The Secret to Better Sleep with Morgan Adams

Summary

In this episode of the Catapult Effect podcast, host Katie Wrigley interviews Morgan Adams, a holistic sleep coach, about the importance of sleep and how to improve sleep quality without relying on medications. They discuss the widespread issue of sleep deprivation, the role of sleep in overall health, the nuances of using sleep medications, and natural remedies to enhance sleep, including the use of melatonin. 

Morgan shares her personal experiences and insights, emphasizing the need for better education on sleep in the medical field and offering practical tips for listeners to improve their sleep habits. In this conversation, Morgan and Katie delve into the complexities of sleep, discussing the critical balance between sleep quality and quantity, the significance of consistency in sleep patterns, and the role of sleep trackers. 

They explore the clinical definition of insomnia, the common reasons for waking up in the middle of the night, and the impact of medications on sleep health. The discussion emphasizes the importance of understanding individual sleep needs and the nuances of sleep disorders.

Takeaways

• Many people are sleep deprived without realizing it.
• Sleep is foundational to nutrition and movement.
• Natural light exposure is crucial for melatonin production.
• Quality of sleep is more important than quantity.
• Sleep trackers can help optimize sleep habits.

Resources:
Morgan's free offer
Instagram
Watch on YouTube

Credit: Tom Giovingo, Intro & Outro, Random Voice Guy, Professional ‘Cat‘ Herder

Mixed & Managed: JohnRavenscraft.com

Disclaimer: Katie is not a medical professional and she is not qualified to diagnose any conditions. The advice and information she gives is based on her own experience and research. It does not take the place of medical advice. Always consult a medical professional first before you try anything new.

Transcript

Welcome back to the Catapult Effect podcast. I am so excited about this guest. I'm excited about all the guests that I have on here, but this one, Morgan Adams, I am really excited to have her on here because the number one ask that I get from the groups that I run, from the clients I work with is how do I get to sleep well every night? And so Morgan is here to talk to us about this today.

Morgan Adams is a transformative holistic sleep coach who empowers women to conquer their battle with sleepless nights without reliance on sleep medications. I love that. With her powerful sleep toolkit, Morgan not only ensures that women experience profound enhancement in their sleep quality, but she also guides them in rekindling their relationship with sleep, paving the way for less stressful and more fulfilling days. Having struggled with insomnia and dependency on prescription sleeping pills for almost a decade,

Morgan ultimately intimately understands the profound impact sleep has on one's quality of life. Isn't that right? Morgan's resilience shines bright as a two-time breast cancer survivor. This experience fueled her advocacy for a lifestyle rooted in disease prevention. Her wisdom and guidance extended far beyond just sleep as she champions the holistic wellbeing in all aspects of your life. Welcome to the Catapult Effect Podcast. Morgan, I am so excited to have you here.

Morgan (01:21.998)
Thank you, Katie. I really appreciate you inviting me on.

Katie Wrigley (01:25.982)
I have so many questions and I'm just I'm so grateful that you're able to take the time out of your busy life and come join me on this podcast so that the audience can benefit from your knowledge and start to have solid sleep because that's one of the things that's come across my own attention and I know you're gonna do this well is that we don't realize that we're sleep deprived. We're so adaptable as human beings we don't realize it. Have you seen that?

Morgan (01:51.404)
Yeah, yeah, it's interesting because we have like definitely found that people who are sleep deprived will at first sort of like realize like, I'm not getting enough sleep. But then they, they like quote, get used to it. But at the same time, their bodies and brain are not functioning optimally. And they've done, they've done studies to back this up. So quite a few of us out there are definitely sleep deprived.

and yet don't often fully realize that this is going on. And it's a, you know, I think probably one third of us at some point, you know, are sleep deprived at any given time. So it's, and I think even a few years ago, the CDC, believe declared sleep deprivation a public epidemic or sleep, you know, a public health crisis to be looked at. So yeah, you're exactly right. A lot of people are sleep deprived.

Katie Wrigley (02:32.597)
yeah.

Katie Wrigley (02:48.986)
But yet doctors don't go over sleep for very, I think they get like a week on sleep and then I get.

Morgan (02:52.544)
Yeah, the last I heard was that primary care doctors get about two hours of sleep science training. Two measly hours, right, for something we spend a third of our lives doing. They get more education on how to manage diabetes than they do on how to manage sleep. And yes, diabetes is an important thing to know how to manage. But think about,

Katie Wrigley (03:01.05)
Two hours? What the hell?

Katie Wrigley (03:07.844)
See you in.

Katie Wrigley (03:18.648)
sure.

Morgan (03:20.366)
the fact that everyone sleeps, right? We all are doing it and not everyone has a chronic disease. So things are a little bit flip-flopped here and slightly. hopefully, I don't have any proof of this backing it up, but my hope is that medical school curriculums will start to really embrace the importance of sleep education.

Katie Wrigley (03:22.766)
Right. Yep.

Katie Wrigley (03:29.632)
So, thank you.

Morgan (03:47.386)
and train the new doctors a little bit more on sleep science than they're currently getting. Fingers are crossed. Fingers and toes are crossed.

