How To Sleep Well: Fix Insomnia with Scripture & Neuroscience w/ Benjamin Long

What if better sleep isn’t about squeezing in one more hack, but learning to release control? We sit down with sleep physician Benjamin to unpack a humane, hopeful way to rest—where practical tools, hard science, and a biblical worldview actually work together. From the hidden costs of residency hours and shift work to the quiet ache of lying awake next to a partner who nods off in seconds, we name the pain honestly and then map a clear path forward.

We start by reframing insomnia. Instead of chasing generic tips, Ben helps us identify root causes—overthinking, doomscrolling, irregular schedules, and pressure to perform—and match them with targeted practices. You’ll learn how to use scheduled worry time to contain rumination, why a simple bedside jot-pad can offload looping thoughts, and how gratitude interrupts anxiety long enough for sleep to take hold. No magic bullets, just small repeatable behaviors that retrain a tired mind.

Then we widen the lens. Scripture treats rest as a gift and a guide, not a flaw to overcome. Genesis models rhythm and limit; Psalm 127 challenges anxious toil and calls sleep beloved. That vision doesn’t cancel the lab data—it completes it. As we explore non-REM and REM cycles, autonomic shifts, immune benefits, memory integration, and cardiovascular protection, the message is striking: every organ system depends on steady, sufficient sleep. Protecting it protects everything else.

By the end, a simple mindset emerges: surrender with structure. Set consistent rhythms, keep a worry window, practice gratitude, dim the screens, and allow the day to end. Trust that you are not the world’s engine—and watch your nights change. If this conversation helps, subscribe, share it with a friend who’s tired-but-wired, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway. Your next great day starts the night before.

Transcript

Benjamin’s Path To Sleep Medicine

SPEAKER_00 0:24

It's good to have you back on Mind Force. I'm your host, Nate Shear. Today's main themes are overcoming insomnia, sleep from a biblical worldview, and sleep science. Sleep of one of those tricky things that everyone needs, few people protect, and almost no one was taught how to think about. When sleep breaks down, everything else follows. Mood, focus, faith, relationships, and definitely performance. Today we're sitting at the intersection of science, belief, and lived experience. No hacks, not hustle culture, just real understanding of rest and why it matters. Benjamin, let's start with your story. What drew you into the world of sleep in the first place?

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Yeah, I kind of tripped into it in some ways. I was running for a long time being a pediatrician. And for anyone who doesn't know, kind of the pathway to becoming a physician, dude, four years of undergrad, four years of medical school, three years in residency to be a pediatrician. Literally got to like my last year and finally kind of looked up and was like, is this really what I want to do? And I happened to rotate on sleep and it just really clicked. I love it just because everybody sleeps and sleep touches so many things. So it was just a really interesting area of study.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Awesome. Was there a specific personal moment where sleep went from background no noise to your mission?

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of my medical education experience really lended to that. I didn't think about it until actually I became an expert in sleep that I was like, I actually have a lot of experience with sleep deprivation. So, you know, as a resident, you know, working 90-hour kind of work weeks and just going on nights, going on days. So a lot of experience of just being totally sleep deprived and seeing the impact that that had on me, that it wasn't until maybe a couple months after my graduation where I was finally done and back to a normal schedule that I woke up one day and I was like, I think I was like really depressed and like anxious and all these things. And now I feel more normal and didn't realize that I wasn't feeling normal.

Life Under Sleep Deprivation

SPEAKER_00 2:40

It's crazy too. Like you never know, like you said, what you're missing until you're missing. My first job in the air uh Air Force was air traffic control. And so later, I guess they've developed like crew rest syndrome or something. But like we used to do two days, two mids, and two off. And so it was the bare minimum to give you enough to get back. And so at some points over the five years that I was in, I was only getting four hours, and that seemed, I guess, normal because I was sleeping during the day and the sun's in, it's not very good sleep. And but like you said, I remember I came off and it took a year or maybe two, where I was getting eight hours and feeling good again. And I was like, oh, that's what that's supposed to be like. Yeah. It's crazy. I'm curious, Benjamin. We watched Gray's Anatomy in some of these shows, but I was kind of curious from your standpoint. Uh, you talked about the 90 hours. Could you kind of walk us through what I'm sure there's no average, but what a week kind of looks like on call, sleeping, and what that kind of looks like during those times.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Absolutely. So it depends upon the specialty that you're in. So Gray's Anatomy, all of those are surgical residents, and then definitely does not portray true things. You know, I always laugh because it's like the doctor is the one who like goes to like run the CT machine to get an X-ray and or CT, and then is also the one drawing the labs and then running the labs, and like, no, that's you mean you know that. Like, we're not the ones doing that. It's a team effort. But you know, and but definitely a big differentiator is surgical subspecialties versus non-surgical. Classically, stereotypically, surgery tends to be more demanding hours-wise, but depending upon what program you're at and where the culture is in that specific location, that might dictate whether or not you're really hitting that 90 hours or busting that. But for me, a typical rotation in uh pediatrics was we would have month-long blocks. And so I might be on nights, so working 12-hour shifts six days a week. And so then I would have technically like 36 hours off and then would go straight back to it. So really, yeah, it was kind of the doing that for four weeks. And then I had uh, you know, some our outpatient weeks or months would be a little bit less demanding, but still you're getting there at like 7 a.m. for learning and lectures in the morning before actually clinic starts, and then you have your full clinic day, and then you're writing notes afterwards. So it's very easy to be there from like 7 a.m. to if you let it five or six p.m.

