The winning formula for sleep

Most of us will suffer from the odd sleepless night from time to time, but sustained sleep deprivation can have a serious impact our health and happiness.

Our ability to concentrate, handle stress, regulate our emotions, fight illness, stick to healthy eating and exercise habits and experience feelings of happiness are all immediately impacted by a bad night’s sleep. Read more on the impact of sleep deprivation here.

The most common causes of mild to moderate insomnia are poor sleep hygiene and stress. As a first step, it can be helpful to step back and assess your sleep routine to help you bank that much needed shut-eye.

Lights out

One of the biggest enemies of sleep in the modern world is too much light. Today, there is light all around us, bombarding us well into the night. In all the rooms in our houses, coming from our TV’s, laptops, phones and even the buildings and street lights out the window.

Along with the sun, these indoor lights and electronic devices emit a light of blue wavelength, which is fine in the day and actually does the job of keeping us awake, but at night can be disastrous when it comes for getting ready for slumber.

All this light triggers our brain into thinking it’s still daytime and in turn signals that it needs to keep pumping hormones to keep us warm, awake and alert.

Our brains have a tiny light-sensitive gland in them called the pineal gland, which produces melatonin to regulate our sleep and awake cycles. The production of melatonin is vital for making us sleepy, yet is inhibited by light (and triggered by darkness, it usually peaks just before we go to bed).

Anyone that is suffering from sleep problems can start with these very simple but necessary steps to help encourage melatonin production:

•  Once you’re ready to start winding down, turn all the lights off in the house and go by candle light - this ‘orange light’ does the opposite of  ‘blue light’, it takes us back to our cavemen ancestors who used to sit around the fire at night, putting us at ease and relaxing our nervous system
• No technology after 8pm, not only does all our technology omit ‘blue light’ but it keeps our brains stimulated
•  If you absolutely have to use your phone, you can try adjusting the light to an orange light from 7pm onwards each night
• Keep electronics out of and lights off in the bedroom 

Go with the circadian flow

Another factor at odds with us getting sleep in the modern world is our fast-paced lifestyles and constant connection, which are working against our body’s natural circadian rhythm. 

Your circadian rhythm is a 24-hour internal clock that is running in the background of your brain and cycles between sleepiness and alertness at regular intervals.

According to the National Sleep Foundation,  for most adults, the biggest dip in energy happens in the middle of the night (somewhere between 2:00am and 4:00am, when they're usually fast asleep) and the biggest spike in energy is between 8.00 and 10.00am.

It helps to listen to and work with our natural circadian rhythm, ensuring our greatest mental and physical outputs are in the first half of the day and then allowing ourselves to wind down come evening.

Ten thousand of years ago, we’d hunt all day, then gather around the fire as the sun would set and retreat go into our caves. Today, we watch reality TV, keep all the lights on, whilst scrolling on our tablets. Our phones are constantly pinging at us and were working and sending emails well into the night.

Come evening, we need to not only shut down all our technology but shut all the mental apps running all day.  

Some ideas to help your body with the natural wind down process include:

• Don’t take on any tasks too mentally or physically strenuous after 7pm
• Get in a habit of not replying or sending work or personal emails or messages after 7pm
• Put your thoughts, problems and to do lists out of your head and onto paper so your brain processes them before your head  hits the pillow

Stop stress and invite Rest and Digest

Come evening, we need to ensure we are winding down our nervous system. Our nervous system has two strands – sympathetic, which activates ‘fight or flight’ and parasympathetic, which allows us to ‘rest and digest’.

The ‘fight or flight function’ is designed to keep us alive and safe from danger and was typically activated in our cavemen ancestors by the threat of predators such as lions and tigers. A string of reactions are triggered in the body (such as a burst of adrenaline which causes an increased heart rate, shallow breathing, and tensed muscles) to give us enough energy to fight or flee the danger.

The problem with today is, there are no tigers or lions in our neighborhoods and our body can’t tell the difference between real or perceived danger. So often we are often flipping into ‘fight or flight’ many times throughout the day when we get stuck in traffic, receive a bad email from our boss or client, argue with our spouse or just feel overwhelmed by our to-do list.

Unfortunately, if our ‘fight or flight’ response is being activated too late in the evening or if we are spending too much time in ‘fight or flight’ throughout the day, our body understands this to mean the danger is still imminent and thinks it has to keep us awake until the threat has passed to keep us alive. It is impossible for us to get to sleep with all the adrenaline pumping around our system. It’s like having a triple shot coffee and trying to go to bed.

But even if we’ve had a stressful day or incident, we can proactively send signals to our brain that we are safe which will deactivate ‘fight or flight’ and promote the ‘rest and digest’ spectrum of our nervous system to help us welcome sleep. 

The key is to get out of our head and into our body come night-time. Ways to promote parasympathetic include:

• Meditation - meditation also helps with the production of melatonin, promotes sleep brain waves and encourages the REM state which is vital for restorative sleep
• Slow, diaphragmatic breathing
• Yin or restorative yoga - you don’t have to go out to a class, you could try it online – yogaglo.com have some great classes
• A warm bath – warm water is super calming for the nervous system and the act of having a bath is calming in itself as it usually means you’re away from all technology and distractions
• Relaxing music – actually enhances your relaxation brainwaves
• Calming herbal tea such as chamomile or lavender – the bioactive ingredients work with the body to calm the stress response
• Magnesium supplement - on a chemical level, magnesium activates the parasympathetic nervous system and also regulates the hormone melatonin, which guides sleep-wake cycles in your body

Coffee and wine lovers beware

Also, worth note is anyone having sleep problems should avoid caffeine after 2pm (as the adrenaline stays in our system for up to six hours and can make it difficult for us to get to sleep). And although a glass of red wine (or other alcoholic drinks)  can help make you sleepy, stick to no more than one glass.

Anything over one glass puts pressure on our system while we sleep to eliminate toxins so the overall quality of our sleep is in fact greatly reduced with each extra glass. Alcohol blocks REM sleep , which is the most restorative type of sleep. With less REM sleep, you’re likely to wake up feeling groggy and unfocused. You may also find you wake up around 3am from all the sugar.

Establish a routine

It can be really useful to establish a shutdown routine to prepare for slumber. Start turning down your activity levels, undertaking any relaxation rituals, switching off your technology and dimming the lights around the same time each night. We are habitual creatures. Our brains understand rituals and will start to see the pattern as a cue for winding down so sleep can follow. 

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