The Health Hunt: Real Healing Journeys, Everyday Wellness & Expert Tips

Ep 08 - Chronic Insomnia: How to Break the Sleep Anxiety Cycle

• Sandi Magder and Daniel Schuman • Episode 8

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If your brain turns into a 3 a.m. drama queen, doing math on how many hours you won’t sleep, predicting how awful tomorrow will be, and spiraling about “what if I can’t fall asleep?”, this episode is for you.

In Part 3 of our Sleep Series, we go beyond sleep hygiene and talk about chronic insomnia as a mind-body pattern: a nervous system stuck in “danger” mode, even when you’re lying in bed, lights off, doing everything right. Sandy breaks down how neuroplasticity, the amygdala, and the vagus nerve all play a role in sleep anxiety, hyperarousal, and that lovely performance pressure that shows up the second your head hits the pillow.

We unpack how:

  • Chronic insomnia is learned, not a character flaw and how the brain wires “bed = danger.”
  • Catastrophizing and forecasting (“If I don’t sleep, I’ll ruin tomorrow”) quietly fuel the insomnia loop.
  • Mindfulness and cognitive diffusion help you see thoughts as thoughts, not prophecies.
  • Paradoxical intention (trying to stay awake on purpose) can lower sleep performance anxiety.
  • Somatic tools like progressive muscle relaxation, yoga nidra, guided imagery, autogenic training, gentle movement, and breathwork (including 4-7-8 and box breathing) send the body a clear “you’re safe” signal.
  • Vagus nerve activation helps shift you from fight-or-flight into rest-and-digest so sleep can actually happen.

Sandy also shares five practical, try-it-tonight steps to start resetting your mind-body sleep loop, like reframing just one catastrophic thought, using paradoxical intention, doing a 2–3 minute breathing practice, and giving yourself permission to rest even if you’re not asleep.

We also revisit sleep apnea and the mind-body connection: why obstructive sleep apnea still needs real medical evaluation (hi, ResMed 11 👋), but how stress and nervous system overdrive can make apnea episodes worse, and where mind-body tools may support medical treatment, not replace it.

If you’ve ever felt broken, “bad at sleep,” or stuck in the No-Sleep Olympics, this episode is your reminder: you’re not alone, you’re not broken, and your brain can absolutely learn a new pattern. We’re rewiring our brains right alongside you.

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All views, opinions, and commentary expressed on The Health Hunt Podcast are solely those of the hosts. They are shared in a personal capacity and do not represent the views, policies, or positions of any current or former employer, including any organizations with which the hosts may be professionally affiliated.

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Intro & Disclaimer

SPEAKER_01

Welcome back to the Health Hunt, a human, humble, and humorous exploration of how to level up your health. I'm Sandy, here with my co-host Dan. And today we're wrapping up our three-part sleep series. Something a little deeper and a little more personal. In this episode, it's all about the mind-body side of sleep. The worry, the pressure, and the spiral of what if I can't fall asleep? That actually keeps you awake. We'll talk about how chronic insomnia becomes learned by trying harder backfires and what modern neuroscience and somatic psychology say about calming your system naturally. And before we get into this exciting episode, you know the drill, the disclaimer. The Help Punt Podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. We're not medical professionals, and nothing shared should be considered medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider before making changes to your health. Okay, let's fall down this rabbit hole. Before

What Mind-Body Work Actually Means

SPEAKER_01

we dive into sleep, I want to explain something that I mention a lot, and that is mind body work. It's something that I'm intensely passionate about because honestly, learning about it changed how I think about pretty much everything. So for me, mind body work started as a curiosity about why the pain and anxiety I experienced never seemed to purely be mental or physical. And when I learned about it, something just clicked and I saw things differently. Mind-body work is the science, the lived experience of how our thoughts, emotions, and body sensations constantly talk to and influence each other. Every thought sends a chemical message. Every emotion shows up somewhere in your body. And your body, in turn, then sends signals that shape what your brain thinks and feels. It's like a feedback loop that never stops. The brain isn't a boss giving orders. It's more like a group chat with your nervous system, hormones, and gut bacteria all chiming in at once. And if you've listened to any prior podcast, you've learned how much I hate a group chat. So I certainly don't want that going on in my body. And then when this internal chat gets noisy, yuck, things like sleep, digestion, pain, and even mood can spiral. Scientifically, this is just neuroplasticity, the way your brain and body tuck to each other and learn patterns over time. If your system has been wired for stress, it can keep repeating it. But the good news, and we all like good news, is that you can unlearn those patterns too.

SPEAKER_00

All right, timeout. Thanks

Neuroplasticity Explained (Play-Doh Brain)

SPEAKER_00

for the intro, Sandy. Yes, I am also on this podcast episode. And uh I just heard the word neuroplasticity, and I think that has six syllables to it. So I have a little bit of a rule that I probably didn't introduce in any prior episode that um I think it's like three or more syllables, and it's like a medical term. We have to kind of suss it out and explain it. That's both Sandy and I, and then the guest salon that will be on the podcast. Let me take a stab at neuroplasticity uh for our 10 listeners out there. Uh, this may be repetitive repetitive, but I think my understanding of neuroplasticity means your brain can change as you grow like play-doh. I think Sandy was just describing that. And so I I reference it to Play-Doh. And so your brain is always shaping itself based on what you do, think, and practice. It's continuously a work in progress. Sandy, do I have that right?

