Sleep Tight: Tips To Help Prepare You For Restful Sleep
Insomnia, in one form or another, is a very common complaint in my practice as a virtual telehealth naturopathic doctor in Sacramento.
The problem is that without a good night's sleep, it can be difficult to correct other imbalances in the body.
If you’re having trouble sleeping, though, you’re not alone. In fact, according to the Sleep Foundation, more than a third of US adults don’t get enough sleep.
But there’s more to a good night’s sleep than just feeling refreshed in the morning.
Over the long term, sleep deprivation puts you at higher risk for developing a number of chronic diseases. This includes diabetes, stroke, and heart disease.
It can also depress your immune system and alter your mood.
This can trigger feelings of depression, anxiety, and a reduced ability to deal with the stresses of daily life.
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In short, getting a good night’s sleep should not be seen as a commodity, but as an essential building block for lifelong physical and emotional health.
Let’s take a closer look at sleep.
What Does Sleep Actually Do?
A good night’s sleep feels great, doesn’t it?
It’s wonderful to go to bed, sleep all night, and wake up refreshed and ready to take on whatever the day throws at you.
But there’s more to sleep than that.
Sleep is an essential activity for healing.
It allows your brain and body to slow down and recover.
Short term, it enables better physical and mental performance the next day.
Long term, sleeping recharges your brain and your body, staving off disease.
Without enough sleep, your brain can’t do its job.
This can impair your ability to concentrate, think clearly and process memories, as well as affecting your energy levels and mood.
What Happens To Your Body While You Sleep?
Most adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep per night.
Children and teenagers need quite a bit more.
But what happens as you fall asleep?
The process actually begins while you’re still awake.
As natural light disappears in the evening, your body begins to release melatonin, a hormone that induces drowsiness.
As you sleep, your body cycles through four or five different stages.
Each sleep cycle is made up of four individual stages.
The first three are a type of sleep called non rapid eye movement sleep, or NREM.
The last phase of sleep is rapid eye movement sleep, or REM.
Each sleep cycle lasts around ninety minutes to two hours (Schwab 2022), so ideally you’ll cycle through these phases a few times each night.
Let’s take a look at what happens during each of these phases.
During Stage 1 NREM Sleep
Stage one NREM sleep is the transition between wakefulness and very light sleep.
Your heart rate, muscles, breathing, brain activity, and eye movements begin to slow down.
This stage typically lasts several minutes.
During Stage 2 NREM Sleep
During stage two NREM sleep, you start making your way into a deeper sleep.
Your heart rate and breathing rate continue slowing down and your muscles become more relaxed.
Eye movements come to a halt and your body temperature decreases.
Your brain activity remains low.
This stage is typically the longest of the four sleep stages.
During Stage 3 NREM Sleep
During stage three NREM, your heart rate, respiratory rate, and brain activity reach their lowest point.
Your muscles are also as relaxed as they can be.
This is considered the highest quality of sleep you’ll get.
During your first sleep cycle of the night, this phase will be at its longest, and will decrease in length in following phases.
During REM Sleep
REM sleep is interesting.
About 90 minutes after you fall asleep, your breathing, heart rate and blood pressure will begin to increase.
Like the name suggests, your eyes will start rapidly moving back and forth as well, though they usually remain closed.
This is where you dream, and your muscles will also become temporarily paralyzed, which researchers think is to stop you from acting out what you’re experiencing in your dreams.
This phase gets longer and longer with each passing sleep cycle.
Your brain also uses this time to convert short term memories into long term ones, according to this 2013 study by Rasch and Born.
During W Stage
There is actually a fifth stage, called W stage – when you’re awake.
Sometimes you’ll have a short W stage during the night but won’t remember having done so.
What Happens If You Don’t Get Enough Sleep?
According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, sleep deprivation can have some major impacts on your health.
From a short term perspective, it can affect you socially.
If you’re sleep deprived, it might cause you to have difficulty judging others’ emotional responses.
You might also have difficulty focusing on a task at hand, commonly referred to as “brain fog”.
This can affect your performance at work or school.
It can affect your reaction time as well, which can be a major problem if you operate heavy machinery or you spend a lot of time in the car.
