Michael Schwartz is the founder of MicroSleep, LLC, and the program director for the Clinical Sleep Health Program at the Oregon Institute of Technology. Michael has over 30 years of experience in sleep. He's a registered and licensed sleep technologist, and he's certified in clinical sleep health. Michael can be found at SleeponQ.com and on Twitter. His Sleep on Cue app is available for iOS devices and Android devices. In this episode, I talk to Michael about cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) and intensive sleep retraining.

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Transcript

Martin Reed: Welcome to The Insomnia Coach Podcast. My name is Martin Reed. I believe that nobody needs to live with chronic insomnia and that cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) techniques can help you enjoy better sleep for the rest of your life.

Martin Reed: All right. I'm here with Michael Schwartz. He's the founder of MicroSleep, LLC, and the program director for the Clinical Sleep Health Program at the Oregon Institute of Technology. Michael has over 30 years or experience in sleep. He's a registered and licensed sleep technologist, and he's certified in clinical sleep health.

Martin Reed: First of all, you do have a lot of experience in the field of sleep. How did you get involved in sleep?

Michael Schwartz: Let's see. I came out of college with a degree in psychology, and I do remember them talking a little bit about sleep in a couple psychology classes. Which I think is interesting, because we always hear in medical school that they don't really talk much about sleep. I remembered a little bit of it, and thought it was really interesting, and then didn't think much of it after that.

Michael Schwartz: Then I got out of college and was doing odd jobs in the summer, and I was actually painting a house. The person whose house I was painting was the best friend of a manager of a local sleep lab. The lady stuck her head out the window and said, "Hey, Mike, are you a night person?" I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "There's a job as a sleep technician down the road. Are you interested?"

Michael Schwartz: One thing led to another, and I was hired on to work nights in a sleep lab. Then I was running the big stainless steel polygraph machine with the Z-fold paper. Then that was in the mid to late '80s, and started off down in Southern California, and then just went on from there.

Martin Reed: Great. Now you do a lot of work, especially ... You still do a lot of the sleep apnea work, but you also do a lot of work with insomnia, as well, right? How did you branch out from doing this sleep lab work into insomnia?

Michael Schwartz: With a background in psychology, I was familiar with some of the aspects of insomnia. It was just always a bit of an interest of mine. When I eventually made my way up to Oregon in the 1990s, there was a medical director of the sleep lab where I was in who was a pulmonologist, and was actually quite interested in chronic insomnia. We started talking, and one thing led to another, and he worked it out where I could educate patients. I would provide sleep education.

Michael Schwartz: That's really how I started working with patients in a hospital setting who had, primarily, chronic insomnia. A large number of them had comorbid sleep apnea, so it was a combination type patient that I was educating. It was mostly sleep hygiene, but there was some of the other components that are a little more helpful for chronic insomnia that I was allowed to phrase in my own way with t...