SPEAKER_01

That's exactly it. It means that the brain can change, it's moldable, it's malleable, all the things we want, and that we're not stuck in our current patterns. And by the way, I I like big words, so I apologize to anyone if I'm overburdening you with lots of letters and big words, but we just have to provide them. I think because of the work that I've been doing, that's almost just like a term that is in everyday life. And so I appreciate you bringing that up because obviously that's not something that everybody has come across. So, really, that is, and what I just explained is that is the heart of mind body work. You can train your system towards safety and calm instead of threat and tension. And nowhere is that more obvious than sleep.

SPEAKER_00

So I'm just gonna interject that this topic of mind and body in general and how it relates to sleep fascinates me and it just makes too much sense. I feel like it's the deeper dive that most people don't take or don't even have time to take in general because old habits die hard. It takes patience and focus. It's really habitual to train your brain to associate things differently. Um, so I'll be a good listener here while we discuss this. And I'm just honestly a very curious newbier.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and just kind of a point of reference, just knowing that your brain can change and that you can change your patterns and habits and even your thinking patterns is sort of the first step in being able to change them. So I know that sort of sounds like a basic concept, but it's actually incredibly important. Most of us think insomnia is about bad habits. You know, having trouble

Sleep vs. Chronic Insomnia

SPEAKER_01

sleeping once in a while, say because you scrolled TikTok too long, had caffeine at 5 p.m., or your dog decided that at 2 a.m. it was time for a party. Some of the things that we talked about in the last episode, that is sleep disruption or poor sleep hygiene. And it's habit-based. So let me make a quick distinction. Chronic insomnia is much different. It's when trouble falling asleep or staying asleep happens at least three nights a week for three months or more, even when you're doing everything right.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, this makes a ton of sense for me. And I think when I'm thinking about this as you're talking through it, the equivalent of this would be um when I skip my 1030 window when I fall asleep. Meaning, about 10:30, my body's like, you are tired, go to sleep. But if it's fall or late spring and there's college football, college basketball, MBA, NFL, you name it, it's on all the time. These are complete distractions, whether it's pizza or your Cinnabon or whatever you want to call it. These are the distractions for me that get me past my 1030 window. And it laps into when am I ever going to fall asleep? And it's really, you know, this is the culprit for me.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. But see, what you're describing is more habit-based, right? You have things that are just things outside of you that are specifically driving your inability to sleep, right? I mean, I get it because during the World Series, my Blue Jays were one of the teams, and I stayed up till 3 a.m. watching an 18-inning game where they lost. And because I'm older and recovery takes a long time. This was probably a month ago, but I think I'm still recovering. But what we're talking about, this chronic insomnia, it's very different. It's it's a regular thing that's not caused specifically by your habits. And it comes with daytime fatigue, brain fog, mood changes. And here's the key it's driven by your nervous system being stuck in alert mode. Researchers call this hyper-arousal, meaning that your body has learned to treat nighttime as danger. So habits might throw off your rhythm for a night or two, but chronic insomnia is when your whole system has basically just forgotten how to power down, meaning your body is stuck in go mode, even though you're horizontal. Brain scans show that insomniacs actually have higher activity in the amygdala, which is the fear center of your brain, prefrontal cortex, the overthinking part. It's like having a smoke alarm going off whenever you try to rest.

SPEAKER_00

I'm gonna interject one second. I'm not gonna do it now. Uh, I don't even know if I can pronounce this word if you said if I said it three times, but amygdala, that would be a word that's uh many syllables that uh I have no idea what that means in deep and depth. And so um just pointing it out, but but carry on, Sandy. Sorry for the interruption, but uh big word.

SPEAKER_01

We know what dance trigger is. It is large over-lettered words. So what I just described, this sort of like stuck and go mode, is the reason that someone's saying, just relax, does not work, right? That's not helping you. I don't know if that has ever worked for anybody ever. If it has worked for you, please let us know. The body's not lazy, it's protecting you from a threat, but it's a threat that doesn't exist. So if your brain has learned, and again, this is where the neuroplasticity comes in. If your brain has learned that nighttime equals danger, the goal isn't to force sleep. It's to teach your system that you're safe again, right? You want to learn that sleep and nighttime is not dangerous. Now, I know that sounds like a given, but at some point your brain is learning certain things about what nighttime means. And that's where the mind body work comes in. Because your sleeplessness becomes learned. You can't just fix it with more sleep tips. You have to literally retrain the wiring itself. So let's talk about how to unlearn this behavior.

