Dr. Kimberly Lemke, founder of Drift Sleep is a renowned sleep expert dedicated to addressing sleep issues and providing education for better sleep.
On today’s show, Dr. Lemke joins Mark Kinsley and explains the motivation behind the Drift Sleep course and emphasizes the importance of optimizing sleep through daily routines and bedtime rituals.
Dr. Lemke discusses:
- Significance of structuring one’s day to maximize sleep quality, emphasizing the role of sunlight and sensory stimulation in promoting sleep chemicals.
- Addresses common mistakes in daily routines and offers advice on managing fatigue and establishing effective bedtime rituals.
- Provides individuals valuable knowledge and practical tools to achieve restorative sleep, and how to help improve an individual’s overall well-being and how to help them wake up refreshed each morning.
FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Mark Kinsley: You are about to find out how naps are like cupcakes. What happened when 93 people showed up to a sleep speech and why? Dr. Kimberly Lemke says sleep is actually a daytime issue. She is the president at CEO of Drift Sleep Course and much more in the Sleep Summit Show begins right now.
Mark Kinsley: Dr. Kimberly Lemke. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and certified sleep science coach. The President and c e o of the Drift Sleep course, you’re gonna find out all about it. Kimberly, welcome to the show. How are
Kimberly Lemke: you? I’m doing well. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Mark Kinsley: Well, it’s my pleasure. Okay, wait, I just went into Kimberly.
Should I just go with Dr. Lemke?
Kimberly Lemke: How do you want? However it is you would like to call me. I can go with the flow on anything.
Mark Kinsley: I feel like we’re new friends. We chatted ahead of time. We did. So I think we’re good to go. We’re, we’re gonna find out and, and here’s the deal. I mean, when you, you’re on the Sleep Summit show.
A lot of information is gonna get out there. Like we are gonna find out, like we do from every guest. Where is the strangest place you’ve ever slept? And if you gotta throw somebody in the bus, you gotta throw ’em under the bus.
Kimberly Lemke: I will do so, because I know the answer to that question.
Mark Kinsley: I cannot wait to hear this. But we’re gonna, we’re gonna get into some of the, the, the rich material around the drift sleep course and your role. As a psychologist and the opportunity you saw to help so many more people on the sleep front. And we’re gonna get into some of the, the material that’s in the Drift Sleep course because this is the Sleep Summit show and we want to make sure that we are getting as much education as possible and uncovering as much as we can about the sleep space.
Uh, okay, so we are gonna get to the strangest place you’ve ever slept at. First, the sleep summit quiz question, and I got this one from you. Okay, so what’s the one sense you have that doesn’t go to sleep. Now, Dr. Olympia, I know you know the answer to this, but I want everybody to be thinking about it and you can answer it later on in the show and then explain to us what’s going on and how we need to pay attention to that one system and how it relates to our sleep and how it could damage our sleep.
Yes,
Kimberly Lemke: it’s, it’s one of my most interesting, fun facts, so I’m excited to share it with
Mark Kinsley: everybody. Excellent. Okay, well I’m excited to hear more about your background and, but let’s start right off the top with the Drift course. So if you go to drift course.com, you can see. This course that you put together, tell us what it is and give us the backstory about it.
Kimberly Lemke: So I have a private practice and I was seeing individual clients and we were working on anxiety and depression and parenting struggles and productivity issues. And what ended up happening is I always would get to the question about How’s your sleep? And inevitably it was bad. For, for a few reasons. So we started to notice that it was either I put my head on the pillow and I couldn’t fall asleep, or I’d wake up at two or 3:00 AM sort of the dreaded, um, mid, uh, night awakening and then couldn’t fall back asleep or it didn’t matter cuz my mind just wouldn’t shut off.
And so I just started to see those three groups of people just consistently show up and as they did, I felt like it was just limited in terms of getting out. Some of the information I was learning to help people sleep better. So what ended up happening is I, I took these courses, I got more trained in it, and I started locally just to ask a few local libraries and say, Hey, and I come from a, a kind of a, a small town, and I said, Hey, do you guys want.
Um, some information on how to sleep better and what usually is like a 20 or 30 person, um, course, if you will, a 20, 30 minute, um, presentation. I had people who, um, there was 93 of ’em who came in and were signed up for it, which just. Absolutely highlighted how important sleep is for everybody, and it just took off from there.
People just constantly were asking me questions, whether it’s, you know, my partner doesn’t sleep, what do I do with that? Or I have kids that don’t sleep. What do I do with that? Or what do I do when I wake up at three in the morning? How do I shut my brain off at night? Um, questions about good mattresses, questions about nighttime aids, and so there was all these things showing up.
And the thing that is so important that I try to get out there is that we also have to understand how to structure our days. So it, it’s, it’s really, sleep is a daytime issue because if we’re not managing our days, we’re not gonna sleep well at night. And so I really am so passionate about helping people understand.
Doable things during the day that they can do that do not take a whole bunch of time or effort, that will absolutely help them sleep at night. And so that’s where I really come from is how do we help you structure your days so that at night you put your head on the pillow, you lay in your mattress and you comfy, cozy, and you’re able to fall asleep and then stay asleep
Mark Kinsley: too.
What are some of the biggest mistakes people are making in terms of structuring their day and what are some of the top pieces of advice you give people in terms of. How do I manage my day so that I get ready for a good night of sleep? What, what are some of those o off the top of your head, things you see that, oh, this is a common mistake.
Yeah,
Kimberly Lemke: so I’m a super visual person and I’m Italian, so I use my hands. Um, but one of the things that it I use is this idea of a sleep balloon. And I tell clients all the time in organizations that the key is that sleep is a chemical process. We have to build. Sleep chemicals, and we have to build this balloon really as taunt, as tight as we can because that’s what gets us through our nights.
So as we sort of build this throughout our days with these sleep chemicals, then at night that’s what we’re using and we deflate it and then we wake up. And so it’s this constant sort of relay, if you will, right? Of building ’em and using ’em and building ’em and using ’em. And so one of the main things that builds those sleep chemicals is sunlight.
We know that there’s sort of a deep part of our brain that really has a mechanism in there that its sole purpose for the most part. One of its main purposes is to let you know it’s sensing sunlight, and it starts your other systems. It starts waking ’em up. It starts building those chemicals saying, Hey, We notice it’s light, we know what to do with that, right?
Let’s shut off melatonin in a sense and let’s start building sort of these sort of weight chemicals. And so I tell you know, people all the time that if you can just get any sunlight into your body, it’s so helpful. It really just reinforces to your body, Hey, we’re still supposed to be up. You know, it keeps us a little bit more energized, keeps fatigue away.
Um, and one of the things I hear Mark a lot is I’m fatigued. And so what they do, and which is a common error, is they go after sleep. Um, you know, in terms of how do I change it up, what can I do different? And sometimes fatigue is not a sleep issue. Um, it’s a fatigue issue. And so, you know, we talk about ways to manage fatigue, which is right, getting light movement, uh, nutrition, exercise, um, keeping a, um, a schedule.
So when you’re eating those sort of things and all of that is really key and that’s what builds those sleep chemicals really as taunt as times we need it to be.
Mark Kinsley: I like the visual too, so I’m just imagining this pink balloon and throughout the day you have these opportunities to blow some more air into it.
And one of the ways to blow up that pink sleep balloon is boom, I stepped out into the sunlight. Great. Uh, that balloon just got bigger, and so that means I’m gonna have more of those really good nighttime chemicals that are gonna be able to release themself and hopefully keep me asleep throughout the night.
Going back to one of the issues you just described, are there any other ways besides sunlight, that those good chemicals build up throughout the day? So
Kimberly Lemke: think about those five senses, right? And I’m not giving away the answer to this quiz, um, but I’m just gonna reiterate the five senses, right? So it’s, and I used my hand to illustrate cuz I had a seven year old show me one time.
And I just will never forget it. So she says, you know, what do you hear? What do you see? What do you smell? What do you taste, and what do you touch? Right? And those are your five senses. And the more you stimulate those, the more you build those chemicals. So, right. If I am just sitting here and I’m working and I can’t get outside, right.
And I think, okay, I can’t get outside necessarily. Get sunlight. But I still got senses to work with. Right. So can I get up, can I sort of move my eyes around, right. Can I take in sort of different data for a minute and start stimulating senses that way? Can I, I’ll tell clients all the time, right? You have a taste one at any time.
At my desk I have typically like Big Red cuz nothing will wake you up like Big Red, um, or anything else that’s just sort of jarring, right? Or, you know, if, let’s say you’re a tea drinker, Put a, um, cinnamon stick in it, right? That’s just different for you, right? Get a different flavor of a tea or a coffee.
So if you think about it, you can do things that sort of stimulate your senses, which will build those sleep chemicals. So even if I can’t get up, but because I got meetings all day. But I have sort of a, um, my tea set out already with like, you know, a special sort of smell to it or whatever it is that will also build those sleep chemicals because I’m stimulating those senses.
So, smelly candles, lotions, um, we talk a lot about lavenders at night, which are great, right? It’s, it’s, aromatherapy can be very helpful. There’s also aromatherapy that can help during the day, so anything that stimulates it’s citrus, you know, I have a, I have a grapefruit one I like and a lemon one because it just, it’s stimulating, right?
It keeps me. Awake, right? All of those things are building those sleep chemicals, so it doesn’t require a lot. It just requires you to sort of be aware of it so that you can take advantage of it during your day.
Mark Kinsley: I think about the inverse of what you just described as bedtime routine. Yes. And one of the things that I talk a lot about when people ask me, Hey, how can I get a good night’s sleep?
And we’re not talking about mattresses. It really comes down to a bedtime. So let’s, let’s go from the daytime to bedtime. Talk about that, because I think it can be very anxiety inducing for a lot of people. How do you tell them that a bedtime routine benefits them? And then what are some good best practices for creating a bedtime routine?
It’s a great
Kimberly Lemke: question. It’s, it’s huge. I, I have 12 year old twins, and I remember right when they were babies, if they’re supposed to go to bed at eight, at like 7 45, that’s not when I started. Right. I didn’t just bring ’em upstairs. Throw ’em in their, you know, bed and be like, ah, you know, mommy out. Right?
Like you, you know, you have to, you know, you give ’em a bath, right? You take them maybe on an evening walk, you play soft soothing music. You read ’em a story. Um, you might have them do stretching. There’s so many things that we do for our kids that we don’t do for ourselves, and so I tell adults there is absolutely nothing different about you.
You also need to shut down your system. Your body wants to sleep. Your brain wants to sleep, right? It, it wants to heal, right? It wants to flush itself out, right? It wants to get rid of, you know, the toxins that’s built during the day. You’ve given it information during the day. It has to organize, so your body wants to sleep.
And so that nighttime routine is you working with your body to start shutting it. Down, right? You start dimming the lights, you start, right? If you can turning off the cell phones, the computers, you start maybe putting the lavender sense out. Maybe you take a bath or you know, a, a shower, if those are calming to you.
I tell people progressive muscle relaxation. Um, if you just Google that, there’s a billion different transcripts you can follow on that. And so you’re really setting yourself up so that it’s like a computer, you’re just sort of shutting it down, you know, one step at a time, one tab at a time so that it can then fall into sleep.
And it’s gonna be very hard to do that if you know your bedtime’s 10 and at 9 58. You just close the computing and try to lay down. You really wanna create that nighttime routine to start sort of shutting down your body so that it starts triggering what it needs to to start
Mark Kinsley: putting you to sleep.
Talking with Dr. Kimberly Lemke, taking us to school on all things sleep. I love it. She created the drift course. It is@driftcourse.com and I like this, you say, in less than 14 minutes, you will know the secrets to falling asleep and staying asleep. What are some of the biggest challenges with people you’ve worked with that you’ve seen them able to overcome with adopting sleep strategies and about how long does it take typically?
Because, I mean, you know, doing it one night, doing it two nights, 21 nights a year. So I
Kimberly Lemke: think the amount of time depends on the severity of your sleep issues, right? Some people have had insomnia for years, you know, and it becomes a little bit harder and a little bit longer of a process. One of the things that is so important is, and, and this is where I think, you know, people look at this strategy and think I’ve lost my mind, um, is this idea of our bed being somewhere where we sleep.
Right. That’s what the bed is for, right? So I, I tell people a mattress and a bed is for sleep and sex, and that is it. We’re not in there reading. We’re not in there doing work. We’re not in there watching tv. That is what it is for. And, and the reason is, so there’s, um, so Pavlov, Pavlov, I don’t know if you, you know him, but he’s right.
A scientist basically who, he had dogs, right? And he would have a dog and he would show it meat. And you know, as soon as he did, the dog would drool and we would expect that, right? It’s, it’s natural. And then he sort of paired that meat with a bell and, and so we would see the dog drool and we should, cuz the meat is still present, right?
And this might sound like, why is she talking about dogs and meat? But I promise you it has to do with sleep. Um, and so what happens is, right, like, so you keep pairing it and then he would remove the mean. And just play the bell. And we still notice that the dogs would drool. And the reason is is that he paired right.
And it’s a sort of a conditioning we have as people and humans that we pair things together that shouldn’t be paired. So we should not see a dog drooling to a bell. It makes no biological sense, but we’ve paired it over time. Sleep is very similar. If we pair our mattress with somewhere that we’re awake, we condition ourselves to believe that when we get in bed, this is somewhere that we’re awake.
And what we’re trying to do is do the opposite and condition ourselves that sleep is somewhere that is happening only on a mattress. And so I tell people, if you are waking up in the middle of the night, And you are up more than 15 to 20 minutes. The one of the main, you know, tips and secrets I have is that you do have to get out of that bed.
Um, now you don’t, it’s not like you’re putting yourself in a timeout, right? Like you’re not in trouble. Um, you know, but you’re going to somewhere that’s sort of, I call it a comfy place. So it’s somewhere that you can relax and you can be calm and you know, we got. Lighting low, but we’re waiting to see signs of sleep.
Not tired. So sleep is right. My eyes closing, my head bobbing. As soon as I see sleep signs, not tire signs, I go to my bed. Um, because that’s what I wanna start pairing is as soon as my body and my head hit that pillow and I’m in bed, that I’ve paired that to where I’m asleep and not where I’m awake and watching TV and reading books or whatever.
It’s.
Mark Kinsley: So the comfy place is somewhere you’d have maybe a, like a book lamp or a low light. Yeah. So it’s not, I’m not flipping on the overhead lights. Do you recommend that people actually read, I, I talk about reading fiction versus reading non-fiction. Non-fiction is like, Hey, have you ever read a kid a bedtime story versus read having them read a math book?
Yes. No. You would have them do a bedtime story. So can you read when you get up in that situation?
Kimberly Lemke: You can, I, I, there’s a sort of a worksheet in that course that I talk about, like doing an experiment, which is everybody is so different, right? So for me, if you put me, I think it was just years of grad school, like, you put me in front of any book and I’m gonna fall asleep, I just, you know, I just am, right?
And so it doesn’t matter what type of book it is for me, but you have to really sort of do an experiment with yourself. And if you read nonfiction or fiction, Either one and you fall asleep. Great. If you read either one and it keeps you awake, cross it off, right? Listening to music, that’s great. If there’s a type of music that’s alerting and it starts getting you jazzed, right?
