Do You Tic in Your Sleep?

In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Ben Mooney, an Occupational Therapist based in Colorado, specializing in insomnia. He has Tourette syndrome and is a certified CBIT practitioner.

We uncover how brain imaging has shed light on the nocturnal activities of our brains, particularly for those with tic disorders. Ben shares practical insights on the importance of consistent wake-up times, the impact of stress on tics, and the role of sleep in our overall health. Whether you're dealing with sleep issues or simply curious about the mysteries of sleep, this episode is packed with valuable information and tips to help you achieve better rest and manage your tics more effectively.

Episode Highlights:

[01:27] - Do people with Tourette syndrome tic in their sleep? Ben explains the science.

[03:35] - Differences in tic frequency during REM and deep sleep stages.

[10:54] - The role of circadian rhythms in sleep and how it affects people with Tourette syndrome.

[14:20] - Impact of technology and blue light on sleep patterns.

[17:02] - Balancing societal demands with the need for proper sleep.

[25:53] - The effects of caffeine on sleep and best practices for consumption.

[30:32] - Resources and advice for finding sleep specialists and improving sleep habits.

[33:31] - The importance of consistent wake-up times and tips for better sleep.

Links & Resources:

·         CBT-i Coach: a free app to help track and improve sleep patterns: https://mobile.va.gov/app/cbt-i-coach 

·         Ben Mooney’s Website: https://mooneywellness.com/ 

Remember, each story shared on this podcast brings light and understanding to the diverse experiences within the Tourette's community. Your journey is your own, and it's filled with potential and promise. If this episode resonated with you, I encourage you to like, share, and leave a review to help us connect with more listeners.

Transcript

Ben Mooney: 0:00

When I work with my clients that have insomnia, I tell them no matter what, I want you to wake up at the exact same time every day. Let's figure out what that time is that's opportune for your life. Let's figure out this time that works best for all of the different circumstances you have. And yes, I understand if you're a teenager, you may need to binge on a little sleep and sleep and a little bit. What can we do to find a wakeup time that's as close to what you can do regularly and consistently. So that way, all of those other chemicals in your body can keep reacting in a predictable manner.

Michael Leopold: 0:41

Welcome to the uptick, brought to you by The New Jersey Center for Tourette syndrome and associated disorders, empowering children and adults through education, advocacy and research by sharing the stories and experiences relevant to the TMS community. Hello, welcome to this episode of the uptick. I am speaking with Ben Mooney, an occupational therapist based in Colorado. Ben has been an OT for 23 years, and he specializes in sleep and insomnia. He also does sea bed and was recently certified in that. And finally Ben has an affinity with our community as he also has Tourette Syndrome. So Ben, I wanted to kick off the conversation with asking do you tick in your sleep?

Ben Mooney: 1:28

Yeah. Hey, Michael, thanks so much for letting me be a part of this awesome podcast. I'm honored to be here, too I tick in my sleep? The answer is yes, we're learning so much now. Because we can use brain imaging to see what's going on in the brain. And there's interesting stuff about ticking in our sleep. People with Tourette and tic disorders tic throughout the entire night. We're often ticking. But there's a difference between, like the slow wave deep sleep, and REM sleep. in REM sleep, we're actually supposed to be paralyzed, because you don't want to act out your dreams. So in theory, when you're in a dream state, your body should be in a state of paralysis, where you're not able to work. And so we tick in deep sleep, but there's not as much synaptic connectivity and deep sleep, and REM sleep. People with Tourette and tic disorders actually tick more often, the explanation from scientists that study sleep is that the basal ganglia which is it's sort of like our know, our Go Nogaro system, and it's where the tics sort of originate from the basal ganglia seem to be used in our dreams. So as we're dreaming, and we're creating these basically test sequences of our autobiographical history, that the basal ganglia are part of our, the memories and the images and the experiences of our dreams move through the basal ganglia, which causes us to actually tick more. So even though we're technically supposed to be in more of a state of paralysis, as our autobiographical history is churning through these dreams in our motor history, and what our brain knows to do filters to the basal ganglia, and they create the tics that are already in there.

