58:22)
That might not be nice to have.

Morgan Adams (00:58:22 --> 00:58:29)
But the mouth tape, I think, can get a little bit too dogmatic. Like, it's not going to be for everyone.

Morgan Adams (00:58:29 --> 00:58:34)
And they actually did a study recently showing that for some people who have sleep apnea, it could make it worse.

Morgan Adams (00:58:34 --> 00:58:44)
So, like, if you, if you have untreated and/or undiagnosed and untreated sleep apnea and you use the mouth tape, it could actually exacerbate your issue, which is what we don't want to do.

Dustin Grinnell (00:58:44 --> 00:58:59)
So that's, that's why I'm kind of like backing off a little on everyone needs mouth tape. Yeah, interesting. So if I wanted to become a nasal breather, I could practice with mouth tape, or is there a way to do it without an intervention?

Dustin Grinnell (00:59:00 --> 00:59:00)
Or—

Morgan Adams (00:59:00 --> 00:59:07)
well, so I, I The way that I started doing it was I would put mouth tape on during the day while I was working. Oh, to kind of—

Dustin Grinnell (00:59:07 --> 00:59:08)
yeah, just kind of—

Morgan Adams (00:59:08 --> 00:59:09)
yeah, because yourself—

Morgan Adams (00:59:09 --> 00:59:16)
yeah, you want to break— you want to break yourself in and you want to discover how easily you can breathe through your nose, right?

Dustin Grinnell (00:59:16 --> 00:59:35)
And then also discover if your nose is unclogged and exactly address that issue. Yeah. Okay, so nervous system and stress. You include nervous system regulation as one of your three pillars. What's the name of your sleep program?

Morgan Adams (00:59:35 --> 00:59:37)
Well, I call it the Sleep Easy Method.

Morgan Adams (00:59:37 --> 00:59:44)
That's right. So yeah, and we do, we do address nervous system regulation to a certain degree.

Morgan Adams (00:59:44 --> 01:00:23)
Some people are come, come in very regulated. They've, they've already gotten these things down, but some people don't really have that. So what I encourage people to do is, you know, start with, you know, some of the basics that are free. I'm a real big believer in breathwork. I think that's an amazing tool that we all have at our disposal. So starting off with just simple breathwork practices where your exhale is longer than your inhale, that's a great place to start because that's helping stimulate your rest and digest system, getting you more in that calm state for sure.

Dustin Grinnell (01:00:23 --> 01:00:26)
And this is something you can do before bed?

Morgan Adams (01:00:26 --> 01:00:38)
Before bed. I mean, I practice it before bed. I also practice it in the morning. You can practice it literally any time of day. I mean, you can, you can be in your car and doing the breathwork.

Dustin Grinnell (01:00:38 --> 01:00:46)
And this is like in through your nose, out through your mouth. Make sure your belly is being extended when you're breathing in. Kind of thing.

Morgan Adams (01:00:46 --> 01:00:49)
And that gets the parasympathetic nervous system activated.

Morgan Adams (01:00:49 --> 01:00:50)
Yeah. Yeah.

Morgan Adams (01:00:50 --> 01:00:54)
And there's, there's some really good tools out there for helping people understand breathwork.

Morgan Adams (01:00:55 --> 01:01:16)
One that I use personally is an app called— it's called Breathwork. It's— I think it's got a different spelling than what breathwork would be normally, but you have this ability to kind of pick from the menu what state you're looking for.. Like, are you looking to ease anxiety? Are you looking to sleep? Are you looking to get energized?

Morgan Adams (01:01:16 --> 01:01:21)
If you want energy, then you have like a longer inhale versus a longer exhale.

Morgan Adams (01:01:21 --> 01:01:41)
So there's a lot of ways to change your state of being with breath. And this, this app will— it has this sort of like little circle that expands when you breathe and then contracts so that you can kind of, kind of get the pacing correct. So I like, I like that a lot for people who need a little bit more guidance.

Morgan Adams (01:01:41 --> 01:01:43)
Um, but just, it's a free tool.

Morgan Adams (01:01:43 --> 01:01:49)
Like, your breath is a free tool to regulate your nervous system. Yeah.

