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Lindsay Scola: The Story We Tell About Sleep | 100 Stories #2 · 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project

• Paige Williams: Welcome to 100 Stories, the Narrative Intelligence Project. I'm Paige Williams. This series explores a question at the center of how we become who we are. How malleable are the stories we live by, and what does it take to change them? Across 100 conversations, I am speaking with thinkers, creators, researchers, and leaders, people whose lives have been shaped by profound change. Together, we're examining the stories we inherit. The stories that become our identity and the human capacities that allow us to see, to question, and to transform them, These conversations are helping shape the emerging field of narrative intelligence. And the foundational book that I'm writing about it, this is 100 Stories. Today I am speaking with my friend Lindsay Scola. She is a speaker sleep educator and sleep disorder patient advocate. Her work explores helping high performers understand their sleep and recognize the flags for when something might be disrupting their sleep. I invited Lindsay to 100 Stories because she is beyond a sleep disorder specialist. A storyteller herself and a creative. And sleep is so important in my life. I know it's important in your life. And I wanted to learn from her because we are always telling stories about sleep, how it affects us. It is a through line of our life. It affects our health, our creativity, and our performance. So welcome, Lindsay. I'm so excited to have you. Lindsay Scola: I am so excited to be here. Thank you. Paige Williams: Thank you for your time. And I want to start off by you telling us about your work and your experiences that have most shaped how you see yourself in the world. Lindsay Scola: the most important thing that's happened for me in terms of my career and where I'm at right now and my health and my life, is being diagnosed with narcolepsy eight years ago. So I was diagnosed at 35 after 19 years of symptoms. And my first response to it was that I didn't want anybody to know. I was afraid of what people would have thought about my sleeping. now at the time I was working in a television awards publicity. There are not, you know, three o'clock in the morning emergencies for that. But I had, you know, worked in the Obama administration at the State Department and and, you know, I'd seen people sort of get passed up for things for sillier reasons. and I just I just really didn't I didn't want people to define me with this. And so I got very introspective. I did a lot of mourning. when you're when you're diagnosed with something that is so big and not going away, you mourn that you're not gonna be the person that you thought you were. you're never gonna be that person. and there was a lot of of sitting with that for me. Now at the same time, I was feeling so behind in my life that I was like, all right, I am going to find the pill that makes me me again. And then I'm never gonna think about narcolepsy. Now, with narcolepsy, you don't get better, you just get better at having narcolepsy. And the medications that we have right now, you're treating for symptoms. And so sometimes something can make something it can give you a side effect that's worse than a symptom. And so it's like, you know, you're putting a pill in, taking a pill out, putting a pill in, taking a pill out. And the gift of the pandemic for me was that I was home, I wasn't driving. And I could take all the narcolepsy medication out. I could find what my baseline was, and then I could thoughtfully add medication back in. But I had this massive epiphany that I had spent the rest of my career in service to other people. I wanted to make the world a better place. And I could not, in good conscience, know that there was somebody out there that had gone 19 years thinking that all of this was in their head and not knowing that there were answers. So I decided that it was time to be public about having narcolepsy, about how treatment was really making my life better, and that there is a faster route to diagnosis and treatment than what I had had. And that was a massive turning point for me. And then it was, okay, I want to know more about this disorder that I have, how I I can make my life better with it and how I can share this information with other people. And it ended up becoming my purpose and my career of let's get people to understand their sleep better. Because, you know, I worked in these like crazy, high, intense careers where sleep is the thing we'll do after the work is done, and really sleep is the thing that allows us to get the work done in the first place. But then also helping people understand. those red flags, that there could be a sleep disorder that they're dealing with, which by the way is one in five of us. And help people live these bigger, better, more powerful lives because they understand their sleep, they're using sleep to their advantage, or they're getting the help that they need faster. Paige Williams: Thank you. That is beautiful. So before we pushed record, I was telling you about some chronic exhaustion I was having two weeks ago. And then I called in the team, you know, like, let's look at all the different sides. And you say, well, could be sleep apnea. And you just mentioned one in four or one in five have it. Lindsay Scola: So one in five people have have sleep apnea, it's the most common sleep disorder. Paige Williams: Okay. So what are the red flags and what should I be looking out for to decide if I need a sleep study or what would the next step be? Lindsay Scola: It's really, you know, sleep disorders are looking at our sleep and also how we're feeling during the day. So if you are feeling Paige Williams: Mm. Lindsay Scola: sort of chronically exhausted during the day, this could be a symptom of a sleep disorder. So not everybody with sleep apnea is a loud snore or gasper. Well, those are symptoms for some people and definitely something we should pay attention to. It does not rule you out if you don't have those. but things like waking up to use the bathroom multiple times a night. waking up in the morning with a headache or a dry mouth or throat or sore throat, you know, increased anxiety throughout the day, reflux at night. so anything that your body is sort of feeling like the nighttime isn't putting all the puzzle pieces together or feeling really tired during the day, and that tired can come in waves, you know, you could feel otherwise engaged and then like get really you know hit with sleepiness in the afternoon. And that's not just sleep apnea. That's you know that that's a range of of sleep disorders. But these are really things that you want to be looking for. And if if you know if that picture is feeling familiar, talk with your general practitioner about it. But a lot of general practitioners just aren't very familiar with sleep, sleep disorders. And how sleep disorders present in women as well when it comes to things like sleep apnea. And so you really want to see a sleep specialist, which is a doctor who is trained to diagnose and treat sleep disorders. Now, some people's insurance require a referral from your GP, some people don't. and so that's why I like to work with your GP to get you to that next step, to get that to to get the the appropriate tests and if you do have a disorder the right treatment. Now, you know, some people's GPs will send out for a sleep test, which is usually an at-home test, that doesn't catch every sleep disorder, doesn't catch up sleep apnea. and you want to make sure you're working with someone who's asking you the right questions and is going to get you to to the right test and the right evaluation of that test. Paige Williams: Thank you for going through that. So let's talk about sleep and storytelling and the stories that we tell ourselves about sleep and whether or not we're sleeping and we're out in the world and we have a narrative going about sleep. And you mentioned your narrative that you were living with of like, I don't want people to know. And then something transformed in you and you started telling your story about sleep. So can you kind of give us your perspective about how your story has changed over time and how you see it affecting people who you work with and talk with about sleep disorders, about the narrative that they carry around sleep? Lindsay Scola: Yeah, I mean my productivity coming of age was in the nineties where highly successful people slept four hours a night. Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, Bill Belichick, all all the Bills. Paige Williams: Bills. All bills. Lindsay Scola: we stopped talking about it after Bill Clinton had his heart attack, but you know, like all the highly successful people slept four hours a night. And I needed more sleep than that. And Paige Williams: Mm. Lindsay Scola: so there was, you know, one, a sort of a like a an icky feeling of like You know, I can't be as productive as like the really productive people because my body seems to need more sleep. then there's the like sleep is a bad thing because we need to get all this done. Society told us if we were tired, we were doing it right. So, you know, you just drink more coffee, push, you know, push harder, first one in, last one out, you know, we'll we'll sleep when we're dead. so we have all of these sort of narratives of like sleep is not sleep's not necessary, you know, sleep gets in the way. sleep is in between me and my productivity. and so, you know, because I have narcolepsy and I spent 19 years not knowing that, there was a lot of shame and self-doubt for me. Paige Williams: Yeah. Lindsay Scola: that I was sneaking naps in public bathrooms because it was the only place I could think of to sleep. And so I like came up with this like whole thing of where people wouldn't see me. So I would like go into a stall, like sit on the toilet seat, like curl my feet up onto the seat, lean my head against the wall, and like I could take a 15 minute nap that way. And it was like all the steps that I would think through that I didn't want someone seeing leg feet dangling in there for 15 minutes and like all of the the the the the twists and turns and mental gymnastics my brain was doing of like where I could like take these naps and like get away with it. And so I've like, I've napped in a lot of bathrooms in congressional office buildings. I I napped in the bathrooms at the UN. I and I I did this for a lot of years and I was just like I didn't I didn't want anyone to know that I needed it. And these 15 minute naps were actually pretty refreshing for me and like got me moving to my next you know the next part of my day, which, you know, people with narcolepsy do find short naps refreshing. And if I had like if we had talked at all about like what ha healthy napping is, like these could have been some indicators for me that like something wasn't right. but you know, I thought it was a personal failing that that I, you know, I needed to nap to be able to like keep up with all of these incredibly, you know, smart, successful people that I was around. and then I hear from people all the time this story of I'm a bad sleeper. And like we would never say like someone with asthma is a bad breather. You know, like but it's like become perfectly okay that some people are bad sleepers. And that's just not a thing. There's a reason that something with your sleep isn't working. So you might be a light sleeper that needs some help with tools about, you know, falling asleep and staying asleep if you're dealing with