May 2024 |

Sleep…Today’s world is shouting stay awake whilst your body is begging you to go to sleep!

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A hot topic at the minute and one that is reaching mainstream, being deemed to be as important as a healthy diet and exercise! In the same way we have so far explored nutrition, breathing and movement, sleep is a non negotiable and automatic part of our daily life that helps to keep us alive!

 

However, in the same way that unhealthy eating, dysfunctional breathing and lack of exercise can induce health issues and problems, the same can be said for lack of quality sleep and our current environment is doing everything it can to try and stop us from sleeping properly. Whether its Netflix’s keeping us up later to watch ‘just one more episode’ or social media keeping us endlessly scrolling, the ability to be able to order convenience food to our door at the click of a button 24/7, or emails pinging on your device hours after the work day ended, the world is saying stay awake whilst your body is begging you to go to sleep!

 

We can all relate to times in our life when sleep has been an issue. As a new parent waking for night feeds and crying babies, when we are stressed about work or exams, when menopause symptoms hit us, when our snoring partner disturbs our sleep night after night. Look… lets face it like everything ‘lifestyle' there’s no one answer, no right or wrong but there is hope, you just need to learn how to take back control of your sleep instead of letting lack of sleep control you!

 

Before we look at some tips and ideas lets first take a look at the benefits of better sleep and I promise you by the end of the list you will be willing to try anything because the benefits go way beyond just getting more sleep and feeling less tired…

1. Makes you more immune robust 

2. Regulates blood sugar levels

3. Controls appetite (Lots of science here about parts of the brain triggering different things, not my place to explain it but will put links to more info at the end)

4. Regulates hormones

5. Fixates memories to help you learn and remember

6. Reduces anxiety and emotional difficulties

7. Cleanses away Altziemers toxins that build up (Yes, there is so much science around poor sleep increasing your chances of suffering with Altziemers)

8. Increases productivity

 

Scientific studies and researching are popping up all the over the place, why? Because they have discovered the importance of sleep in our overall health and wellbeing as well as reducing risk of diseases with better quality and quantity of sleep.

 

So where do you start when you want to improve your sleep quality? Firstly be open minded and kind to yourself, sleeping issues can be a vicious cycle, and if you are anxious and angry about your current sleep situation, you are creating problems before your head has even hit the pillow. Just like we teach our kids to read and write and we learn new things everyday we have to teach our body when its day and night and when we should sleep or be awake. Feed it the right signals and information and it will learn to reset.

 

1. Be consistent with bedtimes, your circadian rhythm (your sleep cycle/clock) can be trained, so if you teach it to be all over the place with various bedtimes your sleep may be just as inconsistent. I realise this isn’t always realistic but stick to it as best you can for the majority of time.

2. An hour before bed lower the lighting levels in the room/house, this will help teach your circadian rhythm its time for bed. Equally when you wake in the morning get into either natural or artificial light asap and it will teach your cycle that now it is morning.

3. Try to reduce or cut out if possible devices an hour before bed. Scientific studies have lots of links to blue light from screens stopping us from falling asleep or breaking our sleep pattern through the night. If you read from a device before bed, try and see if it makes a difference to read from a paper book at this time of night.

4. Listen to calming music or a meditation. How many of you just rolled your eyes and discounted this straight away? I get you, meditation whilst becoming more mainstream still has a lot of barriers to break so I will just say this. The sleep experts have so much science to back it. It’s not like medication where it could have multiple side effects, its free of charge and doesn’t take any effort, just try it, you’ve got nothing to lose!

5. If you’re a parent struggling to get your little one to sleep and its having a knock on effect to the whole family, check out my recommendation below for a children’s sleep therapist with a passion for removing the negative narrative around sleep training. She focuses on gentle, responsive and effective approaches that has the whole families wellbeing at the heart.

6. For snoring or sleep apnea issues, learning functional breathing is a great place to start. Again some recommendations at the end of the blog and watch this space for functional breathing training being offered by me in the future.

 

You know what... I could continue to waffle on and give you so much more but I have to stop somewhere, so I am going to leave you with these thoughts and some resources below if you want to explore this some more… Sleeptight lovely people!

 

References and Helpful Resources

 

Podcasts

Diary of a CEO - Matthew Walker 

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5zWuhSCnED7LRdJmrARho6?si=wxYumTDPQLar7_EgCnE6tg

 

Children’s Sleep Consultant - Kerry Mcgavigan

https://sleepnanny.co.uk/c/kerrymcgavigan/

www.instagram.com/sleepnannykerrymcgavigan

 

Functional Breathing Practices for Sleep Issues

https://oxygenadvantage.com/free-guided-meditation/

You can also refer to my previous blog from February 2024 on breathing.

 

An example of a scientific research study on sleep and mindfulness/meditation

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4407465/