Memory and Healthy Sleep Habits

Good Mornings with Sleep Well (S2E12 2019)

What Your Sleep Habits Reveal About Your Dementia Risk

When I first started reading about lack of sleep being a cause of Dementia, I immediately started researching connected reasons to help others prevent it in their own lives. I came across this article and it was short and to the point. I hope it gives you some great thoughts to ponder. I know it did for me.
~Gretchen

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Gretchen and Javier Casillas started Sleep Well with the idea that sleep is super important, but potential customers were putting off buying a mattress because of the reputation our industry has. Quite frankly, furniture salespeople and mattress salespeople are too pushy and really don’t care about knowing sleep but more about understanding the dollar.  The reputation is there, the statement “just like a used car salesman” is used often in this industry.  So, we decided to do something different.

We created Sleep Well, a sleep store that cares about your sleep, not only cares but, knows sleep and knows how to help you find it.  We research everything about our mattresses, pillows, and bedding.  We know more about the health benefits of an adjustable base than even some manufacturers.  It is because of this knowledge and because of the actual want to help that we have been and continue to be successful.

Since we have this knowledge, we also figured why not share it? That’s why we started Good Mornings with Sleep Well, a weekly video blog to share what we know about all things sleep.  Subscribe and watch us weekly for news and tips.  Thanks for watching!

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Transcription for our viewers:

00:06                                     [inaudible]

00:07                                     good morning. I’m Javier and I’m Gretchen and this is good mornings with sleep. Well, and we’ve been away for like three weeks, eh? Yeah, we haven’t, I mean, it’s been busy. I know. Yeah. I’m like, I’m not used to it. I don’t know. I’m just not. Uh, every Wednesday we record these things and then we put them on Thursday morning and it’s, it got to be a habit and then we had to stop because it got kind of busy. Uh, Gretchen is very active with the Chamber of Commerce here, so that takes her away a little bit. And then other things have been going on, like mountain bikes. Oh yeah, yeah. We got mountain bikes and that Kinda that. Yeah. That’s actually, that’s part of the reason. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and then yesterday I got some really bad news about my truck, so it’s going to be expensive having been in the greatest mood about that. Yeah.

00:52                                     It’ll be awesome when it’s done.

00:53                                     Yeah. Yeah. So it’ll, it’s, it’s, you know, whatever life I guess. So today, um, Gretchen put out an article on our Facebook page that, um, for me really hit home because of the sleep experiment I did a couple of weeks ago and a more like months ago.

01:13                                     Oh, really? See, it’s already hit. Yeah. Wow.

01:17                                     Yeah. So anyway, so Gretchen put out an article about, uh, the ties between, uh, sleep and dementia or sleep loss and dementia. And um, it really tied in a lot to the sleep experiment that I did. And it reminds me that the, the, the whole ramifications of sleep loss over time can really mess up your brain or aid your brain even faster when you’re older. Right?

01:44                                     It does, it’s an onset. I mean, the lack of sleep or way too much sleep. They’re both negatives. So you really want to target every day, even if it’s a day off or if you have a longer night and you need to have recovery time for the following day. It’s really important.

02:01                                     [inaudible] so I just, to me, in the, what was it, the three or four day experiment, the amount of fundamental function that I lost was just astounding. And then for you to put that up and just bring up that there’s it longterm is 10 times worse. Right?

02:23                                     It is. Um, all of this is an onset to it. I mean, if you think about something such as gaining weight, it does not happen overnight. It is a, a whole time lapse of a whole bunch of bad decisions. Yup. Um, that gets you there. Sleep is no different with dementia and even furthermore, Alzheimer’s.

02:41                                     Yeah. And uh, there’s this, what is that saying that, that uh, Mark Kinsley says it’s like sleep good sleep is the combination of a bunch of good decisions and one good investment, which is the mattress. Hey, shameless plug. So yeah, and it is a good sleep. Can your health so much and make your overall aging so much better that, uh, I think that people be [inaudible] I really do. Um, so what your article talks about how what good sleep can do, right? And, and, and tell him a little bit about that.