SPEAKER_00

I like that line about um having to retrain the wiring itself. That speaks to me as it relates to my battle with chronic insomnia over months, uh as I, you know, I touched on in the first part of the first episode in this series. I honestly can't attribute any specific moment or cause to what caused my insomnia, but there was definitely hyper-arousal, another word, monosyllabic, as you mentioned. And uh, you know, I would look, you open the door to my bedroom and it was like you open the door to the like, you know, the what the the the dark room, and it's like, oh, not this place again, you know, associating with a negative place to be and just a just a horrible time in my life. And uh all of what you're talking about here um connects with me a lot.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and I I think I explained this in the last episode where I talked about the sleep issues that I'm having with my dog. And because it's so recent, I remember as it would be approaching bedtime, I started to feel anxious because I was anticipating how she would be all night and how I wouldn't sleep, and I immediately felt panicked. And so even if she fell asleep a little bit, I was actually in a state of hyperarousal because I was anticipating her waking up. And so there was, I there was a learned behavior of associating nighttime with a certain fear, a fear of not sleeping. And sleep anxiety, as we've been talking about, is not just about the night. It's also

Sleep Anxiety, Catastrophizing & Forecasting Tomorrow

SPEAKER_01

about the day that you predict tomorrow will be. And this is kind of the kicker. The mind loves to forecast disasters. If I don't sleep, I'll be useless tomorrow. If I'm tired, I'm gonna mess up that meeting. And boom, you've entered forecasting mode. You start predicting future failure before it happens. The idea that if I don't fall asleep, tomorrow will be awful actually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anxiety wrecks your sleep, the fatigue wrecks your focus, and then you're anxious about the next night. Anxiety impairs sleep, impaired sleep impairs performance, which increases anxiety about future sleep. It's a mental loop and it can be vicious and unrelenting. And I think as you if you followed along, you kind of saw what was happening there. You're on a hamster wheel and you cannot get out. Now, this is what psychologists call, and Dan, brace yourself for a big word, catastrophizing and forecasting error. And actually, this was a word that I heard in my mind-body work a long time ago. And you've probably heard me bring it up on the podcast because it I really connected with it because it's such a oh my God word, and it really conveys how people are feeling. So when you're catastrophizing or you have this forecasting error, you're turning a possible negative into a worst case scenario. And that's again, you understand where catastrophizing comes from. Your body joins the party, your heart rate, heart rate goes up, cortisol's up, your muscles are tight, the brain is screaming, we're in danger. When really you're just in bed doing math on how many hours that you have left. And I love math, but I don't want to do it when I'm falling asleep. Even if the four hours you end up getting could have been enough, you have already told yourself that it's not. And you're gonna feel those effects because of the confirmation bias. But the good news is that you do not have to live like this. And that's why we're doing this podcast because it's important. The first step in being able to change is knowing that you can. The solution starts with taking a step back from the chaos, catching the story and reframing it. Even if I only get like four hours of sleep, I've handled worse. That single reframe lowers the threat chemistry. It's actually science. And more about this coming up soon. So keep listening. But feel free to take a nap if that's something you're able to do. We'll be here when you wake up.

SPEAKER_00

Sandy, really good. Um I think it was We're in Danger. There was a big scream there. You got me. Uh Did I wake you up? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I'm sorry, if you were sleeping, I'm sorry I woke you up.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I was gonna say, you know, if you are sleeping in this uh in this episode, um, that's amazing because we we are very big on sleep. But uh with those two shouts, you're probably not anymore. So, but um if you're taking a nap, you know, great. If not, uh I mean great, we we we won't be offended, but I doubt you are because I think we had a couple shouts there. So we woke some people.

SPEAKER_01

Sorry, and if you just woke up, welcome. All right, well, here's where it gets ironic. Once sleep becomes the goal, it

Performance Pressure & Paradoxical Intention

SPEAKER_01

disappears. You can't do it anymore. It's like trying to make yourself sneeze. It doesn't work on command because sleep's not a task, it's a reflex. The more we try, the more tension we build.

SPEAKER_00

Hmm, that sounds like performance anxiety to me. And we don't want any kind of performance anxiety while you are in bed, hint hint.

SPEAKER_01

We don't. And I feel like this is another t-shirt for the Health Hunt t-shirt store. Say no to performance anxiety.

SPEAKER_00

I like it.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. But like think about it, right? How can you expect to fall asleep when you're lying there and your whole system is active and monitoring? Am I asleep yet? Did I fall asleep? Am I asleep yet? How about now? Am I sleeping? It's like the whole, you know, kid in the car, are we there yet? It doesn't help you get there any faster. And it certainly doesn't help you fall asleep because now your brain has gone crazy. The internal stopwatch keeps the sympathetic nervous system wide awake. We don't want that.

