Name: Understanding Sleep and Anxiety for Optimal Performance
Uploaded: 2026-09-01T18:01:21.697Z
Duration: 59 min 28 s
Description: Understanding Sleep and Anxiety for Optimal Performance

Transcript for "Understanding Sleep and Anxiety for Optimal Performance": Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar. I am Mark VanRiper, director of customer growth here at RPAG. Today's session is gonna be a little bit different from our usual platform and practice management content, and that is intentional. At RPAG, we believe building a great practice starts with showing up as your best self, and that means taking care of the person running it. Today's webinar is called Understanding Sleep and Anxiety for Optimal Performance. That is why we are thrilled to welcome doctor Melissa Milanich, a licensed clinical psychologist, executive consultant, and keynote speaker who spent decades helping professionals sleep better, stress less, and optimize their performance. Doctor Milanich founded Mind, m I n d, Impact Consulting and brings over twenty years of research and clinical expertise in sleep, anxiety, stress, and trauma to help business executives and organizations thrive. This session is brought to you in partnership with Victory Capital Management, and we are grateful for their support in making this conversation possible. But before we dive in, we have a couple of quick housekeeping. Questions and answers q and a will be held in a q and a session at the end of this presentation. But please submit your questions to doctor Milenek anytime using the q and a tab on the right side of our screen. Resources, check the documents tab on the right side of your screen for a link to learn more about doctor Milenek. And also in the docs tab, we have a link to our twenty twenty six RPAG National Conference, September thirteenth to sixteenth. You can still register at the great resort of surf and sand, and we welcome you to join. So at this time, though, it is with my great pleasure to hand it over to doctor Milenek. Doctor Milenek, welcome, and thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. Very excited to be talking with everyone today. So as we jump in and as we touch base, as we said, I'll be talking about all different aspects of sleep, making sure that you have many practical tips and strategies that you can take home to start sleeping better tonight. And we'll leave plenty of time for questions at the end, but feel free to put questions that you have in the chat throughout the presentation so we make sure that we can get to these at the end. And make sure you know where that chat feature is because I'm gonna be asking you some questions as we go through as well. So as I jump in, whenever I am talking about the topic of sleep, I always say I'd be remiss if I don't take a moment to touch on the topic of stress. And when I'm talking about stress, I'm defining it as the demands are exceeding the resources that are available to us. There are constant demands on our time, on our energy, and for all these different things that we need to get done. But what I found is that the majority of people don't actually recognize how much stress they're actually experiencing. We become acclimated to it. It's no different than when I was recently speaking for a conference for Barron's, and I walked into the Bellagio to have the conversations, and and I got hit with a wave of smoke. And a few days a few moments later, a few minutes later, I didn't really notice it as much. And I can promise you that people didn't stop smoking in Vegas. But what happened instead is that as we become acclimated to it, we don't notice it anymore. And that's what happens with stress as well. Even good things can cause stress. It could be a move, a puppy, planning a vacation, so many different things that put stress on and requirements on our time and on our energy. So for today, the whole key is for you to have practical tips and strategies that you can start implementing tonight. And from a stress standpoint, the number one thing you can do is a quick check-in with yourself to be noticing how stressed you are. So to make this point, I'm gonna ask you all to play along with me for a minute. And we're gonna feel silly, but we can feel silly together. What I want you to do is I want you to take your shoulders, and I want you to flick them up to your ears as high as you can. And now really do this, like, higher, tighter, tighter as much as you possibly can, and then quickly drop it. A few things as you you will probably notice there was a little bit of tension there and you're probably thinking to yourself, well, what would I be stressed about in this moment? But that tension can come from many things. It could be the commute into work. It could be sitting at your desk, typing. It could have even been the way that you slept last night and how your neck was in a different position on the pillow. Why do I bring this up? Well, here's the thing. Our brain is constantly scanning and checking. It's determining how tense are our muscles, how fast is our beating, how quickly are we breathing. And when all any of those metrics actually hit a certain threshold, now our brain is gonna stop. It's gonna say, oh, this is that fight or flight response. There might be a threat. I can't let this person rest. When we sleep, it's considered a vulnerable state. And so what ends up happening is that all these other things that can cause tension and stress in our system that have nothing to do with threat can now prevent us from getting quality rest. So that exercise I had you do where you're tightening the muscles and quickly releasing, that's part of something called PMR, progressive muscle relaxation. We overly tighten a muscle group and then quickly relax it. It helps our muscles to elongate. It helps to increase circulation, helps our body to relax. So if you or anyone you know experiences pain at night when they're sleeping, maybe they have a lot of movements, things like periodic limb or restless leg, Doing this exercise head to toe before bed will help to reduce the movements that experience a pain and help people to be able to get better quality sleep without having to just take the medications as well. So many tips and strategies that we can jump into today. But the idea to think about this is this is where this idea of burnout comes in. And when I know people are burned out on the topic, we hear about it over and over again. So for me, it's not so much what burnout is, but what it isn't. It's not that we're lazy, that we can't handle things, that we don't care or don't want to work hard. It's that the demands on our time and our energy exceed those resources. And this doesn't have to just be work related. It could be the fact of volunteering and things that you care about and caregiving. Maybe it's even the fact of why did I sign up for that pickleball league, you know? I have one more thing I have to do on Tuesdays. So we wanna just be thinking through all the things that are taking our time and energy, and that's gonna be where sleep is gonna help us to refill the tank. For so many of us, you could probably relate. Maybe you have your phone and it's about the battery's about to die. So you plug it in just long enough that you have a few percentage points so you can make that phone call. You have to keep plugging it in to get it to work. It's gonna be the same thing with our bodies. We need to plug them in for the whole night and let them fully recharge the battery so that we can perform at our best, and we don't keep running out of that energy and those resources. So for sleep, whenever I'm talking about sleep, I find that it's really important to take a few minutes, talk about the numbers, talk about what we're defining. And I'm not just talking about severe sleep problems like sleep apnea. I'm talking about the fact that you've had a busy work day and you climb into bed and you can't wait to go to sleep, but you can't shut your brain off. Or maybe you find that you do fall asleep and you're up two, three, four times in the middle of the night. Maybe you've noticed that it's always 3AM. Maybe you find that you sleep through the night, that you wake up and you still feel tired and feel like you need that nap in the middle of the day. So the good news is you're not alone. Over seventy million Americans are struggling with their sleep, and we're seeing that over seventy percent of employees are struggling with their sleep. So for those of you that work with business owners, this is an important thing to note because many times what happens here is it's impacting their bottom line. So I would ask you, if you wanna take a guess, feel free to put in the chat how much money you think companies are losing because of the sleep problems of their employees. Maybe you're guessing 5,000,000 or 10,000,000, and you may be surprised to see that it actually is over hundreds of billions of dollars. Before the pandemic, we were seeing over $136,000,000,000 lost each year. And now post pandemic, we've seen that number skyrocket to over $411,000,000,000 every single year. What's intriguing to me is that the majority of what we're doing to make our sleep better actually makes it worse. So you might be thinking to yourself, well, I know it's only a Tuesday, but I can't wait for the weekend to catch up on my sleep. Well, what most people don't realize it takes up to four days to make up for one hour of lost sleep. So that two day weekend is barely even half of what we need for that. And for folks that you may work with that are retired, four days is still a lot of time. Maybe you're thinking to yourself, oh, you know, I just I didn't sleep well last night, so I need to go to bed early tonight. Well, you may not know that going to bed early can also be very disruptive for your sleep because now your body doesn't know when to feel tired. If you usually eat dinner around 07:00 at night, you get hungry around 06:30 because your body knows to expect sleep. When you go to bed around the same time, your body knows to expect food. When you go to bed around the same time, now your body knows when to expect to feel tired. And if we're sleeping at all different times, not only is it harder for us to fall asleep, but we will actually start feeling more tired throughout the course of the day. Because what's gonna happen is that our body now thinks, okay. Well, last night, she let me go to bed around 09:00. I'm feeling kinda tired. I wonder if she'll let me take a nap around four. And And now we start to feel tired all throughout the day, and it's more disruptive. So it's actually better to stick to a consistent schedule as best as we can so we don't see the disruptions even throughout the day and throughout the course of what we're trying to accomplish. So let's talk about also why we need our sleep in the first place, because I find that for my busiest, most productive professionals, we tend to try to convince ourselves that, you know, we can get by on less sleep. We hear you snooze, you lose. Time is money. Who's the first person to show up and the last person to leave? And if we're tired, that somehow equates to being dedicated. But instead, it actually can make our productivity and our performance worse. We know that sleep is really important for our physical bodies to heal and repair. So for those of you that like to exercise, if you're not getting the right amount of sleep, your workouts can actually stop working for you. So now what's going to end up happening is that your body can break down muscle and actually build up and hold on to fat to fuel your exercise. For the gentlemen that are listening today, what we find is that if you're getting one hour less sleep at night than your body needs, it can actually age you eleven years of testosterone. So that means that if you're 39, you're functioning as a 50 year old. And ladies, there's so much that sleep does with our hormones. I'm not even gonna begin to jump into that. But if you have questions, you can definitely put them in the chat. We know that sleep is also very important for our brain and our brain health and our brain functioning. This is why when we sleep, our brain takes out the trash. What I mean is that throughout the day when our brain is working, toxins and extra byproducts build up, and we need to flush that out when we're sleeping. Our three pound brain produces over five pounds of toxins every single year. And if we're not getting the right kind of sleep, that process can't happen. Not to mention the role that sleep pays plays for our memory, our attention, our focus and concentration, our ability to balance and regulate our emotions. So much is happening here. Then it impacts our immune system, our metabolism, and even how we respond to challenges. That's why the few days following Daylight Savings, we see a twenty four percent increase in car accidents, an eight to ten percent increase in heart attacks, and all of these impacts just from one hour on one night. So I'm not bringing this up to make us more anxious and stressed, but more to say that sleep is the secret superpower that we all have access to, but very few of us are harnessing it. And so what we want to do is start to reprioritize our sleep so that everything else can fall into place, so that our workouts can work, so that we're craving healthy foods instead of sugary snacks and carbs because our body is trying to pull energy from somewhere. And don't worry. I'm not saying that you have to spend more time in bed. I actually am gonna help you become a more efficient sleeper. Think about the fact that you can spend less time awake in bed and more time feeling energized, having the energy, feeling healthy, have your brain being sharper, and truly being able to enjoy your life and your days. So let's jump into the practical tips. The first piece is gonna be how much sleep do we actually need? And if I asked you all to think about a shoe size, right now we know that the average US woman's shoe size is an eight and a half to a nine. And for gentlemen, it's a ten and a half. But there are many with larger or smaller feet. And the reason that I say that is think about that eight hours of sleep that the society tells us we need as the same thing, an average. There are many that need more than that, and they barely schedule eight hours into their nights of sleep, and they wake up and still feel tired. And then there are many people that need less, and they wake up after six or seven hours and feel great until they look at the clock, and then they immediately feel tired because their brain said they should. So what we need to do instead is recalibrate, figure out what your ideal sleep number is, not the bed, but the number of hours. And you're gonna leave today's webinar knowing exactly what your number is. So I'm gonna give you a quick sleep quiz, and I'm gonna ask you to put your answers in the chat. So everybody find the chat. And the question is going to be, when I sleep at night, what takes priority? Is my mind and brain gonna heal first or is my body gonna heal first? And so think about this, everything that we know that our brain and our mind does for us, that our body does for us. And what you're gonna find is that, you know, as we're thinking through this, yes, we need both to heal. But if we're not getting the full amount of sleep, choices have to be made. So put your answers in the chat, mind and brain or body. And in order to answer this question, we have to better understand how sleep works. So when we sleep, we go through a process. It's made up of stages of sleep that make up cycles of sleep. Different important things happen at each stage, and we need all of them to be able to function at our healthiest. So first, we're gonna see stage one sleep. And this is going to be where our senses are shutting down, where people experience something called a myoclonic jerk, that feeling of falling, hence the phrase falling asleep. And this is usually about ten to fifteen minutes of your overall sleep at night. If you wake up during this stage, most people wouldn't even realize that they were asleep. Then we're gonna get to stage two sleep. And think about it as a transition. You wouldn't go from first gear to third gear without going through second in your car when you're driving. We wouldn't go from body to brain repair and back and forth without going through this transition stage. This is gonna make up the majority of your sleep at night, about 45 to 55% of your sleep. And you're gonna hear me talk about percentages. For those of you that wear the wearable devices, the trackers, definitely, if you have questions, put that in the chat. We can talk about it at the end of which one are most accurate. What metrics should we be paying attention to? But think about it from a percentage standpoint. Then we're gonna get to stage three sleep. And so on those devices, you hear people talk about deep sleep or slow wave sleep. You're gonna see this if you've done an overnight sleep study, for instance, as well. And this is going to be where the body physically heals and repairs itself. So for those of you that voted for body, you are correct. Here is why. It's survival. Think of it this way. If I'm hiking in the woods and I hear a rustling in the trees, I want