Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This show is not a substitute for professional counseling and no relationship is created between the show host or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective counties crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: It's six o' clock and time again for Brain Matters, the official radio show of the UA Counseling Center. We are broadcasting from the campus of the University of Alabama. Good evening. My name is Dr. B.J. guenther and I'm the host of the show along with my colleague and producer Katherine Howell, who is not here tonight, but she will be back next week.
In case you don't know, the show is about mental and physical health issues that affect college students and in particular, UA students. So you can listen to us each Tuesday night at 6pm on 90.7 FM or you can listen online at WVUAFM UA edu and you can also download your favorite app, I like the MyTuner radio app and just type in WVUAFM 90.7 and you'll find our show there. My logo is a hot pink brain in case you're looking for it. I always tell people that I'll try to remember to give out our email periodically throughout the show. That's when I miss Kathryn the most because she reminds me to do that.
If you have this is our I think this is our third show for the fall semester. We only do shows in the fall and the spring and I always solicit from listeners ideas for topics for the show. So if you're listening and you've got an idea for a topic for college mental health, email those to me@brain mattersradiovuafm ua edu and of course, I'll consider using your idea for a Showtime topic. Nothing is really off limits. We've been doing this show since 2013 and just when I think we've talked about every topic you can talk about in college mental health, something else will come up that's trending. So if you haven't heard us talk about something that you really feel like we should, please email those to me. And again, it's Brain mattersradiobuafm ua Edu Today we're talking about something that seems to be affecting college students everywhere, and that's exhaustion. I think it's affecting everybody, not just college students.
College is supposed to be an exciting time, a time of learning, growing, making friends and figuring out who you are and what you want to do with your life. But for many students, the college experience also comes with chronic sleep deprivation, packed schedules, academic pressure, work and financial stress, social demands, and this is a big one, the almost constant connection to technology.
Sometimes students aren't just saying, I'm tired. They're literally saying, I'm exhausted and overwhelmed and I can't concentrate. I'm sleeping all the time, but still don't feel rested. I don't have the energy to do the things I used to enjoy. And that's really sad for somebody in the age range of a college student, which is about 18 to maybe 23, sometimes 22 or 23.
So how much sleep do college students really need? Why are so many students walking around exhausted? And what role does stress, technology, schedules, caffeine, mental health, and the culture of college life really play? Perhaps most importantly, when does ordinary tiredness become a problem we need to take seriously? So to help us understand the science behind student sleep and exhaustion, I'm so pleased and excited to have Dr. Roxanne Pritchard. She's from the University of Minnesota Duluth. And Dr. Pritchard is a professor and sleep researcher whose work focuses on sleep, circadian rhythms and the way sleep affects college students, health, learning, and well being. And she spent years studying the unique sleep challenges facing college students and helping us understand why sleep is not simply something we can squeeze in when everything else on our schedule is finished. And I hear that all the time. It's like people take sleep for granted, especially college students, because they're young and they can do that. Thank you, Dr. Pritchard, for being on the show.
[00:04:24] Speaker C: My pleasure. I'm so excited to talk about sleep today.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: Me too. Me too. We've had, since 2013, since I've been doing the show, we've had, I guess we've had two neurologists on the show that I can remember. It's been a while where we talked about sleep and sleep disorders with college students. In fact, our director, our executive director here, Dr. Greg Vanderwaal, that's what he, I believe that was his specialty in graduate school. He's a clinical psychologist and I'm thinking we even had him on the show one time. So, yeah, this is, I mentioned topics that are never, you know, off limits and we can always revisit it. I think we should be talking about sleep every year. Just about. To be honest, I agree Tell the listeners a little more. I gave you a big introduction there, but can you tell the listeners a little more about yourself, your credentials, why you're interested in this topic?
[00:05:21] Speaker C: Sure. Okay, so I'm a professor of neuroscience and psychology, University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. And I have always loved sleep, and I love that brain space that we get into that's sort of in between sleep and wake. So kind of like daydreaming, a little bit of creativeness, a little bit of maybe even lucid dreaming. That's always held just a sort of fascination, even since I've been a kid.
So when I started grad school, I went to grad school at University of Wisconsin in Madison in the late 90s.
It I met with these fantastic women who were studying, like, the literal brains of rats when they were sleeping. And that was so cool to me.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: All in sleep.
[00:06:11] Speaker C: All in sleep, yeah. And they dream too, huh?
[00:06:15] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's how you got the itch to start studying sleep.
[00:06:21] Speaker C: Yep, yep. I always was interested in it, but then I was like, whoa, I can record rat brains and do, like, little rat brain surgery and like, really look. Look at their. Their brains when they're sleeping and sleeping in different conditions. And that was really exciting to me. So I did the rat stuff for a while as a neuroscientist. But then in 2004, when I started teaching college students, I was like, oh, my, we have a problem here.
Students are so tired, and they don't necessarily connect the dots between, like, I don't feel well, my stomach hurts, I'm anxious, I'm not doing as well as I want to, nothing's seems as satisfying as it used to, and their sleep.
So then I just kind of switched my research program to college students and have been doing that for the last 20 years.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: It is fascinating you use that word. And sleep is, I think. I mean, I said it just a minute ago. It's something that people take for granted. And I don't understand why that is. It's almost like when I talk to students about the importance of sleep, I feel like sometimes it's like when you talk sometimes about how stress affects your body, it's almost like sometimes they don't take it that seriously. They just don't feel like, oh, yeah, because they've done it for. So who knows how many years they have gone without enough sleep. And I've read, and you can probably talk a little more about this.
You know, this age group needs more hours of sleep than, like, maybe not as much as like newborns and babies. But is it the age group that needs the most amount of sleep besides newborns and babies, or do you know?
[00:08:03] Speaker C: Yeah, so children in general, and that includes adolescents.
We would say that most adolescents, young adults are going to need seven to nine hours of sleep. But for some, 10 is totally appropriate.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: Really.
[00:08:20] Speaker C: And back to your point, BJ, about why we're not taking sleep as seriously, I think there's a couple things going on.
One is, as you said, college students don't really know what the embodied feeling of being well rested is.
So this is a simple question I ask. When is the last time you've gone to bed when you felt sleepy and then slept until you were done sleeping and you woke up naturally without an alarm clock every day in a row for a week?
[00:08:53] Speaker B: Huh?
[00:08:55] Speaker C: Like when, when was that for you?
[00:08:57] Speaker B: Oh my.
[00:08:59] Speaker C: And I, I do that every night. I don't mean to like toot my own horn here, but yeah, that's okay. Sleep is so important to me and I'm a morning person and I don't teach before 10, so it's really easy for me to get as much as my body needs every night of sleep.
But that's not the experience of most students who have been like, waking up too early. Often schools in high school and middle school start at like seven.
That's way before teens are even like body wise ready to wake up. So there's such a culture of being exhausted that people don't know what it feels like to really be rested.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: Well, and on that note, along with your question, I find that some people don't really know how much it takes for them to feel restored.
[00:09:47] Speaker C: I call it restored.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Do you find that also like when you ask that question, maybe you even ask, do you know how many hours you need to feel rested? Do they, Are they, You know, most people really haven't thought about it. The kids I talk to sometimes, they know. Yeah, they do. But most of them have no idea because they really haven't felt like that in a long time.
[00:10:10] Speaker C: Right. And it's gonna take. That's why I said a week. It's not just a night. Because I often get the point of, oh, I usually feel crappy when I sleep 10 hours or nine hours or seven hours.
And that could be reflecting a lot of things.
People have a sleep debt. So if your body really needs, let's just say eight for easy math, and you're only getting six, that's 14 hours a week of sleep that you're missing. That's two whole nights basically. Oh my gosh. And you can never make up like what you're missing the next day. We can only make up like 30, 40% of it.
So it's gonna take a while to get the regularity of sleep to like your new schedule up and set so that you get the full benefit of not just how much you're sleeping, but when you're sleeping, and I'll talk about that later, that sleep is not only how much, but when it is aligned with your body circadian rhythm, where you get the full sort of restorative effect.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: I tell people, I say this a lot. I feel like a lot of times students won't come in here for other things that are associated with poor sleep, like stress and anxiety. But when their sleep gets out of whack, out of sync, that will cause them to come in here when they can't, you know, when they can't, I'm putting this in air quotes. Write their sleep, you know, they're not able to write their sleep back to what they feel like. They, you know, it's so bad, out of sync that it's causing major problems. And what it boils down to, they'll come in and say, I'm anxious, I'm stressed out. But what it really boils down to is poor sleep.
[00:11:50] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And this is something that's been such a source of fascination for me and also opportunity, because your mental health and your physical health all go off the rails when you're not sleeping well. So it's, it is a spiral, a downward spiral. But spirals go up and up as well as down. And that's one of the easiest ways to make your whole well being and your whole health feel better is to start with the sleep. Like, yes, there's usually a bunch of stuff going on that we'll get at. Right.
Exhaustion can be so many different things, but sleep is an easy way to improve things. And then we can see what else is improving along with sleep or what now do we have the energy to work on. But I think starting with sleep is great. And it's also pretty low stigma, right?
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Yes. People are comfortable talking about poor sleep. That's because I feel like everybody has experienced that. Like it's something everybody can say they've experienced. When students say that they're exhausted, what do you think they're actually experiencing?
[00:12:56] Speaker C: I think it's a couple of things. One, it can be prolonged, insufficient sleep. Right. So if we're just not getting the sleep we need, that is going to make everything just seem like, it takes more effort. So your perceived effort goes way up, even for simple things. So I was ill this past week. Just some sort of annoying virus. But I. It's fascinating.
It's like we're two weeks into the school semester. Everybody's changing their germs, but they got me and my family.
But I was just noticing how when I was feeling ill, I had to narrate everything I need to do, like get up, open the toothpaste, put the toothpaste on. Like, it just seems so hard, like
[00:13:42] Speaker B: you're in slow motion.
[00:13:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:44] Speaker C: And that's what being sleep deprived, insufficiently slept will do. It just makes everything seem harder. Like you're just putting 20 pounds of weights in your backpack and trying to do everything else.
It's a heaviness that follows you.
[00:14:03] Speaker B: What about the exhaustion aspect of it? Do you think that's really increasing or do you think we're just talking about it more?
[00:14:14] Speaker C: I think both.
I think I'm pretty excited to say so. I work a lot with athletes on their sleep and in, let's see, what year is that? 2018, the NCAA really held this convention on how do we improve athletes sleep and what is this sort of, what can we do to prioritize it? And we've actually seen the sleep of college athletes go up by about 45 minutes since then. And that reflects a lot of sleep assessments and work with coaches and trainers and teams one on one. But it's really exciting for me to see at a point when, like, other people's sleep is going down. This group that sleep researchers have been really supporting has seen some turnaround.
But overall, I think sleep is getting worse. And I think we also have to consider, I don't want to say the world is out to get us, but the world, when we said, what's going on with this? And one, I'm like, I don't think we know what it feels like to be rested. Two, I think there's huge industry of people trying to monetize our attention. Right. So that's a lot with the phones and Meta just settled for billions of dollars with the states saying, yep, we knowingly made a product that's bad for teen mental health and it's out there. So our bad. Here's billions of dollars for states to support teen mental health. And I think part of that is, is the addictive properties of how a lot of things in our phones are designed. So whenever we're looking at it, somebody's taking our information and using that and trying to keep us engaged. And so there's a lot to when we're sleeping, we're not financially benefiting anybody else. When we're awake, we are.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. We're being used. We're totally being used. We're being used. Hey, let's take our first break and then when we come back, I've got some email questions, but I also want to talk about the college lifestyle, basically. So you're listening to brain matters on 90.7. We'll be right back.
[00:16:36] Speaker C: Wvuafm, Tuscaloosa.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: This show is not a substitute for professional counseling and no relationship is created between the show hosts or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective counties crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your near emergency room.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: Hey, you're back listening to brain matters on 90.7, the capstone. I'm BJ Guenther and we're talking tonight about why am I so tired? The college students exhaustion epidemic. And My guest is Dr. Roxanne Pritchard. And Dr. Pritchard, I think. Did I introduce you incorrectly? You said you were at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul's and I said University of Minnesota Duluth.
[00:17:38] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm at St. Paul, but I love UMD. I have students, alumni there.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: I don't know why I said, I think when I was doing my research that that's what came up. So I don't know. Thank you for correcting me on that. But you are a professor, but not only professor, but a clinical psychologist also?
[00:17:54] Speaker C: No, I'm. No, I'm just a plain neuroscientist.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: Not a big deal, though. That's a big deal. You've done a lot of research and this first email question has to do with something I was going to ask, too, so let me find it. Are sleep disorders such as sleep paralysis and sleep terrors triggered by severe stress, anxiety and depression?
[00:18:17] Speaker C: I'm going to say yes, and then I'm probably going to say that for most of the questions.
[00:18:22] Speaker B: Yeah, that's okay. So.
[00:18:25] Speaker C: Okay, so sleep paralysis and I've had one episode in my life and it was very scary.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: Me, too. I had no idea what it was.
[00:18:32] Speaker C: It definitely is more likely to happen when our schedules are dysregulated or when we have a brain that wants to sleep and is also anxious about being awake or maybe has too much caffeine. So that's kind of the stew that makes it more likely to happen.
When we go into REM sleep, which is when our brains are very active and dreaming, we're supposed to not move.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:57] Speaker C: We're basically paralyzed and hallucinating, which is kind of a funny way to look at dreaming. But that's what it is.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: That's what it is.
[00:19:03] Speaker C: And sometimes there's just a little mismatch in the timing where we wake up before our paralysis has been lifted.
And it's a little bit. Just genetically more common in southeast Asian populations, But it can happen to anybody. If it happens a lot, that could be a sign of a more serious sleep disorder like narcolepsy. But a lot of people, I mean, I had one when I was working on my dissertation in grad school, I'm sure. Drinking too much coffee.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:33] Speaker C: And yes, it was terrifying.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: It was terrifying. I've had it one time, and then when I had that first, I've been. I mentioned to you before the show, we've had a few neurologists on the show and talking about sleep and sleep disorders, and he was the first one I mentioned to what had happened, Just totally ignorant about it.
And he said you had sleep paralysis. That's the first time anybody had ever told me that. But it was terrifying. I just remember my body being awake, my brain being awake, but my body was not able to move. It's just like what you. It's sleep paralysis. And I don't know how you got yourself out of it. I remember counting to three and shaking myself out of it. It was just the weirdest thing. I don't know how other people do it, how it. How you wake up.
[00:20:22] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a few seconds that feels like an eternity when you're in it.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: Yeah, it's horrible.
I mentioned the college lifestyle when we went to break. How much of the problem is simply that students have inconsistent schedules. You mentioned schedules. And sleeping five hours one night and ten or eleven the next night. Because I have students who have early morning classes, and then the next day they'll have, like, not a class until noon.
[00:20:45] Speaker C: Yep. So the sleep community has really started to recognize that it's much more than just how many hours on average you're sleeping. But the regularity of it is super important. And one of the sleep assessments I really like is called are you sated? Which stands for, like, regularity, your satisfaction. That's the a.
The alertness the timing, the efficiency, and the duration. So there's lots of different elements, and I can give you, like, a link to the assessment. But basically it's the idea that all these elements are part of healthy sleep. The regularity is so important because more than half of the genes in our body are under a circadian rhythm that need, like, a certain time of day to go on and be produced in a certain time of day to stop. So if our schedule's all over the place, our genes literally don't know when they should be making different proteins. And it can just lead to you feeling off in a way that's similar to feeling jet lag. So I try to tell students, like, pick a bedtime plus or minus 45 minutes and just kind of stick to it.
And if you're going to oversleep, try to keep it just oversleeping by an hour, not too much more than that.
And same thing with rise time. So I.
I'm a morning person. I like to go to bed by 10, be up between 5 and 6, and that's what my body does naturally.
It's fine if you're an evening person and you go to bed by one and you like to sleep till nine, totally fine. We just, like, keep that rhythm even in the weekends. And it'll make it so much easier to fall asleep and stay asleep and get up early, which I don't think a lot of people realize is your body wakes you up.
That's one of the misconceptions, is like, there's literally no way to wake up if I didn't have 10 alarm clocks and stuff. No, your body will wake you up. It has a whole process where it heats you up. Your. Heats up your core body temperature, gives you some extra hormones like cortisol and some good neurotransmitters like dopamine to get you going. It does this automatically.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: Wow. Do you. Do you find this is one issue I have with some of my students. Do you find that people are impatient with trying to have a schedule, a sleep schedule?
Because we will talk about what you need to do and a sleep schedule. And if it doesn't work, like the first couple of nights, a lot of times people just lose patience and give up and be like, I can't sleep.
[00:23:23] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think a lot of people try to go from where they're at to perfect without recognizing that a gradual change is going to be a lot more impactful.
[00:23:33] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:33] Speaker C: So I think we understand the metaphor of, like, if I'm jogging and I'm Putting that in air quotes. My usual 14 minutes a mile, which is basically walking.
Right. I'm not gonna the next day try a six minute mile. Like it's just not gonna happen. We need like patience with the process. And if you're going to bed at 3am, you're not gonna be able to easily go to bed at 10pm like start by just moving it back half hour, you know, and seeing if that helps. Or an hour max shift a night is kind of what the body can handle. So just be patience. And when we do our sleep challenges, we make them three weeks long. Like give us three weeks to try to nudge you into a better pattern. And usually by the end of three weeks, people are sold and they're like, wow, I feel great and different.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: And that that reinforces it. Then when they, oh yeah, once it's.
[00:24:30] Speaker C: Once you know how good it feels. I kind of talk about this with healthy relationships too. Like if you're used to crappy relationships and you finally get a healthy one, you're like, oh, I'm not going back to that.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what they' talking about. What about, you know, students often tell us they're staying up late to study because they don't have time during the day.
But is staying up actually helping them academically?
[00:24:55] Speaker C: No, unfortunately.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: I mean, I know your answer, but I want to hear you talk about it a little bit. So.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:25:00] Speaker C: This is another big misconception that students have is that the students that are like the A students that are also on leadership and also athletes are the ones that are grinding all through the night. No, they're the ones getting the most sleep. And we've done the stats and the data on this.
The only like student group that's getting better than average sleep are the students with A's, A's, gpa. So it's like when you are doing so much, your brain needs the full power of sleep for you to process and consolidate that information.
And what I will say is how important it is to trust that when you're getting better sleep, things become easier. I mentioned that like backpack with 20 pounds of weights in it. When you're getting good sleep, the weight is removed and it just seems easier to do your homework.
I talk about this when you're reading. Do you have the experience of your eyes are moving on the page but the information isn't going in the brain?
[00:26:02] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:26:02] Speaker C: That's a sign that you're too tired to do that cognitive process.
Yeah, it's not going to happen.
So go to Sleep.
[00:26:11] Speaker B: You mentioned circadian rhythms and REM sleep. This is another email question. If I wake up in the middle of the night, does restorative sleep, especially REM sleep, start over? That's a good question.
[00:26:23] Speaker C: Okay, so both non REM sleep and REM sleep are restorative. I'll start there. There's two different, like a couple different categories of sleep.
I'm gonna talk about slow wave sleep. And that's more in the first half of the night when our brains really slow down. And this part of sleep is when our brain literally cleans itself. Like it gets rid of the daily waste products during this restorative sleep. And this is when we have like the greatest growth hormone and testosterone hormone and antibodies like the body repair and brain repair happen during this first half a night in slow wave sleep.
Unless you have too much caffeine at night and then the brain can't get into that deep slow wave sleep.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: And we're going to talk about that in a little bit because I've got that on my list.
[00:27:13] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. The second half of the night is more with the rapid eye movement sleep. And that's when we're actively dreaming. We're paralyzed, we're hallucinating.
And this, I don't want to necessarily call it restorative, but I would call this like learning sleep.
This dreaming sleep is also required for life. Like you literally will die if you don't have REM sleep. It's, it's. I know. It's also a really important part of taking care of our brains is this creative play space where our brain is doing the process of like, oh my gosh, what did I do today? What do I need to remember? What do I need to forget? What connects to another idea? Where can I think about this in the future? And I actually call this free therapy. Like, we do a lot of emotional processing in our dreams.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: Solving of problems.
[00:28:03] Speaker C: Absolutely. And we wake up with insights often. But if we're only sleeping five or six hours, we're not getting that full REM sleep to kind of cycle through and think about unconsciously what things could be. So we need both of these stages of sleep to feel like, recovered and rejuvenated.
[00:28:20] Speaker B: Wow. Yeah. I mean, you can't say that enough.
Let's take our second break. When we come back, I want to talk about technology and caffeine like you just mentioned, because that is a big one with this group. You're listening to brain matters on 90.7. We'll be right back.
[00:28:46] Speaker C: Wvuafm tuscaloosa this show is not a
[00:28:49] Speaker A: substitute for professional counseling and no relationship is created between the show host or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective counties crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:29:26] Speaker B: Hey, you're back listening to brain matters on 90.7, the capstone of Dr. BJ Guenther. We're talking tonight about why am I so tired? The college students exhaustion epidemic. My guest is Dr. Roxanne Pritchard. She's a professor, professor and neuroscientist at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul's St. Paul, Minnesota. St. Paul, Minnesota. And we're. Look, I've been wanting to talk about technology because I get a little bit confused about sleeping technology. Only because there are sleep apps, but yet you hear all the time, you know, put your phone across the room and don't end the, you know, what is it? The blue light is affecting you.
And also, I want to get your opinion about Fitbits and fitness trackers that also track your sleep, too. But let's start with what do you think? What's your opinion about, you know, how significant the role of smartphones and social media is in the college student population? Sleep problem.
[00:30:25] Speaker C: Oh, it's big.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: Okay. So sorry.
[00:30:28] Speaker C: No, no, no.
Phones. Technology interrupt our sleep in three ways and they're each important. So number one is blue light.
And the reason blue light is important is it's the color of the sky. And that particular wavel signals to a tiny little part of our brain to not make melatonin.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:30:54] Speaker C: So, but there's an easy fix for that, right? So we're like, okay, I'll use my blue light blocking glasses. My kids have those for night reading and doing their homework. And I will just use the night shift or Flux app on my screens. And easy, easy does it. But oh, my goodness, I'm still looking at my phone even with the blue light. And the other two things, one is just time displacement. And this is where I think that lawsuit is going to be. So important.
These things are designed to capture and hijack our attention. And this happens to me, too. Like, gosh, I like synchronized swimming.
I'm on a swim team.
And I can, like, not even realize it, but I've watched 15 or 20 minutes of videos of how to do this move better, and it's just a reel that shows up. And that's my weird old lady interest everybody.
[00:31:47] Speaker B: Right?
[00:31:47] Speaker C: It knows what you're interested in and feeds you that and fun bites. And then. So that time displacement. Right. Like, I meant to go to bed at 10. Oh, gosh, it's almost 11.
[00:31:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And it spikes your brain chemicals, too.
[00:32:00] Speaker C: I mean, that's number three.
[00:32:02] Speaker B: Oh, sorry.
[00:32:03] Speaker C: No, no, no.
Not only is it just like time displacement, it's also emotionally activating. So in the evening.
And I'll talk about one of my favorite experiments. In the evening, we should be winding down, feeling safe, feeling relaxed, feeling cozy. And if I'm looking at what new atrocity has in these 10 places in the world, I'm emotionally upset. And at night, we're not as well equipped, brain wise to handle being emotionally upset. We're much more impulsive, we're much more feeling trapped, we're much more feeling overwhelmed.
So I am looking at things and have we talked about the anxious people that like to listen to murder podcasts?
[00:32:49] Speaker B: Oh, no, no.
That's the worst thing you can do.
[00:32:53] Speaker C: I know. So that's just one examp.
[00:32:56] Speaker B: I used to watch Dateline at night before bed. Mistake, y'. All. Mistake. And I finally put the two and two together. It took me a minute. You can't do that because your. Your brain is still fixated on solving the crime.
[00:33:11] Speaker C: Yep. So if I try to look at the news at night, I will get outraged at the world, right?
[00:33:16] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:33:17] Speaker C: And that doesn't help me calm down. It doesn't help me. So I.
One of the things I'll talk about is how important it is to have a bedtime routine and also to know everybody's brains are a little bit different. Everybody's minds are different. Some people going on TikTok isn't going to bother them. They'll sleep fine. And other people, it will really impact them.
[00:33:37] Speaker B: Wow. What do you think about Fitbit or the sleep trackers that you can wear? Do they work?
[00:33:44] Speaker C: I have mixed feelings.
The Oura rings.
So, okay, I have mixed feelings. I've been wearing one for a long time. But, like, it's because my husband got one for free and I just use it for, like, steps. And overall, I think it's good for trends.
[00:34:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:02] Speaker C: And so that's one of the ways I've noticed, like, gosh, when I'm not teaching, my resting heart rate actually does go down quite a bit in January and summer when I'm not at this job. So I'm like, perhaps I do embody stress.
[00:34:16] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:34:16] Speaker C: Not ready to admit that. But the data are so clear. And I think like for people wearing trackers, they quickly see like, gosh, I never sleep well after alcohol.
That is a thing. And actually we've seen data that show if you have these sleep trackers, people end up drinking less alcohol over the course of the year because they're putting that together in ways that they can like tangibly see.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good idea to suggest to students to keep track of it if they do have one of the rings or even most of them have a, a watch that, you know, keeps up with it somehow.
[00:34:53] Speaker C: But for some people, the tracking of it actually makes the experience of sleep worse and they get anxious about it. So that's called somnorexia and that's on the rise too. And like, then you got start to get almost feelings of insomnia, which is lost confidence in your own ability or performance anxiety around sleep, like it has to be perfect. And anxiousness around that.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: I had a student and maybe this is what she had, but because I can't remember, it's been a while, so I can't remember if she was actually given a diagnosis. She was taking medication, but she had a phobia. It was almost a phobia. I called it kind of like the Cinderella event because she would have to get home. And this is hard for a college student sometimes when you've got friends and you want to go out and by 10 o', clock, because it was her thing to like, she had to have a certain amount of sleep or the next day would be horrible for her. And she had had like one really bad day that triggered her for this phobia and she would panic to get home to get to the dorm by 10 o'. Clock. And if she didn't, she had a meltdown, literally. And so I don't know if that's categorized as the diagnosis you just mentioned. Is that what it is?
[00:36:08] Speaker C: I mean that can definitely be part of it. Almost developing like a. If it's not perfect, it's going to be awful.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:36:13] Speaker C: Mentality of catastrophizing sleep.
So I think of it much more as like, get a good base of your sleep, get your regularity and then if you have a strong base to your circadian rhythm and regularity and you kind of know, you know, it generally works well. And if it doesn't, here's why. Yeah, that way one or two nights of bad sleep isn't going to be a problem.
If anything, it makes your next night's sleep even better.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: Right.
[00:36:42] Speaker C: So that's how I feel when I have a weird night of sleep. I'm like, oh, well, I bet tomorrow I'm going to sleep really hard.
[00:36:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the only way you know that you're getting good sleep is sometimes having some bad nights, you know, that you don't want sleep.
Okay, caffeine. Let's talk about caffeine and energy drinks because that drives me nuts. Stimulants.
College students consume enormous amounts of caffeine and energy drinks. How much is too much?
[00:37:06] Speaker C: Great question.
And again, that's heavily marketed. Heavily marketed by like people that know this is an exhausted audience.
So caffeine is the world's most popular drug. Right? Around the world. There's caffeine, coffee drinkers, tea drinkers. I'm one myself.
I would pay attention to the milligrams and also what's in it. So here's my thing with energy drinks.
They can be regulated either as a beverage, in which case they have to be honest about what's in them and how much caffeine. But if it's marked, if it's labeled as a nutritional supplement, that's a whole different world of regulation by the fda. And it can be. Who knows what's in it?
[00:37:49] Speaker B: Oh my gosh.
[00:37:50] Speaker C: Like the burden of proof is no longer on the FDA to regulate those in the same way. So a lot of the energy drinks have all kinds of like extra stuff that might not be good. And the way you drink them, like, I feel like coffee and tea should be sipped slowly.
[00:38:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:08] Speaker C: But a lot of these like five hour energy shots are just slammed or they taste like sugary drinks. You put them really quickly. And that's a different drug delivery system.
So I'm not opposed. And this is a conversation me and my teen daughter have all the time because she loves the energy drink.
But she kind of knows to have them not after 2pm for her because she's, I stopped my caffeine at noon, she stops hers at 2.
And to try to sip them is better to slam them. And the thing I would want to say is if you're already anxious, this is going to make you feel worse.
[00:38:50] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:38:51] Speaker C: So we did a research article.
[00:38:53] Speaker B: Shaky.
[00:38:54] Speaker C: Yeah. Who does energy drinks? And the students that were most likely to use them were people diagnosed with panic disorder.
[00:39:03] Speaker B: Did you, did it say, did this, did the study say why? Why then?
[00:39:07] Speaker C: I think we're just kind of getting in like the panic, the exhaustion like the drain after panic and thinking this is how to feel regulated or normal. But yeah, I actually had to stop doing caffeine when I was in grad school because my hands would shake. And I can't do brain surgery on rats when my hands do that much.
[00:39:24] Speaker B: No, that's not very good, is it?
You know, here's the thing though. When I start talking about caffeine intake with students, they look at me like the same way they look at me when I start talking about sleep hygiene. It's kind of like, oh, I've heard this before, you know, this is nothing new, but it's practical.
[00:39:43] Speaker C: It is practical. And here's fun fact. If you're on oral contraceptives or hormones, it takes you longer to metabolize caffeine, so it stays in your system longer. So heads up to the girls out there, you might be more sensitive to caffeine and it'd be even more important for you to drink it slowly and earlier in the day. So if you're like studying at 5pm, 6pm and you're tired, don't do energy drink, do nap and then come back like it's going to be much more restorative to have a nap and the energy drink is going to stay in your system.
The half life is at least six hours. So that means half the caffeine is still in your system six hours later. A quarter of the caffeine is still in your system 12 hours later.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: That's the only thing I learned in biology, just about. I remember my professor saying what she said and it still stuck with me to this day. And I will tell these kids that that caffeine lies dormant in your system and sometimes it kicks in later, which is basically what you said.
[00:40:44] Speaker C: Yep, yep. It's gonna, it's a slow release drug and it's gonna stop you from having the deep sleep that's really restorative. So if you're feeling tired, take a nap.
Take a nap.
[00:40:56] Speaker B: Hey, let's talk about naps. Then you brought it up. And I don't know if I have a question on here about naps, but I'm glad you brought it up because does that ruin sleep for you if you take a nap?
[00:41:06] Speaker C: No, I'm going to say no. And if you are feeling like you have insomnia, then we're going to say don't nap. We're going to actually restrict your sleep opportunity to build up your desire and sleep pressure. But for most other people who don't have a problem getting to sleep, sleep Taking a nap and I'll talk about different kinds of naps is going to be great. So you can take a 20 minute refresher nap anytime. And that's like a cat nap. You don't get into deep sleep, you get light sleep. But it feels so good. And you don't even have to actually be asleep. You can just do deep rest. So you can. Sometimes I'll just close your eyes. Just like close your eyes. Daydream. Set a timer for 20 minutes. Try not don't be on your phone. Just like be in your body relaxing for 20 minutes. If you sleep, great. If you don't, great.
Both of that is restorative and you're gonna feel refreshed after that. It's gonna take the sting.
Another kind of nap is one that is more recognizing that you need to go through more of a complete sleep cycle. Which is back to a previous listener's question of does it reset after the restorative sleep. So a complete sleep cycle is gonna have both non REM and rem and that's gonna be an hour and a half is for most people. So if you need an hour and a half nap, like I know some students have to wake up early for an early shift or an early class or early exercise one day a week. Plan maybe a two hour nap the next day to compensate. Where it gets a little tricky is if your naps are too late in the evening that it's pushing your bedtime back. So you don't want your regular bedtime pushback. But a morning nap or afternoon nap is great. And my favorite types of nap naps are the like little refresher 20 minute or like.
Yep. Power nap 20 minute or the 90 minute? Having said that, for me, when I feel like I need a nap, I 100 will take a nap because it means something is up with my body. Usually I'm trying to fight off an illness or I'm pregnant.
[00:43:18] Speaker B: Are you trying to announce something here?
[00:43:19] Speaker C: I am absolutely not.
[00:43:21] Speaker B: Okay, just making sure. We've never had that before, but you know, after this many years, you never know. Hey, let's take our last break and when we come back, I've got another question about substances and sleep.
So hang tight. You're listening to brain matters on 90.7. The capstone.
[00:43:48] Speaker C: WVUAF Tuscaloosa.
[00:43:50] Speaker A: This show is not a substitute for professional counseling and no relationship is created between the show hosts or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective counties crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:44:28] Speaker B: Hey, you're back listening to brain matters on 90.7, the capstone. I'm BJ Gunther. We're talking about exhaustion. Why am I so tired? And My guest is Dr. Roxanne Pritchard. She is a professor and a neuroscientist and wow, you've done a lot of research. Research. Have you written a book?
Okay, no.
[00:44:49] Speaker C: Yeah, there are files that could be called book if you put them together.
[00:44:54] Speaker B: I bet.
[00:44:54] Speaker C: I bet maybe I will one day.
[00:44:56] Speaker B: Well, let's get to the next listener's question. Some students say they will smoke marijuana to help them sleep. Are they getting good quality sleep after doing this?
[00:45:07] Speaker C: Not quite so. And that's very common and especially here in Minnesota. Like edibles are legal. I don't know what the state of it as in Alabama, but no.
[00:45:16] Speaker B: Well, sort of.
[00:45:18] Speaker C: Yeah. It's the whole world. It's so complicated. Now here's what I want to say about that.
The we want to teach sleep skills, not pills. So whether it's like melatonin or cannabis or zquil, all of those aren't ideal for sleep.
And the withdrawal from cannabis is intense insomnia.
So a lot of people think the cannabis is helping them sleep when it's really like your brain without the cannabis is in a much more anxious activated state.
So I'm torn on how to answer that because it's not as bad as alcohol. So in our generation or my parents generation, you'd have a nightcap, you'd have like wine or sherry or vodka before bed. And that's really bad for sleep because
[00:46:11] Speaker B: why explain that a little bit.
[00:46:13] Speaker C: Okay, so first of all, I'm going back to an earlier question of oh, I feel crappy when I get nine hours or ten hours of sleep. Often that's after alcohol.
[00:46:21] Speaker B: Right?
[00:46:22] Speaker C: So on the weekends you sleep in. It's also where there's alcohol. Alcohol, like passing out is not the same as sleeping. That's self administered anesthesia. You're not having your REM cycles, it's not sleep.
So alcohol disrupts your ratio of non REM and REM sleep not only for that night, but for the next night when you have what's called REM rebound where the suppressed REM wants to come back and disrupt your sleep. So often it could take a couple days to recover from sleeping with alcohol in your system. Just like with cannabis, if it's pretty regular use, it might take three or four days to work through the withdrawal effects and take to get the sleep back on track.
[00:47:04] Speaker B: And because they're, they're using it for sleep, I think a lot of people are convinced it's working. So they just smoke more.
[00:47:11] Speaker C: Yep, yep. You know, and that's. We want to move away from that for a number of reasons including a. Doubles your chance of psychosis in young adults.
[00:47:19] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:47:20] Speaker C: But yeah, more so we want to figure out what's wrong with your sleep in the first place and get to that. Like it could be you're just night owl and in this case maybe a little bit of melatonin or regulating your light before night is going to be helpful or changing the time of when you do workouts is going to help get your sleep scheduled. Or maybe there's something else going on and you can talk to a therapist or figure out how to better manage anxiety or some of the other big complicated feelings where just like tuning out with cannabis isn't a long term solution.
[00:47:54] Speaker B: No. And I've had changing direction for just a minute. I've had, I think over the years I've had one student who I knew had narcolepsy and there probably have been more that have slid under the radar. What does narcolepsy look like in this age group?
[00:48:14] Speaker C: I am so glad you asked. I actually have a student who is, we're about to submit this paper on it. So she had an undiagnosed, undiagnosed hypersomnia disorder. So that includes narcolepsy and idiopathic hypersomnia, which is like narcolepsy's cousin.
And there's some great resources out there for people who think they might have narcolepsy or hypersomnia. This is where no matter how much you sleep, you still feel sleepy. You feel like I'm never awake. And that could be I sleep 10 hours and I'm still sleepy. And that seems to be a problem with your brain chemistry that flows flips the awake switch on. So it's treatable, it's diagnosable. What I wish people knew were it's if you feel like I'm sleeping nine or ten hours a night and I'm still always sleepy, talk to a healthcare provider to get a diagnosis because something is off.
[00:49:11] Speaker B: Do you, do, do you participate in sleep studies? Are you.
[00:49:15] Speaker C: So I really try to connect people to get them sleep studies. I'm not a person licensed to do sleep studies, but I can ask a few questions and be. Hey, I think we got an apnea situation. We got some restless legs over here. We have probable narcolepsy or hypersomnia that we need to get screened.
[00:49:32] Speaker B: What's the treatment for hypersomnia?
[00:49:36] Speaker C: Right now it's medication therapy. So one to recognize it is a disability. So you can register with disability services and get better accommodations. Make sure you have time for naps and stuff. But it's medications that activate some of that wake neurotransmitters in your brain.
[00:49:55] Speaker B: Wow. Do you talk to people about sleep hygiene? Do they call it sleep hygiene still? It's kind of.
[00:50:00] Speaker C: There's a whole great paper on. Should we still call it sleep hygiene? I kind of call it behaviors.
[00:50:05] Speaker B: Sleep behaviors.
[00:50:06] Speaker C: But whatever you want to call it, yeah, I think it makes a difference.
It's not going to make as big of a. Well, okay.
I feel like the regularity and the light are probably the one and two things of behaviors I'd want to help.
So get people bright light as soon as they wake up, go outside, see some sunshine is so important for setting your circadian rhythm and having a regular schedule. And beyond that, like, I don't think.
I think it's important to have a sleep ritual. Like, this is how my brain knows to go to bedtime for me. I like to listen to history podcasts because I can do it with my eyes closed and I'm relaxed, I'm in bed, and it's like just a nice way to not think about the present, but to just get me curious about another world.
[00:50:56] Speaker B: Sometimes students will come in and talk to me and we talk about sleep scapes and they listen to sleeps. They call them sleepscapes. Do you know what I'm talking about?
[00:51:05] Speaker C: Is this, like, would it tell me more? Because I might know what you're talking about.
[00:51:08] Speaker B: Have you heard of the Luna app? I'm not advertising for Luna, but it's L O o N a Luna app. And you can. You can. It's like a puzzle kind of, but it's almost like hypnosis. I hate to say that because that freaks people out, but that's what it feels like. But you can. You don't have to do that. You can just listen to the story and it puts you. Supposedly it puts you to sleep. But I've had students tell me about that and they use that I listen
[00:51:33] Speaker C: to, like the sleepy geographer.
Like all those are probably similar thing where it's like relaxing I love just listening to stories to too fiction stories. Well, in a soothing voice will put me to sleep as well.
[00:51:47] Speaker B: What about those. This is the last question. What about those alarm clocks? Like hatch that they work?
[00:51:57] Speaker C: Yep. And earlier you'd said about like some sleep apps, the way we wake up naturally is we're gradually aware of more stimuli in our environment.
So I love the alarm clock apps that mimic that. So like I'm gradually increasing the light. Love it. Because that's how we. That's the dawn. Right. That's bringing the dawn into your room. And that's the eyes connect to 13 different areas of the brain. Only one of them connects to how we see consciously. The other 12 are non conscious responses to light that are just getting so much stimulation from that gradual, incredible increase in light.
[00:52:35] Speaker B: Have you done any research on Nordic culture?
[00:52:40] Speaker C: Oh, I love.
[00:52:41] Speaker B: Yeah, the Midnight Sun. Oh, then I'll need to have you on to talk about that again. Midnight sun versus polar night.
[00:52:48] Speaker C: Yep, it's. And it's also one of my favorite genre of horror movies is like Scandinavian Midnight Sun.
