Episode 59 - Essential 8 Series (Part 1)
Sleep plays a vital role in our overall health and wellbeing, yet 1 in 3 adults aren’t getting the recommended amount. If you're not getting the recommended amount of sleep, your mental and physical health will suffer.
In this episode we’re going to talk about – what happens when we sleep, why sleep matters for our mental and physical health, common struggles with sleep, and practical strategies for getting better shut-eye. If you're tired of feeling tired, let's dive in!
Resources Mentioned:
3 Tangible Takeaways:
Looking for more personalized support?
Website: https://www.riseaswe.com/podcast
Email: amanda@riseaswe.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandaontherise/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@amandaontherise
Episode 59 - Essential 8 Series (Part 1)
Sleep plays a vital role in our overall health and wellbeing, yet 1 in 3 adults aren’t getting the recommended amount. If you're not getting the recommended amount of sleep, your mental and physical health will suffer.
In this episode we’re going to talk about – what happens when we sleep, why sleep matters for our mental and physical health, common struggles with sleep, and practical strategies for getting better shut-eye. If you're tired of feeling tired, let's dive in!
Resources Mentioned:
3 Tangible Takeaways:
Looking for more personalized support?
Website: https://www.riseaswe.com/podcast
Email: amanda@riseaswe.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandaontherise/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@amandaontherise
0:00
Welcome to regulate, and rewire and anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong. And I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences and tangible research based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind and reclaim your life. Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in.
0:27
Hello, hello, welcome back. Today we are talking all about sleep. And what I don't want to do is bore you with generic facts or complex sleep science, one because there are much more qualified sleep specialists and scientists who are better equipped to go into that with you and to because what our clients find the most helpful when we're talking about regulated behavior change is an understanding just enough science to give you buy in to why sleep why whatever it is, we're talking about really matters. enough science to understand your physiology so that you can work with optimizing this habit in a variety of ways. And then what they really value most is the strategy piece, the workshopping on tangible, things that they can do differently. Because here's the thing, sleep is the most fundamental player in our mental and physical health. And yet, it is the thing we so quickly sacrifice first, sleep protects us against trauma, it helps us facilitate creativity and learning it removes toxic waste from our brain allows our cells to repair. So so much more. And yet still, what we find is that one in three adults aren't getting the necessary amount of sleep. And nearly 40% of adults report falling asleep during the day without meaning to at least once a month.
1:52
And up until recently, when I've started to take my sleep very, very seriously, I made up this statistic, I was that one in three, I was that nearly 40%. So collectively, at least a third of us are not prioritizing, or at least, maybe we're prioritizing it. But for whatever reason, we are not getting optimized sleep, we're not hitting that recommended amount of sleep. And that affects all of us. So today, we're going to talk about what happens when we sleep Why sleep matters for mental and physical health, some common struggles with sleep. And then like I mentioned, I'm going to hold most of the space to share some tangible sleep suggestions that you may benefit from utilizing to optimize sleep as part of your healing journey as part of regulating your nervous system.
2:45
And I want to put a quick plug in for the mini workbook that I've created for this and all of the following episodes in this essential eight series. So in each of these mini workbooks that I will link in the show notes, you are gonna find a overview sheet of a lot of the things and suggestions that I offer in the conversations. There'll be a blank habit ladder in case you want to workshop, how to optimize your sleep. It'll also include a page with more resources. So remember those much smarter than me, scientists and sleep specialists. That's where you can find the resources, the books that I recommend on each of these topics, the TED talks, other podcasts for those of you who want to take a deeper dive into any of these habits.
