Episode 08: How Sleep Affects Your Mental Health
Despite evidence suggesting that sleep is just as important as sleep and exercise to our overall well being, an estimated 40 million Americans suffer from chronic sleep issues. Poor sleep is linked to common mental health concerns like anxiety and depression. In this episode, we're joined by Dr. Anna Katherine Black, a clinical psychologist at Delta Autumn Consulting, to learn more about how sleep is integral to our mental health. Listen now below, or anywhere you get your podcasts.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to South of Fine, a podcast from Right Track Medical Group, dedicated to de-stigmatizing mental health in the south through genuine conversation about the challenges that we all face every day. For more information, please visit our website, righttrackmedical.com\SouthofFine. While we hope you enjoy listening to our podcast, please remember that this is not a substitute for professional diagnosis or for the treatment of any mental health condition.
We hope you enjoy listening to our podcast. Please remember that this is not a substitute for professional diagnosis or for the treatment of any mental health condition.
Rhes Low, Host:
All right. Hey, guys. Welcome back to another episode of South of Fine. As usual, I'm your host, Rhes Low. We are going to talk about sleep and its impact on mental health. We've all been there. I'm actually there right now. I didn't sleep well, and my brain does not feel like it's in top gear. It's kind of sluggish. As everyone knows, if we don't get the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep, the next day we're exhausted and we're irritable.
Whatever the reason, whether it's stress from work or family, or just not being able to wind down at night, not to mention the constant draw from our phones and tablets that don't allow us to wind down at night, all of us can relate to feeling sleep deprived at some point. Despite evidence suggesting that sleep is as important to our overall wellbeing as things like diet and exercise, an estimated 40 million Americans suffer from chronic sleep issues.
Apart from those experiencing sleep disorders, poor sleep is also linked to other common mental health concerns like anxiety and depression, we've discussed a lot of that on this show, and it serves as kindling for those who have existing mental health conditions. With experts suggesting that sleep is so integral to our health, why are so many people struggling with sleep, myself included, last night? Not typically, but last night. How is that impacting our mental health? To explore this topic, I'm joined by a Dr. Anna Katherine Black, a clinical psychologist at Delta Autumn Consulting in Oxford, Mississippi. Dr. Black, thank you so much for joining me.
Dr. Anna Katherine Black:
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Low:
Absolutely. This is cool. All right, so let's jump into this thing, Dr. Black. Let's first start with, can you tell us a little bit about your background and your philosophy on treatment, and just give us some specifics on who you are and what you do?
Dr. Black:
Yeah. Well, you already told everybody that I'm a clinical psychologist at Delta Autumn Consulting. My background is in behavioral medicine, meaning that I treat conditions like chronic pain, sleep, headache, and how these go together with common psychological problems like anxiety or depression. My philosophy on treatment is one of what we would call a cognitive behavioral approach, meaning that I look at how our thoughts and our behaviors contribute to some of our problems. My goal, when I'm working with patients, is to really teach them how to recognize this, teach them how to change these problematic thoughts and behaviors. It's a very time-limited active approach. My goal is to really teach patients skills so that they can be their own therapist, so they can solve their own problems moving forward.
Low:
That's cool. We've talked a good bit about coping skills. I mean, you're basically giving them not only coping skills, but regenerative skills, I guess.
Dr. Black:
Yeah. Education is a very big part of what I do, is getting people to recognize how they may be contributing to some of their problems unknowingly. You mentioned you're having problems with sleep. A Lot of times it's what we're doing that's actually causing some sleep problems, and sometimes we're not aware of this.
Low:
Very cool. Okay. Speaking of sleep, people might consider sleep as a more physical issue than a mental one. So how were sleep and mental health connected?
Dr. Black:
Yeah. Going back to thinking about it as a physical problem, a lot of times we think about physical health and mental health as being these two separate things, when they're actually connected. Physical health, we think about what we put in our body, our diet, our exercise, getting enough sleep. We think about mental health as how we think, how we feel, what we do, how we get along with others, or get along in our environment. They influence each other. Like you said, you mentioned that you had a bad night of sleep last night, and you were feeling really tired and really mentally foggy and groggy. We've all experienced that.
Typically what happens is, we start to feel a little bit better. We start sleeping a little bit better, we start feeling better, and we don't develop these mental health problems down the road. But if we don't, if these these sleep problems persist, we can develop problems like anxiety, depression, substance abuse issues, particularly for using substances to help us get to sleep at night. It goes both ways, too, as far as if you have mental health problems like anxiety, or just experiencing increased anxiety with the pandemic, you may have noticed that also your sleep is starting to take a hit, as well.
Low:
Yeah. Yeah. Good point, pandemic. We can't go without bringing that into the conversation. I don't even say it anymore. I just spell it. If I don't sleep for three nights, is that bad? Or is that just, I'm just not sleeping for three nights.
Dr. Black:
That's a good point. Everyone has periods where they don't sleep. It doesn't necessarily mean they have a sleep condition. If it's something where it's persistent and you notice that it's not just three nights anymore, now it's every night I can't get to sleep. I'm having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, or I'm waking up in the middle of the night, or I'm waking up really early in the morning, that's more of an issue, more of something that may be related to insomnia or maybe even some sleep apnea. We see this a lot.
Yeah, I think paying attention to how long it's going on. Are there problems in your current environment, that may be contributing? If so, do your sleep problems get better, once those problems go away? If you've truly developed sleep problems, oftentimes the things will correct in your personal life. Let's say you're having work stress. The work stress gets better, but you still have the sleep problems. That's because you've developed these poor sleep habits that are now contributing to your sleep.
Low:
Oh, that's a good point. So even if the problem goes away, the sleep problem could still hang around.
Dr. Black:
Exactly.
Low:
Because you've trained your body. That's interesting. So we've already discussed how sleep can affect your mental health and how mental health can actually affect your sleep. In America, we tend to be a little bit more sleep deprived than in other countries. What are some of the common causes of this sleep deprivation, and why do Americans tend to be more sleep deprived?
Dr. Black:
Well, one of the things that we just talked about with the mental health problems, there are high rates of mental health in America, but there's low rates of people seeking treatment. Some of this is because of the stigma of mental health, some of it's because it's just hard to find providers, or it's expensive to find mental health providers and to get mental health treatment.
I think another thing that that contributes, particularly in America, is diet and exercise. We're not putting good things in our body. We're on the go all the time, so we're getting something really fast and quick. We're may be eating pretty late at night, which interferes with our sleep. If you go to places like Europe, they move more. We live in Mississippi, and everything's spread out. Really, to get from one place to the next, you have to have a vehicle. So we just naturally live more of a sedentary lifestyle, which not only makes it harder to sleep at night, but it contributes to obesity. With obesity, you're going to see higher rates of sleep apnea and other sleep problems. That's a big problem.
Then you mentioned earlier, just technology in general. Technology has really affected our sleep problems over time, not just in America, but everywhere. We are constantly connected to our phones or our iPads, our computers. There's the issue of the bright light that, when we're looking at these, these lights are our internal biological clock, naturally resets to bright lights. You know, it's supposed to reset when the sun comes up. So it's constantly being reset, particularly when we're on these devices late at night. It's confusing our internal sleep clock. Not only that, but because we have these devices at our hand all the time, we don't unplug. You may be checking an email at 10 o'clock at night when you're in bed trying to go to sleep, or you may be on Facebook, or doing things that are going to be very counter intuitive for sleep.
Low:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a huge issue. I've started turning my sound off. Of course, at some point my kids are getting to the age where I have to turn it on because we're worried about them being out at a certain time, but I need sleep and we don't have home phones. It stinks when you have to turn that on, and your friends that text you late at night start texting you. That happens at every age. You have somebody that's up late texting you.
Dr. Black:
Right.