my legs to work to be able to run away. If my brain is sharp, but I can't protect myself, I don't survive. And the reason that this is so important is that for many of us, we're not getting the full amount of sleep we need at night, But we wake up after a few hours, and because our body healed and we feel physically rested, we don't realize that our brain wasn't getting what it needed as well. So this whole, in terms of the sleep for our body repair, our deep sleep, we want that to be about 20 to 25% of our sleep each night. Notice I'm not saying a specific number amount because not everybody needs the same amount. So I can't say two hours instead, it's the percentage. So this is one cycle of sleep, and one cycle of sleep usually lasts about an hour and a half to two hours. And the typical sleeper gets four to five of these a night. Now we're gonna get into our second stage of sleep, and this is where we're gonna see the instance of REM sleep or rapid eye movement sleep. And this is where our brain is gonna do all of the magic that it needs. It's gonna sort through everything throughout the day, and it's gonna say, okay. Do I need to remember if I had a bagel or an oatmeal for breakfast? That is tasty. I probably don't need to remember it next week. Should I remember what my victory wholesaler was telling me about v flow? That's important. I better file that away and remember that later. But the whole point is your brain is gonna take everything that it's done throughout the day, sort through what it needs to hold on to, and then it's gonna replay what's important to re etch it into your brain so you can remember it later. This is also where the majority of our emotion balancing and regulation is gonna happen. So our ability to have a longer fuse, to be more resilient, to experience more happiness and joy, all of the things for focus and memory and attention, and all of our cognitive performance. That's why it's very important that we get quality REM sleep for our brain health. This is also where the majority of dreaming is going to occur. Now lots to think about here for a second with this, because from a dreaming standpoint, there's a whole other presentation that we can talk to. But But I wanna talk to you for a minute about how dreaming can be related to your physical health. And here's what I mean by that. If any of you have a puppy and maybe you've seen your dog that when it's sleeping, it looks like it's chasing the squirrel and it's moving. We don't wanna do that. We don't wanna act out our dreams because we might injure ourselves or the person sleeping next to us or throw ourselves out of bed. So our body is gonna become paralyzed so we don't act out our dreams. And that paralysis isn't that our muscles are tight and tense, it's that they lose all muscle tone. Just like when you pick up a young child and they're that floppy sack of potatoes. So this is important for us to not injure ourself with dreaming, but this has an impact on our ability to breathe. And here's what I mean by that. So throughout the night, while we're not in REM sleep, our muscles are gonna be nice and tight and tense. So if you think of my hands as my neck muscles and air can flow through. But then when the muscles lose muscle tone, what's gonna happen is they're gonna collapse, which can put pressure on the airway, which can cause obstruction. Think obstructive sleep apnea. That's why the majority of sleep apnea episodes occur during REM sleep. So if I get to REM sleep, and now I'm not getting the air that I need, my body's gonna wake me up to start breathing again. And that's important, but that means that I'm cheating myself out of REM sleep. That's why for individuals that aren't getting the full amount of REM sleep, we see and have untreated sleep apnea, we see that being a large risk factor for early onset Alzheimer's and dementia. So I understand. There are many of you, maybe you don't wanna do the sleep study because you don't wanna go into the lab. Fine. You can now do it at home in your own bed. Or maybe you don't wanna do it because you don't wanna wear the CPAP machine. You feel like it's that Darth Vader mask and it's too obstructive. Okay. There are alternatives. So if you have questions about that, please ask me at the end. I would love to share with you other alternatives and things that you can do to help your body to be breathing healthier because otherwise, you're gonna wake up every time you hit REM sleep. So think of it too. Many of you might say, well, I sleep really well the first few hours, then I'm up every hour and a half to two hours. And you might think that it's your bladder waking up. And it could be. But for some people, it's actually that you're waking up because you're not breathing. And then once you wake up to breathe again, then you realize you need to use the restroom. So pay attention to your wake up patterns, and I will leave that for now. But I definitely would love to share more with you and give you alternative solutions so we can get you breathing and get your body and brain as healthy as possible. For the rest of the night, what's gonna happen is we're gonna go back and forth between our body and brain healing and repairing itself, and this is gonna be where our magic number for sleep comes into play. So if it takes me an hour and a half to get through these cycles, an hour and a half to three hours to four and a half to six, it takes me two hours to get through it, two, four, six, eight for the same thing. So that is gonna be why we're gonna see different amounts of sleep need based on how our body processes sleep. And metabolism is the same way. You're going to see some people that need 1,800 calories and some that need 2,500 calories. It just depends on how your body processes food. That's why we need to do the same thing with adjusting to our sleep needs. So think of it as a balance. At the beginning of the night, we're spending more time with our body healing and repairing itself. And by the early morning hours, we're spending more time with our brain healing and repairing itself, but we have to get there. So if I need eight hours to get through the whole process, but I'm only giving myself a six hour window, you can see that I'm cheating myself out of that brain repair. And every time I wake up, I have to start the process over. So just like chutes and ladders, we keep going back to the beginning. I might start to get through it up. I wake up. I go back again. Up. I wake up. I go back again. And so that's why if I'm waking up three or four times in the middle of the night, I also might not be getting all the way through to the more time spent in REM sleep. This is why we wanna reduce the number of wake ups. We wanna consolidate our sleep back together. So it's quantity and quality of sleep. That's why it's important to note that actually the older we get, the less sleep we typically need. And it doesn't feel that way. This isn't this is the whole thing where I say it's a terrible joke that the universe plays on us because we're young and we can pull the all nighters and still wake up the next day and seem to be okay if we're not getting the sleep. But the older we get, we are feeling that sleep deprivation more and more. Think about what sleep is for that cell growth, that regeneration. Think about how much sleep a newborn gets versus a six month old, a two year old, a 10 year old. So we want to get ourselves to that place to fully understand that if we're getting less sleep, but we're waking up and feeling okay, it doesn't always mean that something's wrong. Maybe we've always gone to bed at the same time and we used to be able to sleep until nine or ten, and now we always wake up at five or six. Again, it may not mean that something's wrong. It may just mean that our sleep need has changed. It's the same thing with food. Think about portion sizes and senior specials. So just want us to be thinking about this so we're not stressing and trying and dreading our bed and forcing ourselves to sleep. Now we need to take a little bit of time and talk about the disruptors for our sleep and what we can do on this. And I could tell you a million times, okay, don't take your devices to bed, but you're gonna do it. So instead, let's talk about how we can make the adjustments to make it better. The biggest issue is going to be light. Our eyes perceive light. They send messages to our brain. There's the sleep switch, and it says it's light out. Be awake. It's dark out. Be asleep. And so what happens is it used to be that the sun would set and that would trigger our brain to start to prepare for bed. But now we're on our devices. The