Katie Wrigley (03:54.692)
Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. So let's start there. Why is it so important? Why is sleep so important?

Morgan (04:01.878)
Yeah. So if you think about the three pillars of health are generally considered to be sleep, nutrition and movement for the longest time movement and nutrition have been the top at the top billing. Sleep is sort of, I call it the redheaded stepchild of the trio. But, but my argument is that sleep is the foundation upon which these other upon which these other pillars are built. Because if you think about it,

Katie Wrigley (04:17.604)
you

Katie Wrigley (04:26.467)
Mm-hmm.

Morgan (04:28.394)
If you want to follow a good diet with nutritious foods, but you're not sleeping very well, chances are you're not gonna be very successful in following a good diet. You're gonna want the carbs and the sweets. Also, if you're not getting enough sleep, you're not gonna have the strength, the willpower, the motivation, quite frankly, to go to the gym or to take a run outside. And sleep is literally...

impacting every single aspect of our lives. So, and I'll just rattle off several that just come to my head, but brain health. We know that in deep sleep, we have this system called the glymphatic system, which is the lymphatic system for the brain. And essentially what's happening during that phase is you're having these toxins sort of rung and cleared out kind of like a car wash and that the toxins are clearing out during that deep sleep. So that's an incredibly important part of sleep. Also,

hormone balance, blood sugar regulation, muscle repair, memory and learning. And then also something that people don't talk enough about that I really like to promote is good social interactions. know, empathy, like they did a study not too long ago where they had people who were sleep deprived and those folks that were sleep deprived actually were less apt to donate to a nonprofit or they were less apt also to help a stranger.

Katie Wrigley (05:40.375)
Yeah.

Morgan (05:55.766)
So all of the things that are happening in our daily lives, the people flicking you off on the highway, perhaps they haven't slept well. I I actually always think about that when I'm in public and somebody is cutting me off or whatever. think they might not have slept so well. in summary, sleep is touching on literally every single aspect of our life. And when our sleep starts to falter,

Katie Wrigley (06:12.888)
Yep.

Morgan (06:22.476)
we will notice other parts of our life start to kind of crumble in their, in its wake. So very important.

Katie Wrigley (06:27.886)
Yep. Yes, I agree. And alternatively, when you get sleep dialed in, you'll notice those things in your life drastically improve very quickly too. Yeah, I've enjoyed that myself.

Morgan (06:36.052)
Yes, very, very quickly. yeah. And so one of the, kind of circling back to the sleep deprivation thing, some people will ask me, know, I've been sleep deprived for so long. Is it too late for me? And, you know, my answer to that is no, it's not. We are able to recover pretty quickly from sleep deprivation. So if you're sleep deprived and you're listening to this and you're like, I'm hopeless, no, you're not actually. So,

kind of look at it as like, you know, if you had really bad eating habits in the past, or if you smoked in the past, like many of us, you know, I did smoke when I was younger. But, you know, a lot of us did. And, you know, we have to look at it as like bygones or bygones, right? And we are doing the best we can now moving forward. So we just make healthier choices and move on with our lives. So if you are sleep deprived, don't feel like all hope is lost for you.

Katie Wrigley (07:25.39)
Yes.

Katie Wrigley (07:34.468)
I love that. Yes, yeah. And just to add onto that, because a lot of times, and I think we'll dive into this, but sometimes the anxiety around not being able to sleep will keep you awake. And then you start going, no, I'm going to get a disease because I'm not sleeping. I just want to give an example that someone gave me a while back that really cooled my heels and sleep. New parents don't sleep for years. And not every parent winds up with chronic conditions. So your body is resilient enough.

Morgan (07:55.704)
Yes.

Katie Wrigley (08:02.948)
to recover even if you have had sleep deprivation for years. And I'm one of the examples of that. I didn't have my own kids, but I had a corporate career that I allowed to really rule my life for a really long time and it got a lot out of it. But I had really unhealthy habits, including nowhere. Like I was one of those that used to pride myself on, as long as I get six hours of sleep, I'm good. No, not anymore.

Morgan (08:27.298)
Yeah, yeah, it's interesting you say that because that's the example I use with a lot of people, especially people who are young moms, know, women out there who've had children. And they're like, does it ever get better? You know, and yes, it does. And no, your health is not completely shot to hell, because we're an adaptable species, right? And we are built to withstand, you know, quite a bit of

Katie Wrigley (08:47.77)
Right.

Morgan (08:56.8)
stress on our sleep. mean, it's yes, it's not ideal. We don't certainly don't want that. But you think about all the women who've had children and have been sleep deprived for years, not getting enough. And they they live full lives into their 80s, 90s and beyond, right? So yeah, very, very well made that point.

Katie Wrigley (09:07.801)
Mm-hmm.

Katie Wrigley (09:18.136)
Exactly, yeah, and thank you for adding more details in that as well. I really want people to let go of that anxiety as much as they possibly can because that's gonna work against you to try to sleep. So one of the first things that people wanna do if they can't sleep, someone to go to their doctor, they wanna get a sleeping pill. Is this a good solution and why or why not?

Morgan (09:29.25)
Yes.