SPEAKER_00

I mentioned in a prior episode uh how therapists use uh paradoxical intention. Paradoxical big word, point that out. I'm using a big word, and uh um at some point, or we can define it and have discussions about this word, but literally you try to calmly stay awake. It removes the pressure, your mind laughs, tension drops, suddenly your body goes, cool, sleep time.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And for me, as someone who hates being told what to do and will literally do the opposite to prove a point, and then I will feel badly that I got in trouble. Yes, it's exhausting to be me. The reverse psychology makes perfect sense. It's the psychological version of tricking a toddler. You pretend you don't want them to sleep, and then five minutes later they're snoring on the couch and you got to carry the dead weight upstairs. Sleep is a reflex, it's not a reward. When you stop forcing it, your parasympathetic system, the calm half of your nervous system, finally gets to say hello and clock in. Fear not, listeners, we're at the part of this podcast that is sponsored by good news. We all love that. Modern neuroscience shows chronic insomnia is a condition of a wiring pattern, a mind-body loop of hyperarousal, which we kind of alluded to before. Brain scans, and I think this is super interesting, reveal elevated activity in the amygdala. Again, there's that word again, which is the fear center of the brain and the pre-frontal cortex, the problem solver, when the insomniacs are resting. So the body's horizontal, you know, picture this. The brain is basically standing and shouting, what if? Oh my God, the world is ending, you know, like chicken little, the sky has fallen. Over time, your brain thinks bedtime is a threat. This conditional arousal, like Pavlov's dog, but instead of salivating at the bell, your body tenses at the pillow. And because the neurons that fire together wire together, I'm sure a lot of you have heard that phrasing, the more nights you worry, the stronger the bed equals danger circuit becomes. So if you keep walking the same path every day, you're actually gonna forge, like if you go through the grass, the grass is gonna dissipate, and you're actually gonna sort of keep digging into this deeper groove. And that's really what's happening with your wire. But the beautiful part about neuroplasticity, as we mentioned, you can rewire it back because it works both ways. The same way your brain learned bed equals danger, your brain can learn bed is safe, and that's gonna help you fall asleep. So that's why the mind-body tools really matter. They create new sensory experiences of safety. Every slow breath, every muscle relaxed, every non-panic night or even hour in bed is a rep towards the new wiring. It tells the brain, hey brain, we've got this. So I just explained how insomnia leads to fatigue and brain fog. Then comes the worry about how that'll ruin tomorrow. The worry pumps the cortisol, raises a sympathetic tone, makes your body feel unsafe. So guess what happens at bedtime? Round two, and then round three, and then you're stuck in this no-sleep hamster wheel. And the antidote isn't to control the loop, it's to literally step out of it. And you can sort of visualize in this in your mind as I'm explaining it. It's basically learning to notice the behavior and the thoughts and take a mental step back. Mindfulness flips the script from control to curiosity. Instead of I must fall asleep, it notices I'm awake. That's it. Hey, I'm awake. Not scary. And you can then focus on something other than I have to fall asleep. So the mindfulness-based approaches teach the opposite effort. Instead of forcing sleep, they say, notice what's here. Think about the sensations, the thoughts, the breath without any sort of judgment. It's literally just noticing. And when you meet the moment without judgment, the nervous system hears we're safe. Again, this is the goal. Even sleeplessness becomes okay because you're no longer judging it as something horrible and catastrophic. If your brain is narrating the apocalypse, you can simply think, there's the thought that I won't sleep, right? Like you can notice, and I started doing this, this even carries through to things like anxiety. Once you start noticing your thoughts, you're literally taking a step back from them and you have the ability to not let them control you. So instead of, oh no, I'm not sleeping, that's called cognitive diffusion, seeing a thought as a thought, not a prophecy or a fact. And studies show that it lowers our favorite word, amygdala activity and lets the prefrontal cortex chill.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, I gotta tell you right now, I think amygdala is making its way to t-shirt status. I think so. And I am going to dive into amygdala after we record this. But um, this is fascinating to me. And I just want to like people are really busy and they're really habitual, as I mentioned. And this stuff is so intuitive, it seems so obvious. But I can't imagine how hard it would be for someone to implement these things who's really busy and has low patience. Like it just takes time and effort.

SPEAKER_01

It does, but like I said, even the fact of noticing that you're doing it can change everything because we feel like our thoughts control us, right? We believe them as real. If the brain is chattering all day and we hear these things and we believe they're real. But when you realize that there's actually sort of a way to step outside of them, it's it's quite game-changing. And just as an aside, when I came to understand this, um, I was, you know, I go for walks and I remember I had walked an entire block and I realized that I hadn't seen one thing along the way, meaning that I was in my head listening to my internal chatter the entire time. And as soon as I was sort of cognizant of that, it allowed me to notice when it was happening. So it's the same thing with your sleep thoughts, right? When you're laying in bed, again, catastrophizing because I love that word. When you start to notice it, it actually becomes more habitual that you notice it. And that's when you can talk yourself off the ledge. So think about this. I love the mantra, like, and this is this is just a calming thought. If I'm awake, I'm awake. I can rest even if I'm not sleeping. And so that takes the, oh my God, I'm not sleeping, I have work tomorrow out of it. You just it's kind of like meh, I'm not sleeping, who cares? It dismantles the performance anxiety, and we talked about we don't want that. And it's a form of radical acceptance of sleepless moments. So the simple acceptance diffuses the fight, right? The body is it's like, oh, it's okay, kind of relaxes. The body stops guarding against being awake and often dripped off naturally once the pressure is gone. In addition, there's no tomorrow's gonna suck prediction for your brain to cling to. So we just finished shedding a little bit of light on how to handle the mind part of this mind-body problem. But sometimes the mind is not the problem, or it's