3:33
Now, today, I want to start by reading from you a quick snippet from the book, "Why We Sleep" by: Matt Walker, who is one of these really smart scientists. He's a professor of neuroscience and psychology, who has focused most his research on the impact of sleep on human health. So what I'm going to read is at the start of chapter six, and this is a fake advertisement. So the headline of this advertisement reads amazing breakthrough exclamation point. Scientists have discovered a revolutionary new treatment that makes you live longer. It enhances your memory and makes you more creative. It makes you look more attractive. It keeps you slim and lowers food cravings. It protects you from cancer and dementia. It even Ward's off colds and flu. It lowers your risk of heart attacks and stroke, not to mention diabetes. You'll even feel happier, less depressed and less anxious. Are you interested? And he continues to write after that. While it might sound hyperbolic, nothing about this fictitious advertisement would be inaccurate. If it weren't for a new drug, many people would be disbelieving. Those who were convinced would pay large sums of money for even the smallest dose. Should clinical trials back up the claims share prices of the pharmaceutical company that invented the drug would skyrocket. Of course the ad is not describing some miracle New tincture or cure all wonder drug, but rather the proven benefits of a full night's sleep. The evidence supporting these claims has been documented in more than 17,000. Well scrutinized scientific reports to date. As for the prescription cost? Well, there isn't one, it's free. Yet all too often we shun the nightly invitation to receive our full dose of this all natural remedy, with terrible consequences. Failed by the lack of public education. Most of us do not realize how remarkable a panacea sleep truly is. And I'll end reading there but I want to go back up and visit that advertisement for a second because these are not over promises. Like he said over 17,000 Well scrutinized scientific reports to date. You have enhanced memory, you're more creative, you look better, it keeps you younger. It boosts your metabolism you have lower food cravings, it protects you from cancer dementia, it Ward's off colds and flus it lowers your risk of heart attacks and strokes. It boosts mood and decreases symptoms of anxiety and depression. And it's totally free. The cost of getting a better night's sleep oftentimes is strategy, it is getting really clear on what matters most to you. It is building better habits around your sleep hygiene and your phone use, we should all set the goal to get good sleep as often as possible.
6:39
A good rule of thumb is to get the recommended amount of sleep at least 80% of the nights. And I also want to acknowledge, here that there are a number of you listening, who are getting the recommended amount of sleep awesome, continue to listen for curiosity. Hopefully some of the other habits in the essential eight series are the ones that you're going to dive into. Others of you may have very, very real reasons why you're not getting that recommended amount of sleep. And when it comes to that, I want to acknowledge that how you get better sleep is going to look different for everyone. But I do want to be very, very honest, that sleep matters.
7:19
And another quick sidebar to remind you, who you're currently listening to this season of life that I am in right now is I am a mom to two tiny humans, my sleep is not always optimized, because I also run my own business. And we've got all of our very real life things, kids wake up in the middle of the night. And I have had more nights of six hours of sleep in the past 10 years than the recommended eight hours of sleep. And the truth remains that that's problematic for me. And for you if your story is similar. And it's only in about the last year or so that I have really leaned in to making some big changes in the way that I run my life, the way that I run my business, the way that I do all of the things to take my sleep really seriously.
8:11
So what I'm about to share is intended to educate and help you to take workshop in your sleep more seriously, seeking out support if you need to, while also being incredibly compassionate with yourself because two things are true here. Number one is that humans are incredibly resilient. And you can and people do run most of their lives off of five to six hours of sleep at night. And the second truth here is that if that is your reality, damage is being done. It is causing harm harm that is very scientifically linked to your struggles with anxiety, or depression, and likely any other chronic conditions that you're experiencing. And again, this information feels particularly important for me to know as a parent, to make sure that I set up good sleep habits for my kids and also help them understand the science so that they value quality sleep that they prioritize that in all of the seasons of their life so that they don't do the damage that I did to my mind and body for so long. The damage that I'm in very much active recovery from I spent over a decade chronically debilitating ly overworked and under rested.