Dustin Grinnell (01:01:50 --> 01:02:36)
So I, I recommend it highly. Elephant in the room. Uh, where do our phones come in here, right? Because yeah, we talk, you know, it's just a part of life and, uh, We know we're not supposed to be on them before we go to bed, and the blue light, and it's still something we do. And some people who are heroes among us, they put them outside their rooms. Um, we should study those people in labs. Uh, it's amazing they can do that. Uh, but, uh, we're all addicted, it seems. Uh, maybe not all of us, sorry, but, uh, I know I am. And, uh, how do you deal with this health in a healthy way? How do you make sure that it's not— our phone isn't destroying our sleep?

Morgan Adams (01:02:36 --> 01:02:42)
What are things we can do to manage? Yeah, it's a huge topic. I mean, we are very much tethered to our phones.

Morgan Adams (01:02:42 --> 01:02:47)
It's just part of our lifestyle right now.

Morgan Adams (01:02:47 --> 01:03:40)
So I, I, I— my approach with clients is that, you know, I'm not really going to think it's a bad idea to— if you want to scroll for 15 minutes before bed, daylight in the day actually helps mitigate the blue light at night. So if that's something that a lot of people don't know, so if you've, if you've had a lot of daytime exposure outside, the blue light from your phone is not going to be as impactful to you. I think blue light blocking glasses can be helpful in certain circumstances if you feel the urge to be on your phone at night and you've maybe been in your office all day and haven't had a lot of daytime exposure, I'd say, you know, try some blue light blocking glasses. There's a— like, there's a lot of shaming right now. I mean, I was just at dinner with somebody the other night and they were like, you're going to be so mad because I'm on my phone at night.

Morgan Adams (01:03:40 --> 01:03:56)
And I was like, well, tell me more, you know. And the reality is, is like, if you want to just check something out before bed for a few minutes, like if you just like to scroll for a few minutes, there's not going to be any harm in that.

Morgan Adams (01:03:56 --> 01:04:42)
The harm is when we lie in bed with our phone and we start to scroll. Like, I don't really think it's a good idea to be in our bed and have our phone. Like, so I will sometimes scroll before bed, but I'm like in my living room, like, and it's like for just 10 minutes. I'm like, let me just see what's going on on Instagram, let's just see what Facebook's going on with, whatever. And then I put the phone I put the phone in another room when I sleep. Like, I'm— and I have found that when my clients— like, most of my clients, they actually have their phone in their bedroom with them. And when they remove their phone from their bed, from their bedroom, they usually tell me things start to improve because they have— they're not tempted to reach for it when they wake up.

Morgan Adams (01:04:42 --> 01:04:46)
And it just creates this nice distance because you know it's there.

Morgan Adams (01:04:46 --> 01:04:57)
Like, you, you just have— it's sort of like just there in the background, and you know that you could use it at any time. So to have it— it's like that out of sight, out of mind concept.

Morgan Adams (01:04:57 --> 01:04:58)
So I'm, I'm a pretty—

Morgan Adams (01:04:58 --> 01:05:03)
I'm kind of a stickler for the phone being outside of your bedroom.

Morgan Adams (01:05:03 --> 01:05:10)
There are some occasions where, you know, you have a sick parent and you need to be reached in the middle of the night.

Morgan Adams (01:05:10 --> 01:05:33)
Well, then there's some workarounds. You can configure your phone to only allow this number to come through, so you can create some boundaries on your own. We have situations in our life that require maybe some exceptions, so it's not like a black and white issue.

Dustin Grinnell (01:05:33 --> 01:06:12)
Yeah, that makes sense. One thing I wanted to ask about too is you know, how do we sleep when things in our life aren't going well and we have really legitimate reasons for being stressed and worried and we're like in the middle of a storm? You know, how do you sleep well if you're in a storm, if that's chronic stress or work problems, caregiving, financial pressure? How is good sleep even realistic in those times when we're really stressed, like if a client came to you in a crisis, what would you say to them?

Morgan Adams (01:06:13 --> 01:06:15)
Yeah, I mean, this is our, our life.

Morgan Adams (01:06:15 --> 01:06:19)
I mean, these things are happening all the time.