Somatic Tools for Calming the System

SPEAKER_01

not the entire problem. So I wanted to share with you and I want to talk about body-based resets because sometimes the mind's fine, but your muscles miss the memo, and the body is still in flight or fight, which can signal to your brain that it's not safe to sleep. So there's a real correlation between, you know, there's the mind component, the body component, and they certainly affect one another. We can bring the body back online, and there's some simple but effective techniques that we can use that I really wanted to share with you because I've used a lot of these myself and I find them very effective. The first one is called progressive muscle relaxing. So what happens is here, you tense and release each muscle group, noticing the difference. It lets your brain actually experience the contrast. It's kind of like if you're in the dark, you might not notice how dark it is until somebody turns on the light. It's almost like that with tension. So you're experiencing the contrast, the tense versus relaxed, and that letting go feeling can be incredibly soothing, like a long sigh for your body. And there's actually actually something called the psychological sigh that is also a body release. But you could try it right now with your fist, right? If you're listening along, you just squeeze it into a really tight ball, hold it for you for a few seconds, and then release and notice the difference. Dan, did you do that?

SPEAKER_00

I actually, before you even said that, was just did like literally just did not notice a little bit of difference. That's funny that you uh called me out on that.

SPEAKER_01

I guess I'm the boss of you. Let's go with that.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

So in line with this, there's also a practice that's very useful for sleep. It's useful for just generally relaxation, but I've used it a lot in sleep, and it's called yoga nidra. I know it sounds like the yoga where you might be imagining um, you know, you got to do all these body movements and stretching and things like that, but it's yogic sleep. It's a guided form of deep relaxation where you lie down, yes, totally still, and you move your attention through different parts of your body while staying awake. It's essentially a meditation technique, and you can find a lot of these yoga nidra meditations on most of the meditation apps or even on Spotify and YouTube. But you know, it's something interesting to try, and I've always really enjoyed it. Another technique is called guided imagery. And this is where you imagined floating or walking through somewhere peaceful because your brain can't hold the threat of safety imagery at the same time it does with something relaxing or beautiful. And I've come across guided meditations that actually tell a story and sort of take you on a journey through to falling asleep because, again, your focus is on the story and imagining the path that you're walking down or the trees or the dragon, whatever. Maybe that's scary, but whatever is in the story, and it's not focusing on your thoughts or just trying to fall asleep. The next technique is autogenetic cues. This is noticing something like when you're laying in bed, my arms feel heavy and warm. It sounds cheesy, but what it's doing is it trains the body to associate those sensations with rest. Because when you, you know, I mentioned like carrying a kid up the stair who's asleep, dead weight. When you're in bed, if your muscles are relaxed, you're actually sort of you can feel and allow the weight of gravity to relax you and pull you down. And that's really a point of relaxation. The next one, and we've talked a little bit about it, is breath work. And this is used again in all sorts of anxiety release techniques, um, relaxation. But one example is slow diaphragmatic breathing

Breathwork & the Vagus Nerve

SPEAKER_01

to the count of four, seven, eight. And so this is something that Dan had actually mentioned in his sleep episode. So it works like this, right? So you inhale for a count of four, you hold it for a count of seven, and then you exhale for a count of eight. And you do this, let's say, three or four times. And it's effective for sleep because it it tells your sympathetic nervous system, it tells it that it's safe. There's science behind it, which I'm not going to get into today. But, you know, this form of breathing is really effective. And there's actually also you could do box breathing, which is four in, hold it for four, exhale for four, um, hold it for four. There's different techniques and you can kind of find the rhythm that's comfortable for you. So what happens is, and the reason that this is really working is that when you lengthen your exhale, especially the exhale, that's why it's an eight count, you activate the vagus nerve, which is basically your body's calm down button. So, yay, push the button, calm down, go to sleep. It tells your heart rate to slow, your muscles to loosen, and your nervous system to shift out of fight or flight and into rest and digest, which is the optimal state you want to be in for sleep.

SPEAKER_00

So PSA on the vagus nerve. At some point in my health journey, I stumbled on the vagus nerve. I went down the full ra on the full rabbit hole for um what this nerve does. Um and the more I learned how many critical critical functions it controls, the more I found myself blaming literally every symptom on it. I'm half joking when I say that, but half serious also, too. What blew me away is how much the vagus nerve actually runs your heart rate, your digestion, inflammation, like even breathing patterns that we just discussed here, your mood. It's basically the main communication line between your brain and your organs as far as my understanding from my readings. It decides whether you're in fight or flight or a rest and digest, as you people may know. I just still joke, if something feels off, it must be my vagus nerve acting up again. But honestly, if you're listening to this, go and you have time, go read about this thing. Um, go read about this nerve. It's super powerful. It is literally a badass nerve and not something you want to mess with. This is a complete vegus nerve, it is a complete t-shirt possibility. There is no question about it.

SPEAKER_01

It is. And if this is the first time that you're hearing the word vegas nerve, just for Googling or Chat GPT purposes, it's not Vegas like the Las Vegas. It's V-A-G-U-S. And I actually went down the same rabbit hole. I think I listened to an entire book on the Vegas nerve. I do a lot of weird things because I've learned things like humming or taking a cold shot at the end of your shower can help to stimulate it. Um, but I kind of stopped the cold shot because if you were listening to previous episodes, you know that I hate being cold. But like Dan said, it is a badass nerve and it's worth understanding because there's a lot of great techniques to help you in sort of all facets of your life with it. What's happening with this breathing is that you're literally changing your chemistry in real time because your heart rate drops, your cortisol lowers, and your brain gets the message. We're safe. And that's why even a couple minutes or cycles of this kind of slow breathing can make your whole system noticeably quieter. And then the last one I want to quickly go over is just gentle movement or yoga before bed. So this is not the yoga needra, this is real yoga, um, any kind of gentle movement, a few stretches, or even just swaying before bed. You can literally shake off the tension. Now, with all of these techniques, you're sending a sweet little letter to your body and teaching it that it's safe to downshift. That's why these techniques appear in every major sleep medicine guide. They reduce psychological arousal. And for all of you fellow nerds out there, this is the nervous system physics. It's science's way of saying, chill out. We got this.

SPEAKER_00

I was just thinking as you were talking about uh yoga before bed. My first thought was um my downward dog and how bad it is. It's like the worst, because my calves are so tight. And so to do to be doing that before bed, it would be like major hyper-arousal. I mean, so um, it was just funny, just that my mind went there. Obviously, you were talking about gentle yoga, but it was just a very funny thought I had. But um, I do want to say one more thing about uh what Sandy was talking about in the four, seven, eight breathing. This stuff works. Like I don't do much mind body, and I will be doing more from hearing all of what Sandy's talking about. But this is a really good like place to enter into this space, into the breathing, because you you would I literally do this and I feel better. I feel less nervous, and I see a physical and noticeable result. And so I just wanted to bring it out to people who maybe aren't in mind and body and are, you know, kind of as at the entry level as I am, is that breathing techniques are a really good place to start.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean, they can stop anxiety and the mental loop literally in its tracks. So I'm I'm glad that you had that experience.

Cognitive Tools for Overthinkers

SPEAKER_01

Okay, so this next part is for all of my fellow overthinkers. Hey, I see you. I am you. We should honestly start a support group with the meeting beginning with, hi, my name is Sandy, and I have spent countless hours arguing with imaginary future scenarios. Full-time job. So cognitive work really helps here because you don't have to automatically believe every thought in your brain as it shows up, which I was mentioning before. Just because you think something doesn't make it true, and this is important, and I've had this argument with people before, you know, they have a thought, seems like this, and well, you have the choice to not listen. So just really let that sink in for a second because this one, this realization really, really changes everything, and not just for sleep. Thoughts are mental events, they are not prophecies. So when you catch a thought like this, if I don't sleep, I will ruin tomorrow, you can pause and ask, wait, is that actually true? You can question your thoughts. You can question where did that thought come from? What's the evidence? Is there science to support this? Most of the time the answer is something like, Well, I've had tired days before and I still functioned and nobody died. And I didn't get fired. And honestly, people were probably too busy worrying about their own shit to notice my stuff. Exactly, right? This is the moment you question the catastrophic story, the amygdala. This is, I think this maybe we should call this the amygdala episode. Your brain's little threat detector, stop freaking out. It's like maybe we can calm down. This little pause of hmm, who said so is more powerful than you can think. And I know I've mentioned that I don't like to be told what to do. So this is the same with my thoughts. My thoughts are not the boss of me. And yes, I still say that from when I was five because I love it and I will never stop. So to tie this all together, what we've talked about earlier, here's the mind-body part. When you challenge the thought, your body responds. Again, your

Behavioral Experiments to Rewire Insomnia

SPEAKER_01

heart rate drops a little bit, your shoulders release, the nervous system goes, maybe we're safe. Now let's talk about behavioral experiments, which are basically mini little reality checks for your brain. So say you sleep terribly and your brain's like, Great, tomorrow's destroyed. I'll be useless. Instead of accepting that as truth, you treat the next day as an experiment. You go through the day and you actually observe what happens. Did I really ruin everything? Did I truly fall apart? Did I fail at the 83 things that my brain predicted? Or were we just maybe a little tired and maybe moved a little slower and drank a second second cup of coffee?

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_01

Nine times out of 10, people realize the day wasn't nearly as catastrophic as the thought may have seemed. It maybe wasn't fun and they maybe wanted to take a nap under their desk, but it wasn't total destruction either. Every time you have a tired day and you don't completely fall apart, you're actually disproving the brain's fear. So think about that for a second. You think something's gonna be terrible, you can observe it objectively and realize, hmm, it's not. That's gonna help you feel safe or understand that you don't have to accept the thoughts. And so here's the rewire. Every time you disprove the fear, like I was kind of explaining, you weaken the old neural circuit. Again, this is where the neuroplasticity comes in. The nighttime catastrophizing pathway, and you strengthen the new one. Even if I'm tired, I'll be okay. This is a classic cognitive behavioral neuroscience that your brain learns from experience. It's not from lectures, it's not from bullying yourself, and it's not from 2 a.m. deep times with ChatGPT. Although I do love those, probably not healthy for me. The real-world evidence proving you're safer than your fears say you are is the golden ticket. Behavioral experiments basically teach your brain, hey, you overreacted. You survived. Please chill. And the more reps you put in, the quicker the brain catches on, which means less fear about tomorrow, which means less anxiety about bedtime, and it means more sleep.

