Sleep: A Powerful Health Tool - Part I
Hi, friends.
This week I’ve been realizing I have difficulty with consistency. Who’s with me??
This applies to most things in my life – personally and professionally. I can go for a period of time with a new habit or become super invested in something for a while, then find I let it go until another wave of enthusiasm hits me. I think this is pretty common and I like to point that out to my clients who struggle with consistency during treatment sessions. Girl, we’ve all been there!
A good example?? Me, trying to write consistent notes to you here….
What I AM consistent with, on a regular and daily basis, is prioritization of sleep.
Sleep and I Are Friends
In this two-part note, I will explain WHY sleep is so important and HOW you can easily make change and track progress.
I’ve always loved to sleep (and nap!) and started to fall in love with the science of sleep during graduate school. This passion, in part, is driven by my fascination with the complexity of our bodies. Sleep also is one of the areas in which we can focus directly on for treatment while simultaneously tracking as a measure of progress.
Why do I think prioritization of sleep is so important? Because of the list of effects of POOR sleep!
Mood changes
Memory problems
Difficulty concentrating
Weakened immunity
High blood pressure
Risk for diabetes
Weight gain
Prone to accidents
Low sex drive
Risk for heart disease
Disrupted balance
Sleep Begets Sleep
Sleep begets sleep.
This is a favorite motto of mine I learned when doing my research about sleep training infants during my pregnancies. Sleep training babies is a fascinating way to see this motto actually play out.
I was a pretty strict sleep trainer with my daughters. This proved a bit more difficult with my second, having a lively toddler to also contend with. Nonetheless, my husband and I knew the importance of fostering excellent sleep structure right out of the gate and it has paid off! Our girls still nap most days for two to three hours and sleep uninterrupted for ten hours nightly. It is a beautiful thing.
I try to carry over the concepts of infant sleep training into my work with clients. We work to quickly assess sleep quality and quantity to determine if any “presenting concerns” AKA symptoms could be linked to or explained by sleep deficiencies/dysfunctions. Most of the time…they can! SOOO many mood and mental health concerns are related to sleep struggles.
The Sun and Sleep
Sleep retraining is a goal with pretty much every one of my clients. Education about the WHY’s and HOW’s is an ongoing process and, often, I serve as a means of accountability for my clients.
This always starts with a little education. The WHY – Circadian Rhythms.
So, here’s an oversimplified version of the complexities surrounding our circadian rhythms that drive sleep. Not that you need an oversimplified version, but I would need to write a textbook if not. This is how I explain things to my clients in a way they can understand in advance of moving onto the HOW of making change and tracking progress.
Side note - I bring to mind a “caveman” quite a bit in therapy. I think this can be a particularly helpful visual to drive home the basic human instincts, needs, and means of self-care we all possess that could simplify our daily lives if we were to shift our focus to these areas. I ALWAYS incorporate caveman theory into sleep retraining.
We all follow a similar pattern in our natural circadian rhythms, driven primarily by the rising and setting of the sun and a variety of chemicals and hormones that course throughout our bodies during the day. If you think about a caveman who had no deadlines, trips to the gym, doctor’s appointments, trips to the grocery store, alarm clocks, 8am class or job to report to, etc. to help plan his day, how did he know when to wake and when to sleep?
The sun.
The caveman rose with the sun in the mornings and rested when the sun set in the evenings. During the summer, he required less sleep during longer days, and he took advantage of the shorter days during the winter months with more rest.
This is our natural circadian rhythm.
A Bit of Sleep Science
In the morning with the rising of the sun, we get a boost of the hormone cortisol (the stress hormone) that is particularly helpful in small doses for feeling alert and ready to take on the day. With the addition of serotonin that also develops as we wake and are exposed to the light, we feel excited about the day. Serotonin is one of the feel-good hormones. Throughout the day, these hormones work in tandem to keep us feeling productive and full of energy.
In the evening hours, as the sun begins to set, these hormones naturally begin to decrease. This allows for the natural production of the chemical melatonin. Melatonin is the sleep chemical that we build in excess in the evenings that helps us to feel tired and allows for proper sleep onset and sleep maintenance.
The idea of building melatonin in excess is very important here, as it pertains to both sleep quality AND quantity. We certainly expect sleep to be restful and can tweak things for a better experience, but we also need a certain AMOUNT of sleep daily for good restorative processes to occur in the body and mind. Most of this restoration occurs during deep sleep. We fall into deep sleep after about one hour of the lighter sleep stages and we require several cycles of deep sleep daily. Adults tend to naturally require about seven to nine hours of sleep daily.
Throughout the hours of sleep, melatonin slowly decreases. Again, excess melatonin is necessary to stretch out our sleeping time through the night.
A red flag that insufficient amounts of melatonin are present is recurrent (and unintentional) early-morning rising.
The cycle then starts over again with the rising of the sun as we wake and the rush of cortisol and serotonin takes place.
Got All That??
Whew. Ok, there it is. The simplest explanation of the WHY behind sleep.
Now, remember the caveman? Keep him in mind in your evenings to come. He will show up again in my next note to help me better explain the HOW of making sleep change! YAY!
Until then, take care of yourselves.
