SuccessFULL With ADHD
Do you struggle with overwhelm, chaos, and negative self-beliefs when trying to accomplish life with ADHD?
As a late-diagnosed ADHD Coach, ADHD Expert for over 20 years, and managing an ADHD household of 5, I understand the struggles that come along with living a life of unmanaged ADHD.
The SuccessFULL With ADHD podcast shares my guests' journeys with ADHD, how they overcame their struggles, tips for other individuals with ADHD, and what life looks like now for them!
Additionally, experts including Dr. Hallowell, Dr. Amen, Dr. Sharon Saline, The Sleep Doctor, Dr. Gabor Maté, Jim Kwik, and Chris Voss, join the SuccessFULL With ADHD podcast to provide insight on ADHD and their tools to manage it.
Tune in to “SuccessFULL with ADHD” and start your journey towards success today!
* The content in this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.*
SuccessFULL With ADHD
Sleeping Smarter with The Sleep Doctor™ - Dr. Michael Breus: A Favorite Rerun Episode
This is A Fan Favorite Rerun Episode
- Website: sleepdoctor.com
- Sleep Chronotype Quiz: Find out your chronotype
- Book: "The Power of When"
- Best Mattresses Recommendations: Check here
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entrepreneurs solve problems for money. That's what they do. Okay? And so you've got to be in the right zone, to be able to solve those problems. And you know, I think about this all the time, you know, I don't learn a lot from my wins. I learned a lot from my failures. And if I can't fail fast, I get stuck in that washing machine. And then self doubt creeps in, like, oh, when in fact, if all you did was sleep better, I can erase easily 60 70% of that. I'm not saying I make smart people out of stupid people, right. But at the end of the day, if you're an intelligent human, and you're not sleeping at the right time, you are not meeting your potential at all, like not even close.
Brooke Schnittman:Welcome back everyone to successful with ADHD. I'm your host, Brooke Shipman, CEO and founder of coaching with Brooke and award winning globally recognized ADHD and executive function coaching company for all ages. And today, we have something a little different for you. As many of you know, I love to bring you the best content. And sometimes that means revisiting some of mine and my listeners favorite episodes. Whether you're a longtime listener, or new to our show, today's rerun is one of those must listen moments, originally airing in 2023. This episode features some of the most popular and needed information for ADHD ears out there today. Alright, without further ado, let's jump back into time and enjoy this classic episode of successful with ADHD. Today, I have Dr. Bruce in the house. Thank you for being here.
Dr. Michael Breus:Of course, of course, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Brooke Schnittman:And so many ADHD ears are excited that you're here today. Sleep is the number one issue that we have to deal with. And before we get into that, I would love to just give you a little bit of time to share accolades. Because you're not just any sleep doctor, you are the sleep doctor. So. So I'm going to share a little bit about what I know about Dr. Bruce, for those of you who haven't heard of him, you should look him up. He is a double board certified clinical psychologist and clinical sleep specialist. He's one of the 168 psychologists in the world to have taken and passed the sleep medicine boards without going to medical school. Yeah, interesting. That sounds very ADHD like, have you? Yeah. Dr. Bruce is the author of three books with the newest one in 2017, the power of when, and that gives that Brown, the groundbreaking biohacking of the perfect time to do everything. So he has something called Chronotypes, which we're going to be talking about. And there's a test on it. And I took it I'm a dolphin, we'll get into that. But he created this book based on your chronotype he also gives the reader the exact time to have sex run. So eat a cheeseburger. I do love those Buy, Sell ask your boss for a raise. So basically, you make all of the decisions for us ADHD ears,
Dr. Michael Breus:again, I'm working hard to try.
Brooke Schnittman:And all of these answers come from over 200 research studies. So this isn't just like, you know, one night,
Dr. Michael Breus:I didn't make this stuff up, didn't make it.
Brooke Schnittman:He also has an expert resource for most major publications doing more than 300 interviews per year. Okay, not total, but per year and including the famous Oprah doctor as the doctors New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc, etc. He has been in private practice for 23 years and recently relocated to Los Angeles as he was named the top sleep doctor of La by Reader's Digest. Welcome, welcome.
Dr. Michael Breus:Thank you. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. Boy, I sound impressive. I didn't know I did all those things. Sometimes I keep forgetting.
Brooke Schnittman:Well, if you thought about it all the time, maybe wouldn't be able to sleep. So no. Right? Exactly. So talk to us. You specialize in came up with the different types of Chronotypes. And I'm a dolphin, my husband's a lion. Tell us what that's all about? Sure.