That’s not what you need to be listening to, right? So it’s really this idea of experiment with yourself when you’re in that zone. And if the things you are doing are helping sort of increase those signs of sleepy sooner, then do more of that. And again, you might do something that you think would be helpful and it’s actually alerting.
So we take that off the table and you do something else.
Mark Kinsley: I learned something new about my wife the other day. She told me, do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and you’re singing songs in your head? I. And I thought about it for a moment and I said, no, I, that doesn’t really happen to me. She goes, I have to tell myself no singing.
That’s not gonna help you get back to to bed. She’s like, I was singing to Lizzo in the middle of the night when I woke up the other day. Oh my God. I love that. She’s like, I had to tell myself no singing. And I’m like, you have to tell yourself no singing. She’s like, yes. I have
Kimberly Lemke: to tell myself singing. I didn’t hurt.
I would be best friends because I love singing.
Mark Kinsley: It’s true. Right? Said you, you said you talk with your hands and you’re Italian. She is too. Okay.
Kimberly Lemke: See, she, both of us would absolutely wake up to lizza, without a doubt. Um, with, without a doubt. And it’s, you know, it’s interesting because I, what do you say that my kids will know?
It’s about me too. You can’t give me. Songs with words too close to bed because I’ll sing, like I just, I have a problem, right? Like I just wanna sing along. So I will have to put on like instrumental stuff for stuff I’ve heard a thousand times that like I don’t even pay attention to. But if you gimme like a new song that I like with words, no, it ain’t gonna go well.
Mark Kinsley: So that’s how you sabotage your sleep, right? Yes. Put on some Lizzo or, you know, some fresh new tea Swifty. Yes. And you’re outta the gate. You’re humming it all night long. So true. Okay, I got it. It’s so true. It’s so
Kimberly Lemke: true. And again, I think you know that once people understand that sleep balloon analogy, you start to really be able to answer for yourself, how am I sabotaging sleep?
Right? So I, I always tell people that I work with, or that I coach, or that I do workshops for. You know, I, I’ll say never have to teach birds how to sleep or cows how to sleep. Right. They know how we get in our way. So if you understand the idea that sleep alone and what builds those chemicals as people I see so frequently, I didn’t have a good night’s sleep last night, and so tonight I’m gonna go to bed earlier.
Mm. Now if you understand what we’re talking about with this sleep alone idea, right? If I go to bed earlier, It does not help me get a good night’s sleep, right? It’s gonna affect now this night and then this night. So I might be so focused on catching up that I’m doing things that are interrupting current sleep.
So if I go to bed earlier, I’m not getting sunlight, I’m not stimulating my senses. I’m probably laying there tired, but awake. And so I’m not, I’m not building any sleep chemicals, which means I’m gonna have a poor night’s sleep. Or if, let’s say, you know, you, you want to sleep in in the morning, Cuz you had a poor night’s sleep the night before.
In theory it makes sense. But if I sleep in now until 10, which I don’t think I’ve done in 20 years, but if I did right, I’m not getting sleep, I’m not getting any morning sun. I’m not getting any movement in. I’ve now thrown off my schedule. So we do things to try to compensate for poor sleep that continues to set us up for poor night’s sleep.
And so we just have to allow ourselves not to catastrophize it. Have a bad night’s sleep, it’s fine. Right? We, we will, we will absolutely make up for that, but we have to get out of our own way and not sabotage it. Have your bad
Mark Kinsley: night’s sleep. Wake up, get out in the sunlight. Yes. Right away. And to nap. Or not to nap.
How are naps? Light cupcakes.
Kimberly Lemke: If you think about a, a, a diabetic and you think about a non-diabetic, A cupcake in and of itself is fine. A nap in and of itself is, is fine. It’s its own thing. If, let’s say, di if I have a, if I’m sitting next to a diabetic and they eat this cupcake, it is going to absolutely affect their system a lot worse than if I eat it, not as a diabetic.
And so naps are very similar. So if, let’s say, I don’t have an issue sleeping and I want a nap. I’m not, I, I told you this earlier, that people get mad when I go after their naps if they’re nappers. It’s like you don’t touch somebody’s nap. If you have trouble sleeping though, you have to look at it because it’s like a cupcake in that it’s going to affect certain people who struggle with things differently and, and a lot more intensely.
So if, let’s say I take a two hour nap and I’m a poor sleeper. That is two hours during my day of two things. One, I’m not building it. The other thing I’m doing is I’m using those sleep chemicals that I’ve already built. So my balloon is getting a little soggy, if you will, the more I use those nap chemicals.
So your body doesn’t know, oh, these are nap chemicals, these are sleep chemicals at night. It doesn’t know you’re using them. And once they’re gone, they’re gone. So really be mindful of that, right? That if you are somebody who doesn’t have sleep issues and you want a nap and just like that cupcake, you wanna eat it, great.
If you’re somebody who really struggles though with sleep and you’re taking naps, I really look at those and see if you can either take ’em out or, you know, safety-wise, if you have to have one, that you limit it. You know, if you can limit it to, let’s say a 30 minute nap or something like that to where, you know, we use some of ’em, but we’re not using.
A
Mark Kinsley: lot of ’em. Do you find it’s better just for overall health and wellness and sleep health to have that contiguous sleep at night, that uninterrupted sleep at night,
Kimberly Lemke: um, rather than the nap.
Mark Kinsley: Yeah, I mean, so fragmented sleep, obviously, meaning if you wake up, you know, during the night, but you still kind of get the amount that you need.
Um, or can some people, you know, maybe this is a minority of people, but can they get a little bit less sleep at night and, you know, supplement that sleep with a nap? I’m just, those are maybe, yeah. Kind of the one-off cases that we don’t want to like, create any type of broad brush strokes around. But I’m, I’m always curious like, okay.
Uh, does that contiguous sleep? Do some things for your body. Um, I’ve heard about sleep spindles happening between hours six and seven that help with your motor movements, things like that.
Kimberly Lemke: Yeah, no, that’s a great question. We, you know, we cycle through sleep stages. So sleep isn’t a consistent, um, process.
Sleep, you know, really fluctuate throughout the day and you enter into various stages of sleep. The various stages of sleep have different functions for us. Those deeper stages of sleep and those rem right, that’s where a lot of restorative sleep happens, right? That’s where we literally see our brain being washed, if you will, when we’re asleep.
Um, when we get into those deeper stages, we see memories being stored. You know, we see a lot of, of, of positive benefits to hitting. Those later stages of sleep. So, you know, I would really recommend that we keep it as continuous as possible so that we can sort of hit those later stages of sleep. So you’re absolutely better, you know, it’s quality, not quantity, right?
So if you can, if you can lay in, in, in your bed asleep and hit those throughout the night, that’s what we wanna do. Rather than, you know, I’m gonna take five here at night, get two, and during the day, and we really want sort of a quality. Nighttime routine to or nighttime sort of path, if you will, sleep wise, so that we get the health effects of good sleep.
Mark Kinsley: It’s a fascinating exercise too, if you ever sit down and you think about your, your sleep in terms of 90 minute segments, you know, a full sleep cycle. So a friend of mine, um, had, had read a, a book by a sleep doctor and he decided he was gonna map out his sleep cycle. So that’s what he counts instead of, instead of a night of sleep.
And so what he found is that, You know, if you’re gonna get, you know, five good sleep cycles for your night of sleep, and he goes to bed at 10 30, 10 o’clock, let’s, let’s say 10 30. That’s an easier one. Yeah. So 10 32, 12, that’s one. And then 1 33, 4 30. And then six at 6:00 AM So hang with me on this if you’re listening and you’re not watching because we, we could do some hand movements here, but I know math doesn’t always translate to the audio side of things, but so that’s five sleep cycles and you get 90 minutes for every sleep cycle.