sun never sets. It's always so bright. This is why we see so many people with melatonin deficiencies. And just for you to know, the majority of people use melatonin incorrectly. It's not a sedative or hypnotic. You're not supposed to take it right before bed. And if you wake up in the middle of night and you find that you're up at 3AM, that's the worst time to take it because now it's gonna disrupt your sleep cycle for many, many days. So if you wanna talk about supplements and what to take and what to use and how to do that, definitely put that in the chat. Ask me at the end. We can talk about the melatones, the magnesiums, and many other things with that. But the key here, as I said, is to really pay attention about what we're seeing here with light. And I can ask you about checking your phone, and we find that people check their phone about, you know, 80 times a day, every ten to twelve minutes. What is scary to me is that by the time a child hits the age of 18, now in 2026, they're spending an average of five point six years on a screen, a third of their life. And we're finding that even a one year old are taking melatonin. So we wanna pay attention to how we're using our phone, how much screen time we're getting. And that's why I say it really is gonna go from participation to confessions because we really need to be thinking through the time that we're spending on our devices. Here's the thing. If you're gonna be using your devices, what I want you to do is put it in night mode. Instead of the white background with the black lettering, I want you to make it a black background with white lettering. That's gonna emit significantly less light. You can even see here with the script between the words audience and confessions, how it's a different light exposure with the contrast. So if you're gonna be on your devices at night, switch it to night mode. Additionally, we need to have some type of wind down routine, not just being on our devices. We do this for children. Wash your face, brush your teeth, read a story, say your prayers, whatever your family does in your process. But what do we do as adults? We keep ourselves busy, and then we climb in bed and we do scroll. And that's gonna be our only indicator that it's time to sleep. So add a few other things. It could be journaling. It could be reading. It could be that exercise in PMR and relaxation. Anything that we can do that our brain says, oh, I know what's happening. I know this process, and it can start to unwind. And if you are gonna be on your devices, let's pay more attention to what we're doing on them. If you want your brain to unwind and it's time to go to bed and you're done with your work day, why are you checking your email? Otherwise, your brain is gonna start thinking about how it wants to respond, what it wants to say, what it wants to do. And so instead, we wanna be checking our email before we get into bed and then shutting that piece off. And you don't need to know what's gonna happen the next day and what emails are there because your brain is not gonna switch off. And if we're on social media and we're on Facebook and TikTok and all these other videos, and now we're going to this to this, and now we've cut thirty minutes into our night, Maybe we feel like we need to be playing on our phones, and now we're watching TV. But you probably have noticed that the commercials are louder than the regular programming. They're designed to do that to get your attention. So now as you're trying to fall asleep, they're causing micro awakenings. You may not even realize, but now what's happening is your brain keeps waking up to check and see if there's a threat. That's why we need to be cautious about anything with vocalization and voices. Because as you're starting to fall asleep, your brain hears a voice that it doesn't recognize. It thinks, oh, this person isn't supposed to be in bed with her or with him, and that would cause again a micro awakening to check and see if there's a threat. So if you need noise, that's fine, but we want static noise, a white noise machine or a fan or something that's not gonna have the volume changes or the voices. Also, we need to pay attention to where we are keeping our our phone. We want it to be face down further away from us because when our eyes are shut, we can still perceive light changes through our eyelids. And all those flashes and alerts, our brains thinks that it's lightning or an explosion or a threat, and now it's on your watch or your face is this close to it. So we want to be turning off those alerts. You can have the do not disturb mode and still have loved ones call through, but we don't need the alerts at 3AM that are waking our brain up. And when we wake up in the middle of the night, we don't wanna be checking our phone. We hear this, but the other thing is don't check the clock. Your brain is immediately gonna wake up, and it's gonna start to calculate. Let's be honest. But I start thinking to ourselves, okay. I've been sleeping for three hours. I have to be up in forty five minutes. Should I even try to fall back to sleep? If you wake up in the middle of the night and your alarm has not gone off, it doesn't matter what time it is. Don't check the clock. But if you also find that you're laying in bed and you truly can't fall back to sleep, don't keep forcing yourself to lay there. Get out of bed. Do something boring. Empty the dishwasher. Fold the laundry. You wanna be teaching your brain that when you're in bed, you're sleeping. You're not awake. You're not stressed. You're not trying to force yourself to sleep. And when your phone is further away from you, now that means that when the alarm goes off, you can't hit the snooze button. Snooze is bad. We need to talk about snooze. And if I asked you, I bet you could all put in the chat the number of times that you hit the snooze button. Feel free to put that in there. And I get it. It feels good to say no to something. And most of us set our alarm early enough so we can hit the snooze button a few times. But here's the thing. All right. I'm gonna ask you a question. Go ahead and put in the chat, how long do you think it takes for your body to prepare to wake you up in the morning? Do you think it's five minutes before you wake up? Your body starts thirty minutes. Go ahead and put some answers in the chat. How much time do you think it takes? And I bet most people will think it's a few seconds, a few minutes. So think of it this way. When we go to sleep at night, our body has to drop in temperature. It changes the chemicals that it's producing. And when we wake up, our body has to do the opposite. So it actually takes our body about two to three hours, hours before we wake up. It starts the wake up process. It has to warm our body back up again. It starts to produce chemicals like cortisol. This is why you're waking up around 3AM, Because three to 4AM is two to three hours before six to 7AM when most people are waking up in the morning. And when your body starts to warm up and the chemical start to be produced, it causes that triggering effect and we wake up for it. And then instead of thinking, I have two to three more hours where I can go back to bed and rest. Now instead, you're looking at the clock and you're feeling frustrated. And then when you hit that snooze button, you negate the whole process. Just kidding. Didn't really mean for you to wake up yet. And now I can take up to sixty minutes for your brain to fully wake you up. So we've negated that process. And those eight to nine minutes of snooze sleep, that's not enough to get into a deep restful stage of sleep for deep sleep or REM sleep. So now it's just like empty calories. It's better to set the alarm for ten to fifteen minutes later, give your body a little more sleep, your body and brain will heal more, and they will thank you. So you probably are telling your loved ones these things. Maybe you're not doing it. Maybe you've been struggling not to check your phone because I've been reminding you of it. So I'm gonna leave you with that, and I'm gonna get you to one of my favorite tips and tricks. And you're probably wondering, what does pizza have to do with sleep? Well, let me tell you a little story for a minute. So let's say that I'm gonna have friends over for dinner and I'm gonna serve them pizza. So I take six inches of pizza dough. I spread it out in a six inch pie pan. It's nice and thick and even all is great. But then I get a phone call, more friends are coming, and now I need to stretch that to be able to have enough to feed everyone. Well, I can make it fit, but it's not gonna be thick and even. It's gonna have holes and gaps in it. And our sleep behaves in the same way. If I've built up six hours of sleepiness, but I'm trying to stretch it because I wanna make it fit into a ten hour window. I wanna get in bed earlier because it's cold outside. I'm tired. I wanna hide from my kids. I spent a lot of money on my mattress. Maybe it's even the fact that it's just I wanna sleep in on the weekend. But here's the problem though. If we're spending more time in bed than sleep that we have, of course, we're waking up because there's not enough to fill the space. Of course, we're not falling asleep fast enough because we're not tired yet. And then if you try to go to bed even earlier, it's just like, well, it's gonna take me an hour to fall asleep. You're not gonna actually fall asleep earlier. Now it's gonna take you two hours to fall asleep. So instead, what we need to do is knead the dough back together. We need to squeeze out all that awakening, and instead, we need to get our body and brain what it actually needs. So we're waking up less and we're optimizing our sleep. Here's how we're going to do this. And here's what I will say. If you pay attention to nothing else today, this is the money slide. This is my entire TED talk, and it's backed by about seventy to eighty years of research from the sleep medicine world. One caveat. If you or the person you're gonna share this with has untreated sleep apnea, we can't do this because we need you to wake up multiple times to start breathing again. And then once we fix the sleep apnea, again, I'll share other strategies with you for that, then we can implement this. But for everyone else, I have seen this work successfully for over twenty years, working with corporate executives, spec ops, military, professional athletes, retirees, everything under the sun. Here's what we need to do. Four simple steps. Step one, we need to identify how much sleep you are currently getting. And so what we're going to do is I want you to take your seven days, think across your weekdays, your weekends, average it out, and I want you to come up with one number, not a range. Don't say six to seven hours. And if for any reason that number is less than five, your new number is five. For everyone else, I'm gonna ask you to be honest and realistic with yourself. What I mean by that is time in bed is not asleep. Don't count the hour reading. Don't count the forty five minutes that you're awake in the middle of the night. You can't count your naps because you're actually asleep then. So when you total this all up, maybe your number is only six hours right now. That's okay. That's a great place to start. I'll teach you to grow it. Then we're going to get to step two, which is what the sleep window is going to be and how we do this as we work backwards. So think across your seven days again, weekdays, weekends, what is the earliest that you have to wake up? Maybe you're up at 6AM on Tuesdays and Thursdays for a workout class. Maybe you're up at 5AM on the weekends for a long run or to take your kids to travel ball. Whatever it is, Take your earliest wake up, say 6AM. Take your number from step one and work backwards, and that is going to give you your sleep window. So 6AM, six hours, that's gonna take you to twelve midnight. And, yes, midnight might feel late. So I can make it eleven to five or ten to four, but I'm not stretching the window just because I wanna get in bed sooner and I wanna sleep longer. We have to start with reality. I always tell people, it's just like the buffet where your eyes are bigger than your stomach and you can only eat so much. We can only process so much sleep. We need to identify the window so we can take back control for that. Once we've gotten our window, we have our number. Now step three is it's time to stick to this schedule for seven days. And I promise you, you can do anything for seven days. If you haven't slept well for weeks, months, and years, I'm asking for days. And this is how it practically works. If twelve midnight is your bedtime, you're not gonna get in bed at eleven to read. You can read at eleven, but you're gonna do it outside of bed, on the chair, on the couch, somewhere else. And when midnight bedtime rolls around, that's not when you start reading. That's when you stop, the book is down, lights are out, head is on the pillow. And if it takes you two hours to fall asleep, that's okay. If you wake up five times in the middle of the night, that's okay. But when your alarm goes off at 6AM, you're gonna get out of bed. You're not sleeping longer. And, yes, you might feel tired, but that's a good thing. We want to feel tired because that means that by the time it's time to go to bed the next night, you're gonna feel tired and you're gonna fall asleep faster. Just like if you skipped lunch, now you're more hungry for dinner. And so that's why for these seven days, we are not going to take a nap. Hear me out. Here's what I mean by this. I'm not saying that you'll never take a nap again. But if we're napping during the day, we can be depleting our sleepiness, which means it's harder to sleep all the way through the night. It's just like if your mom said to you, don't eat a snack, you've ruined your dinner, Don't take the nap. We can ruin our sleep. If you do take naps, we want them to be before two to 3PM, and we want them to be power naps. A quick twenty to thirty minutes, that little boost of energy. It's like having that scoop of peanut butter or the apple in the afternoon before dinner or having the whole bag of chips. And we wanna be cautious about having the nap at the same time every day because then our body learns to expect it. That's why you're feeling tired at 2PM because your body knows that that's when it gets a nap and gets its rest. So we just wanna be cautious. We can use naps especially when we're traveling to help combat jet lag and that travel. We want that to be again earlier in the day. I will literally prescribe naps for some of my professionals to use. But again, twenty, thirty minutes before two to 3PM, and not during this first week where we want to build up sleepiness. You wanna talk more about naps? Definitely put them in the chat and ask me at the end. And the same thing with jet lag and travel and how to sleep on planes and all those other things. We can talk about how we can use lights and naps and those things to help instead of just having to use the chemicals too. Now we're about to get to step four, and this is where it's time to evaluate and adjust. We want to become more efficient sleepers. So what that means is that we wanna be falling asleep within ten to fifteen minutes. We wanna be sleeping through the night minus that bathroom break, and we wanna be waking up and feeling rested. Now if that is you, you've hit your sleep sweet spot. Congratulations. For everyone else, now we're going to adjust and modify. If you're finding that you're still waking up multiple times throughout the night, we're gonna have to shrink that window a bit. You probably padded the numbers the first week because you were worried, and you were putting the number that you wanted to get or thought you needed instead of what your body actually did need. So we're going to need to make that window a little bit smaller. For everyone else who's now sleeping through the night, but they're still tired, now we get to grow that window and we're going to do so in fifteen minute increments. Fifteen minutes is enough to adjust your entire sleep schedule. So instead of twelve to six, that means we're gonna do 11:45 to six and do that for seven days. And then 11:30 to six until we hit that sweet spot where we're sleeping 90 to 95% of the time that we're in bed, We're falling asleep quickly. We're sleeping through the night, and we're waking up and feeling rested. And now you've done the impossible because you just created more hours in your day. Here's what I mean. Instead of spending six hours in bed ten hours in bed to get six hours of sleep, you're spending six hours in bed to get six hours of sleep. And now you have four more hours in your day to do everything else that you've wanted to do. There's a lot of information here. After today, you will be getting my sleep well guide. I believe it's there for you to be able to download. It has all these tips and tricks. You also get access to my TED talk that walks through the sleep window and to my video library on my website, close to 200 videos and tips for sleep and stress and many different access, different guides and things there to help you as well. I'm going to give you a few more tips and tricks, and then we're going to open it up for questions. So