By Dominique Michelle Astorino, October 19, 2020

“Dreams can always be affected by what is on your mind by day and before sleep,” agrees Alex Dimitriu, M.D., double board-certified in psychiatry and sleep medicine and founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine. “Without a doubt, having sexual feelings or thoughts about someone, or some fantasy can certainly come up in your dreams. The mind does work through feelings and rehearses for future events and encounters when you sleep — especially during REM (dream) sleep.”

Click HERE for the full article.

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.

Click HERE for the full article.

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.

Click HERE for the full article.

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.

Click HERE for the full article.

By Elizabeth Millard, Fact checked by Andrea Rice, September 11, 2020

For many people, another issue is that it takes more than a few days to adjust, adds Alex Dimitriu, MD, founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine. “In my practice, issues like insomnia, depression, and anxiety often get worse around the shift in daylight saving, and it can take people up to two or three weeks to fully adjust to the transition,” he says. “Beyond sleep and wake time, the loss of daylight in the afternoons, especially in the winter, makes it harder to exercise or spend time outdoors, which can both be beneficial to mood or nighttime sleep quality.”

Click HERE for the full article.

By Jamie Rose, September 9, 2020

In addition to shorter days, September marks the start of the back-to-school season, and many people return to work after summer vacations. According to Alex Dimitriu, MD, the founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine, many factors can contribute to a declining mood in September: “The official ‘return to work’ always adds stress as people return to ordinary business and school.”

Click HERE for the full article.

Elizabeth Yuko, 8/25/2020

In some cases, anxiety can cross the line between just being an emotion everyone experiences, to a disorder that could require some form of treatment. But where is that line? According to Dr. Alex Dimitriu, a psychiatrist, everyone has a “baseline” level of anxiety—a certain amount that they feel all the time—as well as “spikes” of anxiety, triggered by events or other stressors.

Click HERE for the full article.