Dr. Matt Walker

So how can we boost that?

That's one way that we're starting to explore it, but nothing, I think, solid yet.

The other is some of the drugs, the newest sleep medications that have come onto the market.

And again, I think I mentioned, I did take to task and I feel perhaps rightfully so about the classic sleep medications that if you look at the scientific data, if you can avoid them, it's probably best to do so.

Things like Ambien, et cetera.

We call them the Z drugs because they all start the sort of generic names, sort of start with a Z, you know.

Ambien, for example, has a Z at the start of it for its generic name, but I don't want to get into naming any necessarily brands, but for Ambien, what's...

Interesting about those medications, again, they're in a class of drugs that we call the sedative hypnotics.

So again, sedation, not sleep.

And also there's been some great work, again, by Dirk-Jan Dijk and colleagues.

If I were to show you that electrical signature of your deep sleep, it does look as though those drugs kind of increase the amount of electrical activity in that slower deep sleep range, except once you go all the way to the far left, to the slowest of those slow brain waves, which turns out to be...

the types of waves that are most beneficial for most health-related brain and body functions, you get this huge dent in your electrical brainwave activity.

It's almost as though those drugs take a bite out of that realm of electrical activity.

And of course, there are issues with daytime sleepiness and some safety-related issues, there's been health associations, not necessarily causal,

And so I was, you know, I offered one scientific viewpoint of those medications in the book.

And so be it.

It's not as though I'm anti-medication, as I said.

And some of the new medications are very interesting.

It brings me back to REM sleep.

There's a new class of sleep medications called the DORAS.