Dr. Cindy Geyer

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241 appearances 4 recordings 1 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard 1 Jul

Dr. Cindy Geyer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The Dr. Hyman Show · This Is Why You’re Not Sleeping Well—and How to Fix It Fast · 4 Nov 2024 podcast

That's great.

And Mark, I think from the internal medicine standpoint too, it's equally important to say don't just correct the iron, figure out the why. You don't want to miss blood loss somewhere. Absolutely.

You know, there was one other piece related to her story that I think is also important to call out. Addressing all of those things, her sleep quality was still not what she wanted to be. So we had a conversation and she relayed the fact that when she was growing up, things were pretty unsettled in her home of origin.

There were a lot of late night parties, a lot of noise and bedtime became a time where she didn't really feel safe and quiet and comfortable. So we also talked about referring her to a life management behavioral therapist to really talk about what it meant to be safe and regaining that sense of being okay being in bed. And I think that goes hidden as well that a previous

History of trauma or not feeling safe can also show up with insomnia and difficulty sleeping.

Sure. I think first and foremost, we have to recognize that sleep, you know, you and I trained in an era where sleep deprivation or how little sleep you could get by on was a badge of honor.

So we need to shift that internal dialogue that we all have that, oh, if I'm sleeping, I'm wasting my time and I'm not getting my stuff done. So first, honor the importance of sleep for your overall health and well-being and even your ability to stick to your intentions around choosing healthy foods and sticking to your exercise plan.

Then create a sanctuary that's really conducive for rest and relaxation. dark, quiet, cool, ideally electronics out of the bedroom or turned off if you can, getting rid of all of the light exposures, even your chargers, you know, that had that little light.

I used to, I had a patient who told me she traveled around with black electrical tape whenever she went to a hotel and she would put it over all the little light sources in the hotel room.

So those two, quiet, calming. And I think this idea that you go, go, go, go, go, go, hop in bed and turn it off like a switch, that doesn't work either. So building in a transition to rest and relaxation. If you can do an hour, that's great. And getting off the devices, not watching TV, maybe reading a book or journaling or doing something, taking a bath, stretching in the tub.

I mean, there's all kinds of wonderful ways to ease into rest of the relaxation.

That's my favorite as well. And then you go to your cool bedroom and you do your legs up the wall yoga, restorative yoga position and bingo, you've got your transition to rest and relaxation.

Yeah, that's a tough one. That's a tough one. So the rough analogy is this. It's funny, when they asked partners of people with insomnia how many of them were suggesting that they have a drink to go to sleep, it was about a third of them. So people think alcohol is going to help you sleep. And it might make you fall asleep. But then as it clears out of your system, there's an arousal.

It can exacerbate hypoglycemia. It makes you wake up. It's going to make sleep apnea worse. If you're a woman in midlife, oh boy, it's a bladder irritant. It's a hot flash trigger. So it's really affecting sleep in a lot of ways. The rough equivalent is there's about an hour of sedation followed by an hour of arousal.

So if you had a glass of wine at 6 and you go to bed at 10, it's probably not going to impact your sleep as much as if you have two glasses at 8 or like your late dinner last night if you had a glass or two of wine. I had a beer.

That has another impact on your sleep.

It's really interesting.

Yeah, absolutely. And we're all different in terms of our caffeine metabolism ability. Some people are really fast metabolizers. I happen to be one of those. But if you're a slow metabolizer, half of your cup of coffee from noon could still be in your system at nine o'clock at night. And most of the time we're not thinking back to that new cup of coffee.

With food, it's really about quality, quantity and timing of food. It's all three. Yet another area that's impacted with the health of the gut microbiome is sleep. And data is suggesting that people who eat a wide variety of colorful fruits and vegetables

tend to have better sleep quality, whereas a highly processed standard American diet is associated with more sleep disruptions and less deep sleep. So quality matters. We already touched a little bit on the timing of eating. So eating your calories earlier in the day also helps re-regulate those circadian rhythms.

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