Morgan Adams (01:06:19 --> 01:06:48)
I would say really, really be intentional about taking breaks during the day and addressing those worries, whether it's the mindfulness snacks or the constructive worry exercise. I think those are really powerful tools that we can use during, during a crisis. And also reminding ourselves that this is a season in our life, that this will pass, this will not be, you know, our future forever.

Morgan Adams (01:06:48 --> 01:06:55)
But yeah, I mean, it's— I think that it's permissible for our sleep to slip up during these crisis moments.

Morgan Adams (01:06:55 --> 01:07:29)
And I think we need to trust us that normalcy will happen, you know, soon, because it's not going to go on forever. Giving ourselves the grace and the self-compassion to acknowledge, like, that our sleep may not be great for a while, but that we, but that we can handle it, that we have the capacity to handle it, and that our bodies are resilient and will resume sleeping normally once the stress has kind of dissipated. Right. But it's not easy.

Dustin Grinnell (01:07:29 --> 01:08:20)
I mean, it is not an easy task. I sometimes, for me, just taking positive action on a problem and getting to a point of stoppage helps take away the, the worry. You know, if I've done everything that I can do within my control and kind of left it all out in the field for the day, I generally won't be worrying because I know I tried everything I could. That for me is the only way to get rid of worry. I can't think it away. I really have to take action to solve it away. Yeah, if I can. And if I can, if I have no control, it's a very kind of Stoic idea, then I try not to worry about it. If there's something in the economy or in our culture or something that's affecting my life that I have no control over, I try to let it go because I can't—

Morgan Adams (01:08:20 --> 01:08:28)
literally can't do anything about it. Yeah, letting it go is a very high-level skill because a lot of the things that are going on right now are out of our control. We just, we just can't.

Dustin Grinnell (01:08:28 --> 01:08:48)
We have to kind of let, let go of it. Yeah, it's in a similar area as what we were just talking about, the idea of, of safety. So feeling safe enough to sleep, what is that mean to you? And how do you help someone get there when life doesn't feel particularly safe?

Morgan Adams (01:08:48 --> 01:09:11)
Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a hard one to unpack. Um, and there's different, you know, there's different reasons for people not feeling safe, right? Sometimes I've had people come to me who've had trauma in the past, and the, and the trauma is somewhat of a factor in their inability to sleep.

Morgan Adams (01:09:11 --> 01:09:23)
And since I, you know, I'm not a therapist, I'm not trauma-informed or trained, I will urge them to, you know, reach out to a therapist to help address some of that trauma.

Morgan Adams (01:09:23 --> 01:09:28)
Because I think that a lot of people are dealing with trauma, which is impacting their sleep.

Morgan Adams (01:09:28 --> 01:09:46)
So there's tools that I have at my disposal that are really effective that we've kind of discussed. But when trauma like that, like deeper trauma is an issue, I think it's really worth having a professional in your corner tackling that issue head-on directly.

Dustin Grinnell (01:09:46 --> 01:10:02)
Yeah, that makes sense. As I was thinking about talking with you about sleep, the movie popped into my mind that deals with the main character who's having a lot of trouble sleeping. He has severe insomnia, and that movie is Fight Club.

Morgan Adams (01:10:02 --> 01:10:08)
I don't know if you've ever seen this movie. I have, but, you know, I don't recall the insomnia thing.

Dustin Grinnell (01:10:08 --> 01:12:19)
And he's feeling emotionally numb. He's disconnected from others. He feels trapped in a life that feels meaningless. It's kind of a corporate, you know, cog in the machine, so to speak. And he only— he actually goes and meets with a doctor, primary care physician, and the primary care physician sort of invalidates his experience and says, you know, you need to chill out and chew some valerian root.

And he says, Edward Norton says, you know, I'm in pain here. And the guy says, you want to see pain, go to like the emotional support club. I think it's for men with prostate cancer or something. And he does. And he starts getting interested in going to more emotional support clubs.

And, you know, these— you like sit in a circle and everybody talks about their personal experience with addiction or disease or whatever crisis they're going through, like AA or something. And he finds that he can like be more vulnerable. And there's one scene where he cries. He just like bursts into tears. And he allows himself to be honest about out, like, what he's feeling— the meaninglessness of his life, the fact that he hasn't done anything that he's proud of.