Morgan (09:40.94)
Yeah, it's a nuanced answer. And I have a personal experience with that as somebody who was dependent on sleep medications for eight years. So the thing is, is that, you we just mentioned that primary care doctors only are getting a couple of hours of sleep science training. It is very common for them to either hand someone with insomnia a sleeping pill prescription or a list of sleep hygiene tips, which we know don't really work with insomnia.

Katie Wrigley (09:42.99)
Bye!

Katie Wrigley (10:10.234)
Mm-hmm.

Morgan (10:10.476)
So the issue is that the sleeping pills are meant to be used in a crisis situation. When you look at the bottle, it says they're not to be used more than four weeks in a row, right? And what's happening quite often, which happened with me and it's happened with several of my clients who I've worked with over the years, is that doctors will refill them year after year after year until lo and behold, you're on sleeping pills like some of my clients have been for like 15 years, right?

Katie Wrigley (10:41.08)
Yeah.

Morgan (10:41.102)
So what really needs to happen in a medical setting is for a doctor to assess a patient and say, okay, you're going through a divorce or you just lost your parent. So I'm going to give you these sleeping pills for two weeks and here's how to get off of them. They need to actually direct the patient about an exit strategy, right? So the reason why I say it's a nuanced answer is because there is a use case for them.

but quite often the use case is not followed and the sleeping pills are kind of given willy-nilly and that's how we end up becoming dependent on them. they ultimately, for many people, they start to lose their efficacy, right? So I would encourage anybody who is listening to think about

Katie Wrigley (11:17.497)
Right.

Katie Wrigley (11:22.254)
Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (11:29.626)
Mm-hmm.

Morgan (11:39.362)
sleeping pills in a very serious way. Like, you know, if you really need them, okay, fine, but think about that exit strategy down the road and how you're planning to get off of them. And if you are someone who's listening, who's already on them, please don't do what I did. Don't stop abruptly without the help of your prescribing provider. You can get rebound insomnia. It's really important to figure out some kind of plan, some kind of tapering schedule.

to help ease yourself off of these medications. just, yeah, just a tip if you're out there. you know, there's no, there's, I've worked with clients who feel a deep sense of shame about being on sleeping pills. And you know, there's really, there's really nothing to be ashamed about because what you're doing is you're wanting to get sleep. That's like a human need. It's not like you're doing something crazy. You know, you're really taking these pills so that you can actually function.

Katie Wrigley (12:27.098)
Yeah.

Morgan (12:39.938)
But ultimately they do end up backfiring for a lot of people in terms of the side effects. I think it's like 80 % of people have next day side effects like grogginess, brain fog. And so while we find that people do get about 40 to 20 minutes of extra sleep a night, usually when they're taking these pills, that doesn't really translate into real functional improvements because of those.

next day grogginess consequences that are holding them back. know personally, when I was taking the pills, I got into some trouble at work for not for any bad behavior per se, but I was not able to write as quickly. I was not able to complete my tasks as quickly because I had brain fog pretty much until the morning until the end of the morning. So yeah, there's, you know, some trade offs to be taken if you're going to explore that route often.

Katie Wrigley (13:10.125)
Right.

Katie Wrigley (13:15.599)
Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (13:29.016)
Mm-hmm.

Katie Wrigley (13:36.846)
really weird sleeping pill story myself. It actually led to a diagnosis of another condition. So I used to travel all over the world when I was in corporate. So I would take Ambien to help me adjust to the time zone. It freaked me out because there was when I was going to Europe, not Europe, Asia. So it was a really long flight. And so it was Atlanta to Shanghai and then it was going to go Shanghai to Singapore.

Morgan (13:44.554)
Katie Wrigley (14:04.222)
And I had this teeny tiny little man next to me who was like balled up in his seat. Like I'm, I cannot put my feet on a seat. I'm not that small. And I ate a whole meal and I have no recollection of it. And the only reason I know I ate is cause I had crumbs on me and there was no way the little tiny dude next to me got the crumbs on me. And I'm like, what in the, still have no idea what I ate. And so I'm like, all right, that's interesting. But yeah.

Morgan (14:21.922)
Yeah.

Morgan (14:25.74)
Yeah. Well, yes, I had episodes like that too. I would wake up and I would have like candy wrappers and cookie, cookie boxes. And I'm like, my God, which, you know, again, I mean, if that happens occasionally, no big deal, but like eating that late at night is not good for your sleep. I mean, so yeah, I've heard many wild tales, similar to yours from, you know, from people who don't recollect and you know,

Katie Wrigley (14:36.654)
Yep.

Morgan (14:55.086)
That's like not dangerous, but the thing is, is that people will sometimes, I mean, it's not like a usual occurrence, but they will get behind the wheel and they'll do things that endanger themselves and others. And so that's why the FDA put a black box warning on these medications in 2019 because of these kind of wild happenings where people were becoming endangered.

Katie Wrigley (15:20.462)
Yep. Yeah. And I'm glad that they did that. so Lunesta was the other one that I used to take. This is no fault of the pill manufacturers. We're just talking about some of the side effects here. So we're not demonizing them if you're using them just to understand. But I was taking Lunesta regularly and it made a difference, right? Like as soon as that metallic side effect taste hit my mouth, I was out. It worked great.