9:33
So let's just get really clear. I don't think I'm telling you anything you don't know but what is enough sleep. Science says enough sleep is seven to nine hours of quality sleep with consistent timing, meaning that most nights you are going to bed and waking up at about the same time and you know that you have built a habit of getting enough sleep when you are able to wake up in the morning The time that you want to, without an alarm clock feeling rested. So your body wakes you up when it's time to be awake. And that is an indicator that you have your circadian rhythm set, and you're getting enough sleep. We've all heard how sleep is important. We all have heard that we need eight hours of sleep. But what I didn't know was why. And because I didn't know why I didn't take that recommended eight hours seriously, I truly believed that I might be the exception. I was like, Well, that might be true for most people, but I seem to be doing fine with just five or six hours of sleep. I spent over a decade really truly deeply believing that you only needed enough sleep to get you through the next day. And I was oblivious to the damage that I was causing under the surface. And I think that this was a significant contributing factor to the worst seasons of anxiety.
11:00
And that's what I want to touch on next is what happens when we have chronic sleep deprivation. And to answer this question, I'm going to again turn to Dr. Matt Walker's book this time in chapter seven. The chapter is titled "Too extreme for the Guinness Book of World Records, sleep deprivation and the brain." And it starts: "struck by the weight of the damning scientific evidence, the Guinness Book of World Records has stopped recognizing attempts to break the sleep deprivation world record. Recall that Guinness deems it acceptable for a man to ascend 128,000 feet into the outer reaches of our atmosphere in a hot air balloon wearing a spacesuit open the door of his capsule stand atop a ladder suspended above the planet, and then free fall back down to Earth at the top speed of 843 miles per hour, passing through the sound barrier while creating a sonic boom with just his body. But the risks associated with sleep deprivation are considered to be far, far higher. unacceptably high. In fact, based on the evidence, what is the compelling evidence? In the following two chapters we will learn precisely why and how sleep loss inflicts such devastating effects on the brain, linking it to numerous neurological and psychiatric conditions. Things like Alzheimer's, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, suicide, stroke and chronic pain and on every physiological system of the body, further contributing to countless disorders and disease, cancer, diabetes, heart attacks, infertility, weight gain, obesity and immune deficiency. No facet of the human body is spared the crippling noxious harm of sleep loss. We are as you will see, socially, organizationally, economically, physically behaviorally, nutritionally, linguistically, cognitively and emotionally dependent upon sleep."
12:59
Whew, okay. That's pretty weighty. And another line I want to point out is a couple pages later, and it reads, "you do not know how sleep deprived you are when you are sleep deprived." We don't know how sleep deprived we are when we're sleep deprived. And I think back to that whole decade of sleep deprivation for me, and at no point did I think to myself, Man, I'm really sleep deprived. Because getting five or six hours of sleep again, leaning into this human resilience, I was still able to over perform, I was still able to be a competitive track athlete, I was still able to show for my jobs, I was still able to get pretty good grades in college. And I'm looking back at it now. And I'm just so curious how much of that might have been easier or felt better had I have been well rested. And the paragraph after that line reads "similarly problematic is baseline resetting. With chronic sleep restriction over months dividual will actually acclimate to their impaired performance, lower alertness and reduced energy levels. That low level exhaustion becomes their accepted norm or baseline. Individuals failed to recognize how their perennial state of sleep deficiency has come to compromise their mental aptitude and physical vitality, including the slow accumulation of ill health. A link between the former and the leader is rarely made in their mind. Based on epidemiological studies of average sleep time, millions of individuals unwittingly spend years of their life in a sub optimal state of psychological and physiological functioning, never maximizing their potential of mind or body due to their blind persistence in sleeping too little."
14:57
Oh, blind persistence in sleeping too little. And I think that that is often what it is, I think most of us who have gone through long, long periods of time, months, years, even decades of sub optimal sleep, I think there is some level of, of ignorance to what it is that we are creating for ourselves. And we've talked about this in the context of nervous system states, right, so many of us have been anxious for so long, that being a little bit anxious, being nervous, that has become our new baseline. And almost all of our clients working to heal anxiety go through this phase in which they start to feel anxious that they don't feel anxious, it's almost like they have to re acclimate to a new baseline of health. There are so many of us who are walking around the world, sub optimally.
15:49
And friends, we get 100 years, this has kind of become my motto the last few years to really look through my life. And this lens. For those of you who've been listening to the podcast a lot, you know, a couple years ago was just a year of extreme loss. For my family, I had multiple pregnancy losses, we lost my sister in law at the young age of 37, to colon cancer. And it just put a lot of things in perspective. And so I have this motto of luck. We only get 100 years, we only get 100 years. And there was an older, less wise version of me that more often than once said these very words out loud to people like Oh, whatever I can sleep when I'm dead. And the sobering truth is that chronic sleep deprivation is taking away life. It's taking away and it took away the vibrancy in which I was able to experience my life, the creativity I'm able to bring into my life, the presence and the patience that I'm able to bring into my mothering and the other ways that I show up in the world.
16:49
And I am like not wanting to fear monger, I just am not interested in really like digging in the fear points. And I know that that what I just read to you from this book sounds a little bit like fear mongering. But the science is really clear. Our sleep matters.
17:04
And one of the most rewarding things that I get to do with individuals and many of the people that I work with our parents, there are a lot of really good reasons why their sleep has been sacrificed for a while. I work with a lot of individuals who struggle with insomnia because anxiety also oftentimes creates sleep issues understanding anxiety through nervous system lens your your nervous system is in this mobilizes activated state. And because our stress response is generic, our body doesn't know that it's just the thoughts in our mind, it's just the worry we have over a work project that makes us feel not safe in our body that's activating our system, or whether there's a literal tiger in our closet. And so it makes sense that our body's like no, like, we're not going to prepare you to sleep sleeping is dangerous, you're gonna get eaten, or that if you can finally fall asleep, you wake up frequently, because your body is like, Oh, hey, wait, check your check your closet, check your closet, are you and your family is still safe. And this is why taking this whole human whole life approach to regulating your nervous system is so essential. And why what you'll see is that each of these essentially habits really lends to each other.
18:11
One of the ways to get better sleep is to exercise for about 30 minutes a day. And to when you get more sleep, you have more motivation to do that when you sleep better your heart rate variability also improves which is an indicator that you have higher vagal tone, which helps you be more resilient against trauma and stress to rebound from stressful situations. And so the goal with each of these episodes is that one really speaks to you as a place to start. But that over time, you collectively start to take each and every one of these foundational pillars of health seriously in your life. And this is what we do most inside my rise membership is that we step into this work, step into living differently collectively as a community with that support.
18:55
But what all of this boils down to is sleep is important. And when we sleep too little, especially when we sleep too little for too long. At heart, it's harmful. It robs us of our vibrancy of our vitality, psychologically, physiologically, some of my clients have been shocked when their anxiety and depression symptoms reduce as significantly as they do by just starting to optimize their sleep. And of course, there are some of our clients who are getting the recommended amount of sleep and still are deeply struggling with anxiety and depression pay. This isn't the hinge point for them right now. But it's a really great place to start. And some of the really important things that happen while we sleep is we clear cellular debris that accumulates in our brain during the day we reorder our neurons, aka This is where learning happens. This is where neuroplasticity happens. So it helps us establish new beliefs about ourselves and the world new habits. It resets our digestive system and our gut microbiome which improves our metabolism. It's when we Sleep that it repairs our muscles, our motor circuits, any damaged tissue. It's where our memory consolidation and trauma processing happens. Figuring out how to get the recommended amount of sleep is crucial. It's crucial for your mental health, it's crucial for your physical health.
20:22
And also, this is something that many many of our clients struggle with. And so what we do is we often just take an audit a very real look at why, why is optimal sleep not happening? What a lot of our clients experiences is what is commonly called, like revenge bedtime, it's like, I feel like so much of my day belongs to everyone else, that the only time I get to do anything for me is at night. So we figure out how are there micro ways that you can show up for yourself differently in the day? How can we put enough value on sleep to see that that is something that you can do for you as well. And this starts small. So reflecting on Are there ways, even small ways that you could step towards better sleep hygiene, better habits, even just 1%? There might be some things that are out of your control here, but what is in your control? And what can you start doing today to move that needle even 1% closer to optimal sleep habits.
21:25
And that's where I want to shift our conversation to now are what things contribute to better sleep. And what I'm going to offer are just some candid thoughts on sleep hygiene. My recommendation is as you're listening to choose one thing, either choose the thing that you think will have the greatest impact on supporting better sleep, or the one thing that you think would be the easiest. Oftentimes, when we're stepping into behavior change, I love to just collect some early easy wins. This boosts self efficacy, some self trust, so either choosing the thing that you're going to think has the biggest impact, but choose a version of that thing that is within reach today, or just say, You know what, that sounds pretty easy. Maybe I'll try to start there. The best starting point is to just do a little bit of an audit. Asking yourself, right now on average, how many hours of sleep Am I getting at night? Maybe you're somebody who is tracking that maybe you have a Woop Band or an Apple Watch, I personally wear an Oura ring to help hold me accountable for my sleep hygiene. And I love it. Asking yourself how many hours of sleep did I get last night? Do I know? What's my bedtime? What stops me from getting to bed earlier? Do I wake up feeling rested? Do I have really broken up sleep at night? What do I think is contributing to that? So asking yourself what needs to change that I can get more sleep? What can I deprioritize so that I can get more sleep? And how can I make that happen? So spending some time that brainstorming phase using some of those questions.
23:04
And before I give you a laundry list of sleep suggestions or things to consider when it comes to having better sleep hygiene, I want to give you a framework for how I work with establishing new habits. I like to think about it like a GPS, there are two really important points for successfully navigating your way to where you want to be an honest reflection of where you are, and an accurate destination point. And this is what I lay out on that habit ladder which again is in the PDF that I'll link in the show notes. So at the bottom of that habit ladder, you'll see a place that says current habit and just being honest, but in order to be honest, you might have to spend a week or a few days assessing what your current sleep habits look like. So where am i right now? What is optimal sleep for me? What does that consistent bedtime and wake up time look like? What contributes to that. And then I go in and I fill in the rest from where I am to this destination this ideal where I want to be what is just a 1% shift a small shift so on that habit ladder you'll see 1% habit 2% habit 3% habit to help you create some strategy around this behavior change. And what that destination for some of these essentially it habits, that destination is going to be more variable we can all have different goals around movement, we can all have different ways that we want to build more vagal tone or more interceptive awareness or community. Our ideal community the top of all of our ladders for community is probably going to look very different. But evolution biology really determines none of us get to vote what optimal sleep hours look like. So at the top of that is seven to nine hours asleep maybe you can choose whether you're more of a seven or a Niner seven to nine hours of sleep each night with a consistent bedtime and wake up time to keep our circadian rhythms.
25:00
And what you may want to put there are optimal sleep conditions. So this is something I didn't know for a long time. But optimal sleep conditions, you want to think about creating a cave. It is dark, it is cold, it is cozy and it is quiet. So maybe where you want to start is tonight, sitting in your bed, How dark is your bedroom, can you make it darker? Are there any lights, if there's any lights in my bedroom, I put like black electrical tape over them. Setting your thermostat. Cool. This one is hard. I'm a cozy like 70 degrees, I like to keep my house there. But optimal sleep conditions are closer to like 65 degrees in the evening, and having warm blankets. So you want it cool, as dark as possible, and as quiet as possible. And if quiet isn't an option, because of where you live or other sounds in your home, you may consider having like a white or a brown noise playing in the background to kind of drown out some of that.
26:00
And what I'm going to move into now is a pretty quick run through of a lot of suggested ways to get better sleep. I want to remind you that that PDF has an outline of some of these, but just listen and see if there's any one that stands out to you is like Oh, I could totally do that. Or oh, yeah, I know. That's my kryptonite. I know that's one of the things that keeps me from getting better sleep.
26:00
So one of the first things is to maintain a regular sleep schedule, go to bed wake up at the same time each day.
26:29
Phones and technology. So consider as part of a nightly wind down routine to avoid computers, digital tablets and phones for the last hour before bed. And if possible, try to keep phones out of the bedroom. And I want to talk about this one just a little bit more. If you're somebody who currently brings your phone to bed with you. That's like the number one habit that's got to give if for whatever reason you need it on your nightstand so when I was breastfeeding through the night, it was really helpful to have my phone on my nightstand because I needed to check time I needed the light often. And that got me into a really bad habit of bringing my phone to bed with me a habit I had broken pretty successfully up to that point. So we're we're kind of working backwards from that. But can you plug in your phone on a dresser instead of your nightstand? Can you plug your phone in out of the bedroom is even better. And it for you getting off phones or tablets or TVs or computers an hour before bed isn't possible or realistic. What about five minutes before bed 10 minutes before bed. A half hour before bed. Most of my clients find that if they can really kind of shut down complete tech at about a half an hour before bed. That's good enough. Some of my clients need that full hour and they know that when that happens, sleep quality improves. But we have to get serious about setting boundaries with our technology.
28:03
Now some other ways to get better sleep is to engage in some form of physical activity during the day.
28:10
To avoid stimulants, things like caffeine or even cardio too close to bedtime. And any sedatives sometimes I've heard well if I have just one or two drinks, I'm able to sleep better. The research is very, very clear that while you may feel like after drinking, you can sleep better, your sleep quality is worse. So building a habit of avoiding stimulants like caffeine, high intensity cardio activities, and sedatives. Things like alcohol a little bit later in the day.
28:42
Also, one of the best things that you can do is to get exposure to natural daylight, especially the first half of your day. Talking about getting morning sunlight is a really trendy thing in the nervous system space right now but for good reason. When you get outside, within the first hour or the first half of your day, there's a particular hue of light that helps to signal awakeness alertness to your body. It helps to promote your early morning cortisol release which helps to set your circadian rhythms, which means that you are going to get tired when you're supposed to get tired your body's going to release its naturally produced melatonin when it's supposed to later in the day.
29:21
And this next recommendation for getting better sleep has been really, really helpful for some of my clients who struggle with insomnia is really seeing the bed as the place for sleep and sex. That's it. Beds are for the sake of today's conversation beds are for sleeping beds are for sleeping beds are for sleeping. Because what we want is to create this association in our brain of when I'm getting into bed. That is the time to be drowsy to rest and to sleep far too often. We are in bed working on our laptop we're in bed scrolling on Our phones are in bed watching TV. We want to have our brains associate bed with sleeping. The other thing is if you are in bed and you cannot fall asleep, so if you're having a hard time turning over if you're like it's taking me 40 minutes an hour, I just rolled around and tossed and turned for two hours before I went to bed. If you can't sleep, get out of bed, get out of bed and go do a relaxing activity away from the bedroom, such as like reading with a dim light and only return to bed when you're sleeping. relaxing activities mean no screens. It means staying in dim light. So this might be crocheting. This could be crafting, this could be painting your toenails reading a book. But if you aren't able to fall asleep within about a half an hour, get out of bed. Go do something relaxing. And when you feel that tinge of sleepiness again, return to bed and try again.
30:58
Alright, I think there's about three more I want to offer before we wrap up today. Number one is to consider eating late at night. So when it comes to late night eating small snacks are preferable to heavy meals, which can cause indigestion things that interfere with your sleep.
31:13
Also, if you're struggling to stay asleep in the night, consider avoiding drinking fluids a couple hours before bedtime, to prevent having that urgency to use the restroom as an extra thing that wakes you up which can cause additional sleep fragmentation.
31:30
Another thing to consider is a bath. So a bath at night may sound silly, but taking a hot bath before bed can actually drop your body temperature once you are in bed. So this can contribute to additional feelings of sleepiness and helping you to feel more relaxed.
31:51
And the last thing that I mentioned is to leave time to unwind. One thing we work with clients a lot on is this Pm bookend to their day. What is it that you can do that feels relaxing that feels nurturing, most of them admit that they're on their phone right before bed? Can we read? Can we listen to music? Can we stretch? What is it that you can do if you're struggling? Because you have anxiety in the evenings? Well, how can we work with that evening anxiety from a psychological and physiological perspective? Can we have a worry journal where we dump any worries, thoughts emotions? And then can we put legs up the wall? Can we work to calm the stress response in our body as well.
32:35
What I want this whole conversation to boil down to is just an honest reckoning of where you are in regards to your sleep habits. Somebody who has found their way to a podcast about anxiety and depression is either a struggling or you know somebody who's struggling or you work with people who are struggling and really adjusting this societal norm from okay, I can get it done. Okay, I can get it done from sleep being the thing that you sacrifice to either get more done, or sleep being the thing that you sacrifice to get just a moment of you time. This whole human whole life approach means that we are taking a look at our 24 hours in a day. How can we show up for ourselves more frequently during the day so we don't feel so depleted? By the end of the day, we don't turn into these phone zombies, or lock ourselves in the basement watching Netflix for hours and hours and hours to get some sense of something before we can go to bed. What does it look like to be tuned in enough to our system to recognize the signs of sleepiness as they show up and to not shut them down? We'll talk more about that in our episode on cultivating more interoceptive awareness.
33:52
But our three takeaways from today's conversation are number one, just reiterating that sleep is the most fundamental player in our mental and physical health. Please stop sacrificing it so easily. Please take it more seriously. And set a goal to get seven to nine hours of quality sleep at least 80% of nights.
34:16
Takeaway number two: Is that reflection if you're not there, what small change can you start making today tonight to get you 1% closer to the recommended quantity and quality of sleep.
34:32
And for number three, I wanted to just summarize these general guidelines of create a routine. Get off tech at least 30 minutes before bed off screens. get exposure to natural daylight especially in the first half of your day. Avoid stimulants like caffeine and sedatives like alcohol later in the day, especially dim your lights in the evening and create conditions for optimal sleep when possible. And lastly, beds are for sleeping. So if you can't sleep, get out of bed, do a relaxing activity away from the bedroom until you feel sleepy, and then come on back.
35:10
And actually, I want to run just a minute over to share with you something that many of our clients have found really helpful, especially if they feel like there are certain things they can't control about their sleep, dimming your lights, in the evening, has made a big difference for many of our clients. So what this looks like is as the sun goes down, maybe the hour or two before you go to bed, overhead lights, my understanding of some of the research that's been presented is that there are receptors in the top half of your eyes that signal awakeness. So when we have lights overhead, it is signaling to our body be awake, be awake, be awake. So if you struggle feeling sleepy, when it's time to go to bed, something to consider could be that around maybe seven o'clock, depending on when you go to bed, six o'clock, seven o'clock, let your home dim as it gets dimmer outside. So does it mean walk around your home in dark bumping into things? But can you instead of having an overhead light on have a table lamp on? Can you bring lights closer to eye level or below that helped to illuminate your home? And what does it look like to have enough light to do what you functionally need to do but not have it look as bright as day in your home. And that has been game changing for a lot of our clients. So I know we're running a little over. But I wanted to offer you that as one small shift that you could consider making to your home environment to facilitate better sleep for the whole family.
36:45
And as a final reminder, I made a sleep guide with a lot of these recommendations. I will link it in the show notes. And if you are ever looking for more personalized support if you want to do this being held in community. This is what we do inside my rise membership. And I'd love to see you there. All right, happy sleeping friends, and I'll see you next week.
37:05
Thanks for listening to another episode of The regulate and rewire podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a five star review to help us get these powerful tools out to even more people who need them. And if you yourself are looking for more personalized support and applying what you've learned today, consider joining me inside rise my monthly mental health membership and nervous system healing space or apply for our one on one anxiety and depression coaching program restore. I've shared a link for more information to both in the show notes. Again, thanks so much for being here. And I'll see you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai