How to Sleep Better

Summary:

In this episode, Sam discusses sleep and insomnia. Sam give three warning signs or signals of stress. She shares three ways to decrease stress as well, relationships, eating well, and exercise. She then breaks down the exercise tip into ideas of how to get more movement in your life if you struggle to consistently exercise, like her.

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Episode Links:

Article that Sam references from the Sleep Foundation

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Calming Red-Light Glasses

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Transcript:

Today, we're going to talk about stress and sleep and how they're connected.

I learn something insomnia is actually caused by stress. I think insomnia is one of those words that I learned through context, so I always understood once I heard the word that insomnia meant that you couldn't sleep for repeated amounts of time or repeated nights, and so there was sort of a condition or an issue with your sleep, but I didn't know that it was solely caused by stress, which makes sense now. but I just thought you could have it and maybe there could be no reason for it.

The first time I had insomnia was summer 2017. I was waiting for a counselor. I chose someone and they didn't have any openings until the fall, so all summer sort of like dealing with my own stress and problems without having someone to work through them with me. And I clearly wasn't dealing with them very well, and that caused my body to react with insomnia. It was horrible, I mean. It's this ugly cycle of not being able to sleep and feeling physically horrible during the day because you didn't sleep. But it adds to your stress. And then when you go to sleep, you're too stressed and you can't sleep, so you don't know how to fix it because each day and night

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make each other worse. The Sleep Foundation actually says that it's. Perceived that 10 to 30% of adults struggle with insomnia. That website also notes that when you have insomnia, you get more stress about sleep and so it can make your insomnia persist because your stress has expanded to be about sleeping as well. And people with chronic anxiety are more likely to experience insomnia.

When you're in the moment and you're trying to sleep and you're having trouble sleeping, sometimes you might want to give credit, I guess to a new situation. So if your child moves bedrooms and start sharing a room with a sibling or something like that, they might experience some trouble sleeping, but it won't persist too long if you're going through a significant life change like that, but as an adult. You can also experience trouble sleeping. You can experience trouble sleeping because you're in a new location or a different environment, or because some another person is there. So the Sleep Foundation or sleepfoundation.org suggests ways to get to sleep better, or to create an environment that helps you sleep.

So before you sleep. You might do some breathing exercises to relax.

You can also create a schedule. You need to stick to a routine and a schedule so that your sleep. You need to stick to a routine and schedule so that your body knows when it's supposed to go to sleep and when it's supposed to wake up. It finds the routine normal, and then it releases the hormones that will make you tired at the right time. My own doctor told me I could take melatonin. As many days as I wanted because. It would be easy. It's not something that you can be addicted to and so I could start it and use it each day to

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create a new pattern for my brain and my body to go to sleep at a certain time. And then I could go off of it and my body would already know this is the time that we do it. I'm not sure if you would ever have to wean off of. Melatonin pill. Because your body is totally relying on it to create melatonin for you. I'm not a doctor. Ask your doctor.

And of course, the other tips that are to help people go to sleep. We all have heard of. Shut off your electronics or because those screens and those bright lights tell you to be awake.

I actually read about this a long time ago and so I bought. Some red bulbs and I put one in a lamp in my living room, so if I remember I might be sitting in the living room and turn off the other lights. There are also little funny glasses that have the same sort of red shade, and so if you wear the glasses at night they they create a darker atmosphere for you and they don't activate that part in your brain that says it's daytime wake up.

Another tip you probably have heard of is to create the right temperature in your bedroom or it's around 65 degrees Fahrenheit. That is good for people to sleep without waking up because their body is trying to regulate. The temperature, and they're too hot or too cold.

Of course, caffeine can stimulate your brain and keep you awake, but I also learned that nicotine does that as well. So you want to abstain from those things at least several hours before bed. If you go back to my caffeine episode from 2 weeks ago, you would hear that caffeine has a really long quarter life. So when you drink coffee at noon, 1/4 of that caffeine is still in your body at midnight.

And regular exercise helps you go to sleep. More to I know people naturally think. Yeah, it's because I moved my body and now I'm tired because I moved

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but also regular exercise helps regulate other parts of your body in your system. I'm going to talk more about that in a minute and moving on from tips to create a great sleep environment, we would go on to talk about how to even recognize stress. Sometimes stress catches up with us and we realize a little bit too late so we weren't able to prevent ourselves from becoming more stressed. And then we create a situation where we might have insomnia or be on the brink of some other somaticized stress. When we didn't have to get that far.

So if you want to recognize your stress, you want to check in with yourself. And each day do a body scan perhaps? In the mid day, see how you're feeling. Notice parts of your body that feel tense. If you have tension, usually in your neck or your jaw. You are stressed in some way, So what could help you way before it's bedtime? Maybe you just need to push on your own muscles and your knots. Maybe you have a heat pack that could help you. An ice pack that could help you. Maybe you could schedule an appointment with the chiropractor. You could also get massages that prevent these symptoms that cause stress in your body and might prevent you from sleeping.

Another thing to check is the way that you're talking or reacting to people. If you're snapping at someone and you don't normally do that, whether they call you out or not, it's your responsibility to know that you just snapped at someone or you reacted to something in a way that wasn't as kind as you might usually be able to be. So when you're healthy and you feel good and you're taking care of yourself. And you're not stressed. Then you treat people better. Happy people are happy and things don't stress them out or bother them as much. So if you snap at someone, think about did I really snap at them just because of something they did or probably not right? If you snap at someone,

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you have a problem with something they did or you have a problem and you're taking it out on them. So that is a sign that you're stressed and you can do things too.

Relax, I'll talk about how to relax and be less stressed in a minute. But first I have one more thing to notice that you actually are stressed so you can start putting in these measures to destress.

The last thing is being really tired or really busy and usually they go together, so I'm putting those two things as one bullet point. If you're really tired and you notice how I'm really tired, or maybe you want another coffee during the day, you just feel exhausted. You feel like you could take a nap. That means that you've been spending at least a couple days exhausted and this is your body saying it's already at its breaking point, so you're in that survival mode, and when we're in survival mode, we have to actually.

Move past the preventative things that distress us and take a break. You have to do something like cancel a meeting. You have to take a mental health day. You have to take a nap. You have to take out whatever's in your schedule, because like I said, you're probably too busy as well and that's why you're not resting. And cancel things because your body gave you signs and you missed them. So if you're feeling totally exhausted and you need to take naps, then your schedule is not working for you right now. You have to unplug. And take time for yourself.

OK, so if lack of sleep is tide to stress and we have ways to notice our stress, how can we fix our stress? You probably know what to do deep inside. You know I already mentioned taking that nap, canceling some things, taking a day off. And that will fix it in the moment.

But overall, what helps people a lot are relationships. So

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you might need a counselor, or you might just need to reach out to your friends and have that time because we spend a lot of time taking care our families or taking care of our homes doing our jobs. You're pleasing other people. You're pleasing your family and your boss. And when you get too tired. But you can't sleep or you're too stressed. Maybe you can sleep, but you don't have time to. It's important to maintain those relationships because they bring some balance to our lives and you can get insights from your friends and support and maybe someone is going to reach out and give you some extra help. Even if you didn't ask for it because you shared what your life is with them right now and they're a good friend and they know that they can help you that way.

Another way to destress your body is to eat well. When you eat a bunch of junk, you're actually making your body work harder to digest it, and you might be feeling pretty crappy. You know. Have you ever had a meal like late at night, something that doesn't really sit right with your digestive system and you don't sleep well, or you felt like gassy overnight? Or something unusual about the night? Because your body is trying really hard to digest at night, but you know. At night your body is resetting and making new cells, and so if you are distracting your body. By making it digest some crappy food. Then it's not able to do all the jobs at once like let your body rest stop eating so late at night. Stop eating junk so that it can do its job and rebuild all the cells and do all its things overnight.

And my third tip for decreasing stress is probably the biggest one. It's exercise. Yeah, I know I'm talking bout exercise again, but it really is such a healer. So within this exercise,

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tip a exercise boost your mood. We all know that endorphins make you happy. Endorphins do make you happy. They are released in your body when you exercise. In addition to that. Exercise and the endorphins that come with it boost your confidence level and it can decrease mild anxiety and depression.

B because stress destroys your body and the systems that are supposed to function. Don't function the way they should when they're stressed. I mentioned this before exercise can re regulate those systems. Exercise helps the cardiovascular system, the immune system, and the digestive system, so exercise can reset those other parts of your body. It's not just about your muscles, right?

So when stress is destroying your body in its systems, let exercise also give you the benefit of fixing those other systems too.

And see exercises like meditation, but you don't have to meditate. When you're exercising, you are inevitably focusing on the movements and your breath. Even if you're thinking about life and your stress and all that while you're exercising, there are times when you are not thinking about anything but your body in the movement. Exercise can feel like stress. It feels like a stress on your body because it's hard. It's supposed to be hard. And you're supposed to be putting effort in, but it actually decreases stress, so even if you think. I can't exercise. It's so hard. You know it hurts I'm breathing hard I'm sweating I'm not used to this I feel how out of shape I am. It is not the same as regular stress. So when you exercise, it's as if you meditated because you gave your brain a break from

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the things that stress you out. When you think about your body and moving it and breathing and getting through the next move or making it walking around the corner in your neighborhood, then you gave your brain that break that it needed. Both events bring you back into your body. And out of that space in your brain. Back is just clouded and trying to make decisions, so if you're not used to exercising or you haven't done it in awhile, you might want some ways to make it fun. Do what you love. You're going to quit anything that's exercise that you don't enjoy, and if you think I don't enjoy anything, well maybe you haven't tried all of the ways that you could exercise. Or maybe you need to get creative and make it a little bit more fun. Instead of what you think exercises, so try a bunch of different exercises you know you can walk. You can rock climb. You can hike, You Can Dance, you can lift weights, you can bike to a location, you can do squats while you're cooking. You can try yoga. You can do belly dancing. You can do Pilates. You can play basketball.

Have you tried everything? Because there's gonna be something that you say, hey, that's pretty cool. Or like how this makes me feel. Or that was really fun. You might also find ways to work in exercise while you do other things. Like I said, you could bike somewhere. Or you could do squats while you're cooking, so there are other things that you need to do like I need to go to this location. Why don't I take my bike?

There's the added benefit that you exercise, but you might not even be thinking about it as exercise because it's just your mode of travel. Or you need to cook dinner and while you wait for something to simmer, you have time to just stand next to the stove and do a few moves. Do a few lunges. Lift up some cans and do some bicep curls. Anything like that it

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is exercise, but it's so quick that you won't even care. It'll be over in a second you are Stew will be simmering and then you can do something else that relates to doing short bursts so you don't have to exercise for a long time. You don't have to go to the gym for an hour. You don't have to do a half an hour video. You can do 10 minutes at a time. When I was in gym class in high school, they taught us that it took 7 minutes to get your heart rate up. So basically This is why 10 minutes is effective if you do 10 minutes a day, it's going to be effective for your body, your health, your mind, your sleep, your stress. 7 minutes in heaven.

Lastly, maybe you need to try a challenge or set a goal. If you're a goal oriented person, you might need to sign up for something like a race or a club that swims or. Walks a pushing their baby in a stroller. Something like that where there's a date. There's a deadline and so you have to get ready for it overtime. Challenges are similar, but it's like can you do this plank? I did planks giving which was in November of last year and it increased the amount of time that you were doing a plank each day and it's just for November. It was fun. People do it on line and then they post pictures of themselves doing it or they write how it was they write how hard it is or or whatever.

So sometimes challenges just let you know that there's some competition and that might be fun. Or that the challenge hasn't. End date and that makes you feel like you can do it because it's not going to go on forever.

And it's fun to do stuff with people too. So find a friend. If you think you don't have a friend who wants to do this, I bet you have a friend who is struggling just like you are to consistently exercise. It's so common that people have trouble doing this. You either know people who exercise or you know people who don't well think about the people who don't and see if they have the similar

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goal as you. You might be more comfortable. Making them your walking partner. If you think about the people who do exercise, I bet they'd be happy to do it with you. They'd be happy to have you join them now if you're like this person is an intense run or they're going to be way faster than me. I mean, I have colleagues at work who run way faster than me, but. They might be willing to do their cool down with you, so if you're like stay at work a little longer. Doing your thing, they go on their run. They come back 25 minutes later. You take a walk together and then you go home. Or maybe they're willing to do that one day a week where they run a little slower with you. You don't know until you ask, and every human at some point is thinking about their health and their exercise. So if you think your friend is not going to join you, you might be wrong and you just never asked them.

OK, I hope that helps somebody. It definitely helps me learning and educating myself about stress and sleep and thinking about the really easy things you can implement into your life to decrease stress and get better sleep is kind of motivating to me to just do it and make my life a little bit better.

Sleep is extremely important to me. It's more important to me than I feel like it is to anyone else. I know. I mean, I could still sleep for 10 hours a day. I feel like I could sleep like a teenager and I've always been that way. Maybe it's part of my Vata Ayurveda, whatever it's called I I just need extra sleep and so I protect it. You also might need to protect it by making sure that you don't say that you'll be somewhere. Late at night, just be like I can't. I can't meet you at that hour for dinner because then I won't get home in time to go to sleep at my scheduled time, you know, protect your time like that and try and suggest an alternative to a social event that's not so late at night.

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Much love, Sam.