Morgan (15:23.149)
Yeah.

Mm, yeah.

Morgan (15:40.44)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (15:44.769)
except that I had a horrible brain fog. So they went looking for anemia, found the opposite and wound up diagnosing me with hemochromatosis when I was still in my 30s. So thank God I was an insomniac because hemochromatosis can actually really shorten your lifespan if you don't catch it early. Because I couldn't sleep, I caught this disorder early before it was impacting my lifespan.

Morgan (15:53.282)
Wow.

Morgan (15:59.906)
Yeah.

Morgan (16:06.806)
Wow, how serendipitous. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.

Katie Wrigley (16:08.77)
Right? Really weird, roundabout way, but I'll take it. I'll take it. It lets you better health. So are there any sleep remedies or help natural example like melatonin or something? Are there any that can help in healthy ways?

Morgan (16:27.05)
Yeah, you know, before, before I recommend supplements to people, what I really want to help people do is improve their circadian rhythm naturally. And we can talk about a few ways that, that I like to teach people how to do this, because we all, we all know that we need melatonin, it's our sleepy hormone. And a lot of people supplement with, with melatonin. And we can talk about that in a second. But let's talk about some ways we can like really boost our melatonin naturally. So the first thing that you can do

Katie Wrigley (16:41.838)
Yes, please.

Morgan (16:57.442)
is you can spend a lot of time outside during the day. So we make about 95 % of our melatonin subcellularly, it's kind of a hard word to say, during the day. So interestingly, that melatonin production is impacted drastically if you're spending a lot of your time indoors during the day. So I think it was early 2000s, they did a study showing that

We spend about 97 % of our time either in our cars or inside. And just think back to many, many generations ago when we didn't have the indoor lighting and as our ancestors were basically outside all the time. So we're essentially living in not in accordance to our biology, right? So we really want to focus on brighter days, getting outside more, especially in the morning and the morning sunlight is incredibly therapeutic.

Katie Wrigley (17:45.091)
right?

Morgan (17:55.73)
getting outside within like 30 minutes of waking is ideal. I mean, if you can, if you can be there when the sun is rising, that's beautiful because it gives you this little cortisol boost. And then what you also need to consider to preserve your melatonin at night is really being in a dim environment, right? So a lot of times, homes will have these bright led lights above us. mean, I have a newer home and

it came with those lights, right? And we need to like really be mindful of our light environment at home. So cutting off those bright LED lights above us, maybe having a table lamp that's kind of got a dim light, candles, you know, that's a great thing. If you have to be on a device, wear blue blocking glasses, dim your screens, put on like a red filter. There's a little hack that you can just Google.

how to make a screen red on your iPhone or whatever, and you just configure the settings so you can like triple click the side of the phone and voila, you'll have a red screen. So if you have to pop on your phone at night to do something, then you'll be protected. So those are some ways that we can really promote our natural melatonin production. Now, I'm not opposed to melatonin supplementation at all. In fact, we know that when we...

Katie Wrigley (19:06.052)
Nice.

Morgan (19:19.682)
get into our 50s and beyond, our melatonin secretion naturally just starts to decline. So I personally believe, and not everyone in the sleep world would concur with me, but I personally believe that once you hit your 50s and beyond, supplementing with a very tiny little microdose of melatonin actually could be a good idea for you because you're not producing the same amount that you were when you were younger. Now, if you're gonna go that route though,

Katie Wrigley (19:25.178)
Mm.

Morgan (19:49.676)
you wanna be mindful of the melatonin supplement that you choose. So several years back, they did a study where they grabbed melatonin bottles from shelves and pharmacies and grocery stores in Canada. And what they found was that for a lot of the bottles, the amount that was advertised on the bottle did not actually match up with what was in the actual melatonin pill. And so there was this wide variance where some people got like a very small quantity,

Katie Wrigley (20:13.994)
Yeah.

Morgan (20:18.99)
of the melatonin and other people got great quantities of the melatonin in their bottle. And while large doses of melatonin aren't unhealthy per se, some people have a lot of grogginess when they have too much melatonin supplementation. And then we also know that there's potentially 13 different contaminants in synthetic melatonin. yeah, so if you're gonna be shopping for melatonin, I would really...

Katie Wrigley (20:24.916)
wow.

Katie Wrigley (20:33.646)
Yep. Right.

Katie Wrigley (20:42.944)
wow.

Morgan (20:47.956)
steer clear of like the big box brands that you might get, you know, in bulk and go with a more of a pharmaceutical grade that, you know, you get from a practitioner. There's also a product that I've been leaning in on and recommending to clients. It's a plant melatonin called urbatonin. It's made with just rice, chlorella and alfalfa.

Katie Wrigley (20:53.636)
Mm-hmm.

Katie Wrigley (21:11.759)
Mm-hmm.

Morgan (21:12.012)
and they showed that it was like five to seven times more potent with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties than synthetic melatonin. So I thought that was pretty cool. So I'm usually steering people to the plant melatonin just to kind of avoid the synthetic add-ons that the synthetic melatonins have.