And he has this kind of emotional release. And then he, and then he says he sleeps like a baby. He says babies don't sleep this well. And I was kind of wondering, you know, you're not a therapist, and you don't do psychotherapy. But there's a lot going on emotionally in our emotional lives.

Morgan Adams (01:12:19 --> 01:13:31)
Absolutely. Yeah. I feel like when people are able to let their guard down and they're able to connect with others. I feel like there's definitely— I mean, there is— the research shows that there's a link between social isolation and loneliness and poor sleep. And I've seen this in client work. I'm trying to reflect on a few examples of this. You know, people who are just kind of isolated, that in my experience they've had some struggles with their sleep. People who are in relationships where, maybe a marriage for example, where they don't feel like their voice is heard, they don't feel respected. Those things, I mean, those emotional issues, they really can impact our sleep big time, you know. And again, sometimes it requires, you know, working with a therapist to, to really get down into those issues to, to reach some kind of peace, you know, because I think, I think at the root of, you know, the root of good sleep is, you know, feeling safe, feeling at peace with yourself and your environment.

Morgan Adams (01:13:31 --> 01:13:39)
Because when you feel that internal unrest, it's hard to rest.

Dustin Grinnell (01:13:40 --> 01:14:11)
Really is. Yeah, totally. What about for, you know, in the in the idea of circadian rhythms, for someone working like night shifts, or someone who's like a new parent, or someone whose life just doesn't allow for like a perfect schedule, what do these people need to keep in mind where it's like they, they just can't nail the sleep hygiene that's recommended? And so what else, what can they do to still try to sleep as well as they possibly can?

Morgan Adams (01:14:11 --> 01:14:19)
Yeah, I would say if you're in a situation like that, lean in on the natural light as much as you can.

Morgan Adams (01:14:19 --> 01:14:22)
Um, that's usually pretty accessible to most people.

Morgan Adams (01:14:22 --> 01:15:20)
Trying to maintain as much consistency as you can, like trying not to let your sleep-wake cycle get too out of sync. And then also thinking about other ways that you can think about your health, like, you know, the way you're eating, the way that you're moving, because those matter too. I mean, sleep is definitely important, obviously, but if you're not sleep— like, I talk about this with my clients a lot, who, um, they generally are very health conscious, but they also are very worried about their future health and their sleep issues. You know, they may have a parent with dementia So I always remind them that, like, you know, if your sleep is shaky, A, we're working on it, but B, you've got these other lifestyle choices and ways of living that impact your overall health, like eating well and moving your body. So there's— it's not like one—

Dustin Grinnell (01:15:20 --> 01:15:33)
it's not like your, your health is riding on one thing and one thing alone being sleep. When you start working with a client, what's usually the first intervention that makes a difference?

Morgan Adams (01:15:33 --> 01:15:55)
What's like a quick win that gives people hope? The morning light. I mean, I know it sounds crazy in some respects that it— I mean, it's like I think people sometimes think there's something fancy or complicated or some kind of expensive device.

Morgan Adams (01:15:55 --> 01:15:56)
Technology.

Morgan Adams (01:15:56 --> 01:15:58)
Technology. That's going to solve their problems.

Morgan Adams (01:15:58 --> 01:16:07)
So they do look at me sometimes with a certain degree of skepticism when I talk about getting the morning light. But 9 times—

Morgan Adams (01:16:07 --> 01:16:18)
I have a couple outliers there, but 9 times out of 10, they are reporting, okay, yeah, I'm doing better.

Morgan Adams (01:16:18 --> 01:16:25)
And what they notice first, Dustin, tends to be their mood is better, their energy is better..

Morgan Adams (01:16:25 --> 01:16:27)
And sleep, sleep starts getting better usually pretty soon.

Morgan Adams (01:16:27 --> 01:16:39)
But I feel like in, at least in my experience with my clients, that the mood and energy picks up faster. But those are, that's a win because they're, they're, you know, they're wanting that too.

Morgan Adams (01:16:39 --> 01:16:43)
They're wanting a better mood and more energy during the day.

