WELCOME EVERYONE!!
I’d like to officially welcome you to LotusPowerHealth if you’re new here, and I look forward to sharing and discussing the topic of better sleep with you. 😊
Since you’re here, I imagine that you’re looking to improve the quality of your sleep!
Of course, sleep helps ultimately boost your overall energy levels, allowing you to have more time to spend on the things you most enjoy. Not only though. You’ll find that sleep is one of the pre-requisite for healthy hormones, which affects not only how you look and feel, but also helps you have a healthy menstrual cycle and healthy fertility.
📌Please feel free to leave any questions in the comments below and I’ll do my best to get back to you as soon as possible!
Lack of Sleep
One of the biggest health challenges that people face today is a lack of sleep. In fact, an estimated 50-70 million adult Americans suffer from a sleep or wakefulness disorder and given that to be healthy we should be spending one third of our entire lives asleep, this figure is pretty staggering!
This can be due to a number of reasons and (as with any health issues) can be influenced by varying external factors. It could be that they are not creating the space in their schedule for adequate sleep, or not understanding the importance of it and therefore letting any sleep-related responsibilities go uncared for.
By attending to our sleep-related needs, we can ensure the rest of our day is maximised, enhance our health and productivity levels, and overall cultivate a deeper connection with the world around us as we finally possess the energy required to do so.
So what is a ‘good night’s sleep’?
A ‘Good Night’s Sleep’ can be defined by a period of 6-9 hours depending on the individual’s activity levels, during which 20% of this is deep sleep and 25% is REM sleep.
However it’s not just the quality of the sleep that’s important, it’s also the consistency.
There are so many definition and opinions what constitutes a ‘good night’s sleep’ in the media now however that really it comes down to figuring out what works best for you are aiming to achieve this as much as possible.
Check out this link for more information: https://sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need.
Side-effects of Sleep-deprivation
We’ve all been there… sleepily putting on odd socks and stumbling around wearily in the dark. The obvious effects of not getting enough sleep are clear.
Yet as our day wears on, the effects of sleep deprivation only multiply, regardless of how much coffee we drink.
Some of the the things that happen as a direct result of having insufficient sleep:
1. We become more prone to accidents:
Research has shown that in the US, 20% of car accidents occur as a result of a drowsy driver. Lack of energy causes our responses to be lowered, filtering peripheral awareness and ultimately increasing the chances that we’ll make a mistake while driving.
It’s not just road-accidents. Mistakes or discrepancies in our work due to lack of attention span and energy can lower overall productivity and job satisfaction, and our ability to perform well in the workplace is also significantly decreased.
The National Sleep Foundation’s ‘Drowsy Driving’ website is a great resource for you to learn more about statistics surrounding driving while you should be sleeping.
http://drowsydriving.org/about/facts-and-stats/
2. Not getting enough sleep also leaves us more prone to developing other seemingly non-related health problems.
As the body learns to function on low levels of energy over the course of a period of poor sleep, this means there is less energy left over to help aid the body in it’s recovery from other illnesses that might not seem directly influenced by sleep levels.
Lack of sleep has been linked to such serious inflictions as diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, and even heart disease.
It’s also been known to shorten your overall life expectancy!
While there are generally several other factors involved, it’s still quite telling that these illnesses could all be shaped or at least improved by examining our sleep patterns and energy levels over a given period of time.
Short-term studies where subjects have deprived themselves of sleep to examine the immediate effects of a lack of sleep have noted an heightening in blood pressure, lowering of blood glucose levels, and increased inflammation. It follows so that long-term persistence of these symptoms could lead to more deeply-rooted expressions of these imbalances.
It can lead to imbalances in hormone levels, making us more prone to mood swings and difficult emotional states.
Physically visible side-effects of sleep deprivation include dull skin, dark eye circles, and general fatigued appearance.
More information on this here: http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/consequences/sleep-and-disease-risk.
So why do so many people experience this uncomfortable and stressful sensation of not being able to sleep?
