The biggest thing that is going to disrupt your sleep are your own

thoughts and your own behaviors.

And until you're addressing those, most of the time you're

not getting at the root cause

Sleepless nights aren't just a medical issue.

They're often a spiritual one.

Dr. Benjamin Long is a board certified sleep medicine physician who treats

patients of all ages and explores where theology meets medicine.

get practical about sleep habits that restore rest prayers and devotions

for sleepless nights, and why fatigue mitigation matters for everyone from

medical residents to everyday believers.

His New Sleep Habits Journal releases December 9th, so right

after you are listening to this and this conversation connects faith

medicine and the rest we all need.

Dr. Benjamin Long, welcome to Seek, go

Create.

I'm happy to be here.

Glad you're here too.

My first question, did you get a good night's rest last night?

oh man.

Of course, this is the first question you ask.

You know, and this goes into a good, a good, uh, moment.

Did I get great sleep?

No, intentionally.

So it was one of those nights where, I turned to my wife and I was kind of like.

Let's go downstairs and watch a movie,

Oh no.

Three hours

so,

right.

right.

Exactly.

So, did once I went to sleep, fantastic.

Did I delay a little bit?

Yes.

Yes I did.

But you know what?

I think there's a season for everything, so,

don't start work watching.

You know, the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

You know, directors

cut, you know, or

right.

They,

Yeah.

end.

Mm-hmm.

That's cool.

So

it's interesting.

I was just reading over some of your stuff last night and this

morning I am one that I sort of track my sleep with my Apple watch.

We'll talk about that later if that's a good thing to do or not.

My wife makes fun of me.

I don't think I'm obsessed with it, but I'm at an age where

I realize, I need some rest.

we'll talk, later about how at one point I didn't give a rip, I was just like, I

thought you could sleep when you

Mm-hmm.

So, I don't believe

that anymore.

And I went to bed.

Well, you know, I slept, I didn't do a wake up in the middle of the

night and, you know, do some things that some men of a certain age do.

And, I slept all woke up and said, man, I'm gonna get a great score.

I'm gonna be able to talk about that with, the doctor this evening when

I'm doing the podcast recording.

And it just said it was restless.

I didn't really get some good deep sleep.

I had some dreams and stuff like that.

But anyway, sleep is a funny, funny thing.

How did one get started with sleep being attached to what they

do?

Yeah.

You know, the funny story is I entered into my residency with

full plans on being a general pediatrician to the point that I was.

In a like breakout orientation kind of session.

And one of the people who were proctoring, it was a sleep medicine fellow that year

and they introduced themselves and they said, Hey, I'm studying sleep medicine.

And I was like, sleep?

Like, who would do that?

That sounds so boring.

And apparently three years later, me,

so I had plans to be a general pediatrician since

I was like 12 years old.

That's what my granddaddy did.

he was a pediatrician in Columbus, Georgia.

so it was kind of all that I knew.

And then I was running towards that goal right at the last year before I take my

boards and I had this epiphany of, oh my gosh, what have I gotten myself into?

I think some of that was, I. Heard stories about what life was like

as a general pediatrician when my granddaddy was practicing.

And that was very different from what it is now.

I went through the Air Force HPSP program, so as a Air Force

pediatrician, you have a very, mobile population that you're serving.

And so you don't necessarily get those deep relationships like you do if you're

serving in a small town kind of a thing.

and then I happen to rotate on sleep and everyone who really resonates with

a specialty in medicine, you'll hear them talk about that click moment.

And that was really what it was for me.

My first patient, I went in and I had the whole encounter,

and I just realized, oh, wow.

I love this.

This is, it's this interesting intersection of.

A little bit of neurology, a little bit of pulmonology, a little bit

of psychiatry, and just all of that overlap for me was really fascinating.

And we will talk about this in a little while.

You've kind of brought in your faith and theology or weird word I'm gonna ask you

about later, Theo Somnia, but we'll talk

Yeah.

what's interesting, I mean, this is, maybe I'm gonna go big with a big question here.

You may or may not have data on this, but in general, you know, we are

recording this in the United States of America and, you know, it's late 2025.

Some people may be listening this, you know, into the,

in the new year or whatever.

Yeah, we've got all these luxuries, we've got, you know, these incredible beds

and mattresses and all of this stuff.

I could measure my sleep and all that.

But with all that and all these other things we're gonna talk about

here, probably in this episode, are we a sleep abundance culture or

Hmm.

a sleep

deprived culture?

And I know you might see more of the people that are

deprived, but just if

Yeah.

step back and

look, what would you say?

Without hesitation, sleep deprived.

an area of research that I am personally pursuing academically

is looking at religiosity.

So that's things like religious service attendance, personal prayer time, or bible

reading, things that you can, measure.

and they group that together into religiosity and sleep.

It's a very small area of study.

I recognize I have very niche interests.

and what I have been working on is some survey data that has been taken from

high school seniors since like 1978.

And it has all these different kind of factors, whether that's sex, where you

live, socioeconomic level, parents, education, all these different factors

and religiosity or religious service attendance was one of those factors.

And so the data that I haven't published yet but have been slowly

but surely getting through and working on is that overall, no matter what

you compare how seniors responded to this survey question in 1978.

And then you just look at all survey respondents, to 2023 and

it's definitely a downtrend.

So just by year, people are seniors in that are taking the survey,

are not responding good sleep.

So it's definitely

a phenomenon

so any indications on why

why I think.

Yeah,

and what, and, and are

Yeah,

you, guessing, is it

anecdotal data?

Right,

What, I mean,

Yeah.

I think these

phones have something to do

Yes,

to stuff, staying up all night watching TV and movies, streaming,

Yep.

that for

doing that last night?

Yeah.

all of the

above.

right.

I don't have data in front of me that I easily pull upon, but I think

our screen use, and a really just a disconnection from that 24 hour rhythmic

pattern that's just within creation.