insomnia. but if you're somebody who's waking up a lot during the night constantly, There might be a reason you're waking up constantly during the night. It could be sleep apnea with narcolepsy. we have fractured sleep. I can fall asleep fine, but I can't stay asleep without intervention. And you know, because we don't really and and until recently, you know, we really hadn't talked about sleep at all and what sleep should look like and what healthy sleep is. It's allowed us to create more of these narratives in our head about what sleep is for us and what it should or shouldn't be. Paige Williams: Yeah, why do we judge how we sleep as humans? Lindsay Scola: because I think it's, you know, it's antithesis of this sort of hush little culture narrative. that, you know, that you're supposed to grind, you're supposed to work as hard as you can and get as much done. And so that allows a like a a level of guilt to be associated with sleep. And I'll still hear from people like, you know, I see my husband napping all the time and I think he's setting a bad example for our kid. And you're like, hold hold on a second, like. For a lot of people, napping is really healthy. Like, you know, a a 20 minute nap in the afternoon can like be really good for your blood pressure and for creative thinking. And you know, as long as you don't have a hard time falling asleep at night, like napping is is great. There's there's nothing lazy about that. I'm glad to see more businesses putting in, you know, sleeping rooms. but we like we have so much of this ingrained inside of our culture, that sleep is lazy. And I mean this, you know. Read about like, you know, when Thomas Edison was like inventing the light bulb and like he thought that like sleep wasn't necessary and that we would like find you know, with being able to have light for for longer, we would find ways to get rid of our sleep. Like that that sleep would become unnecessary if we had, you know, light that we could be doing things in the middle of the night. so we've been Paige Williams: Makes sense. Industrial revolution. It's like all of a sudden we have to be super super performative. Lindsay Scola: Well, the industrial revolution really like changed the way that we slept. people used to sleep in two sleeps. So they would like sort of, you know, sleep with the sun, the way that we're sort of biologically programmed. so they would go to sleep when it got dark, they'd wake up in the middle of the night, they'd be up for a couple of hours, you know, do something with the family, you know, pray, have sex, smoke a pipe, whatever people did before the internet. and then they'd go back to sleep and they'd wake up in the morning. And then, you know, with the industrial revolution when we got this sort of like consolidated work schedule, sleeping schedules got shrunken and then we started sleeping in more of one sleep versus the the two sleeps that we used to traditionally have. Paige Williams: Have done much research around culture and how other civilizations even talked about sleep or did they talk about sleep? Is there much written about it? Lindsay Scola: Yeah, I mean they're the same way that we talk about, you know, food and family and all of that is completely different in in cultures. Like there's a very broad spectrum around this. even the way that we talk about you know, sleep disorders and if you like look at sleep paralysis depictions through different you know, different cultures and different people, there there's different stories that are are around with it. Some people really, you know, some cultures really valued sleep, you know, even you still people take siestas, like really value their their afternoon nap. and then you have more of like the the hustle side of it that like sleep sleep is something that we do later. so yeah, it's it's it's one of those things that's completely ingrained from a long time that we're working against. Paige Williams: What changed for you when you were given the words to Receive language and diagnosis that better explained your experience? Did it change how you understood yourself? And did it change how you lived? You talked about COVID was the time where the transformation happened, where you went from shame and like, let's really figure out causes and conditions of this. And then something transformed in you, and then you saw it a new way. So, can you talk about that moment of transformation and what it took? Why COVID, like what it took for you to? transform in that moment and change the story that you were telling yourself about your sleep disorder. Lindsay Scola: Yeah, I mean that time over COVID was really when I had the the transformation in being public around this and being okay with people knowing that I had this disorder. But I think sort of right off the bat, even with all of the grieving that I was doing around receiving a diagnosis, there was a reframing for me that there was a reason that my body had been behaving this way. and so like there was like this like aha moment when I received the diagnosis. you know, first I I looked at my doctor and I cocked my head and I said, I'm sorry, sir, I do not believe you're right. I've never fallen asleep into a bowl of soup because that was the picture of narcolepsy that I had, which so many of us do because the depictions on film and TV are really bad. that is not what narcolepsy looks like. People don't fall asleep, you know, mid sentence, you know, standing straight up or into their food. but then, you know, it was like, okay, I had I had this reason. That I got these waves of extreme sleepiness. I had this reason that I was woken up at night by things crashing or falling or people speaking Russian in the hallway because I actually have, you know, hallucinations is one of the symptoms of narcolepsy. and so the