Katie Wrigley (21:24.025)
it.

Katie Wrigley (21:34.596)
Thank you for sharing that. was a lot of really useful information to help guide people around. it, Tangy? Pardon me, Will, but go lay down, Go lay down.

Morgan (21:35.808)
Yeah.

Morgan (21:42.924)
Yes.

Katie Wrigley (21:49.018)
We'll just have to take that part out. Or I may just keep it in and we'll have a little laugh. I don't know. She was gonna say, they have it. So do supplements or sleeping pills, do they impact the quality of sleep? And if so, how much does that matter versus quantity? Kind of a double question there.

Morgan (21:50.702)
Hey, I've got some, I've got some too.

Morgan (22:09.538)
Yeah, so sleeping pills can impact the quality of your sleep for sure, because it can change the sleep architecture. So sometimes you may not be getting the proper amount of deep or REM sleep. So that's one issue to look out for. Now the age old question, what's more important quality or quantity? You know, I would say in the end quality will win out, but.

Katie Wrigley (22:22.81)
Mm-hmm.

Morgan (22:36.194)
But let's kind of talk about sleep health in terms of the quality and quantity and something that's just as important, maybe I think even more important than that, but just to kind of shed some light on the quantity, we're looking at seven to nine hours of sleep as recommended by the National Sleep Foundation. When you look at their fine print for those recommendations though, you will see that they say that anywhere between six and 10 hours can be appropriate for some people.

So just remember, like everybody has their own sleep need in terms of quantity. just like everyone has a different shoe size. So like I'm really good with seven and a half hours. I know a sleep doctor who's pretty well known who needs nine hours, right? So we have a lot of differences. Quality is, I would say edging out over quantity though. And quality really refers to how much of that time are you actually spent in bed that you're asleep?

Right? A lot of times people will spend lots of time in bed, but a very, you know, not a very robust percentage of that is actually spent sleeping. So we want to kind of our benchmark is 85 % is what we really want to aim for as far as like time in bed that we're actually sleeping. And then another, another quality measure is the REM and the deep that we're getting. But what I did want to share as far as something new that is

sort of coming on the horizon as a really important marker of sleep health is consistency, right? So that hasn't been part of the dialogue a lot except for probably over the past several months because there was a really large study that was launched in January of 2024. Thousands of people that were looked at and what they found was that mortality rates were lower in those who were getting six hours

Katie Wrigley (24:21.348)
Thanks

Morgan (24:33.096)
of regular uninterrupted sleep for the most part versus people who are getting irregular interrupted sleep at eight hours. So my prediction is that when we look at public health recommendations for sleep health, they're going to start to add more meat to the consistency piece because that is proven to be really, really important as far as like our longevity, you know, overall.

Katie Wrigley (24:48.036)
Mm-hmm.

Katie Wrigley (25:01.528)
Right. And when you say consistency, do you mean that the length of time sleeping or the sleep window, like, or do you mean both?

Morgan (25:11.51)
rate, yeah, really the sleep window, what we're really aiming to do is keep our sleep window. I'm sorry. What we're really looking for is to keep our sleep and wake times between like varying by half an hour. So, you know, for example, if you're going to bed at 10,

Katie Wrigley (25:21.082)
We're just gonna have animals on podcast, no worries. This is life, it's all good, it's all good.

Morgan (25:39.392)
and you're waking up at seven trying to keep that sometime within the half hour. So not varying too far off the mark is really what we're meaning by consistency and also consistency of hours. That's gonna naturally fall into place though if you're keeping that sleep window between 30 minutes plus or minus. yeah, there are a lot of people out there. I was like this in my 30s where I had to get up for a job.

an office job, and I had to get up at six to get to work on time. And on the weekends, I would end up sleeping until like nine because I'd be up late watching TV or whatnot. And that created this massive social jet lag, which is, if you haven't heard of the term social jet lag, it's pretty much jet lag, but it's created by the things that we do, right, on our own. And it feels a lot like jet lag too.

Katie Wrigley (26:34.478)
Mm-hmm.

Morgan (26:37.25)
but you're not getting the benefit of going anywhere. And so what ends up happening for a lot of people is like Sunday night hits and they're like, God, I can't fall asleep. Monday morning, they feel like garbage. And then by Tuesday or Wednesday, they're like back up to speed only to repeat the process again the following week. So we just, yeah, we really wanna be very mindful about that consistency piece. So again, I think we're gonna see more.

Katie Wrigley (26:37.306)
Yeah.

Morgan (27:05.11)
more recommendations and the public health discussion around sleep.

Katie Wrigley (27:09.324)
Yeah, I hope so because we need to. Like you've said, this is the pillar of health, right? It's something that every, every one of us has to do and we're supposed to be doing it for a third of our life. And what I find interesting and we're the only mammal that tries to get all our sleep in one fell swoop. Like other animals, they nap during the day. Look at your cats, look at your dog, look at other animals out there. They are taking different rests. They are sleeping in different intervals in there. So humans are, are unique.

Morgan (27:27.34)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (27:39.158)
and us trying to get it all done in those seven to eight hours every night, which I really interesting actually. So what about the wearable devices? So I wear my Oura Ring and I absolutely love it. think, yeah, it's gonna say, I think I saw one on your finger too. So they helpful, they harmful. Is it a double edged sword? Is it an obviate? What would you say?

Morgan (27:43.126)
Yeah. Yeah.

Morgan (27:51.788)
Yeah.

Morgan (27:57.548)
Yeah. Well, there again, a nuanced answer to that. So I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan of sleep trackers. I'm actually used three. I don't, I don't recommend I have the whoop the aura. And then I have an eight sleep mattress topper that has an embedded sleep tracker. So, it's interesting comparing, you know, I take it with a grain of salt. I don't get too wrapped up in it, but here's where I find that sleep trackers have value. I think it's for people who are

Katie Wrigley (28:02.018)
Yeah.

Morgan (28:26.124)
wanting to optimize their sleep, and they're able to take the data that they see from their tracker and make behavioral changes based on that data. So for example, you can run little experiments. can eat later and look at your score and go, wow, I didn't have really great scores. Wonder what will happen if I move my dinner time back an hour so that I'm eating an hour earlier. And then you can see like potentially sleep changes for the better.

Katie Wrigley (28:35.62)
Mm-hmm.

Katie Wrigley (28:56.141)
yeah.

Morgan (28:56.204)
So if you're that kind of person, it's a great tool to help you build better behaviors. Where it tends to backfire are when people who have insomnia wear them. And this is actually most of my client population with people with insomnia. People with insomnia tend to have a higher degree of anxiety about their sleep. And so when they are looking at the tracker every morning and they're seeing, you know, maybe they didn't get enough REM sleep,

it stresses them out, right? And that stress actually makes their sleep potentially worse. So when I'm working with people who have that kind of anxiety about sleep, I will say, look, let's hold off on the sleep tracker till your sleep gets recalibrated and then introduce it. And then there's a sort of like a middle ground compromise that I will sometimes recommend to people. These are the people who are sort of like kind of like normal sleepers. They don't have insomnia.

Katie Wrigley (29:31.428)
Mm-hmm.

Morgan (29:55.288)
but they're getting like a little bit too concerned with their data. They're just teetering on that verge of like what's called orthosomnia, where you're getting obsessed with tracking your sleep, is to either take a hiatus, like a little vacation from your tracker, or what you can also do is wear your tracker daily, but then once a week, look at your data so that you're looking at your data with a little bit of a distance.

Katie Wrigley (30:05.039)
Hehehe

Katie Wrigley (30:22.862)
Mm.

Morgan (30:22.926)
versus looking at it every single morning with that kind of like fine lens, right? So yeah, you have to really know yourself. You have to really know kind of how you'll react to the data and if it's gonna hurt you or help you. Cause I have, you know, I've talked to lots of people about sleep all day long and I quite frequently will have people say, you know what Morgan, I had an aura ring for a year and I just had to give it up. It was just.

like bother, it was just making me mad because, you know, sleep wasn't that great. And I feel internally that I sleep great. feel, you know, subjectively that it's good, which brings me to the point of really at the end of the day, it's how you feel about your sleep, which is like really the most impactful thing. If you feel like your sleep is good, if you're not having to rely on caffeine or like fake energy boost throughout the day, you don't have to take naps all day long.

Katie Wrigley (31:07.053)
Mm-hmm.

Morgan (31:19.16)
you're probably doing all right, you know, and there's probably not much to be concerned about. So yeah, just a very nuanced answer to that question about sleep trackers.

Katie Wrigley (31:29.316)
Then thank you for that. I love my tracker on here. so just to give people context, so we are recording this the day after the presidential election, the 2024 presidential election. So we now all know who the president is going to be. I'm not going there. But what we do know is that people for the last week, weeks, months have been freaking out about this election. And as much as I was really using all my tools, I still got impact. I'm human.

And I still got impacted by it. so one thing I've been, one of the things I watch is the correlation between my sleep score and my resilience. Cause like you were talking about, like you have one night where you don't have a lot of sleep. You're not really going to have the motivation to go to the gym. You're going to be more cranky. You're going to be have shorter patients. You're not going to be thinking as quickly. and so it's interesting to watch how it affects resilience, but for the last like week to 10 days, and it may also be because.

My iron could be high, I'm about to have to get it checked again. So there could be a couple of things that could be playing in. But I noticed that I was waking up more and that's kind of going downhill. what exactly, and this is gonna be another two part question. What is insomnia and does that include those like middle of the night wake ups in the definition? Because a lot of people may be able to fall asleep but then they're wide awake at three o'clock or four o'clock in the morning.

Morgan (32:49.315)
Yeah.

Morgan (32:54.156)
Yeah, really good question. So the clinical definition of insomnia is when you're having trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, waking up too early. And on top of that, you're having some kind of daytime dysfunction or just general dissatisfaction with your sleep and you feel like your sleep is unrefreshing. So it's a pretty, it's actually a pretty broad definition because quite frankly, there are a lot of people out there who are maybe taking a while to fall asleep. They may have quite a few awakenings.

