Sleep Factor: Sleep 101 Part 3 - 7 waking sleep habits for great sleep
Hi there everyone and welcome back to sleep. 101, this is part three of our three part series on sleep. And today's episode, I want to share with you seven waking sleep habits that will help you get a fantastic night's sleep, not just once, but every single night.
Transcript
0:27
Everyone loves a good night's sleep. But fatigue. Insomnia, Sleep deprivation. Those are all central complaints for pretty much every health issue out there, fatigue being number one. And I think for many people, myself included that general fatigue is just something that we live with. It's just something we accept as a normal state of being. but it's not supposed to be that way.
0:56
Sleep deprivation and chronic insomnia, is not normal, that should not be your norm. It might be very common, but it isn't normal for the body. And there's some pretty important reasons that we need to address it.
1:14
Long term sleep deprivation contributes to depression and anxiety, it triggers, our stress response our fight or flight stress response. It contributes to metabolic syndrome, obesity, and insulin resistance, it negatively impacts our cognition, our memory, and emotional regulation. It's linked to high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, it impairs our immune system and increases inflammation, and it can increase the risk of injury from all different sources but especially car accidents. There's a reason for all of these to be connected to our physical health in some way. The body requires sleep to rest to repair itself and the less often it can do that, the harder it is for the body to keep us alive to maintain balance and homeostasis to just exist in an easy way. So you might recognize some of those things on that list, they're awfully similar to the negative health consequences of living in chronic stress under chronic stress injury.
2:42
And what do you know, chronic stress can actually cause sleep deprivation and sleep disorders. It just happens to go both ways. Because sleep disorders can also cause higher levels of chronic stress as well.
3:00
Does that really matter. Not really. It just makes it that much more important that we disrupt that cycle in some way. And the good news is that we can. There are a lot of things that we can do every single day during our waking hours that will improve your sleep every single night, and there are natural things that you can do. You don't have to take a sleep aid to knock you out every night. In fact, that's not going to give you the same quality of sleep, that you get through a natural sleep cycle, moving through your natural deep sleep stages. So let's get started.
Number one, we want to see the light, exposing your brain to natural sunlight is important, especially first thing in the morning. So, if you remember back to episode one we talked about the hypothalamus and inside the hypothalamus there's a group of cells called the SCN. And those cells are receptors for sunlight, and that group of cells is responsible for sending the message to the rest of your brain that hey it's daytime, and it's time to get up and it sets your sleep and wake cycle, your circadian rhythm. If it doesn't get that message that you are supposed to be awake. Then it has no reason to shut down your melatonin production and some of the other hormone production, that is necessary to wake you up. If you can look outside every morning or go outside every morning into the natural sunlight as soon as the sun comes up. This is going to help, start your engines.
Second tip, get up at the same time every day. Yes, this is important. I don't like it either. But your body and your brain like patterns they like habits because it makes things easier and the body doesn't have to work as hard on it. So the easiest way to make this a habit of getting up at the same time every day is to connect this to your light exposure, because this is going to trigger your lowering melatonin levels, and it will make it easier for your body to adjust so find a way to get up the same time every day and then go look at the sun. And if you really want to make this an easier adjustment. We are going to tag on. Tip number three, and start to move.
So tip number three, for a great night's sleep at night is first thing in the morning, get going. So 20 to 30 minutes of some kind of exercise every single day. First thing. It doesn't have to be super hardcore you don't have to even change out of your pajamas. You just need to move a little bit because every time the body moves it kicks out a little hit of cortisol, okay, and cortisol, while it is considered to be a stress hormone, it is connected to movement and exercise, and it's going to help keep you and get you alert in the morning and counteract that melatonin, right, so we're gonna look at the light. We're gonna wake up at the same time every morning, and we're gonna get moving. It can be easy. Or it could just be stretching next to your bed, could be a walk outside, and we can kill a couple birds with one stone by taking that walk outside to see this on.
Tip number four. Eat for sleep. Okay, first of all, our gut health affects every other thing in the body.
7:09
We're talking about simply resetting or supporting your body's natural clock. And you need to understand that your gut, or more specifically the bacteria that live in your gut and do all the work for you, also has a clock. Okay. So when we talk about circadian rhythms, it's not just being awake and going to sleep every system in the body has a rhythm, every system in the body has a body clock, including that gut bacteria.
7:42
So, if we want to sleep better at night, we not only have to support the body by eating lots of pre and probiotic foods with high fiber fruits and vegetables but we need to limit our consumption of things that throw off that balance as well, like sugar alcohol and caffeine, especially later in the day. In fact, we need to give ourselves. Really several hours with no food, prior to bedtime and here is why let me explain this to you. Every time you eat the body releases insulin. And it's insolence job to kind of open the door to store energy storage areas in the body. So insulin collects the energy that gets broken down by our gut, the energy and the nutrients and it stores it first in the liver and the muscles, first, and then whenever that those bases are filled it shoves the rest into our fat cells, that's what insulin does. Okay. If insulin is working overtime in the body.
8:56
Then melatonin, which is our sleepy time hormone cannot come online. No melatonin no sleepy time. All right, so when we eat food is very important. So this is why we want to try to keep our final meal of the day. Earlier in the evening, give the gut some time to work through all that insulin do what it needs to do. And then allow us to go to sleep. Alright that's number one. When we have our final meal of the day.
9:30
Now, you physically may be tired, but your gut also needs to rest. And when I say, God, I actually mean all that bacteria that lives there so if you are eating right before bed that bacteria has to continue to work over time. And that's not when it's most efficient. Remember the body everything about your body wants things to be easy. It wants it to be easiest, that it can have. Okay, so we want to give a little bit longer time for the gut to rest in between.
10:07
The last meal of your day, and the first meal of your next day. And so, eating a little as another reason to eat a little earlier in the evening, caffeine, let's talk about caffeine, obviously, duh, it's a stimulant. Right. And some people have. Well, let me back up, everyone has a little different reaction to caffeine. Okay. Some of us are very very sensitive to caffeine, we don't eat very much. Some of us can drink pots and pots of coffee and go take a nap.
10:40
But even if that's you, even if you can drink a coffee or an espresso right before bed, and go to sleep. Caffeine still disrupts the stages of our sleep at the level of our, our electrical brainwaves. Okay, so if even though your unconscious. Your brain is not cycling through those same stages, as well as it could. So again we are trying to make this as easy as possible for the body and the brain to get to sleep. That means, all we need to do is shift our caffeine consumption. Earlier in the day, and possibly cut back on it. If it's out of hand. So that is the personal choice but see if you can move some of that caffeine. Earlier in the day. Let's talk a little bit about sugar because I didn't mention that, as one of the things that can throw off our overall gut health and and sugar. In general, is pretty much in everything that we eat. So that is another cause of that insulin release, although. Any time you eat anything not just sugar insulin gets released into the body so because it's trying to do its job.
12:10
But, sugar, itself, is going to disrupt that overall gut health, and it's going to make it less efficient at doing its job. So keep that in mind. The last piece to this that I want to touch on is alcohol because alcohol is a depressant and I know a lot of people who like to have a glass of wine or some other type of alcohol in the evening or right before bed because they think it helps them get to sleep. And yes, because it's a depressant, it can help you get to sleep, but it doesn't help you stay there because there are other components and alcohol. It affects your blood sugar, and the gut bacteria in similar similar ways as just a regular meal would, but because of that it can actually wake you up and interrupt. Other sleep stages. Later in your sleep cycle so it's disrupting that sleep cycle. Overall, the other piece to this is that when alcohol is present in the body. The liver prioritizes metabolizing alcohol over everything else.
13:33
So, if you have eaten something and you're drinking alcohol your body is going to metabolize the alcohol and let that let the rest of that food just sit there. Okay. This does not make things easier for our gut bacteria, it doesn't. So, it just takes makes it take longer to get through your system. And remember, our goal is to make things as easy as possible for us to get a great night's sleep. So, we are going to limit the amount of alcohol that we consume, or cut it way back, so that we're not consuming alcohol, right before bed.
All right, let's move on to tip number five. Okay, so we are going to start to turn down the lights. About 90 minutes before bedtime. 90 minutes before you want to get in bed. All right, hour and a half. We need to start lowering the lights in your space. We have fantastic technology, right, but everything comes in on a screen, and that screen is typically blue light blue light is an assault on our brain and it confuses those poor little brain cells that are trying to figure out whether or not, the sun is still up or not. So, if you do not have blue blocking glasses for the evening, that is something that can help if you're not capable or able to turn off those. Those technology devices in the evening if you have to be on those screens blue light blocking glasses can really be a help. But for most people, I would say it's a choice, it's a choice, and you can put down your phone you can put down your tablet you can shut off the television. And, you know, there's nothing wrong with reading a good old fashioned paper back right before bed, it might be just the thing. So, that is tip number five, get those lights and turn them down.
Tip six create your perfect Zen den. Okay, this has to do with controlling your environment, your bedroom or the place where you sleep. You would be surprised at how much a couple of changes can help just really simple changes. But what number one thing here is to keep where you sleep, kind of as a sacred place where you're only sleeping there, you're not working while you're in bed, you're not eating your meals while you're in bed, you're not really watching entertainment in bed, we just sleep there. Okay, the body like we've said before, likes habit. And you can train yourself to become sleepy, just by walking to a space where you're only sleeping.
So, we've already talked a little bit about how important light is, but we want to make sure that our space where we're sleeping is very dark, or can be made very dark. So, block out curtains, if you can, or finding a way to limit any other extraneous light from clocks, or phones, maybe an eye mask. Limiting the sounds. And if you live in a place where you can hear a lot of external noise outside of your space. White Noise machines are great for that to kind of drown out some of that other disruptive noise earplugs and. Okay, so this is big for me so my dog likes to pop up on the bed every once in a while and that is super disruptive for my sleep cycles. I'm not gonna lie, it's terrible. So, if you can keep the animals out of your room. These are just some things, not all of them will work for you, but things to think about. And then, finally, look at the temperature, the temperature in your room. Okay, so a cooler room is much better the body lowers its temperature during that non REM stage, and your body temperature starts to come down. So, if you can begin to lower your body temperature before bed that's also going to communicate to the body Hey, body temperature is coming down time to get some sleep. So, if you can't lower the temperature in the room itself, then you can do it in other ways. For example, a shower or a bath again about 90 minutes out from bedtime. And then as your body cools down, then those sleep mechanisms start to come online. And now on to our final sleep tip, a regular bedtime routine.
18:31
So I said it before and many times, and I'll say it again, the body loves patterns and habits, it wants things to be as easy as possible. And all those habits do is make things easier for you and your body to get to sleep, and that includes your bedtime. Okay, so if you can choose the same time to go to bed every night.
19:01
Then, all of those sleep hormones and neurotransmitters, eventually will start to get the picture and they will start to come online. At the same time, every night. And then things will begin to be to get easier, falling asleep and staying asleep, so we wake up at the same time every day, we go to bed at the same time every day, we, we control our light exposure. We make sure we're getting outside during the day and moving and eating well, and we can make some serious changes, but what do you do if you do all of this, and you still can't shut out those racing thoughts.
Let me tell you, if that happens, I want you to get up. That's right. Get up, get up, get out of bed. If you get into your bed if you follow all of these tips and you're lying in bed staring at the ceiling, not sleeping. You need to get out of bed, because remember we want to keep our, our bed and our bedroom for sleeping only, it is not for tossing and turning. Okay, so we're going to get out of bed and we want to do something else, something that requires a little bit of focus and direction for your brain but it isn't too too hard. The fact is, if your brain doesn't want to sleep yet, it's not going to let you, and you might not be in a place where you're able to tell it what to do yet. So, until you can tell your brain what to do and what to think. Then you need to give it something to do.
Some people like to do some kind of puzzle could be a puzzle could be a Sudoku game, it could be really anything that takes a little bit of focus on your part. There is no reason to spend any time tossing and turning in frustration and irritation, taking yourself up that stress curve, because you cannot sleep, it won't help you, so don't beat yourself up about it, just do it just get up and do something else. And then once you feel yourself starting to get sleepy again. Then you can head back to bed. Alright, just cut yourself a little bit of slack.
Now, none of these things all by itself will do the trick. None of them alone, just like everything else when it comes to health, and the human body. They all work together, because everything is connected in some way how we sleep affects how we eat, how we move, how we eat affects how we move, and how we sleep how we eat and how we move affects how we sleep. It's all connected. But even the smallest thing, the smallest step that you take towards a different pattern can make a big impact over time.
If doing all of these waking sleep habits, is too much for you right now. Just pick one, just adopt one and try it for a week or a month, or however long and see how you feel, keep that one, and try another or pitch it and try another. It's okay. Every single one of us comes to the table with different things going on. And all of those things, find different ways to affect our week and sleep patterns. So it makes sense that we're all going to be able to find something a little bit different, but hopefully something that works for you as an individual. So give these things a try. I'm so happy that you join me on this series, if you need to go back and check it out. Episode One and Two of our sleep 101 series, and I will catch you all next time on the work in.
23:18
Thanks for listening to the work in. If you like what you heard, and want to make it a little easier for yourself to apply some of this information, go to elemental kinetics.com forward slash sleep better and sign up for your downloadable copy of all of these tips to sleep better tonight.
I’m Ericka
Whether your fight is on the frontline or the home front, past or present, personal or professional... chronic stress & stress injury can be a debilitating enemy.
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