there was a reframe pretty quickly. Like, okay, I I know why my body has been doing this. This is not something that I messed up. You know, I can go back to when I was 16 and started having these symptoms. And you know, my first thought was, I must have stayed up too late. You know, I I didn't do the right thing for my sleep. I messed this up. And so that part started to fade away. And so, you know, right off the bat, I was able to be like, okay, I'm gonna manage my energy a little bit differently. you know, I know that when that feeling comes, I need to take a nap, I need a place where I need to take a nap. I can, I, I can, you know. This is, this is not a failing that I need to sneak a nap, that this is, this is actually part of my treatment. and so I got to be gentler with myself right away. Like there was, there was a lot of grace that I was able to give myself that I hadn't previously, which really became a reframe for a lot of my life, not realizing how much I beat myself up priv previously for something that I had no control over. But like where else in my life was I doing that? And so really like learning learning to to love and care for myself in a different way than I had before. And so all of that sort of, you know, built up. So it was like, all right, like I can understand why the sleepiness is there and like let's give ourselves some grace and have a plan. And then, you know, having this this moment of quiet and recognizing that like I wasn't gonna make the world better for the next me, if I didn't you know, speak up and wasn't public about this. and and really, you know, growing up to be the person to care for that baby version of myself. I was in a car accident when I was 16, that I I fell asleep and I hit the car in front of me. And thank God I didn't go into oncoming traffic or it wasn't worse. but I never told anyone that I fell asleep. I I I told my parents that I was distracted. and it wasn't that my parents wouldn't have cared for me, but like in my and and that they would have blamed me. It was that in my head I had messed something up that I fell asleep. And I just want to go back and hold that girl and say, please tell everyone that you fell asleep and you had no control over it. And let's let's let's really like dig in and find an answer here. and I want to make sure that that 16-year-old girl who's sitting there right now hears this and knows that there's there's a reason and that there's doctors that are there to help get that information, get the right testing and get that treatment earlier. Paige Williams: What has telling this story, and you've been on the TED stage with over 20,000 views, top 1%, congratulations, and you're helping people with their disorders, and you're speaking about it, you're a public speaker. What has telling your story done for you inside? Lindsay Scola: It's given me purpose. I there's sometimes it makes more sense in our head for things to have a reason, you know. I went as long as I did without a diagnosis so that I could have an understanding of how the medical system works and doesn't work, and make sure that we make it better going forward. I have so much passion. for how do we train doctors better and how do we give doctors the right tools to recognize when there's a sleep issue for someone to get them to the right course of treatment faster. and you know all of that came from not from from from that lived experience and I'm I'm so driven by this. I'm so driven by helping people get the right answers for their sleep and live bigger, better, more creative, fulfilling lives because they got the help with the sleep their sleep that they needed, that it all it all makes sense in my brain that there was a reason. Paige Williams: So how does sleep deprivation affect our creativity, our agency, our ability to recognize the stories that are shaping us? Why is this so important to you? Lindsay Scola: So one, we need to get enough sleep because we sleep in cycles. So we have light sleep, deep sleep, rem sleep. and part of those cycles all do different things. so you know, in deep sleep, we're really repairing our brain and our body. in REM sleep, we're consolidating our memories and creative connections are coming together. but we need all of the cycle of the sleep to get each of those pieces in place. It's really our entire reboot system is happening while we sleep. And if you start shortchanging that, you lose from the deep sleep at the top of the night, you lose from the REM sleep at the bottom of the night. and you miss those opportunities to replenish your system, but then also making those creative connections. And when we're not getting that sleep, we really start to suffer cognitively. and so it's like you want all of the benefits. so when you get enough sleep, you're getting those benefits. It is making you more productive during the day, it is making you more creative. But then understanding when you shortchange that, it's not just not getting those benefits, you're severely hampering yourself cognitively and with some serious downstream health effects. So we know that if you are awake for more than 17 hours, you have the same reaction time as somebody who's drunk. and you know, we still have we talked about these like stories culturally, like you would never go into work and be like, guys, I'm totally wasted. But look how productive I was. But it's okay to be like, I was up till two working on that deck and I was back at it at five. And look how productive I am. And then if somebody is sleeping for less than six hours for more than two weeks, they start thinking that they're fine. They actually think that they've adapted and that they've recovered. And really, cognitively, they're continuing to decline. So that's like being drunk and having no idea that you're drunk. So that's what's happening to your brain. But then if you're looking, you know, over time, what lack of sleep does higher blood pressure, higher insulin resistance, higher rate of metabolic disorders, heart attack, stroke, even death. So it's really important that we are getting the right amount of sleep for us, which is really personal. so the average adult needs between seven and nine hours. but what works best for you and what works best for me are not going to be the same number. there's, you know, so much. Going around the internet right now like the longevity space. It's like between six hours and 25 minutes and seven hours and two minutes or whatever for like the most ideal number of sleep, like which is total bullshit. so you need what works best for you. And again, the average adult is between seven and nine hours. Some people might be a little less, some people might be more. and you need you need to be getting that the the sleep in the time that's right for you and If you are waking up and something is not feeling right, like you're still feeling tired, you are waking up a lot during the middle of the nights, you're never getting that complete amount of sleep, that's when we start looking at sleep disorders because they're gonna do have those same downstream health effects if you're not getting treated for them. Paige Williams: Okay, this is for me personally. How many times waking up in the night to use the bathroom is too many times? Because if I'm well hydrated, I wake up more often. If I'm not, I don't wake up as much. So how do we judge that? Like how do we know? Lindsay Scola: So I mean if you're using the bathroom like once at night and you're drinking water later in the day, that could be the answer. for a lot of people who are waking up to use the bathroom multiple times a night, it's really not about the level of hydration. It's that our kidneys release when we wake up. So you're not actually waking up because you have to pee. You're peeing because you woke up. and you might not actually recognize that you're awake first. so you're thinking that you woke up because you have to pee. and so that's why this like this is like a red flag for for sleep apnea is that you know, if we're talking and your airways open, and then you go to sleep, your airway closes, your body senses signal your brain, my god, can't breathe, wake everything up. Now this is happening multiple times an hour, up to hundreds of times a night. you might not be recognizing that you're waking up each of those times, but your body is, and you have one that wakes you up enough and your body says, like let's do what we do when we wake up. And you feel like you have to pee. And so people think that, I drank too much water when in reality your body is waking up multiple times and it's doing the function that it does when it wakes up. Paige Williams: Thank you for explaining that. And then I have another one. So a a while ago I told you I was like, Lindsay, is it okay that I have a sleep show that I go to? And you were like, Of course. And like My partner and I, we have like soft sleep shows that we can go to sleep to, like Wild Animals on Netflix or The Golden Girls. I can hear that Golden Girls intro music and I'm like, it just puts me right to sleep. But I can't go to sleep to anything that's interesting, anything I haven't watched, anything that is really like aggressive. So how do we separate between Well, maybe I shouldn't watch T V at night to go to sleep and that story that we tell ourselves, because we've heard it somewhere, versus like what actually works for us biologically. Lindsay Scola: So, you know, we've been like really warned about the blue light, and people are afraid about the blue light at night. And, you know, newer research on the blue light is a little more nuanced. and the thing that's keeping people awake really isn't necessarily the blue light that they're getting, it's the content that they're consuming with the blue light. And so if you are watching content closer to bed that's really revving you up, that's gonna be harder to fall asleep. So, you know, you're watching. true crime that's got you, you know, mentally checking every closet for serial killers, Paige Williams: Yeah. Lindsay Scola: or you're, you know, you're doom scrolling on your phone and you're getting wound up about something, or you're watching something that's really intense or scary. or you know, you're watching that like new Netflix show that you gotta like go to the next one and the next one and the next one. And there's dopamine in that, like that's gonna rev you up and make it harder to go to sleep. I'm someone who always thought that I needed the TV to go to sleep and it really wasn't the TV. it was the sound of dialogue. I have a very noisy internal dialogue and she gets louder and meaner as the night goes on. Her name's Janet and Paige Williams: Janet Damn it, Janet. Lindsay Scola: She's also she's named after Janet from the good place. because she knows she knows everything. and the sound of other people talking like shuts her up and it like it is like this massage Paige Williams: Mm. Lindsay Scola: for my brain. and so I have a blackout sleep mask with Bluetooth panels and I listen to comedy TV shows that I've already seen. I can't be emotionally invested in what's gonna happen. and I set a 30-minute timer on my phone to turn off so it doesn't wake me back up. And I go to sleep that way every night. And you you you know, so that might work for you, but it also might be you know, different noise frequencies or different music. And it's like it's so funny like what works for people and what doesn't. you know, I will look for patterns in things. So if it's like, you know, like sleep music, I'll like wait for a certain beat to come and I like pay attention for that beat. I can't listen to sleep stories because I feel like that person is reading to me and it's like disrespectful to stop listening. And so like it actually like activates me to like stay on and listen. but like, you know, I I get that like emotional support, you know, nervous system, you know, calming of like the the the cadence of certain dialogues that I've already seen. So I'm I'm a big fan of The Good Place, which I've established. I love Girls Five Eva and Shits Creek. Like those are like my three of three of my go to's. but with those shows I have a a list of episodes that I can't do because I have air horns in them. Paige Williams: That's so funny. Lindsay Scola: but I I just want I want people to like understand what what can be causing issues with their sleep, why certain things work with their sleep, so that you can be creative and play around. people get very rigid about their sleep, which I freak out anytime I see some influencer posting some like 15 step sleep routine. we don't need any of that. Like sleep routines, like you do one cue about an hour before bed every night that you can do every night, no matter like how lifey life gets. Like That's that's all we need for our brains. And then we want to make it easier. Like the minute we stop doing all that stuff, sleep gets easier. you know, there's a a phenomenon called orthosomnia, where like people are trying so hard for their sleep that they're actually giving themselves insomnia. they're like so focused on their sleep score, they're so focused on their bedroom being perfect, they're so focused on like you know, the the sleep routine being perfect, and it's actually it's making their sleep worse. So I want people to understand. why certain things work don't work for their sleep and then play and like actually have fun with it. Make your bedroom like the place that you want to go to and get cozy. And there's no perfect formula for anything and just like that you want to get into bed and you like you want to cuddle up and like I look forward to putting my mask on and my sound and like, you know, cozying under my weighted blanket and, you know, in enjoying myself into bed. I like I look forward to certain pajamas that I'm going to put on. so I want to take the stress out of sleep for people. Paige Williams: A lot of noise online about sleep divorce and gummies. Would tell tell us how you feel about those things. Lindsay Scola: So I hate the term sleep divorce because Paige Williams: Mm-hmm. Lindsay Scola: for some people it's like the right thing for them to sleep in certain bedrooms. one of my my favorite sleep doctors, Alison Cole, calls it a sleep situationship, which I just chef's kiss. and so yeah, if if you are someone who's a light sleeper and having someone who moves around in bed a lot like interrupts you, you you just can't get over like the right temperature for both of you in bed, you have different schedules and someone's going to bed much later. And waking up much earlier than the other person. Like, I think it can be totally fine for couples. The thing that I want everybody to think about before they move to that is that if you are doing that because one person snores, is getting that person checked out for sleep apnea, because this is a serious health issue for for you and your partner in your relationship. because that snoring isn't just a nuisance if it's sleep apnea, it's causing detrimental health effects if it's not being treated. Paige Williams: Right. Thank you for saying that. And and and how where where do you land and where does the sleep li science land with like gummies, with with THC or without even melatonin, like all of that. Are we just searching to find what works for us? Lindsay Scola: Yeah, I don't want to speak too much to like the THC knot on that, but Paige Williams: Yeah, yeah. Lindsay Scola: on the melatonin piece of that, melatonin is not a sleeping pill. melatonin is a dimmer switch. We naturally create melatonin. you know, as we're preparing for bed, the sun goes down, we start creating melatonin, which gets ourselves, you know, starting to get more sleepy and our our brain preparing to wind down. and so we're making it naturally. Now there's some people who need it because there's a a misalignment for them, or you know, you're coming back from travel. but what you're purchasing in the store is usually way too high for what people need. it's it should be like below three milligrams, and most of the melatonin is like five or ten milligrams, and then people are taking it right as they go to bed, expecting it to be a sleeping pill. and if you're taking too much, it can wake you up in the middle of the night. it can wake you up too early, it can wake you up feeling really groggy, and it's really not not helpful. so people stop using it as a as a as a a a sleeping pill to go to sleep and really start thinking about more of the the parameters around setting up healthy sleep. Like, you know, doing one cue an hour before you go to bed that like gives your brain that cue that like sleep is coming. So I have an alarm that goes off on my phone. an hour before bed to go wash my face. And sometimes that's like the full skincare routine with all the expensive creams I swore I'd use every day. And other times it's like running a wipe across my face. And it's not the act of actually washing my face. It's the act of like seeing that alarm, getting up from what I'm doing, going into the bathroom, spending that moment by myself, taking the day off of my face in some way, shape or form. And then my brain knowing like, okay, we're winding down for the next hour and then we're getting into bed. and you know that that cue can really sort of help you move forward. Another thing that I do is about an hour and a half before bed. I have a last call where I dump everything out of my brain that has, you know, that could potentially keep me up or wake me up. the email that I forgot to send, the grocery list I didn't put together, the dentist appointment that I've said that I'd schedule every day for the last four months but still haven't done. and then I one, I've shown my brain that I've closed loops. so I'm not gonna forget about it. It is written down and I have a to-do list tomorrow morning. and so like those are really healthy things that we can do around our sleep. Paige Williams: Thank you. That's really helpful. So we're women of a certain age and we're all talking about hormones and sleep, and many of us are realizing we have ADHD. And I know that that's something you've written about and you have as well. So can you talk about the story that we are living currently as midlife women in our culture today around sleep and hormones and how it affects us? Lindsay Scola: Yeah. so there's you know, there's two things here. A lot of us are being diagnosed with ADHD in our forties because that drop in the estrogen really affects dopamine and suddenly all of the systems that we'd like so strategically put in place across our entire lives start to falter. So it's not that you developed ADHD in your forties, it's that the you know, the very carefully constructed system around it fell apart. I'm one of them. I was diagnosed at 41. and so There there's that piece of it. Now people with ADHD have way more prevalence of sleep disorders. there's, you know, some research that there's like an 80% crossover that people with ADHD are eight eighty percent of people with ADHD also have a sleep disorder. so that could be, you know, sleep apnea or narcolepsy or our circadian misalignment that is affecting your sleep, that you want to you need to treat both. and then there's you know hormones that are affecting your sleep. You know, estrogen and progesterone both affect the architecture of your sleep and sort of your anxiety and the other things that can wake you up. and so I want people to understand though that as you know hormones could be potentially disrupting your sleep at night, so can sleep disorders. So If you are someone who is waking up a lot every night and your sleep is being disrupted and you're not feeling great during the day, that you also want to get evaluated for something like sleep apnea because estrogen and progesterone also affect our airway. So as that's dropping, the levels of sleep apnea go way up for women over 40 as well. So it's not just hormones, which you know, the introduction of hormones can help your sleep, that you know, there there's more. more prevalence of sleep disorders there as well. So no one should accept that like bad sleep in your 40s is just something that we deal with. And if you are someone whose sleep is being massively affected and it's not getting better, that you really want to see a sleep specialist. Paige Williams: If you could wave a magic wand and put all the information that you could possibly desire into our heads about sleep, what would you have us know? Lindsay Scola: That sleep is important. sleep is something that we should value up there just the same way that people do with exercise and nutrition. that you know, you wanna you wanna prioritize it when and wherever you can. and that if you are giving yourself enough time to sleep and you are waking up feeling depleted, that this is time to go see a sleep specialist. Paige Williams: Okay, so I'm doing this project called A Hundred Stories, the Narrative Intelligence Project, to talk about how stories run our lives, impact our lives, and our ability to change story. When you hear the words, narrative intelligence, what do you think of and how might you define it? Lindsay Scola: So, you know, I think one of the massive reasons that sleep disorders are so underdiagnosed. Now, you know, I'm saying that one in five people has a sleep disorder. over 80% of them have no idea. that we talk about disorders very clinically. And so the narrative around them really disrupts how people what people know about their sleep, what's normal, what's not. And how to seek help. Narcolepsy has five symptoms. There's excessive daytime sleepiness, there's hallucinations, these are as you're falling asleep or waking up, that can be audio, visual, or sensory or a combination of the three, sleep paralysis, where when you're falling asleep or waking up, you can't move or vocalize. disrupted sleep, you can fall asleep, you can't stay asleep. And then for some people with narcolepsy, cataplexy, which is a loss of muscle tone with an emotion. which can be sort of full body collapse, or for someone like me that's more mild, I drop my phone when I laugh. I occasionally like my my lower lip droops when I'm like really nervous about something. I'm a moderate skier who's afraid of moderate hills and so I can't hold on to my ski poles. one, I never would have been able to put all of those together as a list of symptoms for a sleep disorder. I had no idea they belonged to the same story. and two reading about those symptoms, I might not have put them together because it's not how I would have talked about something. I didn't think that I was hallucinating. I thought that I had really vivid nightmares. Now they were taking place in the room that I was in. and I had this, you know, sensation of not being able to move or scream when the scary thing came into my room. And so when I talk about those things, I really want people to understand the common language around it and connect it. to what that symptom is so that they know how to talk about it, that they get to the right diagnosis. And so we really need to to work on the conversation around sleep disorders, like how these things really feel in somebody's body. and so that we're all speaking the same language and people are Paige