The over-stimulation we are presented with constantly means that there is always something externally going on or happening that we feel we need to catch up with or achieve. This sense of needing to be aware of every little element of our lives (and more importantly, the need to be IN CONTROL of it) is what keeps our minds so active not only at night time – but in the daytime, too. Here are some of the top reasons why adults today are suffering lack of sleep:
1. Technology
Before technology became such a massive and overwhelming factor in our lives, our bodies were in tune to the rising and the setting of the sun. The further and further away from this we’ve moved, however, the less in tune with our bodies we’ve become, and so even the most basic of needs like sufficient sleep has been shaken by external technological influences.
During the days of ‘sleeping when the sun sleeps’, the retinas in our eyes immediately detected a natural hormone called melatonin as soon as the light started to decrease. Melatonin causes us to feel sleepy, and during a healthy period of deep sleep, remains elevated within the bloodstream.
Now think of this in terms of the bright ‘Blue light’ emitted by phone screens and flashing lights of technological devices that we’ve become addicted to checking. As soon as this kind of light hits the retina, the effect of melatonin is immediately reversed and actually PROMOTES a state of wakefulness over that of sleep.
All of this (combined with artificial lighting) has caused disrupted sleep patterns and lowered the overall quality of the sleep we do get, as the bright light we so crave lies inches away from us at night time should a wakeful moment present us with a social media craving.
Check out this video on the impact that screens have on our sleep.
Ways to combat technology and light-related sleep issues
Dim the light on your device screen to the lowest setting possible. Dimming all of the lights in your house will actually send signals to the retinas that it’s time to wind down towards sleep.
At least one to two hours before a set bedtime, turn off all blue-light devices in the house, including TVs, computers, tablets, and smartphones. This will help trigger the production of melatonin and sleepiness will set in at the right time.
Try to regulate this bedtime routine to occur at around the same time each day, to allow your body to create a regulated sleep cycle.
Limit the mind’s stimulation in the hours leading towards bedtime decrease. Activities such as reading a book, listening to music, or meditating are all much more beneficial to still the mind and help it focus on a singular thing, meaning it drifts to sleep easier.
Charge any phones or devices that might tempt you in a moment of wakefulness AWAY from the nightstand. The farther away the better!
📌Which of these tips do you feel you could benefit from?
2. Diet and Insomnia
Just as important as moderating our external experiences before sleep, is making sure our internal bodies are lined up for rest.
Studies have shown that low-carb diets and high-sugar consumption (not just the bad kinds of sugar!) before bed or throughout the day is a huge contributing factor to the difficulties many people have sleeping.
Our physiology it not setup to deal with the typical carb-loaded Western way of eating, which is why insomnia and diet have become strongly linked. If you’ve ever put petrol into a diesel engine, you’ll know that putting the wrong fuel in has less than ideal results. The same applies to us – not only does the wrong type of fuel have the tendency to make us gain weight, but it can also wreck our sleep.
Refined carbs (e.g. white rice, sugar, products made out of white flour like bread, crackers, and cakes) are probably second only to caffeine in reducing the quality of your sleep – knowing a little bit about how your body responds to food will make this clearer.
Refined carbs get broken down to glucose in your gut and are absorbed very quickly into your bloodstream (as they have a high glycaemic index), making your blood sugar shoot up to a really high level. This is bad news for your body, so it spills out a load of insulin to deal with the threat – and because it’s had to do an emergency rush job it overshoots the mark – which means you end up with low blood sugar.
If you’re eating natural foods (which tend to have a low glycaemic index), these violent swings in blood sugar and insulin don’t happen.
It sounds a lot easier than it is, but familiarizing yourself with your body (and the way particular foods influence your sleep) is vital if you’re going to make any progress in improving your levels of sleep.
If this topic is of interest to you, there are TONS of resources online to help you learn more about what foods to/not to eat before bed, like this one: http://www.eatingwell.com/article/32617/9-foods-to-help-you-sleep/.
3. Lifestyle
While both of the factors we’ve discussed already fall into the ‘lifestyle’ category at some level, there’s also no denying that there is more to a sleep disorder than might seem initially obvious. Anyone can tell you to put down the phone before bed, and our fascination with improving diet and fitness stems far deeper than doing so purely for sleep reasons.
Factors such as work hours, work location, nap-taking, sleep cycle regulation, and environmental factors can all have just as significant an effect on our sleep patterns, and so these things should also be considered when seeking to improve it.
