By Alyssa Jung, Mar 31, 2020

One common nightmare trigger is stress. “They sometimes result from us trying to solve problems in our sleep — this is the brain’s rehearsal system at work in the night, so too much daytime stress can lead to nightmares when you go to bed,” says Alex Dimitriu, M.D., founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine in California. Find activities that keep you calm and make them a regular part of your daily routine. Try things like meditation, yoga, walking or other exercise, a hot bath before bed, or scheduling a few minutes of quiet “me time” where you wind down from the day.

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by Elizabeth Yuko, Mar 20, 2020

Our brains do some interesting things while we sleep, and we are designed to often forget the content of our dreams, Dr. Alex Dimitriu, who is double board-certified in psychiatry and sleep medicine and the founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine, tells SheKnows. So what actually happens in our heads while we sleep? According to Dimitriu, a lot: Memories get sorted and stored, we free up new space to learn, we problem solve and connect known facts to form “revelations” and our entire brain gets a power wash by the glymphatic system, to essentially clean up the busiest organ of the body. 

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By Sarah Ellis, March 14, 2020

Think of your body like a bank, and each night you’re depositing a set amount of money into it. If you miss your “payment” one night, you’ll owe more money the next night to make up for it. Sleep deprivation accumulates in this way. “Sleep is indeed like a bank account, and each night one gets less than the recommended amount counts as a draw on the funds,” explains Alex Dimitriu, M.D., a double board-certified doctor specializing in psychiatry and sleep medicine. “For someone well rested, missing one hour of sleep on one night often has quite a minimal impact. Over time, however, the missed hours begin to add up.”

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March 2020

“There is no doubt that longer work hours, constant interruptions, and decreased sleep time are contributing to the rise of ADHD,” says Dr. Alex Dimitriu, double-board certified psychiatrist and sleep medicine specialist at Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine, located in the Silicon Valley area of northern California. These constant demands for attention, combined with a lessened stigma for seeking help for mental health disorders, are pushing more adults toward getting help for an attention disorder that may have been there all along. Often times, it’s the treatment and therapy of a child that brings an adult to realize that keeping attention has been a challenge for them since adulthood.

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By YouAreUNLTD, March 6, 2020

According to psychiatrist Dr. Alex Dimitriu, founder of the Menlo Park Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine Center in Menlo Park, CA, sadness is generally short-lived and dissipates over time as we adjust to a new situation. “We often casually refer to this situational sadness as depression,” he says, “but it is important to distinguish it from clinical depression, a much more severe and long-lasting condition that has serious implications for long-term mental and physical health and must be diagnosed and treated by a medical professional.”

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By Julia Rachel Malacoff, March 04, 2020

Another potential (and ironic) side effect of some antihistamine-containing OTC sleep aids is less-than-great sleep. “There is some concern that diphenhydramine may also negatively impact sleep by reducing REM sleep (or dream sleep),” says Dr. Dimitriu. Lack of REM sleep can affect your memory, mood, cognitive performance, and even cell regeneration, so this can be pretty problematic.

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February 19, 2020 Dr. Dimitriu was published in Psychology Today on the topic of ADHD in adults.

ADHD isn’t just for kids. While attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder is now well recognized and commonly diagnosed in children, less attention has been focused on the fact that about half of these children carry some of the symptoms of ADHD into adulthood. What’s more, there are many adults with ADHD who have never been diagnosed or treated. Many grew up in a time when kids who exhibited the hyperactivity, inattention, and impulsiveness that characterize ADHD were labeled troublemakers, dreamers, lazy, or just “bad.”

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