Sleep Science: Mouth Taping, Melatonin & How to Sleep Better with Dr. Michael Breus
That Can't Be True with Chelsea ClintonShow Notes
We’ve all heard time and time again how important sleep is to our health. But no one really tells us how to become better sleepers, what to do if and when our sleep changes, and which supplements and hacks are worth trying. Chelsea gets all the answers to our sleeping questions from Dr. Michael Breus, who has been bringing science-backed sleep expertise to the public for nearly three decades. He’s a double board-certified Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Sleep Specialist with a podcast called “Better in Bed” releasing this fall. They discuss mouth taping, lettuce water, melatonin, sleep chronotypes, and why we all wake up around 2am. Plus, does warm milk really make you sleepy?
You can follow Dr. Michael Breus @thesleepdoctor on Instagram and Youtube.
Resources mentioned in episode:
– How To Do the 4-7-8 Breathing Exercise
– Breaking social media fads and uncovering the safety and efficacy of mouth taping in patients with mouth breathing, sleep disordered breathing, or obstructive sleep apnea: A systematic review
– Timeshifter App
The Clinton Foundation is a non-partisan organization that develops leaders and accelerates solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. To learn more and be a part of the work, visit www.clintonfoundation.org.
Stay up to date with Lemonada on Facebook and Instagram.
For a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this and every other Lemonada show, go to lemonadamedia.com/sponsors.Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at lemonadapremium.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from That Can't Be True with Chelsea Clinton
What if you could get pregnant in your 40s using eggs from your 20s or 30s? You can, and more and more people are doing it. Chelsea Clinton talks with OB-GYN and fertility specialist Dr. Lucky Sekhon about how egg freezing works, what a cycle costs, and why the average patient is getting younger. They also discuss IVF, insurance coverage, grifters selling "egg rejuvenation,” and how celebrity stories, like Hilary Swank's pregnancy at 52, can leave out the full picture. Plus, a round of Fact or Fiction: Does IVF cause early menopause? Does sperm age? Can you stay on birth control while freezing your eggs?
Peabody Award-winning physician Dr. Joel Bervell joins Chelsea Clinton to fact-check viral claims and headlines, from plague panic to raw goat’s milk to unregulated peptides, and explains why misinformation is harder to fight than ever. He also discusses how medicine was built around the white, able-bodied male, and how that bias shows up in everything from BMI to prenatal screenings to after-visit summaries. Plus, how his favorite animated show changed his life and how he’s paying it forward.
More than 1 in 5 people diagnosed with HIV in 2024 already had AIDS, even though we have powerful tools to prevent and treat it. In honor of National PrEP Day (October 10), Chelsea talks with Dr. Demetre Daskalakis (former CDC and NYC Health Department) and Tristan Schukraft, founder and CEO of Mistr, about HIV prevention, PrEP access, and why stigma still keeps people from getting tested. They cover the PrEP gap for women, the shift from a daily pill to a twice-yearly injection, why an STI diagnosis should prompt a conversation about PrEP, how "undetectable equals untransmittable" could help end new infections, and what it would take to make testing routine.
Meditation gets recommended for everything, from anxiety and chronic pain to insomnia and addiction. But what if it's not always the harmless cure-all it's made out to be? Chelsea talks with journalist Olga Khazan, author of The Atlantic's "The Dark Side of Mindfulness" and the book Me, But Better, about the surprising risks of meditation, including a researcher's finding that it can worsen sleep and trigger psychosis in intense retreat settings. They also dig into Olga's year-long experiment reshaping her own personality — from improv classes to saying yes to everything — plus the science behind small talk and which personality tests actually hold up.
Pennsylvania's measles outbreak has claimed its fourth death — all unvaccinated — even as the CDC's public dashboard shows zero. Chelsea Clinton talks with epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera about the politics behind that disconnect, including RFK Jr.'s reported push to alter the CDC's count, and how "died of" versus "died with" a disease is being twisted. They also unpack the EPA's removal of cancer risk estimates from air pollution data and newly released 9/11 air quality documents.