Why All the Sleep Advice is Making Your Insomnia Worse

This is another "Rant, Rave, and Review" style episode with three main segments. In these episode, I share personal thoughts and insights on current trends and health topics. 

Listen in to hear my thoughts today on: 

1. The trend of recipes titled with "Marry Me" ... do I love it or cringe hard core?

2.  The Gua Sha Facial Tool ... helpful or just hyped up?

3. An article about Americans and insomnia ...was the data surprising to me in this article about sleep? Do I agree with it?

To hear the first Rant, Rave, and Review episode, listen here:
Rant, Rave, & Review: A Fresh Perspective on Headlines, Social Media Breaks, and the Science of Tiredness

Episode Links

Gua Sha tool for face  

“American Insomnia” by Jennifer Senior/The Atlantic

One hidden piece to helping your chronic pain puzzle - Graced Health episode

Exercise for Lower Back Pain (in Age with Grace and Strength Tips) - YouTube Short

Nourished Notes Bi-Weekly Newsletter

30+ Non-Gym Ways to Improve Your Health (free download)

Connect with Amy:
GracedHealth.com
Instagram: @GracedHealth
YouTube: @AmyConnell

Transcript

Graced Health Podcast for Christian Women Over 40

by Amy Connell

Hey there! So good to be back, and I hope you have had a great summer. Thanks for tuning in this past month as we did "A Moment of Grace" with four of the amazing guests that I had over the last year, where I just pulled out a few moments of grace—of wisdom—that I enjoyed listening to again, and I thought you would as well.

Okay, so today I rolled over and I felt pretty awake, but I could tell based on the lack of light in my windows that it was not time to get up yet. I looked at the clock and it was 4:33. My alarm is set to go off at 5:20 this morning—and every morning during the week—and I thought, "Okay, I know how this is gonna play out," because I just was kind of awake and I thought, "If I'm still awake at 4:50, I'm getting out of bed."

Because what I have learned about myself is if I were to lay there and fall back asleep and sleep for 30, 20, even 10 minutes, I would wake up feeling like I had been hit by a big truck. I just feel wrecked. And I thought, "Okay, well I'm awake. So if I'm still awake at 4:50, I'm just going to get out of bed."

Sure enough, at 4:53—I think was the next time I looked at the clock—I was still awake. So I pulled myself out. I finished a study that I had to—I got interrupted yesterday and I'm in the book of Mark studying that. So I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna finish that. I'm gonna do today's," and I just had a bit more time this morning.

Got my workout in before my clients. It was very nice. Just that extra—gosh, even 30 minutes—really made such a big difference for me, and I was so grateful that I had read this article that I'm gonna share with you here in a little bit about sleep and how our attitude about our sleep, or lack thereof, really does make a difference.

That is going to be the third component of today's episode, and this is actually the second of what I call "Rant, Rave and Review," where I just kind of share something that's just been bugging me, and this one has been really bugging me. I'm going to rave about something that I have been enjoying. And then I'm going to review an article that does talk about sleep, and I think you'll find interesting the thesis of the article and the stats and information that is given with it.

My Rant

So first off, my rant. Okay. I don't know about you, but I get stuck in meal planning, in figuring out what I'm gonna cook. I don't want anything like too crazy, but I like to cook and I like to provide nutritious foods to my family. Whoever—lately it's been a lot of us have been at home.

And I receive recipes and recipe suggestions from several companies. Eating Well is a favorite of mine. I still get stuff from MyFitnessPal even though I haven't logged in there in what feels like years and years. And, you know, I like to see what the recipes are. Do they look good? Do I wanna try it?

And just as a little side pro tip: what I have found is when I do find a recipe that looks interesting and that I wanna try, I will copy the URL and then put it into my calendar for a future date. So when I am meal planning—because I do meal plan on my digital calendar—I already have a meal that's like waiting and ready to try. Anyway, that's just a little side pro tip.

But I have been noticing this trend, and the trend is that there are a lot of recipes out there with the words "marry me" before it. Have you noticed this? I have even noticed it in the Apple News. They have started doing almost like reels or just really short—I don't know how to explain it. But anyway, they will show some recipes. I mean, I just get recipes all the time and I have seen, y'all, the "marry me" recipes.

I have seen "marry me chicken." Okay, fine. And I actually looked up the history behind it—I'm gonna tell you what this is in a second. I've seen "marry me chicken pasta." Okay. All right. I've seen "marry me slow cooker chicken sandwiches." Okay. I've seen "marry me zucchini." Are you getting where I'm going here? I've seen "marry me"—and these are all, I have written these down as I've seen 'em because I knew I wanted to do this article. I'm not making this up, y'all—"marry me white beans," "marry me butter beans."

I am sorry. No one is going to say, "Please marry me" after someone makes them butter beans. I don't care if you are vegan or not. Like what? What? Okay, this has gotten out of hand. Butter beans. Butter beans, y'all. Butter beans. I mean, I can't even.

So I got on and I thought, "I want to find out what the history is here," and I'll try and just sum this up in a real short nutshell. But basically it began in the early eighties. There was a fashion editor at Glamour Magazine that created a roast chicken recipe that was inspired by an Italian cooking writer. She gave the recipe to a colleague of hers to make for her boyfriend, and then the couple was engaged shortly thereafter.

Then that recipe made the rounds in the office and three other women in the office were offered marriage proposals soon after making that dish for their boyfriends. And from what I understand, there wasn't anything that really happened beyond that. I don't think that there was a title that was given to it.

But in 2003, Glamour's editor-in-chief heard about that story that, oh, there was this recipe and wedding proposals were following. And so she dubbed it "Engagement Chicken." She ran the recipe in the magazine in December 2003, and the magazine claims that 70 couples have married after the women served their boyfriends the dish. So it has been named "Engagement Chicken." And no, I do not have the recipe for this original recipe. I am sure it's lovely, but I'm not really interested in going around and looking for it anyway.

So that was the original Engagement Chicken. Then in 2016, there was a chicken dish that was created by an editor at Delish Magazine. She created the dish. She was trying to make recipes that would just get people fired up to get back in the kitchen. And then apparently after—like they made the dish during the photo shoot, 'cause you know, you have to make things really nice for food photography and all of that, which I might remind you I am not a food photographer as I share in my Nourishing Notes newsletters. But anyway, after the final presentation and pictures and all of that, the people who were in this photo shoot or behind the lens of it decided to try it.

And someone—and I guess there were a couple people who were saying things like, "Oh, I'd marry you for that chicken" and "Oh my gosh, that's marriage material" and all of that. So Delish developed this original "Marry Me Chicken" that's gone viral on TikTok. And that was in 2016. And since then it's just—it's gotten ridiculous. It's just gotten ridiculous.

I mean, all of these "marry me" recipes. I'm sure they're wonderful, but also, can we please not decide to marry someone based off a dish? And I know you're probably rolling your eyes being like, "Amy, that's not what they mean." I know, I know that's not what they mean, but I just think it's stupid. I'm just saying it. I think it's dumb. And so that's my rant. I think "Marry Me" recipe titles are dumb. Can we please get creative and call it something different, or heaven forbid, just call it what it is so I know what I'm gonna cook?

Anyway, that's my rant. But please. No more "marry me butter beans." I don't know that I've even made butter beans, but I'm sure that's not gonna make my people want it anymore. Okay, I'll stop there.

My Rave

What's my rave? Okay, so I have this friend who has always been the one to introduce me to facial stuff and changing up my facial care routine. She's always on me about wearing more sunscreen. I told her one time that while I wear sunscreen on my face, but not always on my body—and you know, especially when I go out in the morning, I'm like, "I need some vitamin D, I need some sunshine." I don't have a problem getting this and I take care of my face.

And she said, "Well, I think you can make better choices than that." And so I saw my dermatologist shortly thereafter, and she got a really big kick out of that. And maybe I could make better choices, but that's just how I decided to do it. I want to get a little vitamin D anyway.

So this friend will send me things every now and then saying, "Oh, I'm really enjoying this. You should try this." And so she's kind of like my skincare expert. She told me about this funny looking thing. So she told me about a jade roller years ago, and I liked the jade roller, but I needed it on my eyes—like I get puffy eyes. I wanted it around my eyes and I just kind of quit using it.

And she said, "Oh, hey, I know I told you about the jade roller a while ago, but I have this new thing that I've been using and I really like, and it's called a gua sha." So it is smaller than the size of my palm and it's not really oval. I don't really know how to describe it. I will put it in my newsletter coming up. So if you are interested in seeing that, I'll put a link to the one that I'm gonna talk about here in a second.

But it's called a gua sha and it has origins from China with Chinese practice where you just use this—it's kind of a smooth edge tool. It's often made from jade, rose quartz, or stainless steel. The one I have is stainless steel, and I'll tell you why I like that particular one here in a second. But it gently—it's not necessarily scrape, but just glide along your skin.

And so I will start at the top of my forehead, and I basically go from the center line of my face out and down. So I'll do my forehead out and down. I'll do my eyes out and down. I'll actually do my nasal passages out and down. I'll be—it kind of, I don't know. I kind of feel like it clears up my nose 'cause, you know, I'm allergic to everything. And I think it really helps de-puff my eyes. I shouldn't say it really helps—it helps, it mildly helps de-puff my eyes. But what I like about it is it just wakes up my face.

The same friend was telling me about—I think it was Jessica Alba, I hope I'm giving credit where credit is due—and she said, "You know, when I was in my twenties, I would wake up and my face was my face." And I think she's in her forties now. And she said, "And now I wake up, and two hours later, my face is my face." Like, I don't know about you, but it just takes a while for my face to kind of get into place and to de-puff and all of that. And I do feel like this helps it. And I just like that feeling of—I just feel like it kind of wakes up my face and I've enjoyed using it.

The one that I got, I purchased from Ulta, and it's stainless steel. She uses, I think, a jade one. She uses a different one. Maybe the rose quartz or the jade. And I looked for that and I couldn't find it. But I will tell you, I'm glad that I got the stainless steel because now when I use it, I just wash it with hand soap, y'all. I have like rose hip-smelling hand soap, something from Costco in that bathroom. And I just wash it with that because I don't wanna have any residue or bacteria or something like that from the night and then put it on my face every day. So I do wash it every day.

I will wet my face before I do this because you need to have something to help it glide. And then after, I'll just put a little bit of inexpensive, like Olay de-puffing stuff under my eyes, because it's normally several hours from when I wake up to when I shower. And I kind of go through my whole routine that of course she has helped me with. But that stainless steel that I can wash every time and just wake up my face, I really enjoy. And I'm not—I'm just kinda low maintenance with a lot of the stuff. But I have enjoyed that. It takes like 30 seconds to do and I feel like it just helps to flush out the night.

So there is my rave. That is something that I have really been enjoying.

My Review: Sleep Article

Okay, now let's go back to sleep. So, as I have shared before, I will typically spend my lunch break scrolling through headlines, reading articles. I read way too many health articles. They just are very interesting to me. I like to keep up with what is out there, even if I am not totally on board with everything. I like to see what is there.

The article I read was entitled "American Insomnia," and it was in the August 2025 print edition of The Atlantic. It was written by Jennifer Senior, who's a staff writer at The Atlantic, and she won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. She won a 2022 National Magazine Award for feature writing, and this article—I'm just telling you—is long. It was almost 10,000 words. Like my books that I have written are like 50,000 words, which is why I wanted to give a high level review. And if you would like to go read it yourself or listen to it if you're on Apple News+, they do have an audio version, so you can put that in and listen to it when you're going for a long walk because it is long. But I wanted to review it because I liked a lot of the points that she brought up.

So basically her story is that she was a great sleeper until she was about 29, and from what I can tell, she's in her mid-forties now. She doesn't say her age, but just doing some math and putting some things together, I think she's maybe early to mid-forties. And then at 29, she just suddenly couldn't sleep at all. There was like no obvious trigger. There were no life changes. I mean, she tried all the things, right? Like acupuncture and melatonin and running and meds. And then she eventually just needed some antidepressants to cope with the sleep loss. And her story is not unusual in the sense of we sleep really well and then we don't.

In fact, 35% of Americans report insufficient sleep. And by the way, this is despite all of the talk of sleep awareness and getting better sleep and how important it is, and we're gonna revisit that here in a second. 12% of Americans suffer from chronic insomnia—15% among millennials. So that's kind of interesting to me. And while she doesn't talk about it in the article, we know that insomnia and affected sleep is a problem once we hit that perimenopause, menopausal, postmenopausal stage. Like I am very well aware that people can sleep totally fine until they hit these stages and then it's like someone pulled the rug out from under them.

So we do have a sleep issue problem in America, even though there are a lot of people, including myself, who will talk about like, "Oh, try this if you're not sleeping well."

Interesting Points from the Article

Here are some interesting things I pulled from this article. Number one: you know, we have always heard, "Oh yeah, you gotta get your eight hours of sleep, get your eight hours of sleep, get your eight hours of sleep." And studies actually show that seven hours can be optimal for some people. And really that sleep needs just vary by individual and age. And this is something that's very important for us to remember as we are just shifting and our worlds are shifting—that what we maybe used to need, maybe we need less, maybe we need more, but we do have to remember that our sleep needs are going to change as we get older.

Another thing I found interesting is all of the sleep hygiene tips that you've heard, right? Like you've heard these: sleep in a cool room, make sure that your mattress is good, don't do any screens—like all of this kinda stuff. In this article, I found this interesting that experts admit that there's little data supporting the typical advice, and that often we will just naturally adjust anyway.

Now, I will still maintain that, you know, the blue light caused by screens—like let's get that off, like it can't hurt. I'll just say that. And I will also say that the cool room, anecdotally, for me makes a huge difference. It's funny, earlier this summer, several of my friends went to Austin to celebrate another girlfriend's 50th birthday. And it was a surprise birthday party. So we were all in an Airbnb waiting for this birthday party.

And let me tell you what happens when you throw five women who are in perimenopause in a house together: The thermostat just keeps going down. I think we ended up sleeping with it at 65 at night, which was just such a gift to me because my husband and I—he's really cold natured—and so we have a compromise that we sleep at 72. But 65? Oh it was beautiful. Anyway, this is what happens when you throw a bunch of perimenopausal women in one house together. And one of our friends brought her husband and poor guy, I think he was frozen out and we won 'cause there were five of us and there was one of him. Anyway, okay.

The Problem with Sleep Tracking

Another thing about this article—this I think is, and I think this was a wonderful point that we probably need to remember when we have these nights where we can't sleep or when we have nights when we wake up at 4:33. Because let me tell you what happened when I got up at 4:33 and I was, you know, going about doing my morning, and then of course I pull up my health app on my phone, and I wanna see how much sleep I got or really how much less sleep I got than I normally sleep. And I have this other app that I have been kind of playing around with and what's my recovery for the day since I didn't sleep as much. What's my battery percentage? And you know, I'm looking at all of this kind of stuff.

And you know the deal is: Tracking, tracking, tracking and all of this talk about like you gotta get your sleep and you gotta get good sleep, and you gotta make sure that you have enough REM sleep and you gotta make sure that you have enough deep sleep and it needs to be a certain percentage, and all of that kind of stuff that can really trigger some anxiety that will make your sleep worse.

Because now when we're waking up, we're like, "Oh my gosh, if I don't get back to sleep, then I'm not gonna have the energy for the day." And you know, all of this kind of stuff. And in fact, one expert coined the term "orthosomnia," which is basically anxiety caused by your wearable sleep data.

And I think this is an excellent point, and this actually was probably one of my biggest takeaways from this article: remembering that excessive obsession or excessive focus on our sleep can actually harm our sleep. It's not unlike all of the conversations that we've been having about food and all of this obsession about eating a particular way can cause us to have more stress, which will impact our health negatively.

So that is something that I think was really helpful to me today after I kind of had to check myself and be like, "Actually, Amy, your body woke you up at 4:33. It's not the end of the world and you're probably gonna make it through the day like it's—you are probably okay with having 50 minutes less of sleep." Would I prefer to sleep until 5:20? Yes. Would I prefer even more to sleep till 6:20? Yes. But that's just not how it is today. And that's okay. That's okay.

Treatment Options

Then the author gets into more treatment for sleep and what can we do about it, because it is a real problem for some people. I know I'm talking about my personal story, and yours may be very different and yours may be impacting your ability to think or ability to function during the day. So I certainly do not discount that.

She lays out a few treatments and a few alternate ways of considering some of these treatments that I thought was valuable and something to consider. So the first is what's called CBTI, which is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia. So this involves, and you can read the article if you want more information, but believe it or not, sleep restriction, which sounds scary, but it basically consolidates your sleep until you're getting some good quality sleep, even if it's just for four hours. And then you start expanding it out.

Stimulus control—so that's using your bed only for sleep and sex. Like, we're not watching television in it. We're not eating in it. Like the bed has two purposes. Some of this involves cognitive restructuring, so just kind of changing our thoughts about sleep and then challenging that catastrophic thinking.

And that is what I was talking about earlier of, "Oh, I woke up early, I didn't get enough sleep. I'm not gonna have the energy. How am I gonna get through the day? This is never going to end." And that kind of stuff. And this is not only a real thing, but also very easy to get into because sleep is so important and I have shared so often how I protect my sleep so much. So it's very easy to get into that catastrophic thinking when we have a night or two or a week or a month where we're just tired—like we're not sleeping enough. So I get that.

But the paradox is telling people that sleep is crucial for their health, but also we're saying like, "Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Don't have catastrophic thinking, but it's really important for your health." So there's this tension of contradiction when we're talking about sleep, and I think that's important to be aware of because maybe what we need to do is just back off all of the talk about sleep. Like maybe we just need to not worry about it so much so that we can have a better space in our head and not be filled with all of the worry about it, which may be keeping us up.

It also may be a lot of other things, including stress, including hormones. I don't discount that, but I do think like, "Okay, maybe we just back off a little bit. Maybe just not worry about it so much, or at least stop talking about it in our head and just cut it off there so that way we are not creating this narrative in our brain that, 'Oh, I can't sleep. I can't sleep. I can't sleep.'"

This actually kind of reminds me of the episode that I did on pain back in February where one element of chronic pain is our thought process and what we are saying. And if we're saying, "I'm never gonna get better," then our brain is not gonna let us get better. So just a little challenge there of what kind of thoughts are you having about your sleep?

Hope and Perspective

And the final thing I'll say about this article—and there is definitely more, I'm just not wanting to take too much of your time with it—is this is the hope and the perspective that this article gives.

One point the author makes is that some cultures don't even have a word for insomnia. They just kind of accept that sometimes they have two shorter periods of sleep rather than one eight-hour period. Maybe they do four hours, they're up for a couple hours and they go back for four hours. But it's interesting to me that they don't have a word for insomnia, which means they haven't labeled it and it's not a problem in my mind in the sense of like, "Oh, well you're not getting what we say you're supposed to get for sleep, and therefore we need to have a name for it." And they're like, "No, I just slept in two segments last night."

And the other point that she makes is maybe broken sleep doesn't mean—and broken sleep is like two separate pockets of time at night—but maybe broken sleep doesn't mean that sleep is broken. It may just be that that's how you're sleeping right now. Obviously when you wake up and in the ensuing time that happens after you wake up, you'll know if you have enough energy or not. You'll know if you slept well for what you need or not.

So beyond anything in this article, beyond anything that I am saying, you know your body best. You know what you need. And there are plenty of tips and tricks and hacks on getting better sleep. If you have tried all of those and they're not working, then absolutely, there are treatments that you can try. This CBTI was one.

Rethinking Sleep Medication

And you know, the author also tries to reframe medication. One thing she says is we don't say people are addicted to blood pressure medications or statins. I mean, as someone who is on blood pressure medication, I'm not addicted to it, but I do need it to control my hypertension. And if you are on statins for your cholesterol, it's the same thing. You're not addicted to it. And the point was that most sleep medication users aren't seeking highs, they're just seeking relief. And only 7% of long-term users exceed recommended doses.

So maybe we need to take the stigma of meds away. Just a thought. We do what we can and then we enlist help from conventional medicine. I did that. I did everything I could figure out I could do with my blood pressure. I did. And it wasn't changing. And then it was time to enlist the help of conventional medicine. Do I like it? No. Do I like having my blood pressure under control? Yes. And so I keep taking those pills.

So anyway, I thought that was another poignant comment that maybe we need to remember is that those medicines can be beneficial when used responsibly, and let's pull away the stigma from it.

Wrapping Up

So that is the high level review from this 10,000-word article. I highly recommend that you read it. I thought it was a really good article. It was well written and I appreciated her different points and particularly her encouragement to maybe take a step back and stop being so worried, so focused on all of the data that we have, particularly from our watches, our phones and everything else. And maybe if we relax a little bit about that, maybe that can help our sleep.

So that is the end of the review for this sleep article. Again, I will put this in the show notes so you can access it and you can read it. I'll link it straight to the Atlantic website so you can read it there.

And I would like to know, how good is your sleep? I would like to know how your sleep is, because one thing this article doesn't talk a lot about is our life stage.

So if you will pull up the episode in wherever you're listening to your podcast—most of you are on Apple Podcasts, I know, but I know many of you listen on Spotify or Overcast or Castbox or just through the web—but if you will look at the very top of the episode description or the show notes, as some people call it, it says, "Have a question? Click here." Just click on that and text me. "I sleep great." Or "I have this broken sleep." Or "I wake up at three o'clock in the morning and I can't go back to sleep." Any of that kinda stuff. I'm just kind of curious. I would really like to hear how you sleep and you text it. You're not signing up for anything. It's anonymous. Like there's just no commitment. There's no commitment here when you send me something via that way. And so I'd like to hear from you.

Next week we're going to be having another solo episode with yours truly, and we're gonna talk about something that is not discussed as often in the personal training world or the fitness world that is a very important element to our movement. So be sure to come back next week to hear that.

Okay, that is all for today. Go out there and have a graced day.