Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Sleep Is Not Self-Care (It’s Survival)

00:00:00.000 Hey all, Joey here, and you are listening to Under the Influence.

00:00:09.440 I love sleep. Like, I just love it so much. I really do. In fact, if I could have one superpower,

00:00:17.720 it would be to be able to fall asleep on command. Because the truth is, I am a total crap sleeper. 0.99

00:00:25.080 I can only sleep if I am laying flat on my stomach with my face smushed into a pillow 0.98

00:00:31.520 in my own bed. And this sucks. I mean, honestly, it really does because I am also a person who 0.99

00:00:41.260 functions when I get about nine hours of sleep. So it just feels unfair that falling asleep and

00:00:48.380 staying asleep is so incredibly hard for me. And I know that I'm not alone. My guest today is

00:00:55.840 Lindsay Scola. Lindsay is a writer, coach, and a former overachiever, although I think that she

00:01:02.360 still overachieves a little bit, who has spent most of her life believing that sleep is a sign

00:01:08.020 of weakness. And you can understand why, because in every profile we read of a CEO ever, they talk

00:01:15.900 about how little sleep they need or how they wake up at 5.30 and then they go, go, go. I hate that

00:01:22.860 for us. I do because I think that rest is such a necessity. It should not be considered self-care.

00:01:31.360 It should just be considered normal. And Lindsay agrees now, but she didn't for a long time until

00:01:39.960 her body staged its own kind of rebellion. After years of hiding her extreme fatigue and shame

00:01:47.860 napping in literal bathroom stalls, Lindsay was finally diagnosed with narcolepsy in her 30s.

00:01:55.380 And that diagnosis changed everything. It didn't just change how she lived, but it changed how she

00:02:02.240 thought about rest. And that is when she realized what we're going to talk about today, which is

00:02:08.220 the fact that we've all been sold a lie. We've been sold the lie that sleep is luxury, that it's

00:02:14.540 a reward, and that it's a bonus if we are lucky. And now Lindsay, because the truth is she is still

00:02:21.140 an overachiever, is on a mission to help others unlearn those things. She's got a newsletter 0.65

00:02:27.500 called Rest Assured and a sleep course called Sleep is a Power Move, and her goal is to teach

00:02:33.180 people how to reclaim rest without shame. We're going to talk about all of this today. We're also

00:02:40.380 going to talk about those rigid sleep hygiene checklists that are absolute BS that are online

00:02:46.040 and whether or not mouth tape actually works. Let's get into it.

00:02:57.260 I'm so excited that you're here today because I'm recording this podcast actually from my bedroom

00:03:02.140 and we are talking about one of my favorite things which is sleep. Mine too. Also recording

00:03:10.940 from my bedroom. Exactly exactly and after this I might take a nap because I deserve it. We all

00:03:18.220 deserve naps. I like to wear my necklace that says good at naps. Oh good at naps makes a good t-shirt

00:03:24.220 too. Have you made t-shirts of that? I do. I actually have a store good at naps.com. Oh my god

00:03:29.420 so smart so smart so today we're going to talk about sleep we're going to talk you said one of

00:03:34.100 those you said a very smart thing to me about sleep recently which is that sleep should not be

00:03:39.020 considered self-care i say something similar it's that reading shouldn't be considered self-care

00:03:44.880 that we should reading should just be something we do like in our lives yeah the whole concept

00:03:50.960 of self-care has become this thing that makes it sound like it's a choice like you should work on

00:03:56.000 your self-care. And my whole thing with the things that we are supposed to do for ourselves

00:04:01.280 is that we don't get to choose to take time off from them. You would never say, I've got this huge

00:04:06.940 work project for the next two weeks. I've got a lot going on with my kids. My husband's doing

00:04:10.700 this thing. So I'm just not going to breathe for the next two weeks. And then when those two weeks

00:04:14.860 are up, I'm going to take all of the breaths that I didn't take before. But we do that with things

00:04:20.300 like sleep and movement and yeah, reading. And reading, how did you get to the point where you

00:04:25.520 believed that sleep was no longer self-care, that sleep was something we all deserve and something

00:04:30.900 we need to be prioritizing? Oh man, I started at the completely other end. I didn't even think

00:04:35.600 sleep was self-care. I thought that sleep was like this enemy of thing that I had to do. Like

00:04:40.840 I was so angry at my body and my brain that I needed to do it because I was that like weird

00:04:45.960 political kid who came out of the womb, um, staging walkouts for unfair treatment in the

00:04:50.920 lunchroom when I was six. Uh, my parents still don't know where I came from. Um, that was the

00:04:55.340 first time, but not the last time they picked me up in the principal's office. Uh, and so I just

00:04:59.160 like thought I wanted to do all of the things and to do all the things like you shouldn't have to

00:05:03.240 sleep. And then, you know, when you're like a formidable youth in the nineties and all the

00:05:07.740 highly successful people are sleeping four hours a night, which, you know, we stopped talking about

00:05:11.160 after all the heart attacks. But hear me out on this. We got this message that, you know, to be

00:05:17.840 successful, you sidebar sleep. Unfortunately for me, I would have these episodes where I had these

00:05:25.720 moments of excessive daytime sleepiness where I was otherwise engaged. I was talking to you,

00:05:29.240 I'm on the edge of my seat. And then just like this fog rolls into my ears, anesthetizes my

00:05:33.620 senses. And I feel like if I don't go to sleep right now, I'm going to die. And so I used to

00:05:38.300 take secret bathroom naps. How did you sleep in a bathroom? Oh, I was very good at this. So I would

00:05:45.460 go into a stall. I would sit on the closed seat. I would pull my feet up with me. I'd put my head

00:05:51.160 against the wall and I could like sort of cuddle myself into the fetal position and I could do a

00:05:55.960 good 15 minutes that way. Wow. That is a superpower because I will tell you my own sleep drama is

00:06:03.620 that I have a very hard time falling asleep. So I can't sleep on planes. I really can't sleep

00:06:07.360 unless I'm in a bed on my stomach. So you're not alone in that. And you're also not alone in

00:06:14.100 the ability to fall asleep. And like two out of three people are going to experience that

00:06:19.080 at some point in their life. For me, my ended up being narcolepsy, which is a disorder of the

00:06:28.040 sleep-wake cycle. And I was diagnosed when I was 35. But when I learned that I had narcolepsy,

00:06:36.460 I didn't just learn I had a sleep disorder. I learned that I didn't know anything about sleep.

00:06:40.420 And so I sort of set off on this journey to make myself feel better about this awful thing that

00:06:45.280 people were going to know about that was going to keep me from working as hard as I possibly could

00:06:49.340 and really realized this missed opportunity that all of us have to spend a third of our life doing

00:06:55.940 this thing that restores our brain and our body and our memory and that we are not taking the

00:07:01.820 full advantage of it. And as a matter of fact, we're hurting ourselves by not focusing on it.

00:07:06.460 Well, I have to say that I think sleep has been very demonized and that constant work and a lack of sleep has been valorized a lot in the past 30 years.

00:07:18.120 You know, anytime you talk to a CEO or something, they're like, I can go on like three hours sleep or at least, you know, for a long time.

00:07:25.800 I'll sleep when I'm dead.

00:07:27.180 I'll sleep when I'm dead.

00:07:28.300 You know, like sleep is the enemy of productivity.

00:07:31.280 And that has been the messaging for a really long time. 0.98

00:07:34.580 And I think that's shitty. 0.76

00:07:35.820 And I think a lot of it, a lot of us absorbed that. A lot of us also absorbed that busyness is king, that, you know, if we're not, quote unquote, busy, we are failing at life. You know, how did all of that work into your psyche? And how do you think it damaged you just generally as a human being? 0.92

00:07:52.740 Well, I mean, I think, you know, doctors on one side not being able to catch my narcolepsy symptoms were one thing.

00:07:59.160 But the other thing was me, that I didn't want to tell anyone that I was struggling so much with the need to sleep or sleeping during the day and the other sort of associated symptoms that came with that.

00:08:12.680 Because, you know, burnout is the sign that you are doing it right.

00:08:18.880 And so, you know, everybody around me was tired and I didn't have any words to know that my

00:08:25.060 tire was different.

00:08:26.700 And so we're always trying to outpace each other more hours.

00:08:30.620 And, you know, that quantity has always trumped quality.

00:08:34.960 And when we actually pull back and we look at the science, you cannot be productive every

00:08:39.540 minute of the day.

00:08:40.620 We actually all have a biological time that we are supposed to wake up and go to sleep 0.62

00:08:45.880 and productivity windows within that.

00:08:47.920 And once you start pulling into that space, you will be more productive in less time and be happier doing it.

00:08:57.320 So you have started really educating yourself on sleep.

00:09:02.060 You're now writing a newsletter about sleep.

00:09:04.360 You have a sleep course coming up.

00:09:06.960 Talk to me about all of the things you learned about the importance of sleep.

00:09:11.820 So sleep is where we restore everything that happens in our body.

00:09:15.980 So we sleep in four different stages between late sleep, deeper sleep, deep sleep, and REM sleep.

00:09:22.580 And each of those stages has its role.

00:09:25.060 So whether that is taking out the trash in our brain that we build up throughout the day, that that clears out.

00:09:30.840 And when we don't do that, we see neurodegenerative diseases forming that are associated with this.

00:09:38.140 Our memory goes from short-term to long-term memory.

