dr. Bruce you're gonna start today with
the correlation between our age and our
ability to get a good night's sleep
absolutely so it turns out that there
are different things that will happen
throughout the course of our lifetime
they can have pretty big effects on our
sleep and some of it becomes age
dependent so when you're in your like
20s and 30s it's usually something
behavioral like I'm staying up really
late because I'm going out with my
friends or watching my favorite TV shows
right because of your social life but
then as we get older it has a tendency
to turn a little bit more medical and or
medicine oriented so if you have
something going on in your life so in
your later in life for women menopause
might be something that could be
disruptive of their sleep or you might
have a health condition like
fibromyalgia or something along those
lines those don't seem to happen until
much later in life and that's what seems
to affect sleep then but you were saying
that your goal for yourself is six six
and a half hours that's correct
everybody has a different sleep need in
terms of the amount of sleep that they
need and that's also based on the
quality of the sleep that they're
getting so if you get really good
quality sleep you don't actually need
eight hours let's be super clear eight
hours is a myth right not everybody
needs eight hours I'm a six to six and a
half hour sleep I go to bed at midnight
I get up around 6:30 that works for me
because of the consistency of my sleep
schedule and consistency is also a great
factor out of right but we're going to
use as we often do on our show some of
our own viewers at three different ages
to get some practical advice from the
doctor while we have dr. Bruce with us
Joel what is your sleep issue so I'm 27
I work in real estate Manhattan my
schedule is crazy constantly moving and
inconsistent I'd imagine it very real
estate your hours are constantly
changing all the time and I go with my
friends are out till late yep and I
struggle to get to sleep early and I'm
constantly waking up in the middle of
night and is there anything I can do to
not feel that way might get himself on
more of a schedule since his life is
kind of erratic yeah so the answer is
yes all right so that's that's the good
news and it's actually reasonably
straightforward so remember back a lot
not too long ago when I launched my book
actually from your shelves right from
this shaft on this show we talked about
something called chronotype so for folks
out there who might not remember chrono
types are a scientific term but they
really mean things like early bird
versus night owl so I discovered Ford
different chrono types first is
something called a lion that's replaces
the early bird these are self-starters
early early morning people like they get
up at like 4:30 next there are bears so
bears are kind of in the middle
bears are people who have a normal sleep
wake pattern they kind of get up around
7:00 they go to bed around 10:30 there
seems to be most alert in the mid
morning hours the next one is where I
think Joel falls into category and
that's the wolves so wolves are night
people which i think is more along the
lines of who you are
so you're most alert more from noon
until 2:00 p.m. and then again in the
later evening in the afternoon at night
you're like you are dolly a wolf and
then there's what's called dolphins and
so dolphins are my people who have
difficult sleep there are light sleep
patterns they're all over the place they
like to get up early but they're usually
self-diagnosed insomnia my sister
actually so if people want to learn what
their chronotype is head on over to my
quiz at the power of win quiz comm but
we figured out that your chronotype
is a wolf so that's number one but for
folks out there who don't know what
their chronotype is an easy thing that
you can do is take your morning wake-up
time so for me let's take 6:30 right
right and count back seven and a half
hours so why seven and a half hours
Michael the average sleep cycle is 90
minutes the average person has five of
those five times ninety is 450 minutes
which is seven and a half hour
I gotcha so that's the place to start
okay now you asked me before but Michael
you go to bed at midnight and you wake
up at 6:30
that's not seven half hours why do you
get less well everybody else gets more
because of my consistency I actually
started at seven and a half hours and it
slowly has shrunk what your issue is is
you're going to bed too early more than
likely right because your brain isn't
ready to do that so what my suggestion
to you would be what time do you
normally go to bed now right so that's
way too early for a wolf I would say
you're probably needing to go to bed at
midnight because I'm a wolf and that's
when I go to bed
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