What is the bidirectional relationship between sex and sleep? Tune into this week's episode and prepare to be fascinated! :) Amy Killen MD is an anti-aging and regenerative physician specializing in sexual optimization, aesthetics, and longevity medicine. In this episode of Sleep Is A Skill, Dr. Killen talks about her story and how her work transforms the conversation around sex & sleep. *Spoiler: As a former ER physician, she knows a thing or two about sleep optimization.
BIO:
Amy Killen MD is an anti-aging and regenerative physician specializing in sexual
optimization, aesthetics and longevity medicine. Board certified in emergency
medicine with ten years of ER experience, Dr. Killen saw the impact of unchecked
chronic disease and disability from the front lines before transitioning to anti-aging
and regenerative medicine.
An international speaker, clinical practice owner, medical director of a national
regenerative medicine physician training course, author, and frequent media guest,
Dr. Killen has become an outspoken advocate for empowering patients to look and
feel their best by merging lifestyle modification, hormone optimization,
personalized medicine and regenerative therapy.
SHOW NOTES:
💌 Dr. Killen’s story and how her work transforms the conversation around sleep
💌 Biohacking your rhythm with increased sexual activity
💌 Different methods to improve your sleep...like mouth taping
💌 Current research on different forms of pleasure before sleep and their effectiveness
💌 The relationship between one’s sex life and depression/anxiety
💌 Myth or fact: people should ejaculate less as they get older
Check out Dr. Killen’s website: https://dramykillen.com/
Email Dr. Killen: amy@dramykillen.com
Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.amybkillen/?hl=en
Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrAmyBKillen
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amykillenmd
Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dramybkillen
Mollie McGlocklin - The Sleep Is A Skill Podcast - Ep 028 (1...
Fri, 1/8 10:24AM • 45:04
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
sex, people, sleep, hormones, orgasm, erections, problems, nitric oxide, women, doctor, point, area, studies, testosterone, topic, progesterone, stress, killin, life, therapist
00:04
Welcome to the sleep as a skilled podcast. My name is Mollie McGlocklin. And I own a company that optimizes sleep through technology accountability and behavioral change. Each week I'll be interviewing world class experts ranging from doctors, innovators and thought leaders to give actionable tips and strategies that you can implement to become a more skillful sleeper. Let's jump into your dose of practical sleep training.
00:34
Welcome to the sleep as a skilled podcast. My guest today is Dr. Amy killin and I cannot be more excited for you to hear this episode. And part of the reason is that we are discussing a topic that we have not touched on at all so far on this podcast. And that is the bi directional relationship of your sexual health and your sleep health. And so some of you might be like, of course, yes, this is so connected and others of you know, my say, what, how in the world are those topics connected and certainly bidirectional? so don't you worry we will get into all those details and more I think you're going to really enjoy this. But first want to just let you know a little bit about our guests. So again, Dr. Amy Callen is an anti aging and regenerative physician specializing in sexual optimization, aesthetics and longevity medicine, board certified in emergency medicine with 10 years of er experience Dr. killin saw the impact of unchecked chronic disease and disability from the frontlines before transitioning to anti aging and regenerative medicine. An international speaker, clinical practice owner, medical director of the National regenerative medicine physician training course author and frequent media guests Dr. killin has become an outspoken advocate for empowering patients to look and feel their best by merging lifestyle modification, hormone optimization, and personalized medicine and regenerative therapy, I know that you're going to really enjoy this episode. Now before we get into the podcast, I do want to take a quick minute to give a shout out to our sponsor better help or as I like to call it a therapist in your pocket. It's the exact app that I use when I was going through my really challenging period of insomnia while traveling overseas. And the ability to maintain a consistent therapist in real life was just really not an option for me since we were jumping around from country to country. So the ability to with using my phone have video calls weekly with my therapist that was paired with it. For me, actually, I connected with a great therapist right off the bat. But I do know other people who have been able to kind of shop around with some of the therapists on that app until they find a great fit for them. And in between those calls. One of the things that I found was really helpful is that you can also send voice notes, text messages, images in between that you no longer weekly video call, so that you do have this really very real ongoing connection and support that I certainly at least in my experience hadn't felt with real life therapists that I've used in the past. And also the pricing structure is much more competitive than a lot of the real life therapists that you can come into contact with. So I found it to be a lot of benefits. I recommend it to a lot of people that are just kind of going through struggles in their life or just simply want to be able to uplevel and get bringing that level of reflection and awareness into their life, about what's both working and not worth getting. And you can certainly cancel at any time and for our sleepy community. The betterhelp company has hooked us up with 10% off if you go to better help.com forward slash sleep is a skill again betterhelp.com forward slash sleep is a skill. And welcome to the sleep as a skill podcast. I'm so grateful that you were able to take the time to speak with us today. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm excited to be here. Thank you. Awesome. So I know that there's going to be a lot of information for us to cover today. But I think we can start with hearing a bit of your story and how certainly your work relates to our continued quest, at least on this podcast to continually look at and improve our sleep. I'm Amy, Amy khylin and I am anti aging and regenerative physician I specialize. I say I'm specialized in sex and skin. So sex is a big part of my practice. I do a lot of work with integrated medicine and regenerative medicine and just trying to help people have MBO improve, improve sex lives and sexual longevity is a big piece as well working with people as they get older to try to stay sexually healthy, and then using that as a way to stay kind of generally healthy. So that's kind of my my short version. I've been doing this specific thing for the last seven or eight years and before that I was a an ER doctor. So if you want to talk to me
05:00
Talk about lack of sleep, we can go, I can go down that
05:05
you guys are pros. Actually, it's actually funny because one of the things that made me decide to leave the emergency department after many years was I had, I had three kids at towards the end of that within a couple of years, and was just sleeping so radically and so horribly. And, and after many years of that, decided that I just couldn't handle it anymore. So I decided to leave the ER, but so sleep was actually one of the big reasons for that. But I've been doing what I've been doing now for like the last eight or so years, and it's very different from the ER, but I love it so much. Oh, that's amazing. Wow, what a story. And isn't that interesting too, how sleep can play such a factor in a roll into oftentimes needing to really change the course or the direction of our lives, when that is not working, there's nothing that will make you move faster, when that continues to just be an area that's just not fulfilling on what we need. So I totally hear that. And, uh, you know, partly how I've been connected with you is a few people had sent me Your, your Instagram, which is fantastic. And so we'll share in the show notes too, to make sure people can follow you there. And you've given a lot of information to around certainly sex and its relationship to sleep and how they're both, you know, kind of coexist serving each other. So I'd love to dive in a bit more, and how people can make that connection of how those two are interconnected. Yeah, they're, they're very much interconnected. In fact, it's funny, there was a study done, I think, in 2017, in the UK, where they were looking at, you know, what makes people especially feel good, and what contributes to just general wellness, and that they're looking at everything from, from how much money you make, to, you know, to sleep and sex and, and various things. And that what they found was actually, that, that sleep and sex were the two most important things, when it came to creating a sense of well being, like, above everything else above how much money you make above, you know, your relationship status, like it was, it was sleep first, actually. And it was sex, sex second. So the two of those things are so important. And they they're, they're very much intertwined. The way that you know, sex affects how you eat, and how you sleep affects your sex life. And it's this sort of snowball effect that goes back and forth. So I feel like the two of those should are like little best friends. I love that. That is, those are little best friends. And it's so funny to them. You know, I'll be working with clients and people will have, you know, difficulty in kind of creating a solid evening routine, and just what do I even do with myself, if I'm not on all the tech and the lights and the, you know, phone, all the things. And when I will kind of controversial lands, often for many people controversially of bringing up this topic, and even if they're single of kind of, you know, self pleasure and all those topics, it can really get murky. So I'm so glad that you're helping to bring this into the forefront lose kind of the weirdness around the topic, and really get into the nitty gritty of the why and the science of you know how interconnected This is. And actually, again, one of the conversations that we had connected over was this great Instagram posts that you would put up of someone sharing about how when they started mouth taping before bed, that they were now waking up with not nocturnal erections again, yay, exclamation.
08:20
So I know that's a loaded topic, literally. But
08:25
I'm wondering if we could, you know, just I know, we're going a lot of directions. But if we could just even point to how, how this is that this is so linked up. So the quality of your sleep, then, you know, fulfilling on the quality of your sex life and vice versa. So if we can unpack a little bit of this, that would be great. Yeah, so there's, there's so many components to it. So so so first of all, the mouth taping story was funny, because it was one it's one of my colleagues. And we were actually in the procedure room doing a procedure with like, there's like five of us in there, like a whole staff of people. And and my colleague who knows I really interested in Sexual Medicine, you know, he just like he's just, he just comes out was like, hey, so I started mouth taping and I started having all these erections again, and it's fantastic. And so I was like, Oh, my gosh, you're like, tell me, so we had this whole conversation, you know, like mid procedure, which is how I loved it. But we believe that when you have a healthy sex life, that it improves your sleep. And the reason I say believe is, is because unfortunately, it's actually kind of difficult to do these studies, there have been studies done there's there's definitely a research that shows that couples who who have sex, like at night before bed, for instance, they say that they sleep better, they say that it takes less time to get to sleep. And they say that they actually sleep more soundly. And some of this is just kind of, you know, they're self reporting on that because most of this was done before we had like aura rings, and you know, and things like that, where we could actually just not invasively look at our sleep. So the thing that they're out there, they're having to do all kinds of crazy tests back in the old days, but even this self reporting is you can look at it and people are generally feeling like if they have