Low:
Because they think they're funny. You spoke of light and how that's affecting our circadian rhythms, and that's more of a modern issue. I mean, since the onset of electricity, I think that we've really jacked that up a lot. We're staying up, and we're not going to bed with the sun down and getting up as the sun rises. Even though I do remember my grandparents typically doing that.
Then I also want to say this, and maybe you can roll on a little bit more, before this, we talked about a show I've been watching on Netflix. They were in a blue zone in Italy. A blue zone is where you have a large group of people that are centenarians, so they're approaching 100 in the same households. It's funny because, you're right. There's a 98-year-old that they featured, and he would walk every single day. He'd walk up and down these big steps, and that was just part of his life. I don't even think he owned a car. He was healthy. His mind was very adept, with any sort of tests that they gave him. He's just older. He's just 98. I'm getting a little verbose here, so I'd better get back to my script. This is actually a good question. What are some of the short-term effects of sleep deprivation?
Dr. Black:
Some of the short-term effects would be problems with attention, problems with thinking clearly, like you mentioned earlier, your brain is kind of in a fog, problems regulating our mood, feeling irritable. When you had a bad night of sleep, things just don't sit with you very well. That's definitely an issue. Increased pain is another short-term effect.
Low:
What does that mean?
Dr. Black:
Increased pain? Things are a little bit more painful, when we don't sleep. We're not able to regulate our body's stress system. When that is turned on, our muscles are more tight. Our blood pressure goes up. So you've noticed, if you've ever gotten a poor night of sleep and you go to the physician and they check your blood pressure, your blood pressure is usually up. When your blood pressure is up, your body is tight and tense. The worst thing you can do for pain is your body being very tight and tense.
An interesting study came out not too long ago, where they actually looked at reaction times. They wanted to see people who have missed 24 hours of sleep, looking at sleep deprivation, and comparing them with people who had been drinking alcohol, to see what were their reaction times when they put them in a simulator for driving. They found that the people who were sleep deprived actually did worse than the people who had been drinking alcohol.
Low:
Wow.
Dr. Black:
You think you feel okay and you're like, "I can go. I can drive. I only missed one night of sleep. I feel relatively okay." It's actually affecting you a lot more than you actually realize.
Low:
Yeah. I've experienced that before because in a past life, as most of our listeners know, I was in the entertainment industry. When I was younger, I was on a film set, and it was independent film, so we were shooting long, long hours. I'd been up probably about 18 to 20 hours, and we were shooting 14 hour days almost every single day. I started driving home, and the light were affecting me differently. I've never thought that I needed to pull over, but at that point, I had to pull over. I couldn't, and my body was shaky. I guess that's part of the sleep deprivation. Just from a personal standpoint, I've experienced that. You're right. It's worse than drinking too much. Not that I've ever done that before in my life. I've never drank too much.
Dr. Black:
Right.
Low:
I've been to college. Come on. Yeah, so that's a great point. What are some of the super longterm effects, if you're dealing with sleep deprivation for a very long time?
Dr. Black:
Longterm effects are going to be some of those physical health problems, like hypertension, increased obesity or rates of obesity, heart problems, also a weakened immune system over time. It's going to be harder for your body to fight off infections and things like the common cold. Which can be kind of anxiety provoking right now, with the pandemic going on. I know that's been an increased concern for a lot of my patients right now. They're more concerned about their sleep because they want to make sure that they're healthy and they're doing everything they can, to be able to fight off the coronavirus, or just problems in general.
Low:
Yeah. The more we talk, the more I realize that sleep is probably one of the main generators, outside of diet, of health problems.
Dr. Black:
Yes. That's what we're learning, and that's why I'm glad we're doing this podcast, to get that information out there to people, so they start paying attention to their sleep. We were talking about Americans earlier, just what's the deal, why do Americans seem to be more sleep deprived? Part of that is, we don't really prioritize sleep. You know, there's that common saying, "I'll sleep when I'm dead." We don't think about sleep as being very important, and yet we're finding that it's vitally important. If we can increase our sleep, or not necessarily increase sleep, but increase the quality of our sleep, we'll-
Low:
Expand on that a little bit, increase the quality. We hear all the time, seven to nine hours, or eight hours of sleep. Talk a little bit about that.
Dr. Black:
Yeah. Actually, that's one of the first things I tell patients, ignore that seven to nine hours. A lot of times that can be problematic because not everyone needs seven to nine hours. That's kind of a magic number that we use, but some people need a lot less than that, whereas some people need a lot more than that. It's not really the quantity of sleep that's important. It's the quality. How much unbroken sleep are you getting?
A lot of people, they'll say, "I need to get this seven to nine hours of sleep." They're staying in bed longer because they realize, "My body naturally wakes up when I get six hours of sleep." But in their mind, they think, "I've got to get more than that. I'm not sleeping enough." So they stay in bed longer, and the longer that they stay in bed, the more likely they're going to experience broken sleep because their body is just not used to being able to get that much. It doesn't need that much. Not only that, the longer we stay in bed awake, the worse it is, because we condition our brain to thinking it's okay to be awake in bed.
Low:
Huh. That's really interesting. How do we know what our particular sleep schedule should be?
Dr. Black:
Usually the way I tell patients to do this is to start tracking. A lot of people have a Fitbit that they can track their sleep. Or actually there's an app that I get patients to use called CBT-i Coach. It's a free smartphone app that you can use, and you can actually track your sleep. You can track what time you get in bed, what time you get out of bed, how many times you woke up, how long. You can get really detailed.
After examining that, you can see, "Well, how much am I sleeping?" You know, versus, "How long am I staying in bed?" How do I feel the next day? That's usually how we can figure out if someone's not sleeping well, is, I feel tired. But just because you feel tired, there can be other things that are contributing. You could be dehydrated. You could have some of these other mental health problems, like just anxiety, depression, that can be making you feel tired. So there's a lot of things that are going on there, for sure.
Low:
Yeah. It's a very circular thing, when we get into this. You can't just make yourself sleep. You have to actually take steps to fix your diet and exercise, and that's all going to lead to better sleep and better health all around. I'm not saying that. I'm deriving that from what you're saying.
Dr. Black:
Yes.
Low:
I'm going to digress here into something that ... Shakespeare and a few guys of his time period wrote about what's called a second sleep. Before electricity, people will go to bed, like we've mentioned before, with sundown, typically. I mean, not everyone, but typically. Then they would wake up around midnight and read for an hour, do whatever for an hour or two hours, and then go back to sleep. That's their second sleep. Have you ever heard of that?
Dr. Black:
I think someone mentioned that to me not too long ago, actually, but before that, I had never heard of that.
Low:
Okay. I didn't know if that was like some old wives' tale, or if there was some merit to it, with old timey circadian rhythms.
Dr. Black:
I mean, it makes sense. They lived a different lifestyle. That's another thing that contributes. Our lifestyle is an 8:00 to 5:00 type of a lifestyle. A lot of times that doesn't always line up with everybody's internal biological clock. You have people who are naturally night owls and people who are naturally early birds. Actually, in the teenage years, it's shifted a little bit back. They're more likely to be more productive later in the day, later in the evening. You think about schools, all schools start before 8:00 AM.
Low:
Right. I've heard that discussion, yeah. So adolescents, typically their natural sleep habits are later. They would get a bed at like 11:30 and be fine.
Dr. Black:
If school started a little bit later, they would be fine. They'd be more productive. They wouldn't have as many sleep problems. A lot of times when patients come in to see me, they don't even realize they have sleep problems because this is how they've always slept. They may have started in childhood or in teenage years, and so they don't even realize it's abnormal until maybe they get married and their partner says, "Hey, you snore." Or, "Hey, you stopped breathing." Or maybe you realize that your partner falls asleep when they're head hits the pillow, and you're like, "I've never done that. That's odd." That's when people kind of picking up that I actually even have a sleep problem.
Low:
That's really interesting. Some people, I've got friends, and we know certain high-functioning individuals that only sleep four hours a night, but they must be just getting good quality sleep. Is that a reality?
Dr. Black:
Maybe, yes. In fact, if you think about it, would you rather sleep five hours, you sleep the entire time, or would you rather get 10 hours of broken sleep, where you're waking up every hour?
Low:
Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Black:
The idea is, yeah, you'd want to get that consecutive sleep. That has to do with our sleep waves and getting that deep sleep and getting REM sleep and things like that. Which is kind of complicated, and we probably won't get into it in this episode. When we're getting broken sleep, we're getting a very shallow sleep, and so we don't feel rested when we wake up, we don't feel rested during the day. In fact, a lot of times, when you get that really broken sleep, you may feel more tired after a night's sleep than you did before you went to bed. That's often an indicator that you're not getting good, deep, consecutive sleep.
Low:
Yeah, absolutely. So we've talked a little bit about COVID and how it's impacted some of your patients. On the tails of COVID, it seems that we are going to be reopening schools. One day we are, one day we're not. As children and teens and college prepare to return to school, into the classroom, how can they ... The question was to get into a normal sleeping pattern, but from what we've talked about, there's not really a normal sleeping pattern. A healthy sleeping pattern. How can they get into a healthy sleeping pattern?
Dr. Black:
I would say the very first thing is to get on a schedule. I know y'all talked about this a few weeks back on one of your podcasts, just getting on a schedule to help with mood and anxiety. Schedule is also excellent for sleep. That's one of the first things I recommend people do, is make sure you're getting up at the same time every day. That's been the biggest shift in the pandemic, is that you don't have to get up and go to work or go to school. So you're sleeping later, and because you're sleeping in later, you're going to bed later, and your sleep gets off when we do that. So getting up at the same time.
For those parents and kids, I would say get on a schedule sooner rather than later. Don't wait until the night before school starts to go to bed at a decent hour. Start that now. Go ahead and set your alarm for when you're going to be getting up during the school year and practice getting up, start regulating your sleep that way.
Low:
Cool. So if somebody is having trouble sleeping, what are some specific coping skills that they can use to improve their sleep? You can tie this into exploring a little bit more about diet and exercise and how that affects it, as well.
Dr. Black:
Yeah. I would say one of the first things, other than getting on a sleep schedule, is incorporating a wind down routine, making sure that you're giving your body and your brain time to wind down from the business of the day. Unplug a little bit sooner. My rule of thumb is, anything that glows, turn it off 30 minutes before bed, at least 30 minutes before bed.
Also, making sure that you're only using the bed to sleep. As I've mentioned several times, your brain can start to think it's okay to be awake in the bed. We've got to break that habit. We've got to break that association between your brain thinking it's okay to be awake in bed. That means don't be on your phone in bed. Don't watch Netflix in bed. Don't read in bed. If you're having these sleep problems, make sure you're doing that in a different room, if you can.
But yeah, I guess to talk about how this happens, if you think about our brain is constantly making connections with things that go close together. So for example, if I started talking about a lemon, like a big, juicy, sour yellow lemon, your mouth automatically starts to salivate, right?
Low:
Yeah.
Dr. Black:
That's because your brain has learned that lemons are sour. It has learned to expect the sourness of a lemon, when you start to talk about or think about a lemon.
Our brain does that with bed, too. What we want is our brain to think bed with sleep, with resting, with going to sleep at night. But if we're doing these things in the bed, like watching television, our brain has learned that the bed means it's okay to be awake. It makes that connection. So you may have noticed that you feel tired all day long. You're exhausted. Then you get in bed, and you're wide awake. You ever notice that?
Low:
Yeah.
