Dr. Alok (Dr. K)

So if you do the job that sleep has to do, if you take care of your body and do some of the things that sleep normally does for you, you can sleep less.

And the second thing is that if we think about why do we need to sleep more, the life that you live will determine how much you sleep and how much difficulty you have sleeping.

See, everyone gets this.

We did a whole video about this, but I think this is a huge misunderstanding that people have.

I have a lot of patients who had insomnia and they think insomnia is about going to sleep.

I have difficulty going to sleep.

And so we try to solve in psychiatry, we try to solve insomnia at bedtime.

So we say, hey, take some mirtazapine, take some Benadryl, take something to help you sleep, right?

We'll give people melatonin.

We'll like, if you're having trouble sleeping, like take this pill so it helps you sleep.

Here's the key thing to remember.

Your ability to go to sleep depends on your activity for the day.

So the way that you spend your day will determine how easy or difficult it is to fall asleep.

Now, some people have really bad insomnia disorders that this doesn't work for, or at least works in a very limited capacity.

But I'd say that literally for 99% of the patients I've worked with who have insomnia, unless you have something like familial fatal insomnia, which is a prion disease or some other form of really, really bad genetic or weird neurological insomnia,

I don't know if what I'm saying is going to work for people with familial fatal insomnia.

But anyway, the rest of y'all, 99% of people, it's about how you spend your day.

So a couple of things that people really make big mistakes on.

One is I think having a heavy meal before you go to bed is huge.

So have a heavy meal, get that insulin spike, go ahead and go into that food coma.