You might also feel irritable, cranky, or quick to frustration.
All this might be familiar if you only have occasional insomnia, and most of the time it will take care of itself after a good night’s sleep.
But what happens when you have chronic insomnia?
From a long term perspective, lack of sleep has been linked with a number of chronic illnesses. These include:
Obesity
Type 2 diabetes
High blood pressure
Heart disease
Stroke
Anxiety
Depression
Decreased life expectancy
How to Optimize Your Sleep
Don’t let that list above scare you – there are plenty of ways to optimize your sleep.
Let’s take a look at them.
1. Take The Time To Unwind
Often, we don’t take the time to close our day and transition from wakeful alertness to rest and restoration.
Dim the lights, read a book, start a meditation practice, or maybe a mindful yoga practice.
RELATED: How Stress Derails Your Best Intentions
Take a bath with some Epsom salts and lavender oil.
Try some deep breathing exercises.
Listen to some calm, relaxing music, or try journaling.
There are so many different possibilities to help you ease into the evening.
2. Shut Off Your Electronics
Earlier, we talked about how your body naturally produces the hormone melatonin as you start preparing for sleep.
But if you’re staring at a screen, your body can have a difficult time producing them.
As a result, it can help to do a “screen ban” on electronics.
Turn off the TV, computer, tablet and phone at least one hour before bed.
This can help your body ease into sleep.
If you must use a device before bed, consider a pair of blue light blocking glasses, or use a screen filter like f.lux to reduce the amount of blue light coming from them.
This helps mimic the shift of natural sunlight from midday to evening, which can help.
But ideally, it’s best to decouple from your devices in the evening.
3. Sleep In A Totally Dark Room
The darker your bedroom, the better.
Use blackout curtains or a sleep mask to make your room as dark as it can be.
Remove anything in your room that emits light.
In order to get to sleep, your pineal gland needs to produce melatonin, and that only happens in total darkness.
4. Maintain Your Circadian Rhythm
Make sure you go to bed at the same time every night and rise at the same time every morning.
Yes, even on weekends.
Being aligned with your circadian rhythm helps solidify a healthy wake sleep cycle.
5. Should I try An Herb Like Valerian?
If you take a look at the shelf at the health food store, you’ll likely see a sleep section with various herbs and supplements.
It’s common for people to reach for herbal sleep aids like Valerian, which is a root native to Asia and Europe.
There is some evidence to suggest that it can be an effective natural sleep aid.
However, the studies that were evaluated in a recent meta analysis saw quite a bit of diversity across preparations (ex. capsules versus alcohol extracts).
Also, results were different depending on the population studied.
For those with cancer or who were post-menopausal, results were positive.
Whereas a bulk of other studies didn’t find benefit.
Currently, it looks like the evidence might be strongest if the insomnia is connected to anxiety.
In general, there aren’t serious safety concerns, but clinically, I find that people don’t tolerate Valerian well and can feel too drowsy the next day.
As always, it’s best to speak to your naturopathic doctor before adding a new supplement to your routine.
As well, when it comes to sleep, the right treatment will likely have to do with the contributing factors.
For someone, maybe trouble sleeping is due to depression and for another it’s due to hormonal shifts.
Each would require a different strategy.
What Causes Chronic Insomnia?
If you’re dealing with chronic insomnia, it can have a number of different causes.
This can include simple ones, like poor sleep hygiene.
If that’s the case, the above tips may help.
But it might also be related to an underlying health condition. These may include:
Chronic anxiety
Chronic depression
Sleep apnea
Chronic pain
A side effect of certain pharmaceutical medications
ADHD or autism spectrum disorder
Restless leg syndrome
Pregnancy
Age – people over 60 are more likely to have difficulty sleeping
Parkinson’s disease
Skin conditions like psoriasis or eczema
Digestive issues
And more
If you’ve tried the tips we talked about earlier in this article but you’re still having trouble sleeping, it’s a good idea to...
Book Your Appointment With Wild Lemon Health Today
Chronic insomnia can be difficult to deal with.
It can affect every area of your life – physical, mental, emotional, professional, social, you name it.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Here at Wild Lemon Health, we can help.
Book your FREE introductory call today, and find out how you can get the sleep you need to feel great every day.