Morgan Adams (01:16:44 --> 01:16:59)
So I think, I think when I'm recommending to people like where they should start, if they could only do one thing, that's the thing to, to try to do.. And what I love about it is it's accessible to most people. It's free.

Morgan Adams (01:16:59 --> 01:17:18)
And, you know, again, starting with the basics, I think, is critical with any kind of health optimization, you know, plan. I mean, I love my gadgets, don't get me wrong, but without those fundamental practices in place, those gadgets aren't going to work as well.

Morgan Adams (01:17:18 --> 01:17:35)
So really kind of think about The— I kind of have this phrase, the basics before the biohacks. You know, let's get— let's really dial in the basics and then weave in these other interventions if you want more sleep optimization.

Dustin Grinnell (01:17:35 --> 01:17:43)
For someone who's been struggling with sleep for like months or years, what would you want them to know that might shift how they're thinking about this?

Morgan Adams (01:17:43 --> 01:18:00)
What I would want them to know is that your sleep is definitely something that you can change for the better. You are not doomed to have poor sleep. Like, it's not a life sentence. I think a lot of people think that it's just—

Morgan Adams (01:18:00 --> 01:18:03)
they're just bad sleepers. Yeah, they label themselves as a bad sleeper.

Morgan Adams (01:18:03 --> 01:18:25)
I mean, I've, I've had several clients come to me and like one of the first things out of their mouth is, I'm a bad sleeper. And they, they've lived this label, and quite often they've been passed along this label by a parent. So I always tell parents, whatever you do, try not to label your kid as a bad sleeper because that label will follow them and will—

Morgan Adams (01:18:25 --> 01:18:27)
they'll internalize that.

Morgan Adams (01:18:27 --> 01:18:54)
So I do like to really think about the mindset of the bad sleeper. And I don't want to be positive Pollyanna and say like, oh, you're an amazing sleeper. But like, really, how can we change the negative thought to something that's more helpful or at least more neutral. Like, hey, I'm having some struggles with sleep, but I'm doing X, Y, and Z in hopes of making it better, and I believe that I'll be successful with that.

Dustin Grinnell (01:18:54 --> 01:19:16)
That's a lot more, um, useful and neutral than just, I'm the worst sleeper ever. Have you had like a worst-case scenario, someone who said they were a bad sleeper and they were sleeping poorly and they felt like nothing would ever work, and then, you know, a year from working with you or working on their—

Morgan Adams (01:19:16 --> 01:19:26)
they just made a total transformation? Yeah, I've had a few of those people who really, really, uh, were, were coming in very, very defeated.

Morgan Adams (01:19:26 --> 01:19:33)
They were very skeptical. Some of these people have been to sleep doctors, they've been on the meds,.

Morgan Adams (01:19:33 --> 01:19:43)
And they were just like, well, I'm just going to see if this works. And it can take, you know, people will often ask me, well, how long does it take to get better?

Morgan Adams (01:19:43 --> 01:19:51)
And, you know, some people, like I had one client recently, she turned it around in like 4 weeks.

Morgan Adams (01:19:51 --> 01:19:52)
Like it was an amazing transformation.

Morgan Adams (01:19:52 --> 01:19:55)
But I think, to be honest, she's a little bit of an outlier.

Morgan Adams (01:19:55 --> 01:20:02)
I think it takes, it can take, it takes as long as it takes and it can take, you know, up to several months.

Morgan Adams (01:20:02 --> 01:20:21)
To really start seeing changes. And I think it's helpful when somebody has— if somebody like me, you know, a coach, somebody who's been trained in helping people get better sleep, to have that accountability and that support.

Morgan Adams (01:20:22 --> 01:20:24)
Because I think sometimes we have these setbacks.

Morgan Adams (01:20:24 --> 01:20:56)
Like, I've worked with clients long enough so that I have seen their sleep get better and then they take a step back because of usually an external circumstance with their family. Honestly, it's just like, you know, somebody died or somebody got sick and then their sleep suffered again and then they were able to get it back. Right. So sometimes it's, it's healthy. I don't want them to go through pain, but sometimes I'm somewhat grateful that they are going through a struggle while we're working together so that I can be there to show them that they can get back on track again.

