How is your sleep? Part 1
Do you get a good night’s sleep and feel refreshed when you wake? This week is about making our sleep a priority.
Answer some of these questions for yourself.
Do you get your 7-8 hours a night?
What is the quality of your sleep like?
Do you have difficulty falling asleep or even staying asleep?
How much caffeine do you drink after midday?
Do you look at your phone or blue screens before bedtime?
Do you look at your phone during the night if you wake?
Do you get out into natural sunlight each day for at least 15 mins?
Do you eat late at night?
How much water do you drink in the day?
Sleep is so important for our whole health and well-being. If we don’t sleep well..
We don’t think clearly
We make poor nutrition decisions
We have no energy
Our body feels sluggish
We lack enthusiasm
We feel anxious
We are irritable
Our circadian rhythm is out of sync
Our immune system is depleted
The list goes on…
So this week we are going to make some small changes each day and stick with them for the week and see if we can improve our sleep
Priority today is to reduce your caffeine intake. Sounds difficult but it is achievable. Did you know caffeine stays in your system for up to 12 hours after you drink it. So a cup of coffee at 12 is still there at 12 at night, like you have just had it. So maybe skip your afternoon coffees and teas and try drinking herbal tea, hot water and lemon or decaf if you can’t do without it.
You might not think caffeine does not affect your sleep. But even though we might have no trouble falling and staying asleep (for some of us) you are still not allowing your body to go into that state of relax and digest and you may be waking in the morning feeling sluggish and still tired.
Another area that can affect our sleep is blue screen exposure, this is desktops, laptops, phones and Ipads etc.
The blue light affects your production of melatonin hormone, we need this hormone to get us to sleep. Cortisol hormone is what gets us up in the morning and it peaks and about midday. It slowly starts to drop and melatonin starts to increase. Unfortunately if we are on screens late into the evening and during the night this confuses our brain to start to increase cortisol as the brain thinks the blue light is daylight. So when we are tired and we go to bed and can’t sleep this is because we have high levels of cortisol, which also can activate the adrenal glands and we then we may start to feel anxious and it’s a vicious circle.
What to do?
Switch off all devices 2 hours before bedtime or put them into another room away from temptation
If you use your phone for your alarm and maybe put it away from your bed. This may help to stop looking at your phone if you wake in the night.
Put you phone on aeroplane mode to stop notification’s disturbing you
Keep the lights low in the evening no bright lights and maybe use a night light so if you need to get up in the night you won’t need to turn on the “big” light
If you really need to use your device at night, check your settings for a night-time screen mode a lot of devices have this now. This will only help to reduce the blue light exposure a little
These are just a few ideas, any questions just ask. I hope all this helps you get a good nights sleep, any questions message me.