Reality Of Medical Training Schedules

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Yeah, it's rough. In the Air Force, we got a hundred patients a week, which is always just kind of crazy to me that we could even do that and have enough time to use the bathroom and do notes and catch up on admin, and it's kind of wild. I feel bad for both sides because a patient wants more time and wants to pour in to you and asks you five different things they got going on, and you only got so much time in front of you before the next ones. It's kind of unfortunate. Well, my next question is one of my favorites. I love myths. Myths are kind of funny. So, what's one thing people assume about sleep that you wish they'd immediately unlearn? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

I think the biggest thing would be that I can fill my life with whatever baby. I'm super busy from the moment I wake up until I'm about to fall asleep, and expect in some way that I should just be able to kind of like hop into bed, close my eyes, and then I should be out, you know? And in some ways, I think it's a little bit of our mechanical culture and environment. Like people, I think in some ways expect us to be somewhat like machines, and our language kind of lends it towards that. I'm gonna wind down, I'm gonna shut off. Like we expect these things that we're supposed to be able to just kind of like a flip of a switch, be able to fall asleep when really that's that's not the case.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

Yeah, it's definitely true. I've done a lot of like long road trips, you know, 10 hours, 12 hours, 14 hours, and always funny to me because kind of that same principle, you're super tired, you're drained, you've used your eyes, you've used that mental power, but you can't go right to sleep. You try to get in, you pull into the hotel, and you're like, I'm so tired. And you just lay there, and I guess, you know, it's hard to shut off the mind and things like that. Well, last question in the introduction is what are you most focused on helping people understand right now?

Myth Busting: We Aren’t Machines

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Yeah, the biggest thing right now is to maybe challenge a little bit of our postmodern perspective on sleep, that sleep is a total biological phenomenon that we want to talk about? When really there is some really interesting conversation that I like to have on this intersection of theology and medicine, and specifically trying to look at sleep from a Christian worldview and say, is there something else here that maybe we might have a little bit of a blind spot from our current lens? Not to get too meta too too quickly or something like that. But in a lot of ways, we there's this fallacy called the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. And that's where we can say that this phenomenon is something that really exists in reality when it's not the actual thing. So in sleep, the way we talk about that is we talk about sleep in stages, non-rim, one, two, and three and rim. And so if you're talking to a sleep doctor, we're going to talk to you about these brain waves that show us what stage of sleep that you're in. But the fallacy of misplaced concreteness is that's not actually your experience of sleep. Yes, that gives us a very powerful tool to say this person's sleep is different from this person's sleep, or you're not getting this amount of sleep. But we can enter a blind spot when we assume that the little brain waves that we're looking at are actually the real thing of the experience of sleep. And that's this kind of difficult point in science because there is a certain aspect of sleep that we can't really get at. The biggest one would be like dreams. You know, I can't draw your blood and get dream levels to be able to, you know, understand what kind of dream you had last night. And the problem with dream research is that we rely on you as the person to remember the dreams and then be able to tell them. So there's no quote unquote objective way for us to study dreams, like I can study the blood pressure in your heart by doing a cath through one of your veins in order to kind of get to see like whether the different pressures in different areas, like we were able to get that for blood pressure and physiology and do things of that nature. So there's this subjective experience that real quickly you can get into a conversation of then of like, okay, then what is consciousness? And the fact that we don't actually have a physical explanation for consciousness. Certainly we have like, you know, brain neurological correlates for parts of what's happening in reality. So we talk about the hippocampus and the functional MRI that lights up and that's associated with memory. And so we know that these two things are the same thing, but my memory of being at my grandparents' house on a summer day and going on the slip and slide and that whole experience stored in my brain, you're not going to find that anywhere in your brain. So that that opens this door to this whole conversation of science is this really cool door to be able to learn so much about the world, and yet it does have its own limitations.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

That's awesome. Yeah. I appreciate you coming on the show. It's really cool that you found the intersection between, you know, that spiritual realm and then also the science. Sometimes I feel like they feel like they're at odds and people believe them to be at odds. And in multiple episodes, I've said I completely disagree. And, you know, seeing rainbows and, you know, scuba diving and the depths of the the water is like those are the times I I feel most connected and realize like an intelligent, you know, higher power was able to create all these super complicated things. Like you're saying, it's just so difficult to even wrap your head around a soul and things like that. So it's interesting. My wife's just got a book in the mail, The Biblio Diet, which is like going through the Bible and saying what you should eat and things on your, you know, how your body reacts and things like that. I'd never really thought of like the human and Bible, you know, portions overlapping, but it's cool. You're here. This book's out there, there's a lot of good resources. So glad to see people are in this realm. But Ben, before we get too much farther, I wanted to see if you had a question before me.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

Yeah, I think the question I would always love to ask is is there anything you want people to ask you about that you something maybe you're passionate about or something you're thinking about right now that no one ever really gives you the chance to talk about?

Beyond Biology: Theology Meets Sleep

SPEAKER_00 11:51

That's interesting. No, I can't think of anything that I would those softballs, you know, you put them up there so you can just crush it. No, I can't really think of anything. I think the biggest thing for me would be, you know, connecting with other people and trying to, you know, interact with people. I've had episodes on kindness and connection and things like that. I think that would be something in that realm, trying to figure out where we overlap. Because I think we get through life through connection. We're um, you know, social creatures by design. We're supposed to do things together. And so I think I would go down something along those paths where I think it's most disheartening right now. We're we're more connected than we've ever been, but then also more disconnected, which is very unfortunate. I see a lot of stuff like my daughter's friend. She wrote some concerning things on one of their group messages, and it's just really disheartening and very sad to see kids as early as 11, 12 already feeling disconnected and bullying and hazing and different stuff. And I wish we'd go. I don't know what the question related to that is to key that up. But but yeah, I would say be nice to each other. I don't know. That's a kind of blanket answer, I guess. But yeah. Do you have a question that stirs anything off that?

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Well, as I say, I do have an another question because I was kind of going back and forth between two. The other one, obviously, I'm a sleep doctor, so I'm always interested in people's sleep stories. I had a chance to read your bio. So I know that you've seen a lot and experienced a lot. So maybe, you know, like what has your relationship with sleep been like?

SPEAKER_00 13:29

It's been pretty rough. So my first job in the Air Force was air traffic control, and so we had very set schedules. So two days, two swings, two mid, it was kind of the minimum amount of sleep to get you back on the next shift. Some places do different ones, like four and two or six and three days. There's kind of different ones, but generally it's pretty non-standard, which I always thought was funny because when we talked to the flight docs, they were always like, we can't give you, you know, ambient or whatnot because your sleep schedule's too regular. Like that's not very regular, but what they were saying was like it was planned. Those pills and whatnot are designed for people that are called on alert and have to, you know, get back on schedule and whatnot. So I've had a really difficult time. I I've been much better over the last eight years since crossing over to become a hospital administrator. My schedule's a lot more normal, but my biggest thing is being able to shut my mind off, which is probably I will probably get into it, but might be the most common one. I have troops and personnel issues and fires I need to put out. Maybe the wrong word. It's what we say in the military. Put fires out at the clinic, and I'm always trying to think of solutions to things to try to make things better within the clinic or hospital. So mine is trying to wind down. It's really difficult. And I've come up with different things like, oh, don't worry about it, or put it in a box and tie it up for tomorrow, but I haven't found anything that's super good. The best thing for me, which it might also come up, is working out. So I get up at 5:30, do my devotion, quiet time before the kids get up. I go to the gym at seven, and then I, you know, kind of tire myself out. And then over the course of the day, I'm actually able to lay down. And usually if there's not too many big things in the mind, it's not too bad. But I definitely say it's a it's a very interesting relationship throughout my different career fields and whatnot. And like you mentioned earlier, not that I can come anywhere near, you know, the residency, but basic training and some of those TDYs and exercises that we've been on where you I had one back in March where we were working 16 hours a day. So even when you go to lay down, your mind is just still kind of going, even though you're you're physically completely tired, but it's difficult to like wind down and really well, wind down like the robot you said. But yeah, it's definitely been interesting. I wish it was a little bit better, but I think after this episode, it'll it'll be better. We'll see. I can do my best. So your first pillar, Ben, is overcoming insomnia. So when someone says, can't sleep, what's usually going on under the surface? Absolutely.