Dustin Grinnell (01:20:56 --> 01:21:13)
So it's not like forever it's going to be sliding downhill, right? If someone listening thinks like, I've tried everything, what would you say is the one thing they probably haven't actually tried yet?

Morgan Adams (01:21:13 --> 01:21:22)
Um, let's see. I think probably, um, I think probably most people feel like they have consistency.

Morgan Adams (01:21:22 --> 01:21:58)
But I think that if you really tracked your sleep-wake times, I think most people would realize they're not as consistent as they think they are, which is why tracking can be a useful tool for a lot of people to really see. And then once you see that there's a lot of outlying sleep-wake times, is bringing those in, dialing it in to just stabilize it even more. I think that's probably something that most people would be kind of shocked to learn that they're, they're not as consistent as they might give themselves credit for.

Dustin Grinnell (01:21:58 --> 01:22:16)
Yeah, that makes sense. You talked about how healthcare professionals, doctors especially in medical school, they're not getting a lot of sleep science training. What do you wish more healthcare professionals understood about sleep or insomnia?

Morgan Adams (01:22:16 --> 01:22:22)
I wish they would understand that, that pills are really just a Band-Aid solution. They really are.

Morgan Adams (01:22:22 --> 01:22:24)
It's, it's not the root cause, and it takes—

Morgan Adams (01:22:24 --> 01:22:31)
it can take a lot of digging and a lot of investigation and work to get to the root cause.

Morgan Adams (01:22:31 --> 01:22:40)
And, um, ultimately though, it's worth it because once you've figured out the situation, you can turn things around pretty quickly.

Morgan Adams (01:22:40 --> 01:22:41)
But But a pill is really—

Dustin Grinnell (01:22:41 --> 01:23:09)
you're, in my opinion, you're just kicking the can down the road with a pill. I only have 2 more questions, but the first one I want to ask is, you know, in this conversation we covered a lot of ground. Is there anything we haven't covered? Is there anything that you feel like we've missed or that you want to talk about, uh, that feels like it should be said?

Morgan Adams (01:23:09 --> 01:23:11)
I think we've covered a lot of ground.

Dustin Grinnell (01:23:11 --> 01:23:11)
Okay.

Morgan Adams (01:23:11 --> 01:23:16)
Yeah, I really do. And the things that we haven't covered are things that, like, I don't know a lot about.

Morgan Adams (01:23:16 --> 01:23:22)
Like, sometimes people want to, want to talk about dreams, and I don't know that. I've—

Morgan Adams (01:23:22 --> 01:23:32)
that is, you know, some, some— when I tell people I'm a sleep coach, sometimes they'll want to, like, talk about dreams, and I'm like, that's cool. Like, I'm—

Morgan Adams (01:23:32 --> 01:23:42)
I love talking about dreams, but, like, there's not any part of me that's been trained to like analyze your dreams or like go through this analysis.

Dustin Grinnell (01:23:42 --> 01:23:50)
So that's for another guest. Yeah, yeah, it is interesting to think about how maybe dreams impact sleep quality.

Morgan Adams (01:23:50 --> 01:23:53)
I mean, um, but yeah, well, they—

Morgan Adams (01:23:53 --> 01:23:56)
yeah, I mean, for people who have nightmares, it's—

Morgan Adams (01:23:56 --> 01:24:49)
that's, that's, that's something that, you know, I've talked to several people about who wanted to work with me, and their, their sleep was being disrupted by dreams. And that's not my training. So I'm like, okay, you need to go to a therapist and ask for image rehearsal therapy. So it's a, it's a therapy called image rehearsal. And, you know, I don't— haven't been trained on it.

So I'm not going to do that with them. But essentially, you are, during the day, we're kind of reliving the, the replayed nightmare that you have all the time, but you change the ending. And then, and then the idea is that when you dream, your— the ending of your dream changes so that you're not really having the nightmare. That's sort of the loose explanation of it. But again, I don't— those are the clients that I refer to a therapist because I, you know, want to stay in my lane.

Dustin Grinnell (01:24:49 --> 01:24:55)
Yeah, you have a very good sense of your own, uh, strengths and limitations.

Morgan Adams (01:24:55 --> 01:25:01)
And just like a primary care physician, you refer out when you've reached the boundaries of your knowledge.

Morgan Adams (01:25:02 --> 01:25:19)
And I've been so lucky, Dustin, to have met so many ancillary professionals in the sleep world that I feel so comfortable with referring that I just, you know, I'm not— I don't shy away from saying I can't help you because I feel like there's somebody I know who can help that person.

Dustin Grinnell (01:25:19 --> 01:25:20)
Yeah.

Morgan Adams (01:25:20 --> 01:25:43)
Do you like this work better than your previous work? Oh my gosh, I love this. Like, I love this work more than anything I've ever done. And I've had a lot of jobs. And I mean, I feel so rewarded and so privileged to be able to help people with such a fundamental issue that's affecting their lives.

Dustin Grinnell (01:25:43 --> 01:26:02)
It's really just— it's life-changing. Yeah, because you can really transform someone's life if you— you can transform their health. Yes. If you get their sleep better. Amen. That must be very gratifying to see someone struggling and, you know, 6 months later they're sleeping much better and feeling much better.

Morgan Adams (01:26:02 --> 01:26:03)
Yep, absolutely.

Morgan Adams (01:26:03 --> 01:26:04)
It has a ripple effect.

Morgan Adams (01:26:04 --> 01:26:22)
It affects not only them, but it affects their families. So the family relationships get better, their job performance gets better. There's this ripple effect that I don't even realize because our work has ended, but it just—

Dustin Grinnell (01:26:22 --> 01:26:34)
the benefits just keep going. It's awesome. Yeah. So we covered a lot of ground, and I guess my last question is, what gives you hope about helping people with their sleep problems?

Morgan Adams (01:26:34 --> 01:26:48)
Oh, what gives me hope? I think the fact that I've seen a significant amount of people have transformations. Because in the beginning, like with anyone, they're just like, okay, can I help somebody?

Morgan Adams (01:26:48 --> 01:26:48)
Be, right?

Morgan Adams (01:26:49 --> 01:26:55)
I mean, I think any practitioner who's a newbie goes through that self-doubt, that imposter syndrome.

Morgan Adams (01:26:55 --> 01:27:07)
But I think when you have— when you start developing a track record of identifying the people that you can help and then being able to help them, that, that gives me hope for sure.

Dustin Grinnell (01:27:07 --> 01:27:14)
Well, you know, I want to thank you so much for, uh, talking about this, uh, with me. It's incredibly useful information.

Dustin Grinnell (01:27:14 --> 01:27:18)
I'm going to try to not have the phone in my room tonight.

Dustin Grinnell (01:27:18 --> 01:27:23)
I'm going to try it. And I'm going to get up and walk around in the morning.

Morgan Adams (01:27:23 --> 01:27:35)
If people want to know more about your work and your sleep coaching, where can they go?

Morgan Adams (01:27:35 --> 01:27:48)
Well, my website is MorganAdamsWellness.com. I'm on LinkedIn, Instagram, pretty active on both of those platforms. And I have the opportunity for people to schedule a free consultation if they feel like, hmm, I think I'd like to talk to someone, kick the tires. Yeah.

Morgan Adams (01:27:48 --> 01:27:59)
And, you know, again, like you said, if I can't, if I can't help them and they've got a different issue than I deal with, and, you know, I've got referrals at the ready for them.

Morgan Adams (01:27:59 --> 01:28:00)
Yeah.

Dustin Grinnell (01:28:00 --> 01:28:08)
Well, thank you so much again, Morgan, and I wish you the best in working with all your clients.

Dustin Grinnell (01:28:08 --> 01:28:09)
Sleep well.

Morgan Adams (01:28:09 --> 01:28:11)
Thank you. Thank you. You too.

Dustin Grinnell (01:28:11 --> 01:28:28)
Thanks for listening to this episode of Curiously. I hope my conversation with Morgan Adams gave you something useful to think about. If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who's been fighting their own battle with sleep. And if you want to support Curiously, leaving a review helps more people find the show. Thanks again for listening and stay tuned for more conversations with people I meet along the way.