Gadgetory

welcome back to the scene at stage as our coverage of CES 27 continues with me right now is dr. Michael Bruce he's the sleep tech ambassador I am also known as the sleep doctor and today he is going to help us hack our sleep with some new products here at CES so you've been around you've seen some stuff you know how to cut through all the nonsense do all the stuff that's not gonna help you sleep but you've got some things here that you think will do that so can you explain what you have here absolutely so working with the National Sleep Foundation they've had me go around and look at all of the different sleep tech right that's out there and it's pretty impressive some of the stuff that they've got going on these are three of my favorite items that are out there I'm gonna start here and I'm gonna move my way towards you it okay so I'm these two items are created by a company called AI home you're probably very familiar with AI home they're you know big into the but the bedside table sure and what's really interesting is this is a new unit it's called the Zenergy unit and so it actually uses light and sound to not only help you fall asleep but to help you wake up so this is stuff that you kind of have you've done a lot of research on this up isis stuff that is actually designed to follow a certain sort of science that'll help you lower your heart rate exactly so this does not work is that I feel like when you tell somebody like oh yeah this alarm clock is gonna lower your heart rate just play along with it explain how that were this is really interesting most people don't know but you want your heart rate to lower to about 60 beats per minute in order to enter into a state of unconsciousness well if you're sitting up or even if you're lying down your heart rate might not be anywhere near there yeah I think yours might be actually so what's really interesting if you notice the light is changing yeah and so you would breathe in with the yellow light okay and then you would breathe out as the red light comes on and by doing that just that simple breathing technique your heart rate will begin to lower lower lower and get you there and then bring you right into sleep which is pretty cool there's also different sounds that can be actually quite helpful as well we've got ocean sounds you got nature sounds things like that that are also very valuable in terms of relaxation right before sleep cuz you know we talk about this all the time on your show but you know sleeps not an on/off switch it is certainly not right it's more like pulling your foot off the gas and slowly putting your foot on the brake this is an assistant to doing all of that so for the people who have a hard time shutting off their mind which a lot of people do or they're looking for a way to hack their sleep and get there quicker this is the type of unit that I would recommend for people I'd recommend it to my patients I've got it in my house things like that I'm sure it's a lot of fun so now in addition to the breathing assistance that it does for I you said there's also a bunch of like different kind of sounds that oh there's you into sleep lights and so the lights are designed so blue light we know is something that wakes people up okay and red light is something that we know that helps people fall asleep gosh so it turns out that there are cells in your eye that react to these different colors or wavelengths of light blue light actually shuts off the melatonin faucet well we don't want that shut off at night but we do want to shut off during the day so that's why we get blue in the morning and we get red in the evening cuz red actually helps turn the faucet on okay so that's that's what's pretty interesting about this it's also obviously got an alarm it's got a smart wake feature so we can kind of wake you up at a good time there's a lot of really cool stuff on yeah there seems to be an intense amount of functionality going on and then I really dig the kind of subtle you know time just displayed behind the grill there it looks really cool so now this is going to go for how much so this is available right now on amazon $99.99 okay great okay and now we have a portable portable version so this is interesting so this actually won the 2017 CES Innovation Award okay and so this is a portable unit as you can see there's you can attach a cord but it's chargeable sure and here's what I like about this is I can toss it into my suitcase yeah and I can use it when I travel or I can put it in a child's room I can put it on a crib something like that it's a really nice thing and it's got a lot of the similar functionality to what we've seen here but much more portable sure type of unit which I really enjoy quite a Bluetooth speaker absolutely you can use it as a Bluetooth speaker like my kids like to use it as a Bluetooth speaker and then they throw it in their room so it's kind of with them all the time excellent so this is essentially the the mini version of the larger one and this is gonna go for how much so this is on Amazon now for $69.99 okay excellent now we have a different kind of tech very different kind of this when you were explaining this to me in the back I was a little intimidated to be quite honest so what we got going on cool so this is by a company whose name is ResMed so ResMed is the foremost leader in CPAP machine so if you remember people who have sleep apnea where their throat closes at night they have to wear a mask and a breathing machine at night sure that's what this company does they've been doing it for 28 years they've been in this business they're an 8 billion dollar market cap company so they really know and understand sleep one of the things they wanted to do is be able to track people sleep so we've seen a lot of monitors out there there's one right there's one on your phone there's one on your wrist there's one everywhere so one of the things that we wanted to look at is contact lists but accurate okay right because a lot of times if you just have you know your phone on your bed all it's doing is looking at accelerometry sure this actually uses Doppler radar that so if it's raining in your bedroom this will be a bill you're not gonna sleep well without exactly right so what this does is it actually will shoot out a radar signal that actually sweeps across the body and they can actually measure your chest movement to the millimeter even under the covers Wow okay that's and so we're presenting is people breathe in a particular pattern and their heart is a particular pattern at certain sleep stages so we get to the algorithm of being able to now monitor sleep and we don't have to have something attached to me to be able to do it you can have one on either side of the bed and then in the morning you get a sleep score other thing that's kind of fascinating about this is it also measures the light in your room it measures any sound that's in your room and the temperature in your room okay so if any of those affect you it will actually generate advice the next day based on your personal sleep where's that advice really coming from coming from me okay so I actually even the person who developed the advice engine behind this and so this is all from a real sleep specialist so it was kind of complicated because there's a lot of different things that can go on but when we learn certain things about people sleep at night we can then give them really applicable device and that's the big game-changer here because there's a lot of monitors and some of them you know are very very accurate but at the end of the day they don't do a whole lot for you other than well I got 13% of REM sleep well what the heck does that mean what do i do what do I do with that that's where this comes in as the advice engine also by the way I forgot to mention over here that these are all fully controllable with a nap okay so you can actually monitor and do all that stuff just hop you know Helicon exactly excellent all right so something dr. Bruce and I do together when we do podcasts is turn to the audience for questions about sleep advice absolutely so no pressure if you have a question about sleep sleeps important I don't get it enough of it but if you do have a question about sleep raise your hand we'll come over and give you a microphone don't worry I have a few that I've gotten I'm gonna warn everybody I don't do dream interpretation yeah that's something everyone always so good health at right away so I'm just gonna dispel that myth right here right now okay first question from Twitter what should people say what kind of food should people stay away from before bedtime okay this is a great question so there's foods that are pro sleep and there are foods that are anti sleep if you will obviously anything with caffeine in it is probably not what you want you have before feed before bed no brain right although I've got patients who turn to me all the time and they say hey dr. Bruce you know I just had a triple espresso and then I went four straight to sleep yeah they're not they're not human well they might that's possible right but the truth the matter is is that they don't realize it but the quality of the sleep that they're getting is really not that great sure so that in and of itself is a pretty more isn't trying right exactly trying to use the iHome machine is something that it could be very difficult if you're having a lot of coffee turns out spicy food can actually cause indigestion and that indigestion turns out can affect your dreams that's the part that's interesting so so when people have like high spiced foods and things that are upsetting in their stomach it can actually manifest itself in their dream state okay it can be a little on the scary side so you just have like the attack of like a chili pepper I heard we have a question from the audience let's get to that Thank You Suri brave soul over here absolutely never Britt oh is that on hello okay hi so I'm curious about sleeping and the apnea when it's just before because one of the challenges is how do you know you're having it how can you sense it because with sleep apnea you've already been diagnosed and you have that whole gear set up right is there any way to check it out beforehand is there any like this device would that support it or is there any other solution that we might use it's great question so first of all historically we used to know that you'd have to go to a sleep laboratory and you know twenty-seven electrodes attached to you and wires and cameras and all that kind of stuff now technology's actually advanced a week we actually have home kits that are very very small almost the size of this unit now these units are these are not diagnostic units these are not medical grade units but there are ones out there that your doctor can actually send home with you and number one see do you still have sleep apnea let's say you lost weight or using a new treatment number two they can also see how your disease progressed so there are some difference because that can happen so there are some things that are out there from a technology standpoint that where we can assess sleep apnea but they're not necessarily on the consumer side they're much more on the medical side excellent I think we have another question in the audience yes yes sorry I just with regards to maybe you can dispel dispel any rumors with screen time before we go to bed like when you should I read on a tablet or watch TV on a tablet or and I want to go to sleep and my mind's racing got it I is there any sort of like rules as to how this is a great question so thanks for asking it so we get this question all the time so one of the things that we know is lots of people are on their phone right before lights-out who could that be and or on the iPad or watching Game of Thrones or playing candy crush or whatever game like that's probably not be surprised how many people do so here's the thing is television which is from a proximity standpoint is all the way across the room is it necessarily as bad now I'm probably the only sleep doctor in the universe that says it's okay to fall asleep with the TV on and I'll tell you why because I do alright so if I'm gonna be this like dog I better follow my own advice right so what I find is