Michael Leopold: 3:26

While we what's happening makes sense, we're activating a part of our brain that's also implicated in in ticking then when that's activated, maybe you take more too, we

Ben Mooney: 3:35

do tick more and REM sleep, REM sleep as it seems like the basal ganglia get filtered into REM dream sleep. And so we do take more in REM sleep in like slow wave sleep and what we would consider to be like that deep sleep. Often, there's less what we call synaptic connectivity, there's less commotion in your brain, there's less efforts for your brain to try to like, communicate, deep sleep is critical for the memory storage. And it's also critical for movement when we learn and we learn coordination of tasks. How we do that gets stored in deep sleep as well. But as that's happening, and when we're in deep sleep, the waves are slower waves. So there's not as much synaptic connectivity, there's not as much hewing for our body to produce tics for our brain to produce tics at those trends. We are ticking still, but it's not as often. Now when it comes to like, you notice you're ticking more in your sleep. Everyone is so different with ticks, it's pretty universally accepted that when we're more stressed, we're taking more often. Stress plays a huge role. If we have deadlines or I noticed this with myself I also I have a child that has Tourette and when I watch him playing sports, he's ticking more often so he's word doing these things that are getting our nervous system all, it's moving fast, and there's a lot of stimulation inside of our nervous system, we certainly tend to take more perhaps if we're doing activities before bed that are kind of getting our nervous system moving a little bit more, there's probably and I don't know this, I'm just guessing there's probably a correlation there. What I noticed for myself, ever since I can remember the stillness that I experience, when I lay down to go to sleep in the darkness, and there's no stimulation, this is often the first time of the day when I'm moving slow enough to be aware of my body. When I'm moving slow enough to actually think about my movements. my tics are really they're highlighted, then at that point I can. I'm so aware of my tics. Yeah. And then I get frustrated with myself, because I'm almost about to fall asleep and do something, take yourself awake. Yeah, yeah. And I also have OCD. So this time period is dangerous for me. Because when I'm finally still on, I have mental stillness, and there's darkness. And it's an opportunity for me to go read into my obsession, I can analyze the conversations I had earlier that day, or how can I predict the future outcomes? And how can I prepare myself? And if there's going to be potential confrontation? I can analyze how am I going to respond to that? What am I going to say? When I remember when I was a kid, people would make fun of me for my tics. And I would always use that time before going to sleep, to think about ways something else I could say to defend myself or something I can do tactfully are ways that I can avoid these situations. This was my time where I tried to figure everything else out. But the problem is, this isn't when I'm supposed to be sleeping, it really ate into my opportunity for sleep, it was a dangerous path, because I would get myself into this cycle night after night. And essentially, it just became part of my behavior, I would get in bed and I would start thinking about the same cycles over and over again, the same life problems. This is really Turman was insomnia. A lot of the people I work with whether they have Tourette or tic disorders, so they don't go through the spinning in their mind when they're laying down in bed. And so that's kind of a long explanation. But essentially, there is a time to deal with mental health, there is a time to deal with these parts of us that want to solve problems. And I allocate time and I teach people to allocate time, during the day when we can rationally think through this, we can give those parts of us attention that need the attention. And then we can say when when it's time to go to sleep, I hear you, you want to come up and you want to try to solve this problem. But right now it's trying to sleep, we will allocate time tomorrow. Why do we sleep at all? Why can't we just keep going, half of our brain shuts off, the other half keeps going, why have we not evolved out of sleep? Yeah, the third year your life is spent sleeping. Of course, I'm a little biased here. But sleep is, in my opinion, the most important thing due, the way that we record memory is through sleep. So we have a hippocampus, which is sort of like a thumb drive. And all of the details that we record during the day, like what car is next to you at the red light, how the food is arranged on your plate. Everywhere you go, your brain is just traditionally recording all of these details. And by the end of the day, you have millions and millions of bits of information, just from that day alone in your brain. And your hippocampus is that thumb drive that's just storing all this data. And somehow that data needs to be filtered out a lot of it's unnecessary to us. But there's so much data that is important to us as humans, and it needs to get filtered into long term storage. And so one of the key things that happens in slow wave sleep is that data is transferred into the cortex into long term storage banks. And it's based on what we need. So that gets filtered in sleep. That's one of the key things right there. Our body goes through so much growth in sleep. I think 75% of human growth hormone is released in sleep. Our muscles are relaxed and repaired in sleep. Sleep is again, like I said where memory storage takes place. We absolutely need sleep to sort of reset our nervous system, let our organs relax. There's toxins that are flushed out of our brains, like our brains actually shrink when we're in sleep. And the CSF the cerebral spinal fluid washes over the brains and it clears out toxins it clears out the amyloid plaques. That's where we have that association with dementia, Alzheimer's. This is one of the key processes in sleep. And then of course there's this amazing beautiful REM sleep that we have in there. That's phenomenal because in REM sleep, what's going on is, it's basically our brain creating test scenarios for life. So we have this huge, autobiographical history of information, somehow we need to test this out to create our version of reality and to be prepared for what's happening in the future. So our brain basically has all of this data, and it creates stories, these are our dreams, our brains 30%, more active than REM sleep than when we're actually awake fully. And it's just creating the sequences of potential events, and how we would handle that information. When you think about like emotional regulation, or being able to find balance with your mood. When we hash this out in our dreams, we're so much more relaxed and prepared and able to essentially handle stressors in our day to day life. It's interesting

