Most replayed moment: Sleep myths that are ruining your rest | Dr Sophie Bostock

Debunking turkey and cheese myths

0:00Hello, and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health.

0:11Sleep. It's a bizarre process when you think about it. We lie down, close our eyes, and before we know it, we're waking up the next morning with a head full of hazy dreams. Because of its mysterious nature, sleep has long been surrounded by all kinds of strange ideas and theories about what might help or harm it. From cheese causing nightmares to turkey making you sleepy. So today, I'm joined by sleep expert Sophie Bostock to separate facts from fiction. She'll debunk common sleep myths and share simple practical tips that you can use tonight to improve your sleep.

0:46Can eating turkey help you get to sleep? Okay, so the theory here is that I think it's the tryptophan content in the turkey which supposedly is going to help you sleep. I believe I read some research that suggests that the amount of tryptophan in turkey that we get would not really be enough to influence your sleep. You'd have to, you know, consume 50 turkeys or something to really influence that. We've talked a little bit earlier about, generally speaking, a healthy, unprocessed diet, which might include sort of protein, some lean meat, is probably going to be good news for sleep.

1:23I have not seen any research specifically on turkey that shows that it improves your sleep. What may be happening around Thanksgiving, you have, you know, lots of excitement, lots of food. As you're relaxing afterwards, you've had a very social occasion. There's all sorts of things that will reduce your stress response in that environment, perhaps lead to some good sleep. Might not be the turkey. Cheese. I grew up, everyone told me, if you eat cheese before you go to bed, you get nightmares.

1:53So there was a paper that was published, I think just a month or two ago on this, and it was actually a survey. So this was a Canadian study and over a thousand students who got credit for taking part in the survey. And they asked them about the foods they ate and whether the people thought they influenced their sleep and their dreams. And out of a thousand people, I think only one percent suggested that dairy influenced their dreams. The study suggested that that population were more likely to be lactose intolerant.

2:24So, of course, if you're eating something that really doesn't agree with you, it may well disrupt your sleep.

Magnesium and melatonin supplements

2:29What about supplements? The two supplements that particularly came up in these questions were melatonin and magnesium. Okay, so both quite big topics. Let's tackle magnesium because in a way it's a bit less controversial. I think of magnesium as the Swiss army knife of supplements, really. It sort of seems to do a bit of everything. It's involved in hundreds of enzymatic reactions in the body. There's no question that we need it. There's also no question that if we have a generally pretty healthy diet with lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, we will probably get enough magnesium in our diet.

3:03What we don't know from the research is whether magnesium has any impact on your sleep if you're not magnesium deficient. There was a study in December last year that looked at magnesium L3 in 8. And that seemed to suggest that, yeah, help people fall asleep perhaps 10, 20 minutes faster, improve sleep quality. So, anecdotally, I know a lot of people who take magnesium and say it improves their sleep. I think the effects are probably not that strong.

3:33But if it works for you, try it. It's pretty inexpensive. It's pretty difficult to sort of overdose on magnesium. We're just going to excrete it out again. So, it's one of those where I'm like, well, you may as well experiment with it, particularly if you are in a population that has experienced quite a lot of chronic stress because we know that that decreases your storage of magnesium. So, any chronic stressor, and that might mean a lot of exercise or going through menopause, there are certain populations who will be at more risk of magnesium deficiency.

4:08Thank you. What about melatonin? Melatonin in this country, here in the UK, is only available on prescription from your doctor. I know a lot of people listening will be in the US and other parts of the world where they may well be able to buy it as a supplement over the counter. So, the reason that it is only available on prescription here is, you know, it's a natural hormone. It's got very few side effects, actually, relative to other sleeping pills. But it does have physiological effects.

4:40So, melatonin, we all naturally secrete from the pineal gland in the brain. And if you have regular sleep patterns, regular circadian rhythms, you'll typically release it about an hour and a half to two hours before your normal bedtime. It's often called the hormone of darkness. So, if you're in very bright light, as we are recording in the studio, that would really interfere with your melatonin levels. And that could either delay the secretion of melatonin or reduce the amount that you get, which would make it a bit harder to fall asleep.

5:11As we get older, we produce less melatonin. So, in this country, it can be prescribed for insomnia for adults over the age of 55. But the reason it's not really prescribed for adults below that age is because there's not really much evidence that it helps them, not for insomnia. So, what melatonin is good at is changing the timing of sleep. So, if you've got someone who has a circadian rhythm disorder where they are going to bed very, very late at night, their body clock is delayed by four or five hours relative to most of the rest of us, then melatonin is that tool that can be used to bring the body clock forward.

5:54So, I would say that it's probably not going to help you very much if you have insomnia. And I think a lot of melatonin is purchased in the US by people who have that belief. The stuff that you buy over the counter is notoriously unreliable when they've done analysis of how much there is in particularly gummies, which often people buy for their kids. We know that the amount of melatonin in those is anything from 74% to 374% of what is actually advertised.

6:25Wow. And to get melatonin to actually work, you need to get the right dose at the right time. So, if you do think melatonin might be helpful for you and it might be a circadian rhythm issue, it may be that particularly for children with autism, ADHD, sometimes they have circadian rhythm issues as well, go and speak to your doctor. I would always prefer that a medical professional is managing the dose, the timing and also the quality of that melatonin that you are taking.

Practical sleep hygiene habits

6:52I'd love to like pull this together now into sort of quite straightforward, actionable advice. And could you maybe describe to me if you were trying to say, Jonathan, this is the sleep hygiene that you or a standard person should have. What is that? Let's keep it simple. Start first thing in the morning. Wake up at the same time as often as you can. So, set your alarm for the same time each day. When you start to do that for a week or two, you'll find that you don't need the alarm anymore. But try and aim for consistent wake up time.

7:24Aim to get some natural light, ideally within the first hour after waking. That's going to kickstart your circadian rhythm for the day. Tell the clock that it's wake up time. And the advantage of doing that is that if you get this bright light in the morning, it's going to banish the melatonin. So, you're going to feel more alert. But automatically, 15 or 16 hours later, you're going to start to feel sleepy. Move your body during the day. Whichever way makes you feel happy, but get physical, be active. There was some recent research actually suggested that yoga was one of the best forms of exercise for sleep.

7:58So, it doesn't need to be super intensive. It just needs to feel good for you. Take some time out to relax during the day. Particularly if you're a busy person that goes from A to B at 300 miles an hour. Just take 15 minutes for yourself. A moment to be and not do. And then as we come towards bedtime, try and have a consistent wind down time. I'm not bothered about whether you get into bed at exactly the right time. But try and have a consistent time where you start to switch off.

8:31So, in that hour of wind down, you know, get done what needs to be done for tomorrow. Some form of relaxation. Something to look forward to, whether it's a warm bath or reading a book or doing some breath work, listening to music. Some intimacy with your partner, with your family. Social connection is often neglected in terms of its role in improving sleep. And then during sleep, you want darkness. Use an eye mask or blackout blinds. And try and sort of banish light from your sleep environment. And just let it come.

9:03Don't try too hard to sleep. That sounds brilliant. The one thing I haven't heard you mention I'm curious about is use of that smartphone. Because you said right at the beginning that, like, that's the number one thing that's really changed everything and made this worse. In my book, That Wind Down Time, that's when I'd be switching off the phone. Ideally, the phone does not come with you into the bedroom by a cheap alarm clock that has no smart functions. And this is something that actually can be really good for families. So, parents will often say, you know, how do I separate my teenager from their phone?

9:36Well, if it's something that everybody does, it's just a norm. The phones don't go into the bedroom. That's not where they live. That just is a rule that you can make for yourselves. If I do all of these things, if I'm not in the insomnia, but I'm in that 50% to 60% of people are not getting their best sleep, can it really transform my sleeping? All of those things might help a bit. I don't want to overdo the sleep hygiene piece because I also know there are some great sleepers out there who have pretty poor sort of sleep habits.

10:08They're all part of this picture of positive sleep health. I think if there was anything to add to that, it's just that I would love people to believe that sleep is important, but also to believe that they are good sleepers. A lot of what I do is help people build confidence. So, if you do those habits, what happens is that you build confidence that you are going to sleep well. So, that helps to ease the anxiety. If you're someone who has been anxious about sleep in the past, the danger of this advice is that it's too rigid and that if you haven't had 15 minutes of daylight within an hour of waking up, you start to get anxious.

10:49If your phone's accidentally gone into the bedroom, then you might have a terrible night's sleep. So, these are guidelines. They are recommendations. They are not strict rules. What about wearables that track sleep? They're obviously very popular. Can they help? I'd say they absolutely can help. It depends what you're using them for. So, I believe they can be a brilliant accountability buddy. So, if you set yourself a goal around improving sleep consistency, for example, and you are tracking that, that is a behaviour that's actually very easy to change over time that is going to be linked to better quality sleep.

11:28I think where they can become a little unhelpful is where people become fixated on the numbers and there is a very real condition called orthosomnia, which is an obsession with the perfect night of sleep. Ultimately, the most important thing is how you feel during the day. And although wearables can give you some useful indicators, it's really about how you feel is the most important metric that we have. I was going to ask your own sort of sleep habit. What are the critical things that you try and make sure you do?

11:59For me, it is about doing exercise in the morning, definitely getting some bright natural light and as much natural light actually during the day as possible. I recently broke my collarbone. And so, for at least a week or so, I wasn't getting outdoors as much as I normally would. And I really noticed it. Obviously, I was in pain as well. And that wasn't very helpful for my sleep. But I noticed that as soon as I started reintroducing just walking, not even intense exercise, my mood improved, my sleep improved. So, for me, that's an absolute must.

12:31But also, I would say just taking that scientist approach to my own sleep, testing, trying new things. We talked about magnesium earlier, doing an experiment with that. I'm currently trying a sauna blanket to see whether that improves my sleep. You know, I think taking that curiosity, what can I do? Does it make a difference for me because we're all different?

Cognitive shuffling for sleep

12:52Final question. If you were going to say like one thing that a listener could sort of start doing today, what would you say? I'm going to give you something a little bit different here. So, there's a technique to help you fall back to sleep called cognitive shuffling. I've talked to a few people recently and they've found it really useful. So, this comes from research that compared what happens when good sleepers fall asleep versus poor sleepers.

13:23And the good sleepers will describe seeing very visual things which are not rational, not related to each other. Whereas a poor sleeper will often describe planning thoughts, anxious thoughts, thinking about I've got to do this then. So, to try and promote the mind state of a good sleeper, this cognitive shuffling technique involves thinking of a random word, any word. So, last night my word was leprechaun. And then with each letter of that word, thinking of another random word.

13:55So, my L might have been lemons. Every time I think of that word, I try and visualise it. So, I go from lemons to elephants. I wasn't actually quite sure how to spell leprechaun, but I was asleep before I got to the end of the word. So, it didn't really matter. But that technique might be useful. That's all for this week's recap. At Zoe, we believe that when it comes to your health, small changes can actually add up to a big improvement over time. And that's why we developed Daily 30, the gut supplement that's specifically formulated to become your new daily healthy habit.

14:29You simply add a scoop to any meal once a day to support your health and increase the plant diversity in your diet. By the way, whenever we talk about Daily 30 as a good source of fibre, we're required to say that it contains 4 grams of total fat per serving. Obviously, that's all amazing healthy fats from plants. To make Daily 30 part of a gut health routine, simply visit zoe.com slash Daily 30. See you next time.