it's hard to turn off my brain at night but if I'm listening to the television usually when people are watching TV to fall asleep their eyes are closed and they're just kind of listening and it's just enough of a distraction to make it so that it's not I'm distracting my brain from what it would normally keep me awake that's a proximity issue and and an engagement issue but if I'm on my phone and I'm looking at Facebook I'm reading an email that has an emotion ality to me that's not a great idea right also the proximity it's like 18 24 inches from my face and so the blue light 460 nanometers is the blue wavelength that actually hits particular cells in your eye that can turn on or off the melatonin faucet like we were talking about before so you want to avoid screens that are close to you probably about between 45 and 60 minutes before lights out and just to piggyback on that if I could you may I find 80s comedies are the best thing to fall asleep that's better than sign building fall asleep and you just don't want to really engage in something you just want to be able to like have Tom Hanks in the background like falling into like buddies yes and that really does the trip Oh trick and one other thing that would address that issue as well is um there are now blue blocker glasses so and and they're fairly stylish fairly comfortable you can actually wear these glasses while you have in your device so if you're just tethered to your device and you have to do it even though again it's not my recommendation I know it's gonna happen these blue blockers will actually block that blue wavelength of light and it actually reduces eyestrain and and so I was like really come on does this really work and I started using them I was shocked at first of all how much more relaxed I just felt walking around my house because we have all this bright bright light in our homes and that's really not how our body is designed to have that because you know used to be you'd fall asleep when the Sun went down right way back in the day now we don't have that so these blue blocker glasses can actually be quite effective pretty cool do we have one more from the audience I think yes actually yes Oh Oh excellent do you have any suggestions besides drugs for PTSD nightmares absolutely so when we look at so PTSD is you know first of all it's prevalent it's very very prevalent and it's not just in our veterans or people have been in active theater for it's in our police it's in our fire it's in traumatic traumatic times you're involved in something traumatic so the answer to the question is yes now when you look at nightmares there is one drug that's actually been shown to work for nightmares for PTSD in particular the drug is called prazosin it's an old-line antidepressant but I know we're looking for things that are not drug related so when you're looking at nightmares one of the things I like to talk to about people is there is a treatment that's out of bye-bye by a guy by the name of Barry Krakow out of the University of New Mexico and what he's done is he has you write out your entire nightmare every detail you can imagine and then change the ending so that it's no longer that you're being pursued but you're pursue them and then you read this new nightmare if you will with the new ending multiple times before you go to sleep within seven to ten days it actually starts to change in your dreams which is quite fascinating and so it's a really nice way of not having to add a pharmaceutical to that situation and be able to use more of a behavioral methodology um there's a little bit of data looking at cannabis and the use of cannabis for nightmares for PTSD as well interesting all right I want to finish things up with few more things that you and I have talked about a bunch a lot of people are curious about the effects of snoring uh-huh like is snoring it's obviously annoying but is snoring can it damage can it do damage to you is it is it something that you know can lead to something else absolutely so when we look at snoring so when we think about breathing we should think about it across the spectrum so there's regular breathing and then comes snoring then calls it comes these things called hypopneas so not quite a complete stoppage of breathing and then apneas which is complete cessation of breath so snoring is part of that continuum and so if you're snoring on a regular basis you could be walking down a bit of a dangerous path when it comes to apnea now just to be really honest with everybody roughly 50% of America snores but only about 10 to 12 percent have sleep apnea so not everybody that snores has sleep apnea but everybody that has sleep apnea snores right right so it's a two-way street but the traffic's not the same on either side and also we know that when people are lying next to a snoring bed partner they lose approximately one hour of sleep a night right it's a selfish thing finally we're here at CES I've taken this advice from you at the show this year actually want to bring it up before we have to say goodbye yep explain how somebody can really turn a mini nap into something way more get a lot out of that with something you call a nap a latte so this is one of my favorite sleep hacks out there and I call it the Napa latte and so what you do is let's say that you only got four and a half five hours of sleep the night before you know your body needs more or two or let's hope not right so what you do is you take a cup six ounce cup of black drip coffee that has the highest caffeine content in it okay throw in a couple of ice cubes to cool it down drink the entire thing as quickly as you can and then take about a 2025 minute nap you will actually reduce the amount of stage 1 stage 2 sleep that your body is craving the caffeine kicks in you're good for four hours I to the moon take my advice thank you so much for being here doctor it's always a pleasure sleep doctor ladies and gentlemen thank you so much man fantastic advice thank you right now we're gonna take a break when we come back we will be featuring the best new tech for business professionals so stay tuned we'll be right back