Michael Leopold: 10:54

how our bodies have evolved for millions of years. And one of the outcomes of that is is we work in cycles, our body functions in terms of cycles, and that's where we get to circadian rhythms. I'm wondering if you could speak to this and the importance of circadian rhythms and what when it comes to proper sleep.

Ben Mooney: 11:12

That's everything. Let's bring us back to Tourette and tic disorders to when people with Tourette and tic disorders tend to have a little bit of overactive dopamine, and they have elevated adrenaline. And they also have decreased serotonin, five HT synthesis, the modulation of serotonin leads to melatonin being released, we have this beautiful trend of wave and sequence of predictable chemical reactions in our body, and sleep. And so the whole circadian day really just helps her body move. And then these this beautiful system of fluctuations of neuro chemicals, if you look at how the sun rises, basically, and how our body's hormones and the way that can the neurochemical chemicals are released in our body match this beautiful day and light patterns and all of this other stuff. There's ways to be efficient to basically live our best life, there's ways that we can kind of move to understand just how the circadian day can help us so much more. I

Michael Leopold: 12:26

think what I'm hearing is, so much of it is we should be more attuned to what our body is telling us like when it's giving us these signs. I find sometimes at night, I get tired and feel sleepy at eight or 9pm. And I might push through that to try to get something done. Or I'm finally getting time done with work. I've enjoyed the night, whatever, I ignore it. And then it's 10 or 11pm. And I'm not tired anymore. And now I'm trying to go to sleep and I don't feel that I'm sleepy, is that my body telling me I should have gone to bed at eight or nine? You know, maybe that that's what my body's cycle wants to do? Would that be a read reading of it? Absolutely.

Ben Mooney: 13:06

Yet, our bodies are so intuitive. We're in this day and age right now where we have technology, we have social media, we have work stresses, and they're right at our fingertips. It's not like you have to go to your office and turn on your computer. You're getting pinged with your emails all the time. And what happens when we do that the light goes into our eyes. And so the light going into our eyes automatically reduces melatonin. Additionally, we're creating this like cortisol reaction where we spike our cortisol, our heart starts racing. And we start thinking and analyzing and so many of the processes that in theory at that time of the day, should kind of be winding down, they get into a little bit of a tailspin. And our nervous system doesn't really know how to react to that in our nervous system. It doesn't know if there's a threat that's potentially life endangering. It doesn't know if when our cortisol rises, if we're on a trail with a wild animal, or if we're just getting an email that indicates that we have to do more work. Our heart's racing, the cortisol is pumping, our nervous system feels like maybe it needs to speed up. And so it gives the body a little bit of a jolt. And you don't feel tired.

Michael Leopold: 14:20

You'd mentioned the lights on the phone. I know a lot of the phones now they have the nighttime mode. There's like the yellow brownish tint to it or it's not as right. What are your thoughts on that our technology is getting better because of the fact that people are using their phones at night and we want to protect your brain when

Ben Mooney: 14:37

you're doing that. Technologies are getting better, no doubt and people are catching on just how absolutely critical sleep is. It's becoming more mainstream and doctors are getting better education and it seems as though everybody understands in theory that this is the case. Now having said that, the writers of these TV shows like Netflix makes it really easy to start a new show. Yeah. And our brains, it's really hard sometimes to say no or to not try to get that next fix. We as humans are trying to fragile in that area, where it's so easy for us to just say, Oh, I'll be okay. Tomorrow, I'll be alright the neck, I'll get this down. I had, I'm having bad sleep, I'm in a phase right now. I'm not sleeping good. But I'll figure it out each sleep, right, I can do this. That's not always happening that way. People are turning this into more chronic habits. So it's yes, technology is getting better. But our behaviors are, they actually are getting worse. The statistics show that more than ever, now, people are struggling with sleep, there's more rates of insomnia, there's more prescription sleep medications than ever before, right now, I tend to be on one extreme end, I really try to get my body and my family, I try to get them to follow this, my wife doesn't always follow. But I try to follow the sun as much as humanly possible. When the sun's going up, I'm getting the light. When the sun's going down in the evenings, I tried to turn off as many lights as possible, I tried to keep it low, I take it to an extreme. And I have had a long history of horrible sleep. So what I'm learning is that I need to do this, this is for my nervous system, this is something that I absolutely need to do. I don't use my phone at night, people say, Shine the light down, turn the flashlight on shine the light down. For me personally, I won't, I don't use red light, I don't use my phone and go down. I just don't use technology. And I have to be pretty diligent myself. If somebody actually has true insomnia, and they're not getting that reshot refreshing sleep, I feel like we have to try to do as much as we can. to really help our brains and our bodies find relaxation, then light is a huge deal. I'm

Michael Leopold: 17:02

thinking about a how you the stats you brought up on how our sleeping behaviors are getting worse. And I think a lot of this is exacerbated by our society. Like you said, people sending work emails it eight 9:10pm. And so if you're home, you're looking at your phone, you happen to see it and now I'm on that rabbit trail going through my work emails and something I wouldn't have done otherwise, I'm also picking up college students cramming for exams or staying up late, how do we continue to coexist in a society that's making these demands on us or tempting us without sacrificing our sleep like that is consistency more important than getting a strict nine hours of sleep every night,

Ben Mooney: 17:42

we have to be practical here we have to be realistic life is it's complicated, we're expected to be more productive now. And society is going to reward the people with jobs with promotions, with things that are important to our human society than financial ways. Because they are the ones that follow up and they get that job done. And they sort of like force themselves into the night to do more work. This is something that is heavily rewarded. Ultimately, at some point, we have to stop. We there's no replacing sleep, period, there's no replacing sleep, we know when it comes to like taking medicine, and all of the this abundance of pharmaceuticals available, there is truly zero medication better than sleep, there's nothing that's going to regulate your body, there's nothing that's going to help you physically, mentally, emotionally, and with all of the systems more than sleep is going to do. So if you're trying to diet or if you're trying to exercise. Or if you need to cram and get a lot of information in your mind. The best way to do all of those things is with great sleep. There's studies that that demonstrate very clearly that you're going to score better on a test if you sleep the night before versus if you stay up and cram. Now, yes, you may be able to retain that information short term, to answer your questions on your test better the next day. But that information is not getting stored in your long term storage. If you're not getting the sleep to get it in, it's gone. So when we think about ourselves as like, efficient humans, trying to perform as best as we can in the society, getting time and making time for our sleep opportunity is critical. Like I said, with prescriptions, we know there's more sleep prescriptions and ever before being written right now. We know that there's it's obvious this is kind of anecdotal, but people in society are not in there. healthiest mental health status right now, there's there are a lot of people struggling with mental health right now, as we're in this, this state of hyper productivity and social networking and connection, it's abundant. It's almost like we're in an experiment here. They started with the Internet. And we have access to all of this dopamine that can get kicked up with likes and social media attraction. We're in an experiment right now, as humans with our nervous systems that technology is delivering, there's no turning back, obviously. So we have to learn how to use it to our advantage. So when you talk about like the consistencies, the way I work with my clients, the way I tell my clients about consistency, is I use a comparison to travel. Like if you're traveling in different time zones, you most people when they travel in different time zones, they go east or west, they kind of get thrown off a little bit. Maybe they fly to Europe, and there's a period of days, and in some cases even longer, where it takes somebody a while to adapt, and to change their nervous system and to basically adapt to the new timezone. When people wake up and go to sleep at different times of the day, even if they sleep in like, a few hours on the weekend. Almost what they're doing is changing time zones. That's not exactly true. Because yes, the sun is rising and setting at the same time. But this flow of chemicals in their body that happens when they wake up later, and then they go to sleep later. And then they try to get back earlier. And they're doing this every week, trying to catch up and then trying to get back on track with their sleep. There's a huge argument to be made for consistency. When I work with my clients that have insomnia. I tell them no matter what, I want you to wake up at the exact same time every day. Let's figure out what that time is that's opportune for your life. Well, let's figure out this time that works best for all of the different circumstances you have. And yes, I understand. If you're a teenager, you may need to binge on a little sleep and sleep and a little bit. What can we do to find a wakeup time that's as close to what you can do regularly and consistently. So that way, all of those other chemicals in your body can keep reacting in a predictable manner and essentially, create this wave that pushes your body into sleep consistently each night. Can you speak a little bit about caffeine? Yeah, so let's start with caffeine. Our brains produce something called adenosine. Adenosine is this amazing substance that as we continue throughout the day, the adenosine builds and connects. So our brain has these receptors for adenosine, they basically are like puzzle pieces. And as the day goes on, the adenosine binds to these puzzle pieces. And the more that happens in the more we store that adenosine in our brain, as the day goes on, we get tired. So adenosine creates sleep pressure. In the night when we sleep, basically, the adenosine gets filtered away, and then we start over again. So the adeena is inbuilt as our day goes on. And then we hit a certain point where we have an enormous amount of sleep pressure in our brain are those receptors have caught on to enough adenosine chemicals that basically our body is aware we start yawning we get heavy eyes, and we can feel sleep pressure growing and building in our body. Of course, then usually that time of the day the melatonin is released and our nervous system knows this asleep pressure, it's time to sleep and we get forced into sleep. That's kind of how it Dean is he works. Caffeine is is a really fascinating substance. It's it's the second most traded commodity in the world only behind oil. There's a reason for this. It's a psychoactive stimulant. It stimulates our nervous system. How does this happen? When I talk about those little puzzle pieces, those receptors that adenosine uses to attach our brain, caffeine has the exact same the same binding receptor so caffeine can actually get into our brain and bind to the brain and block out the adenosine growing in our brain. So caffeine sort of blocks the Edina zine in our brain from creating more sleep pressure and hence as a result, we aren't feeling as tired. So caffeine kind of keeps us down by binding to the brain like that. As the caffeine wears off, most people probably are aware and who have experienced hit that crash that caffeine crash. So yes, they can caffeine eventually loses its power over our brain and its capacity to influence our brain, the adenosine finally connects. And suddenly, we feel that crash after having the caffeine. So anyhow, the way caffeine works, if we're using caffeine too close to bedtime, there is a huge likeliness that even if you don't respond to caffeine as much as other people do, even if you have a high power, and you're still influencing the architecture of your sleep, because your body isn't going as deep into sleep as it might go, if you don't have that caffeine, and you just have that pure denas In buildup in your system. But caffeine will, in most cases, for most humans, prevent sleep within that life that it has inside of your brain. Interesting. So

Michael Leopold: 25:53

can we say a certain time? That's true for most people? Like I've heard no caffeine after 4pm? Or 5pm? are you hesitant to even make those kinds of guidelines? Yeah,

Ben Mooney: 26:04

everyone's so different. Almost everybody I work with has a history of using a lot of caffeine. Most people, they drink caffeine, and then they feel that crash, and then they do more caffeine, and they start feeling crashed, and maybe they have something they have to do, it's really important to them, it's really hard to say a blanket rule for caffeine. However, when you go to sleep, if you're going to sleep at 10 o'clock, for instance, let's rewind the clock by eight hours. And let's see if you stop caffeine it at two o'clock. How is that going to influence you just notice and observe how your sleep is at night. And for sleep. A lot of times it takes more than one night to run an experiment. And your body has to get used to the to everything adapting after a few days of of repetition, somewhere around eight hours before bedtime is a great place to start. It's also the doses of caffeine. How much counting Are you having Are you starting caffeine first thing in the morning and then just kind of going from that point on, I believe there's a strong argument for when you wake up, giving your body and your natural chemistry a chance to wake up with you, versus putting a psychoactive stimulant in your system right away. And so there's a lot of work we can do with caffeine. And it's not just how late you're using it. It's how early you're using it, how often what the dose is, and certainly how late you're using it. Caffeine is a great antioxidant. There's a lot of great benefits for caffeine. It's just also something that we have to be really aware of.

Michael Leopold: 27:42

I know you treat a lot of patients with insomnia. And it sounds like one of the best practices is figuring out what what's the patterns? What are all the patterns going on in your life in your sleep. When are you waking up? When are you going to bed? How restful was the sleep you're getting? Are there any apps or tools that you recommend to clients that can help with measuring some of this and tracking it? Yeah,

Ben Mooney: 28:06

what I use with my clients, it's called CBTI. Coach. It's a free app. I think the VA produced this. And it only takes about three minutes to fill out your data in the morning. It just tracks your sleep patterns, you answer about five or six questions and rate the quality of sleep because sleep is truly a subjective measurement. The CBTI coach app has suggestions, it'll take your information and plug it into a formula that it suggests for you. There's apps, there's sleep assistance. There's one example where while there's more than one example, but basically a guy just babbles and just talks and doesn't even finish a sentence ever. He just he basically just talks in the subject content that he has with just winds. And then he'll find a connection at the end of one statement and then move it into a whole different unrelated thing. And they'll do that for hours. And some of my clients, we try everything, they can get their brain to settle down into sleep. But they try that. And it works. It works so well, for some people, because what's happening is they're not thinking about their life, and they're not going into their loops. They're letting the content of what this guy's saying ramble on and it takes them down and they slowly just fade off into sleep for them. It works amazing. There's other people I work with that try that and it doesn't work at all. It's such an individualized process. But ultimately, meditation is a great thing. Our brainwaves start slowing down when we're meditating. I often have people stretch in the dark, before bed bed, and again, there's no stimulation. We might practice like some kind of like Transcendental Meditation, they're just focusing on one mantra and when they noticed their brain going, trying to solve something or trying to fix something or trying to go into a different direction. We'd bring it right back to the mantra. Essentially you're sewing on the brainwaves, but really what I'm saying is first Everyone, it's a little bit of a different approach. And we all have to just experiment with this. But I will say, putting time into solving this is trying well spared, it's worth it. Because if you're not sleeping, when you start getting that good sleep, it's 100% worth it, everything is easier and leave.

Michael Leopold: 30:19

For any of our listeners that may want to talk to you or an OT, like us specializing in sleep. Where should they turn to? Are there any good resources to fight? Is this something any ot can do? Or how do we find one of those sleep experts?

