Healthy Holidays: Sleep and Stress Relief

Glean reasons and tips to prioritize sleep and easy ways to relieve stress over the holidays. Heidi shares insights from this article by the Mayo Clinic. 

Guided meditation options: Breathing Meditation by Diana Winston @ UCLA, Empowered Me Meditation by Deepak Chopra

Click here for Heidi's "how to turn your brain off at night" post.

Take Aways

• "You may be able to sleep your way to a longer life." -Mayo Clinic article.
• If you cut your sleep short for a prolonged amount of time, it may raise your risk of heart attack, dementia, and diabetes.
• Sleep is restorative. 
• The brain and body perform many critical tasks while we sleep.
• While we sleep, our immune system makes repairs.
• Heidi's parents and grandparents prioritized family, church, and community over sleep most of their lives and they lived and are living long (AND PURPOSEFUL) lives! 
• Heidi's push back to prioritizing sleep: Always have a goal or purpose you're working toward. Giving up some sleep to attain that goal is usually worth it. 
• Tips to getting better sleep: create a bedtime routine, keep your room dark, exercise regularly, pay attention to your medications, get a check up, get a new mattress, stick to a schedule, don't drink alcohol.
• Stress relief tips (Starts at 20:37): exercise mindfulness, use guided meditations, take 3 deep breaths when feeling anxious, go for a walk, be in nature, read, be in sunlight, crochet, and accomplish tasks.
• It relives stress to check things off your to-do list. 
• Express your frustrations to someone who loves you and who won't be directly influenced by the decision or situation you're ranting about.

You're amazing. You can conquer anything. Hugs!! -Heidi

Want to feel better? I'd love to help. Book a 30 minute call with me (Heidi) here. 

Heidi's links:

• Heidi's website
• Heidi's Instagram

Are you here for pmdd support? I've got you.

• 5 Ways To Feeling Better with PMDD: I created this free download to help women with pmdd feel better. I wish it had been around when I first learned I had pmdd. 
• Semaine PMS and Period Support Supplements: These supplements have reduced cramps and helped level emotional downs that I (and my teen daughter) experience. Book a one off support call Just need some friendly advice about your pmdd journey? A support call is Free support call with me. 

Music 

• Music- Island Breeze by Surf House Productions |...

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello, this is the Living Well with PMDD podcast. I'm your host, Heidi Bradford, certified life coach, mom of five and PMDD Survivor. Happy to have you here. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered health advice.

Welcome to our Healthy Holidays, sleep and Stress Relief. I hope you are having a wonderful December. I had a really pleasant morning with my two daughters. My younger daughter was home 'cause she got a fever in the night. And it was just nice being home with her.

I wanna share something a little bit funny too. We've had this Amazon package for about a week that we haven't opened, and last night I looked at our Amazon purchases [00:01:00] and I saw that these Christmas ties and this Christmas dress for our kids, it showed that they'd been delivered. And I was like, Trent, these are here somewhere. What? What's going on?

And. We both kind of looked at this box that we thought was from, um, one of his brothers and Trent said, "well, just peak." And sure enough, there were the Christmas ties and the little holiday dress. We've had them for a week now and thought that they were still not here. Hopefully that'll make you smile.

Okay sleep and stress relief. All of you know, sleep is super important for our health, and I wanna read to you some of the titles of the searches the search results that came up when I typed [00:02:00] into Google "sleep and life expectancy." Sleep and longevity: how quality sleep impacts your lifespan. Getting good sleep could add years to your life. Insufficient sleep associated with decreased life expectancy . Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration. Less than six hours of sleep a night could shorten your lifespan and the relationship between sleep and life expectancy. Obviously the prevailing thought, or in general we are taught and there is research to support that we need hours of sleep all at once. They say seven hours at least, or we might be taking years off of our life, right? So that I think is the ultimate goal to get enough [00:03:00] sleep each night and to do it in a somewhat routine basis of from this time to this time. In a minute. I do wanna push back on that a little bit because I guess I question almost everything, especially things that create kind of fear-based beliefs.

And to me, if I am believing that if I don't get six hours of sleep a night. I'm going to literally die sooner. That generates fear and anxiety inside of me, and I don't want that. I fight against that. So I do have a bit of a pushback to the general, uh, mainstream thoughts about getting at least seven hours of sleep a night.

That said, I do think it's a good benchmark. I don't want anyone to think, I don't think you need sleep. You do.

For sleep [00:04:00] and life expectancy. I chose an article by the Mayo Clinic. It starts off, you may be able to sleep your way to a longer life.

Ooh, that's so nice. Um. Maybe not so nice for those of us that live kind of busy lives from one thing to the next, but it's good to know, right? Maybe it could be beneficial for us to try harder to get enough sleep. According to recently published research involving 172,000 321 adults, men who get adequate sleep live about five years longer than men who don't.

For women, it's two years. However, about a third of adults cut sleep short, raising their risk of heart attack, dementia, and diabetes among other health conditions. And then, um, we're gonna go into how does slumber protect health and expand life?

I'm giving you bits and pieces [00:05:00] from this Mayo Clinic article and I will put it in the show notes so you can go look at it if you want to.

So what are the benefits of sleep? Sleep is restorative. And during sleep, your brain and body perform many critical tasks important for overall health. While you're asleep, the body heals and restores itself. The immune system repairs sore muscles and injured tissues. The spaces between brain cells widen allowing fluid to flush away toxins. Memories are processed, consolidated and stored. Muscles relax and glands and tissues secrete essential hormones like growth hormone and testosterone.

Okay, then answer the question, does lack of sleep cause health issues? When you don't sleep enough, you cut short those healing and restorative processes increasing your risk of several health problems. [00:06:00] Um. Belly fat accumulates. Lack of sleep interferes with hormones like leptin and ghrelin, which regulate hunger and appetite. In Mayo Clinic Research, when healthy study participants slept only four hours a night, they consumed 350 more calories than usual the following day.

And then, um. This is another doctor one of the authors of this study. Typically, when healthy people eat more than they need, the excess is stored in subcutaneous fat under the skin. However, when the sleep deprived participants overate, the excess was stored as inflammation, producing visceral fat deep in their abdomens. So that's about belly fat accumulation.

Blood pressure rises. In other research done at the Mayo Clinic, [00:07:00] sleep deprivation led to rises in blood pressure both during the night and during the day. That's how powerful sleep deprivation can be, says Dr. Summers, even when a sleep deprived person is able to sleep deeply, blood pressure is still higher.

Another thing that can happen that's a negative effect on us from sleep deprivation is that our blood sugar goes up. Prolonged sleep deprivation. So not in small doses, but prolonged sleep deprivation has been linked with insulin resistance, poor glucose tolerance, and an increased risk of type two diabetes.

The last negative bullet point from this Mayo Clinic article is that brain function declines. When you don't sleep enough the brain doesn't have enough time to thoroughly flush away toxic byproducts raising your risk of neurological conditions like [00:08:00] Alzheimer's disease ease. There are negative effects of prolonged sleep deprivation. But then we have to look at how much sleep do you need?

Maybe you could participate in a sleep study if you are consistently not feeling rested. Um, based on this article. The Sleep Doctor person kind of says if you just answer these two questions. Do you wake naturally without the help of an alarm clock? Do you feel rested and restored during the day? If you answer yes to both questions, you're likely getting enough sleep. So there you go.

I do want to talk about getting better sleep, but I think here I will add my pushback. You've heard some benefits of sleep. It's restorative. The brain and body perform lots of critical tasks, um, related to our overall health as we sleep and our immune [00:09:00] system makes repairs while we sleep.

The pushback I would offer is that if you are getting less sleep because of a drive to do something or there is a long-term goal that requires some sleep sacrifice. I'd say it's well worth doing because we are purpose-driven beings. We are goal-oriented. Our brain does really well when we have a goal, and then it can help us achieve that goal.

And while burnout is real, if we are working towards a goal these short term spurts where we do not get enough sleep, I think in the end it's worth it and your body can make up for it later on. I don't know how far to take this pushback, but [00:10:00] I will illustrate, my grandpa and grandma both died in their nineties.

91 was 92, 1 was 94, 93. Anyway, somewhere in there between 92 and 94. They were very driven people. My grandma, when she was in her seventies or eighties. She was teaching me piano lessons. They did rest during the day as they got older, but in their younger years, they weren't just hyper-focused on their health and taking care of themselves.

They were hyperfocused on helping their children and their grandchildren. Having that purpose for them, especially as they got older, I think was actually a bigger factor in them living longer than, um, their amounts of sleep. Now, if they had never gotten enough sleep all [00:11:00] along the way, I don't think they would've lived into their nineties. But I don't know. Maybe they would've still. 

My dad who is the son of those two grandparents? He is 92 right now. Is he in perfect health? What is perfect health for a 92-year-old person? I think that's very subjective and I would say he is in good health. He's had too many strokes. He's doesn't eat that much right now. He. He probably ate too much sugar and I think is on the diabetes scale. But for being 92 and still being able to move around, he's, he is not super mobile. He's not like going out running marathons or running even to the store every day, but he's still living and he still has some purpose in checking in with his kids and grandchildren and even great-grandchildren coming over and spending time with him. [00:12:00] He likes to know what's going on in the world with politics. He's always been one to share good books that share truth or factual information or studies. I think all of that his. His learning and having a purpose for his life probably has factored in much more than his amount of sleep. My dad did not and has not gotten enough sleep probably for most of his life. My parents raised nine children. I'm the youngest of nine. My mom was 40 when she had me. My oldest brother and I are 18 and a half years apart. They were parents for a long time. Most of their children did at least one sport. Some of them did three. Some of us did club sports. Our parents were very involved then coming to our games. We also did choir and musical type things. I don't think my parents got six hours of sleep [00:13:00] in a row for those 20 years. Some child was sick or some child had a project or five of us needed help with our homework, whether it was English that our mom could help with, or math that our dad helped with.

My mom lived to 82, she passed away earlier this year, and my dad lived to 92. Well, he's still alive. My dad's still alive, so who knows how long he'll live. That is the pushback I I will give to you. When you are overly concerned with sleep or other health factors and you are thinking, I really wanna write this book, but that would mean getting up at four in the morning for three months. I'd say go for it. It's probably worth it. Your overall health will actually blossom from you doing that because you have accomplished a goal.

I look at my business [00:14:00] versus my family and I probably over prioritize taking care of my family. But when I step back and I'm frustrated that I haven't met my business goals, I can acknowledge that that is the way that I want the scale to tip. I would prefer that I am overp prioritizing my family than under prioritizing it .

 How do we get better sleep? This is again from that same article. I hopped back to it after my little rant. Create a bedtime routine.

Your brain picks up on your daily habits as a result. By going through the same series of steps each night before bed, you tell your brain it's time to wind down. It doesn't have to be elaborate. It could be reading in bed before you fall asleep, depending on what type of books you're reading and stuff. It could just be brushing your teeth, saying a [00:15:00] prayer or some thankfulness and going to sleep.

A second tip. Keep your room dark. Over thousands of years, our brains evolved to use light and darkness as cues for sleep. Says, Dr. Summers your penal gland recognizes how much light is around you. He says, even the dim illumination of the LED light on a clock will tell the gland to shut down melatonin production. The darker it is, the more likely you are to sleep.

Okay, another tip. Exercise regularly. Moderate aerobic exercise like walking has been shown to improve sleep quality, especially the slow wave sleep that's key to tissue repair.

Next, pay attention to your medications. Know if you're taking a diuretic that's gonna make you need to get up in the night, things like that.

Get a [00:16:00] checkup. Um, various health conditions ranging from arthritis to enlarged prostate can make it difficult to sleep. With that I would also say maybe your mattress needs to be swapped out. I know ours does. My husband, his back does not do well with our mattress. We still haven't done it yet, but that's something we need to do.

Um, stick to his schedule. Try to wake up at the same time every day, even if you have nowhere to go. Similarly, keep your bedtime consistent.

Don't drink. Alcohol can worsen sleep quality says Dr. Summers though alcohol might initially make you feel drowsy, you'll likely wake a few hours later and feel unre refreshed the following day.

This article closes out with Dr. Summers saying, "many people stumble onto their sleep remedies over time. If you've found a way that helps you, a way that no one else is talking about, that doesn't mean you shouldn't [00:17:00] use it. Says, Dr. Summers, "if it works for you, do it."

Okay. I realize I've gone a long time about sleep. I wanna just tell you also about me. I'm 43 right now. I am in pretty good health. I'd say if you're looking like worldwide compared to everyone, it's probably excellent health. I have access to healthcare, to exercise, to nutritious foods. Not that I eat enough nutritious food, but I try. As a teenager though, I had some commitments that limited my sleep. I did volleyball after school. That's was usually two to three hours.

And then I had homework because I took academically rigorous classes and a schedule that was rigorous. I was usually up until at least midnight doing homework every [00:18:00] night. I had made a commitment to attend early morning seminary that started at least by seven. I. It may have even started at six some years.

I personally wanted to record in a journal on a nightly basis and read some scriptures and say a prayer. On top of that, ICI committed to not do my homework on Sundays. Felt like it was a huge distraction from worshiping God and having my Sunday be holy. I don't think that's necessary for everyone, but as a teenager, that's how I felt.

And so if I had homework that I had not finished on Saturday, I would still usually be awake on Sunday at midnight, and I would start my homework at midnight or I would go to bed Sunday and wake up early to do it on [00:19:00] Monday. I look back and I don't regret it. Maybe my body health is not as good as it could have been, but being part of other things, like having that connection and commitment to God and then journaling was a really great outlet for me when situations really bothered me or I had, um, friends that weren't treating me how I thought I should be treated. But all of that said. I'm so happy that I played volleyball. I'm so happy that I was involved in musicals. I'm so happy that I attended weekly youth activities at our church. Some of those things didn't really seem like a choice. I did them because I kind of started and it was a part of my life.

So I would tell you don't cut things out just to get more sleep. Really evaluate and make sure that you're purpose driven as [00:20:00] you make healthy choices in your life, including your sleep routine.

I have a routine if you have a hard time turning your brain off at night. Myself, my sisters, my mom, we all had that. I have a routine, um, just a dialogue you can give to yourself and I'll either provide a link to a post I did with that or I'll put it in the notes because that is a thing too. It's doesn't need to be a really big thing. It is worked for me. It's worked for others, and you can get your brain to turn off at night.

Okay. Stress relief. For this just think mindfulness, like being aware of yourself, your feelings. That is really good for stress relief. That can be uncomfortable. We tend to want to just get on with life and keep moving. Pause. [00:21:00] Sit on the couch while your kids are playing without your phone, without a book, without a TV remote. Just sit there. It will bless you. It may even improve the relationship you have with your child or your grandchildren. They may come and approach you. Which they might not do if you have your phone in your hand.

Guided meditation is can be really helpful for this. The nice thing about guided meditation is kind of like the nice thing about having a DVD exercise program. You just have to show up. Guided meditations are prerecorded meditations that you can access through YouTube or other apps, and you literally just go there. You click on a link and you either lay down, you sit down, um, depending on your preference and maybe what the person [00:22:00] instructs you to do, and you just follow the directions. It's a beautiful, wonderful thing to help you rest and let go of some of the tension that's been building inside of you and in your mind.

Another thing that I remember, a doctor came and spoke to the women at our church. A tip he gave us was to take three deep breaths when we were feeling anxious when we recognized that we were experiencing anxiety. That is really good. If you're having a cry session or something. It's okay to let all of those feelings out, but at some point recognize, okay, I'm just feeling really anxious let's take three deep breaths and you just do it.

Some other things that are good for stress relief [00:23:00] are walking, being in nature, being in sunlight, reading. Crocheting a blanket. If it has a deadline like you're trying to get a gift done for Christmas, there might be a different feeling than just relaxing. But just notice is it helping you relieve stress? Those are all natural pleasures. 

A big stress reliever that we don't really talk about is accomplishing tasks. When we check something off, it actually does relieve some stress. With my oldest daughter who's doing online school, it's her senior year. Every once in a while we have to regroup and I will make a new chart for her . I made her a chart for [00:24:00] her last four classes with just a bubble for each module. There are 16 modules for each of her classes, and she colors them in as she finishes. It has the date. If you follow our plan, you'll finish by this day. Her stress decreases when she freaks out and feels like she's behind just by going and looking at the chart. Now, like any of us, we don't always use the things that we have to help us reduce our stress.

Sometimes we just need to be able to express it and tell someone how terrible we are feeling and how we're not keeping up on our goals and whatever it is. And that's okay too. That's a good stress reliever to be able to talk things out with someone. Sometimes that needs to be someone that's kind of neutral in your life, that all these decisions and things aren't impacting them, but [00:25:00] they also really care about you.

My dad, is a good example of this. This past Thursday, I was faced with a situation that I could not calm my mind about, and I was freaking out.

That evening I was sitting on the couch with my husband and he hands me my phone and he had dialed my dad. I took the phone and I went in the other room and I cried to my dad and I told him how this is terrible and I hate this possibility. And I was crying and he, there's just a pause and he is listening, and then he says, " take a deep breath.

Just take a deep breath." And then followed up with more listening and some thoughts, but not really direct counsel. But it was really, really helpful to me. I hope you have someone like that in [00:26:00] your life. And I am gonna sign off for now. We'll talk to you next week about diet and exercise over the holidays.

Thanks so much for listening to the Living Well with PMDD podcast. To learn more about life coaching with me, visit my website Heidi, H-E-I-D-I, bradford coaching.com. Until next time, keep hoping, keep loving, and remember that you are not alone.