Dr. Michael Breus:So first of all, I want to be super clear, I didn't come up with Chrono types. So Chrono types have been around since the 70s. And for people who don't know what the word Chrono type means you've actually heard of the concept before. If you've ever been called an early bird or a night owl, those are Chrono types. Okay, so back in the 70s there was a cool little questionnaire that you could take called the morning this evening, this questionnaire where some people like to get up early. Some people like To stay up late, so we call them early birds and night owls, then around kind of the mid 80s, we said, oh, there's people in the middle, we got to come up with a name for them. So they call them hummingbirds. I have no idea why they call them hummingbirds. It seems like a really ridiculous name. But that's what it was. And it kind of, you know, fast forward, we got into like the mid 2000 2010 2015 era. And I had a patient and one of my patients I failed with. So my area of sub specialty within sleep and sleep disorders is insomnia. And so people always ask, like, why did you take the medical boards if you're a clinical psychologist, and it's because insomnia is not just a psychological issue? It is both in medicine, anatomy and psychology issue. And in order for me to be able to holistically treat people, I had to know both sides of the brain, basically, right. And so when you start to look at that, you realize that these insomnia patients are quite complicated. And as we were discussing, you know, before the interview, they're kind of a pain in the ass, right? So they're hard. Most sleep specialists have no interest in working with these people. They treat sleep apnea, narcolepsy, restless legs, all important things to treat, I want to be super clear, if you think you have a sleep disorder, talk to your doctor and get yourself sleep tested. But to be fair, if you've got insomnia, you don't want to be sleep tested, because we attached 27 electrodes to you. And if you think you didn't sleep well before, I can assure you, you ain't gonna sleep well, again, right. And so focusing in on insomnia, I had this one patient and I failed miserably. And to be fair, I'm, I bought, like, you know, somewhere in the 500 to 600 range for insomniac. So about every six out of 10, I really can hit a home run with and do quite well with but some people are just tough to work with. So I failed with her. I tried cognitive behavioral therapy, we didn't try medication, working with her physician tried all kinds of different things. And so I was like, come back in, I need to do more. We need to go more in depth really understand what's going on for you. And she's we're talking, talking, talking and she finally turned to me. She said, you know, Michael, she said, I just think I was born in the wrong time zone. I was like, Okay, tell me more. Yeah, tell me more. So we started talking about it. And she was like, it feels like my time zones keep switching on me, like all over the place. And I was like, that's interesting. I said, well, for work, what what would be your best timezone? And she said, my best time zone would be if I could show up at like, 10, you know, 11 and stay till like seven. And I was like, Well, why don't you do that? And she said, Well, my boss would not allow it. My children and husband would not allow it. Because I get up early, and you know, help deal with the kids and all this other stuff. And I said, Well, can I call your boss and ask them if we could run an experiment? Right? Because I mean, at this point, like, I'm willing to try just about anything, why not? Right, exactly. Like how much harm could it do? Right? And so I call up her boss, and her boss says, you know, we can do whatever you want. And this was on a Monday, believe it or not, he said, But on Friday, I'm firing her. And I was like, Oh, crap, like, no pressure, right? So
Brooke Schnittman:based on the fact that she wasn't productive in the morning,
Dr. Michael Breus:exactly. So she was falling asleep at meetings. She was her work product was unproductive, very scattered all over the place. And so I was like, Okay, let's give it a go. I said, I don't want her to have to come in before 10. She's gonna stay until seven. So we did a few different things. And we figured out that she was what's called a dolphin. So I'll explain to you what a dolphin isn't just a second. And so we were able to manipulate her schedule, so that it made sense for her. And so I called him up on Friday. And the first words out of his mouth were I have three more employees, I want you to talk to her, he did not fire her. I worked with three other employees. So I called up her husband to find out what his experience was. And he said something to me, that was so profound. He said, Thank you for giving me my wife back. Right? It's like, you know, raises the hairs on your arms. Right? It was a Yeah, wow. Okay, like there's something here, right? And she's not an early bird. She's not an idol. She's not an in between she's, she's got anxiety, she's got, like, very difficult to focus very difficult for attention, all these different things, you know, sounds like an add patient to me, right? So I said, Okay, let's, let's work more on on figuring this out. And so I wrote the book, The Power of when. So power of when w h e. N is when in your day, you should do certain things, right. And so for her, her work day needed to be from 10 to seven, right? Because we were also able to identify during that slice of time, when she was able to focus when she was able to be creative, when she was hungry when she needed to take a nap. And this was all based on research that had been done all around the world. So Crono types, again, they've been around since the 70s. So what I did was I aggregated all of this information around and then we decided, well, how do we identify these people? Right, like how do we figure out who's what and so I started looking at you genetics. So I'm a bit of a sleep nerd, I like to look at all the science,
Brooke Schnittman:I hope you are, if that's what you do for a living, exactly, I should be
Dr. Michael Breus:for anything. And so I started to look at the genetics and got really interested in the human genome. And it turns out that being an early bird or a night owl, it's not a choice. It's in your actual DNA. Right? So there's almost 70 different places on the human genome that have an effect on your circadian rhythm. There's one place that I decided to focus on called the P E R three area. So this area, if two genes are flip flopped, in one way, a mild mutation, you're an early bird, if they're flip flop the other way, you're a night owl, if they're just normal, you're a hummingbird. But then there's some that are completely opposite. That's where
Brooke Schnittman:your adulthood where what test is that called. So
Dr. Michael Breus:you actually have to get your genetics actually tested. Now, to be fair, one of the things that I do in my private practice now is I'll take a DNA swab. And I will actually look at your genetics. If you do like, for example, if you've ever done 23, and me, I
Brooke Schnittman:was just thinking about that. I'm like, Oh, my You're gonna disrupt a lot of families here.
Dr. Michael Breus:Well, no, but but here's the thing is it's not as disruptive as you might think it actually it actually makes families come closer together. So there's actually a morning this evening, this report on 23andme that starts to get to this as a general idea. Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Just look under Reports. You'll be surprised it's right down there at the bottom. Like what time should you be waking up? What time should you be going to bed all again, based on genetics?
Brooke Schnittman:I get emails during them all the time about possible relatives, and I just delete, delete. Find the good stuff. I don't want to know about possible relatives. Yeah,
Dr. Michael Breus:no interest. No, no, thank you. But But if you can find this type of genetic information available to you, there's a lot that you can actually do with it. And so by aggregating all these studies and figuring out when early birds are good at certain things, when night owls are good at certain things, when what we what we basically call non typical Chrono types, or what I've named dolphins, things that it works out pretty well. And so people always ask like, why animals? Right? So first of all, I'm not a bird, right? I'm a mammal, right? And so I didn't want to be I didn't want to come up with another bird. So I chose animals that actually represent the circadian rhythmicity that they are so lions are transposed for early birds, because many people might know but lions wake up before dawn, they usually have their first kill before dawn. They're very active hunters in the early early morning hours. There's were people in the middle they they're now hummingbirds. Now, our bears, they wake up as the sun comes up, they go to bed when the sun goes down. They're very kind of affable creatures kind of working around that. Wolves are the night owls. Many people know wolves are very much night creatures right? Now people say well, dolphins Michael, what what are you talking about with dolphins? So it's interesting. Dolphins sleep uni hemispheric Lee. So half of the brain is asleep, while the other half is awake and looking for predators. Right? That sounds like somebody who's got some anxiety. He's got some insomnia. He's got some of these concerns. Sure.
Brooke Schnittman:And that's why we wake up tired and exhausted the next day. Exactly.
Dr. Michael Breus:Right. And who doesn't want to be a dolphin, right? We also want to animals that were aspirational, right? Like, who doesn't want to be the King or the Queen of the Jungle, right? You know, or who doesn't want to be an awesome teddy bear or a wolf, you know, or a dolphin? So we we really thought through kind of the idea of which one of these animals do you kind of want to be? So once we once we kind of figured that out? I was like, Okay, I'm gonna create a quiz for people to take online, because not everybody can do their genetics, right. And to be fair, the quiz works, but it's not like foolproof, right? I mean, there's only so much you can do with 30 questions on the internet, right? So so it's called Chrono quiz.com. And we'll put the link in the show notes afterwards, so people can go and check it out. What's been fantastic, is we've gotten now north of about three and a half million people have taken the quiz. So we have tons of data to really start to understand what people and so here's how it works. If you're a lion, which is an early bird, your melatonin stops by about 430 in the morning, you wake up around 536 o'clock, and then a very predictable pattern to your hormones goes on until about 930 at night. If you're a bear that's forward by about 90 minutes, if you're a wolf that's powered by about 90 minutes, right? If you're a dolphin, it's all over the place, right? So it gets very, very interesting when you start to look at it from a pure hormonal standpoint. So as an example, if you're a wolf like I used to be, my body doesn't stop producing melatonin sometimes until 839 o'clock. Oh, wow. But if I got to get up at six, guess what? I'm groggy as hell. I'm not productive. It doesn't work out well for me. But if I know that I can either go to bed earlier. Well, actually, I can't because as your melatonin doesn't kick off until almost midnight. So what I have to do then is take a nap during the day. Right? So I can strategically place my nap during a time of day when I know I'll be tired, and you don't have to take a long nap less than a 25 minute nap and I can be up and going whenever I need to be.
Brooke Schnittman:So it sounds like there's a lot of strategy behind knowing what chronotype you are. It's exactly a one size fits all solution for sleep at all.
Dr. Michael Breus:Not at all. Not at all. And that's the problem, like you hear now, like, there's a big thing going around with people that they say things like, oh, I want to be part of the 5am club, or I get up in the morning, right? I'm gonna tell you right now, that's total horseshit. Okay, like, there is no universe where that makes sense. Only in about roughly 15, one 5% of the people out there can do that successfully. Okay, that means 85% of people are going to fail when they try to do something like that. Like, that's not a good idea. I'm
Brooke Schnittman:so glad you mentioned that. Because I also work with entrepreneurs, and we shame ourselves having ADHD so often, well, I saw this person waking up at 5am, I read the 5am. Club, this and that, like, should I have a morning routine where I'm reading, if I don't know, if you're gonna be exhausted for the rest of your day, and you need to slow roll your day and you need to sleep? That's gonna be counterproductive?
Dr. Michael Breus:Absolutely. You have to know your genetics, like, you know, I tell people all the time, look, I'm five, nine, I'm never going to dunk a basketball, it's just not going to happen, right? I know who my body is. And I work within my body to be able to do the things to the optimal performance that I want to be able to do them. That's what this is, is it's kind of like a secret weapon for optimal performance. And so you know, you said to me earlier, in the podcast, you said, oh, there's going to be a lot of couples or families, they're going to get upset. Actually, the opposite happens. Here's what's so fascinating, is not everybody in the family is going to have the same Chrono type. In fact, many people when they get married, don't marry the same Chrono type. Okay, so it makes it very interesting. Right? So this is actually one of the reasons why my most popular chapter is what's the best time for sex? Right? Because a lot of people are like, what's going on here?
Brooke Schnittman:Touch on that. Oh,
Dr. Michael Breus:yeah. And it's funny, it's the most quoted chapter that I have. People are always interested in it we'll talk about in just a second. But the basics of Chrono type is you go to Chrono quiz, you take the quiz, you figure out what you are, right? If you if you want buy the book, I mean, I'd love it if you do, but you don't necessarily have to we send emails to teach people different things. Like, when should you have your first cup of coffee, depending on your Chrono type? When should you go to sleep? When should you stop alcohol, things like that become very, very important. Strategically speaking, right? Because here's the problem is, when was last time somebody taught you how to sleep? Never, almost never, right? And so but it's one of those things that you feel like well, nobody taught me how to breathe, either. Well, by the way, there's certain ways that you can breathe, it can be very effective. Mindfulness
Brooke Schnittman:Meditation, exactly breathing, but you have to be intentional about it.
Dr. Michael Breus:Exactly. And so what I tell people all the time is you must be intentional about your sleep. Right? And if you can create a structure by which to follow number one structure is great for people with ADHD because
Brooke Schnittman:we thrive off it, but he didn't at the same time.
Dr. Michael Breus:Absolutely. But at the end of the day, if you can follow some of my guidelines in a fairly easy format, I'm going to show you productivity gains that are massive for you in any area that you want. I'll give you a great example, personal area, right? So a lot of people say, Well, can you Chrono type change over time? Actually, it does, believe it or not, everybody goes through all of the chrono types at some time in their life. So if you're, if you're a baby, you're alive. You go to bed early, you wake up early. And when you're in like middle school, you're a bear. Right? So you kind of get up and 730 go to bed at 730. When you're an adolescent, you're a wolf. Right? What do you do? You want to stay up until two and sleep until 12? Right? Like wolves often do, then your chronotype seems to set for about 30 years, and then it starts to change again, right? And so if you ever turn to your parents or your grandparents and say, hey, I want to go out to dinner, what did they say? Oh, let's go to 435 O'clock dinner. Why? Right? Because they're moving backwards, right? You're like what's going on with your grandma? It's like, they can't help but it's all about when does your melatonin by genetics kick off? Right? And so once we understand that, it becomes much, much easier to manage ourselves throughout the day.
Brooke Schnittman:So let me ask you a question. So I know you said that it changes every 30 years. Yes, sure. Right. So this might be a coincidence. But when I worked in a school, I had to wake up early, and I was fine. Waking up early. I thrived, waking up early, and I would go to bed early. Now. I still go to bed somewhat early. And I wake up around the same time every day because of my baby. But also I know that I cannot be productive, productive with work like don't start work until 10am.
Dr. Michael Breus:Me. So you're a classic dolphin, for sure. Right? So you're somebody who's there's a weirdness to your schedule, right? It kind of doesn't fit into the classic Early Bird or the classic night owl. And so what we need to do is, first of all is regularize your wakeup time. So we need to find the right wakeup time for you, right. And we can do that in a whole host of ways. One is take the chrono quiz. But if you want to be even more exact about it, you can just measure your melatonin. So there are assays that you can buy online, they're like 100 bucks, and it's saliva. And you take a saliva sample in the morning, in the afternoon, the next day, morning, afternoon, and you get a very nice cortisol and melatonin curve, then you've got to follow the data, right, you got to see where your data is there. And then you know when to fall asleep, when to wake up, if you just drill into that. Here's where it gets really interesting. So here's where the productivity is through the roof, is if you find what I call your Chrono typical swim lane, right, which is your place to be, we actually find that you condense your total amount of sleep needed. Interesting, which gets really interesting, right? So if people tell me all the time that like, I wish I could find an extra 90 minutes in my day, oh, I can find it for you. No problem, all I have to do is get you into your Chrono typical swim lane. And here's what happens, it takes it out for months. But all of the sudden, your sleep begins to condense. So we used to always say you need eight hours, you needed hours. First of all, that's bullshit. You don't need eight hours, most people don't. Okay, there's varying amounts of time, it depends on your age, kind of on your gender. If for women, it depends on where you are on your menstrual cycle. It depends on if you have kids, like there's a whole host of different things. But generally speaking, the reason you're in bed eight hours is to basically get six and a half to seven hours of good solid sleep. Interesting. But if I can tell you exactly where you can go and get that in the timeframe in which in which you're going to be in bed, guess what, I just shaved an hour off of that time that you spent in bed. And now you can use that hour more productively for whatever you want. Amazing. Yeah. Now it can be for personal things. It can be for professional things. It can be for spiritual things like you get to decide, right? That's the cool part is you get to think about okay, well, what do I want to do better?
Brooke Schnittman:Right? So we actually, if we follow the your method, it's not sleep procrastination, it's actually intentional. shift of your sleep schedule.
Dr. Michael Breus:Exactly, exactly. I'm working on this article right now that I'm going to entitle sleepy entrepreneurs fail slowly.
Brooke Schnittman:Okay, stacks up over time, huh? Exactly
Dr. Michael Breus:right. And as an entrepreneur, you want to fail quickly, right? Because if it didn't work, and you want to know fast, so you can pivot and retry and pivot and retry until you get into your lane and go, go, go go, right. And so this is what happens is people don't realize it, but focus is affected, attention is affected, energy is affected. I mean, all things that you need, your diet is affected, your ability to exercise is affected. I tell people all the time, like literally everything you do you do better with a good night's sleep. Absolutely.
Brooke Schnittman:So I know so many people, me included, sometimes that it's a catch 22, right? They're in this vicious cycle where they can't sleep. So then they're not productive the next day, and then they can't sleep. And then they keep trying to do all these things. What would be the first thing that you would tell someone who's in that vicious cycle? Talk
Dr. Michael Breus:to a sleep specialist? And let me explain why. So here's the thing is, this isn't something necessarily that you can do on your own. So many people are like, look, how tough can this be Michael, I can I can figure all of this out by myself, I can read one of your books, I can do that. Here's what I've discovered, especially people with ADHD, this is not something you are going to figure out by yourself. Okay, this is something that you will talk with somebody about, it doesn't take long, maybe two or three sessions to understand how the system really works. And then to have very defined points in time, because we got to figure out what you are right, which chronotype you are, then we have to give you the time and then we have to see if it worked, right because it's a 30 questions on the internet, like sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's not so good, right? And so we have to and you know, everybody's a little bit individual. So we kind of manipulate it around until we get there. Once we get there and we layer it in for about 28 days. You're good to go. Now, if you turn to me said Mike, I'm gonna put a gun to your head and I'm gonna say what's the one thing that's easy wake up at the same time, seven days a week, not five days a week, seven days a week. And there's a biology reason for this. This isn't just Michael causing torture right across the universe here. So what happens is when you wake up in the morning, when sunlight hits your eye, you have a very specific cell in your eye called a melanopsin. Cell. This sends a signal to your brain to turn off the melatonin faucet in your head. Okay, once that melatonin faucet turns off, brain fog starts to clear everything gets sharper and you're doing much, much better. For example, we use light therapy for jetlag, we can use light and manipulate light because let's be fair light is medicine. People don't realize it but it really is. And we can do a lot with it but there's a second thing that happens that many people don't know about is your brain sets a timer for approximately 14 hours later for melatonin to start. So here's where it gets interesting. Your brain can't tell time. Now, let me explain what I mean by that. So if you're waking up, let's make the math simple. If you're waking up at 6am, five days a week, 14 hours later is 8pm. Melatonin starts takes about 90 minutes to kick in, you get tired around 930 10 o'clock you fall asleep. But if on Saturday, you decide to sleep until 814 hours later, is not eight o'clock at night. It's 10 o'clock at night, because it's a timer, not a clock. And now all of a sudden, your whole melatonin curve has shifted. It literally takes one night to shift your melatonin curve. It's what we call social jetlag. Wow. So if you think about it, you stay up late on Friday, sleep in on Saturday, stay up late on Saturday, sleep then on Sunday, Monday sucks. Because your melatonin curve is off?
Brooke Schnittman:And how long does it take to recover from that?
Dr. Michael Breus:Not long at all. But here's the thing is, you have to have the right timing based on your Chrono tag. Okay, so And here's where the problem comes in. Michael, my boss says I have to be available at 730 Every single morning, right? So what I do is exactly what I did with my patient that I told you about before, is I turned to a lot of people and I say ask your boss, if you can run an experiment for a week, just a week, to see if your work product changes to see if that works better for you. You will be surprised the smart bosses out there will be very interested in saying okay, I can get more out of this person, if I'm if I'm moving more towards their personal timing and whatever their job description is, especially with creatives. If you're out there, and you're a creative person, let me tell you something 7am Sucks for creative people. It's awful. Most of my creatives are our wolves their evening people, right? Because that's really what entrepreneurship is all about. Like my friend Joe Polish says this all the time, he says entrepreneurs solve problems for money. That's what they do. Okay, and so you've got to be in the right zone, to be able to solve those problems. And you know, I think about this all the time, you know, I don't learn a lot from my wins. I learned a lot from my failures, right? And if I can't fail fast, I get stuck in that washing machine. And then self doubt creeps in, like, Oh, I've been failing and failing. And because I'm not failing fast enough to be able to pivot to find that right answer to now be able to do the things that I want to do to solve said, problem.
Brooke Schnittman:Absolutely. If you're failing slowly, you get that negative message over and over again, for sure.
Dr. Michael Breus:It's awful, you know, and then you get those negative tapes running in your head, like, Oh, you're never going to figure this out. Right? All this stuff. And when in fact, if all you did was sleep better, I can erase easily 60 70% of that. Yeah, I'm not saying I make smart people out of stupid people because that, you know, dumb is dumb, right? But at the end of the day, if you're an intelligent human, and you're not sleeping at the right time, you are not meeting your potential at all, like not even close. Interesting.
Brooke Schnittman:And in my upcoming book, I also talked about like, optimal focus time, I would love for you to review that section and put your Chronotypes in there. Because how do people know their optimal focus time unless they are your chronotype? Exactly, exactly. Yeah, so question for you. I know you said that a lot of individuals with ADHD or dolphins?
Dr. Michael Breus:Yes, not all.
Brooke Schnittman:So is it a thing that a lot of ADHD years have reverse sleep cycles, or delayed sleep cycles.
Dr. Michael Breus:So it's all over the board. That's what's so fascinating to me. So like when we were talking earlier, sometimes what I find is with a dolphin, if I can, in fact, find out what their sleep schedule is, and get them working better with that and lower some of that anxiety because quite frankly, the biggest thing that most of my dolphin suffer from his level of anxiety, right? It's a fear based situation that's kind of going I'm not good enough. I can't solve this problem or shit. I'm not doing it right.
Brooke Schnittman:And then we have those vivid dreams and nightmares and absolutely, absolutely.
Dr. Michael Breus:So all of that kind of comes into play. If we can, if we can get a handle on that. Sometimes their true chronotype pops up. Sometimes they end up being a lion, which is an early early person who gets stuff done and all that all that kind of operational stuff that they're that they're looking for. Sometimes my dolphins turn out to be night owls, but they're being forced into an early schedule. Right so their boss is saying you've got to be up at seven o'clock in the morning when historically like they never took a class in college before noon. Right? Right because that wasn't their thing. Like they could never quite get there. You know, that sort of stuff. If you can
Brooke Schnittman:we differentiate real quick. So if you're forced to have a certain cycle, whether it be for kids or an environment, a work environment where they can't, unfortunately, change your work schedule,
Dr. Michael Breus:right? Happens all the time. Can you adapt
Brooke Schnittman:100% to that? Or is there always going to be some sort of delay?
Dr. Michael Breus:So yes and no. And so there's always a little bit of a delay, but we have tricks to help people with that. So one of my favorite tricks is a nap. Right? And so I call it the escape hatch, right? And so sometimes for my dolphins, it's like, I have to be up, you know, at a time when my body doesn't want to be up, or I have to be asleep, when a time when my body doesn't want to be asleep. How do I deal with something like this, and I'm exhausted during the daytime, I'm only getting five and a half to six hours of sleep, my body really needs seven. Again, this can vary across people, in women in particular, with women, it takes a little bit longer, because I also have them map their menstrual cycle with their sleep diary. Because a lot of women need more sleep before their period and less sleep after their period. And so we can manipulate that and understand where that works. But a nap between one and three in the afternoon for about less than 25 minutes can be a killer productivity boost. You know, there's a couple things you think about. So number one is safety at all times, right? So let somebody know that you're taking a nap. nap in a safe place. Because you know, you're very vulnerable, your eyes are closed, you don't know what's going on. Don't go to your car, right? And if you are going to go to your car to take a nap, have somebody sitting in the seat next to you listening to a podcast or doing whatever eating their lunch, whatever, they're safe. Again, safety, safety, safety, because here's the thing that a lot of people don't realize. You can't sleep unless you say, like, period, stop everything.
Brooke Schnittman:Yeah, that's the basic hierarchy of needs. Right? Exactly. The
Dr. Michael Breus:root of all insomnia is safety. 100% every time, okay? And so if you can find a safe place, and a safe place, by the way, isn't necessarily just the your physical surroundings. It's also your mental surroundings. It's also your spiritual surroundings. Right? And so if all you do is think about all your failures all day long, that is not a safe place for your brain to be. And
Brooke Schnittman:do you think that's why many individuals with ADHD have a difficult time sleeping because of negativity bias?
Dr. Michael Breus:Absolutely no question about it in my mind. And so when I look at sleep, there's a few things that I look at. But two main categories that I work with them on is there's discipline, you know, things like stop caffeine by 2pm, learn when to take a nap, figure out your chronotype wake up the same time every day, you know, basic basic stuff. And then there's acceptance. Right? It's okay. Like the newsflash, your heads not going to pop off. If you don't get a great night's sleep tonight. It's happened to you a million times before. Right? And so oftentimes, they're and this is gonna sound a little hokey, but I use it all the time is the Serenity Prayer. Right? So grant me the acceptance to understand the things I know, understand things I don't know and accept the things I can't do anything about. Right? Right. And once you understand how to accept your situation, your anxiety drops, which allows the natural sleep process to take over because nobody in the history of time has ever thought their way to sleep. Nobody, right? So people tell me all the time, I wake up at two o'clock in the morning, and I start thinking, and then I figured, well, I'm just going to finish out that thought, or I'm going to burn this new idea into my brain or whatever, stop it. Okay, it's not going to work. Right? Except the fact that your body's up and it's okay. A lot of times add years, they compare themselves to other people around the time, whether it's somebody else would add or somebody else that doesn't have it, and it's constantly this comparison, comparison, comparison, like shut up. Stop it. But here's the thing is, add is a superpower. Like people don't get it. Okay, but if you can harness it, you can solve all kinds of problems that most people have no idea how to solve. Why do you
Brooke Schnittman:think that I so I pulled Instagram and our email list and I got so many people who are interested in knowing why their children are having such difficulty sleeping, they try melatonin clonidine, that
Dr. Michael Breus:idea. Bad idea. Okay, so there's a lot going on with kids and sleep. So number one, it depends on the age of the child. So I want to be super clear about something. If your child has a sleep problem, and you give them a pill, they now have two problems. They have a sleep problem, they have a pill problem. Okay. 99% of children do not need a pill to sleep. Okay, now, I want to be clear, there's some that do, right? If you've got a child who had a major psychotic episode or a mental breakdown or has been in rehab or what have you, many of those children need a pill to sleep based on their neuro chemistry and things like that. I'm not saying go against your doctor. If your doctor gives them a pill for a particular reason at a particular time to sleep, then you need to listen to your doctor. But there's a lot of parents out there who pass out melatonin and unfortunately some of their doctors tell them to do it. But 95% of children make four times the amount of melatonin that they need. Four times. Okay? You do not need to do that. Also many people don't know this, but melatonin is by prescription only in most places other than the United States. That's number one. Number two, they're overdosing these children wildly. The appropriate dose for an adult is between a half and one and a half milligrams. You find it for that the only place the only thing you can find is three milligram dummies, five milligram gummies, 10. milligram gummies, right. It's stupid. You're and by the way, most people don't know this part. Melatonin is a contraceptive at high levels. contraceptive. Can you think of anything worse for a young female developing body than introducing a contraceptive when it's not necessary? I can sounds like a bad idea to me. Wow. So you got to think through this as an idea. Now, to be fair, there is some data on add in melatonin, and it can be helpful, but test your frickin melatonin. Like figure out if you need it or not, don't just willy nilly start using it. Right? Talk to a doctor and see if you can figure out what makes sense there. Okay, there's and by the way, Vitamin D is also circadian pacemaker. And there's a lot of data coming out about vitamin D and add and how useful it can be, right, you want to take vitamin D in the morning, you want to talk with your doctor. But somewhere between 5008 1000 international units per pill is usually a good place to start, you want to have it with a little bit of food, because it's fat soluble, you don't want to just basically pee it out. So there's a lot of things that you can do ahead of time before you get to the melatonin 's of the world. But here's the biggest problem with kids and sleep is their parents. 99% of the time, the parents are like I want you to go to bed and the kid doesn't want to go to bed. Why? Because you've been roughhousing with them. Because you were working till seven o'clock at night, you come home, you everybody has dinner at a and then you want to spend time because you want to be a good parent. And now it's 930 and you've been playing with your kids till 930 And they're all zapped up. Right? Don't be an idiot. You know, kids have a different schedule. Cut it out, you know, like, it's just not that hard.
Brooke Schnittman:I get it my 16 month olds whenever we're, you know, playing music right before bed. She's hyped. Yeah, till 830 Right
Dr. Michael Breus:now, you know, or change the music, change it to something that's more calm, or a little bit of music and then move into storytime or move into bath, then move into storytime, then move into you know, div and by the way, the lights should be dim when you're doing all of this because you don't want SS light because that slows the production of melatonin for the child. So I'm telling people all the things that they probably already know. But to be fair, you just need to, you need to give yourself some runway to land the plane. Okay? Like, that's what I tell people all the time, especially with children. Because children, you know, they're they're different little creatures. They're not just little humans. They're not just little adults. Like they have very different schedules, right. And especially ones that are your age, they're lions, they want to go to bed early, and they want to wake up early. Yep, don't be rocking out at seven o'clock at night. Okay? Like, it's not a good idea. Here's the thing. And it's like, it's like, you know, toothpaste out of the tube, it's really hard to put it back in, right? And so you got to give them structure, right? The more defined structure that a child has for bedtime, the better they will sleep, right. And so I tell this people all the time, like, if grandma and grandpa are showing up and their plane is late, and they don't get until eight o'clock, they don't get to see the baby. Period. Stop, full stop. We're on a schedule. That's how it works. You know, people will give moms all this trouble all the time. Oh, I can't believe you're doing it this way. I never, I never had to do it this way with you great. This, this isn't your child. This is my child. It's different genetics than I had I got I've got a husband or a partner who has influenced this this for but with different genetics. So guess what? Shut up. Right. This is how we do it here. Exactly.
Brooke Schnittman:This is right. This is our house boundaries. Real quick. Just two quick questions. So you had mentioned that don't overthink sleep, some people don't need eight hours of sleep. But what if someone's on a four hour five hour consistent sleep schedule? And there's nothing they can do about it? Is that okay? Or
Dr. Michael Breus:there's always something they can do about it. So there is no universe where for hours, it makes sense for anyone. The lower level limit for you to be functional to drive a car make decisions is probably six, six and a half, six hours, I would say right? Because the data is super consistent. The more sleep deprived You are the worst decisions that you make, the less focus that you have the riskier decisions that you make. Right? It's just a disaster. So you know, I love it when people are like, Oh, Michael, I can only get four hours. Bullshit. Okay, I'm here to tell you. I know you. I know it like I know you can get more sleep. You just have to prioritize it.
Brooke Schnittman:Why is it so difficult? And maybe this is more complex. But why is it so difficult? The older you get to take naps, I've found that a lot of people have said that they can't take naps anymore.
Dr. Michael Breus:That's a good sign. If you can't take a nap, that can be a good sign because it means you're fairly well rested. The other big thing is how caffeinated Are you? Right? So how much caffeine is in your system? Are you buzzing or not to do with your napping? Right? And so people don't realize that caffeine has a half life of between six and eight hours. Okay, so if you don't stop caffeine by like noon, like Yeah, it's not gonna go well, if you tried to take a nap at you know, three o'clock, right? Also, your sleep drive is directly related to the last time that you were asleep. So as an example, if you want to go to bed at 10, and you took a nap at three, you ain't going to bed at 10, I can assure you, right, because that sleep drive has to build up throughout the day. The Biology of it is is that when a cell eats a piece of glucose, something comes out the back end. One of those things is called adenosine. Adenosine works its way through your system goes to a very specific receptor site and then has to accumulate. When you take a nap, you lower your adenosine, which means it's harder to fall asleep. So strategically placing naps based on your Chrono type works very well.
Brooke Schnittman:Love it a little bit. So any last closing thoughts for someone looking for asleep change?
Dr. Michael Breus:Absolutely. So I got a five step plan works really well. And then I also want to talk about mattresses because that's an important thing that a lot of people, how do you pick the 14 best mattresses, I'm gonna, I'm gonna show you. So step number one is to find one wake up time based on your Chrono type. Okay, step number two is to stop caffeine by 2pm. Right as a start. Step number three is to stop alcohol three hours before bed, limiting yourself to two drinks. Okay, step number four is to exercise daily, which is, by the way, the best way to improve sleep quality and make yourself a little bit more tired. But you need to stop usually about four hours before bed. And step number five is when you wake up in the morning, I want you to do this thing that I call the three fifteens. So you you swing your legs over you put your feet on the ground, still sitting on the bed, take 15 Deep breaths. This is merely to bring yourself centered This is to get your respiratory system kind of back in gear, then you drink 15 ounces of water. Most people don't know this, but sleep in and of itself as a dehydrated event, you lose almost a full liter of water from the humidity that's going on in your breath. So you've got to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate well before you caffeinated and then go over to the window or best go outside and get 15 minutes of sunlight. I love that just enough time to get vitamin D and it turns off that melatonin faucet.
Brooke Schnittman:I love that it's so simple 15 1515
Dr. Michael Breus:I believe that sleep is a performance activity. Okay, so I used to be a runner. So if you're a runner, you can run a race and flip flops, torn shorts, you know, with a boombox on your arm, but your time is not going to be too good, right? But if you've got your ASICs on and you're dry footwear and you're good tunes, your performance is going to be better, right? Sleep is the exact same way. Right? And a mattress is arguably the key component in your overall sleep system. So number one, replace your pillows about every 18 to 24 months. Oh yes, absolutely, they structurally break down your head weighs somewhere between eight and 10 pounds depending on how big you are. So the structure of the pillow itself is going to change. Now if you got one of those memory foam pillows, it's like a big block of cheese that you can probably keep that one for more than like more like three years. But generally speaking, I don't like those that sleep hot, it's not necessarily a really good thing. So replace your pillows. That's number one. But number two, if you've had a mattress for longer than about six, seven years, it's probably time for a new one. But listen to your body. Right? If you wake up stiff and sore more than two days a week, and it's not from working out really hard or hitting the mountain bike or hiking on a trail. Do you need a new bed. So what I've done over at the sleep doctor.com, which is my website is we have mattress reviews. So and it's complicated. We've reviewed over 150 beds. And so we figured out like what beds are good for side sleepers versus back sleepers versus stomach sleepers. We have mattresses that are good for people who sleep hot, we've got mattresses that are good for people who are a little bit on the bigger side of things. And so there's a lot of different things out there, don't try to do it yourself. Trust me, it's taken years to do these reviews, and figure all this stuff out. Go over there, you'll see that we've got a lot of information there on mattresses, but also, we've got a lot of information about sleep in general, if you think you've got sleep apnea, you can order your own sleep test from over there and be able to figure something like that out. If you just want to learn about these kinds of tips and tricks of that I tell people all the time, we have lots of articles on that. And so it's a really good resource for people to check out and learn. We've actually got entire articles on sleep and ADD and ADHD, just focusing on that. So we really try to give the the breadth of information out there for folks because sleep is a I mean, I could tell people this all the time you change your sleep you change your life. Like it's just literally that simple. So you know why not? I mean you spending, arguably more time doing that than any other single activity that you're going to do in a 24 hour cycle? You might as well do it right.
Brooke Schnittman:Yeah, sleep impacts everything. Yeah. Mike drop. Exactly. Well, thank you for your time, Dr. Bruce. And we'll definitely put your links in the show notes. We look forward to this coming out and everyone hearing your amazing tips.
Dr. Michael Breus:absolutely happy to do it. And for folks out there. Remember, the book is called The Power of win. And if you don't get the book, go take the quiz, Chrono quiz.com You will definitely learn something before it's all said and done.
Brooke Schnittman:Thanks for listening to this episode of successful with ADHD. I hope it helps you on your journey. And if you need any additional support for you or a loved one with ADHD, feel free to reach out to us at coaching with brooke.com and all social media platforms at coaching Woodbrook and remember, it's Brooke with any Thanks again for listening. See you next time.
