Issues with Sleep? What you need to know

Many of us experience the need for more sleep, yet it never gets prioritised especially when we are so busy. The aim of this article is to help you improve your motivation to take action by providing you with information that helps you assess yourself, why it's important, and what you can do about it now.

Sleep - Why is it important?

We need the right amount of quality sleep to keep ourselves healthy.

Sleep is a dynamic process moving through four distinct stages as we wind down our brain and body to rest and recover.

There are a number of very important functions that happen when we sleep;

  • Repair and restore of all the physical cells and tissues that have been used or damaged during the day
  • Our brains consolidate memories and information experienced during the day, processing and storing them for easy recall
  • Our brains also experience detoxification of all the waste products created during the day which only occurs when we sleep
  • Regulation of hormones that are responsible for growth, metabolism and overall stable health occurs
  • Regulation of mood and emotions
  • Our immune system gets checked and balanced ready to defend the body preventing us getting sick from diseases or infections
  • Metabolic and energy resets as your body checks stores and gets supply ready for the next day
  • Cardiovascular system resets and recovers, relaxing while you are not upright or conscious

     So what happens when we don't get enough sleep?

    When we don't sleep long enough or the quality of sleep is poor our health is impacted. Poor sleep can be due to a number of things such as being interrupted, not phasing through the sleep cycles due to alcohol, medications, stress, vasomotor problems such as hot flushes, heat, noise etc.

    The risks are cumulative, which means the longer this goes on, the more the risk increases.

    Fatigue has been well documented as critical to some work tasks, driving and decision making. That lack of sleep for a day can give you the same reaction time and alertness as someone with a breath alcohol level too high to safely drive.

    We know a fatigued and stressed brain looses it executive function preventing creative problem solving which can be crippling as you are unable to find the right solutions for everyday problems.

    Research shows lack of sleep interferes with metabolism and hormone regulation, which disrupts a number of processes around appetite, digestion and cellular metabolism resulting in unwanted weight gain.

    Furthermore, without adequate sleep, you increase your risk of heart and other diseases such as diabetes, as your body is unable to reverse inflammation resulting in inflammaging.

    Risks to your brain, mental health, mood, memory are numerous. Studies are suggesting that cumulative poor sleep contributes to Alzheimer’s and dementia.

     Ok - that's enough of the information, are you motivated to take on doing one thing this week to improve your sleep?

    Great!

    Here's what you can do:

    Talk to your General Practitioner (GP) or physician. It's super important that your GP knows what's going on as there are many reasons why you might not be getting a good's night sleep that they need to rule out and treat such as sleep apnoea (when you have micro pauses to normal breathing during sleep) hormone related conditions, mental health concerns, infections and other diseases.

    If you have not been sleeping for a long time and it's more habit, research tells us help from a psychologist is far better than any medicine to help you learn how to sleep soundly again. In Australia see your GP to arrange subsidised services.

    Get a baseline. A sleep diary tracking your sleep for 2 weeks is a good idea to get an idea of exactly where the issues are. Perhaps its that you can't get to sleep, or stay sleeping. It might be early morning waking and not being able to get back to sleep. All this information is helpful for the doctor, and also to track progress when you start implementing some of the strategies suggested here.

     

    The above is not forever! It's just to get you re-trained in your new routine. Then once established you can re-introduce these and see how you go.

    Other things that help:

    Sleep when sleepy. If you are in bed and it's been more than 20 minutes, get up and read a paperback book under a lamp, not a bright light. This tells your body the bed is for sleeping.

    Try to wind down, relaxing at least 30 minutes prior to going to bed. Have a ritual; a cup of herbal sleep inducing tea (chamomile, lavender), brush teeth, wash face, read for 10 minutes then lights out. 

    Bathing can really help as this raises your body temperature the drops it. It's the cooling of the body that makes it tired.

    Talk to your pharmacists about over the counter medications (for short term use to establish sleeping habits not appropriate for long term as these actually interfere with quality sleep).

    Talk to your herbalist or naturopath about supplements, botanical, oils, that help support the body to relax and get the right hormones in gear to assist with falling asleep, staying asleep and early morning waking.

    Keep your room cool. We need our body temperatures to be lower for good sleep.

    Sleep - When to be concerned?

    Poor sleep can be associated with Depression and or Anxiety. When you are not manufacturing adequate neurotransmitters; dopamine or serotonin your sleep gets affected. It's really important to distinguish is this is a factor, so you can get help to support this pathway to get back on track faster. It is not always the case that sleep disturbance = depression, so take this test from Beyond Blue to rule it out. It's called the K10 - it's 10 questions, you get a score which identifies if this type of issue is contributing to sleep issues which also impacts your mental health.  1 out of 2 people in Australia suffer with their mental health, so it's more common than you realise.

    A Health Coach can help you with motivation, a plan and ongoing support to really get on top of your sleep for good a lot faster than doing it yourself. Changing old habits is hard, and if its a fairly new issue, we need to make sure there is nothing else contributing to it. Click this LINK to book in a free 30 minute chat, it might be all you need!