By Dominique Michelle Astorino Nov 13, 2020

Depending on caffeine may seem like an obvious sign, but it bears emphasizing. “If you’re drinking more than one cup of coffee or Red Bull to get through the day, chances are, you’re sleep-deprived,” says Dr. Dimitriu. The other one? Yawning and dreaming of laying down on the couch in your office (ahem, living room) the whole day. How you feel in the afternoon specifically is a dead giveaway for the quality of last night’s shuteye, Dr. Dimitriu says.  While everyone gets a dip in energy in the afternoon, if you’re sleep-deprived, it’s like trying to run a marathon through wet cement wearing a lead backpack (after eating a jar of melatonin gummies).

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By Emilia Paluszek, October 31, 2020

“Attention and focus are also impacted with poor sleep, and people will experience trouble learning and retaining new material, or being increasingly forgetful of previously learned material,” says Alex Dimitriu, MD.

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By Dominique Michelle Astorino, October 27, 2020

“The wheel of emotions is a useful tool for people to start to better identify their feelings, rather than saying ‘I just don’t feel good,'” says Alex Dimitriu, M.D., double board-certified in psychiatry and sleep medicine and founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine.

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By Lauren Smith, October 22, 2020

“When does some condition count enough to be a disorder? In the case of social anxiety, the intensity of the condition must be enough to cause life disturbance,” says Dr. Alex Dimitriu, MD, double board-certified in Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine and founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine. In other words, are you avoiding a job interview? Limiting your social life? Missing out on events that you wish you could attend? Overrelying on alcohol to “survive” social events? These may all be ways that social anxiety disorder causes life disturbance. Many people forget or aren’t aware of this aspect of the condition, which fuels the myths about social anxiety disorder.

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By Julia Malacoff, October 11, 2020

Enter: Stress hormones. “Stress hormones like cortisol, adrenaline and even dopamine can be elevated during periods of stress, and they can remain elevated for some time, even after the stressor is gone,” says Dr. Alex Dimitriu, a board-certified doctor in psychiatry and sleep medicine. So once you get riled up about something — work, family issues, a pandemic — it can be hard to physiologically “come down” from that stressed state.

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By Jessica Migala, Oct. 01, 2020

Plan a transition period between awake time and going to bed. “Your brain needs to slow down to shift gears, and too many people try to be super productive to the last minute,” says Alex Dimitriu, MD, a dual-board certified doctor in psychiatry and sleep medicine in Menlo Park, California. If worries tend to spiral before bed, Dr. Dimitriu recommends journaling. “It’s common to be flooded with thoughts at bedtime, but if you sit and work through them [rather than avoiding them by filling the space with scrolling on your phone], these thoughts tend to get better in 20 or 30 minutes,” he says.

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By Jessica Migala, September 29, 2020

Your body was built to deal with anxiety as soon as you open your eyes in bed, says Alex Dimitriu, MD, a dual-board certified doctor in psychiatry and sleep medicine in Menlo Park, California. “In the morning, [the stress hormone] cortisol is elevated, and you have more adrenaline and an elevated heart rate. That’s what wakes people up,” he explains. But for some people with anxiety, that physiological response becomes psychological and symptoms are far worse in the morning than any other time of day. Lack of sleep or going to bed late the night before tends to make morning anxiety worse, says Dr. Dimitriu. The circumstances of the day can also accentuate symptoms. “Lateness can really make people anxious,” he says. It can make you feel scattered as you scramble to make up for lost time all day.

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