continue to put those in the chat. We'll make sure we have time to get to those. Here's my next question. If I'm going to go to the movies, what snack am I most likely going to get? So go ahead and put that in the chat, what your guess is. And I know somebody might say snow caps or milk does, but I bet the majority of you, when you think of the movies, you're gonna think of popcorn. Just like your brain says movies, popcorn, it makes that quick connect. That's what I want your brain to do with your bed and sleep. I want it to think bed and rest, not where I stress and worry and plan, not my office. Your bed should be reserved for sleep and romantic activity, and that is it. Anything else, your brain is gonna be confused. Should I be awake right now? Should I be asleep right now? Should I be paying attention to what I'm reading? This is why you fall asleep on the couch, and then when you get to bed two hours later, you can't fall asleep, because your brain thinks that the couch is where you sleep and the bed is where you solve the world's problems. So we want to be paying attention to what we're teaching our body and our brain and where it gets to sleep. So we know that it's important from a consistency standpoint, from an exercise standpoint. Exercise is great. Do it earlier in the day when you can so your body has time to unwind. We talked about naps, so I'll leave that one for now. We want your bedroom environment to be cold, dark, quiet, and comfortable. We yes. Cold enough that you need a cover. There can be relative things there with the actual temperature, and there's so many devices out there, but eye masks are great. Earplugs are great. You can use that if you have a bed partner that has different schedules and many things there as well. Lots we can talk about. If you have questions, again, please put them in the chat. And then when we're taking care of that, really recognizing that light is gonna be one of the key things that's gonna impact our sleep. We wanna get less light at night, turn off the overhead lights. We We wanna be getting less devices, use the side lamps, but use your light in the morning. Light is gonna be that thing to trigger our circadian rhythm, to get it going, that system that helps us to know when to feel awake and when to feel sleepy. And if we're using light to our advantage, we don't have to rely on chemicals and substances as much. Now I have people that will say, well, I still smoke. It relaxes me. The nicotine is a stimulant. It can disrupt your sleep. Caffeine, I want you to put in the chat, how long do you think it takes for your body to get rid of the caffeine in one cup of coffee? We know that with caffeine, caffeine works in a unique way. It has a half life of about five hours. It takes it up to seven to eight hours to get out of our system. And caffeine actually doesn't make us less tired. It reduces our ability to perceive that we're tired. So if you could have two espresses and fall right to sleep, yes, we need to talk about your tolerance. But it's also important to note that what I mean by that is that since we don't know that we're tired, that's why you can still drink the coffee and fall asleep. That's why many people will fall asleep behind the wheel. But what we find is that it doesn't actually make us less tired, and it can actually hurt us over time if we're constantly running on empty but don't realize it. And then there's alcohol. And I have many people that will say, yes, but I'm stressed and I have a couple drinks and I fall right to sleep. It's great. Sedation is not sleep. So just because you're unconscious doesn't mean that you're getting quality restful sleep, and it can actually reduce your REM sleep at night. So I'm not saying that you'll never have a glass of wine with dinner or your nightcap. I just want you to pay attention to the impacts it has. Be looking at that, and don't use alcohol as the thing to put you to sleep. So we've talked a lot about our schedules, our exercise, our technology. Be careful when you wake up in the middle of the night not to eat or drink a lot because if you aren't getting enough water during the day and then you drink water when you go to bed at night, your body will learn that that's when it gets hydration and it will actually wake you up for water. So be cautious what we're treat what we're teaching our system. We talked about reading. So let me get to my last and favorite tips. How do we shut our brain off? So a few things. Throughout the day, we're busy, busy, we're running and going, and our brain is going to need to have the chance to process things. So what happens, though, is we don't give it that wind down time. Would you take a casserole out of the oven and immediately put it in the fridge? I hope not. I hope you'd let it cool down first. So that's what we need to do for our brain. So here's your homework. About ten to fifteen minutes before it's time to go to bed, I want you to take a notepad and a pen, no technology, and I want you to do this outside of bed. On the right hand side, I want you to write your to do list for the next day. I have to go to the bank. I have to go to the dry cleaners. I have to follow-up with my Victory wholesaler. All the important things you need to do. You're gonna write this all down because otherwise, you're gonna lay in bed and you're gonna plan and you're gonna think about what you need to do, and then you're gonna try to keep your brain awake to remember it, which makes it harder for it to shut off. And then on the left hand side of the page, you're gonna do a complete brain dump. You're gonna take everything that's running through your mind and you are gonna download it onto the page. And you're gonna write and write. I usually say set a timer for five minutes because the first minute is high level. I'm worried about my kids, finances, health, but the more that you write, the more starts pouring out of your brain. And you're not creating worries. What you're actually doing is you're helping your brain to download and get that out so you can free up that space so that it can truly have permission to shut off. You put it on the nightstand and you get in bed. And if your brain is still running and racing, you get back out of bed, write more, and get back in bed. Just like you take that puppy and you put it outside when you're doing the house training, you're taking your brain and you're putting it outside of bed. You're teaching it that it no longer gets to go in bed, and so you're no longer taking your troubles to sleep with you. You also find that you're more efficient because you have your to do list the next day before you have your coffee. By the way, make sure that you drink water in the morning while you're making that coffee. That quick boost of hydration will actually help you throughout the whole day, and then you can have your coffee. The other thing, maybe you climb in bed and you find that, okay. I'm not thinking and planning, but my brain just doesn't fully wanna shut off. Then this is where you can incorporate something called cognitive shuffling. So I want you to take a word that feels relaxing and sleep related. Let's say the word blanket and lay there. Imagine a nice warm blanket, you're cozy and ready for sleep, and then start through the letters. Take the letter b. Think of every word that starts with b, baby, balloon. And as you're working through it until you run out of b words, now go to the word the letter l. Think of all of the l words. As you're working your way through, you're gonna find that you most likely fall asleep before you even finish the word. It was able to distract your brain enough without engaging in something that was fully meaningful so that now you're not trying to force yourself to sleep. So as I said, there are so many questions, so many things, so many other topics that I'd love to share with you. But I know we have questions about supplements and wearables and travel and jet lag and pets and kids and so many different things. So with this, I think we're gonna, bring our folks back, and we're gonna go through your questions, answer as much as we can. And if you have follow-up questions that you don't wanna ask in front of the group, they will be sharing. As I said, you have my sleep well guide, my contact information. You're welcome to reach out. I'll answer any questions that you can have privately as well. Well. So with that, let's see what questions we have. Yes. First question is, how reliable are wearables, the Fitbits, etcetera, for identifying sleep stages? So there's a number of different wearables. It depends on which one that you're gonna be using. Right now