03:19                                     Well, good sleep allows you to have that brain cleansing that we need. It allows you to further more, having a good, well conditioned brain. It’s going to help with short term and longterm memory. Yeah. Yeah. It helps you focus and have clarity. Um, it also helps you able to continue to build on memories. So it’s not just memories from the past, like what happened to you or a vacation you had when you were a child. Um, but it’s also for the ones to come still.

03:48                                     Right, right. And so a lot of a lot of that is, if you think of your mind as, um, or your brain is, is it’s there and all this plaque builds up and you think of good sleep as being like turning the dish washer on and it cleans it out. I mean, that’s the way you need to think of it. And that that in itself should make sleep a whole lot more important to you. Right? Correct. Okay. All right. So you said a little bit about not oversleeping. What the heck does oversleep have to do with anything?

04:20                                     Well, let’s just hit it here. How many times do you hear about people saying, I hit my snooze button or yeah, or I have to hit my snooze button repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly. Or um, they get to a point where like, oh, it’s a day off so I’m going to sleep in today.

04:38                                     Okay.

04:40                                     I like to sleep. Yes. But when it comes to it being a habit, like a constant habit, that’s when those things really build up on you. Again, it’s an accumulation of the choices you make. Yeah. So you want to make sure that you’re limiting or getting enough, cause again, you don’t want too little and you don’t want too much.

05:01                                     I remember established health patterns, our seven to eight hours of sleep on average. Anything less than I think you’re cheating yourself of of really good sleep of a couple of sleep cycles that would really help rinse out your brain. Um, so, okay, so oversleep in itself. What would we consider oversleep?

05:20                                     Well, um, I’m reading from a form, this is from the national sleep foundation and they stayed, if you’re between the ages of 26 and 64 that you want to get between seven and nine hours of sleep, no less, no more. Right. Okay. And if you’re over the age of, I’m 60 12, you’re 65 and older, they say, um, eight hours, you know, seven to eight hours. Um, but I always hear, you know, when you’re younger and they didn’t put it in here, like teenagers and stuff like that, their sleep habits are terrible. They just want to sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep. And it’s like, if they need it, let them have it. Right. But again, don’t need them sleeping until noon. There’s gotta be limits. There has to be a bed time so that you can still wake up and you still have a productional day. You don’t want to have a situation where you’re just gonna let the whole day go by because you were asleep.

06:10                                     And I think that leads into the whole point of this video and everything we share with you is establishing really good sleep habits, right? So I mean the first steps would be identify how many hours you need to sleep. Let’s use eight for example. And then you need to identify what time you need to wake up in the morning. For me, it’s five in the morning. I wake up at five every morning. So therefore my bedtime should be between nine and 10 which it is. I’m, I’m, I’m super strict about my bedtime and I’m super strict about the time that I wake up and annoys the crap out of her because she, she hates it on Sunday when I’m waking up at five, five 30 and uh, she’s like, it’s your day off. What did you doing?

06:54                                     Yeah, yeah. Well sometimes also we like to do our exercise in the morning, so if we’re going to do it, we have to get up early, right? Normally I’ll sleep till six, but if we have to get up to exercise, you know, that means I got to get up at least by five 30 so that we can get geared up and head out, have time to give back, still have our coffee, watch the news and get ready for work. So yeah.

07:13                                     Yeah. And that is, that is important. So yeah, coffee,

07:16                                     yes, it’s, it’s a need. It’s not even a

07:21                                     so, okay. So identifying your wake up time and then you subtract the eight hours and you come up with your go to sleep time. So a lot of things come into this part, right? I mean that’s a good sleep habit. You have your eight hours, you have your set times. How in the world do normal people stayed disciplined with that time? Yup.

07:41                                     Well you have to limit distractions. Um, that’s key. Okay. Um, that means if you have a lot of light on the side of the house, your bedrooms and maybe consider getting some blackout curtains or something, that’ll actually keep the room dark, um, until your time is to get up. Or the same with going to bed. If you have streetlights or any type of bright lights outside your window, make your room as dark as possible so that doesn’t interfere. And also consider noise. Um, some people live in apartments. Um, some people just have noisy neighbors or that annoying dog that just doesn’t want to stop barking, whatever it is. Um, consider your noise environment and maybe your best into like a sleep machine to create white noise or rain.

