ReThinking Mental Wellbeing

Sleep: Your Superpower Unlocked

• Andre Jackson • Season 1 • Episode 22

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Ever wondered why sleep feels so refreshing when you get it right? It's not just about rest—it's a full-body reset that science has proven to be as powerful as any medical breakthrough.

Sleep isn't a luxury we can sacrifice on the altar of productivity. It's the foundation that determines how we function emotionally, physically, and mentally. Throughout this episode, we explore sleep's profound role in enhancing memory, boosting creativity, strengthening immunity, and regulating emotions. When sleep meets the right conditions—proper duration, depth, regularity, and timing—our quality of life dramatically improves.

During deep sleep, your brain literally washes away toxins that build up during waking hours. Your body repairs itself, regulates stress hormones, and strengthens your immune system. Meanwhile, your mind processes emotional experiences, reducing their intensity so you can handle them better the next day. This is why sleep has been called "the bridge between despair and hope"—it can make the difference between waking up overwhelmed or waking up resilient.

For those struggling with sleep anxiety—that frustrating state of being "tired but wired"—we share practical strategies to break the cycle. From Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (available for free through Just A Thought in New Zealand) to journaling, environment adjustments, and meditation techniques, these tools can help retrain your nervous system to embrace rest rather than resist it.

Remember, mastering sleep isn't about perfection. It's about getting better through small, consistent changes. Sleep forms one critical quarter of the foundation for authentic living, alongside eating better, connecting better, and moving better. When we prioritize these fundamentals, everything else in life becomes more manageable.

Ready to transform your relationship with sleep? Listen in, try our suggested techniques, and discover how better sleep might just be the key to unlocking your best self. Have questions about sleep or other mental wellbeing topics? Reach out to us at RethinkingMentalWellbeing@gmail.com—we'd love to hear from you.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to another episode of Rethinking Mental Wellbeing. This is our community podcast where we can talk about everything related to depression and anxiety. So my name is Andre and I want to thank you for being with me over the next half an hour as we share this space of lived experience where we can talk about how to live the best version of our authentic life. So if you're ready, then I'm ready. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome back to Rethinking Mental Wellbeing. If you are here for the first time, then welcome to the space, and if you've been here before, then welcome back to the space. I'm going to start off this episode by talking to you about an amazing breakthrough that scientists have just discovered. This is a revolutionary new treatment that makes you live longer, enhances your memory and it makes you more creative. That makes you look and feel younger. It lowers food cravings and it wards off colds and flus. It lowers your risk of heart attacks, as well as strokes and diabetes. You feel happier, less depressed and less anxious. This revolutionary new treatment is what is known as sleep, and the topic of sleep is what we're going to be talking about in today's episode. That quote that I read is from a man named Matthew Walker. He's a British author, scientist and a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California. He's also known as one of the world's experts in this topic of sleep.

Speaker 1:

I think it's important to know that sleep is not a luxury. It was never designed to be a luxury, but in these days it's kind of become something that we do if we have time, if we give ourselves permission to, if we can be bothered permission to if we can be bothered or even if we can. These days we've put sleep lower down on the list of priorities, because often it counteracts the drive to be productive. But without the right type of sleep, which is the right amount of time combined with the depth of sleep, we mistake productivity for busyness. But in order to be at our best emotionally, physically, mentally we need to learn how to sleep well. Sleep is a basic need, just like food and water.

Speaker 1:

Sleep is essential in functioning well as a human being. In functioning well as a human being, sleep is the foundation that influences everything in life, because life feels a lot harder when our sleep is compromised. In other words, the length and depth of our sleep and the frequency of how often this happens is not where it needs to be, or even not where it should be for us. But when sleep does meet these conditions, our quality of life improves. Our energy, our mood, our ability to focus and our capacity to deal with stress all improve. So sleep is not only about rest, but it's the foundation of our physical health, our mental and our emotional health, and our quality of life and our day-to-day performance.

Speaker 1:

Quality sleep influences our health and our emotions. It influences our ability to think clearly and even how long and how well we live. We become better at regulating our emotions with a better night's sleep and life becomes noticeably easier to manage. Our mood is more balanced, our mind is more focused and your body is more resilient. And your body is more resilient, so we are simply better equipped to meet the demands of the day. And when you learn something new, your brain needs sleep to lock it in.

Speaker 1:

Sleep strengthens new memories, making them more durable and easier to recall them later on, because when your brain takes new information, it blends it with what you already know to form something new, essentially creating new ideas, new insights and new solutions to problems, to problems that you wouldn't otherwise see. So the old saying just sleep on it actually has scientific backing behind it, and during the night your brain processes emotional experiences that you have, and particularly when it's in what is known as REM sleep, it reduces the emotional intensities of memories and it helps you deal with them the next day in a better way. It's like your brain is running on a nightly maintenance program to protect your emotions and your mental health. In fact, good sleep has been known to and referred to as the bridge between despair and hope. It can make the difference between waking up overwhelmed or waking up more resilient, and during certain stages of sleep your body regulates important cells within your body that play a critical role in fighting viruses and preventing illnesses.

Speaker 1:

When you're sick, your body naturally craves sleep, because sleep boosts the immune system. In fact, sleep is one of the most effective tools for healing. It is a full body recover process. During sleep, your cardiovascular health is also supported, and during deep sleep your heart rate slows, your blood vessels relax, your blood pressure lowers. Naturally and consistent quality sleep helps regulate your cortisol levels, which is the body's main stress hormone. So deep sleep functions like a natural blood pressure medication and stress control. And another really cool thing that happens in particularly in deep sleep is that your brain clears out metabolic waste products that build up during waking hours, and this includes a chemical called adenosine. This is a chemical that has contributed to what we call sleep pressure. In other words, the more tired you are is a direct result of the buildup of this adenosine, and in deep sleep your brain is literally getting washed from toxin buildup, which is a really handy thing to do, but this only happens in deep sleep.

Speaker 1:

So, as you can imagine, sleep isn't a passive state. It's an active, complex process that happens behind the scenes to keep our brain and our body functioning at its best. So, as we go through this episode, we're going to explore some of these benefits of sleep. We're also going to give you some ideas about how to sleep properly or how to sleep better, some which you probably have tried before. We're also going to provide some tools and some techniques you can take away with you that you can experiment with and try out, and even adapt, so we can learn to get a better night's sleep. So now we're starting to know that sleep is your body's daily reset, and one of the biggest misconceptions about sleep is that sleep is a waste of time, and, from what we've just been talking about. We now know that it's not.

Speaker 1:

Sleep is how your brain clears out the mental clutter. You're better able to learn and remember after a better night's sleep. It is how your body repairs damage and toxin buildup within your body. Sleep provides more space to be able to stay calmer under pressure, to deal with challenges better and to feel more emotionally balanced. Your immune system relies on sleep, and when you sleep well, your body is better at fighting off illnesses and you can recover better. Sleeping well supports your healthy blood pressure, lowers stress hormones, reduces the risk of heart problems. Your hormones are even affected by sleep. Hormones that help your body heal and recover are released during sleep. Sleep also has an impact on appetite. When we're sleep deprived, your body produces more hormones that makes you feel hungry and less of the ones that tell you that you're full.

Speaker 1:

Sleep also produces productivity. We make better choices. We perform better in our activities. Sleep sharpens your thinking, it helps you focus and stay focused, and it improves your reaction time and even helps you stay motivated. So sleep is one of the most powerful performance enhancers that we have, because a lack of sleep doesn't just make you tired, it makes life a lot harder than it needs to be. Everything becomes more difficult when you're running on little sleep. We forget things, we make more mistakes, we're more sensitive to stress and we get irritated a lot easier. Our tolerance to deal with things is less as we struggle to stay motivated. Our decision-making abilities suffer, our creativity drops and even our ability to connect with other people is also compromised. We're more likely to get injured, to get sick, to feel overwhelmed with poor sleep and, over time, poor sleep affects our long-term health. Studies have shown that just one week of short sleep can change how hundreds of your genes function, including those related to immunity and inflammation.

Speaker 1:

So this episode is not about learning to sleep perfect. It's about giving you some ideas and some tools and the possibility of knowing that there are things that we can do about it if we're not sleeping well, to learn to sleep better. In fact, when I'm talking to people in workshops and they ask me Andre, where should I even start on learning to live the best life I want to live, or finding my authenticity, or making life easier, or even getting my needs met, I would always say to them establish a foundation first, and in particular, a foundation that has four parts to it Eating better, sleeping better, connecting better and moving better. So if you can make these four things your starting point and establish these as routines, then your foundation becomes enforced and reliable and something you can build the rest of your life onto. So, if you've noticed, sleep is a part of that equation and of that foundation, and you also notice that it's about getting better at it, which is often a good place to start, rather than the illusion of thinking that we have to master this straight away. Better is a lot more achievable than perfect.

Speaker 1:

So the question on how do we know if we're getting a good enough sleep comes down to four key elements the quantity of sleep, or how many hours you're getting. Are you getting enough sleep? So for most adults it's around seven to nine hours a night, but to get that much actual sleep, you need to be in bed for longer than that. The next element is the quality of sleep. This means are you sleeping deep enough? Are you spending enough time at each stage of sleep? So if we're tossing and turning or waking up frequently, then this is going to reduce the quality of our sleep. The next element is the regularity of sleep, and this means going to bed and waking up about the same time every day and we do this because your body thrives on routine and regular sleep patterns help you fall asleep faster, allowing you to wake up feeling better. The next element is about the timing of sleep, and this is about synchronising your sleep with your natural body clock. For example, some people are early risers. They love to wake up before or around when the sun rises. Some people are night owls, preferring to go to bed later at night. But fighting our natural rhythm makes sleep harder and less refreshing, even if you get the right amount of hours.

Speaker 1:

We are known as diurnal creatures, which is the opposite of nocturnal, so we are designed to be awake through the day and to get the bulk of our sleep at night. One or two bad nights of sleep is not going to be that significant, but chronic sleep deprivation missing sleep night after night over a long period of time can have a serious impact on us. So the good news is that sleep can be fixed. With small, consistent changes, we can improve the way we sleep and improve the way we feel the next day. And, as we talked about before, it's important to know that we're not here to master or perfect sleep. It is about learning to get better at it, the small changes that we see, the more this feeds into our confidence and our ability to believe that we can improve our sleep. And I'm also aware that this is kind of like a chicken and egg scenario. You know that sleep affects our quality of life, our stresses, our mental well-being, our outlook in life and all the things that we've talked about before, but all of those things also affect our sleep. But if you want to feel better, think more clearly, stay healthier and be more present in life, then learning how to sleep better in conjunction to the other lifestyle changes that we need to put in place, like getting rid of some of the stresses that aren't ours, or even getting rid of some of the stresses that are not now, finding good connections, changing and adjusting our pace of life that suits us, eating better, movement and exercise and literally everything else I've talked about in all of the other episodes of Rethinking Mental Wellbeing and all of these things work together better when they're combined to help us sleep better.

Speaker 1:

So to understand sleep, we need to first of all understand the cycle of sleep and the role that each of these stages play in our sleep cycle. So sleep is made up of two main types. The first is non-rapid eye movement, or otherwise known as non-REM, and rapid eye movement sleep, known as REM, and these two forms of sleep even flow and cycle throughout the night. As you sleep, your body moves through these stages throughout the night, roughly around 90 to 120 minute cycles. For some people the cycle may be a little bit shorter or longer, but the pattern stays the same. So non-REM, then REM, and then the cycle repeats. So when you first fall asleep you start at the lighter stage of sleep and from there you gradually descend into the deeper stages of REM sleep, or otherwise known as deep or slow-wave sleep. And so after about 45 to 60 minutes of this deep sleep, so after about 45 to 60 minutes of this steep sleep, you begin to rise into a brief period of REM sleep, which is the lighter sleep, and then this completes one cycle and then it starts all over again. This cycle of sleep repeats multiple times throughout the night, but the balance of REM and non-REM sleep shifts across the night. So, for example, earlier in the night you get more deep, non-rem sleep. Later in the night, especially the last couple of hours of sleep, your body shifts into a more REM sleep, less deep sleep, as it starts to wake up. This is why when you cut your sleep shorter, like waking up too early, it often doesn't just reduce your quality sleep time. It cuts into your REM sleep, the part that's most abundant at the end of your sleep time. So even if you lose only an hour's sleep, that last hour may include a large portion of your night's REM sleep, and this directly affects things like your memory, your mood and your creativity the next day.

Speaker 1:

Sleep anxiety is a major reason why many people struggle to fall or stay asleep at night, and this often feels like you're caught in a paradox You're exhausted and you want to sleep, but your mind feels wide awake, leading to the phrase of being tired but wired, and this reflects a mismatch between your physical fatigue and your heightened internal stimulation. Anxiety is one of the most common underlying causes of insomnia and even without that formal sleep disorder of insomnia, high levels of stress or worry can interfere with sleep because when anxiety is present, the nervous system remains active, keeping the body in the state of fight or flight. Your heart rate is elevated, your blood pressure rises, your core body temperature may be higher than the ideal that we need for sleep, and these are all things that contradict getting a good night's sleep, disrupting the normal process of winding down, getting ready for sleep, and one of the most difficult parts of sleep anxiety is the mental loop of worry and rumination, and I'm sure that we've all experienced what a racing mind feels like as soon as we lie down and our head hits the pillow. It seems like our thoughts and our emotions come to life. Our thoughts and emotions become amplified in what is meant to be a quiet space, and our brain begins to anticipate problems, scanning for threats, catastrophizing our situations. But of course, this is not the place to do it, and the rumination blocks our brain's ability to transition into rest mode. And if this is repeated over time, then this pattern turns our sleep time into stress time, then this leads to dreading sleep time, and so the bed becomes associated not with sleep, but with sleeplessness and frustration and anxiety.

Speaker 1:

And, of course, the more we struggle to sleep, the more anxious we feel about sleep, which is contrary to what we need to do in order to sleep, and we even have certain habits that reinforce sleep anxiety. Things like checking the clock at night is one of them. Every time you look at the time, you're reminding yourself of how long you've been awake for and how little time remains before you have to get up. This triggers more stress and adds more pressure, and anticipatory stress is another common issue. So when you know you have to wake up early like getting up early for work what you may feel is heightened stress before bed, which of course, keeps the brain on alert, leading to a shallow, fragmented and broken sleep.

Speaker 1:

Technology and certain habits can make things worse. For instance, keeping your phone near your bed may induce the possibility of interruption, and if you're extremely light sensitive, then even the charging light on your phone has the potential of interrupting your sleep. Even if your phone pings with notifications, our FOMO or fear of missing out kicks in as a compulsion to check our phone. This is a low-level alertness. We see this especially in teenagers and young adults, and this can delay sleep onset and reduce sleep quality. For example, obsessive use of sleep trackers contributes to a condition called orthosomnia, which is a preoccupation with sleep quality that ends up disrupting sleep itself.

Speaker 1:

So for the rest of this episode, we're going to be talking about some of the tools that may be helpful to realign yourself back to a healthier state of sleep. So find the best tools that are going to be the most effective to you, but give them a good go. Don't try something just once or twice. And, of course, not all of these tools are going to work for everyone. So cherry pick the ones that are going to be the most useful and the most effective for you and your lifestyle. So for people with persistent sleeping anxiety or insomnia, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, or CBT-I, is highly effective. This approach helps identify and challenges unhelpful and unhealthy thoughts about sleep. It helps to adjust to better routines for sleep and rebuilds confidence in your ability to sleep naturally.

Speaker 1:

At the time of this podcast, right now in New Zealand, an organization called Just A Thought offers free online CBT slash I as a course and a program. So in a world that often has a price tag on especially therapy, then this is a great opportunity to tap into what is often known as the gold standard of sleep treatment at no cost. So if you're interested, then go to the Just a Thought website and then navigate to the All Courses tab. There you'll have a ton of really cool courses, and one of them is managing insomnia. So of course, it's worth mentioning that the strategies that I give you is not going to be, of course, a complete list, but it'll give you some idea and some option to be able to start doing something.

Speaker 1:

Another strategy is the process of writing down what is in our head, like our worries and our concerns and our ruminations. This is a great technique where putting your thoughts on paper is helpful to start detaching the emotion from the thought, and it helps reduce the mental tension associated with anxiety tension associated with anxiety. Another technique is that if you are lying in bed and can't sleep after maybe 20 or 25 minutes, then, according to sleep experts, they recommend that you actually get up out of bed and leave the room. You do something calming in another space in the house this could be reading or listening to music and then go back to bed only when you feel sleepy. This helps re-establish the association between bed and falling asleep. Distraction techniques often help too. This is where techniques like meditation or something called yoga, nidra, slow breathing, even body scans, can help calm the nervous system. Some people even try to go for a mental walk, visualizing a peaceful environment and going for a walk, essentially in your mind, which helps occupy the mind and reduces anxiety.

Speaker 1:

Making practical changes to your environment can make a difference Keeping clocks and phones away from you so they're not easily accessible. Avoiding stimulating conversations or movies or social media in the evenings. Being mindful of caffeine intake, especially later on in the day, as that can increase both the anxiety and alertness, which, of course, is contrary to sleep. This will depend on your caffeine sensitivity. Another technique that may work is, instead of getting frustrated or anxious because you're not sleeping, is adopting an attitude of acceptance. Instead of fighting sleep, allowing yourself to accept that all you're going to do is rest and relax. Sleep may come more easily when the pressure of sleep is removed. Another technique could be the use of white noise, for instance, the noise of rain, the noise of nature, or maybe it's the opposite for you, maybe you don't even like noise. So if you're able to, earplugs that either go in your ear or over your ear may help and reduce some of the noise within your environment.

Speaker 1:

Another technique that you may have heard of before is sleep hygiene. Sleep hygiene is where you prepare your body for sleep, preferably an hour or two hours before bed, so your body and your nervous system starts to get the message that it's now time to rest. So what we've just gone over is a very quick overview about some ideas that you can use if you haven't before or maybe you want to try again as routines and habits and tools to be able to sleep better. So, of course, as we said, this is not a complete list, but it starts to give you some ideas and some options about how to retrain your nervous system and your mind to relearn how to sleep better, because if we can get better with our sleep, it changes the landscape for everything else in life.

Speaker 1:

So that's all I've got for this episode. Thank you for joining me today and I hope that you've got something useful from this discussion, and if you have any questions you would like us to discuss on future episodes, then please email me at RethinkingMentalWellbeing at gmailcom. I'd love to hear from you. So until then, go well, go in peace, have a great week and we'll see you next time. You.