Ben Mooney: 30:33

There's actually not a lot of OTS that do the sleep work, I got my training on sleep at Colorado State University, and they have this incredible program, they have these professors that are just so dialed in. But there's not a lot of OTS that do sleep work. The thing is, here's what I would say, the internet is full of, there are so many options. Now, I would suggest basically, if one of your listeners is really struggling with their sleep, first of all, 100% Call me, I always offer a free call no matter what. And maybe I can help somebody find resources too. But ultimately, talk to your doctor about it. Talk to a health care professional, there are sleep experts. And the science is so good. There are so many options just to an internet search and schedule that appointment, book that call talk to somebody that specializes in sleep, find out if it's a good fit for you. I would say the hardest part for most humans is making that first step. And with sleep, it's a really interesting thing. Because we're so programmed to just say, Oh, we I sleep every night, I'm gonna figure it out. Or we're also so programmed to say, I'm in a period of bad sleep in my life right now. I know what I need to do, I'll figure it out. And then months and months go by, and it's the same problems. And it starts becoming a little more of a behavior thing. The hardest part is to say, I don't think my sleep is great, I need to talk to somebody and make that phone call, then reach out. I really would encourage people if they're struggling to just reach out to do an internet search, find a sleep specialist, talk to your PCP, primary care doctors will have referrals, and just start the conversation. And also, I'm just going to say this is my bias, of course. But I'm not a doctor, I don't prescribe medication. So this is my opinion that I'm sharing here. Starting off immediately by teaching the sleep medication is, in my opinion, sleep medications are sort of like band aids, they solve a problem temporarily as they make your brain shut off. But you're still not getting the architecture of sleep that you need to get that good regenerative sleep growth. So my suggestion is to really work harder on the behavioral aspect, if you're not sleeping, some people truly have medical problems where they cannot sleep. But for most people, there are behaviors that they know that they can do, they there's behaviors, they can change. And with modification of behavior, you're going to do yourself a huge favor by learning how to modify your behavior to get that good sleep, versus just taking us asleep. That

Michael Leopold: 33:21

is Yeah, difference between trading the problem trading symptom, any other tips or advice you have for listeners or best practices that you find you're making often to your clients,

Ben Mooney: 33:31

there's one thing that I'll share, a lot of people come up to me, my friends, clients, people come up to me and they want to talk about sleep. You know, I love talking about it. And everybody wants to talk about their bedtime. Everyone wants to talk about what time they're going to bed. And that's how they want to start. They associate bad sleep with bedtime behavior. And it's true, of course, there are plenty of associations with bedtime behavior. In my opinion, when we start with wakeup time, we can lock in behaviors so much easier. So I would say I would suggest to somebody that struggled and maybe they've tried different things. I personally really like to get my clients working on wakeup times as the number one priority. If we can set a consistent wake up time. And we can keep that going. Even if you have a horrible night of sleep. So it's three in the morning, you're wide awake, you're furious, because you're you have something that maybe you need to do the next day, or whatever you think to yourself, I'm just going to sleep in, I'm going to sleep in and capture my sleep and catch up. I understand why you feel that way that makes total sense. But if you really want to hard reset your insomnia, or if you really want to try to get your body consistently moving. If you create that wakeup time and you stay consistent on it. Then you create this cascade of effects. That's going to build the sleep pressure and if You do this for consistently for 357 days in a row, and you keep that wake up time, you're gonna notice your bodies naturally. Building that sleep pressure, you're gonna feel that sleep drive that intense need to get to sleep. It's so much easier, in my opinion, to start by bringing on wakeup time. It's really easy to create patterns out. Yeah,

Michael Leopold: 35:23

we have spinning it to approach it a different way. And also think about what you're doing during the day. We haven't really talked about diet or exercise or like reducing the impact of stressors on our life throughout the day, too. And all those implications on our sleep as well. Our listeners have a lot to take away from with this. Ben, it's been wonderful having you on the podcast. I hope to chat with you again here. To any of our listeners. This is Ben moody, occupational therapist based in Colorado. If you're looking to speak with them, you're welcome to reach out. You can also reach out to the New Jersey Center for Tourette syndrome and our organization can help connect you to a sleep expert as well or the to another therapist or professional that you may need. So thank you so much, Matt. It's been great having you on the podcast.

Ben Mooney: 36:07

Thanks so much. And if anyone's listening, if you're struggling with sleep, especially I've been there, I feel it. I feel it's so hard. It feels so helpless and there is so much that can be done and it's worth it. My website is Mooney wellness.com. Please feel free to reach out and call I would love to connect with anybody that also just start that conversation started with any. I'm honored to be here. Thanks, Mike.

Michael Leopold: 36:30

All thank you and thank you all for joining us. Thank you for listening to the uptick, brought to you by The New Jersey Center for Tourette syndrome and Associated Disorders empowering you to stretch the boundaries to live your best life. The NJ center for Tourette syndrome and Associated Disorders NJ CTS, its directors and employees assume no responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, objectivity, or usefulness of the information presented on this podcast. We do not endorse any recommendation or opinion made by any guest nor do we advocate any treatment