Connection, Community, And Mental Health

A Personal History With Shift Work

Insomnia Reframed: Causes Over Hacks

SPEAKER_01 16:03

I think the way I like to frame insomnia for most people is that it's one, not usually a primary issue in that, like we used to talk about primary insomnia versus secondary insomnia of is there something else that's causing it versus is that this just its own entity? And as we have continued to try and refine how we diagnose and talk about insomnia, pretty much inevitably, most times, there is something that is going to be causing your insomnia. So it kind of became this false dichotomy between primary and secondary. And so now we just kind of more say, is this acute happening right now, or is this chronic and has been prolonged or something else? And so for insomnia, the interesting thing though is that there really are a lot of different things that can interrupt your sleep. And so one of the things that's really difficult is being able to, people all the time are asking me, okay, what's some quick tips I can have to help my sleep? And I'm like, I don't know because I don't know what it is that is causing you a problem for your sleep. So there might be something kind of like what you're talking about. If if there's someone who I call them the overthinkers who I'm just all the stuff that's in my mind, and I I need to kind of get that off. Oh, sorry, hold on a second. My dogs. Can you hear my dog? Just a little bit. A little bit? Okay. Okay, sorry, let me get that real quick. It's all good. Sorry about that. She escaped. It's all good. Okay. So insomnia. So something that works for someone who's a little bit more of an overthinker, where I might say, hey, let's do one of the common things I actually talk about is scheduling worry time, which I can get to that in a second. That is something that would be really helpful for an overthinker. But then for someone who's a doom scroller, that I'm just on my phone and I'm like flipping through my phone, then that's not going to be something that's super helpful for them. So the biggest thing is that one reason I love being a sleep doctor, and I think there's probably an element to this of being a physician for most people, is I hear your story and have a whole time to kind of bear witness to what's going on in your life, and then walk alongside you and figure out what tools do you need for where you're at right now. And so for the overthinker, scheduling worry time sounds really counterintuitive because you're like, okay, you want me to worry about things? That doesn't really make a lot of sense. But what it one, we want to try and do is separate your bedroom environment from being a place that you worry. Because sometimes what happens is you can condition yourself to let the that room be the place where you worry about things. So I often, you know, we'll hear people who say, like, I don't really think about any of these things until I get to, I'm lying in bed and trying to fall asleep. So some of that might be you just don't have enough margin in your day to be able to problem solve and to do those things. And so that's just the time where you have the cognitive space, and that's your brain's just trying to kind of get through all of that, is one thing. And so it could be that plus, I have over days and weeks and years and years and years conditioned myself to have the bedroom to be a place where I worry. So one way we do that is say schedule worry time outside of your bedroom, outside of your bedtime. And then it's not anything that's magic. It doesn't work, you know, after necessarily one or two nights of practicing this. But with practice, what happens then is that you're trying to contain your worry to one specific part of the day. And so then how this really helps in practice is then if you're outside of that time, then you tell yourself, if this really matters or, you know, whatever, I'm going to worry about it at worry time tomorrow. And so inevitably, for some people, then they start worrying about what if they forget what they were worrying about, and that's a whole cycle you have to go down. But the then with practice is that you sit down, you write down all the things that you are worrying you, and then I tell people it's a little bit of a bell curve. So at first, it's gonna feel like you're actually worrying more, and it feels like it's actually getting worse because you have now set aside time to actually think about it, and people are pretty good at identifying what's worrying them so that they will come back the first appointment and be like, Doc, it's not helping. If anything, it's worse. I'm more worried, and I'm like, that's okay, keep going, and you're gonna get over a hump, and eventually you run out of worries. And so then then what you can also start to do is then start problem solving kind of some of those things too. So then it just kind of becomes a time to be productive in some ways, of like, okay, I've got all my worries down. It's not really anything else that's coming to my mind. So let's go back to the top of the list and I can, you know, maybe put up some steps of things I could consider or try or something like that. So it removes it from the bedroom, it gets it off of your mind, and then it kind of contains it to one part of your day. So that way, if you're starting to think through those things, you're like, nope, I've got, you know, 20 minutes tomorrow worry time to be able to think about that. And for a lot of people, again, it's a practice thing. And that's the hardest part about sleep medicine, is so much of this are thoughts and behaviors that are your barriers to good sleep. And people hate dealing with their thoughts and behaviors. Everyone wants, can you just give me a pill that's going to help me fall asleep? And I'm like, no, like I can give you a pill. And in reality, there's no perfect sleep aid. All sleep pills are going to do something, whether that is modify the different stages of sleep that you're getting, or it might, you know, help with the beginning of the night, but not the middle of the night. So there's no like perfect sleep in a pill kind of a form. But I tell people, like a band-aid, it's a sleep aid. This is just a tool that is helpful for as needed kind of use, but not something that we want to rely on. And then people don't like that answer. And then it's a whole conversation of, okay, how can we consider to try these behavioral interventions? Because people will come back and they're like, Doc, it's not working. I'm like, okay, how long did you do it? I did it three nights. Okay, you got to do it more than that. So now I've started to say, do this every single day for four weeks. It is okay if you're not able to get this done every single day for four weeks. Like, there's grace, that's fine. I don't want you to like feel like you can't come back to me if you aren't able to do this. Because we can walk walk through this together, troubleshoot, and try and kind of keep going. But we are not gonna say this doesn't work, this is a fail kind of a thing just because it's hard or because we haven't given it its good try, because those behaviors and thoughts are kind of the foundation for. Good sleep. And so if I'm not addressing them, then I'm just like that story of the kid at the dam with like the water that's like poking through and just trying to kind of stop it. You know, like it's not actually, we're not getting to the root problem.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Yeah. I love that you bring up the multiple times per week and things like that. That's come up so much on the show. And it started from the very beginning, which I love that because one of the reasons I wanted to start the show was we can talk about physical stuff. It seems like with no issue, you'll talk about your favorite workout, how you did buys and tries, three by five. But a lot of times we don't talk about mental things and we're like, oh, you know, I found a new breathing technique. I mean, it's starting to get a little bit more common now, but I find it so odd that like it's common. We're like, oh, I go to the gym three days a week and do cardio so I can, you know, have a good heart and be healthy. But for some reason on the mental health, we wanted to check into mental health on like the worst day of your life. We never wanted to do the offloading. And so it's another good reminder. And so I'll, you know, I'll always bring that up as a reminder. Like you do it all the time, or you do it for a period of time. It's not a thing. Like it's the example I always use, you would never go and jump on the treadmill once and you're like, I'm done. I'm done with cardio forever. Like that's not how cardio works. Right. And neither is your mind. So that's awesome. Well, Ben, I would assume overthinking must be one of the more common ones. So I'd like to dig a little bit deeper, go into some of those practical things. So you mentioned the worry time. What have you seen for the best like tips and tricks for that? Is that like journaling and getting it out? Is it just sitting and pondering? Like you mentioned, like problem solving. Is it more successful when you see the completion of that? Or kind of what does worry time? It sounds awesome. I'm really loving this, but what does it look like in practice? Yeah.

