At every medical appointment, certain rituals unfold: height, weight, blood pressure, and—almost reflexively—temperature. But in asymptomatic patients, how often does that temperature reading actually matter? In this episode, we will:

• Examine the origins of routine temperature checks and their current clinical value
• Explore data showing how infrequently temperature readings in well visits lead to meaningful outcomes
• Introduce the idea of sleep as a more relevant and revealing “vital sign”
• Highlight how simple questions—like “Do you snore?” or “Are you sleepy during the day?”—can uncover high-impact sleep disorders
• Contrast the diagnostic yield of temperature checks vs. sleep screening
• Consider why sleep is still overlooked in routine care, despite its massive public health implications
• Reimagine a future where sleep quality is as routinely measured—and meaningfully addressed—as blood pressure

Produced by: Maeve Winter

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• Twitter: @drchriswinter
• IG: @drchriwinter
• Threads: @drchriswinter
• Bluesky: @drchriswinter
• The Sleep Solution and The Rested Child

Thanks for listening and sleep well!

We all think we know what insomnia is: trouble sleeping, tossing and turning, maybe staring at the ceiling until sunrise. But does the public really have a clear picture of insomnia and does that impact the massive health impact it has? In this episode, we will:

• Explain how insomnia is not a single problem but a progressive condition, starting with a few rough nights and, in some, developing into a chronic disorder
• Explore why insomnia is often a disorder of perception, where patients significantly underestimate how much they sleep
• Review what studies show about actual sleep time in insomnia—based on polysomnography, actigraphy, and other objective measures
• Identify how public misunderstanding of insomnia has contributed to ineffective treatments and persistent myths
• Walk through a new six-level clinical framework for managing insomnia, from public health education to relapse prevention
• Highlight why “doing nothing new” after a bad night may be the best form of early treatment—and why CBT-I remains the gold standard when things don’t resolve
• Discuss the role of hyperarousal, sleep identity, and over-attention to sleep in making insomnia worse over time

Produced by: Maeve Winter

More

• Twitter: @drchriswinter
• IG: @drchriwinter
• Threads: @drchriswinter
• Bluesky: @drchriswinter
• The Sleep Solution and The Rested Child

Thanks for listening and sleep well!

In our modern world of blue light and burnout, it’s easy to forget that sleep has always been shaped by the forces of its time. In this episode, we travel back to the Gilded Age—a period of dazzling progress, deep inequality, and curious beliefs about sleep. In thenis episode, we will:

• Explore how medical professionals in the late 19th century understood sleep—and misunderstood insomnia
• Learn what physicians were prescribing to sleepless patients in an era of opium, electricity, and moral fatigue
• Contrast the sleep practices of the working poor and the wealthy elite, and how each class shaped our modern assumptions
• Examine the “rest cure,” neurasthenia, and other diagnoses born from a world grappling with industrial change
• Discover the surprising technologies and bedding innovations that started appearing in Gilded Age bedrooms
• Reflect on how beliefs from this gilded era still echo in our bedrooms today—from sleep hygiene to the fear of lying awake

Produced by: Maeve Winter

More

• Twitter: @drchriswinter
• IG: @drchriwinter
• Threads: @drchriswinter
• Bluesky: @drchriswinter
• The Sleep Solution and The Rested Child

Thanks for listening and sleep well!