Secure Your Sleep
The importance of profound sleep is underestimated. Especially when you are a professional, sleep is often what you lack of. You are…
- working long and way too many hours (almost) every day
- taking your work to bed: if not physically, then mentally
- drinking slots of coffee to find some energy to get through the day (and so, later… the night)
- eating too late or/and at night
- not taking the time to wind down before going to bed
- indulging sugar to get a kick
Sleep is food. Ever looked at it that way? Just like food can heal, sleep does too. Every night. And this is why it is so important not to neglect it. Your body needs this period of inactivity…
- to restore its cells
- to regenerate
- to take a mental and emotional break
- to process the day and unconsciously slumbering feelings in dreams
- to produce essential hormones
- to generate energy
- recharge your batteries
You need those eight hours of complete rest, even if you are full of energy on raw food after only 4. The body needs this time to balance its functions and to rejuvenate. Continuous deprivation of sleep can cause illness, makes you age sooner and faster (just compare your looks in the mirror after a bad and a good night!) and shortens your life.
The hours that you are sleeping are your real healing time and it doesn’t require anything but closing your eyes and drifting away. Yet, it doesn’t seem to be as simple as it used to be to have a good night’s rest. So, what changed in our lifestyle that makes it so difficult to do one of the most simple things in life?
Our life is full of unnatural stimuli and we lost the connection with the rhythms of nature such as night & day, seasons, the tides, the influence of the moon, the birds. Our constitution is connected to light and darkness but we have shifted and adapted our rhythm to television, social life late at night, long or reversed working hours. Our days have become so much longer by the introduction of artificial light. I remember the time I was living with my grandparents and they went to bed at 9PM when it got dark and were getting up at 5AM with the first light. There was no television, only music. They told stories around the wood stove and a candle, I loved drawing, reading and writing until bed time. That was such a soothing time!
Soothing. This is how your closure hours of the day need to be to find mental rest first, to calm down your thoughts before hitting the sack. But how can you break with your stubborn old habits that keep you active until the moment you go to bed?
- Turn off the television. It is keeping you awake so you won’t miss the end of a movie you won’t even remember in the morning. You pass and ignore the point you would fall asleep naturally and can’t find sleep in bed
- Keep out artificial lights so you get a hint when it is getting dark and time to go to bed
- Take this time to do something nice for yourself or with your family. Play an old-fashioned game, talk, laugh, make music together
- Read with your music in the background or in silence
- Soak a while in a nice bath with calming essential oil, relaxing magnesium salt (Epsom Salt), put some veggies on your skin in the meantime or an avocado mask, do an enema…
- Leave out the computer (this is about the toughest one, I know)
- Make a walk in the evening and have a nice cup of sleep stimulating tea afterward
- Connect with your loved one and make love, read to each other in bed
- Go through your day and process while awake, close off your day with positive thoughts
That last thought before falling asleep is very important. The more positive, the more spiritually uplifting, the better you will sleep. Your last conscious thought is a powerful suggestion to your unconscious mind when you are asleep and you will reach deeper levels of sleep.
Just as important as your last thought, is the first one you wake up with. Make it a beautiful thought and take a few minutes to visualize your day (you can call it meditation if you wish) with its best outcome before becoming active. This is a very simple yet powerful tool to raise your level of consciousness and focus.
The importance of having your sleep between 10PM and 2AM is crucial for your hormones produced by the hypothalamus and pineal gland. The whole endocrine system is connected to how you sleep. Growth hormones are only produced between those hours and so, skipping them can bring you completely out of your equilibrium. A few essentials to make sure your melatonin levels are in balance…
- First it is key to sleep in a dark room to be able to produce melatonin, the sleep hormone. It is produced in the pineal gland, which becomes active as soon as it becomes dark, making you feel sleepy. Once it gets light, or when you are sleeping in a room that isn’t completely dark, the production of your sleep hormone stops and you wake up. By respecting the light- and dark cycles of nature you can resolve stubborn sleep issues. Keep out all artificial light sources during your sleep.
- Workouts in the evening decrease the production of melatonin up to three hours after exercising. Exercise in the morning to activate and energize your body.
- Medication such as anti-anxiety and anti-depressants, steroids (prednisone), pain killers (ibuprofen) and blood pressure medication also decrease the production of melatonin.
Another note that might interest you is that sleep on the crucial hours doesn’t only benefit your health, but also your beauty and weight. I know, I know, old sayings can be corny. But… they always contain the truth. A beauty sleep isn’t called a beauty sleep for no reason. Sleep from 10 PM to 6 AM makes you look younger, it irons out wrinkles, it regenerates your collagen. Why use chemical creams when all you need is sleep?
By postponing your sleep until the wee hours every day and being active until late, you are increasing the cortisol levels in your blood. These elevations in chronic sleep loss can promote insulin resistance and bring you in risk for diabetes and obesity.
You can find out so much, simply by giving it a good thought and with some close observation. Keep a journal for a week with what exactly is waking you up in the middle of each night. When you discover your pattern, you can take action and try out a few things. Again, keep track with your experiences daily in your note book and see what difference which actions make.
- Don’t eat up till 3 hours before going to sleep (ideally don’t eat after 7PM) or you will be digesting this food all night long, meaning you won’t reach deep levels of sleep and feel exhausted in the morning. Also, keep your dinners light: your body is slowing down when it gets dark and doesn’t need as much food as you might think.
- A good snack 3 hours before going to bed is a banana. It is rich in tryptophan, which is a calming hormone that helps produce serotonin and makes you feel relaxed before going to bed.
- Absolute darkness in the bedroom is essential to produce melatonin (between 10 and 2PM) to protect your sleep for the rest of the night. Is light entering from the outside? Wear a black eye mask or simply replace your curtains with black blinds.
- Hydrate your body thoroughly during the day by drinking pure water half of your body weight in ounces minimum. Stop drinking one hour before going to sleep. You are now hydrated well enough to get through the night without being thirsty or without going to the bathroom.
- A “night cap” might make you feel sleepy at first, but decreases your sleep quality during the night.
- Consuming sugar may cause nightmares. If you haven’t eliminated sugar out of your diet, this is a good reason if you are haunted every night.
- Dreams do tell a lot about your life because it is a way to process emotions and situations you are facing. The more you are covering up during the day, the more they will occur at night.
- To cover up outside noises, a “white” noise generator might help you. Another simple trick is using wax ear plugs.
- Put away or cover up night clocks. They shed enough light on your eyes to break your sleeping cycles. Moreover it is very stressful to watch the minutes crawl by while laying awake.
- A lot of sleeping discomfort comes from your position. Laying flat and straight on your back without a pillow under your neck relaxes the adrenal glands and you will calm down (production of adrenaline stops).
- Back pain? Lay flat on your back and put your pillow under your knees. Now your back will be flat on the mattress and relax. Don’t sleep on your belly when you have a bad back!
- Sleeping on the belly is a very straining position and you will have to change this position during the night. If you wake up easily, find another comfortable position that supports your sleep.
- Pain can often be resolved by sleeping on your side in fetus position with a pillow between your legs or a pillow against your back.
- Sometimes it is better to actually get out of bed when you can’t fall asleep anymore. Try to stay calm. Tossing and turning will keep you further away from falling asleep. Go and sit down in a sofa with a nice book in soft light or meditate a bit and go straight to bed as soon as you become sleepy.
- Depression is also often an underlaying cause for insomnia and waking up at night. A natural tea that can be helpful one hour before bedtime is Valerian. Eat enough Vitamin C rich foods during the day: Vitamin C helps reduce depression. (cruciferous vegetables, lemon, berries,…)
- Exercising during the day improves your sleep increasingly. Don’t exercise too late: this will produce too much energy before bedtime.
- And last but not least… changing your mattress can bring the solution to all your sleeping issues. If it is older than 5 to 6 years, it might have lost its “shelve life”. A good quality mattress is not a luxury but a necessity (that feels like heavenly luxury). Don’t forget that you spend a third of your life in bed!
So… my assignment for you this week is: giving your sleep a chance to restore your body by following my suggestions and going to bed at 10PM and raise with the birds. Just one week. And then have a good look in the mirror…
Download my energy tip here!
.jpg)
