Sleep Unplugged with Dr. Chris Winter

Chris Winter, MD
  • 3.0 (7)
  • Medicine
  • Updated Weekly

No holds barred, unscripted discussion on a wide range of sleep topics - from sleep disorders to current research and controversies in the field. No topic is off limits! Dr. Chris Winter is a clinician, a board certified neurologist and double boarded sleep specialist with 30 years of clinical experience. He is the author of The Sleep Solution and The Rested Child, and is a popular consultant and speaker, working for many professional sports teams. He is well known for his unique perspective and ability to demystify sleep, all of which he brings to Sleep Unplugged. 

  1. 3d ago

    Bonus - The AI Interview Experiment...UNHINGED: Wish I Knew What You Were Looking For

    A few days ago, we did an experiment to see how well AI could interview me about sleep. In this bonus episode, I reveal the original attempt which was a bit all over the place. The interview was much more personal and strange which we corrected by adjusting the prompt in the "official" episode, but I thought it might be funny to share the trial run. In this episode we will: -Debate how much of my career success can reasonably be attributed to my looks -Discuss my questionable resemblance to Tom Hiddleston -Ask which voices in the sleep world I occasionally wish were a little quieter -Revisit the strangest place I have ever slept -Explore the difference between believing something works and believing it works very much -Talk about the irrational fear that someday the phone simply stops ringing -Consider who I am when sleep medicine, sports, speaking, and podcasting are stripped away -Get unexpectedly personal about work, family, friendship, and the things we sacrifice while building a career -Ask what I hope my children do—and don't—inherit from me Original intro music Vigilanteology by Abhinav Singh (copyright 2026) Original outro music Vigilanteology (reprise) by Abhinav Singh (copyright 2026) Produced by: Maeve Winter Music by: Dr. Abhinav Singh (@sleep_vigilante), all rights reserved More Twitter: @drchriswinterIG: @drchriwinterThreads: @drchriswinterBluesky: @drchriswinterThe Sleep Solution and The Rested ChildThanks for listening and sleep well!

  2. 5d ago

    #221 - The AI Interview Experiment: Wish I Knew What You Were Looking For

    What happens when the interviewer knows nearly everything you have said publicly and has zero fear of challenging or offending you? In this unusual episode of Sleep Unplugged, I turn over all control of the podcast to AI and let it ask the questions and dictate the program. The result is a surprisingly candid conversation about certainty, contradiction, expertise, and what an algorithm might see when it examines a career devoted to sleep. In this episode I (or we?) will: Turn the microphone around and let artificial intelligence interview the interviewerExamine the tension between scientific authority and intellectual humilityDiscuss why sleep medicine sometimes rewards certainty when the evidence demands nuanceRevisit ideas and opinions I have expressed publicly—and allow the AI to challenge themConsider what patients, athletes, and listeners actually need from a sleep expertAsk whether an algorithm can recognize contradictions, vulnerabilities, and blind spotsOriginal intro music Vigilanteology by Abhinav Singh (copyright 2026) Original outro music Vigilanteology (reprise) by Abhinav Singh (copyright 2026) Produced by: Maeve Winter Music by: Dr. Abhinav Singh (@sleep_vigilante), all rights reserved More Twitter: @drchriswinterIG: @drchriwinterThreads: @drchriswinterBluesky: @drchriswinterThe Sleep Solution and The Rested ChildThanks for listening and sleep well!

  3. Sep 7

    #220 - The Lindsay Clancy Tragedy: Insomnia, Overmedication, and the Psychiatric Safety Net

    A Massachusetts courtroom just produced something that almost never survives into public record: a near-complete paper trail of one woman's psychiatric care in the three months before catastrophe. Her diary, her phone notes, and the testimony of every provider who tried to help her sleep all lead to a central question: what actually happens when insomnia and psychiatric illness feed each other, and how thin is the system supposed to catch it before it breaks? In this episode we will: Walk through the documented timeline od initial depression, an SSRI, a reported 48 hours without sleep, and a rapid cascade through a benzodiazepine, an antihistamine, and eventually an antipsychotic, across three different providers in three monthsBreak down SSRI-induced activation syndrome and why it can look clinically identical to an antidepressant unmasking bipolar disorderBring in the hard data on sleep loss as a trigger, not just a symptom, including a study of 870 women with bipolar disorder showing one lost night of sleep around delivery raised postpartum psychosis odds roughly fivefoldDraw the same throughline through Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, and Brittany Murphy, three deaths where a real, unresolved insomnia complaint met multiple prescribers without a shared pictureEvaluate national data putting mental-health ED visits at over 35,000 a day, and a 2013 survey showing a third of psychiatry residencies don't even offer an elective in sleep medicineOriginal intro music Vigilanteology by Abhinav Singh (copyright 2026) Original outro music Vigilanteology (reprise) by Abhinav Singh (copyright 2026) Produced by: Maeve Winter Music by: Dr. Abhinav Singh (@sleep_vigilante), all rights reserved More Twitter: @drchriswinterIG: @drchriwinterThreads: @drchriswinterBluesky: @drchriswinterThe Sleep Solution and The Rested ChildThanks for listening and sleep well!

  4. Aug 31

    #219 - Top 10 Sleep Threat Power Rankings: Trapped Inside Disillusion

    Dr. Alison Kole is taking on sleepmaxxing, ChatGPT, and the sleep-industrial complex in her Top 10 Sleep Threat list. In this episode we will: Explore why patients sometimes arrive at the sleep clinic with their story and diagnosis already writtenLook at the fear of sleep studies, sleep apnea diagnoses, and outdated ideas about CPAPAsk why CBT-I remains underused despite being the gold-standard first-line treatment for chronic insomniaConsider why better sleep requires thinking beyond the bedroom to exercise, nutrition, mental health, and the entire 24-hour dayTo find out more about this week's podcast sponsor Fitnexa and their SomniPods 3, please use the following link https://go.fitnexa.com/egVvZ9 and use the code DRCHRIS10 for $10 dollars off your order. Original intro music Vigilanteology by Abhinav Singh (copyright 2026) Original outro music Vigilanteology (reprise) by Abhinav Singh (copyright 2026) Produced by: Maeve Winter Music by: Dr. Abhinav Singh (@sleep_vigilante), all rights reserved More Twitter: @drchriswinterIG: @drchriwinterThreads: @drchriswinterBluesky: @drchriswinterThe Sleep Solution and The Rested ChildThanks for listening and sleep well!

  5. Aug 24

    #218 - Medication Deprescribing: Get Off This

    Nobody blinks when a doctor says you'll be on blood pressure medication for the rest of your life. Say the same sentence about an antidepressant, or Zepbound, and responses are quite different. This episode digs into deprescribing, the fast-growing clinical movement around when and how to stop medications, and asks why some "forever drugs" get a cultural pass while others get moralized. In this episode we will: Separate the real clinical debate around antidepressant tapering from the online discourseTake on the GLP-1 stigma directly, with two 2024 JAMA Internal Medicine studies that found no elevated depression or suicidality risk, and ask why "you may need this forever" reads as scandal here but shrug everywhere elseSit with the RLS story, where the science just ran the opposite direction: 2025 AASM guidelines downgraded dopamine agonists after mounting evidence of augmentation, a drug-induced worsening of symptoms, making deprescribing here the conservative, evidence-driven move, not the fringe oneAsk why hypersomnia drugs generate almost zero cultural friction at all, and what that quiet exception reveals about the other threeLand on what actually predicts whether a "forever medication" gets treated as a fact of chronic disease or a personal failing — and why RLS should make you distrust any tidy answer to that question, including this episode'sTo find out more about this week's podcast sponsor Fitnexa and their SomniPods 3, please use the following link https://go.fitnexa.com/egVvZ9 and use the code DRCHRIS10 for $10 dollars off your order. Original intro music Vigilanteology by Abhinav Singh (copyright 2026) Original outro music Vigilanteology (reprise) by Abhinav Singh (copyright 2026) Produced by: Maeve Winter Music by: Dr. Abhinav Singh (@sleep_vigilante), all rights reserved More Twitter: @drchriswinterIG: @drchriwinterThreads: @drchriswinterBluesky: @drchriswinterThe Sleep Solution and The Rested ChildThanks for listening and sleep well!