It's just an increasing disconnection from that.

and that survey data from the 1970s, we've had, big jumps since then.

an interesting thing within the data I've been working through was there

is actually an uptick from 2000.

Six to 2012.

There was a brief period where seniors were reporting better sleep and

then, around 2012 or so, which also happens to be when, the iPhone was

really kind of getting out there more.

So, it starts to go down again.

so yeah, that is definitely just speculation.

but there certainly is, research around that, that's ongoing for sure.

It's, I mean this is because we don't have a lot of data on it.

I think it's speculative, but how old are you?

What's your age?

I'm 35.

Okay.

So I've got,

kids that are close to your age.

I'm sitting here trying to think, and one of them actually edits this podcast.

So she'll say, you don't know my age.

I think she's 34.

But, uh, that might, be right or wrong.

Anyway, and I'm in my sixties and I still recall no devices,

no internet, no 24 7 news,

things like that.

That's

how

Yeah.

I know

Mm-hmm.

listening in going,

man, what an old dude.

But I also don't recall anyone talking about

sleep.

Mm-hmm.

And

maybe you got some data on when it kind of became a specialty and

a practice and things like, then it's probably been around for

a while,

Yeah.

but, and I have these theories about things that occurred during the eighties

where, when CNNI remember when it first came online and we went from, you know,

three channels to cable and MTV and then

24 7 news, and then the

internet and phones and all that kind of stuff.

I have some theories about that, but in, in, in general, I'm about to back up

and I wanna ask you some personal things about you growing up and things like that

and how you brought these interesting topics together with your life.

But do you have any history on study, as a medicine, as a

practice or anything like that?

Because to me it seems

Yeah, absolutely, and I think that's definitely a correct assessment in

that my board certification as a board certified sleep medicine physician

to be go through a fellowship.

So I had to do one year where I devoted just to studying sleep.

That didn't become really concretized until about 2012.

So very new.

Prior to that, it was kind of like one of those things where you read 200

sleep studies, you take a test and you could call yourself a sleep doctor.

and really as far as age of the field, as far as when we're talking about sleep

staging, like you're talking about with deep sleep or we're talking about rim, we

didn't even discover that until roughly around the 1950s or sixties, as far as

the actual neurological staging of sleep.

so that was really the impetus for the field and how it's

kind of progressed since then.

Which, probably tells us a lot why it's kind of front and center and I

don't like to throw around words like, epidemic or different things like that.

But I do think there's a

mild crisis, I wanna say, like, the Diet Coke of Crisis, it would be like still

a crisis, but,

Right.

one calorie.

We're gonna come back to all that because I want to, walk through a lot

of the things that have gone through my mind, ask you about it, and then

we want to tie in some of these spiritual components and look at this

book you've written that I was able to look through over the last few days.

Back up though, you say you're 35.

And so, you know, that eighties that I brought up, you came into

the world at the tail end of that.

Great generation of go, go, go,

greet is good.

Mm-hmm.

did you have a spiritual foundation growing up?

Is that something you've always had or was that something that came later?

Yeah, absolutely.

So I'm a preacher's kid.

my dad was a bivocational preacher, it's funny, I tell people he was

in the Air Force and a preacher, and so most of the time people are

like, oh, so he was a chaplain?

Nope, he was a pilot.

he flew in the Air Force, but for a period of time he was full-time ministry, for

a significant portion of my childhood.

So, I like to tell people, you know, with my grandfather being a

physician, pediatrician, and my dad being in ministry as well as being

in the Air Force, I just kind of.

spliced them together for my career ambitions.

And so definitely the center of gravity for my family growing up was the

church, you know, there Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesdays, and then

anywhere and everywhere in between.

I have memories of being out and about with my dad while he was visiting

people in the hospital, sitting with grieving people at funeral homes.

Granted, most of the time I was, had no interest in that as a child and

outside playing in the parking lot.

But de definitely had a front row seat to, ministry.

And from a very early age, probably around fifth grade or so, I started

helping out with the younger kids.

And then from then on was always involved in some kind of role within the

church until I left for medical school.

Do you ever consider going into full-time

Yeah,

paid

good

at all?

right

a possibility

at all?

You know, I never felt a specific call to ministry and that was something my dad

always, said is, Hey, if this is, you will know, you know, God will call you to this.

So definitely don't do it if you don't feel called.

'cause that's, that's when things go awry.

So, yeah, my, my dad, really instilled like a, having a calling and that

being kind of, an important part.

And there's really been a journey in some of that too, of

viewing my role as a physician.

And that was part of, you know, this work that I've been doing

that led up to writing this book was, a little bit of a question.

What does it look like to be a good Christian physician?

Like, how exactly should my faith impact how I practice medicine?

And at the beginning of my medical journey, I had, one

kind of viewpoint on it.

I think I definitely was more along the camp of, to be a good Christian physician

is, explicit gospel conversations with my patients and going and serving as a

medical missionary, which, you know, God bless if that's something that happens.

but if that is the measure of my successes, a physician, I've been doing

really poorly up until this point.

so it really was a journey of trying to figure out, okay, what does it look like

to, practice in a way that is from a Christian worldview, but then also as I

decided I was gonna be an expert in sleep.

I found myself coming to the end of these journeys with patients,

oftentimes Christians, and, getting to a point where there's not necessarily

a pill or a therapy or something else that I can do to fix the problem.

so of course I, am just trying to figure out, well, what's my role here then?

If I can't fix the problem, what should I do?

What can I do?

And that, question of, well, what does the Bible say about sleep was kind of

one of the early things that came up that led me on this journey to have

a fuller vision of sleep beyond what I received in my medical education.

But you mentioned earlier

Columbus, Georgia did, but then also

Air Force.

Did you move around some or was Columbus, Georgia your base?

I met my wife Columbus,

Georgia.

Oh, no way.

I'm

northwest of Atlanta right now as I'm recording this,

and I grew up in the Atlanta

area

Okay.

my parents, when they

left Mississippi, right before I was born, they came to Columbus, Georgia.

So Columbus is, I don't know that I would want to go live there long

term or anything like that.

Mm-hmm.

but, it's sort of

special to me a little

Yeah,

that, was that your home, you grew up, because I know there's Fort

Benning, there's not Air Force there, but there's military there.

right.

were you doing in

Columbus bus?

My mom's side of the family's from Columbus.

My dad, he actually started Army, did basic in Fort Benning, and then was around

Columbus, and then that's how they met.

He flew helicopters in the Army for a little while, and then

went over to the Air Force.

I was actually born in Texas, in Fort Worth when Carswell

Air Force Base used to be open.

my dad got out of the military, was in full-time ministry, and that's kind of

when we were in Columbus, and that's most of my childhood, like first kind of 10

years and kind of core memories there.

And then in, towards around 2000, they were needing more pilots in the Air Force.

And so then my dad answered that call, and then we moved to Oklahoma City.

We were there for about four years, which was also around the time of nine 11.

And so, my dad was involved and deployed several times, then we

moved back to Georgia when I was kind of middle school age range.

So Georgia, Oklahoma, were kind of my main childhood growing up for me.

And then I went to undergrad at Columbus State University, majored

in biology there, and then I went to medical school at Mercer University,

but in their Savannah campus.

Savannah, I went to Georgia

Tech, so I

Hmm.

grew up in and around Atlanta and went

to Georgia Tech.

But I, one quick question before we kind of get back to the topic that I

really wanna talk about all of it, but I wanna get back into some sleep stuff.

But this actually ties in with the theology and the spiritual aspect of it.

I realized at some point in my life, growing up in the Bible Belt, the

deep South, that there were a number of good things that I had, I'm gonna

say it this way, that had latched

onto me.

Hmm

And I also

noticed that there were some things that I needed to sort of shake off,

mm-hmm.

tell me growing up, growing up in the deep south, primarily Oklahoma, the.

Sort of counts.

Doesn't count.

Not quite,

They say it counts,

Texas, you've got Georgia, you've got even deeper, deeper south,

and you know, even Atlanta Metro.

But me a couple of good things about growing up in that type of

atmosphere,

Mm

a couple of things

that you've had to kind of say, you know what, this wasn't necessarily

good to grow up in that culture or that

atmosphere.

Great question.

I think a high view of scripture and the importance of scripture

as God's word and a reverence for that was definitely something good.

You know, I was a wana kid and grew up memorizing scripture, seeing it as

integral to my faith, and I think that was something really good that has.

Supported me in my spiritual journey.

and always something to come back to.

But then as I was wrestling with this questions of what does the bible say about

sleep really helped to set a foundation for trying to get at what was actually

the authors and tendon meaning, and not trying to necessarily bring my own

biases to the text as much as possible.

So I think that was huge for, for something good.

And then something I had to kind of sort through or shake off, I

think a little bit of what I've already talked about as far as what

does it mean to be a good physician.

I love Jordan Rayner's work on a theology of work in a lot of his books.

he's fantastic.

And

he talks a lot about how that, his most recent book, the Sacredness of Secular

Work, there's not this, this division between secular work and religious work.

That all work is good.

And we see that and how God worked in preparing the garden for Adam and Eve.

And so having to have a more robust theology of what work

meant was really important.

Especially while I was in my residency where I'm working 90 plus hours a

week, I'm exhausted and burnt out.

And seeing all these pictures online of my friends doing all these things

on social media, but then also engaging in some stuff that I was

like, well, what am I, what am I doing?

And it felt like there was this odd disconnect of, well, certainly God isn.

Less happy with me now in this time where I'm preparing or what I'm

doing right now, and would be more happy with me if I was doing missions

work or something of that nature.

and not to say that anyone explicitly said that, but most of the time in the

context of my faith tradition, medical missions, medicine is seen as that means

to an end to get the gospel to the person, which 100% we need to spread the gospel.

Absolutely.

Like, not dogging that at all, but it bypasses it.

A question of, well what does it look like for Christians who practice medicine?

How should we be practicing that?

That really brings back questions home to the doctors here in America and

how we practice and how we engage, I could go on a whole diatribe on that.

Well, what I'm hearing, and I agree with you, that when you are in, you

know, probably in other parts of the country, my wife and I have traveled

for a long time now and, typically, live, work and travel in an rv.

I'm actually in a real home right now as I'm recording this, and as you move

around, you realize

Mm-hmm.

culture does change as you move around the country.

Some, and, and what you're talking about is in what I'll call

church world most of the time.

I went to Bible school for a couple years and there's a pecking order.

It's not stated.

But you know, missionary third world, there's nothing, you can't

do anything more sacrificial for the kingdom of God than that.

after that it kind of, you know, comes down and then you get business guy.

The thing that's kinda weird for me and the people that are listening

in, they know this with me.

I was saved in a

business setting.

Mm.

the Baptist church growing up in the south all my life, but it just

never took, I mean something about some of the structures and things,

I just didn't care for it that much.

And one of the things we talk about here, Benjamin, is, is kind

of how business leadership and all that comes together a little bit

different than what Jordan does.

He looks for people in work situations.

These are like leaders,

business people and all.

Mm-hmm.

like to dig down

on how do we bring all of that together in one place.

Mm-hmm.

do think sometimes traditional church circles.

Try to make people feel less than, and, and I'll say it's snarky.

your money, you know, go out and make

good money and send it in.

And, so that's

interesting.

I appreciate you bringing that up.

I wanna get back to, because obviously you did not leave of that,

spiritual background behind when you became a medical professional.

You brought it in and over the last, handful of years, you've been bringing

it closer and closer together.

It's kind of becoming one, it's becoming more synergistic.

Tell me a little bit about journey, because I think most people, a lot of

our listeners will go through that.

They will either be saved and start working and be really good at what

they do in business and then feel like they need to retire from that

and go into full-time ministry, which makes it might make sense at some.

Point, but really, if you're really good at something, why not keep doing

that?

Yeah.

Tell me more about that.

Yeah, I think

it's interesting.

I think there's a lot of parallels with that integration journey, both for people

in business as well as in medicine, and how it really impacts the questions you're

asking, the methods that you are using.

And so as someone from medicine.

As I said earlier, you know, I had this more explicit idea of what it meant to

be a Christian within healthcare and on this journey, I'm actually, so I'm

in seminary right now, trying to deepen my understanding of what it, having a

Christian understanding of sleep, but then also just in this own integration journey.

So we, there's a lot of literature on this specifically for theology and psychology,

just because both of those disciplines have inherent questions of what does

it mean to be human, you know, and

purpose and drive and things of that nature.

And so there's, it's an interesting kind of.

Model that happens there.

But I think there's probably some similarities with business as well, where

we talk about theology and psychology, which we could also say theology and

business as enemies versus allies.

And there's some stuff in between too.

So the paradigm that I was studying for that, he also talks about spies,

that you're going into one of the other territories and trying to

dig what you can from it to kind of go back to help what you can.

But then also you're losing some of that integrity from the other discipline.

he also talks about it as, kind of.

Conquering or rebuilding or things of that nature of saying, Hey, things are

so messed up in this other discipline.

We need to just break everything down and start afresh from a new kind of Christian

worldview or things of that nature.

And then an allies model is where theology and medicine is.

Theology is what God has revealed in his word.

And then in psychology and medicine, what God has revealed in his works

and creation and what we can see and answer through scientific

method and things of that nature.

We're studying what God has created and that we can bring those two

things into conversation and we'll have a better, fuller perspective

of the questions that we are asking.

So do you think someone is struggling with bridging and or marrying their faith with

their occupation, vocation, whatever, do you think it could impact their sleep?

Certainly.

I,

Like

I

you,

I think people

yeah.

It's like, I'm

yeah.

Oh no.

absolutely.

Yeah.

And you know, we talk about insomnia from what's called a three Ps model, where you

have some kind of predisposing factors, you have some kind of precipitating event

that can be a stressful life event that causes the difficulty with your sleep.

And then you can have perpetuating factors where these behaviors that

you're trying to respond to, the insomnia that then perpetuate it.

So yeah, certainly many life stressors, whether big or small,

can certainly impact your sleep.

so let's dive back into the sleep.

I want to tell you some things I've done and you could either

tell me, gosh, Tim, you're crazy.

Usually people don't do that to the host, but I'm open to it.

Okay.

I really am.

I mean,

Okay.

expose myself.

So my wife and I've been traveling now for 13 plus years, and we've been homeless.

Um, I mean, I've been, we've been in and outta homes, but we've in an rv.

We were in an apartment for a little while, while we were in, in

Bible school and things like that.

But one of the things that I've done along the way.

Is, I've wanted to see, this is kind of when I got to a place in life

where I realized sleep was I, I've joked with people during the nineties.

I truly believed there was

no reason for sleep.

Mm-hmm.

very little of it.

You

know, I was living off three hours a night and, you know, who knows, maybe I

started the No sleep, epidemic that might be sweeping the, you know, the country.

Now, maybe it was me.

but as I realized that I needed rest, maybe I hit about 50

years old, something like that.

I actually started realizing when in certain places I slept better

than others,

Hmm.

certain

climates, when I could breathe well through my nose, and when I

couldn't, you know, things like that.

We would be in Breckenridge, Colorado for, you know, for six weeks.

And I would realize I said, you know what?

At 10,000 feet.

I can't sleep.

I mean, I just can't.

And I notice things like that and you know, and I started

looking at temperatures.

I sleep really well when it's 48 degrees outside of the covers.

My wife, not so much, so that doesn't work out well.

But I mean, I just experiment and play around with things.

You know, what do I do leading up to going to sleep at night?

What do I do in the morning?

I know that like over the course of, I'm not looking at one night, I'm looking at

like a three to five night cumulative, you know, rolling average things like that.

Oh, I think you're onto something for sure.

Yeah, I absolutely, altitude, climate, all of those things can definitely impact

the quality of the sleep that you get.

And

there's good research behind that.

as far as altitude change.

We could take this conversation in a hundred different ways, but

certainly finding out what works for you I think is critical.

Because some, exactly, like you said, some people like it cooler,

some people like it warmer.

And one of the most common questions I get is, what kind

of mattress should I sleep on?

Or what's the best sleep position that, should I be on my back?

Should I be on my side or all this stuff?

And I'm like, whatever gets you to get the sleep that you need.

And for me that might be seven hours for you.

That might be eight, six.

You know, there most people are in that seven to nine.

There are the occasional short sleepers that I think are the ones who probably

have succeeded a lot in the, the American economy and history and stuff like that.

And then just have no compassion.

'cause they're like, you need nine hours of sleep.

What are you talking about?

You know, like six is all you need.

So, And certainly we see that in a variety of disciplines.

Healthcare definitely being one of them.

We're the worst patients, even though, you know, we, we have

the most knowledge of things.

And I think that finding out what works for you and understanding

what it is that your body needs.

So like if you're tracking on your Apple watch, what's like the average sleep

that you typically get on your watch?

I'm about seven to seven and a

half.

Yeah.

Waking up,

Yep, yep.

And that's a huge thing that I always am talking about on my channel, is really

just trying to have that consistency of that bedtime window and not thinking

that you're doing something wrong if you.

Are getting seven, but oh, I should be getting nine or something like that.

Like people will think that there's a certain number sometimes that

they're supposed to get, but it's really what your body needs.

And the best way to do that is through a wearable or just a old fashioned pen and

paper and tracking kind of how much sleep you get and then that really becomes your

anchor and then you're able to respond.

Because life, I tell my patients this all the time, life to live is to experience.

Precipitating factors for sleeplessness.

So you're gonna have something that gives you a terrible

night's sleep no matter what.

If you're alive, and having that understanding of this is how much sleep

I typically need, or what my body does over the average of two weeks or so, then

you know, okay, I had a five hour night.

I feel exhausted, but I don't want to overdo it and sleep too much the

next night because then we have a terrible way of kind of swinging in

one direction and then overdoing it, and then actually hurting our ability

to fall asleep on subsequent nights.

I love the question about

the mattress.

I guess I haven't thought of this.

there are things in our current world that allow people to charge

incredibly high amounts of money because people think they're supposed to.

One is when people get married for whatever reason, they throw

absolutely silly money and people take advantage of that really well.

Second time is when people die.

When there's a death in the family.

I've got friends in the funeral business, so I'm not totally dissing

this business, but that's a good time to, you know, have some money

since you brought it up, are one too.

And you know, my wife and I were actually building a home.

we traveled all over for, 13, 14 years.

We are about to start building a home in southern Arizona,

in the desert at 2,900 feet.

Because I know that's optimal for me because I've kind of tracked it, it's

kind of high desert, so it's dry and really beautiful part of the country.

And there's one piece of furniture because we had some stored away

that we're gonna have to get.

And it's our master bedroom mattress.

And I've started looking around.

I'm going, oh my, it has been so long since I bought a mattress.

This is amazing how.

Pitching this,

Mm-hmm.

there's a lot of money to

be made there, right?

Maybe we should get in the mattress business.

What do you think?

Yeah, absolutely.

the main research that I talked to people about was done on the

firmness of the mattress for people who have low back pain.

And there's small, but actually some pretty okay.

Research that showed having about a medium firm mattress is going

to be the best for your back pain.

So that not too soft, but not too hard.

Outside of that, I have don't have much knowledge of that

Yeah.

and

you're, I think you hit the nail on the head because sleep is this growing

huge industry, whether we're talking about mattresses or we're talking about

supplements, or we're talking about gidgets and gadgets and all this other

stuff to help optimize your sleep.

And I think.

this goes back to our conversation of thinking deeply about Christians in

business and in medicine and in different industry and what does that look like

to ethically be pursuing operating in the, not workplace, but in the industry,

being a, being a Christian in that.

And so that's one, one thing.

Other thing is, I think it also gets back to the unasked questions we get a

lot of times with, so many times when my patients come to me, of course they want

me to fix their sleep, is the number one.

They're really surprised when I don't necessarily go straight to

a pill because that's what they expect me to do as a physician is

just write them a prescription and.

There is this idea that I should be able to live my life in whatever way and

somehow still get the sleep that I need.

And I tell patients this all the time.

The the problem isn't the mat.

It some, okay.

It might sometimes be the mattress, you know, like if you have a really old

mattress, might need to get a new one.

But it typically, it's not a new mattress, it's not a, you know, silk lined eye mask.

It's not the, you know, whatever new supplement rage

is on the internet right now.

The biggest thing that is going to disrupt your sleep are your own

thoughts and your own behaviors.

And until you're addressing those, most of the time you're not getting at the

root cause there is a conversation that needs to be had around the marketing

and the tactics and the promises that we have on that business side

of the sleep industry, and there's not a lot of research to support it.

Right.

I mean there's, there's gimmicks.

I mean, something that popped in my head when you were talking

about was the weighted blanket.

It's like, gosh, I slept under one of those one time and was thinking,

somebody get me out of this thing.

'cause I'm being pressed under the covers and people say, oh, I love the weighted

blanket.

I'm going,

Yeah.

feeling sleeping with

bricks on

top of you.

Mm-hmm.

there's a lot of gimmicks and

all that.

and you know, if we were to, you called him granddaddy, and I called my

grandfather from Mississippi Granddaddy.

If we were to bring them onto this call and have some of this conversation,

they would go, what the heck are you?

Young fellows talking about, we just laid down on a

board almost and went

Yeah.

my, my grandfather granddaddy snored, literally would shake

the rafters of the house.

And, but

you know, he,

Yeah.

he went to

bed.

He slept.

Yep.

Yeah, there's reason why in Ecclesiastes, it talks about the sleep of the laboring

man says whether he, his stomach is full or is empty, his sleep is sweet compared

to the rich man and his abundance.

And some of that gets at a little bit of the ancient thought on sleep and related

to your stomach and how full you are.

But I think there's something that definitely is to be said

about having a good day's work.

And when we were in agrarian society and we were out and we were active

and we were moving, and then there's no electricity, you're just gonna

lay down, you're gonna fall asleep.

You gotta work hard, work hard, come in,

eat.

You're probably not

Mm-hmm.

tv.

You're not gonna get up

in the middle of the night and watch movies and

stuff like that, or your

No.

and you're gonna go to sleep and

sleep good.

Wake up, do it again every day and probably not think about it

Mm-hmm.

Alright, well, I do have one, this sort of like a practical, since I've got a,

a doctor of sleep on, I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna present something that's interesting

that my wife and I have, and I bet we're not the only couple that has this.

and then I wanna start moving into some of the spiritual aspects of sleep.

'cause that's one of the things I want us to kind of move

towards and finish up with.

So when I lay down here where it is 7:23 PM and we're recording this, and

I'm, I'm already starting to move into a mode where I'm getting prepared.

I'll be probably by nine 30 ready to go to bed.

I just got even a portable sauna that's in our bedroom.

I might even do a sauna if I could get it assembled, take a cool shower

and crawl in bed right after that.

I mean, I'm into prepping and I will typically lay down, read a little

bit because I'm getting tired.

And then I'll go to sleep and go to sleep hard.

And then about 3 37 ask me how I know that start coming out of that.

And I'll usually wake up.

And sometimes it'll be, you know, I start thinking about something.

Sometimes I'll get up and, you know, go to restroom, lay back down, go back to sleep.

Sometimes not.

Anyway, my wife, lays down, sometimes takes her an hour or so to go to

sleep.

Takes her a while to kinda get in that

mode.

I don't know if it's the deep

rim or whatever it is.

Mm-hmm.

by the time morning

comes, she is sleeping hard and tough to get up.

So we've got of opposite sleep

patterns.

Hmm.

a little bit about

anything that you want to say about what I just shared, because

I think a lot of people deal with that kinda one or the other.

I'm guessing.

Yeah, I think I would encourage listeners, one, to be willing to look

at your options and see if there is a good sleep physician in your area.

And having a full conversation on it is one.

'cause a lot of times people just think, you know, like, yeah, I have some

problems with my sleep occasionally, but like, what are they gonna do about it?

or it's not affecting me so bad kind of a thing.

I'm, I'm getting most of my sleep, but we know if even if you, your

body is seven hours, that's what it needs and you're only getting like

six and a half that is going to.

Impact you, you know, with, with your audience being entrepreneurs and people

in business and things like that.

There was a really interesting study that was done in 2019 that looked at

sleep deprivation, specifically in entrepreneurs and their ability to

assess new business venture ideas.

And they compared sleep deprived people with people who had

reported being well rested.

the interesting thing was that the sleep deprived entrepreneurs were more likely

to rate three different business ideas.

They had a highly attractive one, normal and a least attractive one.

They were more likely to rank that least attractive one as being higher compared

to their well-rested counterparts.

getting the sleep that you need really can impact your ability to have that

deep structural thinking and engagement in whatever, your task may be.

So I think.

Having the question and being willing to go talk to a professional is

always a great step, number one.

for me I do 45 minute initials, and then I'm able to have a whole conversation,

get your whole history and go through that and really make sure I'm tailoring

something to you specifically.

And sometimes that is a little bit of a conversation or some fine tuning.

but then I think it's helpful because then that's tailored to you and

you have someone else who's there walking you through it instead of,

going through, countless Google articles or things like that and

trying to piece this out on my own.

So that would be one.

The other thing is your circadian rhythm is pretty genetically determined.

So when I say circadian rhythm, that is, you can think about that

as actually your activating rhythm.

You have two processes that.

Determine your awake sleep states.

sleep pressure or process S is the longer you're awake that builds.

It kind of correlates with the buildup of adenosine and other

byproducts in your brain that are gonna make you more and more sleepy.

And then as you fall asleep, then your brain starts getting rid of those things.

Then on the flip side of that, you have your circadian rhythm, which is this kind

of waxing and waning 24 hour pattern,

If you've ever stayed awake for a full like 24 hours and then you're getting

to mid-morning the next day and you were really sleepy, then all of a sudden you

kind of have this little burst of energy and you're like, that doesn't make sense.

That's probably your circadian rhythm.

And then you'll feel good for an hour or two.

But if you don't go to sleep soon, It's gonna start tailing off and then you're

gonna feel really sleepy pretty soon.

So that activating rhythm, when you hear people talk about chronotypes, night

owls or morning larks, or things of that nature, that's one of those things to

be kind of aware of is there's probably a pretty significant portion of people

who are true night owls and they just cannot sleep until close to one or

2:00 AM and their body wants to stay asleep until closer to 10:00 AM to noon.

And the problem with historically these patients has been, they've get labeled

with insomnia and all of these other things when it's really not that, and

it's a totally different treatment for that compared to true chronic insomnia.

So that would be one thing for listeners.

If you have struggled with sleep problems for a long time and maybe

you fit more of that night owl where you're just like, I'm not sleepy until.

2:00 AM and then I cannot function until noon again, would be a great conversation

to have with a sleep physician to see if that's what it for you and there's

a tailored kind of treatment for that.

and I think the other thing that came up in my mind was the waking

up in the middle of the night.

I think we often think that I'm just supposed to sleep a full eight hours.

Waking ups normal.

So the biggest thing I usually tell people is how long you're awake.

So if it's less than about 15 to 30 minutes, then totally fine.

Even if that is, you wake up and you remember four or five nighttime

awakenings, if you can flip back over and then fall back asleep.

That's totally okay.

but it's that waking up and I can't get back to sleep.

And sometimes that waxes and wanes and that goes back to that kind of yo-yo

pattern I was talking about earlier where your body's seven and then maybe the

other day you were trying to catch up and you got like nine hours of sleep and

now you're operating out of a deficit.

And so then you're gonna have more nighttime awakenings

'cause you're in a deficit.

So sometimes the easiest thing is actually just tracking your sleep

for a couple weeks and then trying to kind of match your time in bed to

how much sleep your average sleep is.

if you're, like you said was about seven, seven and a half hours, but you're

spending nine hours in bed, you're not being as efficient with your sleep and

you want roughly that to be 85 to 95%.

I've actually considered, it's kind of tough to do with my current schedule,

with some of the work I'm doing and things I've considered just going in, getting up.

And doing some things.

I'm working on some books and working on writing and some research

and all that I'm doing right now.

up, starting to do some things, do some work, and then I would love it.

I can't, I'm not in a position right now, but I'd love it to take about a 45

minute nap, not too long after lunchtime

Mm-hmm.

I haven't been able to really test that well, but I'd love to.

I love testing stuff and seeing what works and

stuff

Yeah.

I think one of the

big things, and I love you, you wrote about it in the book we're

about to talk about here is kind of journaling and see what works.

I think what a lot of people do is they try to make their life,

another stress thing that might be where they are out of alignment.

They try to make their life look

like everyone else's.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

think that's a mistake.

I think first of all, seeing what works for you.

The challenge sometimes is when you sleep with someone and their

schedule works different than yours.

I'm pretty sure sometimes I might make a little bit of noise and my wife wants

to go sleep in another room, which is, something that she's able to do at times.

how important is it have a, I'm gonna use the word peace, but

it it, that's a spiritual term.

You know, when, when Jesus arrived, he says, my

peace I

Hmm.

he said things like,

my peace I

give to you.

Yeah.

we're not supposed to be anxious.

Sometimes some of the sleep that I, or the things I think about when I

wake up in the middle of the night is

Mm-hmm.

What You probably don't see people that are at peace

Hmm.

they're fatigued, but let's start bringing in the spiritual component to this.

Talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, I think

when we just look at the sleepless night as something to fix, then we miss

out on the opportunity for connection and growth with God that we wouldn't

necessarily just get, if we're following that typical secular kind of mindset

of, I need seven hours of sleep.

I need to do whatever I can to kind of fix my sleep.

there was a song on Christian Radio back in the early two

thousands that had this lyric of.

What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know you're near?

there's certainly biblical narrative, part of the story of

God interrupting people's sleep.

You know, I think about Samuel's call to be a prophet and his waking up

and not knowing what it was and going to Eli and was like, you called for

me And like, Nope, go back to sleep.

so I think all that, to say

exactly what you just said as far as the peace and the trust sleep within

the biblical narrative gives us this level of trust and peace because we

see that God is a God who never sleeps.

And because of God's creator status and my creaturely status, I can

lean into that vulnerability and trust him that my work doesn't.

Actually rely on me.

You know, we, we convince ourselves that we're the ones in control and that I

have to strive and do all this stuff.

And I love to point people back to Psalm 1 27, that starts off

about the, you know, it's vain.

If you are, the watchman is watching.

but if the Lord's not watching, then the Watchman's watching in vain.

And it's vain.

If you are foregoing sleep, you're staying up late to work and to toil and to eat The

bread of anxious toil is how it's worded.

And then in verse two it says, but God gives to his beloved sleep.

And so really understanding sleep as a gift from God, that's something

that we can receive that is just 100% that story and that narrative

that we get from God's word.

Totally different from a mindset that's just built on secular

humanism and that you'll encounter if you go to a typical medical

practice to get your sleep treated.

And so there's all this, we live in an anxious and unsettled age, and

to a certain extent, I can sit down with someone and talk to them about

their thoughts that they're having distortions with those thoughts.

How helpful or unhelpful we're, we're very utilitarian and pragmatic in some

ways within medicine, and that's kind of how most of the conversations go.

So we're not talking about how true the thoughts are.

We're talking about how helpful the thoughts are, and we can

talk about replacing those with, with more helpful thoughts.

But then that's about it.

That's kind of where the therapy ends of cognitive restructuring,

which is a component of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia.

But then for the believer and Christian, then it goes into that next

step is one of those, those thoughts that we are replacing with is the

truth that we believe that God is in control and he cares for me and

he loves me and cares for my sleep.

And so we were able to have a different conversation about peace.

and I say in my book that this journey into the sleepless night with through

the Bible brings more comfort and joy and peace because we are submitting our

lives to the creator of those things.

And so.

I think of when you're talking, I think a lot about Psalm three, where

David is on the run, he's fleeing from Absalom, and it kind of has this

narrative that everyone's around me and they're like, going to attack me,

I'm surrounded, and then it has this, and then I lie down and sleep

and I wake up for, you're with me.

And which seems totally counterintuitive because his life is in danger, and yet

he sleeps as this act of embodied trust.

And that's, that's the thing that I can't get past within the, the Bible

is that level of trust of God's bigness and my smallness, that when you meditate

on that and you reflect on that.

Are you still gonna have sleepless nights?

For sure.

I try my best to not say I'm gonna fix your sleep.

I really even try to kind of move away from better sleep.

I say that occasionally and and and stuff.

But, all

that to say, that when we are, we are spiritually transformed

when we encounter God.

And that is really the, the hope of this book is to bring people sleepless

nights to God and trust that he

can be trusted.

I,

the word that popped to me, maybe this was, maybe God gave me the word

that you wanted to say, was living

a rested life, being just

at rest, and I use the word peace a lot.

It's something that, and I know that that word doesn't mean.

It's, it's different for different

people, but it's just

Hmm.

everything's in alignment and I feel rested.

You know, I'm not anxious.

It doesn't mean I'm not, there's not a lot going on.

I've got a lot going on right now, and I call this a resource that you create.

I'm gonna read the title and you can tell me more about what you

were trying to accomplish here.

Sleep habits, journal practices, prayers and devotions to ease sleepless nights.

Tell me, first of all, tell me about the title.

That's kind of cool.

Full disclosure, the publisher came up with the title,

Did they,

so.

they, I mean, it was, it gotta

be a little bit collaborative.

It's not like they made

up something so

R

they had to pull something with

that though.

Right.

the funny story for this is actually the publisher was kind of already

on the journey to create this book.

they initially reached out to me and said, Hey, can we collaborate on this?

And I was like, actually, could I just write it for you?

And, by God's grace, and I'm so appreciative of them, they said yes.

part of that really early developmental stage that they were

in was a lot of that research on the title and things of that nature.

I had small input into, to ease your sleepless nights.

'cause I think previously it was restless nights and I said, Hey,

maybe I use a sleepless night rule.

So maybe we could make that kind of a thing.

but truly I think, it's this amazing, thing that happens in collaboration

where you know that the coming together of ideas, you get this better product

than what you were gonna have alone.

'cause my actual vision for this book was a full nonfiction trade book,

whereas what you have is actually a gift book that short and sweet.

I like to say that they're independent bite-sized activities.

And so really in this process, a little bit of my pride kind of came against it.

'cause I had this idea of like, oh, I wanted to do this.

but as we went through the writing process, I really saw the wisdom in it.

'cause in some ways I like to say it's a book for people who hate to

read because you don't have to get through an entire chapter before

you have some kind of actionable steps or things that you can do.

It's written around what I call the sleepless night rules, so that way.

You can jump into whatever step of the rules that you're having a problem

with, and in one activity, it's going to move you one little step closer on your

journey through the sleepless night.

Yeah, I'm actually, I've got a digital copy, so I'm

scrolling through it as we look.

It's very attractive, by the way, the actual layout and the book and like that.

And there was some of the steps on the sleepless night rules that.

Was interesting to me.

I might ask about it

really quick and

Yeah.

was the, first of all, I think it's, if you can't go to sleep, but I, I'm,

I'm going to kind of incorporate this into, if I wake up and then can't

go back to sleep,

Yep.

you say rise from bed if

you cannot fall asleep and then connect with God and wait to

feel sleepy.

Yeah.

think what

people do is the opposite of that usually, but I could be wrong.

Tell me just a little bit more, and then I've got one, one last question

before we wrap up here.

Yeah, you're right on it.

Rising from bed is probably one of the hardest steps in

the sleepless night rules.

There is a theory that we are creating an unconscious association

with the bed and wakefulness.

And so when you're doing that with years and years and years, you create this

association in your brain that if I'm tossing and turning and getting frustrated

in bed, that I can't fall asleep.

Then the bed becomes where I am frustrated and awake, and so rising out of bed, even

just getting out of the bed and maybe in another part of your bed is totally fine.

for some people they have to actually leave their bedroom,

but what we're doing there is.

actually just trying to disconnect that association in your brain.

And then part of the theology and things that I'm reflecting on in the book through

that too is thinking of ourselves as more embodied as, body soul complexes.

And so what is that doing to my soul when I'm pivoting to rise

out of bed, out of my frustration?

So, so I believe available next week.

It's, I believe if I, you know, we're doing our math, we're recording

this a little bit earlier, but it should be right after this releases.

So anything else about where people can find it, get it, do things like that?

it's kind of a journal,

Mm-hmm.

aspect.

There's

a lot of things where people write, which I think is important for

something as important as sleep.

But anything else you wanna say about where people can

get it or things available?

when it's released.

Yeah, easiest place would just be going to sleep habits journal.com and then

that will take you straight to my website where it has all of the different vendors.

But even if you just Google it or go to your typical, bookseller, then

you're gonna be able to find it there.

And yeah, I think that, it's designed to be done as like self-help.

statistically.

Everyone who's listening knows somebody who has problems with their sleep,

I'm pretty confident about that.

So we're getting closer to Christmas time and stuff like that.

And part of that, you know, aesthetic component of it too is fantastic for

a gift for someone who's really been struggling with sleepless nights.

So definitely would recommend it for that too.

it does have a gift look to it.

But my last question, I'm gonna have you speak to someone that they listened in

on this episode and they are exhausted.

I know my daughter, she, helps edit the podcast.

So she'll probably be listening before anyone else.

She's got two young children, you know, she's married with two young

children and all that that implies.

And then, I know that there could be some high energy, high achiever types

that just operate on very little sleep.

And then some people that just really struggle with some sleep, things that

could just be extremely tired, just.

Okay.

Say something encouraging.

say something short and encouraging as we wrap up here and then I'll finish up.

just something that might help them know

there's hope.

Yeah.

I think that is so often the person who's sitting across from me when I'm

seeing you as a, your physician, and so I really had that in mind as I was

writing the Sleep Habits Journal Really try to create that with the tone too,

to en engage people where they're at.

some people will go through it and they'll have activities that don't really resonate

with them, but I really tried to make sure I kept that exhausted mom child with

little ones and they can't even remember the last night of sleep that they had.

and feel just out of it.

And how do I get through?

And I think one of the things that I love about our faith is this

beautiful paradox that, that we worship a God who never sleeps.

He never grows weary, and never has need for sleep.

And yet paradoxically understands our sleeplessness through the life of Jesus.

By the Holy Spirit who is with you in your sleeplessness, can truly

actually empathize with you of what you are experiencing in your

exhaustion and how tired you are, and

I believe where the spirit is, then we are moving towards some s sense of healing.

That could be a whole other podcast in and of itself, of

what do I actually mean by that?

But what I mean is that God can be trusted as a companion on your

sleepless night, and he's always present and ready to connect with you.

And finding a small moment, or a small breath or a small prayer may be just what

you need to be able to take that first step on your journey through the sleepless

night and just know that there's a God who cares about you and empathizes with you

That's good.

Dr. Benjamin Long thank you for this conversation.

the name of the book is Sleep Habits Journal Practices, prayers and

Devotions to Ease Your Sleepless Nights.

And, again, it should be available here in the next few days.

I think was December

9th?

Is that what I

That's it.

somewhere?

So, and it's a, it's a good looking book for gifts and things like that.

Thanks for listening in and it's a, it's getting evening for me, man.

I am just hopeful and prayerful that you will have a fantastic.

Evening Sleepful restful season, this holiday season that, you might

be listening to this in, and I appreciate what Benjamin's doing.

I do think that he is in ministry because exhausted people are not typically at rest

and at peace, and

Mm-hmm.

for them, I

believe, really see all the things that God can do in their lives.

There are seasons that we go that we, we might have to, you know, through

medical school or build a business or company or something, but I do believe

that he's in ministry and I appreciate what he's doing in sharing this.

So we are seek, go create.

We've got new episodes every Monday.

We're on YouTube, all the podcast platforms.

Thanks for joining us.

See everybody next week.