Heather Sandison, ND
Wow. It’s already day four of the Reverse Alzheimer’s Summit, and you are hearing it from some of the greats today. Steven Gundry talking about the gut-brain connection. I mean, he is going to take your understanding of this very complex process. A very complex interaction between the gut and the brain, and expands your knowledge in a really profound way. I’m so excited for you to learn from him and Richard Horowitz, who’s going to connect the dots between tick-borne illness and cognitive function and Alzheimer’s. He’s going to share stories of people he has seen get better when they treat these tick-borne illnesses. There are so many great speakers this week and I hope that you are getting so much out of this and finding things that you can implement right away. You’re going to hear from my friend, Audrey Wells today. She is an expert in sleep medicine as well as weight management. She has a really unique perspective and has done so much to help people get better sleep which is often one of the first steps to improving cognitive function. We’ve all had that experience of being jet lagged or cramming for exams overnight or missing sleep, caring for a newborn or another loved one, potentially a loved one with Alzheimer’s or dementia. And when we lose sleep, when we have that experience of sleep deprivation, we don’t feel as cognitively sharp in the morning.
Now, when that accumulates over time, it’s even worse. Getting good quality sleep is one of the takeaways from this entire summit. You get nothing else from today. I want you to think about how you can optimize your sleep at night. Step one, it’s just setting aside enough time to get sleep. To get your 7 to 9 hours, depending on what your body needs. Step two, thinking through your evening routine and how you optimize sleep by preparing for it and getting to bed on time. What time is your ideal bedtime? Can you find a way to stick to it? Can you even maybe set a reminder on your phone an hour before to start getting ready for bed? Can you find some discipline to stop watching some of the videos, stop listening to podcasts, to stop computering away at the computer? In my family, we call it, I’m off to computer, get on the computer. If you find that you get wrapped up in TV shows or in front of screens or scrolling at night, can you find a way to kind of force yourself off of that and force yourself into bed so you can get that quality sleep, that really deep sleep and the REM sleep that it’s easier to get before midnight. So that you can feel more rested and rejuvenated in the morning and then make those great diet decisions and movement decisions.
The other big piece about sleep, we have our amount of sleep. We have a quality of sleep that we can kind of toggle with by doing end-of-one trials. It’s how we refer to it. We can do little experiments on ourselves each night and see if our sleep improves. We might even measure it using a ring or a watch and see if our metrics can get better. The other piece of sleep is if you have a sleep disorder, something like sleep apnea. Now, if that’s the case, I highly recommend treating it aggressively. Again, if you get no other takeaway from today, it’s how crucial sleep is to brain health. So if you or a loved one, if you’re concerned at all that they suffer with sleep apnea, please schedule a sleep study immediately as fast as possible. What I’ve learned in my clinical practice is that even people who you wouldn’t expect to have sleep apnea, they’re not overweight, they don’t snore, and they’re not male. They can still have obstructive sleep apnea that creates hypoxia or low oxygen at night that is making their brain struggle. It’s not giving them the resources they need to maintain healthy blood flow and oxygenation at night. And these repeated events, apnea events at night can lead to brain disease and neurodegeneration over time.
So please, please, please get that addressed at this stage for every single patient in my office who is struggling with any cognitive decline. Early stages or late stages. I request a sleep study. Go get yours so that you are not leaving something very treatable on the table that could really impact your brain health. Now, if you’re concerned about having to use a CPAP, my friend Audrey Wells has developed something to help everyone make friends with their CPAP. CPAP should become your best friend. But if that’s too scary, if you don’t like the idea of a mask, there are lots of different types of CPAP and APAPs, alternating pressure devices, and there’s also mouth guards, there’s mouth tapping, there are different strategies that can help you to resolve your apnea and get good quality sleep so you can wake up feeling rested in the morning. So happy to have you here. Thank you for joining us. I will see you on day five.
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