When I was younger, I never wanted to go to bed. There always seemed more that I wanted to do other than sleep. That said, when it was time to wake up, I didn’t want to do that either and I still don’t! The older I get, the more I value my sleep time. I often calculate how many hours of sleep I will get if I fall asleep this instant! Of course, it takes me longer than an instant to fall asleep, but a girl can dream. I’ve even got to the point in my life where I am super excited if I have no plans in the evening and none too early the next day, which means I have an opportunity for maximum sleep time. I also look forward to naps. Yep, I do love my nana naps.
As you no doubt can tell, sleep is very important to me. As a society, we know it is an important part of living, just like eating and breathing. We are also becoming more aware of how interconnected our physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing are to one another, and sleep is a part of that. Often, I think we find it easy to compartmentalise different aspects of ourselves. For example, eating and sleeping is for my physical health, meditating/mindfulness for my mental health, talking about my feelings – with a trusted friend, therapist or even my journal – is for my emotional health. However, it’s not that black and white.
This past week I asked my followers what was important about sleep to them and what effects they noticed sleep had in other aspects of their lives. Most people replied that they noticed if they were tired, they would be more grouchy, more easily irritable, and would experience brain fog. These are my experiences, too. When we give our bodies the adequate amount of sleep it requires, we are better able to manage and regulate our emotions during the day. We also have greater mental clarity. All of this occurs because our brain has had time to rest and restore itself, along with the rest of our body, overnight. If you think of the brain like a computer, you’ll find many similarities. A computer cannot be turned on always. If it is, eventually it will run out of power and/or will go to ‘sleep’. The same is said for our brains and bodies. We are not endless powerhouses. We need to recharge our batteries and have periods of rest when needed.
When we are awake, our brain has so much information to absorb and distribute. Think about all the neural activity that occurs throughout our day for us to eat, drink, be active and able, to converse and socialise, to drive, to plan ahead, to readjust plans that get interrupted, to manage problems that arise, to identify and regulate our emotions, and so and so forth. No wonder our brain needs some down time. No wonder when it doesn’t receive enough our mood is more susceptible to agitation and our mind filled with cotton wool. This is why sleep is important for our mental and emotional wellbeing. If only being aware of its importance was enough to allow us all to get the adequate amount of sleep we need.
There are a number of reasons why we may not be achieving the optimum amount of sleep we require. A few of the main ones are our bodies not releasing enough melatonin, our minds being overactive, and having high levels of emotional arousal. Melatonin is a hormone that our brain releases to help our body sleep. Having low levels of melatonin, therefore, make it harder for our body to experience quality sleep. A lot of people also have quite active minds that are always ‘on’, always planning, preparing, worrying, thinking about past mistakes and things they should have said or done, etc. Having a mind that is not just active but overactive, especially when we are trying to get some sleep, is like having a toddler talk to you and not shut up! Extremely annoying and incredibly frustrating. This is similar to experiencing high emotional arousal before bedtime, too. When our emotions (e.g. anxiety, fear, sadness, anger, even joy) are heightened our internal systems are activated, particularly our sympathetic nervous system (aka our fight or flight response to stressful and harmful situations). The activation of our sympathetic nervous system means that our bodies become hyper alert and aware to protect us from danger, clearly not conducive to a good night’s rest. So, what can we do to change these preventions to sleep?
In terms of helping increase our release of melatonin, there are a few things we can do to aid our body and brain. Creating a space that is designated primarily if not, solely, for sleep – that is, keeping the bedroom, or at least the bed, a place where we only sleep, not work/eat/study/etc – helps our body to associate the bed(room) with that activity. Ensuring the environment is cool, with low lighting, and maybe even some lavender scents can aid in creating a sleep-inducing ambiance. Another thing that is helpful to know is that sleepiness comes in hour and a half waves. What I mean by this is if you’re feeling sleepy but push through it, you’re likely to soon become more awake after a while (between 10-30 mins) and it becomes harder for you to go to sleep then because your body is ‘awake’. It will take your body another hour and a half to fall back into that sleepy stage. My best advice is to catch the wave of sleepiness. When you’re feeling sleepy, go to sleep! Lastly, it is useful to refrain from using technology right before bed. Our technological devices emit a blue light that directly effects the production and release of melatonin in our bodies. By limiting our exposure to this blue light before bed, we give our brain a better chance of producing and releasing melatonin.
To aid with the overactive cognitions and emotional arousal there are a number of techniques that have proved helpful to people. Finding what works best for you will be a bit of an experiment. Journaling and writing ‘to do’ lists or even just some notes before bed can help get those thoughts and feelings that are percolating inside of you to settle down. One thing I have learned over the years is that the more you ignore your thoughts and feelings the more they will try to be heard and looked at. The best thing is to give them some of the attention they need so that they don’t hold power over you. Meditation, mindfulness, and praying are great tools to help settle the mind and heart. There are a variety of meditations, mindfulness practices, and ways to pray out there that you will be able to find something that works for you. Self-compassion.org have guided meditations that I have personally found very useful. My penultimate suggestion and the most unpopular recommendation I have for you, is limiting your caffeine intake. There have been a number of studies that have shown the effects of caffeine on our bodies. Caffeine is a stimulant and stays in our system for quite a while. If you take 40 mg of caffeine you will have 20 mg remaining in your system 5 hours later. 5 hours after that you will have 10 mg remaining in your system and so on. As you can see, caffeine likes to hang around. Reducing your caffeine intake can truly help your sleep as you are taking away a stimulant in your body and allowing your body to operate as it was meant to. That’s not to say caffeine withdrawals aren’t real, but it is to say that the benefits far outweigh the costs.
Finally, by far the best technique you could choose, is diaphragmatic breathing. This type of breathing is the breathing our body uses when we are asleep. This is where we breathe long and deep into our bellies with a lengthy exhale, too. You can do this to counts of four and even had pauses between inhales and exhales. For example, slowly breathe in for four counts, hold your breath for four counts, exhale slowly for four counts and hold for four counts. You can change the number of counts to two or eight or more, whatever works for you. This is a great technique as it activates our parasympathetic nervous system (the opposite of our sympathetic nervous system), also known as our rest and digest system. Diaphragmatic breathing literally gets the body to physically calm down. It is not only useful for sleep but also when feeling anxious and stressed.
To conclude, there are a number of techniques and strategies that we can use to improve our quality of sleep. As we have explored and reflected upon, sleep is not just good for us physically but emotionally and mentally, too. In focusing on this one area in our lives, we can improve not just our physical health but our overall general wellbeing. I would love to hear your experiences of sleep. Whether you’ve received enough or not enough and how you knew this? What strategies have you tried? What techniques would you like to try? Why you want to improve your sleep quality and what challenges you face?