For example, if you work long hours at home and often don’t stop working until later on in the evening, this can create a hazy blurred confusion between sleep and work hours, meaning that the quality of neither your work nor sleep time will be optimized to what it could be.
If you take naps regularly and find yourself in need of sleep at random intervals during the day, this is generally an indication that your night-time sleep patterns are out of balance. To minimize the necessity for naps and maximize the night-time hours, try regulating your evening sleep-cycle and adhering to a strict ‘before-bed’ routine, because as we’ve already discussed – the hour or two before bed is the most crucial to your sleep quality!
4. Environment
Environmentally, it’s often difficult to manipulate external factors in order to maximize your sleep quality, and yet there ARE several things that can be done.
Clean up your room – sleeping with less clutter reduces the stimulation around us and clutter in the brain.
Light a candle – something so simple as lighting a candle or diffusing essential oils and turning off any devices an hour before bed can contribute to sleep quality.
Minimize outside noise – it might seem obvious, but choosing an environment that’s not overly impacted by outside noises and disruptions is a huge way you can improve sleep quality. If you know you’re a light sleeper, make sure you consider that when choosing a bedroom!
Again – turn off that phone! This cannot be stressed enough. Too many people still rely on their phone during the nighttime hours and arguing your case by saying you need it to wake you up is really just an excuse. Which brings me to tip number 5…
BUY AN ALARM CLOCK!
A really fascinating study on the influence of lifestyle factors on insomnia in Japan can be read here:
5. Sleep and Mental Health
Sleep is as effective on our health as eating, drinking, and breathing as it allows our cells to repair themselves and allows our brain to process and receive information. It’s also linked to various mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression, as low levels of physical energy translate into poor cognitive activity and a lack of ability to process thoughts clearly.
When seeking to boost our mental health, therefore, it makes sense that improving sleep quality is high up on the list of recommended treatments. The difference that you’ll feel after several consecutive good night’s sleep in your overall mood and awareness is really incredible, so prioritize sleep over anything else.
Lack of sleep also contributes to the likelihood of developing and worsening a mental health disorder, so if you are prone to struggling with these issues or think you might be at risk, it’s a good idea to prioritize sleep.
Harvard Health (linked below) states that there are over 70 types of sleep disorders in existence. The most common problems are insomnia (difficulty falling or staying asleep), obstructive sleep apnea (disordered breathing that causes multiple awakenings), various movement syndromes (unpleasant sensations that prompt night fidgeting), and narcolepsy (extreme sleepiness or falling asleep suddenly during the day).
There have been so many overlaps between the study of mental health disorders and sleep disorders than researchers have regularly concluded that there must be an overlap in their biological roots.
Link: https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/sleep-and-mental-health.
REM Sleep and how to boost it
REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep occurs in cycles of about 90-120 minutes throughout the night, and it accounts for up to 20-25% of total sleep time in adult humans, although the proportion decreases with age (a newborn baby may spend 80% of total sleep time in the REM stage). In particular, REM sleep dominates the latter half of the sleep period, especially the hours before waking, and the REM component of each sleep cycle typically increases as the night goes on.
As the name suggests, it is associated with rapid (and apparently random) side-to-side movements of the closed eyes, a phenomenon which can be monitored and measured by a technique called electrooculography (EOG). This eye motion is not constant (tonic) but intermittent (phasic). It is still not known exactly what purpose it serves, but it is believed that the eye movements may relate to the internal visual images of the dreams that occur during REM sleep, especially as they are associated with brain wave spikes in the regions of the brain involved with vision (as well as elsewhere in the cerebral cortex).
Here’s some facts about REM sleep! https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/facts-rem-sleep_us_56c3296de4b0b40245c7d079
How to boost REM sleep?
1. Cultivate a day and nighttime routine
By cultivating a day AND night time routine, we can more successfully engage with REM sleep when the need arises. Following guidelines regarding your diet, fitness, and health regimens, lifestyle factors, and environmental factors in the immediate proximity to where you plan to sleep all contribute to raised levels of REM sleep.
There are more methods at the link below, but I’d like you to take this opportunity to consider which ones (realistically) you could start to introduce to your current lifestyle.
Leave your thoughts in the comments below!
Link: https://www.livestrong.com/article/504724-how-to-stimulate-rem-sleep/.
2. Meditation for Sleep Disturbances
One amazing way to start maximizing your sleep is by learning how to meditate. By becoming more aware of our thoughts, tendencies, and patterns, meditation supports an overall more balanced, rounded and energized lifestyle.
Another aspect of this kind of lifestyle is a regular sleep cycle.
There are many different effective meditations that can be done to support a better cycle of sleep. As many people find it difficult to know where or how to start with their meditation journey, it helps to start by taking guided meditations to help ease you into a deep state of relaxation. Then you can work towards achieving this by yourself.
Studies have found that regular meditation can have long-term benefits for our sleep cycles and can even fight against insomnia.
Meditation helps us to drift into a deeper state of sleep and, more importantly, to remain there. This calming focus as an alternative to stressful or agitated focus is what encourages our nervous system to relax, integrating breath with movements of the mind.
There’s more about meditation and insomnia here, and I’ve also added links to some great guided meditations to get your started: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/mindfulness-meditation-helps-fight-insomnia-improves-sleep-201502187726.
Jason Stephenson Meditation:
3. Sleep Cycle Apps
There are a variety of apps available out there now to monitor your sleep cycle. These apps measure things like when you enter deeper periods of sleep, when your potential for REM sleep is highest, when and how you start to enter into the lighter levels of sleep.
By monitoring your current sleep tendencies, it gives you an awareness into how best to maximize your sleep times. You can start to use your sleep time to your advantage and maybe figure out triggers or reasons contributing to your lack of sleep.
Apps such as ‘Sleep Cycle’ provide you with all of this information and are available for both Apple and Android – the only warning I’ll mention is to ensure if doesn’t cause you to keep your phone too close!!! Try instead to download it onto a tablet or itouch to minimize the potential for distractions in the form of other notifications!
Sleep Cycle: https://www.sleepcycle.com/.
Sleep Bot: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lslk.sleepbot&hl=en.
📌Have you tried any sleep-related apps? Would you recommend them?
4. ‘Flow State’ and Sleep
Any artist who is familiar with the deeply focused sensation of ‘Flow State’ will know that it’s a state during which our creative capacity is heightened, leading to a more intense and lengthened state of focus. It can also feel like we’re more deeply in tune with our bodies and minds.
It’s interesting to consider our capacity to focus in terms of our ability to cultivate deep states of sleep, as the brain waves involved in maintaining ‘Flow State’ (ie ‘Alpha’ and ‘Theta’), are the same brain waves involved in maintaining continued and deep states of sleep.
Therefore, it follows that after an intense period of ‘Flow State’, we find it easier to get to sleep! Channeling energy in one direction consistently means that the energy is more accustomed to going down these pathways. This improves our capacity to enter into any state including a state of deep sleep!
There are many different opinions surrounding insomnia and creativity, most of which differ depending on the individual. Some people (like the one linked below) claim to find it productive to stay up all night to work, only entering into a focused state during these hours, while others strongly assert the benefits of nightly sleep routine and balanced sleep pattern.
In the end, it really comes down to lifestyle factors and figuring out what best works for each individual. If ‘Flow state’ is elusive for some during daylight hours, it makes sense for them to postpone any work-related pursuits until later on, and vice -versa. The science is there to back it up, however, that achieving a state of deep sleep is a similar sensation of prolonged focus and calm awareness that exists during ‘flow state’.
More on Flow State: https://catalyticcolor.com/scientific-research-about-flow/
Nocturnal hacker and ‘flow state’: https://lifehacker.com/368416/turn-insomnia-into-a-productivity-boost
5. Psychophysiological Insomnia
This kind of insomnia is possibly one of the most difficult to deal with. During a period of psychophysiological insomnia, a patient experiences a lack of sleep during which their thoughts are preoccupied by the fact that they are currently NOT sleeping, and worrying about the consequences, effects, and outcomes of this fact.
If you’ve ever had a big meeting and experienced a lack of sleep the night before as you apprehend and over-analyze the potential outcomes of the day ahead, you’ll know the feeling!
It affects more female patients than male, and is characterized by the onset of anxiety as the patient prepares for sleep. Worrying about the quality of the impending night’s sleep, the duration (or lack thereof), and the consequences should they not achieve sufficient sleep.
The preoccupation with sleep stems from an initial experience of insomnia, and subsequent developed fear of re-returning to that state causes the onset of psychophysiological insomnia.
This disorder can be treated by engaging in relaxation techniques and meditation to first calm down the nervous system, the mind, and body to prepare it for sleep.
Read more about pyschophysiological insomnia here: http://www.clinicaladvisor.com/the-waiting-room/identifying-patients-with-psychophysiological-insomnia/article/351553/.
6. Sleep-enhancing Foods
While we’ve discussed the importance of a regulated and balanced diet in cultivating a healthy sleep pattern, there ARE some foods which encourage and promote a deeper sleep more so than others.
Eating protein-rich foods that are rich in the amino acid tryptophan can be of benefit to those seeking to improve their sleep. This amino acid helps to encourage the sleep-producing hormone melatonin, and so is a great way to help yourself achieve better rest. Chicken, turkey, milk and dairy, nuts, and seeds are all good choices of foods like this, and combining these with rice, pasta, or potatoes helps the body get the most benefits from tryptophan.
If you’re someone who prefers not sleeping after a heavy meal, there are also certain snack foods which better encourage sleep than others, and the trick is simply to be aware of the effects of these before you sleep.
Foods with naturally occurring amino acids (such as walnuts, almonds, green leafy vegetables, and root vegetables) are great grounding choices that will return you to a calmer state of mind and ease anxiety before retiring for the night.
Find more sleep-inducing foods here: https://www.rd.com/health/wellness/foods-that-help-you-sleep/.
7. Essential Oils for Sleep!
For anyone not familiar with the concept of essential oils, they are (essentially) broken down volatile organic molecules that can change quickly from their solid or liquid state at room temperature. They’re called volatile because they change state quickly, but the most important fact to know for the benefit of this class is that they are derived from organic plant sources and that they can be very powerfully fragrant.
Some of these natural fragrances have been proven to promote and induce a calmer state of mind and encourage a more balanced central nervous system which allows us to more effectively prepare for sleep.
For this reason, many people use essential oils such as lavender, chamomile, sandalwood, ylang ylang, and cedarwood (among others) in their sleeping areas to help infuse the air with pleasing, calming molecules to relax the nervous system and encourage deeper breathing as they fall asleep.
The study linked below examines the effects that lavender has on the nervous system, and it concludes that the use of this essential oil has positive impacts on the emotional state and physical tension involved in sleep disorders.
Essential oils have so many benefits and it’s a great area to begin exploring if you’re new to the potential they hold to help regulate your sleep pattern.
Link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3612440/.
8. Other Strategies to Promote Sleep
As I’ve mentioned earlier, there are quite a few strategies that are effective in promoting a deeper state of sleep. I’d love if you took the next few moments to consider which one might suit you best,and share below if you have any experiences in trying any of them.
From meditation, to journalling, to yoga, to changing your diet, and learning how to use essential oils, there are a number of strategies you can try to improve your sleep and I’d really encourage you not to give up trying if one doesn’t have the immediate desired effect. (It takes a while and a lot of trial and error to figure out what works best for your particular sleep issue and your lifestyle, so please don’t lose heart if one thing doesn’t work!!)
📌What do you think you’ll try tonight?!
We’re done, but this is only the beginning for you!
I hope this event has been informative for you and succeeded in drawing awareness to the benefits a consistent cycle of deep sleep can have in your life. If you’re one of the millions of people who are still struggling to find what works for your particular sleep issue, I really do encourage you to try some of the techniques we’ve discussed today.
The difference you’ll feel after a few nights of good sleep will make all the sleepless nights seem worthwhile.
Thank You!
I’d like to take this opportunity to sincerely THANK YOU for giving me your time today, and I really hope you’ve found it beneficial in some way!
As I’ve mentioned, I am here to answer any of your ongoing questions and I really hope to hear from you – what you found most useful, and what you could have used in addition to everything we discussed.
I really love sharing this topic with people as I feel it’s a vital aspect of our health and lifestyle that is often forgotten in favor of other elements, so if you’ve made the decision to tackle it head on by attending this class I assure you, you’re already halfway there.
Best of luck on your journey towards a more sleep-filled life!
Resources
These resources were used to assemble this article for you:
