SIMPLE but Research-Backed Ways I'm Improving My Sleep

Did you know 1 in 3 U.S. adults are not getting the recommended 7 hours of sleep? Maybe you're one of them!

In this episode, I'm talking about 5 ways I've found that improve my sleep and giving some supporting evidence from sources like the National Institutes of Medicine, Baylor University, and Psychology Today to show you that these methods actually WORK!

Hopefully this is helpful for you and you're able to implement easily into your own life. As always, if you found this episode helpful, please share it with a loved one!

Love you, thank you!

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Transcript

Speaker 0:40

Hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. I'm so glad that you're here. Today, I'm talking about something that we seem... it seems a lot of people struggle with, which is sleep, and that is something that I know for me, in the summer months, it's actually a little bit harder for me than in the winter months because of the extended period of daylight and then also just, our house gets hotter in the summers, and it's harder to sleep in a hotter temperature. So, I know for me it's pretty relevant to right now, and maybe you're experiencing that too where you're not getting as good of sleep or as much sleep because of the summer months and just more going on and all of that. So, hopefully this is relevant to you. If you struggle with sleep, I really think that you should try some of these things. They're very simple, not hard things to do, and they are research-backed, and they are some things that I've been doing. Some of them I've been doing for longer than others, but I wanna go through each of them just to give you an idea of what I've been doing and how it could help you, and then also a little bit, tiny bit of the research that I found supporting these things. I never wanna come on here and be like, "This is what I'm doing. You should do it, too," without any sort of backing for why you should do it. But all of these things I found articles from the National Institute of Medicine and several other sources that support them. So hopefully this is helpful Firstly, I do wanna say that I, when I was doing some of the research for this, I found a stat that said that a third of US adults don't get the recommended seven hours of sleep, which I always thought it was eight. For me, I always heard eight, but I also recently found out that your sleep cycle repeats every one and a half hours. So that's why it's really hard, when you snooze the alarm and You go back to sleep, your body wants to go back to sleep for one and a half hours because that's, the sleep cycle, and your body just repeats that, so then that's why you of... A lot of time when you snooze the alarm and you wake up, like, 20 minutes later, you actually feel way more groggy than if you would've just gotten up whenever the first alarm went off. I don't know, I just recently learned about sleep cycles and whatnot. But anyway, so all that to say that when I was looking at the sleep cycles, it was like it repeats every one and a half hours, so that would put you at, seven and a half hours would be the sweet spot. And then if you want it longer, it'd be, like, at nine hours, and then obviously shorter at six hours is just not enough. So it's recommended that US adults get seven hours of sleep. Most of us don't. Actually, I won't say most of us 'cause it's a third, which isn't a majority, but a third of people, like, the fact that three people could be sitting in a room and one out of the three of them is not getting enough sleep regularly at night, no wonder we're all angsty and anxious and depressed and all the things. We just need some sleep. And I think about this a lot because if you listen to my episode a couple weeks ago, I talk about her all the time, but I have a niece, Mila. She's nine months today, actually. Yay. And when she gets sleepy, she really struggles and sometimes she doesn't wanna go down for sleep. And her mom, my sister, talks about how, well, yeah, think about, like, when we're really tired and we're really sleepy, like, we're cranky too, and we actually can regulate our emotions before we go to sleep, but babies can't. And so for her, it means, I've gotta cry, I've gotta be upset, I've gotta kinda have a meltdown. And for us, it's more like we're tired and we just have to get through the day, and so maybe we're snippy or critical or mean, or we overeat or or we are on our phones too mu- oh, it could be anything that we do because we're actually just tired. But I have been thinking about it a lot with that element, too, of, from birth, we really need a lot of sleep, and it is a vital, important part of every human. And one out of three of us are not getting a good amount of sleep. Whether that's because we're waking up in the middle of the night, like, being disrupted by something, or because we're not falling asleep easily, or we're, tossing and turning, or we're staying up on our phone too long, and then we realize, "Oh God, it's 2:00 AM, and I have to wake up at 7:00 AM." Whatever the reasoning is, one out of three US adults are not getting enough sleep. So, here are some things that I think would help you, and even if you are getting seven hours of sleep, maybe you don't feel, like, fully rested or maybe you still ha- you still do have a hard time falling asleep at the end of the night. I think that these things could really help you. So the first one, and this is the newest one that I've started, I started it about two months ago ago, and I have noticed a huge difference. So, I don't know about you, but I kind of noticed that for me, whenever I struggle to fall asleep, it could be for two, one of two reasons. It could be a physiological thing, my body feels restless, or my body feels almost over-tired sometimes, I would say, where I know I'm exhausted and my body is exhausted, but it just can't get into a state of calm, and my mind is exhausted. It's not my mind that's keeping me up, it's my body. That happens less to me. The second reason would be that my mind is awake. Like, my body's ready for bed, but my mind is going through, blblblblblblblbl, all the different things all the conversations I had throughout the day, or all the things that I have to do tomorrow, or all the things that happened when I was in fifth grade and that teacher said this thing. And just like, what are we thinking when we're, when it's, when it's 11:00 PM and we're laying in bed, or 10:00 PM for me, and laying in bed trying to fall asleep? What... Just the most random things pop into your head. So, if you're like me and that second one is more prevalent, I think that this would be really helpful for you. Any type of journaling or really what I've been doing is a brain dump, is what I would call it. But any type of journaling, writing things down before bed can be really, really helpful. And I am gonna read a little bit off my phone during this episode if in, in case you're watching on YouTube, just because I just wanna cite some of the places that I found, support for these ideas. So Psychology Today, for example, They cited research from Baylor University that found that writing a specific detailed to-do list for the next few days can help you fall asleep 10 minutes faster than usual. So if you're the type of person who is like, "Oh my gosh, I have so much to do in the next few days," and that kinda keeps you up and keeps you anxious, you could just quickly write out a, a task list, a to-do list for the next few days, and you might fall asleep much quicker. That is something that I have incorporated Another stat from the Journal of Sleep Research in 2023 noted that 15 minutes of pre-bed journaling reduces sleep latency by 37%. So sleep latency is the amount of time it takes you to fall asleep. So not necessarily like disruptions in the middle of the night, but just that you fall asleep quicker whenever you do some sort of journaling before bed It can also decrease sleep-disrupting nighttime anxiety, I kind of equate this to, you know that feeling, it's a good anxiety I guess when you're a kid, but you know, Christmas Eve when you're laying in bed and you're like, "Oh my God, I can't wait to wake up and see my presents," and you just have the most fitful sleep because you're waking up thinking about the fact that it's Christmas Eve. This is that. To me, like, the nighttime anxiety thing that is disrupting your sleep, making you wake up is, it's a more negative version of that. But, like, say that you've got a really big project tomorrow, or you've got a really big presentation tomorrow at work, or you've got a really big day with your kids happening tomorrow, something like that, then I feel like the nighttime anxiety can set in. I know for me, this is, this does happen the day before a travel day or something where I know that there's a big day ahead of me. And of course, those are the days that you need the most sleep and you get the least because you wake up in the middle of the night going, "Oh yeah, tomorrow I need to make sure I remember to pack this in my suitcase," or whatever the case may be. But journaling before bed can help reduce that by for- up to 42%. That's actually a pretty significant amount. So that would be my first one, is doing some sort of journaling, writing down before bed. It can be a to-do list. It can be a gratitude list. It can be just a brain dump. That's, that's mostly what I've been doing is, a cross between a brain dump and a to-do list. So I just kind of write down... When I say brain dump, I mean everything that I'm thinking right now, everything I'm thinking, feeling, and then I do a to-do list for the following day is what I've been doing. It takes minutes. I just have a journal right next to my bed on my nightstand, and I pick it up, and I've started doing that. And I do genuinely think it's helping. Obviously, I'm an anecdotal example of this, but that's why I found some research to help with that. So that's one thing. The second thing that I wanna talk about applies more to the physiological thing that I was talking about earlier with the first reason that you might not be able to fall asleep is because your body's not ready to, and this is something that I started doing probably closer to six months ago. Yeah, 'cause it was still cold months. And I think more so than just helping with sleep, this does help with sleep, but I was noticing that my body would feel sore and that would keep me up, and I've been in a pretty consistent workout routine for years now. But I do think that I'm getting older, and I'm noticing aches and pains a little bit more, and I'm really not that old. But one thing that I've been doing before bed, for maybe between 15 and 30 minutes, is stretching and/or foam rolling. So, I have a foam roller. You don't have to have a foam roller, but particularly, I have a lot of tension and tightness in my hips and lower back, and, well, really your hips affect your lower back being tight. So, I focus a lot on those areas, but maybe you have a lot of tension or pain in your calves or your hamstrings or your chest or wherever on your body feels sore. I have noticed that this makes me feel so much better, and when I was looking at information about this, it has shown that people with insomnia, when they do stretching b- prior to bed, they do have up to a 14% reduction in the severity of their insomnia, The first several weeks of doing it, it can in- reduce their insomnia by 14%, but then it can show even more of an increase after being more consistent with it over time. And then On top of that, the reason that it helps just average people, like maybe not you, I don't have insomnia, I don't think, but for regular people who maybe don't have insomnia but just do have a hard time falling asleep, the reason that it helps is because it shifts your parasympathetic nervous system out of fight or flight mode. It lowers your cortisol, it improves your blood circulation, and it helps you get... Even though it feels like a physical decompression, it's also a mental decompression. So it really is helpful, and it is research backed, and I highly recommend it. Again, you can focus on whatever tight areas you have. If you want an example of the stretches that I do, the ones that I really like are the ones... I'm trying to describe this so that you can listen to on audio too, if this makes sense. The one that I really like that's really effective, and I think that a lot of people have issues with their lower back this would help for, is laying on your back and taking one knee up to your chest and then crossing it over so you've got one leg out straight and the other one is like in an L maybe, I guess. And that one helps, I think, release the hips and the lower back. That one's really helpful. I also really, really like just the 90-90 windshield wipers stretch, and then also reaching over one knee when you're in that 90-90, and then reaching over the other knee when you're in that 90-90 and just kinda sitting in there. Honestly, if you just did three to four stretches like that, it probably would help, enough just to decompress mentally and get your body in a state that is good for rest The next two are actually things that are things I limit before bed. So rather than adding this into your before-bed sleep routine, these are things that I would remove, and the first one is not gonna surprise you probably, but reducing or limiting your screen time before bed. This is something that I started a couple of years ago. I heard a podcast, and he was talking about the 3-2-1 rule. His rule before bed is three hours before bed, no food. Two hours before bed, no work. Ha ha, that one's not hard for me at all. One hour before bed, no screens. And so his thing was he cut off eating at three hours before bed. So if I'm going to bed at 10:00 PM, my last thing I need to eat is at 7:00 PM. At 8:00 PM, no more answering emails or looking at Slack or looking at Teams or any of those vehicles that you use for your workplace. And then one hour before bed, no screens, and that includes your phone, the TV, your, I would say iPad, except I use my iPad to read, so I don't really count that. But just no screens that are, like, stimulating social media, news, games, anything like that. So limiting your screen intake. And you won't be shocked that daily screen use prior to bed is associated with a 33% higher rate of poor sleep quality. That's from the National Institute of Medicine. People just don't sleep as well whenever you are looking at your screens right before bed. And then another thing that the National Institute of Medicine said about screen time before bed is that interactive screen time, like multitasking or gaming, so I would say social media, gaming, or TV, anything like that, delays sleep onset by 10 to 35 minutes, and that is the sleep latency that I was talking about. So your sleep latency is worse, the amount of time it takes for you to go to sleep is worse whenever you look at screens beforehand. And this is something that I started several years ago, but I genuinely do notice the effects whenever I have the one-off time when I'm like, "You know what? I'm just gonna, I'm, I'm just gonna watch this TV show before bed. It'll be fine." And I do actually notice the difference when I'm going to sleep that I have a harder time going to sleep. I just feel overstimulated. I feel like there's too much going on in my brain because I was just watching TV, watching something very stimulating The next thing that is a, limitation, I guess, so something to take out of your, to delete from your evening, Is liquids. So I would say as someone who, I chug down liquids, I don't even mean to, it's just if it's in front of me, I'm probably gonna drink it, and I'm a big water drinker. So I, again, as I've gotten older, I've noticed that I can't chug a big thing of water right before going to bed, or else I'm definitely gonna have to wake up in the middle of the night to go pee. And did you know this is called nocturia? I didn't know that, but nocturia is what it's called whenever you have to wake up in the middle of the night to go pee. And when you consume liquid within two hours of bedtime, you have a dramatic increase of noctur-uria, of course, because you've been drinking things, whether that's alcohol or water or juice or tea, it could be anything. I highly recommend trying to limit that to two hours before. So if you go to bed a- again, if you go to bed at 10:00 PM, try not to have any water or any beverages after eight o'clock. Now, if you take your birth control at nine o'clock, not speaking from experience here or anything but if you take your birth control at nine o'clock and you need to take it with some water, it's okay. Take a sip of water, get it down, that's fine. Or just something small, like you need to take some pills and you get a little sip of water or yeah, you just get a sip of something, that's totally fine. No big deal. But no longer, and this is anecdotal again, but no longer are the days that I can chug a thing of water and sleep soundly through the night and wake up in the morning and feel great. As you get older, you have to pee in the middle of the night. And to avoid that, you, this really can help in my opinion and experience And the last thing, maybe I should have said this after the limiting screen time thing, because this is something that you can replace your screen time with, is reading. So reading before bed is something that is really good for you. I would say that most of my friends who have little ones, they do story time before bed, they do bedtime reading, and they love it. And the... I don't know why when we become adults, we decide that we don't need bedtime reading or story time before bed, but we do because it does help. Another study by the National Institutes of Medicine, this was in... It was called The People's Trial, 42% of participants who read a book in bed reported improved sleep quality, compared to just 28% in the control group. So people report that they have better sleep quality whenever they read a book in bed prior to going to sleep. Another thing is it can increase the duration of sleep. So bedtime readers sleep about 30 to 40 minutes longer than people who don't read before bed And then on top of that, reading is a stress reducer. It helps shift your focus away from, like, your daily stressors and whatnot, and so that can help your parasympathetic nervous system again to down regulate and get your body ready for bed, your body and your mind ready for bed. So hopefully those are helpful. I'm curious if you're doing any of those already or if you've tried anything like that. If you do try some of these or all of them, because I really do think they're all implementable, then let me know, because I do think that they're really, really helpful, and sleep is so important, and I hope you have wonderful sleep this week. Love you. Thank you.