[00:52:54] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I'm into all that stuff too. Yes, me too. Sidebar. We need to just talk on the side after this show because I totally, I totally am fascinated. We did a show, actually. Actually I was. I am obsessed with Hygge. Hygge and I had a show several years ago about, you know, Nordic culture and being in darkness for so long for months and still being the happiest culture ranked consistently the happiest culture on earth.
So there's something to that.
[00:53:31] Speaker C: Mm. And the good healthcare. Yep, sure is.
[00:53:33] Speaker B: Yep.
Can you think of anything else? Like if you had a student in front of you right now, you know, are we asking the wrong questions of college students on how can you become better at managing your exhaustion? Should we instead be asking what we've created in college culture that is making so many young people exhausted in the first place?
[00:53:55] Speaker C: Those are two very important questions and that's something me and my colleagues have worked a lot with about. Like, what is your college grind culture like? Like. Like, do you have student employees working the library at midnight or 5am if so, that's a mistake and the liability.
So I like to really ask both questions. Where I would start with the individual is going back to why? Like, what do you care about?
[00:54:19] Speaker B: Right.
[00:54:20] Speaker C: Who are you? Why are you here? What are you wanting to do? And that really, I think taps into people's motivation. So the athletes. I'm like, your bench press is going to be £20 more when you're well rested.
[00:54:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:31] Speaker C: For people that are like, I'm going to be a doctor. And then we'll talk about how much having good sleep lifts your GPA. You get like a 0.14 penalty for not sleeping well. So, like, just. So I like to figure out what people's motivations are and then work from there to be like, okay, how is going to be invested in your health going to pay out and help you fuel your. Why?
[00:54:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I like the motivation question. And, you know, you're right about athletes. The athletes I've worked with, I like working. Working with athletes because they're very disciplined. Not that other students aren't, but they're very. They're. They see it's a different type of discipline.
I don't know any other way to explain.
[00:55:14] Speaker C: I know Alabama football is big, but our football team gets about hour and a half more sleep per night than NCAA average for football team.
Put that out there for the time.
[00:55:25] Speaker B: I just wonder what they're doing over there, you know, Coach DeBoer, are you listening? I just wonder what they're doing over there, you know, to encourage this. Because I always think about, like, the night before a huge game. I know I'm just a weirdo. This is the therapist and me. But I always think about, like, are they asleep now? You know, at midnight? Are they asleep now? They've got a big game. We've got a big game coming up really, really early this Saturday. It's 11:00am Central Time, and already I'm thinking, how are those kids gonna go to sleep. Sleep. And get enough sleep, you know, because they're driving over that morning, Saturday morning from here, it's about 90 miles.
[00:56:01] Speaker C: So if I were the sleep consultant for that team, and maybe my words to the coach's ears or something, they would have gone the night before because you'd need. Yeah, that's not going to work because they'll probably get tired on the bus because they're sleep deprived, and then they're going to be in a state of sleep inertia where they're playing.
[00:56:22] Speaker B: They're playing Mississippi State. Alabama's playing Mississippi State in Starkville, Mississippi, which is about 90 miles from here.
[00:56:28] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:56:29] Speaker B: So.
[00:56:29] Speaker C: And then they need to be warmed up. So I don't. I.
I agree.
[00:56:33] Speaker B: I agree. And it was just announced, I think, today, and I don't believe. I don't ever remember us doing that. Normally we go over and we stay in Columbus, which is about, I'd say about 30 miles. That's not unusual. That it's about 30 miles from the campus. So that's normally what we do. We've never driven from here and I mean, yeah, they might as well just sleep over, you know, in the Coliseum, you know, because it's just gonna. I think it's gonna be difficult, but we'll see. Fingers crossed.
[00:57:02] Speaker C: We'll see. But if they have a good base of sleep, it shouldn't be that big of a deal if they have a good base. But that all depends on their lift schedule and these other things. And yeah, I do a lot of one on one consulting with teams.
[00:57:15] Speaker B: Oh, fun, fun, fun, fun. Hey, thank you so much for being on the show. This has been so much fun. And I said before fast. It really goes by fast when you like what you're talking about. And I love talking about sleep because it's all it to me, it's something that can be corrected and usually pretty easily.
[00:57:32] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:57:33] Speaker B: If people are dedicated and usually without medication too.
[00:57:37] Speaker C: Absolutely. It's one of the quickest ways to turn your life around.
[00:57:40] Speaker B: This is great.
Don't forget, our shows are recorded and podcasted on Apple and Spotify. Also audioboom.com and voices ua edu. You can just type in Brain Matters and you'll find some of our past shows. There's a link to Voices UA Edu on our counseling center's website. That's Counseling UA Edu. And I want to remind you I forgot to give out our email, which is Brain mattersradiobuafm ua Edu. If you have any ideas for upcoming show topics. We've got several shows planned until the end of this semester, but I'm going to need some ideas for the spring semester. So email those to me. And as always, I like to thank a few people who made the show possible. Our executive director here at the counseling center, Dr. Greg Vanderwaal, my producer and my colleague Katherine Howell, who will be back next week. My colleagues here at the counseling center who are always so supportive, Gareth Garner. He edits our shows for WVUA every week. He does a great job. And of course, my guest tonight, Dr. Roxanne Pritchard. Don't forget, we're on same time, same place next week. And the show topic, this is going to be an interesting one. I've already talked with several students about this show, the comparison trap, why everyone else's life looks better than mine. So tune in and thanks again for listening. Have a good evening and good night.
[00:59:07] Speaker A: This show was not intended as a substitute for professional counseling. Further, the views, opinions and conclusions expressed by the show hosts or their guests are their own and not necessarily those of the University of Alabama, its officers or trustees. Any views, opinions or conclusions shared on the show do not create a relationship between the host or any guest and any listener, and such a relationship should never be inferred. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, please contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact a respected county's crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