08:23                                     We recently bought an Alexa probably what an echo, uh, what three months ago, maybe four months ago. And we’ve been using it. It produces rain sounds, it produces ocean sounds. And at first I was totally against it. Um, she was all into it. She’s always so good. It’s okay. But now to be honest with you, we’ll skip a couple of nights so that way we don’t develop a total addiction to having that white noise going on. And if there is a difference, there is a difference. Dumb white noise really helps us get through the night. So, uh, I would, I would definitely, if, if you guys are into the idea of getting a, some kind of white noise player for your bedroom, I would definitely encourage you to do that. Yeah. It even drowns out our dog snoring.

09:09                                     Okay. So this is a funny story. I’ve always wanted a baggy bulldog to me. They are the ugliest, most adorable dog ever. They got so many folds of skin. You just want to shake them all the time and shake their lips or they’re just so cute. And they’re like this big style dog that walks around like they own the world. I’ve always want one. I love them. And he’s like, we’re not getting one of those. They snore. And I was like, okay. Well now he’s found out that his, she had sue who also has a smashed snout, snores louder than any person that we know. Whether he is sitting there just licking his leg or sleeping.

09:47                                     He’s this big, he’s, he’s this big, he’s a little guy and I swear he snores louder. He snores louder than any person and he just whales for hours on end and we’re like [inaudible] shut up, shut up. So yeah, I guess that’s a sleep disruption for us except for the white noise. Actually it takes care of it. So back to the video, back to the whole purpose about this. So developing really good sleep habits. Um, and, and we really encourage you to, to either read our blog because there’s a lot of helpful information to help you build a good sleep habit or good sleep hygiene as well. Um, or you know, Google stuff. Find out about it. Your health is, is depending on your sleep, you know, there’s diet and exercise. Those are two topics that get a lot a lot of coverage. Yes. Uh, sleep really doesn’t and we encourage you to look that up because it’s, it’s all just as important if not more because you have to think about your sleep. I mean your, your brain health, whether it be now or whether it be in the future when you’re older, you have to consider the ramifications of sleep loss.

11:01                                     [inaudible] any of this is a funny thing. We’ve been watching our man competitions a lot, our, the people who are trying to compete in the competitions to make it to Kona and in the process. Sure. Um, when you talk to them, they will tell you sleep deprivation really affects how they can exercise really affects how they can stay, remain focused and disciplined. So it affects, you know, your eating. It affects because you’ll eat more when you’re tired. Yup. Um, and then as far as your discipline for your exercise, you don’t have as good as an exercise or regimen whenever you’re tired. So it’s like your sleep is actually, um, I would say it’s equally more important, but depending on what it is you’re doing, it can be most important. Right. So it’s really, really a necessary fact that you do balance, diet, exercise and sleep. And if you’re not hitting one of them, all of them fail.

11:52                                     Right? Right. So, um, the whole gist of this thing is to please look into developing a really good sleep habit for your health now and in the future. Yes. And, uh, we appreciate you watching the video and we would appreciate you watching our other videos because if you’re looking to develop really good sleep habits, we have a lot of great information on there. Um, I’ll put a link to the directly to the blog that has all our videos and to our youtube channel that has a lot of videos as well, right? Including Gretchen talking about just about every mattress we have in the store. So that way you know which one’s the right one is for you. And um, remember when you sleep well, you live well. Have a wonderful day. Bye Bye.

12:40                                     [inaudible]

12:43                                     says me when I don’t get enough sleep. Hello. And I just wanted to say thank you for tuning in and watching us today. If you liked our video, please hit like, and if you would follow it was over to our website. Check out all our other videos were great with trying to be fun, but also very informative. So if you would like to catch on, son, catch up on something that you’ve missed or if you’d like to see some that are coming in the future, please subscribe to our channel. Cause always when you sleep while you live. Well, thank you.