00:09:41.820 I really wish that I could go back and like throttle myself in college and all those times

00:09:47.240 that I was pulling all nighters to cram for something because you might remember that

00:09:50.580 one piece of information for the test the next day but you will never remember it again and you

00:09:55.320 are way more likely to remember something if you sleep on it and just our overall immune system

00:10:02.980 happens while we're sleeping and sort of everything we are looking for with all of

00:10:10.340 these hacks and everything that we're trying to do for longevity, we have those tools at our

00:10:14.940 disposal when we focus on sleep. And now I don't want to say that like just thinking about sleep

00:10:20.460 and you're going to sleep better because we need more tools for that too. Because we've been just

00:10:25.280 told this list about sleep hygiene. And if you do all of these things, you're going to sleep right

00:10:29.440 and you'll feel better. And that's not true either. I hate thinking of sleep as a list of

00:10:35.900 to-dos because the minute you think you can't do one of those, you're just like, well, shit, 0.99

00:10:39.720 I'm a crappy sleeper and I'm doomed to feel terrible for the rest of my life when really 0.98

00:10:44.020 it's small incremental changes that we can be making to make us feel better.

00:10:48.280 I loved the newsletter you did a little while back about, you know, watching a TV show to

00:10:53.080 wind down at night.

00:10:54.060 That's totally OK.

00:10:56.080 The whole the whole myth that, you know, any sort of blue light that sleeps into your

00:11:00.380 subconscious in the evening, it's going to keep you from being a good sleeper is totally

00:11:05.260 false.

00:11:05.660 and so finding stuff that's actually going to wind your brain down is really really healthy

00:11:10.040 yeah it's true i mean i have found because i'm a i am a shitty sleeper and you know that is

00:11:16.900 something that i have accepted about myself the sleep hygiene hacks that i read on a lot of blogs

00:11:22.080 i'm like fuck this okay like lighting a candle and eliminating blue blue screens from my room 0.87

00:11:27.480 that has done nothing for me okay making sure my room is a certain temperature like putting my phone 0.99

00:11:32.300 in another room. Nothing, nothing, nothing. My brain has a hard time turning off. I am that

00:11:37.200 person. My husband is not. My husband is able to just lay down and pass out. And I hate him for

00:11:42.600 that. I actually actively hate him that he is able to do that. It's one of the most annoying

00:11:46.540 things about him. But I will tell you, one of the things that I identified as a problem with

00:11:53.280 falling asleep is that I was reading before bed. And I love reading. I do. It is one of my favorite

00:11:58.740 things in the whole world. But for me, it is also a job. It is work because I'm a person who makes

00:12:03.300 books. And so when I am reading, my brain is actively doing things that are work-related.

00:12:08.940 And I found that once I stopped reading before bed, that I was falling asleep better. So now

00:12:14.360 I watch a TV show. We have a bedroom TV for the first time in our marriage. Or I listen to very

00:12:20.040 esoteric British podcasts about the end of civilization, which, look, I don't know why.

00:12:25.820 That calms you down.

00:12:27.080 It calms me down.

00:12:28.160 Weirdly enough, calms me down.

00:12:30.300 Okay.

00:12:30.600 I think maybe because the messaging is we've been here before and humanity has survived.

00:12:34.600 So that's what I need.

00:12:35.540 I'll take that.

00:12:36.120 That's uplifting enough.

00:12:37.620 Enough.

00:12:38.400 Okay.

00:12:38.820 Enough.

00:12:39.980 And so those things work for me.

00:12:43.220 They don't work for everyone. 0.97

00:12:44.940 My mom still falls asleep listening to a TV.

00:12:47.960 And for some reason, I just, I thought that that would not work for me.

00:12:51.980 It works like a charm.

00:12:52.780 I am a person that needs background noise to distract from the noise in my brain.

00:12:56.800 So you have hit on something that is so fundamental and something that takes a lot of people a lot of time to figure out and something that I work with people in my courses and in my coaching.

00:13:06.520 Effort is the enemy of sleep.

00:13:09.120 So if you are doing anything that you're telling your brain, like, I need to go to sleep right now, your brain's going to rev up.

00:13:16.340 So the same thing, if I'm like watching a TV show that there's like a lot of like drama

00:13:20.680 and my brain has to stay awake and it has to capture these things, my brain's going

00:13:24.080 to rev up.

00:13:24.620 So the same thing, if you're reading because you need to remember the content that you're

00:13:28.840 looking at, your brain is going to turn back on.

00:13:31.460 So we want to find the things that actually turn our brain down.

00:13:34.820 So this is going to be different for everyone.

00:13:37.220 And I encourage you to play.

00:13:38.980 Things are going to not work.

00:13:40.600 Things are going to work.

00:13:41.420 And yes, it's going to be completely different no matter whom you talk to.

00:13:44.840 So for me, I thought I needed to watch TV for years and years and years.

00:13:49.480 And then I married someone who couldn't fall asleep with TV on.

00:13:53.460 And then I realized it had absolutely nothing to do with TV itself.

00:13:56.940 But the fact that I have a very nosy narrator in my brain and she gets sort of meaner as the evening goes on.

00:14:04.260 Her name is Janet. 0.72

00:14:05.660 And the thing that shuts Janet off.

00:14:07.820 Wait, how did you name her Janet?

00:14:09.760 I'm a fan of The Good Place.

00:14:11.280 uh and there there was a character on the good place that was like a person well she was not a

00:14:16.980 person uh but like this being that knew everything and so janet my narrator knows everything whether

00:14:22.140 she's right or not uh and it just it just stuck uh but uh the thing that shuts janet off is uh

00:14:30.680 listening to dialogue and so i listen to comedy shows that i have already seen so i'm not emotionally

00:14:37.580 invested. But the sound of other people talking to each other shuts my brain down. I don't want

00:14:42.820 to listen to sleep stories that are talking to me that I feel like I need to be responding in some

00:14:46.960 way. I don't listen to like different noise levels like white noise or red noise or anything

00:14:54.360 because I start like listening for patterns. And so I just want something where somebody else is

00:15:01.460 doing the work and my brain shuts down. So I have a sound sleep mask that I put a 30 minute timer

00:15:07.460 on to my phone and Bluetooth and it turns off. Oh, which one do you have? Because I have one that I

00:15:11.920 love. The Manta sound. I'm obsessed. Same. I'm obsessed with it. This is the greatest, greatest

00:15:17.360 invention of all time. I learned about it from Emma Straub's newsletter and it's been life

00:15:23.400 changing for me. And you know what? It is not an affiliate link. I'm not sponsored by them.

00:15:27.600 The Manta sleep mask is the best thing ever. I'm not either, but I talk about it literally all day,

00:15:32.800 every day every day um my instagram followers were treated recently to the trials and tribulations 0.98

00:15:38.600 of my dog who decided to chew on it because it smelled like me what a dick i'm sorry seriously 0.99

00:15:44.080 such a dick i told him if he uh if he takes this one out uh i'm selling him for parts i don't know 0.99

00:15:50.480 if that message resonated with him or not i don't know it probably didn't it doesn't work when i say 0.99

00:15:53.940 to my kids so yeah um but the the sound sleep mask has been such a game changer for me and uh my mom

00:16:02.240 is like on it and she loves her sleep music um that she's found on pandora uh there and so there's

00:16:10.160 just so many different options but i want people to play the other thing i do is i like to fall

00:16:15.260 asleep scrolling through my phone i cannot look at news i have a no news after seven o'clock roll

00:16:19.900 for me um uh but i love watching videos of people restoring cast iron skillets i find it so soothing

00:16:27.900 um wait a second will you send me some of these 100 i will never ever ever restore a cast iron

00:16:35.240 steal it myself but watching other people doing it is like it's it's just this like

00:16:40.540 like wrap me up in a blanket comfort i'm out that sort of situation

00:16:44.660 all right let's take a quick break and when we get back i want to talk a little bit

00:16:50.100 about your narcolepsy because i feel like most people me included i don't know a lot about

00:16:56.960 narcolepsy i've seen it in like movies and she's like someone just like falls asleep in the weirdest

00:17:00.600 places which is incorrect fantastic

00:17:02.980 okay we are back talk to me about narcolepsy what is it so narcolepsy is a disorder of the

00:17:17.760 sleep-wake cycle uh so your brain is uh not necessarily always awake when it should be and

00:17:23.260 not necessarily always asleep when it should be. So you can feel excessively sleepy during the day

00:17:28.880 and you can feel wide awake in the middle of the night. So you have something called fractured

00:17:32.100 sleep. No problem falling asleep, major problem staying asleep. It also has a couple of other

00:17:38.520 symptoms attached to it. Sleep paralysis, which is that feeling inside a dream where you can't

00:17:44.880 move or you can't scream. Anyone can have this at any point in their life. People with narcolepsy

00:17:49.380 have it a lot more frequently. Hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations, which is a hallucination

00:17:56.420 going into sleep or coming out of sleep. They can be video, audio, or a sentence, or you can have it

00:18:04.600 as all three. I generally have audio hallucinations. So I'll hear things like crashing, the dog barking,

00:18:13.140 my husband talking to me, people speaking in Russian in the hallway, construction happening

00:18:17.060 at three o'clock in the morning things that aren't there it's always like very quick i don't hear it

00:18:21.200 for a long period of time but then every couple of weeks i will have one that is visual audio

00:18:26.340 sensory and they're generally pretty scary something comes in the room it tries to get you

00:18:30.460 you can't move because you have a sleep paralysis sensation um and then uh some people myself

00:18:37.100 included have something called cataplexy which is when you have a strong emotional response to

00:18:42.020 something, you lose muscle tone. So for some people, this can be a slack jaw. It could be the

00:18:47.300 sense of falling over. Mine is in my lip and my eyes and sometimes my hands. I am a moderate skier

00:18:54.680 who's afraid of moderate hills. And so when I get afraid of those hills, I lose my hands and

00:18:59.980 sometimes my knees go a little weak and I can't hold my poles and I fall over. And it's awful for

00:19:05.720 everybody who's skiing with me included. But all of these sort of go together and they don't you

00:19:14.300 would never see them as symptoms of something as a person who's never studied this. And most

00:19:21.000 general practitioners can't either. So there is a very long diagnosis period for most people,

00:19:26.780 myself included. I was 19 years. Wow. All of that all of that is bananas and nothing like

00:19:32.520 when you see narcolepsy in movies of people just falling asleep like no in a restaurant and then

00:19:37.960 like crashing out into like a bowl of cream of wheat 100 actually when i got diagnosed my doctor

00:19:43.480 told me i had narcolepsy and i like cocked my head and i looked at him and i was like i'm sorry

00:19:46.680 sir i don't think you're right i've never fallen asleep into a bowl of soup uh so that was what i

00:19:51.640 thought it looked like also and so what i describe it as is you know that sensation when you know you

00:19:57.100 need to pee but you can like you can wait it out for a little while till you find a bathroom

00:20:01.480 Eventually, you're going to absolutely have to pee. It's the same thing with when I get

00:20:05.280 seriously sleepy is like I get that sensation coming on. It can be really painful while I'm

00:20:10.900 trying to figure out my next move on it. But it doesn't happen instantaneously. I get a warning

00:20:17.380 around it. Okay. Okay. So you get diagnosed with this and then you're like, I have to totally

00:20:23.900 revamp my sleep. What do you do? What do you start doing at that point? It's a lot of education.

00:20:30.420 um so just really really trying to learn what's going on um you know for for people with narcolepsy

00:20:36.900 the the biggest the biggest change is is uh medication now there's no novel treatment so

00:20:42.060 it's not like you know i have a thyroid condition so i take um thyroid medication that puts the

00:20:47.760 my lack of thyroid you know back into my system um so we don't have that yet for narcolepsy so

00:20:53.540 you're treating symptoms uh so sometimes that works really well sometimes those that medication

00:20:59.520 has more, um, side effects than it's actually helping you for. So there's a big, there's a

00:21:05.460 big game of trying to figure out what you're going to feel the best around. Um, you know,

00:21:09.740 I've definitely found a lot of things that help everybody with their sleep, help me, uh, getting

00:21:15.380 sunlight first thing in the morning. Um, and that's not just being around a window because

00:21:20.300 our windows filter out, um, UV light. So like, you want to go out first thing in the morning

00:21:24.900 and get a natural light in your face. Cause that's going to start your 24 hour clock.

00:21:28.340 exercise. And it doesn't have to be like heavy working out in the gym, but stretching, moving

00:21:35.120 my body. And then I do regular naps. So I, every day, sometime between 12 and two o'clock,

00:21:43.560 I take a 20 minute nap and I set a timer for that. People with narcolepsy go into REM sleep

00:21:49.940 really quickly. It's one of the hallmarks of the condition. And if you wake up in REM sleep,

00:21:54.320 you feel really terrible. But for really anybody who's napping, you want to make sure that you're

00:21:59.960 not sleeping more than like 25, 30 minutes, because then it's possible to start waking up

00:22:04.760 into deep sleep. And so you're going to feel really groggy and have something called sleep

00:22:08.120 inertia. So I tell folks to set a timer for 30 minutes. That gives you a couple of minutes to

00:22:13.340 fall asleep and then sort of get that 15, 20 minute nap in. A caveat on that, if you are

00:22:19.360 somebody who struggles to fall asleep or stay asleep at night, please don't nap because you

00:22:24.720 need all of that sleep pressure that napping takes the edge off of to make sure you get as

00:22:29.860 much sleep as you can. But what if like me, you're a person that's just not going to fall asleep?

00:22:34.440 Like, so I'm like, I'll set a 30 minute timer, but I'm not going to sleep. Does it matter?

00:22:38.240 Like, does it still count if your body is just getting some rest? So yeah, I mean, resting is

00:22:43.700 great for anybody. If you are not going to fall asleep, it's, you know, napping, but you're also

00:22:51.000 someone who struggles to sleep at night. So we have, we make something in our body called sleep

00:22:55.740 pressure. So it's a chemical called adenosine. You wake up in the morning and imagine you have

00:23:00.460 an empty balloon. And as the day goes on, that balloon gets more full and more full and more

00:23:04.560 full. And you nap sort of like pinching that balloon to take the fullness off of it. Because

00:23:09.280 when we get the full, full, full part of the balloon, when it's going to pop, that's when

00:23:12.860 our brain says, all right, time to go to sleep. People who struggle to sleep at night sometimes

00:23:17.440 have a harder time with sleep pressure and need to get as much of it as possible. It's good for

00:23:22.000 our brains, regardless of whether we're nappers or not, to take that mental stimulation off,

00:23:28.480 to take a walk around the block, to lay down, close your eyes, even if you're not going to nap,

00:23:33.860 play a game on your phone. But it's something that just tells your brain it's time to take,

00:23:37.980 It's time to take a rest. And depending on where you are is one of those, you know, one of those biological places in our sleep, either as a early morning, someone who wakes up before the sun, someone who wakes up with the sun or someone who wakes up after the sun.

