By Layla Khoury-Hanold, Feb 2, 2023

One of the main causes of crying in your sleep is past trauma. The reason that unresolved trauma or grief manifests in our sleep is due to our brains performing daily processing functions. “Part of this is cleaning up toxins and storing memories, but another major part is processing what occurred that day or things from the most distant past,” says Dr. Alex Dimitriu, dual board certified in psychiatry and sleep medicine and owner at SiliconPsych.com. “Freud called this ‘day residue,’ or the tendency to keep processing events of the day or more distant past. Crying or other sadness in dreams may be reflective of this background processing and could certainly be unresolved trauma or grief.”

Click HERE for the full article.

January 25, 2023 Dr. Dimitriu was published in Psychology Today in an article titled:

The Merger of Artificial Intelligence and Psychiatry

Psychiatry is an art and a science, and artificial intelligence may provide tools to allow it to better understand what makes us tick.

True to this duality, I have always loved working with people as much as technology, especially the interplay between the two. I approach my work with engineering precision and record keeping, but I also pay close attention to both the “fuzzy” psychology of nurture, as well as the more medical biology of our “nature.” Along these lines, I often tell patients that we aim to work on the “hardware and software” to understand ourselves better and optimize how we feel and perform.

Click HERE for the full article.

By Zoe Malin, Jan 19, 2023

As the sun rises later and sets earlier during the winter months, odds are you feel some combination of sleepy, less motivated and plain old glum during the day. And to some degree, that’s totally normal, said Dr. Alex Dimitriu, who specializes in psychiatry and sleep medicine, and is the founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine. Our circadian rhythm and other biological clocks are regulated by sunlight, so when there is less of it, we feel drained. Until the sun returns in spring, we can replace missing daylight with light therapy lamps, which simulate the light of a sunny sky and can help boost your mood, among other benefits.

Click HERE for the full article.

January 18, 2023 — Dr. Alex Dimitrui, Founder of the Menlo Park Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine clinic, was interviewed by Insider for the article, “5 tips to try lucid dreaming and take charge of your dreams and nightmares.”

Click HERE for the full article.

January 11, 2023 Dr. Dimitriu was published in Psychology Today in an article titled:

Why Some Experts Believe Stress Can Aid Performance

“A little anxiety from time to time can be beneficial to task performance…[as] illustrated by the Yerkes-Dodson law, which states…performance is improved by anxiety until an optimum level of arousal is reached.” That quote, by psychologist and author Clifford B. Dobson as referenced in Yerkes-Dodson: A Law for All Seasons, might best explain why Garry Kasparov became World Chess Champion and John McEnroe won seven Grand Slam tennis championships by age 25, despite their performance stress.

Click HERE for the full article.

By Stacey Zable and Timothy J. Forster, Jan 5, 2023

Head support: What’s most important is ensuring your head is supported in the right places by your travel pillow – and, in particular, not being pushed forward by excessive padding – according to Dr. Alex Dimitriu, a sleep/wake and performance specialist who is dual board certified in psychiatry and sleep medicine. “The biggest issue many travelers will experience when sleeping on a plane is that the seats don’t recline enough,” Dimitriu says. “This often results in the head being just on the brink of tipping forward – which is not a comfortable sleeping position. Because of this insufficient recline, it is important to keep padding behind the head and neck minimal to reduce the tendency for the head to tip forward. A good pillow would provide support for side sleeping, rather than a lot of padding behind the head, which just pushes the head forward too much.”

Click HERE for the full article.

By Brian Morris, Jan 04, 2023

“Some studies have been carried out showing that melatonin can reduce stress around surgery,” says Dr. Alex Dimitriu, M.D., a double board-certified physician (Psychology and Sleep Medicine) who founded Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine as well as BrainfoodMD. “In a 2015 review paper, the authors noted benefit to pre- and post-surgical anxiety in people pre-treated with melatonin – in one instance, with similar benefit to midazolam.”

Click HERE for the full article.