SPEAKER_00

Wow, this is great. Uh what's funny to me is how obvious all this seems uh when you actually test it. Your brain predicts total collapse, and then the next day you're just mildly annoyed drinking an extra coffee. For me, that would be probably extra couple coffees, but um nonetheless, um, still the same. So like the rewire ends up almost embarrassingly intuitive. It's like, oh, I don't implode just because I slept badly. And so for me, this is totally noted and um really productive.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and and over time, again, it will rewire your brain. And just, you know, as an example, so this awareness can be a great practice for any type of anxiety or fear. And I'm someone, I'm a procrastinator because I perfectionist and I live in a world of the outcome is not going to be perfect, so therefore let's not even start. And it's that's a fear-based response. So when you contemplate the real worst case scenario, like a dramatic maximum effect, the oh my God thing, the benchmark could be, will I die? And then after the assessment is, did it kill me? If you're able to answer that thought is no, it didn't kill you. Okay, so now we just want to tie all this together. The most effective insomnia approaches today blend CBT1 with mindfulness and relaxation. And Dan talked about CBT1, which stands for cognitive behavioral therapy, back in episode six. This is the first episode of our sleep series. And this is really the modern evolution of that, pairing the cognitive and behavioral tools with the nervous system calming tools we covered today. Because changing your habits really does help. But calming your body's alarm system helps even more. When you work with both the mind and the body, you're not forcing sleep. You're teaching your system to trust nighttime again. Blending science with self-compassion works better than white knuckling through the night. And that's when real lasting change happens. So the goal is not to force sleep, it's to restore trust between the mind and the body. The best relationships are built on trust. It's not relationship advice, but also it's kind of relationship advice. Before we wrap up, I want

Can Mind-Body Tools Support Sleep Apnea?

SPEAKER_01

to circle back to the episode where Dan talked about sleep apnea, which was if you're keeping track, episode six, sleep one of the sleep series. Because I asked him a question that a lot of people DM me about. And yes, we would love to hear your questions and stories, so please reach out. The question was this can mind-body work help with sleep apnea? Well, so in preparation for this episode, and in part to satisfy my own curiosity, I did some digging. And the real answer is sometimes, in certain situations, sleep apnea is a medical condition, as Dan talked about, and for many people, it needs medical treatment. But there is a mind-body component for some cases, okay? So not all cases, some cases, especially the type that gets worse when the nervous system is stuck in stress mode. When your body's in sympathetic overdrive, fight or flight, your airway muscles can tighten, your breathing rhythm can get choppier, and apnea events can become more frequent or more intense. So if that's the cause of your sleep apnea, and again, that is not for everyone, or if it's the catalyst to frequency, you know, the more times that you stop breathing at night, the various practices that calm the system, things like somatic regulation, breath awareness, meditation, and that four-seven breathing technique can help relax the airways, reduce nighttime tension, and stabilize breathing patterns. Now, again, we're not saying that mind-body tools replace treatment for sleep apnea. So don't throw out your ResMed 11.

SPEAKER_00

Whoa, I heard uh the words throw out your ResMed 11, never. Um, and if you're gonna think about throwing anything out with ResMed, just give it to me because I I mean I'm a big fan of ResMed, as you guys know. But I um think that I really appreciate people asking about the mind-body connection as it relates to obstructive sleep apnea. In my humble and obviously non-medical opinion, um, if you have true S true OSA uh in the upper airway, um, physically collapses during sleep, this is probably, and as Sandy mentioned, with the mind-body in certain circumstances, it's probably an anatomical issue and not a physiological one. So if you're playing Inspector Gadget, as one of my favorite cartoons growing up, and sleep apnea is your Dr. Claw. Um, again, if someone doesn't understand the reference, uh message me or go watch Inspector Gadget. I would pursue the mind-body route, but I would also speak with your trusted health practitioner for guidance about additional testing for the anatomical part. And as Dr. Claw said in the cartoon Inspector Gadget, next time, Gadget, next time.

SPEAKER_01

So I'm having trouble moving on because now the Inspector Gadget theme song is stuck in my head and I can't think of anything else. I'm gonna have to use one of one of these techniques, maybe just some breathing for a few minutes. So we'll pause this and circle back.

SPEAKER_00

Well, Sandy got to yell a lot and do like a lot of like high voice things, and I thought I wanted to do a next time gadget next time. So that was mine.

SPEAKER_01

It wasn't like Inspector Gadget. I I can't believe I just did that because my singing voice is horrible. I'm sorry to everyone. We have more than three listeners now, but probably we're back down to three. So my Sandy, actually.

SPEAKER_00

I liked it.

SPEAKER_01

Was that correct? Do I remember that? Yeah, okay. We watched a lot of that as kids. So all right. Well, quickly circling back to the ResMat 11, Dan has been traveling a lot recently, and we're playing a new game that I am obsessed with. He's playing and I'm just enjoying the entertainment value. So he's been sending me photos of people on airplanes with their CPAP bag. And I can't even describe to you the amount of joy that it brings me. And, you know, if you want to join this party, please, for my joy, for Dan's joy, for your own joy, post and tag us in your travel adventures with your seatmates, CPAC. I promise it's a really good time.

SPEAKER_00

This is all in furtherance of the CPAP Airplane Club that I mentioned in my the first episode of the series. My iPhone's camera roll right now, if I look at it, is peppered with like first a chicken picture of a chicken parm. I love family-style chicken palm Italian. Then there's like a ResMed Bag 11 on a Southwest flight to Fort Lauderdale. And then there's like a picture of my dog and other dogs, and then there's ResMed Bad on an American Airlines flight in a bin. Uh, it's it's a bit of a random camera roll that I wouldn't want everyone to uh just happen upon.

SPEAKER_01

I know, but it's so good. And going back to the joke or advice not to throw out your ResMed 11, please don't, because this game is really life-changing, and I can't lose this for my life. So get out your phones and take some photos. Okay, moving along. So we just covered a lot. So let's pull it together in a way that your tired brain can actually remember for tonight. Or you obviously you can go back and listen to this, but let's try and wrap it up. So the whole episode boils down to one big truth. Chronic insomnia is not a character flaw, it's just a nervous system pattern, and patterns can be rewired. Let that sink in for a minute because again, that is your initial point of change. So here's the big takeaways. Your mind and body are always talking. Thoughts become chemistry, chemistry becomes sensation, sensation becomes uh-oh, here we go again. So when we shift that story, we shift the body. And when we shift the body, we shift the story. Sleep issues fall into two categories habits and hyperarousal. Bad habits are fixable with routine. Chronic insomnia equals your system thinks nighttime is unsafe. You can't hack your way out of that, you have to retrain it. The third point anxiety about sleep is often worse than the lack of sleep, catastrophizing, forecasting, performance pressure. Your brain becomes your own worst hype man in the worst possible way. But the good news is you don't have to believe everything you think. The fourth point you can rewire chronic insomnia. Neuroplasticity works both ways. Every calm night, every reframe of thought, every relaxed muscle is a rep in the direction of safety. Number five, mind-body tools work because they send your system the message we're safe. Slow breathing, body scans, visualization, muscle relaxation, these aren't tricks. They're ways to change the physiology so your brain can follow. And the last point, number six. Yes, for some, even things like sleep apnea are affected by stress. Again, not a cure, but calming your nervous system can help your airway relax and make everything else better. Okay, so let's make this practical in case you want to try this tonight. Here's five simple actionable steps to start resetting the mind-body sleep loop. Number one, reframe just one catastrophic thought. When your brain says, if I don't sleep tomorrow, I'm gonna ruin tomorrow. Just try this. Tell yourself, I've had tired days before, I can handle tomorrow. Number two, try the paradoxical intention trick. Tell yourself, I'm just gonna rest here and stay awake. Remove the pressure and let your body do what it knows how to do. The third thing you can try. Try a two to three minute breathing exercise, like we said, the four, seven, eight, or any kind of cycle of slow extended exhales. Calm the body first, the mind will fall out. The fourth thing you can try, do one somatic reset. So that would be the progressive muscle relaxation, yoga nidra, a short body scan, anything that tells your muscles you're allowed to release now. And the fifth thing you can try, notice, don't fight your wakefulness. If you're awake, you're awake. So what? You're not gonna die. You can rest even if you're not asleep. Letting go of that fight is sometimes a thing that makes sleep possible. If you find yourself

Outro & Key Takeaways

SPEAKER_01

awake tonight thinking you're the only one stuck in the no sleep Olympics gold medal race, you're absolutely not. Half of the world is up at 3 a.m. with intrusive thoughts. The other half is in a full conversation with ChatGPT about symptoms. So let me be your voice of reason and tell you nothing is wrong with you. You're not broken, you're not bad at sleep. Your brain learned a pattern, and it absolutely can learn a new one.

SPEAKER_00

So I've got a big dude bomb here to launch. Um, I just want to say like this has been an extremely informational episode for me, but you are to our audience, maybe it's 10, maybe it's 13, whatever, you are so not alone. People aren't sleeping well. Um that's not breaking news. But like Sandy said, a lot of this is fixable or at least addressable. Go on your own health hunt, dig into the things she mentioned and become your own health advocate. And if OSA, an obstructive sleep app, you know, is on your radar, don't just ignore it like millions of people do. Find a good practitioner, get evaluated, and actually optimize your sleep.

SPEAKER_01

Our favorite part of this podcast is to remind you that you're so not alone. If anything, we're right here with you and we're rewiring our brains together. If this episode helps you see your nights a little differently, share it with someone who's tired of being tired. You can find us on Instagram at the healthhunt underscore podcast, or email us anytime at infothealthhunt.com. We really love hearing.

SPEAKER_00

And if you're fine-tuning your nightly routine, check out our Health Hunt Premium Supplement Store, Practitioner Grade Options We Trust, and the link will be in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01

Shout out to my museum. Until next time, may you feel a little bit more peace in your mind, a little more trust in your body. See you next time. See ya.