And what he found was if he continued sleeping past 6:00 AM and he got up at say, six 30, Or seven even. He didn’t actually complete another full cycle, so it didn’t give him the full benefits of that restorative sleep cycle. So timing out your sleep and mapping out your sleep in that way, that may be like, you know, next level Yeah.
Type of information. But he had a lot of success with that. Yeah.
Kimberly Lemke: Well cuz he, he sort of saw, right, like what happens when you complete the cycles, right? Is that it does have a very healthy effect on your system. One thing I see is, is. People really try to manage their sleep and they really try to control it.
And sometimes that can work against us too. So, you know, I’ll have people who, whether it’s, you know, their electronic devices that they wear, whatever it is, you know, they’ll, they’ll feel like they slept fine and then they’ll sort of look at their watch and be like, oh, I must not have slept fine. And then they try to like interfere with it.
Or they double think in like, okay, today I’m gonna, and so what we find too sometimes is like our heads get in the way if we try to control it too much, right? We get in our own way, which is why. Going back do. I don’t teach birds how to sleep. I don’t teach. They don’t get in their way. Right. They just like, okay, maybe they were up all night.
I. Well, they’re gonna even it out somehow, right? So a hundred percent agree with you on we have to understand those sleep cycles and we wanna get in as many as we can. We also don’t wanna overthink it cuz then we’re gonna get anxious because we’re not getting the right amount. And then anxiety will never help you sleep in like the history of anxiety.
Right? So, you know, it’s sort of that idea too of don’t make yourselves too anxious about it because now we’re gonna create a whole nother issue, um, at night that we don’t want to create if we don’t have to.
Mark Kinsley: I think everybody should just relax. Yes. Like truly just relax. And I’m gonna tell you why.
Because there is part of your body, brain, it’s a sense that doesn’t go to sleep. And that, that was our sleep summit quiz question. I think it’s time that we, we brought this back to the surface. What is the one sense you have that doesn’t go to sleep? And, and, and I’m saying that, And kinda like a dolphin swinging through the water with one eye open, right?
Half of their brain doesn’t go to sleep. You’ve got part of you that’s staying awake to make sure everything’s, you know, checked up on, or, you know, everything’s good. So, okay. Dr. Olympia, what is the one part. What is the one sense that doesn’t go to sleep? And explain this to us cuz I had never heard this.
Kimberly Lemke: Yeah. So the one sense that will not go to sleep and the one system is our auditory system, and the reason is it’s, it’s to keep us alive, right? So we want to be able to hear if something’s coming or somebody’s coming. Right? There’s, there’s. Right. Life benefits to that. Right. So our, our body will not shut that off completely.
It will sort of, it will mute it a little bit, but it will always be on. So that’s why our fire alarms, our auditory, that’s why the alarms that wake us up, um, our auditory, it’s because that one system is always awake in the background. And so there’s a blessing to that and there’s a curse to that. So the, the blessing becomes right, like safety-wise, that system is always running.
Curse wise is if you are playing things in the background to help you sleep, um, your body is aware you’re doing it. So, uh, I told you earlier, I’m a little bit of like a hallmark spaz, um, like I adore it way too much. Um, and so. It is so consistent cuz every movie is like the exact same, right? That what I’m typically watching at 9:00 PM is gonna be almost exactly the same as the one I’m watching at 1:00 PM right?
A lot of stations or a lot of music doesn’t necessarily hold true to that. And so, you know, you will see, uh, commercials come on and become louder. And the reason is cuz they’re taking advantage of that. So I dunno if you’ve ever noticed that, but you know, you’re like watching something, all of a sudden a commercial comes on and you’re like, oh my gosh.
Right? And the reason is mm-hmm. It knows that that one doesn’t go to sleep. And if you are asleep, it wants to wake you back up to pay attention to what they’re trying to sell you. Um, so just be very mindful of that. So the noise machines, if you’re, if you’re falling asleep to any sort of podcasts or sleep stories or music, you just wanna be sure that there’s nothing happening.
Throughout your night, that is gonna wake you up because as soon as you’re that sense, Sort of feels something shift, it’s gonna wake you up just to make sure you’re safe. And so you really wanna minimize that. So I’m more of a fan of things like fans or, you know, white noises or, you know, there’s pink noise, brown noise, because nothing will shift on those.
Um, typically within those. Um, versus when you’re doing anything that is verbal or anything that’s musical, you can have shifts in that, that can wake you up.
Mark Kinsley: Wow. Cool. Great fact. Great sleep. Summit quiz question. So now you got something to take back to your office, the water cooler, your team, and you can, uh, educate them just like Dr.
Kimberly Lemke did with us today. It’s so great to have you on the Sleep Summit Show. How can people get connected with you? Do, should they go to drift course.com? Is that the best way to reach out?
Kimberly Lemke: So j course.com or you can go to Lincoln, Dr. Kimberly Lemke. Instagram, Dr. Kimberly Lemke. Just Dr. Kimberly Lemke.
And you’ll, you’ll find me somewhere.
Mark Kinsley: Not napping, though. Not
Kimberly Lemke: napping. Stay awake.
Mark Kinsley: Oh. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. We, we are not done yet, though. We are not done yet because we have not found out. The strangest place Dr. Kimberly Lemke has ever
slept.
Kimberly Lemke: Oh Lord. Um, I have a dear friend Stephanie, who’s gonna hate me saying this.
Um, so I don’t camp. Well, um, there’s. Too many critters. And she promised me, this was like a week, or this was about a year ago, that if I went camping with her, that, um, she would have a blow up mattress in the back. We would, it would be super comfy. Everything would be great. And so she brought this mattress to blow up in her car.
Um, and at 11 o’clock at night, uh, her battery was dead. And we were around nobody who could come help us. And so seats wouldn’t tilt back. Mattresses didn’t blow up. Um, there’s absolutely nothing. And it was like the middle of summer. So we had to both sort of like lean against the window in the back seat and then constantly open the door just to get air and then close it cuz mosquitoes would come in.
Um, and so I, you know, she, she knew that, um, I wasn’t, I was, it was so bad. And so as we’re laying there opening and closing this. Something else must shorted in her car. That set off an alarm that would go off every 20 minutes. And so we would, we would be laying in the back opening and closing it, trying to breathe, not laying in mosquitoes.
And then every 30 minutes, like this loud blaring, um, alarm would go off. And so that by far is the weirdest and most horrible place I have ever slept. And so in the morning, I, grace graciously asked for somebody to jump the car so that I could go home.
Never to go camping
Mark Kinsley: again. Yeah. That’s a comedy of heirs. That’s like one thing after another, after another after you’re, so you’re not gonna, she’s not gonna drag you into camping again. She’s, she’s not gonna sell you on like, Hey, I’ve got an rv. It’s the same type that like, rock bands tour in. You’re not in, I you’re not
Kimberly Lemke: in for it.
I, I adore her, but I will no longer trust her.
Most things I will, when it comes to camping, like, Ease. She has lost complete, I’ve lost trust in her. I still adore her if she’s listening, but I will not sleep with her in that car ever again. She’s keeping,
Mark Kinsley: she’s, she’s trying to balance out all the good work you’re doing with making sure that nobody gets a good night’s sleep.
She did. When they so very well, I might say,
well, sorry. Sorry, bestie, but there’s not gonna be a repeat try on this one. Mm-hmm. Well, Maybe there’ll be a repeat with us. We, I’d love to catch up with you again. Dr. O Lemke, thank you so much for being on the Sleep Summit Show. You’re amazing and thank you for all the good work you’re doing in the industry.
Kimberly Lemke: Oh, thank you for having me. I appreciate you.