And they don't give a crap like they're like rocking and rolling through their day. doesn't, they don't, they're not even bothered. Those are the people that are not going to ever come to me. Right. But when people are the people who come to me are the people who are having a lot of awakenings or, and, or they're really having a hard time getting to sleep and they feel like crap the next day emotionally. And they're having lots of day, day time consequences. Those are the people that really are.

fully meeting that definition of insomnia. Yeah, so I've had some, know, in the course of having that question asked, I've helped clarify for a lot of people that insomnia does actually mean having trouble or waking up in the middle of the night. A lot of people think that it's just having trouble falling asleep. But quite frankly, the waking up in the middle of the night seems to be a more problematic thing for my clients than

Katie Wrigley (33:56.407)
Mm-hmm, that makes sense.

Morgan (34:23.55)
trouble falling asleep. And I think that that's sort of a general theme that I'm hearing from my colleagues in the sleep world, other sleep coaches, doctors that I consult with, the awakenings are really what people are complaining the most about.

Katie Wrigley (34:40.674)
Yeah, and that makes sense. Are there multiple reasons why people wake up in the middle of the night? Like, I know a lot of times trying to fall asleep, it's the monkey mind and trying to get the nervous system to calm down from the day. what about like, because I've heard all kinds of reasons why people wake up in the middle of the night. So I'm curious to hear from you, Morgan, as the sleep expert.

Morgan (34:51.372)
Yeah.

Morgan (35:01.556)
Yeah, well, I'm glad you brought that up because I've actually just created a guide for 3am wake ups. You can get it free on my website, but I'll share a few highlights from the guide. Number one, I want to just preface this with like it's normal to wake up in the middle of the night. We're often kind of taught or told like that shouldn't be happening. Something's wrong. Well, the reality is that after we complete each sleep cycle, we naturally have a brief awakening.

Katie Wrigley (35:31.684)
Hmm.

Morgan (35:31.702)
And that's really designed evolutionarily. Is that even a word? But it's designed for our safety. think back many, many years ago when we had no, we did not have homes with security systems. There were like tigers, you know, to pounce on us. So we were vulnerable in our sleep. So we would have these brief awakenings. We'd scan our environment for, to make sure we were safe. And then we'd go right back to sleep so that we've continued that.

Katie Wrigley (35:34.968)
Hmm.

Morgan (36:01.016)
type of behavior into the modern day. The problem is, is that, you know, if we are awake more than a few minutes, we'll remember that. And some people start to kind of freak out over the fact that they're not getting back to sleep, right? And we have this new concept that's been studied recently called mind after midnight. And essentially what this means is when you are awake at night, you're actually not

Katie Wrigley (36:22.874)
Hmm.

Morgan (36:30.734)
operating from the rational part of your brain. So your pre-functional cortex, that part of logic and reason is essentially kind of offline at that time of night. And so what often happens is, I mean, this is kind of an extreme example, like suicide rates go up at that time of night. There are more suicides in the middle of the night because people go to that kind of catastrophic place in their head.

Katie Wrigley (36:50.156)
Yeah.

Morgan (36:58.646)
And I know personally, you know, I don't have like a lot of issues with waking up in the middle of the night, but there have been times when I have and I couldn't get back to sleep and man, my mind went to crazy places, like catastrophic thoughts. And so I think it's really helpful that we all acknowledge that like we're not in our right mind and to kind of contract with ourselves that we're not gonna make any decisions or do anything or,

Katie Wrigley (37:10.221)
You

Katie Wrigley (37:19.226)
I like

Morgan (37:26.818)
make any, do any behaviors that could impact us or other people is just kind of like, don't really do anything, right? And so I'll just quickly touch on a few of the main reasons why people are waking up and there's more in my guide, but the top three that I see in no particular order, but one of them is low blood sugar, poor blood sugar balance. So people will often have a

Katie Wrigley (37:34.489)
Mm-hmm.

Morgan (37:55.532)
blood sugar dip in the middle of the night. And that creates this cortisol and adrenaline spike which wakes us up. So one of the remedies for that issue is having a very small snack like about an hour before you go to bed that contains a little bit of protein, a little bit of complex carb and some fats. I think, you know, a little bit of Greek yogurt with some almonds would be a perfect snack. Second reason people are waking up a lot is because they're too hot.

Katie Wrigley (38:08.789)
Mm-hmm.

Morgan (38:23.178)
And I'm not necessarily talking about like a hot flash or night sweat, but just generally overheated. And so you want to work on thermoregulation and there's multiple ways of doing that. And then the third reason I really, really feel it's important to call this out, especially for women who are listening in midlife is sleep breathing issues, right? So when I'm working with a client or I'm looking at their data tracker and I'm seeing like a lot of little

many, many white blips on their tracker, multiple awakenings, I begin to get suspicious of sleep breathing issues, right? And that as women get into midlife and beyond, it becomes a bigger issue because as we lose our female hormones, our airways get impacted negatively as well. So our sleep apnea rates essentially at midlife become matched with those of our male counterparts. So like, but before midlife,

Katie Wrigley (38:59.876)
Mm-hmm.

Morgan (39:19.892)
Men are the ones mainly having apnea, sleep breathing issues. And so what we find is that about 90%, 90 % of women with sleep breathing issues go undiagnosed. And I have worked with many women who, when we start working together, they have no idea they have sleep apnea. It's only until we get kind of a few weeks or maybe a month in and the strategies like aren't really taking as much as I would.

Katie Wrigley (39:24.602)
Fascinating.

Morgan (39:48.686)
anticipate with the techniques I use. And then we have to have that really very just frank discussion about getting our sleep breathing tested. So that's just kind of a kind of a general guideline of you know, some of the reasons there are more. And, you know, you can get the guide for free and really kind of delve into the whole topic because there's a lot there's a lot to talk about because it's such a such a meaty problem for a lot of people.

Katie Wrigley (40:16.506)
It is, and I'm definitely going to be grabbing that guy myself. Thank you for that, Morgan. I did two sleep studies in my past because like I had said, I had really bad insomnia for a long time until, and in my case, it was because I was running from a trauma, so my nervous system was on fire. The first one, I'm not even sure how they allowed it to happen because I was like, do I still take my Lunesta? They're like, yeah.

Morgan (40:18.966)
Okay, yeah.

Katie Wrigley (40:42.668)
Okay, so I sleep fine on Lunesta and they're like, you have no sleep abnormalities. I'm like, but I was taking a sleeping medication. They're like, yeah, I'm like, I kind of don't want to sleep medication. And they're like, well, you sleep fine with it. And like, okay, that was super helpful. Thank you. And then the second one I had, and this was, I was trying to treat depression through pharmacology, which

Morgan (40:50.894)
Wow.

Morgan (40:58.893)
Wow.

Katie Wrigley (41:07.898)
doesn't for me personally no judgment to anybody who does that and more power to you if it is helping you. Yay, I love to hear that. But for me, it didn't work and they had me on Symbolta and I was one of the three percent. My mom was still an active physician's assistant at the time and she was like, this may be from your Symbolta. The test showed, I kid you not, I was waking up every 36 seconds.

Morgan (41:31.47)
my gosh, wow.

Katie Wrigley (41:34.274)
And the psychiatrist who had prescribed them, despite the fact I told her I was revved up, she just figured she had my meds down and that wasn't the problem and was nowhere to be found after the sleep study. And that was like, done. Pharmacology was sleep, this is not working for me. And then we took that medication, I was like, civil. It was horrible. I'd be driving along singing and then someone would piss me off and I'd

Morgan (41:50.424)
Mm.

Morgan (41:56.045)
Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (42:04.334)
bark at them like, it was no fun. that was, how long was that going on? Nine months, I think. And I had fibromyalgia, I was super overweight because I was so dysregulated. I was waking up every 36 seconds.

Morgan (42:06.53)
Well.

Morgan (42:12.856)
Yeah, well here.

Morgan (42:19.468)
Yeah, ironically, I used to sell antidepressants as a pharmaceutical sales rep. I was actually taking the one that I sold. So I was intimately familiar with them as a class of drugs. now with Cymbalta, was it hard to get off that? Because I think I remember that you have to really titrate slowly or you'll get those little jittery shocking things. Those little.

Katie Wrigley (42:24.217)
That is ironic.

Katie Wrigley (42:44.602)
I three times as long as they recommended. Whatever they recommended, I quartered it. It took me two or three months, I think, to fully ... I was not taking a high dose. It took me three months to get off of it. You cannot ... Yeah, that wasn't fun.

Morgan (42:51.587)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Morgan (43:02.178)
Yeah, things that they don't tell you before they put you on something like that. You know, it's like, it would be helpful to know that like, once you're on it, it's going to take a while to get off of it. I think a lot of people would take pause and like rethink that decision. Anyway, I have similar experiences and thoughts about antidepressants that we could definitely riff on, but that's an aside. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (43:15.961)
Yeah.

Katie Wrigley (43:23.298)
Yeah, if they work for you, great. If they don't work for you, Morgan and I are with you. But where can they find you, Morgan, before we wrap? This has been so informative. And I know we could go a lot deeper, but thank you so much. And where can we find you?

Morgan (43:35.31)
Of course. Yeah, so my website is MorganAdamsWellness.com. There you can find that free guide to 3AM wakeups to download for free. And you can also schedule a 20 minute free consultation if you feel like you need some help with your sleep. can talk and see if working together is a fit.

Katie Wrigley (43:55.222)
Awesome, great, thank you so much. So we'll make sure that we have your website on there and then I think you also give me your Instagram so people can come follow you out there. I'll make sure those are in the show notes. Go out, grab that free guide, benefit from Morgan's tutelage from her coaching and help yourself get that quality of sleep. Thank you again for joining me today, Morgan.

Morgan (44:02.712)
Yes.

Morgan (44:14.072)
Thank you, Katie.

Katie Wrigley (44:15.832)
And thank you to listeners. I know you have your choice of what to listen to out there on the internet. And I appreciate you taking time and listening to this podcast and implementing these strategies into your life. And until next time, please be well.