Ep. 14 Unbehaved: Meghan French Dunbar with Lindsay Scola

How to Advocate for Yourself When Nobody's Listening

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Episode Overview

Lindsay Scola was 16 when the exhaustion started. She told her doctor she was tired. Her doctor told her busy people are tired — and that felt, somehow, like an initiation into adulthood rather than a dismissal. So she carried it. Through a career as a political staffer, through building 75,000-person rallies for the Obama campaign while sneaking naps in bathrooms because she thought that's just what exhaustion was. Through doctor after doctor handing her the same sleep hygiene pamphlet and sending her home. Through the one who was convinced the laptop in her bed was the whole problem.

It wasn't until she was 35 — after a bottle of red wine, a pint of Cherry Garcia, finding the end of the internet, and having a meltdown on the floor of her doctor's office — that someone finally said: let me send you to a sleep specialist. Nobody had told her sleep specialists were a thing.

She was diagnosed with narcolepsy at 35 and ADHD at 41. And what she found on the other side of those diagnoses wasn't relief, at first — it was grief. Because she'd spent nearly two decades believing she was the chaos monster. And then she found out she'd been fighting it the whole time.

This episode is funny in the way that only real things can be funny — the chair she tried to negotiate with, the child ghost she bought sage to exorcise from her Echo Park apartment, the inner narrator named Janet. But underneath the humor is a conversation about what it actually costs women to be dismissed by systems not built to see them, and what it takes to keep advocating for yourself anyway. Lindsay gives everyone listening an explicit permission slip at the end. You're going to want to hear it.

In This Episode

• Almost two decades of being handed the same sleep hygiene handout — and why Lindsay kept accepting it
• The meltdown that finally worked: wine, Cherry Garcia, the end of the internet, and the floor of a doctor's office
• What the average doctor knows about sleep (fewer than three hours of education, across their entire training)
• What narcolepsy actually looks like — and why it looks nothing like the movies
• The hallucinations: negotiating with a chair, a child ghost in her apartment, buying sage
• "I wasn't the chaos monster — I was fighting it": the specific grief of a late diagnosis
• Obama campaign bathroom naps and what ADHD superpowers actually cost
• How ADHD presents differently in women — and why it's still being missed
• Sleep as the foundation of performance, not the reward you earn after it
• Naps aren't lazy — the research, the sweet spot, and why Lindsay wears a necklace that says "good at naps"
• "Janet" — her inner narrator, and the one thing that actually shuts her up
• The permission slip: you have permission to demand more from your doctor 

Timestamps

 02:01 — Lindsay's story: narcolepsy at 35, ADHD at 41, and nearly two decades of being handed the same sleep hygiene pamphlet and sent home

03:30 — The meltdown: wine, Cherry Garcia, end of the internet, and a literal meltdown on the floor of her doctor's office — and finally being referred to a sleep specialist for the first time

05:06 — The number that explains everything: the average doctor gets fewer than three hours of sleep education across their entire training

08:06 — How do you keep advocating when everyone keeps saying you're fine? Meghan asks the question

08:41 — Lindsay's answer: "I knew something had changed. I knew I wasn't going to stop until I had answers."

10:39 — Meghan's own ADHD diagnosis at 37 — the moment of solidarity, and the question: what would have been different if you'd known sooner?

11:21 — "I wasn't the chaos monster — I was fighting it": the specific grief of a late diagnosis

12:43 — Obama campaign bathroom naps: building 75,000-person rallies while hiding narcolepsy in bathroom stalls and thinking she was just lazy

14:04 — ADHD in women: why it looks different, why it gets missed, and how a pilot script led to Lindsay's diagnosis at 41

15:06 — The self-advocate she learned to be: from high school walkouts to demanding answers from doctors

18:17 — Preconceived notions about narcolepsy and ADHD that kept her undiagnosed for decades

18:47 — What narcolepsy actually looks like: nothing like the movies, and why the soup scene from Deuce Bigalow is not it

21:35 — The hallucinations: negotiating with a chair, a child ghost in her apartment, buying sage for Echo Park

24:32 — The sleep conversation: why we've made it too complicated, and what actually matters

25:03 — Simple sleep hygiene that works — and "Janet," her inner narrator, and the comedy show sleep hack that shuts her up

30:04 — The old playbook flip: sleep is what helps you do the work — not what you earn after it

31:14 — Patient advocacy: what to do if you're where Lindsay was, including the AASM sleep center finder

32:46 — The real cost of not getting enough sleep — and why you might not notice your own cognitive decline

34:14 — What Lindsay is most excited about: her TEDx talk (selected for the main TED channel) and sleep apnea in women

35:55 — Naps aren't lazy: the research, the 20–25 minute sweet spot, and why Lindsay wears a necklace that says "good at naps"

37:54 — The permission slip: you have permission to ask more questions, demand a second opinion, and tell your doctor what you need

A Few Things That Stayed With Me

"Busy people are tired." — What Lindsay's first doctor told her at 16. She believed it for nearly two decades.

"I wasn't the chaos monster. I was fighting it." — Lindsay Scola

"Sleep is what helps you get the work done — not the thing you earn after." — Lindsay Scola

"Never stop advocating for yourself because your health, your sleep — this is all the most important thing. Not wanting to make your doctor upset isn't a good enough reason to stand up for your own health." — Lindsay Scola

"The average doctor gets fewer than three hours of sleep education across their entire training. Sleep is a third of your life." — Lindsay Scola

"You have permission to ask more questions. You have permission to get a second opinion. You have permission to say: no, you need to give me what I need from this." — Lindsay Scola

About the Guest

Lindsay Scola is a sleep advocate, speaker, and self-described excellent napper who was diagnosed with narcolepsy at 35 and ADHD at 41 — after nearly two decades of being told she was just tired. A former political staffer, she built rallies for the Obama campaign and wore exhaustion as a badge of honor while hiding the truth of what was happening in her body. Her TEDx talk was selected for the main TED channel. She lives in Los Angeles and her DMs are always open.

Find her at lindsayscola.com and on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Connect with Meghan

• Book: This Isn't Working
• Substack: meghanfrenchdunbar.substack.com
• Instagram: @meghanfrenchdunbar
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/meghanfrenchdunbar 

Full Transcript

Introduction (00:00–01:41)

Meghan's recorded introduction.

Have you ever known that something is wrong only to have someone else tell you that it's totally fine? Maybe it's a gut feeling about someone or a hunch about a project where you speak up only to be shut down by colleagues. Or maybe something more personal — like a physical or mental health issue where you know that something isn't right with how you're feeling, but then your doctor dismisses what you're saying entirely?

Today's episode is all about those moments: the times when we tell ourselves that "behaving" means not making someone else uncomfortable by pushing back and advocating for ourselves. We're going to learn how to unbehave by pushing back anyway until someone finally listens. And our teacher is the wonderful Lindsay Scola.

Lindsay spent years working at the highest levels — Congress, the Emmys, and the advance teams for the Obamas. Yet behind the scenes, she knew something was very wrong. She was chronically exhausted — taking naps in bathrooms and on airport floors — and had been telling doctors about it for 20 years, only to be dismissed every single time. But she never gave up. She never let others convince her she was wrong. And she finally got answers that changed her entire life.

This episode is about how to keep believing in yourself even when others don't, and what self-advocacy looks like — especially in systems that often ignore women's voices. Lindsay is funny and real and has a completely no-BS approach that I think every single one of you needs to hear. And she provides insights on sleep that blew my damn mind.

You need to hear it from her. Here's my conversation with Lindsay.

Interview

Meghan French Dunbar (01:42) So you and I have a similar situation in our lives where we were both diagnosed with respective conditions much later in life than would most likely happen. Can you help us understand your journey and talk a little bit about why it took so long to get diagnosed?

Lindsay Scola (02:01) Yeah, so I was diagnosed with narcolepsy at 35 and ADHD at 41. And both of them are sort of a similar story — we don't talk about sleep, and we don't talk about ADHD, especially how it looks in women. Thankfully, there's more on the ADHD side now, and the internet is one of the reasons I got diagnosed. But when I was 16, I started having these moments of just extraordinary sleepiness. I'd be otherwise engaged and then I'd be sitting in class and feel like I had no option but to go to sleep. I started taking naps in bathrooms. I told my doctor I was feeling really tired, and she told me that I was busy and busy people are tired. It felt dismissive, but also like some secret initiation into adulthood.

I went on to work as a political staffer, and when you're tired, you're doing it right — we wore exhaustion as a badge of honor. I carried that with me through almost two decades. Anytime I talked to doctors about feeling really tired, I got handed a sleep hygiene handout and sent on my way. I had one doctor who was convinced that because I used my laptop in bed, that was what was making me so tired, and that if I just stopped using the laptop, everything would get better.

This was my normal. When I was 35, I just hit a wall. If I didn't have to get out of bed, I wouldn't. I felt like a lunatic zombie — zero emotional regulation, my brain felt like Swiss cheese. I was taking naps in bathrooms and on theater floors and basically wherever I could find a secret place to sleep. I went to my doctor at my wit's end and said, "I need help figuring this out." I got sent an at-home sleep test for sleep apnea, which came back negative, and was told that I was fine and given more sleep hygiene information.

I was apoplectic. I went home, drank an entire bottle of red wine, ate a pint of Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia, and found the end of the internet. I'd learned that at-home sleep tests were created by the VA as a low-cost alternative to diagnose middle-aged men — and that wasn't me. So I went back and told them the test was wrong, and that they needed to send me for a study in a sleep lab. I had a literal meltdown on the floor of my doctor's office at 35, and she stopped me mid-sentence and said, "We are beyond both of our knowledge on sleep — I will send you to a sleep specialist."

But I'd been complaining about this for almost two decades. No one had ever brought up a sleep specialist. I didn't know sleep specialists were a thing. And it took me having a meltdown for someone to finally say, okay, let's go to the next stage.

Meghan French Dunbar (05:06) And the doctors themselves — is that a training issue?

Lindsay Scola (05:06) The average doctor worldwide is receiving less than three hours of sleep education. Another study in the U.S. put it at less than two hours. This is the thing we spend a third of our lives doing.

So I finally got diagnosed at 35, and that solved a lot of the problem. I was on treatment, my brain came awake. I found out I was creative — before that I was either working or sleeping. With the ability to actually stay awake and think, I started writing. And as I hit my 40s and started perimenopause pretty early, my brain started getting really slow. I felt paralyzed — whether I was trying to write a work email or figure out what to eat for breakfast, the idea of making decisions felt like an endless web of possibilities.

Around this time I was writing a pilot script, and the producer suggested adding a neurodivergent character. So I decided to give the woman in her thirties ADHD. I'm now doing research on women with ADHD — before this I thought it was like little boys bouncing off the walls in school. And suddenly she became the easiest character in the script for me to write, because I was writing myself.

Meghan French Dunbar (06:26) This sounds familiar.

Lindsay Scola (06:30) There was this big aha moment — but then I had to actually get diagnosed. The whole process of finding someone to diagnose me was sort of insane. You'd make an appointment and then get a call: "We don't do ADHD." I finally found someone who did the evaluation, and every time I brought something up, she'd say, "That's what the lay literature says, but it's not actually something we look for." At the end of the call, she told me she didn't think I had it — she thought I was just getting older and needed to start keeping a calendar.

I said, "I've been keeping a calendar since I was a teenager." She said, "No, no — for social things too." I didn't go to her because I was missing drinks with the girls. I went because my life felt completely halted. I was keeping schedules at the level of the President of the United States. Keeping a calendar was not my problem.

I decided she was not the person to continue working with, and eventually found an amazing therapist. I told her what had been happening, and she said, "I'm not going to just tell you that you have ADHD — let me evaluate you properly." I didn't care what diagnosis came out of it. I just wanted someone to tell me why my brain was operating this way. She did the evaluation, and not only do I have inattentive ADHD — I scored in the 99th percentile, because I like to go big.

Meghan French Dunbar (08:06) I feel frustrated on your behalf. There are a number of issues here, but one of them is going to a specialist and being told you're wrong — the classic gaslighting of being told you're overreacting. How did you stay motivated to keep self-advocating when even the specialists were telling you nothing was wrong?

Lindsay Scola (08:41) For me, it was knowing I couldn't keep living like this. Everything was taking longer. My motivation had completely tanked. I knew what I used to feel like in my brain, and I knew what I was capable of before. And there was just this moment of: this can't be all that there is. I knew something had changed. I knew I wasn't going to give up until I got answers.

When you get diagnosed with ADHD in your 40s, you have aha moment after aha moment. That's why I was staging walkouts for unfair treatment in the lunchroom in first grade — I have an injustice sensitivity. That's why every report card said I cried too much — rejection sensitivity dysphoria. That's why I threw the coat hanger off the door when my brain couldn't process that something was caught in the door jam. It doesn't give you a roadmap for what to do next, but understanding the why changes everything.

I was incredibly grateful to have a therapist who not only diagnosed me but worked with me on real tools to start moving forward. Once I had some tools in my toolbox, I started building my own systems — systems that made my brain feel better.

Meghan French Dunbar (10:39) The validation question — because I was also diagnosed with ADHD, I think when I was 37, and I had the same experience of: now all of this makes sense. And I was so frustrated that I didn't have the information or the diagnosis earlier, because I felt like I unnecessarily struggled and suffered in systems that didn't work for me, feeling like something was wrong with me. Did you have a similar experience? What do you think would have been different if you'd been diagnosed earlier?

Lindsay Scola (11:21) Every day, I still think about it. There is a specific type of grief that comes with any late diagnosis, especially when it went on as long as mine did — how different my life could have been if I hadn't felt like I was fighting a chaos monster. Well, let me say it differently. I wasn't the chaos monster. I was fighting it. If I'd had tools to work with the chaos monster, my life would have been different. Not that my life hasn't been amazing and I haven't done incredible things — but it could have been a lot easier. There could have been so much more time without thinking that I was broken.

Specifically on the 2008 Obama campaign: I was an advance person, which is the coolest job in the world — you're a couple of days ahead of the candidate, you get dropped somewhere, and you just have to figure it out. We were building 75,000-person rallies and I was the crowd person, figuring out how to get people in and moving. It was a giant puzzle in a very short period of time. The ADHD superpowers are what let me do that without feeling stressed. It was exhilarating.

Meghan French Dunbar (12:36) Right?

Lindsay Scola (12:43) But I was also excessively tired, surrounded by the best and the brightest, and there I was sneaking naps in bathrooms — thinking I was lazy because I didn't see my colleagues doing it. What would it have been like to know: this is why you're always tired, and here's a treatment?

There have been a lot of tears over this. I'm also grateful for my long diagnosis period, because I'm the type of person — ADHD and all — who will hyperfocus their way to a lot of information. When I got diagnosed with narcolepsy, I wanted to know everything: every medication, how to make my life as good as possible. I surrounded myself with advocates, researchers, and sleep medicine professionals. And then sleep became my career.

But what it could have been like to go through school without thinking I was broken because I don't retain information I read — I'm still sitting with that.

Meghan French Dunbar (14:04) I think about this a lot, especially with how much information is coming out about women being diagnosed with ADHD and other conditions later in life. We've normalized chronic stress, exhaustion, busyness, and overwhelm. When we feel those things, so many of us just say: this is what it takes to succeed. When in reality, we're neurodivergent and really struggling in a system that was never built for us to thrive within.

As you were going through this — and at least in my experience growing up as a people-pleasing woman who was taught not to make people uncomfortable — the idea of pushing back on medical professionals would have made me cringe. Did you have any of that?

Lindsay Scola (15:06) In the political world, I was moving a lot — someplace for a year or two, never longer. So I didn't have doctors for long periods of time. The doctor who finally got me to the sleep specialist stayed my GP for years after, and she got to learn what narcolepsy was alongside me.

I did a lot of people-pleasing earlier in life, before the ADHD mask sort of fell off. But I've never had an issue pushing back. I'm grateful to parents who made sure I knew I was supposed to advocate for myself — and when I needed them, they'd be there too.

We had abstinence-only-until-marriage education at my high school. My family talked about science, and I knew that wasn't right. I took the school on, and then the school board, with my parents standing right behind me. I ended up getting my first job with NARAL Pro-Choice Washington as a high school senior, working to make sure we had medically and scientifically accurate sex education in Washington State. So I was raised on the idea that you keep pushing.

But we never talked about sleep, so I didn't know I should have been pushing harder about how I was feeling. Neither did my parents — we all just thought I was a really good sleeper. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I was asleep. If I wasn't driving, I was asleep. If a flight was delayed, I was asleep on the airport floor. And nobody should be willingly sleeping on an airport floor. If that's you, or someone you know — that's a flag that something is not right with your sleep. But we didn't know. Nobody ever taught us about it.

Until I was diagnosed with narcolepsy, I thought sleep was like going under anesthesia — you go in, you come back in the morning, and nothing happens in between. But sleep is the foundation of everything. It's where muscle recovery happens, where the brain clears waste to help fend off neurodegenerative disorders later on, where we make creative connections. All of this is happening while we sleep, and we have no idea. So we don't know what healthy sleep looks like, and we don't know what disordered sleep looks like — and it's costing people their health.

Meghan French Dunbar (18:17) I want to get into the sleep piece, but first — you mentioned preconceived notions, and this was part of it with ADHD too. That classic image of a young boy who can't sit still. What were some of the main preconceived notions around both narcolepsy and ADHD that helped keep you undiagnosed for so long?

Lindsay Scola (18:47) I never in my wildest dreams would have considered narcolepsy. Even in the moment I heard it come out of my sleep doctor's mouth, I cocked my head, looked at him and said, "I'm sorry, sir, I do not believe you are right. I have never fallen asleep into a bowl of soup." Because that's what we imagine with narcolepsy — the movies have done a number on us. Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo is forever seared into my brain.

Meghan French Dunbar (19:01) Same. That's exactly what I imagined.

Lindsay Scola (19:15) That's not what narcolepsy looks like. It looks like feeling really engaged, and then having these waves of searing tiredness coming on. I compare it to when you really have to pee — you're not going to have an accident, but you know a bathroom is imminent. It's this painful tiredness behind my eyes. Or you wake up feeling like you never went to sleep at all. People with narcolepsy can feel like they've been awake for 48 to 72 hours, even after a full night's rest.

My third day on a specific medication, I woke up crying — because I didn't know what it felt like to wake up refreshed. I'd always woken up because I had to. I didn't know what it felt like to actually feel like I'd slept. That was a profound revelation.

But there are also other symptoms I never would have connected. Narcolepsy has five distinct symptoms that seem completely unrelated on their own. One is hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations — hallucinations as you're falling asleep or waking up — which can be audio, visual, sensory, or all three. I've had audio sensations my whole life: hearing things that aren't there as I wake up. Crashing sounds. People speaking Russian in the hallway. Construction at 3 a.m. that wasn't happening. My husband talking to me when he's sound asleep.

The funniest one — after I was diagnosed — my husband was out of town, and I woke up to the dog barking. There was a chair with clothes on top of it by the door, and I don't sleep with contacts in, so I was negotiating with the chair. The dog, who was asleep next to me on the bed, woke up and looked at me like I was certifiable. This had been going on my whole life.

Meghan French Dunbar (21:30) I see you.

Lindsay Scola (21:35) The visual hallucinations tend to be scarier for me — something coming into the room, scurrying across the ceiling, coming down like it's going to get me. And sometimes they're paired with sleep paralysis, where you can't move or scream. For some people with narcolepsy there's also cataplexy — a loss of muscle tone triggered by emotion. For me it's pretty subtle, just in my hands and occasionally my face, but for others it can mean completely falling down.

And then there's disrupted sleep — you can fall asleep fine, but you can't stay asleep. There were long periods of my life where I just thought I was really haunted. I'd be awake in the middle of the night, and three o'clock is always the witching hour in horror films. There was one very vivid hallucination where a small child asked to hold my hand. I went out and purchased sage for my Echo Park home in LA to get rid of my child ghost. I'm still pretty convinced it was a yes-and situation with The Haunting. But never in my wildest dreams would I have thought: this is a neurological episode — I need to see a doctor. I never would have put any of it together.

And on the ADHD side — there are so many superpowers we don't talk about. The ability to do big, high-stress things without feeling stressed. I was the executive director for the 2013 Inaugural Parade — 10,000 participants, 250,000 people in the crowd — and I didn't break a sweat. But try to put on a slightly damp sports bra and I'm in total meltdown.

I had no idea that my lack of emotional regulation my entire life was a symptom of ADHD. My husband and I found all my old report cards at my parents' house a couple of years ago, and they all said something similar: praising that I was the kid who made sure new students felt welcome, who made sure everyone was heard. And then, on the other hand: I cried too much, and this was going to be a problem in life. Those are two sides of the same coin — and that's ADHD. I cried throughout my whole career, not because I was sad or upset, but because I cry when I'm frustrated, when my brain can't comprehend what's going on. I was chastised for it. Nobody ever helped me figure out why it was happening.

Meghan French Dunbar (24:32) You said you've made sleep into your career. And I feel like the old playbook means we don't really take sleep seriously — we glorify stress and overwork and exhaustion, brag about how little we need. What have you learned about sleep, its importance, and some of the basics that most people overlook?

Lindsay Scola (25:03) First of all — if you always feel unrested, that is a sign of a sleep disorder. There are lots of sleep disorders and they're way more common than people think. Narcolepsy is rare — about one in 2,000 people — but sleep apnea is something like one in five.

We've made sleep feel really complicated, especially now that everyone is wearing a tracker and there are ads for every supplement and sleep tool imaginable. Sleep is a $1.4 billion industry. But sleep itself is actually a lot simpler than we've made it, and the simpler we treat it, the easier it gets.

The fundamentals: wake up at the same time every morning. Get natural light within the first 30 minutes of waking to set your circadian rhythm. Get as much natural light as you can throughout the day so that you produce melatonin later at night. And melatonin isn't a sleeping pill the way we buy it at the drugstore — it's actually a dimmer switch, telling your brain that sleep is coming.

Your wind-down routine should be simple — something you can do every night, even when life is lifey. I have an alarm on my phone that just says "wash your face." Sometimes it's just a wipe across my face. Sometimes it's the expensive skincare I swore I'd use every day. But that act of taking a moment by myself, taking the day off my face — it tells my brain that sleep is coming.

And then find tools that are specific to you. I have a very loud internal narrator, and she gets louder and meaner as the night goes on. Her name is Janet. The thing that shuts Janet up is the sound of other people talking — quick, witty dialogue. I sleep with a blackout mask with flat Bluetooth panels in it, put on a comedy show I've already seen so I'm not emotionally invested, set a timer for 30 minutes, and I'm always out before it goes off. But sleep stories don't work for me — I feel like that person is talking to me and it's my responsibility to listen, and that keeps me awake. Certain sleep music keeps me awake because I start tracking the repeating pattern. The goal is to be curious about your sleep, try things, and not overthink it — because the more effort we make it, the harder sleep gets.

There's actually a condition now called orthosomnia, where people are so worried about their sleep that they wake up feeling good, look at their tracker, see an 80 sleep score, and suddenly feel terrible. Really, the goal is to make sleep simpler, and to understand what sleep disorders look like so we can get people evaluated, treated, and living much healthier lives.

Meghan French Dunbar (28:32) The point you made at the top — if you don't feel rested, that's a sign something might be going on. I'd say about half the time I wake up doing great and half the time I wake up dead to the world. At what point does that warrant a conversation with someone?

Lindsay Scola (28:52) If it's happening 50% of the time, that's the time to talk to a sleep specialist and get evaluated — especially if there are other things going on. With sleep apnea, for example: are you waking up multiple times a night to use the bathroom? Waking up with a headache or a sore throat? Feeling really fatigued during the day? Those are things to look at.

Or if you just never feel rested. Sleep disorders don't always show up at night — mine certainly didn't. I thought I was a great sleeper outside of what I now understand was disrupted sleep and hallucinations I explained away as being haunted. It's really about how you're feeling during the day. And especially with ADHD, there's a huge crossover with sleep disorders. The idea that ADHD just messes with your sleep or makes you tired — really two things can be going on simultaneously, and both deserve to be treated.

Meghan French Dunbar (29:55) You mentioned making sleep into your career. What does that look like?

Lindsay Scola (30:04) I'm a speaker now. I go to companies and talk about how sleep is really our competitive advantage. High performers especially like to think that sleep is the thing they earn after the work is done — but sleep is actually the thing that helps you get the work done in the first place. I also coach people who haven't made sleep a priority — going to sleep with a laptop and two phones, waking up in the middle of the night to work, and then wondering why they're tired all the time. I help people put systems in their lives that actually support the sleep they need so they can perform better during the day.

I also consult on patient advocacy around narcolepsy and sleep apnea diagnoses, and I work with companies on making sleep a priority and encouraging people to get screened for sleep disorders.

Meghan French Dunbar (31:14) Patient advocacy — I'm honing in on that one. For people who are listening and are where you were — feeling like something is wrong but being told it's not — what are some of the first steps?

Lindsay Scola (31:38) First: understand that your primary care physician likely didn't have much education in sleep. They may not be asking the right questions, and they might not know what to do when you complain about feeling really sleepy. Knowing that sleep specialists exist — and knowing that you may need to get a referral and that it is absolutely okay to demand one — that's step one.

The AASM, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, has a page where you can find sleep centers near you and schedule an appointment directly. I tell people: if you're concerned about your sleep or how you're feeling during the day, I would much rather a doctor say "we evaluated you, it might be something else, let's look at other things" — than have something go untreated because no one pushed for the right answer.

Meghan French Dunbar (32:46) My brother is one of those people who doesn't get enough sleep. I've sent him articles about the profound negative impacts. Beyond not optimizing performance, what does the research show about what not sleeping enough really costs us?

Lindsay Scola (33:12) Cognitive performance declines when you're not getting enough sleep — for most adults that's between seven and nine hours. And one of the insidious things about sleep deprivation studies is that people don't know their cognitive performance is declining. They think they've adjusted to sleeping less, but they haven't. Things keep declining. You might think you're operating at the same level you once did, and you're not.

A lot of people muscle through in their 20s and 30s, and then their 40s and 50s hit and it becomes a lot harder — and that's often sleep deprivation catching up. The brain needs that time to replenish, to clear out waste, to make creative connections. When it doesn't get it, we pay for it across the board.

Meghan French Dunbar (34:10) What are you most excited about that you're working on right now?

Lindsay Scola (34:14) I'm very excited for my TEDx talk to be out in the world — I can't wait for everyone to see it. And I'm really focused on the conversation around sleep apnea in women, because I don't think we've had enough of it. We picture sleep apnea as the man with the thick neck and the square jaw, snoring loud enough to shake the house. But not everyone with sleep apnea snores, and there's no body type assigned to it. My size-two sister has sleep apnea.

The symptoms look really different in women: waking up multiple times a night to use the bathroom, heartburn or reflux at night, fatigue during the day even when you think you slept fine. After 40, women's rates of sleep apnea increase significantly — especially with perimenopause and menopause. And sleep apnea has serious downstream health effects: increased insulin resistance, higher blood pressure, metabolic conditions, and increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and Alzheimer's. People need to know this is a possibility, that ignoring it is genuinely harmful, and that there are real solutions.

Meghan French Dunbar (35:55) I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier — taking naps and feeling lazy. There's so much societal conditioning around rest being something you have to earn. If you're taking a nap, you're lazy. If you're not producing, you're not worthy. For anyone listening with that mindset — what's the message?

Lindsay Scola (36:28) If you don't have a problem falling asleep at night, naps can actually be really good for you. Studies show they can lower blood pressure and help with creative thinking. The sweet spot is 20 to 25 minutes — long enough to get some rest, short enough that you don't wake up groggy from going too deep into sleep.

But naps can only help if we stop saying "naps are lazy" and actually have this conversation. I will talk about naps as loudly and as often as I can. I sometimes wear a necklace that says "good at naps" because I am excellent at them. There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking a nap. And we need to stop making sleep the enemy of productivity — because sleep is actually the thing that makes us more productive. There is no tool, no supplement, no hack that gets you out of needing sleep. The best performers going forward are going to be the ones who prioritize it.

Meghan French Dunbar (37:54) If you were to give listeners permission to do anything — around their sleep, their ADHD, their diagnosis, their rest — what is the permission slip you would give people?

Lindsay Scola (38:10) Always advocate for yourself. You have permission to ask more questions. You have permission to get a second opinion. And you have permission to say: no, you need to give me what I need from this. If your doctor tells you that you can't be evaluated for sleep apnea because you don't snore — you have permission to say you want to be evaluated anyway. There is no skin off their teeth for making that happen. Sleep specialists are real. You can make an appointment. If you need a referral, it is okay to demand one.

Never stop advocating for yourself — because your health, your sleep, this is all the most important thing. Not wanting to make your doctor uncomfortable is not a good enough reason to stop standing up for your own health.

Meghan French Dunbar (38:57) All right, Lindsay — how do people find you? How do they support you?

Lindsay Scola (39:01) Lindsayscola.com — that's Lindsay with an A, the best kind of Lindsay in my opinion. I'm on Instagram and LinkedIn, and my DMs are always open. I want to hear from you.

Meghan French Dunbar (39:11) We'll have all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much — I hope I can sleep well tonight after this conversation. I really appreciate your perspective and the way you're helping people push back on the systems.

Lindsay Scola (39:25) Thank you.

Transcript edited for clarity. Minor transcription artifacts removed; speaker voices and meaning preserved throughout.