10:00
Good sexual experience before bed, then they sleep better. And there's a lot of reasons for that, probably that we know that with men especially they release a hormone called prolactin during orgasm, that is very, it makes you very sleepy. And so that's I'm sure that most guys, they could tell you that they they have an orgasm, they get really tired right afterwards. And they may not stay asleep for very long, but they at least get kind of drained for a few minutes. with women, the estrogen that is released is thought to actually improve your rim a portion of your sleep and to kind of strengthen the REM portion of your sleep. And then you also both of them will release we both release oxytocin, which is sort of a bot you know, bonding hormone and kind of like cuddly hormone and like let's just cuddle up on our blankets and relax kind of hormone. And that's, you know, happens during sex as well. And even with, with masturbation, there's, there's research a little bit of research into whether or not sort of self pleasure before going, you're right before bed, Is that helpful for sleeping. And it's funny, I was just reviewing a paper yesterday, before we came on here today, I have to read you this because it's so funny, please. So I just I have it ready for you. So So they took these five women, five men, and they they had them do different things. So some of them had to would read for 15 minutes and then go to sleep. One group was like, you know, kind of self pleasuring, but not going all the way to orgasm, and then they would go to sleep. And then the other group would do like the whole thing with orgasm, and they're trying to see, is there a difference? Like, can we say that something is causing improvements in ability to get to sleep as well as you know, stay asleep. And so at the end of the studies was a small group, they said that they didn't really see a lot of differences, they weren't really seeing a lot of improvements necessarily in sleep latency and the ability to get sleep. However, they said, however, the presence of the researcher having to remove the anal probe following orgasm may have delayed participants sleep latency.
11:58
Good What a nice Asterix.
12:01
These are this kind of these are the kind of like, again, before, like all the technology that we have now, like they actually had to put like probes and things like inside of people to see, are they having an orgasm? Are they asleep? Like they're doing all the, you know, crazy EKGs on the head. And so the data is limited on that. But I think that there's a lot of especially now that we have, we already have all these technologies, they can actually track our sleep, as well as technologies. They can even track how strong your orgasms are. There's vibrators and things like that, I can do that. So I think we have the tools now to do it better. We do. Yes, I look. First of all, I'm so glad you came prepared with that awesome example. And second of all, and you're so right, it's a very exciting time, because I'll also share anecdotally, I'm sure my boyfriend will love me sharing the story. But one gadget that I've been loving is familiar with the leaf, but it's so right, so you put it on, it's almost like a continuous glucose monitor, but for your HRV. And I have noticed so far in my time of using it that post orgasm, the HRV will really my HRV numbers will really improve. I've also had a few HRV experts on the podcast and pointing to and we really didn't thoroughly explore this enough. That's why I'm so glad to have you on here of the impact for orgasm on on our heart rate and on our HRV. So that's another kind of quantifiable way to take a look at that. But so you're so right. And I know this is a big topic, and we're kind of going in a bunch of directions of how beneficial it can be. But I think going back to this topic around even if we go back to say like the mouth taping example, I think many people are surprised to see to understand how that can link up and can you further just parse out a bit of like, why is that connected? Why would that help with erections? You know, just taking that as one example? Yeah, so mouth taping is interesting. I've only just recently learned about people have been telling me about it for years, but I didn't really know understand the connection. But one of the hormones are the chemicals, not a hormone one of the chemicals is really important for a wreck house productions. And for both men and women, you know, we both have erections, that is nitric oxide and nitric oxide is the main chemical messenger that tells your blood vessels to vezo dilate so to open up so you know to let more blood into different parts of the body. So whenever you have an erection, you have nitric oxide that signals Hey, we need some blood down here guys, and you get you get blood that rushes in. And one thing that happens as we get older and by older I mean really after age 20 or 30 is we stopped being able to make as much of our own nitric oxide. So a lot of the problems that we see with sexual dysfunction in both sexes is just a lack of nitric oxide, you know your body's you're ready, but you can't release enough nitric oxide to get the blood really to get into the area. So the reason so that's important because mouth taping, what it does is it forces you to breathe through your nose. And when you breathe through your nose, actually you're able to there's some either in the sinuses or the back of the nose.
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You're able to release nitric oxide into those areas and then when you breathe that air into your lungs, that nitric oxide is able to disseminate into the rest of your body. So there's studies with with mouth taping that have shown that that the nasal breathing will help with things like lowering your blood pressure and and you know, helping with all different other kind of cardiovascular benefits. But but a lot of those are probably due to nitric oxide, because that's your oxide is going to if you have enough of it, it will lower your blood pressure. But it's also what causes you to have a reaction so that was my friend. He's basically your your breathing and all this good nitric oxide from your nose. And it's getting into your bloodstream, and some of us going into your, you know, the pelvic area. And all of a sudden, you've got nocturnal erections, again, which are very healthy and what you do on AF. Wow, yes, I'm so glad you kind of explained that in a way that people can grasp onto because it often can land is just like this fringe odd thing, but particularly then when you hear some of the benefits that you don't always hear, you know, maybe on the box of the mouth taping, and I just said, nocturnal erections could be a nice, happy benefit and things of that nature can really help you know, when people over to doing something that can take an extra habit that many people find to be an extra step. And the other thing I wanted to check in with you on on your website, you mentioned that around 40% of women have some degree of sexual dysfunction. And that's something I've found with a number of clients, I will have different female clients that when we because we to sort of this sleep sabotage, jers kind of list and we have all these areas of life that are working and not working, giving self assessments. And the fact that I have the sex as a category on there often kind of, you know, is alarming for people. And many will find many people will particularly women, almost have this resignation to the fact that Oh, for x reason, I it's painful, it doesn't feel good, I just don't go there. There's all kinds of things that are heavy in nature around that topic. So I'm wondering if people are having some of these sexual dysfunctions, how they can one what steps they can take? I know, that's, again, a broad question, but to understanding what that might be doing to impact their sleep quality. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of reasons for sexual problems, obviously, you know, in women, it's usually either lack of interest or low libido, its problems with arousal, so you just can't get kind of excited, it's pain, or, and, or its problems reaching orgasm. So it can be any of those four, or a combination of those four. And it is, is pretty common, you know, about 40% of women at some point have some some degree of sexual dysfunction. It doesn't always bother people, you know, some women are like, I could take it or leave it, but a lot of people it does bother, and they just, they just don't know how to approach it. So you know, there's, there's so many things that can cause sexual problems, it can be anything from how the stress that you're under, that you're not really dealing with, to prior stresses, you know, sexual traumas in the past, you know, sort of spiritual traumas, if you will, where it's sort of guilt and things like that, you know, around your sexuality, to, of course, any physical problems, pelvic floor problems, like you don't have a lot of pelvic floor muscle strength. For instance, as you get older, hormonal problems, which happened, you know, when the 10 years or so before menopause, we start to have all these hormone shifts, where you, all of a sudden, you don't have as much testosterone and you have too much estrogen. And, and you know, there's always kind of crazy imbalances that a lot of women don't know that we actually, you know, we can treat that's not a, that's not a big deal. We can give you some bioidentical hormones, and it can make a huge difference. And all of a sudden, maybe you want to have sex again, and maybe, you know, maybe it's not painful anymore. And of course, there's other things, structural problems and things that require, like an OB GYN to, you know, to do procedures and such. But there's a lot of different reasons for it. And I think that the first thing I would say is just to go is to go see a doctor and just make sure that you don't have anything serious going on and then try to get to the bottom of it. Because it is worth at least exploring as an I know these kinds of things so that you can decide whether you want to try to treat them or not. But sex we know, not just in sleep, but we know that sex, a healthy sex life for both men and women has been associated with, you know, improvements in cardiovascular disease, risk improvements in blood pressure improvements in Coggan, brain health we there's some studies in older people that have shown us that in older people who are sexually active, have less cognitive decline, as they get older, they have better memory they have like better hippocampus is and you know, in sexes that's contributing to that. And I'm not I'm not sure anyone really understand some of these exactly why that is. But that's definitely true. And then people who have a strong sort of a healthy sex life, either alone or with a with a partner, also tend to have less depression and anxiety, they have better self image, and all of that and all of those things can feed into how you sleep, right? Like if you have a lot of depression and anxiety, then that's going to make you not sleep as well. Right? If you have like if you have other sort of health problems, you maybe aren't sleeping if you're having a lot of social relationships.
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problems because sex is because your sex is not very good. And you're, you're stressed out about it, or it's not working really well, well, that also can affect how you're sleeping. So there are direct sort of connections as far as like, you have sex, the hormones do this, and then you sleep better. But they're also all of these indirect connections where sex, you know, does x and y and then y and z dot, you know, contributes to sleep in this way. Wow. Yeah, really well said, I'm wondering if you could share is there so when we talk about sleep, people want to know what's normal? What's the normal amount of hours I should be getting? What should you know, my sleep stages look like? What should my heart rate look like? All these things? what's normal? Is there any sort of even normal range that you can point to around for people, I'm sure it's a wide range, but is there kind of a normative thing that we can point to for health purposes around what we should be striving for could strive for in the realm of sex, even if it's alone or with your partner, and that can help us point to if we're kind of far off the mark that we might want to really focus on this area, the studies that have been done with sex and looking at some of the like cardiovascular disease risk and things like that most of them are looking at at a healthy sex life is having sex one to two times a week. And that's, you know, that doesn't necessarily mean that that's what you should be doing. But that is kind of what's been studied. So I think that the most important thing to remember is that not to make this stress you out, yeah, like, not to make not to make you feel inferior, because you're doing it last, or you're doing it more like this is not a this is not a perfect like, you should do it this way. That's just what's been studied. I think, in general, people who, you know, tend to have more sex because they enjoy it, and they're having fun, they have a good relationship, they tend to, you know, be happier than those who are not having it as much. But that doesn't, that's not always the case. Obviously, there are couples who, you know, they say that 20% of marriages are sexless at this point, are almost sexless. And if that's true, a lot of people are still very happy. So it's hard to I never want people to feel guilt more guilt, like I feel like people already feel guilt for, for so many things. And I don't want to add to that, but one to two times a week is what has been studied. Well said, got that, okay. And I like what you said too, about kind of giving hope or possibility, if people are having some of these, that sexual dysfunction to consult with your doctor, I'm certainly getting the sense of, you know, creating that open communication so that you can get to the source of that, and hopefully really make a difference with that. And that there's so much as you spoke to that you can certainly do some of those things that you can do so use pointed to different hormones, is there kind of a rundown of some of the most common things that might come up that you'll help people with when they're having some of that dysfunction? Yeah, I mean, it depends on the, you know, with with women, it's usually a lot of times low progesterone will actually cause problems sleeping, you probably talk about that before they go on. Yeah. And that can be you know, especially with when women when they're still cycling, they're, you know, hormones are kind of up and down. And, and lack of progesterone is a big deal, of course, postmenopausal all of the hormones drops, so progesterone, testosterone, estrogen, all of them go right down. And so adding in progesterone, in both cases can be really helpful for for sleeping just before bed, other hormone, but again, like estrogen has been shown to help with improving your REM sleep. So that's something else, you know, again, you don't tend to need extra estrogen unless you're unless you're postmenopausal. But once you go through menopause, you definitely adding in some estrogen can be helpful for that. And then your testosterone is interesting, a lot of women don't know that they the testosterone is even a thing that they have. But it is, and it's super important, it's important for sex drive. And, and but it's also important for just motivation in general and decision making and, and being able to, you know, to burn fat and being able to, you know, to burn to build muscle, and there's you know, there's all kinds of things like that. And so all of those hormones can start to kind of fluctuate in your kind of mid 30s ish or so, and then start to go down and sometimes need to be replaced. And that can help with both sleep and stress. You know, I have, I have women who can't sleep because they're having night flashes, or sorry, hot flashes, or you know, all night won't have enough estrogen, or they're in or the balance is wrong. So, but those same hormones can also affect your ability to to want sex and have sex. So they go very much hand in hand. And if you flip it around, when you're sleeping, is when you're, especially with testosterone is when you're making a lot of your hormones. So if you're not sleeping, well, you know, we know testosterone needs a good three hours or so of good sleep in order for you to make testosterone and so, especially in guys, we see, you know, people who are, you know, even a week of not sleeping more than five hours or so can reduce your testosterone levels by 10 or 15%. And that's just one week like think what happens if it's over, you know, months or years. No wonder our overall testosterone in our population of men now is much lower than it was 50 years ago, like you know, we aren't sleeping as well. We are more stressed out we are you know, all these things that affect testosterone.
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So, anyway, they kind of goes both ways with the hormones. Well, I'm so glad you said that too, because I think a lot of people aren't as connected to how much testosterone and sleep are so intimately linked. And I think the more we can get that message out, the better because, you know, it's it's often been some sort of narrative of, you know, the the driven person gets up early, goes to bed, lay all these sort of things. And we're actually finding kind of the flip on that. So thank you for saying that. And as far as when we get into this, some of these hormone conversations, I've had different clients that will almost shirk away, like, that sounds like that's going to be an expensive endeavor, this is going to mean a lot of testing of all those sort of things. Are there particular tests, or companies that you recommend that can help facilitate this and make this easier? Or is it something that really, you know, you just got to bite the bullet get some invest in a little bit of testing for your hormones, see where you're at? Or do you recommend kind of continually taking a look at where those hormones are at, like, I like to, for people to get kind of a base level on their hormones and they're maybe in your mid 30s or so when you're feeling pretty good, you know, get checked out your get your sex hormones checked, and as well as your thyroid and things like that, if you have a primary care doctor, you should be getting your thyroid checked periodically anyway. But I like to get like the other sex hormones checked as well. Your there's several ways you can do it. You a lot of doctors like myself, when I one clinic, we actually take insurance. Even though we do a ton of hormone, we do bioidentical hormones, we that's one of our main things, but because we feel like it should be a part of something that you care that anyone can receive, we take insurance for that. So we will will bill insurance for the labs will bill insurance for the visit. So really, it's not it's not expensive, any more so than any other doctor's visit. A lot of the hormone doctors and functional medicine doctors don't take insurance. And those guys, you know are a little bit more expensive, for sure to see the doctor, the labs themselves, you know, you can get you can get salivary testing, or urine testing for hormones, somewhere in the probably 250 to $350 range with tests that you can even order yourself off of like zrt, for instance, has has hormone tests, or Dutch, the Dutch test, you know, there's a test you can do at home, that if you will just want to check your levels and and see where you are, you can do that. But I would just caution you that you need to know what to do with that then and sometimes, you know, it's oftentimes better to pay a little of money to go to an expert who knows what to make of all those crazy numbers. Yes, yeah, absolutely. Because I know that has been a you know, a stopping point for many people, they get the test Oh, no. Now I know that x, y and z, my progesterone slow and but then what to do about it. So you're very right on that point. And I actually wonder if you like you're pretty forward thinking Do you see any future as far as in the sex tech arena, as far as health and well being in relationship to making sex even to having more of a pulse on where we're at with it. So for instance, I was earlier in the year back when we used to have events, CES was one that I'd gone to that was just tremendous. And the sex tech arena was the first year that they were allowed to have sec sec present. And like, you know, just it was huge, huge, huge, huge, very exciting stuff. You know, measuring the strength of orgasms, like you were kind of alluding to, and just really making this more of something that we can all be kind of speaking about and making more of a conversation piece, do you see anything kind of coming or anything that exciting that you're using or know of that people can speak to that's kind of noteworthy, I just looked at the sex or the sex tech world A few months ago, and I aside from the, the some of the ones like the lioness and the ones where we can look at orgasmic strength, which I think is fascinating. I can't think of anything else sort of techie, there are some you know, there's some good apps out there that have come out in the last couple of years that are that are sort of combination education, slash, you know, kind of gets you in the mood sort of apps, I think they can be really helpful for especially for women who tend to have a little bit of a harder time, kind of getting, you know, converting from like taking care of the kids washing the dishes and going to work all day. And then you know, trying to go to write to having sex, like it's the mental part is so important for us.
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There's so some some of those apps are like there's an app called Rosie that's that's new. That's really that's really good. Right and it's an education has an educational piece, and there's videos and this is what's normal is it's not but then there's also some ways to kind of help get you into the right mindset. So I like that some of those kinds of, you know, taking that, that sort of meditation mentality and applying it to to sex and applying it to sexual sort of headspace, as well. But I think there's definitely room for more like I think that your point is well taken. There's so many now so many devices that can track our sleep, and it can track our steps, you know, work we can we can track like everything, but we're still not really tracking our sex and their sex lives. And I think that there's a lot of opportunity there. Because as I showed earlier, it's hard to really study sex. It has been done
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Certainly, but it's hard to do. People don't want to fund it. There's a lot of like taboos around it. But if we can study it ourselves on ourselves, then the nobody gets offended. And we still can learn some things. So well said. So a couple things just from a working it into our lab. So now if we're if we're to your point, yes, thinking of it more, I think the same thing has applied to sleep. And that for so long, it was an area that was a lot of it was a gray area, you know, you kind of knew how much you slept. But you know, it was foggy. I think I woke up all of that. But now that we have all these different, you know, kind of trackers, we can start to put a little bit more numbers. And I think as years progressed, we'll be able to have even more confidence around the quality of those numbers and what have you. To your point. Yeah, there's still just sort of this notion or a lack of knowingness of how often we're having it. what's normal, what's not normal? And I'm wondering with that, is there do you have recommendations for one, even from a strategic standpoint, I know Elisa vt is a speaker on kind of biohacking your rhythm and bringing in and will recommend having more sex during the luteal, your luteal period for women that are menstruating to kind of help with added cortisol and kind of, you know, lower, that's the kind of stress that you might be going through, are there any sort of strategy that we could bring in to specifically almost use it as a aid to our health when it's maybe, you know, we're more stressed out than normal starting to use sex in the same way we might, you know, taking, like meditating or what have you? Yeah, I don't have any, I was just thinking that's like, that's a great strategy. I think anytime you're really stressed out, trying to calm down enough and get enough parasympathetic involved, that you could have sex in the neck, because that will really help you then get to that next level of sort of calm and not stressed out. But it's difficult because in order to have sex, you actually have to be in that sort of rested and relaxed state you have to be in the parasympathetic state, you can't be sympathetic overdrive, you know, cortisol through the roof, adrenaline through the roof, like that's that fight or flight state is it makes sense is not conducive to having sex because your flight you're fighting, or you're fighting or whatever you're doing, you're not right, we're not having you're not procreating, when that's happening. And so it is, the first step, you know, is to get down enough of relaxation, to be able to even have sex, that's true for men and women. So I think that's the first thing is thinking about, well, how do I do that, you know, and that can be something as simple as breathing exercises, it can be journaling, it can be like, for me, I love going on walks outside in the mountains. And so, you know, I'm not for all purposes, I just, I just love it. And so I'll go outside and go for walks in the mountains. And that's the way that I kind of keep myself on an even keel or exercising, or, you know, there's several different things, but, but I think that, you know, creating a space for yourself to get yourself in that in that mood. And that's, you know, one thing is to keeping the your bedroom, you know, reserved for sex and sleep, like you kind of alluded to earlier. And you know, once you pass through those bedroom doors, like that's a no TV or no phone or no gadget tree zone, ideally, and I'm not perfect at this myself. But if you can create that sort of space where you you walk into your room, and it's like,
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and you can breathe, then that will start to trigger your your head into really being in this most is more parasympathetic state. And that's going to be much more conducive to having sex at any point in that room, than if you if you don't make it a safe space for that. Hmm, that makes a ton of sense. How about time of day? I've gotten this question a few times for you know, so certain women will say, then it amps them up, and then they're not going to fall asleep after or the men will fall right asleep after Is there any kind of science to that of the kind of effects and strategy around timing? Yeah, you know, I don't know for sure. I know that in the morning is when we start started, we tend to see the highest testosterone levels at least are in the morning, because you know, you've made them overnight. So for and for a lot of reasons, it makes sense to have sex in the morning, because that's when you technically could be sort of the most revved up if you've slept well. And if you're not getting up early to go do something you know, else that you have to do. But men do tend to be able to fall asleep right afterwards after sex a little easier than women. But I still think that it really depends on the couple and kind of how what their rhythm is. But as long as it's happening sometime, it tends to bode well for general health, relationship health, you know, emotional health, mental health and sleep health. That's so well said. Are there things that you are able to do with men specifically with their difficulties around sex, so for them if there's kind of some performance anxiety or any of these topics that are a bit more of the psychology, but wanting to ensure that we're, you know, still helping to focus on that area and to prioritize that area but striking that fine line between you know, not putting too much pressure, are there things that you're able to help them with around that time?
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I work with a lot of men with erectile dysfunction specifically and just or sort of erectile dysfunction, as I call it, sometimes where it's not necessarily dysfunction is maybe not as good as they want it to be or as they're hoping. And that's sort of a big area of expertise of mine. And there are some definitely some things that that can be done. Certainly, you know, understanding how how EDI happens and understand the causes of it, which is usually a vascular problem, usually a blood flow problem. But you know, just understanding the things like the inflammatory processes that lead to EDI. So you know, basically everything that that from eating too much sugar to smoking to high blood pressure to being overweight, not exercising to too much stress, which causes your testosterone to come down, which causes you to not have it. Yeah, like there's all these things like that, that can that can contribute to ratelle dysfunction, hormonal imbalances, as well, of course, but also that we can do, we actually have a lot of tools now that can help with those things. So whether it's replacing hormones, oftentimes testosterone, or getting increased nitric oxide from food, for instance, ditching your your Listerine getting rid of your antiseptic mouthwash, which is going to impede your ability to make nitric oxide from food. And drink oxide is the main chemical that is going to open the blood vessels up so that you have that erection. So I tell guys to get rid of their Listerine. And to use sort of a do it yourself mouthwash if they're going to do a mouthwash that can help as well. The mouth taping is something else, again, increasing nitric oxide. And then there are a number of other sort of therapies and things that we can do, they can do some at home or in our office like shockwave therapy like Gaines wave, which is a shockwave therapy that, that we do in our office, it's just it's a, it's a non invasive sort of treatment that you do, you know, a couple of times a week for a few weeks, it can make huge improvements in in blood flow and blood vessel formation, and can create lasting changes that lasts a year or so to help improve the ability to get and keep blood into the area, or some of the regenerative injections that I do with stem cells or PRP, where we're actually injecting into the penis as well. So there's a lot more than just viagara now out there, but Agra still works. And it's so great I have I have a lot of respect for it. So if you're having problems with erections, like you know, you don't have to hide it, you don't have to worry about it, like just talk to a doctor who knows what they're doing. And we can actually, oftentimes reverse it. Wow, very, very cool. And so do you have it too, that people can start to when they're creating this dialogue and relationship with their doctors, that that sign of low libido, really taking that seriously, and starting to hone in on that, share that with your doctor and starting from that vantage point that it really for healthy, functioning adults, that that's something that we want to also maintain, it's really something that is a sign of solid health. So at that it's off, it's a place to begin in kind of our quest for a healthy, fully functioning life. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, libido, you know, is is important. And again, there are some people who just are just don't really have interest in sex. And this is not me telling you, you have to be a certain way. But lack of libido when you've had one before, and you don't have a good reason for it to have gone away is a sign that something is potentially going on. But whether it's a hormone problem, whether it's what you're eating, whether it's some kind of environmental toxin, and what's you know, whether it's a social, emotional, you know, problem, a past trauma, like there's so many things that can cause that libido to go away. But if you never ask for help with what's, you know, if you don't ever talk about it, and bring it to someone's attention, then you're never going to know what that reason is and be able to fix it. So I think that in general, as a culture, we've just, we just haven't talked about sex in a in a real sort of medical system way with like, you know, until recently, like, you know, we've always if we have knee pain, you go to the doctor and hey, I have knee pain, can you help me and if you didn't get if you didn't get help you keep got you keep going to doctors, like you keep finding different doctors, like you keep asking them Hey, guys, when my knee still hurts, like Why is no one addressing it, and you do your own reading and you'd be like, you dive into it, because that knee pain to you is important and you want to fix it. And that's the same with everything is the same with you had a headache, essentially every organ system if it's bothering you, you find someone that can help. However, I find that with the sexual organ system, unless you're having pain, a lot of people will just feel like it's it's normal. And or that people can't no one can help me anyway. So why should I ask? And so they just don't just don't ask, or they asked one person who doesn't really know how to do anything with it or how to treat it or they just, you know, they can just give Viagra and that's it. But you know, treat it like knee pain with just keep keep after people and find someone who can actually help you. Because there are people there are people yeah, and actually it circles back nicely to kind of how you began this conversation around sex and sleep being this area that's such a kind of signal for perceived overall
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A healthy and fully functioning life. And it does seem like those are two very clear areas that for a long time have been sort of that same dead end approach or sort of resignation of Oh, I guess I'm not a good sleeper or, you know, when the sex conversation then I guess, I guess it's not for me. And yet, it doesn't have to be that way. So I really appreciate you standing for raising the bar on this topic. So that's amazing. I've had sent to me a couple times this random different articles from Dr. Oz, this is such a mass conversation, but Dr. Oz purporting that suggesting that people should aim to have sex every single day, if possible with your partner, and how that can really help warrant and stave off all kinds of different health problems. What do you think of things like that, like really trying to uplevel and make it like a daily goal? Do you think that's just just silly and not something you should be striving for? Is that Is there anything for you and your kind of personal goals of how often you see for frequency? Or do you think it just doesn't really apply in this conversation? I think that, you know, I think if you can have it every day, that's fantastic. And if you have a life that allows that, you know, if you have a job, if you have kids, if you have pets, if you have like I feel like there's so many variables that affect whether or not like this actually happens every day, it's it could be like my dog in the bed who won't move and I'm like, Alright, fine.
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very relatable. So, yeah, I think I definitely think that, that in general, you know, more is probably going to make you happier. Like I said, at the beginning of every day, if you can get into a habit and make it you know, make it a ritual, make it a habit, it becomes new fun, that you're excited about that every day is a good thing. There. There's, you know, it's funny, there are some I've gotten to I've gotten into kind of discussions with slash arguments with with like Dave Asprey before about her that he you know, cuz there's, there's some people who talk about, you know, like semen retention and how you don't want to have you don't want to have you don't want to have you don't want to jacket with me. And yeah, and there's definitely some some there's, there's sort of old texts that suggest that that as you get older, you should ejaculate left less often. and such. I haven't found a lot of good evidence myself to support that. But there is some research that in men that more jack ulation actually, it reduces your risk for prostate cancer. So that is something that is is possible and you can man, you can use that as a
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love to me then
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my prostate.
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But, you know, I again, I wish that there was more information and hopefully we'll learn more about Yes, the thing but there's not all that much that tells us exactly how often and and such, but Yeah, wow. Well, you've given us I think, a lot to think about and really just making this connection with sleep. And you know, partly why I'm asking so many specific questions is that oftentimes the people that I'll find coming, having sleep difficulties will either can often fall into the kind of that type a group of Okay, so what do I need? What's the prescription? What did you know was specifically spelled out for me, man, I think you're providing this nice space of it doesn't necessarily have to look like that. But by even bringing attention to this area, to begin by creating a relationship with your doctor, and if things aren't kind of working as well as they could, creating a dialogue with your partner, really just putting the reverence for this area that you know, really it deserves and that there's a lot of really wonderful positive things that we can gain from this and the prioritization of this can really reap rewards in both our sleep and then just our overall sense of well being. So thank you so much for all this information. And so how can people follow you learn more about what you're up to all your great information that you're putting out there and you'd have such a great candid way of just sharing you know, just your passion for this? So how can they follow you on Instagram I'm Dr. Amy B. killin and I'm pretty active on Instagram. As you mentioned, I'm also on YouTube at Amy killin MD, and I put videos out there occasionally. And then my website I have several websites, but the one I usually direct people to is Dr. Amy killin calm. And that one gives you some general information. And then I can kind of point you to the other various websites that I have for clinics and things like that. So awesome. Well, thank you again for taking the time and I just really appreciate all the just the fun nature that you're bringing to this topic. And it really makes a big difference for so many people and so I'm excited to continue to follow you and learn more. Thank you.
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You've been listening to the sleep is a skill podcast, the number one podcast for people who want to take their sleep skills to the next level. Every Monday I send out something that I call Molly's Monday obsessions containing everything that I'm obsessing over in the world of sleep, head on over to sleep as a skill calm to sign up.