in the research, there are four that are showing to be the most basically, we'll say, in terms of mapping on to the in lab sleep studies and those types of things. So the Apple Watch, the Fitbit, the Whoop Band, and the Oura Ring are the four that are showing most accurate about 90 to 95%. There are many other ones like your garments and such that are very close behind, and each day the technology continues to improve and to improve. The trick that you want to pay attention to is you want to be looking actually at patterns versus just the absolute value on it. What I mean by that is that, you know, if you're we want to be wearing it through the day and at night and maybe it says 19% most days. Okay. Well, that's fine even if it, you know, isn't the 20 to 25% range. But if you also notice that it drops to 12% one night or it jumps to 26, that change in pattern is more meaningful, and that's why we wanna be able to be paying attention to those things for it as well. Make sure that you have something that's gonna be able to track heart rate variability, your oxygen o two saturation, and the amount of time that you're spending in the sleep stages. Those are the core features you need, and then you can get into all the other metrics to help and support as well. K. Our next question, what would you recommend in terms of supplements in dealing with a nine month old that wakes up multiple times at night? So I always have to say that I'm not your prescribing provider. I don't know you or your family's medical background, so I can't give specific medical advice on that piece just legally. I can share some information from the behavioral sleep medicine space. Step one, I would actually recommend that you go to something called babysleep.com. It's a resource website that's put up by the Pediatric Sleep Council, And it goes through month to month, zero to thirty six months of what their body chemistry is doing, different supplements and rates and those types of things. Because we usually see around month seven individual, that's where the babies are starting to be able to self soothe. And around month nine, we will be seeing certain types of sleep regression. Some for babies, their sleep cycle is different. It's usually about a sixty to seventy five minute cycle. That's why their nap is usually about an hour, hour and fifteen minutes, and they wake back up again. So you wanna be cautious about having to immediately go to the medication route and the supplements. Oftentimes, you can make some tweaks to the environment. It may be the fact that when the HVAC comes on, looking at air flow, looking at temperature, looking at sleep scheduling, and the light in the room, we usually wanna start there before we immediately jump in with supplements for kiddos. I do find that once they get to about age one, so people are implementing melatonin, it's gonna be different for children versus adults. So for melatonin, typically for adults, it spikes about four to six hours before bed, and we will see that we wanna be taking it at least one to two hours before bed, three to four hours, sometimes people will say, but earlier. Whereas for children, usually when we get into a little bit more beyond toddler and adult into adolescence, they're taking it about twenty to thirty minutes before bed until you get to about age six or seven and such. So the timing is very different. I will say that in general with any type of naturally occurring supplements, because they're not FDA regulated, we want to make sure that you're using a brand that does third party testing because a lot of the brands have too much or too little in it. And we want to be paying attention to the dosage. For adults, they're typically talking about with melatonin about a half a milligram, one to two milligrams, three max, five at the absolute max. More than that, your body can stop producing it on its own. We can see many impacts on the system Versus for kids, they're usually talking about a half a milligram or less. So a lot of those gummies and things that have higher dosages, you're actually typically recommended to be cutting them in half. We tend to be giving people way too much. You also want to be doing melatonin separate from other supplements. So because like the melatonin we usually take earlier for adults, but for things like magnesium and such, that's what you would usually take about twenty to thirty minutes before bed to help to relax the body in the system. So pay attention to third party testing, dosage amounts, and the timing for it. But but we usually wanna try to do the behaviors before we get into the supplements, especially for children. K. If a client is managing, excuse me, significant financial stress, potential market losses, retirement anxiety, how does the type of psychological stress interact with sleep, and what's the cycle you most often see? So, typically, what we're finding from a stress standpoint that it's impacting the individual physically and psychologically. So they don't realize where they're holding tension. A lot of people hold it at different places in their bodies. That's why things like the PMR that I showed you at the beginning would be something for them to do a quick check-in with their body and what's happening. It's be able to relax the physical system. And usually, we find that then it's also gonna be harder for them to be able to shut their brain off. So that's why things at night, like the writing and the journaling, having a significant bedtime routine, doing those things, obviously, having a conversation with their advisor to have a better understanding can help, but some people are just going to be overly worried. I will have folks where they're having them the idea to pay less attention to certain news and certain things that they're reading, or set in certain time or a limit for that. Also giving them some unwind time at night, helping them to potentially do a gratitude journal or other things that can be positive, future outlooks. If it's really true significant anxiety, that's when we would start to incorporate things like chronic behavioral therapy and other tips and strategies. There's a lot more there that I can't go on to with a quick response. But we usually will see those cycles where they're struggling to sleep at night because there's no other distractors. And now they're getting online. They're reading the articles. They're seeing what's happening. And as we know, there can be so much volatility day to day that sometimes they're not they're we need to remind them to pay attention to the patterns to be able to help them to be able to rest and shut the brain off as well. Okay. Could my anxiety be contributing to my sleep problems, or is my sleep disorder making my anxiety worse? Both is the shortest answer because the anxiety, as as I said, if it's amping our body up but a lot of people don't realize think of it I'll I'll give you an example. So I have a kettle on the stove, and it can be from boiling. I can turn the burner down, and it may go from boiling to simmering, but it doesn't mean that it automatically shuts off. For many of us, we're so used to existing in a state of some stress that we don't we think that we've turned the burner off, but we're actually simmering. There's always some underlying anxiety going on. And if our body can't fully get to baseline and bring that down, then that's where it's harder for us to rest and relax because sleep is considered that vulnerable state. That's why things like HRV, heart rate variability are so important to track. Because if that number is smaller, that's usually an indicator that we're not fully decompressing at the end of the day and fully relaxing. So if we're not if that anxiety is amping us up, not only will our brain not unwind, but our body can't fully let us rest and relax. And then if we're not getting the full rest and relaxation, then our body can't heal, our brain can't have that ability to clear itself out and to relax. So then that puts more stress on the system. So the two of them match back and forth. That's why the strategies I'm talking about today are part of something called CBTI, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. And it is a specific non medication route that will actually help to quiet the brain and the body and help with the stress as well to be able to rest and relax. So if you're finding that you're experiencing this, that's a definitely thing. Follow-up with me. I can give you a list of providers in your area that can help you with this. I can it's also something that I can do, but with three to four sessions, usually, you're able to be sleeping much more