00:23:51.440 We all hit different points during our day where we're going to turn off for a little while.

00:23:55.960 And whether you're someone who naps during that time or sets the work aside that you don't have to think too much, like leaning out your inbox, you know,

00:24:04.740 making sure that your schedule is sort of adjusted around when you have those dips

00:24:08.940 is going to be helpful for your productivity regardless.

00:24:14.980 Fascinating. Fascinating. I mean, yeah, there are things like I actually don't mind scrolling my

00:24:20.060 phone before bed. It's not that stressful for me to scroll through Instagram, mostly because I

00:24:24.140 don't do it the rest of the day. One of the things I do know is that I have to stop caffeine. Like

00:24:29.720 if I want my sleep to be better. For years, my doctor was like, what if you quit caffeine? And

00:24:32.800 i'm like that's not the problem and then i would cut out coffee and i'm like oh that is the problem

00:24:36.400 oh y'all aren't wrong and also wine is a big problem now that i'm a woman of a certain age

00:24:43.620 and that's so annoying because i do have to choose between alcohol and getting any halfway decent

00:24:49.200 sleep yeah i mean some people you can do a drink and like do it at happy hour so it's like early

00:24:54.980 in the evening um because uh alcohol has a really long half-life um and so whether or not you like

00:25:01.980 you're metabolized it it's still in your system in the way that it is not necessarily keeping you

00:25:08.100 from falling asleep lots of people tell me like oh but i have my glass one i fall asleep great

00:25:11.680 yeah it's going to make you sleepy the problem is it's going to disrupt your sleep cycle

00:25:15.680 so you're not going to get enough deep sleep or you're going to go into your cycles at weird times

00:25:20.600 so you're not going to actually get what you need out of sleep and that's when you wake up

00:25:24.360 feeling like you never really went to sleep or waking up for big parts you know big chunks in

00:25:29.060 middle of the night and feeling wired um so i like to tell folks you know like one one drink

00:25:34.140 one glass of wine at happy hour um i figured out for me that it wasn't so much about the booze it

00:25:40.520 was about the the sort of tradition and feeling around it like i like the feeling of the glass

00:25:45.000 in my hand i like the ice i like the flavors uh and i have gotten deep into this mocktail thing

00:25:50.620 interesting it's so funny because i was just i was hanging out with my friend casey this morning

00:25:54.120 well i was we were like i was working down at her uh bar actually which is not open but i was

00:26:00.520 working there because i had to get away from my loud ass children uh who i'm looking out the 0.81

00:26:04.920 window at and they are naked right now um outside as you should be summer no totally summer as they 0.93

00:26:10.880 should be uh anyway we were making plans for this afternoon and i was like i think it's got to be a

00:26:16.720 mocktail night because we had a neighborhood gathering and tied it on a few days ago and

00:26:21.360 still feeling it and so we were like brainstorming different kinds of mocktails and i do think that

00:26:25.980 mocktails can really help slow me down oh yeah no i mean there's something there is something about

00:26:32.280 that like a still feeling of like of having of having the drink having the clink having the end

00:26:38.800 of the day sort of ritual around it um that i've just really enjoyed and like i still enjoy the

00:26:45.200 flavor out of it um and i think there's there's definitely something to it i mean i don't know

00:26:51.580 about you it was like sort of like when i crossed 35 i signed some contract that if i have more than

00:26:56.360 one drink tomorrow i'm or one-on-one drink tonight i'm giving up tomorrow uh and uh i just you know

00:27:02.780 at a certain point it stops it stopped feeling worth it for me um and so you know save save

00:27:09.020 certain certain drinks for special occasions but i am loving it's not fair it's just not fair

00:27:14.540 Oh, totally. And one of those things that is absolutely, absolutely not fair. And the deeper

00:27:19.600 you get into perimenopause and menopause, it is going to make it worse. So true. So true. Okay,

00:27:25.820 let's take one more break. And when we get back, I want to talk about the charlatans of sleep that

00:27:30.320 we see on TikTok and the grifters of sleep trying to sell us supplements and all of this bullshit. 0.95

00:27:35.080 I want to know what some of the craziest things you've seen on social media 0.91

00:27:37.780 for people claiming to help you repair your sleep are.

00:27:44.540 Hungry now.

00:27:50.420 Now.

00:27:52.620 What about now?

00:27:54.780 Whenever it hits you, wherever you are,

00:27:57.620 grab an O'Henry bar to satisfy your hunger.

00:28:01.440 With its delicious combination of big, crunchy, salty peanuts

00:28:05.120 covered in creamy caramel and chewy fudge with a chocolatey coating.

00:28:09.980 Swing by a gas station and get an O'Henry today.

00:28:12.620 Oh, hungry. Oh, Henry.

00:28:19.440 OK, we are back. Talk to me a little bit about what you've seen on social media, because there's there's no shortage of sleep sleep hacks on TikTok.

00:28:27.840 What have you seen? So, first of all, sleep is a 64 billion dollar a year industry.

00:28:32.940 So that's everything from, you know, shut up. Explain that to me.

00:28:37.340 this is mattresses ergonomic pillows white noise machines melatonin gummies and then all of the

00:28:43.040 crap that you see on tiktok and basically if you see it on tiktok please please don't purchase it

00:28:48.020 um unless it's a mantis sleep mask again i'm not paid by them um but uh i'm i'm like on a one woman 0.91

00:28:55.460 crusade to like stop people from using mouth tape it's really dangerous and if i see one more tiktok

00:29:01.820 lady tell me it's going to make my my jaw snatched um first of all mouth tape is not going to do

00:29:07.740 anything for my double chin uh nothing nothing that you keep your airway closed is actually

00:29:14.160 going to change the physical appearance of your face other than keep you from breathing which

00:29:19.240 is important um and so if you have any airway obstruction at all you have inflammation in your

00:29:25.180 sinuses any anything that would keep enough air from going in through your nose uh that is

00:29:30.940 incredibly dangerous unless you have worked out a plan with a certified sleep specialist please

00:29:36.240 please don't use mouth tape um the the sleepy girl cocktail with the cherry juice um like yes

00:29:44.140 cherries have some like magnesium and melatonin in it which we naturally make but it also is you're

00:29:50.100 putting a lot of sugar into your body to like spike your system right before you go to sleep

00:29:55.000 which is incredibly not healthy um and then there's i mean there's all the different like

00:30:00.160 sprays and concoctions that people have made up that like you spray this certain lavender spray

00:30:04.920 on the right place on your pillow and it's gonna fix your sleep issues um which all of this i find

00:30:10.620 like pretty it's actually it's really dangerous because when you can't sleep you will do absolutely

00:30:16.560 anything to try and fix that before my narcolepsy diagnosis um my fractured sleep was really terrible

00:30:23.140 so i was falling asleep but i was waking up in the middle of the night uh and then i was up for

00:30:28.260 hours. And I mean, I had probably 12 different ergonomic pillows that I had purchased at one

00:30:34.740 point. I had a chin strap that I purchased trying to like hold my mouth tighter. I had purchased

00:30:41.700 like every melatonin gummy that there was. And of course, none of that was working. I had a sleep

00:30:46.940 disorder. And one in five people has a sleep disorder. They're only diagnosed at about 18%.

00:30:52.000 So chances are, if you're struggling with your sleep, it needs medical intervention. And no

00:30:57.760 silly purchase from TikTok is going to fix this. You know, I actually have some friends that swear

00:31:02.140 by mouth tape and I think it's the dumbest thing in the entire world and nothing they tell me 0.96

00:31:08.220 will change my mind. Good. Please keep it that way. And for everybody listening to this. It's 0.98

00:31:12.660 just like nothing they tell me. I'm like, absolutely not. I want nothing to do with

00:31:15.660 your fucking mouth tape, to be honest. And people are zealots about it. And it's like, 1.00

00:31:20.300 I mean, it really is like modern day sink oil. Well, I think that the best advice is just like

00:31:26.740 you have to do what works for you because also like magnesium jacks me up as if I just like did

00:31:33.800 a bump of cocaine I don't know why it does that apparently it's like very rare but it happens to

00:31:39.000 some people so I can't have magnesium and I'm constantly being being like sold magnesium on

00:31:45.080 on Instagram same with melatonin it works a little bit but I can only have half a normal person's

00:31:50.140 dose so I have to have like a child's dose otherwise I get restless leg syndrome and I

00:31:55.820 I just think every body is totally different, and it's more stressful if we're trying to follow these dumbass social media hacks and tips, and they don't work for us.

00:32:06.140 No, and the thing, I mean, melatonin is great if you have been traveling and you're dealing with jet lag.

00:32:11.920 Because all melatonin is, it's not a sleeping pill.

00:32:14.860 It's making you get naturally sleepy earlier.

00:32:17.940 So our bodies don't naturally produce melatonin until you get a star.

00:32:20.820 So if you are in some place where it stays light later in the summer and you're having a hard time dealing with that after the time change, or you're traveling someplace where there's a really deep time change from where you came from, melatonin can help you get onto the schedule faster.

00:32:36.260 but taking melatonin every night and swearing that it makes you sleep better is probably not

00:32:42.440 the case um uh because it it just doesn't it doesn't work that way until getting more melatonin

00:32:47.880 is actually going to make you feel really terrible it's going to give you more sleep inertia and it's

00:32:52.900 going to make you feel groggy when you wake up in the morning um so what i'm you know working on

00:32:57.720 you know in my my coaching and my course sleep is power move uh with folks is that we put together

00:33:04.300 a toolkit for you to figure out what helps you fall asleep at night and what helps you when you

00:33:10.760 wake up in the middle of the night or if you wake up too early. We are biologically programmed to

00:33:15.600 wake up easily. Back when we were in the caves and we needed to know when the lions came in,

00:33:21.600 our bodies were programmed to wake up. Now, the more modern day lions we have are work deadlines

00:33:25.960 and kids and, you know, family stress that comes up. And, you know, good stress can affect your

00:33:31.460 sleep as well. If you're getting married or you're excited about something, it's going to have a very

00:33:35.360 similar effect. So we're biologically programmed to wake up easily. It's just putting together

00:33:42.180 the right tools for us, which are more natural than what you're seeing on TikTok, to help you

00:33:48.080 get back to sleep, whether that is putting sound on. For a lot of people, it's getting out of bed

00:33:53.060 and just doing something else until you feel sleepy. I hate cleaning, like really, really,

00:33:58.420 really hate cleaning so if i go and try to clean the kitchen for 15 minutes in the middle of the

00:34:02.920 night my brain will want to do literally anything else to get out of that situation oh my god i do

00:34:09.240 that too i put clothes away oh i put clothes away in the middle of the night or i tidy when i can't

00:34:16.100 sleep and then because my brain does not want to do that it's like fine i'll sleep yeah i mean and

00:34:20.840 even look if you go and do an hour of work because you are revved you wake up in the middle of the

00:34:24.640 night and you had an idea you need to get out of your head our brains are like snow glows you can't

00:34:28.860 force snow to come down so give your brain what it's looking for in that moment which hopefully

00:34:34.380 is not doom scrolling on social media but you know that that could be like you know something

00:34:40.000 that you want to write uh making a to-do list for something that came up and once we sort of

00:34:44.520 dump that out our brain will be happier and it'll be more willing to go out to sleep

00:34:48.740 that is i mean i just like these are sleep hacks that i can get behind right like just like very

00:34:56.240 basic advice and like things that have worked for other people because i'll try anything once

00:35:03.080 but do not try to trick me with your snake oil agreed no and i mean it's it's really simple

00:35:08.440 solutions and we want to work with the human bodies that we have uh which are complicated

00:35:13.860 and they're different. And it's really, it's really like little, little changes that we can

00:35:20.840 make that work for us. But everybody should feel like they have a permission to slip to a cliff.

00:35:28.300 So you've been writing this newsletter about sleep called Rest Assured. Tell people where

00:35:35.080 they can find it and where they can find some more of your advice. So lindsayscola.com,

00:35:40.680 Everything is there. I have a weekly newsletter on Tuesdays where I talk about sleep, my own personal stories, things that you should be looking out for in your own sleep, things to try.

00:35:53.620 You can also find my one-on-one coaching practice there and my new course, which I'm so excited about, Sleep is the Power Move, where we talk about sleep being like a real business decision.

00:36:05.100 And we put all of this effort into our, you know, our LinkedIn's and, you know, the courses

00:36:10.300 that we take to learn the algorithm better and all of these things that we do, but we

00:36:14.020 haven't spent any time on sleep.

00:36:15.960 And it's not our fault.

00:36:16.820 We didn't learn anything about it in school.

00:36:18.660 We never got the food pyramid version of this.

00:36:21.300 We learned how to balance checkbooks, but we never, we never learned how to do this

00:36:25.880 thing that we spend a third of our life doing.

00:36:28.100 And so the course is just about three hours, but everything is broken down into 15

00:36:35.060 minute videos, which you can watch or just listen to if you want to have it on while

00:36:39.380 you are folding laundry or making dinner or stuck in L.A. traffic at anything visual you

00:36:46.860 can you can download afterwards.

00:36:49.220 But really, it is how to to implement this stuff better and more easily in your life

00:36:54.540 with the with the human brain and body that you have.

00:36:59.520 I love everything about this.

00:37:01.100 Thank you so much for coming on today, Lindsay.

00:37:02.580 I'm actually tired, and I think I will go try to take a nap right now.

00:37:05.560 I 100% support this.

00:37:07.420 Thank you.

00:37:32.580 Thank you.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - August 07, 2025

Sleep Is Not Self-Care (It’s Survival)

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