Dr Ford Brewer - PrevMed How I Fixed My Terrible Sleep Scores - Ford Brewer MD MPH (PrevMed Health)
7 snips
Aug 23, 2025 The host shares their personal battle with sleep issues, revealing insights from wearables that track sleep metrics. Discover the dramatic impact of sleep quality on health and longevity through compelling stories of insomnia. Explore the interplay of exercise and sleep, the benefits of weight loss on restfulness, and how body image perceptions affect health journeys. The conversation dives into the nuances of sleep stages, including REM sleep and dreaming, while highlighting the importance of personalized coaching in metabolic health.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Longstanding Personal Insomnia Story
- Dr. Ford Brewer struggled with insomnia for decades and found family history (his father) relevant.
- His baseline sleep scores were about 50–60% before recent improvements.
Wearables Use HRV To Infer Sleep Stages
- Wearables derive sleep staging mainly from heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV).
- Changes in HRV across the night help infer deep sleep, REM, and wake periods.
Unexpected Sleep Response To GLP‑1s
- Dr. Brewer noticed dramatic sleep improvement after taking GLP-1 medication episodically over years.
- Weekly dosing during an allergy season trial raised his sleep scores into the 90s and sustained them.