consistently and feeling less stressed. Okay. How to deal with dogs in the bed. Even if they get kicked out, they're back up in the middle of the night. So there are a number of things here. A lot of it actually stems from what are we doing at the beginning. And so this isn't gonna help for those of you that already have the pets, but we'll find a few things. We actually find that the research shows that people and dogs sleep best if they they can be in the room, but not on the bed. So teaching them and training them to have to be in that space. Part of this is from animal behavior. It actually can hurt the animals and the pets to sleep with you. Here's how. So from an alpha, a whole animal behavior standpoint, when they are sleeping on the same plane and with the alpha, that teaches them that they actually can't protect themselves in their most vulnerable states. That can increase separation anxiety. It can make it harder for them to be separated from you, which can cause more stress throughout the day, which can impact them and their sleep, not to mention their movements, your movements, temperature, all different things. If you truly have a pet, and at this point in time, you can't get them out of the bed, usually I'll recommend getting a dog bed, putting it at the bottom of the bed and teaching them that that's where they sleep. So at least they're in one localized space instead of pushing you out of bed at the end of the night, and you have the king-size bed that the dog is enjoying and you have the small space. But we do it is important to note that it isn't always the healthiest for the pet. So then it's not just us feeling bad about it, but what's going to be healthy for them as well. And you do want to pay attention to many other things, but that is if you now sometimes, owners that will put double sided tape on the edge of the bed and when the pet tries to jump up, they don't like the sticky feeling and they'll jump back off again. You can have them out outside of the room and then let them in, although they are a great alarm clock to tell you when it's time for them to eat, not a minute late. Many other things there, but those are a couple quick tips and tricks. If you wanna talk specifically about pets, you can follow-up and I can share some other strategies. What if your spouse has the TV on for them to sleep, earplugs and sleep mask don't seem to work? Yeah. So there are gonna be a few things here. So, obviously, we want them to understand that that's not a healthy thing for them to sleep. So one, you are more than welcome to start blaming me. You can say that you listened to this today, that, you know, it's not you. It's coming from the sleep doctor. So you can totally blame me. I get invoked all the time. You can share with them the sleep well guide that will share that and help them to understand that it's not going to actually help them to sleep better. If they truly will not shut the TV off to fall asleep, the next step would be to set it on a timer. Because even though it's running for them to be able to fall asleep, we want it to shut off. We don't want it running through the night because we don't want the sound, the light, the constant, because it'll cause all these micro awakenings. If they can, you can also purchase sleep buds, which are gonna be specific earplugs that you can use for sleep. They're comfortable. You can sleep on the side, and you can actually run the TV or the podcast through those. So the partner isn't hearing it or listening to it. So then they're hearing the sound and they're shutting it off. But if you wanna share with them the tips and strategies we talked about today, this is the problem. Most people, their brain isn't shutting off, so they need the TV or they need the noise to distract the brain. So when we start doing the writing and the journaling and the cognitive shuffling and those other things, we don't need the podcast and the TV as much, but setting the timer is a good first place to start. Is sleepwalking hereditary? So sleepwalking and Parasomnias in general are something that we do see genetic components. We also can see some other behavioral components. We will typically see that if we are under more stress, more sleep deprivation, more dehydration, that we can see this being triggered more often. It does happen more often with kids, so we do see it in a lot of adults, not just the sleepwalking and the sleeptalking, but which is where the body isn't going into the paralysis the way that we would like it to. But we can also see the opposite of sleep paralysis, which people don't always know is also related, where you wake up and your brain is awake, but your body isn't able to move right away and it takes a minute to get out of the paralysis. We see both ends of the spectrum there. And, again, stress, sleep deprivation, dehydration, we can see more of that occurring. If someone came to you right now with a demanding career and said they had one month to meaningfully improve their sleep, where. would you start and what realistically can be achievable in that time frame? I would start with the sleep window. So I would the two things that I would first adjust is let's figure out how much sleep you're getting, and let's get you on a sleep schedule. Think of it this way. So your your clients give you money, and they say, I want you to invest it and give me the best ROI. You're gonna take that pot of money, and you're gonna decide how to allocate it, stocks, bonds, ETFs, what you wanna do with that to give them the best return on the investment. When your body knows when you're sleeping at night, especially a consistent wake time, that's number one. Wake up at the same time all seven days. Because whether you go to bed at 10:00, at 11:00, at midnight, if you're getting up at the same time every day, your body now knows its core pot of money, a pot pot of resources, and it can say, okay. I cannot properly allocate this percentage to body repair, this percentage to brain repair, to optimize healing and repairing, your best ROI for your sleep. So having as consistent of a schedule as possible, you may not always be able to go to bed at the same time, but if you have at least the consistent awake time, that's gonna help your body to optimize the healing to start getting that repair. And then the other piece is how you treat your bed. That should be sleep and romantic activity. That's it. If you're traveling and you're on the road and the bed's the only place to sit, great. Sit at the edge of the bed, use it as a couch. Sit on top of the covers to do your work and everything else. And when it's time to bed, everything goes down and then you get under the covers. Start teaching your brain what that trigger is of when to sleep and when to be awake. And that will help you to reset falling asleep faster, staying asleep longer, waking up less, and your body optimizing health and healing and repair for your brain and your body. So my sleep window will likely be midnight to seven, but my husband's alarm clock goes off at 05:50, and it wakes me up. Other than moving to another bedroom, what can I do? You can do a couple things. I mean, obviously, the earplugs, those things, he can actually have the earplugs with a personalized alarm. So when the alarm goes off, you don't hear it and he does. Yes. He's moving, but it's less disruptive. If he picks out his clothes and things the night before and is getting ready in the bathroom and not in the room, there's gonna be less sound and disruption if he's not turning on all the lights. You could also consider going to bed earlier and getting up at 05:50 at the same time. That's another thing that a lot of people don't always wanna adjust the schedules or night owls and early birds, but you could go to bed earlier and wake up at the same time as him as well. If you don't wanna make those adjustments, then it's what are we doing with the getting ready, the earplugs, those types of things would be the first place to start. Some people will have specific beds where the mattress isn't as it doesn't have as much motion. So when he gets up, you don't feel him getting out of bed. There's gonna be a little bit of give and take and a little bit of compromise there, but that's usually where we would start before we consider the whole sleep divorce idea of sleeping in different beds. Well, that brings us to the end of our webinar presentation. I'd like to certainly thank doctor Melissa Milenek for being here. We appreciate it. It's wonderful. Victory Capital is one of our partners in this, and all of you attended. We'll head back to the next webinar. Have a great day. Sweet dreams.