Prioritizing Sleep

In our fast-paced, technology-driven culture, many of us struggle to get enough sleep. Whether it's spending long hours at work, being glued to our electronic devices that disrupt our natural sleep patterns, or dealing with excessive work stress, these factors prevent us from getting the recommended 7-8 hours of sleep that we need each night. In this episode you’ll learn about:

• How does sleep tie into our wellbeing?
• What are the fundamental stages of sleep and why are they important?
• What are some of the top sleeping disorders and how would you distinguish between sleeping disorder and someone who's going through just stressful phase of or more work and not being able to sleep during those weeks? 
• How does it affect our productivity?
• Simple solutions to prioritize good sleep.

You can learn more about Seth at:

Website: www.sleepably.com

IG: https://www.instagram.com/sleepably

FB: https://www.facebook.com/sleepably

If you liked this episode and would like to learn more about wellness training and workshops offered by 9 to 5 Wellness, email us at info@aeshathair.com

You can learn more about our programs at https://toneandstrengthen.com/workshops-trainings/

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🌟 🌟 🌟 If you liked this episode and would like to learn more about wellness training and workshops offered by 9 to 5 Wellness, email us at info@aeshathair.com. You can learn more about our programs at: https://toneandstrengthen.com/workshops-trainings/. 🌟 🌟 🌟

My passion is helping organizations create a culture of wellness, and I do this by setting up health programs that prioritize the most important asset they've got – their employees. Cheers to a healthier and happier journey ahead!

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Transcript

 So today we will be talking about sleep, sleep for wellbeing. You know what? We spend approximately a third of our lives sleeping.  Sleep is an essential involuntary process without which we can't function effectively.  I figured that we are going to talk about it today because as I've been coaching a lot of my clients, I've realized that a lot of the corporate clients don't get enough sleep and it's.

As essential to our bodies as eating, drinking, breathing, it's just so vital for maintaining the physical and mental health. So, sleeping helps us to repair and restore our brains and bodies. I have  a sleep coach with me today, and I'll be talking with Seth Davis. Seth is a certified adult sleep coach, and he's the founder of Sleepably, a Denver based team of sleep coaches who help adults and children sleep better.

In addition to helping organizations help their employees sleep better, Seth works with individuals worldwide to create personalized plans for optimizing their rest and overcoming their sleep issues. Hi, Seth!  Welcome. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Oh, I'm so excited. Thanks for coming on the show today.

I want to start right there. How does sleep tie into our well being? Sure. Yeah. I mean, pretty much from head to toe from every area of our life, sleep kind of touches everything. So talking about our mental well being, a lot of people actually refer to sleep as the nighttime therapist because, you know, as we're sleeping, as we're going through different sleep stages.

Our brain is being restored. It's having a chance to kind of relax and kind of sort through the things that they experienced during the day and sort through memories and process, all emotions, all those things. So it really is one of the most essential factors of mental wellbeing. It really helps us just kind of refresh every night and come back the next day stronger and in a good place mentally.

In terms of physical wellbeing, it affects everything from our. Protecting us from chronic illnesses for helping us to repair our tissues and helps our cardiovascular systems. And really just, I mean, from head to toe, there's, there's nothing that sleep doesn't improve. So I always just encourage people to, you know, make sure we're trying to get as much as possible because during the night we're getting that work done on ourselves so that we can.

feel in tip top condition. Yeah, I love how you have just highlighted that during the night we are getting that work done. So tell us more about it. What's happening within our bodies and what's our brain doing while we are sleeping? Sure. So yeah, during the night we're going through different kind of cycles or stages of sleep.

 We go through a couple of lighter stages of sleep where kind of still partially way we're kind of drifting in and out of sleep. And there's a lot of benefits if you want to know that during that. But then we drop off into sort of the, the deeper stages of sleep. And that's where we have the tissue repair going on, growth hormone being produced, all those kind of deep restorative phases.

And then we go through REM sleep with rapid eye movement sleep. And that's where we tend to have more dreams. We're kind of, our brain is kind of processing the emotions and memories and storing all those things. So as we go through the nights, that's happening four to five times recycling through those stages.

And so, When we are sleep deprived, we're not getting enough sleep or kind of getting low quality sleep, we're deprived of a lot of those, those really fundamental stages of sleep. And that's where we start to see problems. But so if you just think of it in terms of during the night, we're going through each of those things, we're benefiting from those things.

And that's why when we wake up in the morning, we tend to feel more restored and like we've had that work done. Yeah, I love how you just broke down all the stages of sleep and how the body goes through a variety of processes during those stages. I think depriving ourselves of any one of those stages would Lead to not having enough sleep and not having enough recovery and repair, right?

Exactly. Exactly. Right. So, well, I want to touch upon sleep disorders because I have had clients and people I've worked with, and even sometimes myself, self too, when I'm stressed out, I want to say, or I have a lot of workload, I have a hard time sleeping. And no matter what I do.  It's not enough. I just can't fall asleep.

 What are some of the top sleeping disorders and how would you distinguish between sleeping disorder and someone who's going through just stressful phase of or more work and not being able to sleep during those weeks? Actually, one of the most common sleep disorders is sleep apnea, affects a lot of people.

So when people start to find themselves kind of snoring loudly during the night, gasping for breath, having pauses and breathing, that's one of the biggest ones that people deal with. And so if you have any of those symptoms, it's definitely good to go get that checked out. And they can do sort of home tests.

So it's pretty easy to, to get diagnosed.  And treat it if needed, but then when it comes to insomnia, that's another one of the most  common ones. And so for that one, you know, it is normal for us to go through sleep issues when something happens. Maybe it's a stressful time at work. Maybe we have a loss in the family.

Could be a lot of different stressful events. And it's normal for those things to kind of affect our sleep. So, you know, we might find ourselves having a little bit harder trouble falling asleep or waking up in the middle of the night and kind of having trouble falling back asleep. And so a lot of people do deal with acute instances like that.

But, when it gets chronic, that's when We're seeing that happening several times a week for, you know, three months or more on end. So it's just kind of this perpetually happening and that's when it might be considered more of a chronic insomnia problem. And so with that, that's when you might go, you know, go to be seen by a specialist and, you know, talk to your doctor about it.

And they might recommend that you go see a specialist and kind of work through that with  someone who specializes in insomnia. I like how you just distinguished between a chronic insomnia and then short term insomnia, right? A phase that person is going through. So for somebody who has short term insomnia, can they develop chronic insomnia if they don't take care of the situation that they're going through?

Yeah, so this is actually where it gets kind of interesting. So So with insomnia, they've sort of narrowed it down to a model, a model for insomnia. And so they call it the three P model. And so the first one is predisposing factors. So you might have somebody who is just a little bit more predisposed to kind of worrying or being anxious or overthinking things is to kind of have that natural, there's natural personality factors.

And so that makes them a little bit more predisposed to sleep issues. Then you come to precipitating factors. So maybe something does happen. You have this stressful time at work. Lost in the family. Those are some of the things I mentioned and it disrupts your sleep. So that's normal. But then we get to the third one, which is perpetuating factors and third P.

And so this is where we had this thing happen and we start focusing our sleep. We start worrying about it. We start overthinking  it and trying to problem solve and do all these things. And that's what can kind of kick it into high gear and keep the problems going for longer. So whatever happens initially can kind of fade away, but you're left with all this thinking, overthinking, worrying things about sleep.

So that's kind of the model for how insomnia starts and then how it continues going even after the original thing has gone away. You're exactly right. Like the nights I have. a hard time sleeping. It's almost like I can't shut my brain down like that work or whatever. Sometimes it's family, whatever concern it is.

It just keeps playing in my head. So now I'm just curious, how does work stress? relate to insomnia or lack of sleep? Sure. So, yeah, so they've done studies. They've shown that that work stress. The last number I saw was that 66 percent of people in America in the survey in America said that work stress lead led to racing mind at work or at home.

I think you're doing during sleep. I think that was the statistic. Yeah. So first of all, I mean. If we're stressed about something at work, maybe it's a project or a disagreement with a coworker or something, we're more likely to bring that into bed with us. So we're kind of thinking about it as we're trying to fall asleep or wake up in the middle of night.

We're thinking about that. And so that kind of racing mind can just keep us from being able to relax. And possibly even bigger is just our reaction to the stress. So, you know, that we have a physical reaction where we might go into fight or flight mode and our hearts racing. We're breathing faster. Our muscles are tense.

All those things are going on. Our brainwaves are going faster, and those physical reactions make it harder to, to kind of relax and let yourself fall asleep as well. So I think those are two of the biggest ways that we see work stress kind of making it harder for people to sleep.  Yeah, yeah. I love how you just brought up the racing line because  That's exactly what happens, like, you know, your mind is in a loop and it can't, you can't fall asleep.

So for our employees, desk bound employees or busy professionals who are listening to our conversation today live or recorded, , What are some of the ways that they can improve their sleep naturally? Sure. So I think there's, there's a few things off the top of my head. So the first one is, you know, kind of thinking about stress and stress relief.

One of the ways to kind of manage that is to take little breaks throughout the day. So if you're able to, you know, get away from your desk and take a walk outside or maybe eat your lunch away from your desk.  Taking those little even five or 15 minute breaks can be really helpful just to kind of let a little bit of steam go throughout the day.

So we're not, we don't build it up and bring it home with us. Another thing is that movement is really helpful for sleep. So kind of trying to get our exercise in throughout the week. So again, if you are able to get up and maybe exercise during lunch or take a walk or just get up and stretch and stretch for a little bit, I think any of those things can be sort of helpful if you can do those throughout the day.

And then sunlight. So sunlight is exposure is really helpful for sleep and for our mood and for our daytime energy. So if you're able to sit by a window for a while during the day, take that walk, just kind of get that sunlight throughout the day. It can be helpful to kind of not only improve our mood and our energy, but also helpful for sleep when we get to the evening.

Yeah, I love all those tips because those are doable and I was hating this window right here because it was like sending this glare on my face, but now I won't  because I'm going to be able to regulate my sleep cycle. Um, but I want to highlight what you just said, like movement. You know, go out and move for 5 to 10 minutes because it's going to help you  decompress and take that stress off in that hour and then you come back, you know, return to work and then take another break.

So now you're not building up. So how is exercise and movement related to well being in terms of sleep or getting enough sleep? Sure. So there's, there's quite a few, there's several ways that it can help. the first is that, you know, it does help with stress relief. And so it helps to kind of produce endorphins, helps you to kind of relax that stress response and kind of engage the relaxation response a little bit more.

So it's really helpful for stress relief. It helps to, , one of the ways that exercise kind of affects us is when we sort of stress our body a little bit. So we get exercise, we stress our body a little bit, and the body sometimes responds by giving us more of that deep restorative sleep to help us recover from that stress.

So sometimes the exercise can lead to kind of deep and more restorative sleep. Third way is that, so our body has these natural kind of temperature fluctuations where, you know, it's during the day we have a higher body temperature as we get closer to sleep, and during the night we have a lower body temperature.

And so sometimes we tend to be more kind of the couch potatoes, more sedentary. And when we do that, our body temperature fluctuations sort of flatten out a little bit, that can affect our sleep quality. It can affect our kind of mood sometimes, but when we get that regular exercise, it helps us to maintain those fluctuations at the right times.

And so that can be really good for just helping us to fall asleep and stay asleep and keep that sleep quality going pretty well. I love that. I didn't know about the thermal effect of,  I mean, I knew about the thermal effect of exercise in general, but not how it impacts the sleep, how it's related to sleep.

So that's wonderful because I always tell my clients and even in corporate workshops that. Sleep is so important. And then so is exercise. So movement ties into sleep and then sleep ties into exercise. So I just love how you just made that connection. Now let's talk a little bit about employee wellness programs and why should organizations focus on sleep solutions as part of their employee wellness programs.

Sure. So, and yeah, I actually have gotten into doing some sleep wellness programs for companies for that fact that not only does it help the employees, but it really helps the companies as well. So they've done numerous studies showing that when employees aren't sleeping well, costs the each employees not sleeping well can cost the company a couple or a few thousand dollars per year.

There's more absenteeism, some more missed days, due to, you know, sick days and missed days. There's more presenteeism. So employees are more like they're kind of there, but they're not really there. They're not really engaged or, or being at their best productivity goes down. They, the emotional intelligence can go down.

So, so interactions between employees can kind of suffer in between them and their, their managers.  There's a lot of different reasons why it benefits both parties to improve sleep. So that's kind of one of my goals is just to make sure that we kind of have a culture of emphasizing rest, emphasizing sleep so that people are just feeling better during their days at work.

When they go home, they're able to kind of wind down before bed and enjoy their nights more. And I just think there's a lot of help, more healthier, happier people when we have all those things working correctly. I couldn't agree more. You're so right that it ties into the presentism, absenteeism costs of the companies and the productivity of the employees.

Right? So, and I feel like that's the end goal for individuals and then the organizations as well to be more productive. Right? So how does Sleep tie into productivity. Let's, debunk this a little more. I wanna know, like, I know, I mean, if I'm not rested, I'm not gonna give my a hundred percent, but at the same time, I also know I have like this big to-do list for my business.

And if I don't get that done, like, you know, that that's not good too. So it's always like a lot of my clients say that too. Oh, I don't know how to find the balance, you know, I mean, but for that, how does it tie into productivity? How is it getting into our productivity and what are some of the, again, simple solutions, tips to focus on productivity and have get enough sleep?

Sure. Yeah. So as far as how it affects productivity, I think there's, there's several ways that it can go about it. One of them is that it just lowers your motivation. If you have less energy, you're less motivated to really go out there and give your all. You kind of pull back a little bit, and that's one kind of simple way.

Another one is that it might cause you to Kind of choose simpler tasks. So maybe, you know, if you have a hard task, you have an easy task and the hard task is going to really push things forward. The easy one is something that's sort of mindless, but you can knock it off your checklist. You're more likely to focus on that easier thing.

And so if you're, if you're tired, you're focusing on the easy wins and never really on the things that are going to move the needle, then you're just not really having that productivity that's going to push things forward. Another one that I was thinking about is that I think motivation, choosing the easier task and then just, just your energy levels, you know, if you're, if you have low energy, you are just kind of coasting a lot of times.

And so I think when you have people in that situation, we have, you know, a lot of people in that situation in a company. It's going to kind of slow down everything. There's going to be bottlenecks and it'll show up, you know, eventually in the bottom line for the company and creativity shown when you're trying to solve problems and everything else.

So it's, it really, it starts there and it kind of snowballs until things are moving at a snail's pace. So what are some of the ways to  prioritize rest and recovery and get a good night's sleep? Simple solutions that again, employees can use or even organizations. Programs that organizations can implement.

Yeah. So one thing is just sort of emphasizing the having sort of boundaries or kind of the work life balance idea. So, you know, you have your time to work, you have your time to be productive and be stressed about things. But then when you get home, you know, you have time to be present and, you know, kind of wind down before bed and do the things that are going to, to help you to kind of disconnect so that when you get into sleep, into bed to sleep, that you.

are just ready to have a calm and restful night. So I think that's one thing is kind of emphasizing, giving yourself time to give yourself to do that wind down. A lot of times working on kind of relaxation techniques. So, you know, when we do have that stress, we feel like we're always going or things like that.

It's kind of learning the ability to slow down and take this time to maybe do a mindfulness exercise, maybe do some stretching, maybe just read a book or something. And, you know, let yourself have that time to just kind of Slow down at times, uh, yeah, and then just, just kind of techniques to, if we do experience those issues during the night, we're having trouble falling asleep or trouble staying asleep, sort of learning ways to deal with that, to manage with that, manage that and not let it affect you so much that we can, so we can still rest comfortably.

That's, that's one of the harder things to do, but that's, that's kind of what I work out with people is learning to stay calm at nights and. Yeah, I love how you highlighted first that setting healthy boundaries, right, and that is key because you do want to disconnect from work each and every day and have some hours to yourself, maybe you're spending time with your family, or it's just for yourself, doing something that speaks to you, it could be movement based activities, or it could be just reading, or whatever.

sometimes watching your favorite TV show. And then you talked about also that disconnecting as in mentally disconnecting with the activities that you're doing. And I'm so glad that you help people learn how to stay asleep when they are in the bed. So I'm just curious, does technology play a role in sleep deprivation?

Like if People are on their phones texting or being on social media right before they sleep. Can that affect sleep? Yes. And I see this very often. It's become, you know, as we've become more attached to our phones and screens, this has played a part. So a lot of times people do find it hard to sort of let go of their screen as they're winding down for bed. 

You know, they are scrolling through TikTok or they're just watching TikTok videos after TikTok videos, scrolling through emails, checking work emails, texting, and there's really, you know, it just, it kind of keeps the brain going so that the brain never has a chance to actually wind down and rest for sleep.

Another thing I see often is that people, you know, they'll wake up in the middle of the night and they'll grab their phone and start looking at things on their phone in the middle of the night, which also is not. really conducive to sleep. And then I guess the other thing is that when people wake up, a lot of times the first thing we do is grab our phone and look at it.

And so they've shown that that also has some negative effects for the daytime as well. So, yeah, very connected to our phones and it has been shown to cause some issues for people. What's the safe buffer time to put our screens away before we go to bed? So usually 30 to 60 minutes is sort of the recommended time.

And if you can get closer to that, that 60 minutes, I think that's a good thing to aim for, just because it really does give you the best opportunity to, to wind down and have that buffer zone. So I would say that's something to aim for and maybe get closer to that 60 minutes if possible. Yeah, and I feel like that's so important in today's age when we talk about winding down and slowing down to put the screens away for at least 30 to 60 minutes before, because then your brain is going to understand you're establishing a habit here, right?

That you are creating this connection between disconnecting from technology and going to bed. And I've heard that the blue light actually disrupts your sleep, right?  Yes. Yeah. So, so that's the, the idea is that, , blue light is basically the same, , wavelength as you, when you look up in the sky, you see a blue sky.

It's kind of the same frequency of light or wavelength. And so it can sort of trick your body into thinking that it's still earlier than it really is. And then your body thinks, okay, it's still, I don't need to produce melatonin to help me drift off to sleep. And so it's kind of tricks your body.  There have been some studies that have sort of said maybe that the, the effect of blue light isn't as much as we actually think it is, but sometimes just the, you know, the simple act of having bright lights in front of your face and then also the content that we talked about, that kind of stimulating content.

Those, those may be, those definitely can be, uh, you know, kind of not helpful for falling asleep. Yeah, no, that's wonderful. So it should be part of your slowing down regimen to disconnect when we say disconnect, disconnect, like literally from the technology. So I'd love to learn more about your organization sleepably and your coaching program, and also I'm sure our listeners and viewers want to know where they can find you.

Sure. So yeah, so as you mentioned, we do, uh, one on one sleep coaching for adults and children, so we're, you know, trying to help adults or families who are taking care of children to get the rest that they need, um, so we really do kind of a personalized approach to really find out what does your life look like, what are your specific obstacles and then develop a plan to help you through and coach you through to better sleep.

So we do that. And then we do corporate engagements as well. So everything from doing presentations about sleep for companies, for their employees to one on one sleep coaching to workshops and a lot of other things as well. So people can find out at sleepably. com that's sleep a b l y. com. People can schedule a free call to discuss their specific.

Needs and we can talk about that. And it's probably the best way to, to learn more about us and kind of start that conversation as well. So any parting thoughts, any tips on something that somebody who's struggling with sleep can implement right away? Sure. Yeah. So yeah, so some simple, some simple tips are.

You know, if you find that you are, you know, get into bed, you're really alert and it's hard to fall asleep, maybe look at, you know, that particular night. Are you going to bed too early? Are you giving yourself enough time to get drowsy so that you have that drowsiness ready for bed? So it's a really simple one.

You know, try to keep a consistent sleep schedule. So try to wake up  around the same time each day. As often as possible, go to sleep around the same time each night, same as, as well as similar as possible. That's really helpful. I guess the snooze button, a lot of people will wrestle with the snooze button and if possible, it's better to just, uh, sort of set your alarm for the actual time that you want to wake up and then wake up at that time instead of using the snooze button over and over again.

Oh, I love the snooze button tip.  I'm not a big fan. I'm not a big fan of snooze button. And now I know why. And thanks for highlighting the consistency. I think that's. It's really important because people think that, Oh, we can go on a weekend schedule and stay up late. Well, I think you do get sleep deprived.

And a lot of times I see a lot of corporate professionals returning to work on Mondays more tired than when they left work on Fridays. So yeah, consistency is key as it is key with exercise and nutrition. It's key with sleep. So thank you so much, Seth, for joining us today.