The Practice Of Scheduled Worry Time

SPEAKER_01 24:10

And there's there's different kinds of stages too. I think some of us might have heard of the intervention where you just keep a pad by your bedside or something and you just write it down to offload it from your brain. Because that can be an aspect of the overthinker, is that in some ways you're subconsciously like, I don't want to forget it and I haven't solved it. And so your brain's just kind of wired to keep it on your mind because you haven't solved it yet or you haven't offloaded it somewhere else. And so for some people, they don't even necessarily need to do worry time. They might just be caught in this, but they're kind of thinking about something specifically that just having like a pad at their bedside to kind of write something down might be helpful. But if you find that that is not actually helping your mind to kind of calm down, then we're actually kind of like scheduling worry time and doing it somewhere outside of the bedroom and outside of bedtime would probably be more beneficial. Then the other kind of thing outside of worry time or just writing it down to get it off of your brain, I really like to talk about practicing gratitude because it's really hard for our brain to do two things at once, even though we have a lot of people who say they're multitaskers. Really, they're it's that you're really good at switching between things, but your brain is focused on one thing at a time. And so the same thing with worry, it's really hard for your brain to both worry and to practice gratitude at the same time. And so it's not gonna magically, again, make those worries go away or do anything. But how I talk to people about gratitude is it just kind of cuts the cycle off. And so it kind of stops it in its tracks because now I'm thinking about, well, I'm just thankful that I have a job and I'm thankful that I have a house, and I'm thankful, you know, it's and I encourage people to try and like don't just say the same, I'm thankful for my family and my house and my job. And I'm just gonna say those three same things. I encourage the people kind of move beyond that because then I think in some ways too, that's that kind of gets back at the spiritual side of things and when we're talking about who we are as persons in our hearts, as individuals that have kind of settled habits and dispositions that when you are practicing gratitude, that's forming you into be a certain kind of person. And I'm going to be more thankful. And then if you start to notice these things that you're thankful for, it's easier for you to start seeing that to where. So let's say you've already you're trying to think of something that you're thankful for and you're like, well, I'm thankful for this bed. Then you can start thinking about all the people and all the hands that it took to get that bed to you right now, of like the people who made the sheets, the people who made the mattress, the people who made the frame, you know, like the screws that hold everything together. It's like the once you like see that and you have it as a mindset, it's crazy that you can start to see the illusion of self-sufficiency just goes totally out the window because then all of a sudden you're seeing this whole network of hands and people that even, you know, this that we're doing right now, to be able to talk in two totally different places, you know, is totally crazy. And that is gonna do something within you that's gonna help to kind of stop that worry in its tracks and give you at least the space and the margin to pivot so that way you can move towards if you want to do some deep breathing or some prayer or guided imagery or whatever that might be.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Absolutely. That's good stuff. I think of that every time I get on an airplane for whatever reason. Maybe it's because I I grew up on Oregon Trail, right? So I always think of Oregon Trail for some reason. And I think back like it used to take days to get down the road, and like half of you would die from dysentery. And now, like I can be I've been stationed in Japan, Florida, you know, Southern California, Northern California, all over the place. And so it's just bizarre to me. I can blow through like 10 time zones, mean a completely different, you know, area of the world with modern technology. And then back in the day, you had to do like a covered wagon and try to go across the river. So yeah, I think that's pretty interesting how crazy that is. But we'll transition into your next pillar, which is sleep from a biblical worldview. So, how does scripture frame rest differently than our modern culture? Sorry, I got something caught. No, you're good.

Gratitude As A Cognitive Pivot

SPEAKER_01 28:28

I mean, I think the biggest thing for how the biblical authors talk about rest and sleep. One, if I can nerd out a little bit about the Bible for a second, if you look at Genesis and the creation narrative and just the fact that God rests is like a huge thing. And even when you're comparing it to other, like neighbors of the ancient writers, um, you're going to have like epics where the world is created out of violence and that, you know, this god slays this god, and then their, you know, like body that is like halved becomes like the sky and the ground kind of a thing. A very violent, you know, social imaginary. And then so you read these things that would have been the surrounding stories for the ancient Israelites, and then you read Genesis and the creation account that God just creates it out of his word is totally like mind-blowing when you see it from that perspective. We, you know, hindsight's 2020, we're like, oh yeah, that makes sense that the world could be created that way. But in the ancient Israelites, like, that's that's bizarre. But then the fact that in this kind of Eden setting, when God finally sees that something is not good in creation, the fact that Adam is alone and goes about solving that to try and bring him Eve, sleep is a part of that narrative. And it's very interesting that God puts Adam to sleep because in other ancient texts, it's the gods that are sleeping, it's not humans that are sleeping. Like humans are created in one kind of ancient creation myth to do the work of the gods, so the gods can sleep. So it's a very different, you know, like perspective. Even ain't you know, like thousands of years ago when that was written, it was radical compared to their neighbors at that time, let alone this question that we're talking about, how that vision of rest and reality and sleep is different from our modern kind of hustle culture and productivity and efficiency and things of that nature. Very, you know, like we've already talked about a little bit mechanical, and that we idolize efficiency. I mean, we see this both in medicine for sure, of like, that's the the bottom line. If I could do something to be more efficient, we're going to sacrifice a lot of things for the sake of efficiency in the modern American healthcare paradigm. And so the fact that the biblical narrative gives us this creaturely limitation, the fact that we are limited creatures in contrast to God as creator, who has no need for sleep, has no need for rest, never grows weary. It really just puts us in our place. And that's a very different dynamic. That it's it's something that we don't need to try and overcome. It's not something that we should try and, you know, buck off. Like that has sleep has had a bad rap intermittently throughout history, and especially in industrial revolutions when people were really kind of like, we want to get beyond our limitations. And some of that too was like, I need to, I'm spending a third of my life asleep. That's crazy. I need to do other stuff because I need to be more efficient and more productive. And I think now most people are burnt out on the productive kind of narrative and stuff like that. And there's less buy in on that for our postmodern period. But I think that narrative still exists for sure.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

Absolutely. I love that you mentioned that. I was, I was kind of hoping you would because I recently, it's been a couple months, but I think it came up in Bible study, but I'd never really thought of it. But it's awesome that Jesus came down and, you know, walked among us and did everything to connect with us. And one thing I'd never thought of is on that seventh day, even though he is God and most powerful and can literally do anything he wants, he rests solely as an example to say, I rested, you should rest. I don't need to rest, but I'm going to do it to lead by example. He could do whatever he wants. I'd never really pause. So that's awesome that you mentioned that. Lead by example, like, did the thing, it is okay, it is not weak or anything like that. I'm curious in this section, for the biblical standpoint, are there any biblical principles that quietly support better sleep without ever even using the word sleep? Maybe not directly, but it's kind of tied into sleep.

Rest Through A Biblical Lens

SPEAKER_01 32:59

I think, I mean, one I really love comes from Psalm 127. So it does specifically talk about sleep, but it kind of gets back to our limitations and that it's talking about setting up unless the Lord builds the house, then the one who is building it is laboring in vain. Then it goes out to the one who's watching over the city. Unless the Lord's the one watching, then that person who's watching it is watching it in vain. And then it goes into saying, it is in vain that you rest or sorry, sorry, it is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep. And that really gets back to this productivity, you know, discussion that we've been having of that so many times, like I got a busy day, so I need to get up early to get on this, this, or that, or I have to stay up late until my checklist is done. Over, you know, a thousand years ago, we have this written in this psalm of this reflection of someone who's saying it's totally in vain that we are doing this and not recognizing that God has given us sleep as a gift. You know, God is the one who is sending sleep upon us, and that's something that we need to recognize and receive. And especially that in relation to the watchman or the builder, that, you know, we can have this illusion of control that everything that's happening in my life, I have to hustle or I have to do all of these things in my own power in order to make it happen. And obviously, the inverse is not true that I can just lie back and be like, cool, God's got me. No, I'm not gonna participate or anything. And it's in that middle place where God is inviting you to participate. But you know, don't be fooled for one minute that you were the reason why things are happening when God is the one who is creator and sustainer over all things.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Absolutely. I think another good reminder is everything's in balance. Like everything, you should never be on one end of the spectrum or the other. Like you said, you can't completely give it away. You have to do something, but you also know that the creator is ultimately in power. I think one thing that's super interesting to me is I feel like I get that anxiety and the checklist and trying to work through everything at night. But the one thing that I just stumble upon, which I think has been really helpful, is do you know the most common phrase in the Bible?

SPEAKER_01 35:19

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 35:20

No. The most common phrase in the Bible is in variations of the words, but do not fear is the most common phrase in the Bible. So it's just a good reminder when you lay down, you're trying to worry about the next day, and did I get enough done? Just over a hundred times based on you know different translations, a number changes, obviously, but just think on that. Like, do not fear. Like there's a reason that shows up more than any other phrase in the entire Bible. 66 books, and you got, you know, one phrase that comes through. I thought that's pretty powerful. Is there anything that you know that like kind of feeds off that do not fear? I think.

Trust, Fear, And Context In Scripture

SPEAKER_01 36:00

Not anything that is cut. Well, I guess, you know, there is a proverb that talks about the fear of the Lord is what leads to life, and that your sleep may be sweet and you're untouched by evil. So we're not quite talking about the same fear, but definitely, you know, there in that there is something interesting in the biblical narrative that's talking about this is good for you. You know, it's very difficult for us as modern readers to engage in the Bible, especially, you know, there are very many difficult passages that reading as a modern reader, it's like, how could this be going on? But it does say in Deuteronomy, where God, it's kind of the review of all of the laws of Moses, again, just a reflection on that over again in Deuteronomy. And there's a verse in there that talks about that everyone else will see our laws and see how good and godly we are. And that reading that recently made me pause too, because so much of us have issues with specific verses in the Bible or like this part here of like, oh man, I just don't understand why God would say this or that why this would happen, or whatever kind of a thing. But then when you go back and you read the Bible in context, especially really interesting to read, like the Code of Halmorabi and different other ancient law codes, and you compare that to the law and the Torah, then you are going to see that in some ways they're actually the same. Like there are very similar things, but then also there are very different, you know, one thing that was very prominent to me was that in other kind of ancient law codes, there was definitely like castes of people, like, oh, if you cut off a slave's, you know, ear, then it costs this much, but if you cut off this person's ear, it costs this much, versus in you know, the Torah and the Mosaic law. For the most part, everyone is treated kind of the same. There's no caste system. Certainly, there are gendered and different kinds of things that we could. I could I'm getting us off a little bit here, but all of that to say that you know, the word is good. Like God's word is good for us, and it's not written, you know, you might hear that it's not written to you or but it's written for us. It's written for our good. And so it's something that we can engage. And I think that's that gets back to trust. And I think this is really coming back now. So it just took me a while to get here. For sleep is really embody trust. And that's something beautiful we have within the Christian worldview of I can fall asleep because I believe there is a God who is holding everything together, and I don't have to worry because God's got everything under control. And so, in a way, it is this practice of trusting God each and every night to let go of even that illusion of control and understanding that he is sustaining and kind of working in things. But saying I trust in God, like we're very cognitive, like thought people, not necessarily always like feeling people. And so I can understand that, but to like sink down into my heart and really trust God, that's a totally different journey.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

Absolutely. That's hilarious you mentioned that because we just started at church in our small group an honest look at the Bible's seven toughest topics by Dr. Andrew. I don't know how to pronounce his last name, but it's funny because one of the main things he talks about is context. You got to read it by at which it was written. We're 2,500 years later. Yes. And so if you try to apply these things way back then on how they treated women and, you know, fill in the blank, like they just don't make sense. And there was war and violence, and but it's hilarious because he uses the same phrase which I was gonna use, but you already did. But I I guess I'll repeat it because it's so good. It's written for us, but you know, it wasn't written to us. It was written to people, you know, that have long, long, long come and gone. So we have to take it at what it was written at at the given time. That's a really good one. Well, Ben, we'll transition to your final, final pillar just to kind of get a little science in it. So, sleep science. What actually happens in the brain and body during healthy sleep?

SPEAKER_01 40:13

Yeah, we could talk about sleep in a lot of different organ systems when we're thinking biologically. Typically, sleep doctors are going to talk about it neurologically and what's happening with your brain waves, but we know that there are actually pattern differences with your heart rate, with your breathing, with your muscle tone. But in general, we talk about it neurologically. So you have non-rim, where your eyes are not moving, and that's stages one, two, and three. So stage three you can think of as that's the deep sleep, slow wave sleep. And a lot of times I tell people that stage three is really good for the body. And then you have rim sleep, which is where we typically think about dreaming, and I tell people is good for the mind. Technically, all of your sleep is good for your body and good for your mind. But we do know that if you've ever heard of your sympathetic system and your parasympathetic system, so the sympathetic is that fight or flight, and then the parasympathetic is rest and digest. So you enter into sleep and parasympathetic, predominant. And then for RIM sleep, then kind of the sympathetic nerve nervous system is being activated more. This is very simplistic. There's actually, you know, like all of sleep is good for your body and for your mind. You don't technically just dream in RIM. More recent research has found that you are doing some kind of dream imagery throughout all of the different stages of sleep. It's just a matter of not whether we're remembering them, if it's from our day versus the narrative. So I'm I'm slightly simplifying here, but in general, that's what we know of sleep. And it's funny because any medical subspecialty that I talk to, if it's a cardiologist, a gastroneurologist, someone who looks at your liver, someone who looks at your kidneys or something, like sleep is going to cause some kind, or sleep disruption is going to cause some kind of derangement to any organ system. So immune system is a really interesting one. Like your immune system works better when you are well rested versus when you are sleep deprived. But one of the strongest ones that we know is cardiovascular, that your heart, your coronary arteries, your blood pressure, all of that is better neurologically when we're thinking about increased risks of dementia and Alzheimer's or things of like neurodegenerative diseases. We know that there's some link there with sleep. And so that research is always continuing and ongoing. And, you know, we obviously don't have time to dig into all of the different details, but the rough rule of thumb is that your sleep touches every part of your body. And if you're not getting the sleep that you need, it's going to impact it somewhere.

SPEAKER_00 42:42

Makes sense. No wonder you picked that one. You wanted the one that just impacted everyone. You didn't want one part of the body. Well, Ben, let's try to bring it all together. You had three wonderful pillars. So since sleep sits at the crossroads of biology, a little bit of trust and a little bit of behavior, what's the single most important mindset shift people need to make to finally experience real rest?

What Healthy Sleep Does In The Body

SPEAKER_01 43:08

I think the biggest thing that the Christian story is that we worship a God who, like I've already said, never grows weary, never needs to sleep, didn't suffer from sleeplessness, and yet entered into creation to experience suffering, to take on our suffering, which includes sleeplessness, and then died and resurrected and now is still with us in the Holy Spirit. And so the fact that we worship a God who paradoxically has never slept but has slept blows my mind. Like it's the thing I cannot get past because, in a real beautiful way, I can try to be the best doctor that I can to help you with your sleep. But I'm never going to be with every single one of my patients when you are facing your sleepless night. And insomnia can be such an isolating experience. And especially if you're married to someone who falls asleep, like in two seconds, I have not heard something that makes someone more mad than talking about their spouse who can fall asleep at the drop of a hat. And so, really, the fact that the Holy Spirit is available to you and can bring you that comfort and that peace and that joy and connection in the sleepless light night, like no one else in the world. Can. That is the one thing I want people to kind of take away from this. That if you're experiencing that tonight, you can always take that time to connect with God.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

That's awesome. Thank you for that. Yeah, that's hilarious. My wife has fallen asleep mid-sentence. I hope she listens to this episode. It has happened. She will probably say it has not, but mid-sentence. I don't know how that's even humanly possible. Yeah. But uh yeah, she's or she's doom scrolling. It's like one or the other. She's out in seconds, or she's staying up way too long, and I just see the glow of that. Well, Benjamin, thank you for bringing clarity to a topic so many people struggle with silently. Before we close, working listeners connect with you and learn a little bit more about your work.

SPEAKER_01 45:07

Yeah. If you're experiencing your own sleepless nights, then my book that just came out, Sleep Habits Journal Practices, Prayers, and Devotions to Ease Your Sleepless Night, might be a good resource for you. So you can get that at sleephabitsjournal.com. That takes you to my website where you can learn more about me, sign up for my newsletter, things of that nature. Um, but then also I'm on social media as at the wholehearted MD. So any of those places, I'd be happy to connect.

SPEAKER_00 45:34

Awesome. I need to make another tab right now and put that in the Amazon cart. To everyone listening, real rest is not quitting. It's not lazy. It's alignment. It's trust in the Lord. Please protect it. I love you all. See ya.