  6. Aug 17

    #217 - Modern Night Shift and Circadian Adaptation: Up All Night

    Our current gig economy did not just create new jobs, it expanded a whole new category of night worker, from rideshare drivers to online freelancers to overnight fulfillment teams. Today (or tonight rather), our bodies are struggling to make the switch. In this episode we dig into what that circadian resistance actually costs your heart and metabolism long-term, and the handful of interventions that can actually shift it. In this episode we will: Break down why 22 of 30 permanent night nurses still had daytime-oriented melatonin rhythms and why that's not a willpower problem, it's a light-exposure problemGet into the real stakes: a 2025 meta-analysis linking night shift work to 13% higher cardiovascular disease incidence and 27% higher CVD mortalityTake on the meal-timing question head-on and look at new data suggesting fasting at night preserves glucose tolerance better than eating, without pretending the evidence justifies one universal ruleReview how light and schedule consistency can help improve these situations To find out more about this week's podcast sponsor SideSleeperZ, please use the following link: https://sidesleeperz.com/Original intro music Vigilanteology by Abhinav Singh (copyright 2026) Original outro music Vigilanteology (reprise) by Abhinav Singh (copyright 2026) Produced by: Maeve Winter Music by: Dr. Abhinav Singh (@sleep_vigilante), all rights reserved More Twitter: @drchriswinterIG: @drchriwinterThreads: @drchriswinterBluesky: @drchriswinterThe Sleep Solution and The Rested ChildThanks for listening and sleep well!

  7. Aug 10

    #216 - Nasal Strips and Sleep: Leave Me Breathless

    Nasal strips have been a fixture in pharmacy aisles and on athletes' faces for decades, sold on the promise of easier breathing, but the peer-reviewed evidence often tells a different story than the packaging does. We put nasal strips and internal dilators through the RCT wringer and sort out what these devices can and can't actually do, from your bedroom to the finish line. In this episode we will: Break down what the highest-quality evidence — a 2026 meta-analysis of 17 studies and nearly 500 patients — actually found for AHI, oxygen saturation, and sleep architecture across all nasal dilator typesSit with the placebo-strip finding out of the University of São Paulo, and what it reveals about the gap between subjective "I slept better" and objective, PSG-measured outcomesCompare internal dilators like Mute against external strips, and call out where manufacturer-cited stats diverge from the independent literatureHead onto the field and track: two competing systematic reviews on whether strips help runners and athletes, and why "very low certainty" evidence still shapes what gets marketed to youTo find out more about this week's podcast sponsor BreatheUp, please use the following link: https://breatheup.com/ Original intro music Vigilanteology by Abhinav Singh (copyright 2026) Original outro music Vigilanteology (reprise) by Abhinav Singh (copyright 2026) Produced by: Maeve Winter Music by: Dr. Abhinav Singh (@sleep_vigilante), all rights reserved More Twitter: @drchriswinterIG: @drchriwinterThreads: @drchriswinterBluesky: @drchriswinterThe Sleep Solution and The Rested ChildThanks for listening and sleep well!

  8. Aug 3

    #215 - Seqoquel and Insomnia: Same Thing From The Same Old Cause

    Ten million prescriptions a year, and most of them aren't for what the drug was built to treat. Seroquel started life as an antipsychotic — engineered to quiet psychosis, not close your eyes. Somewhere along the way it became one of the most common "off the record" sleep aids in America, riding on a side effect nobody set out to sell. The evidence behind that shift is thinner than most people assume — and Seroquel isn't the only drug doing this. In this episode we will: Trace quetiapine from its 1997 approval for schizophrenia through its quiet migration onto millions of nightstands, and unpack the receptor science that explains why a psychosis drug puts you to sleep at allSpotlight the actual clinical trials behind quetiapine-for-insomnia — including the 13-patient study nearly the entire off-label practice rests on — and the newer data linking it to cardiovascular events, dementia, and fallsBreak down what the American Academy of Sleep Medicine's guideline really says about quetiapine (it's not what most people assume), and why that gap in the data is its own kind of red flagDraw the parallel to trazodone — a different drug, a different original disease, and somehow the exact same storyTo find out more about this week's podcast sponsor Sleep Reset, please use the following link: http://thesleepreset.com/podcast  Audio Engineer: Bradley Bransly Barker Original intro music Vigilanteology by Abhinav Singh (copyright 2026) Original outro music Vigilanteology (reprise) by Abhinav Singh (copyright 2026) Produced by: Maeve Winter Music by: Dr. Abhinav Singh (@sleep_vigilante), all rights reserved More Twitter: @drchriswinterIG: @drchriwinterThreads: @drchriswinterBluesky: @drchriswinterThe Sleep Solution and The Rested ChildThanks for listening and sleep well!

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Ratings & Reviews

3
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

No holds barred, unscripted discussion on a wide range of sleep topics - from sleep disorders to current research and controversies in the field. No topic is off limits! Dr. Chris Winter is a clinician, a board certified neurologist and double boarded sleep specialist with 30 years of clinical experience. He is the author of The Sleep Solution and The Rested Child, and is a popular consultant and speaker, working for many professional sports teams. He is well known for his unique perspective and ability to demystify sleep, all of which he brings to Sleep Unplugged. 

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