3. Dr. Wendy Troxel - Sleep Expert

Mar 17, 2020

Sleep expert Dr. Wendy Troxel is a Senior Behavioral and Social Scientist at the RAND Corporation and Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. She is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in behavioral treatments for insomnia and other sleep disorders and has been interviewed and featured on Good Morning America, CBS Sunday Morning, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times among others. She’s given two TEDx talks. The first on the impact of early start times on adolescent sleep and development. Her most recent talk dove into her study of how relationships impact our sleep. In today's show Dr. Troxel explains why it’s a fools errand to try and pigeon hole the role of sleep as it permeates across all aspects of our lives in ways that the medical community at large is still only beginning to understand. She discusses that while sleep study is rapidly growing there's a need to study sleep “in the wild” as often the studies being conducted in the laboratory are not representative of the environment we as individuals and partners actually sleep. Dr. Troxel discusses how the roles we play can increase our vigilance and disrupt our sleep. The need to create a routine to calm our evolutionary default to vigilance and create an environment for sleep. What we can do to help ourselves be physiologically prepared to sleep. Some best practices that you can integrate into your night time routine. How much trust we should put in today’s sleep trackers. The need for good quality sleep vs. simply an hourly recommendation. The importance of how relationships impact sleep and how critical sleep is to the quality of your relationships. Why our understanding of adolescent sleep means we need to rethink what are healthy school start times for our kids.

Wendy’s TED Talks: