March 8, 2021 by Elizabeth Enochs

“Bright lights and screens suppress melatonin. They trick your body into thinking it’s daytime still,” Alex Dimitriu, MD, a double board-certified physician in psychiatry and sleep medicine and founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine, told POPSUGAR. “Besides making it harder to fall asleep, bright lights and screens can also lessen the quality of sleep all night long. Sleep is just not as deep.”

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By Lindsay Champion, Feb. 23, 2021

We hate to break it to you, but you can’t. There is no shortcut for a good night’s sleep, says Alex Dimitriu, MD, double board-certified in Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine and founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine. “The body goes through specific stages of sleep, which we refer to as sleep architecture,” he explains. “We need a significant amount of deep sleep, and dream or REM sleep each night, and often to get enough of both, we need at least seven hours in bed.” That means there’s really no way to truly feel like you got eight hours of sleep (or experience the benefits) when you only got four. Sorry, friends.

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February 12, 2021 — Dr. Alex Dimitriu, Founder of the Menlo Park Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine clinic, was interviewed by Insider for the article, “Yes, you can overdose on melatonin — here’s how to find your proper dosage.”

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By Dominique Michelle Astorino, February 01, 2021

Insomnia disorder is its own beast, according to Dr, Dimitriu. “Insomnia disorder (or psychophysiological insomnia ) is not a result of depression, anxiety, medical issues, or substances including alcohol, caffeine, or stimulants.” Rather it’s defined as trouble initiating or maintaining sleep or waking too early, three days per week or more over a period of at least three months, he explains. Insomnia disorder, aka chronic insomnia, is a long-term pattern of sleep difficulties that, as Dr. Dimitriu explains, aren’t necessarily a direct byproduct of anxiety. Then there’s acute or short-term insomnia, which is a brief episode (less than three months) of sleep loss brought on by factors such as sleep anxiety, grief, or job loss and typically improves as the patient copes with the stressors that originally brought on the sleep issues, according to SleepFoundation.org. Just as you can feel depressed but not have a clinical depressive disorder, you could experience insomnia symptoms, but not have chronic insomnia disorder.

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By Alexia Dellner | Jan. 28, 2021

“Really short times to fall asleep (i.e., less than five minutes) often suggest significant sleepiness or sleep debt from insufficient sleep on prior nights,” Dr. Alex Dimitriu, MD from Menlo Park Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine tells us. Other signs that you’re sleep deprived include fatigue, irritability, mood changes, difficulty focusing, a weakened immune system and a reduced sex drive. If you’re lying in bed and struggling to fall asleep, when should you just give up and try something else? Dr. Dimitriu usually tells his patients to spend 20 minutes trying to fall asleep. “Clock watching is bad, as is getting stressed out about not sleeping in bed,” he explains. After about 20 minutes of not being able to fall asleep, you should get out of bed and do something relaxing like reading in a dimly lit room. When you feel sleepy, get back into bed and try it again.

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January 21, 2021 by Jenna Wirth

“Toxic positivity is essentially the denial of negative feelings, a forced positive attitude that attempts to negate any negative sentiment,” Alex Dimitriu, MD, a double board-certified physician in psychiatry and sleep medicine and founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine, told POPSUGAR. “It’s telling someone ‘to cheer up’ or that their sadness or worry is not warranted or useful.” This unhealthy denial is harmful, he explained, because any defense that glosses over reality can be a dangerous thing. Not only does it have the potential to hurt people by discrediting their experience or feelings, but it can also hurt yourself by rejecting real information or feelings in favor of a positive facade. “It’s like putting makeup on a wound,” Dr. Dimitriu said.

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Amanda Capritto, Jan. 20, 2021

Night terrors and nightmares both involve sleep and fear, but they differ in a couple of ways. One key difference is the time at which they happen, says Dr. Alex Dimitriu, psychiatrist and sleep physician at Menlo Park Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine.  Nightmares are scary dreams that usually occur during REM sleep, which is when dreams occur, Dimitriu says. This means nightmares commonly occur in the second half of the night, or early morning. Night terrors, on the other hand, more often occur during deep sleep, which is more clustered in the first half of the night, he says. People generally wake up with night terrors around 90 minutes after falling asleep. Additionally, during nightmares, people usually wake up and remember the dream, Dimitriu says. But with night terrors, “People wake up startled, scared and confused, with no recall of what they were dreaming,” he explains. 

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