Williams: Mm. Lindsay Scola: getting diagnosed faster. Paige Williams: Thank you. Is there anything I haven't asked you that I should have or that you would like to add? Okay. Lindsay Scola: No, this has been fantastic. Paige Williams: who else or whose perspective should I learn from in regards to this hundred stories to add to the hundred about narrative intelligence? Who would you lead me to? Lindsay Scola: there is a sleep doctor named Michael Granier, who is doing amazing work around sort of all of the levels of our sleep and how people talk about sleep. and I think he would be a really, really great component to this. Paige Williams: Okay, is it someone you know who you can introduce me to? Okay, Lindsay Scola: Yeah, absolutely. Paige Williams: great. Anyone else I should talk to about it? Narrative intelligence? Lindsay Scola: yes. do you know Julie Foe? she's on the list. I'll connect you with her. Paige Williams: Great, awesome. Okay, I'm gonna wrap us up here. You feel like we we recrossed the T's, we dotted the I's? Lindsay Scola: Yeah. I is there anything that you think we missed? Paige Williams: Hmm, I have one question, Lindsay, Lindsay Scola: Okay. Paige Williams: and it just keeps coming up and I keep telling myself a story that I can't ask you this question. So I'm gonna get past that limiting belief and ask you anyway. Lindsay Scola: Okay. Okay. Okay. Paige Williams: How many times you say wake up often? What is that number? Lindsay Scola: I think if you are waking up, you know, every night, even once, and it's feeling like you it's happening every night or or you're waking up and you can't go back to sleep, it's it's time to see somebody. Paige Williams: So once a night every night is waking up often. That's not regular. Lindsay Scola: Yeah, I mean, if you if, you know, a couple of times a week you wake up once, you go back to sleep, waking up in the middle of the night is normal. We were programmed for it. Back when we were living in the caves, the lions came in, we needed to wake up, grab our families, get out. It's very heroic. and so, you know, n fast forward, we're still scanning for lions, but they're, you know, work deadlines and family issues. and so, yes, if you're going through a period with an intense stress. or something's happened recently and you're waking up, you know, once every night and you're sort of waking up sort of like highly alert, this could be something that you're going through right now. but if you are waking up once, twice, three times and it's happening every night, it's definitely worth getting evaluated. Paige Williams: Thank you for telling me that. I think I'm gonna have to get evaluated because ever since I had baby, I've been waking up. It shifted after pregnancy. But before that I didn't. Lindsay Scola: It you know, if if this is happening regularly, I there there is Paige Williams: Every night of my life. Lindsay Scola: nothing there is nothing wrong with seeing a sleep specialist and having them tell you that it is this is your your sleep is fine. like I would rather people be be over cautious about going to see a sleep specialist than try to, you know, push it away as something else. And Paige Williams: Mm-hmm. Lindsay Scola: there are plenty of things that can be waking us up that are disrupting our sleep. And if we are especially if we're feeling tired or feeling depleted during the day. Paige Williams: All right. Lindsay Scola: It's worth getting your sleep checked. Paige Williams: I'm glad we had this conversation. I'm gonna come back to you and tell you how it went. All right, one more thing. When we talked when I introduced you, I said sleep is a through line. It a through line story in our lives. Can you and you gave me that language, it is a through line. Can you just riff on that for a minute about how important sleep is and the story in our lives of our lives? Lindsay Scola: Well, I think we we're really focused on making sure that babies and toddlers get enough sleep and then, you know, like thinking about, you know, teens, are they getting enough sleep? And then we sort of push it away. Like we create our own story that sleep isn't necessary or that we have things that are more important to do than sleep. but you know, sleep is the thing that is allowing us to get everything done in the first place. So I want people to start rewriting. their story with sleep. The same way that you care for your baby, the same way that you care for your child to make sure that they're getting their sleep, think about that for you, that you're putting your health and your family's health as a priority by making sure that that sleep is accessible to you as well. Paige Williams: Thank you so much, Lindsay, for sharing your story about sleep and for helping us understand more about our story about sleep. I know I have some sleep work to do now and to get curious and let curiosity drive the bus in regards to my sleep. What I realized in that interview is I've been waking up one to three times a night to use the bathroom for a very long time. Perhaps I'm one of those five who needs to look at sleep in my life. And the truth is, is I haven't done it because I've been telling myself one thing about sleep when actually it might be another thing. And that's why I'm so excited about interviewing a hundred people, about their expertise, about their stories, so that I can learn, so that you can learn, and so that we can grow and our narrative can change. Because at the end of the day, why would we care about narrative intelligence? Why do we want to increase narrative intelligence? Because the truth is, the more we understand narrative intelligence and how it works in our lives, the happier we are, the more we love, and the more free we are. So I'm gonna look at my own sleep story and I hope you do the same.