Dr. Black:
That's a good indicator that your brain has learned that it's okay to be awake in bed. So in order to stop that, you've got to break that connection. You've got to get out of the bed when you're not sleeping. You've got to stop worrying in bed. You notice you're worrying, get out of bed, go do something relaxing, like part of that wind down routine, like listening to a boring podcast, or listening to some soothing music, or doing some breathing exercises, some relaxation or mindfulness exercises. Then when you do feel tired, then go back and get in bed, kind of [inaudible 00:26:13]. That's a good way to improve your sleep.
Low:
That's hard to do, Dr. Black.
Dr. Black:
It is. I've actually done this. I don't ever tell a patient to do something that I haven't done before. I get it. It's tough. But if you can stick with it, it usually only takes about a week or two to re-correct that cycle and that pattern. You'll be sleeping like a baby, if you can do these things. But I know. That's one of the things I work on with patients is, "All right, what got in the way? Why didn't you get up this day? Why did you stay in bed?"
Low:
Yeah. What about napping? I know a lot of people would be interested to know about napping.
Dr. Black:
If you're having problems sleeping at night, take the nap and get rid of it. That's the first thing I tell people. My parents are very guilty of that, and I've been trying to break them of their naps for years. They say, "Well, I just need that nap. I'm okay if I just do that nap." I usually say cut it out. But if you do have to nap, definitely do it before noon and take a very short nap. Some people will say a nap, but it's really a sleep.
Low:
Yeah. So like 10 minutes?
Dr. Black:
30 minutes at the max, nothing any longer than that. Our sleep, we have a natural sleep need that's similar to hunger. If you're snacking during the day, you're not going to be hungry for dinner because you made it so that you're not hungry anymore. Sleep is the same way. If we're napping during the day, then we're not going to need to sleep at night. Our sleep need actually goes down each time we nap. We want our sleep need, or hunger, to be really great in the evening when we're trying to go to sleep.
Low:
Right. Which is how exercise would tie in. I mean, if you've pushed your body a little bit, you're more apt to be able to wind down at the end of the day, I would imagine.
Dr. Black:
Right. Exercise helps us to burn off some of that energy, that stress. But I also want to point out, we don't want to be exercising right before bed either, because that can make it harder to sleep. So I usually say about four hours before bed, if you can.
Low:
Four hours before bed.
Dr. Black:
Yeah. Exercise four hours before bed. I mean, if you're doing something really light, like yoga, and when I say ... I mean, some yoga can be really strenuous. If you're going to do something like that, doing like a deep breathing, a gentle stretch type of yoga, that can actually be helpful for bed, but nothing that's going to make your heart rate go up.
Low:
Okay.
Dr. Black:
You want to make sure you're doing that earlier in the day.
Low:
What about eating dinner? I mean, how does that affect the time that you get to sleep? Is that impeded a little bit?
Dr. Black:
Dinner's the exact same. I usually say four hours before bed for dinner, as well. Because if you're eating a big meal before dinner, your body's going to be trying to digest that when you're trying to sleep, and that's going to make it harder to sleep during the night. Also, some people have a lot of indigestion. If you eat a big meal and then you try to go lay down immediately, it's going to increase heartburn and things like that. So if you're going to eat something before bed, eat something really light, not a meal, and making sure that it's something that's good for you, if you can.
Low:
Why do people say that good, healthy sleep, promotes weight loss? Is it from inflammation, or what's the deal with that?
Dr. Black:
Some of that can be the case. Others is that, obesity, when you have a lot of weight pressing down, it's going to make it much harder to get air through their airways, which is what sleep apnea is. You're unable to get that air through there, and that's caused by excess weight. So the less you weigh, the better your chances of being able to sleep a little bit better, at least not having sleep apnea.
Low:
But I've read certain reports that say that sleeping a healthy sleep is going to enhance your ability to lose weight. Is that true? Or is that a-
Dr. Black:
No, it is absolutely true. Part of that is metabolism. You know, if you're getting enough sleep, you're also staying on a schedule. You're moving a lot more during the day. You're able to burn calories and things like that. People who typically sleep better, stay on more of a schedule as well. They eat regularly throughout the day because they're on a schedule. They're moving, they're burning calories. So it all ties in.
Low:
Okay, cool. I know we've diverted a little bit from the mental health aspects of this, but I think all of it's very interesting. Like you said in the beginning, education is key to all of this. Learning as much as we can about why this affects us is hugely important, especially when I've got you right in front of me and I can ask you all these questions. Okay. So at what point should someone seek professional help for sleep problems?
Dr. Black:
Well, as someone who treats sleep, I usually say the sooner, the better, because it's much easier to treat a minor problem than a major problem. But I think for most people it's going to be when it starts causing you impairment. When you start having trouble at work or school, you're having trouble paying attention, or maybe you're falling asleep at the wheel, definitely seek treatment. So impairment is one. Or if it's causing you distress, if you're just concerned about it or want to know more about it, seek treatment. And what we talked about earlier, if it's become more consistent, if it's not just three days, but now it's been three weeks and you're still having problems with sleep three or more days a week, then it's probably time for you to come in and get some help for that.
Low:
What percentage of like behavioral issues that you deal with could be related to sleep?
Dr. Black:
I would say most of them. If they're not related to sleep, sleep is definitely a big component of it. It's always something that I assess for, and it's always something that I usually try to target, at least at some point in treatment, because it is such a contributing factor. As I mentioned earlier, everyone doesn't always realize that they have sleep problems. So if I say, "How are you sleeping?" And they say fine, I always ask further questions. They may think they're sleeping fine, but I get in there, and I'm like, "You know, you meet criteria for insomnia. You're definitely not sleeping fine."
Low:
Yeah, because a lot of our understanding of sleep is wrong. Like reading in bed. I mean, that's just a simple thing, but you think that's healthy. You think you're helping your brain out, but you're actually messing everything up.
Dr. Black:
Right. Well, I do want to point out if you're not having sleep problems, then reading in bed is okay. If you're feeling well rested and you're not having any of these problems, like attention problems, memory problems, fatigue during the day, then it's okay to read in bed. But if you do notice that you're having problems falling asleep or staying asleep or waking up really early, you may want to cut reading and bed out. You know, read in the chair instead.
Low:
Yeah. Okay. That's really good. Yeah. I've found that I don't like to read at night anyway. The morning is when I'm fresh and can get everything going. So if I get a bad night's sleep, then I'm not very fresh. Our audience won't hear this, but there's a lot of things that I really messed up in this. I'm going to have to edit a lot out because my brain is sluggish from lack of sleep. But Dr. Black, thank you so much. I could sit here and talk to you about all this stuff on and on, but I've kind of let us go a little bit longer than I should have.
Dr. Black:
That's okay.
Low:
But thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.
Dr. Black:
Thanks for having me.
Low:
Cool. So if you'd like more information about Right Track Medical Group or the South of Fine podcasts, please visit right trackmedical.com. I am Rhes, and I look forward to continuing this conversation with you guys in upcoming episodes of South of Fine. Dr. Black, get some good sleep. That was dorky, sorry.
Dr. Black:
That was good.
Low:
If you have questions about mental health and the COVID-19 pandemic that you'd like our providers to answer in a future episodes, please email southoffine@righttrackmedical.com. If you'd like more information about Right Track Medical Group or the South of Fine podcast, please visit righttrackmedical.com. Thanks to our production team, Kelly Hunsberger, Caitlyn Clegg, Carolyn Hughes, Aleka Battista, and Rhes Low. Special thanks to Squadcast for providing superior remote interview services.
If you have questions about mental health in the COVID-19 pandemic that you'd like our providers to answer in a future episode, please email southoffun@righttrackmedical.com. And if you'd like more information about Right Track Medical Group or the South of Fine podcast, please visit righttrackmedical.com.
Thanks to our production team, Kelly Hunsberger, Caitlyn Click, Carol Ann Hughes, Alica Battista, and Rhes Low. Special thanks to Squadcast for providing superior remote interview services.
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