Dr. Mitch: It's 3am and your brain won't let you sleep....

Your two-minute checkup with Dr. Mitch Schulman brought to you by board certified hand surgeon Dr. Daniel Durand for relief of trigger finger. Book a consultation now at montrealhandsurgery.com. It is 752. It's Ken in for entry. Nice to have you with us here on the second day of January. Well, it's three o'clock in the morning. You're awake and then your brain and your mind becomes your own worst enemy. You start thinking about things, worrying about things, and you can't get back to sleep. Why does that happen? Dr. Mitch Schulman is on the line. Mitch, good morning.

Good morning. I got scared. Just that it was three o'clock in the morning. I got terrified. Mitch, I remember you telling me once that you have no trouble sleeping. Like your head hits a pillow and you're done. You're out nine, nine point nine times out of 10. Yes. I guess I am so sleep deprived. Look, I can probably fall asleep. Yeah. For most people, and especially as you get older,

It's not that you need for sleep diminishes. It's that your ability to sleep diminishes. If you're a guy, there's a certain part of your body that gets bigger that means that you end up going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. And for people of all ages and sexes, it really can be a function of underlying health issues or other things going on. But certainly, as you all know, there's a natural rhythm

to our sleeping and to our daily patterns. Remember we talked about the circadian rhythm, the amount of day, rhythm in our body? Well, it turns out melatonin, the hormone that we used that helps us to fall asleep naturally, which is a natural component of our body, peaks, and then slowly starts to diminish around between two and four AM. At the same time, your body starts revving up to get ready for the next day, cortisol levels and other things start going up. So there's this sort of

No man's land as it were between about two and four in the morning where people will tend to wake up. And for most people, they're sort of lightly asleep. They're lightly awake. They drift up. They drift down and they go back to sleep. For a lot of people, they go to the bathroom and then they fall back to sleep. But there's some people who wake up in the middle of the night like that. And especially if they've been drinking or doing other things, you just can't get back to sleep. And it's like, it's like, you know, the old hamster wheel, you know, the little thing running, running, running, running in your brain is

and you just can't break it. Certainly what I tell people to do is when you're caught in a situation like that, don't stay in bed. Get up, go to some dimly lit part of the house and try and do something mindless and boring. They talk about word-finding puzzles. They talk about, you know, because it's right there in front of you. You don't have to work very hard to do it. Reading or doing something like that. Sometimes it helps just to write everything down that's bothering you and get it off your brain.

But doing something like that, non-electronic, non-stimulating, non-litid, litid, lit, non-lighted, whatever. Not blue light staring at you as you're doing it will help you to fall asleep.

And that's what you need to do. Just be careful. If it's something new for units happening on a regular basis, you want to make sure that something else isn't going on like Restless Lake syndrome or some other problem that really needs to be dealt with. A couple of things I want to mention. Mitch, you know what works for me. I don't know if this is the right thing to do, but when I wake up in the middle of the night and I can't get back to sleep,

for whatever reason. I just use my phone and I start listening to a podcast and just the sound of the voices quietly in my ear, it lulls me back to sleep and it seems to work. Yes, and there are people that will put on restful music or meditation or things like that and those definitely work

Just make certain as you're using your phone, turn the light or the phone away from you. So something isn't shining in your eyes as you're doing that. Yeah, it's a buried under the covers. And the other thing I was going to ask you, can you offer any insight to why I can set my watch, Dr. Mitch, to the time of the morning when my wife will start snoring. But that has to do with the circadian. It's the positioning, the depth of the sleep. Don't forget there are different stages of sleep, right?

And as you get into different stages of sleep, the muscles relax more or less. And depending upon the relaxation, the tone and the position you're in, that will induce snoring. Storing happens because the, um, the passageway that the air is going through isn't as strongly supported as it might otherwise be. And so there's stuff flopping in the wind as it works. Nice. A nice image there. Mitch, uh, a little before I let you go, a little birdie has told me that you're welcoming a new member to the family.

Yes, my daughter delivered. January the 1st at 854 in the morning. It's a great way to start the year, I guess. Wow, good for you. Thank you. Everyone healthy and happy and doing well? Knock on wood, yes, which we all know. That's the most important thing. Let everyone be healthy and happy.

and only the best for the new year. We've been through enough in 2024. Everyone deserves a healthy, happy year this year. Well, congratulations to you and the family. Thank you. Mitch, thanks for this as always. Have a terrific day. You too, all the best.