Reclaiming your health and resilience: Part 1 - Sleep
Transcript
Welcome back! Today kicks off a 4 part series on reclaiming your health. And This comes directly out of last week's discussion with Jason Sapp. If you missed it please go back and check it out. Jason is an iraqi war vet and a health coach and he told his story of trauma and PTSD and it’s a story of recovery and hope. But in that conversation we touched on some really important pieces to the puzzle of building lasting resilience.
Now you might think that you don’t personally have a trauma story or that your stress levels are never that bad. But while most of us might not experience the kind of intense and prolonged trauma that is associated with combat and full blown ptsd, we need to remember that the NS can be affected by anything. Because of that, without a release valve, it can be overwhelmed by anything. And the health issues related to resilience and an overwhelmed nervous system are subtle at first. They're so subtle that most of the time we don’t take action until those problems become raging, medically significant health issues. Like Diabetes, Cardiovascular disease, suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety and others. The kinds of diagnoses that demand action.
There are 4 pieces or pillars that we touched on in last week's episode that play a critical role in reclaiming health and resilience that are completely within our control.
Movement, nutrition, sleep and connection. We’re going to talk about each one of those over the next 4 weeks. And hopefully start to untangle some realistic ways that we can start to take back and reclaim our own influence over the quality of life we want. Hopefully some of the things that come up will help you reframe the way you see yourself, the body you live in and maybe, just maybe find some ease in that relationship.
Movement, nutrition, sleep and connection, each of these are levers, access points and communication pathways into the nervous system and each of them can and will affect your nervous system whether you know it or not in both positive and negative ways.
Knowing this is either empowering or overwhelming depending on what’s going on with you. That’s why we want to break it down a little. Everything we do affects our nervous system first. It’s the first line of defense, like a security filter. Anything that isn’t evidence of safety is going to trigger some kind of protective response. That could be action hormones like cortisol or adrenaline, elevated heart rate, muscle tension, increased breathing. It might be pain, physical or emotional pain. We often think of stress responses as negative but they aren’t always. Sometimes all those things can be associated with excitement or joy. But if the nervous system gets overwhelmed, it can get stuck on and then we start to see the physiologic fallout.
We can’t really start to put our own puzzle together without the big picture. You need to start by looking at each of those 4 pillars with a little awareness first and then curiosity for yourself.
Today I want to kick off our series by looking at sleep. I like to think of sleep as the canary in the coal mine. Often (not always) it’s the first thing we notice when we’re stressed. It’s an easy thing to gauge. How well do you sleep on a regular, consistent basis?
What counts as insomnia? From Pub Med
(1) difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep or nonrestorative sleep; (2) this difficulty is present despite adequate opportunity and circumstance to sleep; (3) this impairment in sleep is associated with daytime impairment or distress; and (4) this sleep difficulty occurs at least 3 times per week and has been a problem for at least 1 month.
The number one cause of insomnia (both acute or chronic) among adults is stress.
The nature of the stress response disrupts sleep pretty easily because when that internal security system reads a threat it’s going to flood your system with hormones (adrenaline and cortisol)to keep you alert. Sadly it doesn’t matter where the threat is coming from or even if it is real or present.
So this might be a tough work day, a future deadline, family conflict, childhood memory, past trauma, physical injury, high intensity workout too close to bedtime, stomach ache or being too full from dinner or certain types of food, excessive caffeine, alcohol or drugs/medications, nightmares, and eventually it could even be sleep deprivation/chronic insomnia itself that can trigger that response.
As you can see by that list some of those things might be external, but many of them are internal. What can you do if the nervous system is reading a threat that is coming from inside yourself?
This is where many people who are suffering with stress injuries can start to feel like they’re fighting themselves.
One of the hardest things to wrap your head around when we’re trying to recover resilience and suffering from sleep deprivation + insomnia is that what we consciously believe the problem is, is not always what the nervous system/body sees as the problem. Our story can sometimes interfere with recovery because it becomes so deeply rooted in our identity that it’s difficult to know who we are without it. That idea in itself can feel threatening.
Let’s withdraw from the why a little bit here, because why we are having a hard time sleeping is less important than what we can do about it. The actions that we can take. We know that we have control over our own actions. We know those actions might be habitual. We know that our actions can and do play a role in how we sleep.
Now before you get your feathers all ruffled. We want to step away from any judgment. There is no good or bad or right or wrong about what you have been doing up until this point. When we take responsibility for our own health we want it to be empowering not a shame spiral. Everything you do for yourself comes from a place of survival and everyone does the best they can with what they have and what they know.
Look at how you sleep. Do you struggle to get to sleep, stay asleep, feel rested when you wake up? Does this affect how you feel during your day? Has it gone on for over a month?
Let’s look at 4 specific things that you can do every day that will support good sleep patterns.
Leverage light exposure.
Sunlight early in the morning and as the sun sets actually helps trigger on and off (dimmer) switches for melatonin in the brain. Melatonin levels rise in the evening in order to help you get to sleep and stay asleep. Sunlight in the morning signals the brain to lower melatonin levels and keep them low during the day so that you can wake up and be alert. The low light of sunset is the signal to the brain to kick up the melatonin to help you get to sleep. This is why certain types of light (blue light) after the sun goes down can be so detrimental to sleep and in turn brain health.
You’ve heard I'm sure about circadian rhythms. Well your body has many different “clocks” that determine optimal activity in different systems. Sleep (night time) is the optimal time for your brain to rest and repair, clean out “junk” from your day, form long term memories and make new neuronal connections.
Bright light during the day (all colors) will help reinforce that natural rhythm. So viewing bright natural sunlight (not staring into the sun) simply by being outside will help reset that rhythm. Even if it’s cloudy. That’s one of the reasons that getting outside can be so beneficial. Walk the dog in the morning. No dog? Try parking a little far away on purpose to extend your time in the sun before work, get out for a walk around the block at lunch and/or definitely after dinner.
Then be mindful of the tech you use after the sun goes down. Ideally we would cut off all tech for 2-3 hours before bed. If that’s not possible then this is when you would want to use the blue blocker glasses.
Master your movement
Everyone knows that exercise is important for overall fitness and health. When you are sleep deprived from chronic insomnia the last thing you want to do is go to the gym even if you know you’ll feel better later. For optimal sleep you need to know that cortisol is released during all types of exercise and movement. So if you like high intensity - do it early in the day. If you have to exercise in the evening give yourself 2-3 hours before bed or keep it very low intensity. Perhaps choose a restorative yoga practice that includes yoga nidra(guided meditation). Even simple breathing practices before sleep can be very effective.
When you have regained more consistent quality sleep you’ll have more energy and motivation to move in other ways.
Nutrition intervention
Brace yourself. This is the one no one wants to do. Listen I get it’s uncomfortable and overwhelming to think about how you eat. But for sleep if you only change one thing, change when you eat your last meal. Here’s why that’s important. When you eat your body releases insulin. Insulin's job is to take all that energy and put it somewhere. Either make it available immediately or put it away and save it for later. The problem is that insulin opposes melatonin. Remember that one? Melatonin helps you calm down to fall asleep. That means that when insulin is active melatonin can’t come online and do its job effectively. This is why we want to give ourselves ideally 3 hours between our last meal and bedtime. It’s also why there’s such a strong correlation between insomnia, insulin resistance and obesity.
If you want to change a little more about your diet take a hard look at when you are consuming caffeine. Shift that to early in the day. The half life of caffeine is about 6 hours and everyone has a different tolerance for it. It might be helpful to do a 30 day caffeine cleanse. ( no lie, that’s one of the hardest things for me to do so no judgment from me)
And then if you want to go a little hardcore like Jason Sapp did, clear out all the crap and processed food from your pantry. But if you're not quite ready for that you can start a little at a time. Cut out the added sugar first. Then go for the processed stuff. Replacing each thing with a whole food.
Internal and external environment
This is big for a lot of us. Temperature. Your internal body temperature and external room temperature can have a big influence on how well you sleep. Hormones play a part in internal body temperature for women in menopause and also perimenopause. Hot flashes and night sweats are common but not necessarily “normal”. I know I had terrible night sweats in my thirties. Come to find out I also had a severe vitamin D deficiency and Vitamin D is a hormone regulator. Insulin also affects hormone balance and as hormone levels change sugar can make hot flashes worse.
Outside of hormone dysregulation, we can influence the temperature in our sleep environment to optimize for better zzz’s. Keeping the room cool is important but you can also help your body cool down to prepare for sleep by taking a warm shower 90 minutes before bed. As your body cools from the shower it will make it easier to fall asleep.
The connections will come. You don’t need to do ALL of these ALL at once. But be aware none of what we are talking about in this series is a magic pill. You can’t just do one thing one day and expect any kind of lasting difference. But you can do one thing consistently and see benefits. So be mindful of your choices and give yourself some grace and time to integrate these new habits so they’ll stick. You want them to feel easy so you can feel easy in your own skin.
Thanks for listening and if you like what you heard and you want to know a little bit more, you can get a free PDF download with the sleep tips we talked about today at savagegracecoaching.com/sleepbetter and I’ll see you next time on the work IN when we’ll dive deep into using movement to de-stress and build resilience.
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