.jpg)
Less Stress In Life
Less Stress In Life
Ep 29: Is Stress Affecting Your Sleep?
Our mission is to give you tools and strategies that will help you move from being stressed to feeling your best.
In this episode we talk about three factors that impact the ability to get great sleep: Sleep apnea, over activated stress response, and having a sleep routine. If you're having trouble falling or staying asleep this episode is for you!
Co -hosts Deb Timmerman and Barb Fletcher, are certified HeartMath® Trainers, and certified stress educators, who are skilled at helping people discover the power of living form the heart. To take the Stress and Wellbeing Assessment in Canada, click here. To take the Stress and Wellbeing Assessment in the US, click here.
SPEAKERS
Deb Timmerman 00:00
You're listening to the Less Stress in Life podcast. Your hosts, Deb Timmerman and Barb Fletcher are on a mission to help individuals and organizations manage stress and change. Together, they bring you real conversations, inspirational stories, and strategies to help move you from being stressed to feeling your best. Good morning, everyone. I'm Deb Timmerman, welcome to our series of 52 practical tools for less stress in life. This is episode 29.
Barb Fletcher 00:34
Holy cow. I'm Barb Fletcher. Our goal is to give you tools and strategies to help move you from being stressed to feeling your best, and today we're going to talk about sleep and stress. I don't know about you, but sleep really matters to me too. I like it a lot. Research shows that between 1/4 and 1/2 of all adults are experiencing sleep issues. That statistic alone was really shocking to me, and in addition to that, not many people actually relate stress to impacting the quality of sleep that they're getting.
Deb Timmerman 01:21
We need deep sleep for processing and sorting information, stopping the flight fight activation and for optimal brain performance. Barb, when you talk to clients, what are the clues that you hear from conversations that you have, that they might be having trouble with the quality of their sleep? And it might be related to stress?
Barb Fletcher 01:42
That is one of the first questions I ask. How are you sleeping? And they say things like, while I've got a lot on my mind. Or, they say that they just can't stop things. They just keep going round around, kind of like that hamster wheel that we've talked about before. People say well, I can't turn off my brain. Some people actually get out of bed, because they just can't quiet it down. Or they've had a lot going on during the day and they just can't wind down.
Deb Timmerman 02:12
Do they ever say that they're talking to you, because other people have noticed changes in the way they behave?
Barb Fletcher 02:21
Well, those are really often subtle. They're not as obvious as waking up in the night. So they may be showing up as irritable. Or maybe they find themselves making more mistakes than they have in the past. Maybe it's harder to concentrate, or remember things. They don't have a lot of motivation. They wake up, but they still feel tired and it's hard to get moving. Or like me, in the middle of the afternoon, they actually need a nap.
Deb Timmerman 02:51
Yeah, I can relate to that when I was really stressed out in managing. Like about noon, after I would have lunch, I'd maybe have a little burst of energy, but two, three o'clock in the afternoon, I was looking for coffee, or a chocolate bar, or anything that I could to get that juice back in my system, which didn't really help. I mean, it maybe helped for a minute, but after a half hour or an hour or two, you're right back into that slump again.
Barb Fletcher 03:25
For me, this still happens at times, If I have a busy day, and I haven't taken time to recharge, I might just have an extra cup of coffee. And what I find is, by the end of the day, my head hurts and gets into a bit of a cycle where it's even harder to sleep when I do go to bed.
Deb Timmerman 03:46
I did a cleanse in like February, March and I had to get off a caffeine for that, and so I planned that decrease over two weeks so that I wouldn't get a headache, and then there was a period of a couple of months that I've gone without caffeine. I mean, I might have the occasional Coke or something but not very much. I don't really drink a lot of that, but I tried to have caffeine. Last week I stopped and got a cup of coffee only because I just wanted it I craved it. And that whole day, I felt like I was buzzing. And I had that caffeine early in the day like before 11 and I had trouble winding down that night. So we get really in tune to having a needing that in our body, and when we take a break, we don't realize how dependent we were on it.
Barb Fletcher 04:36
That's one of the things that I always look in the mirror when I go to bed and think okay, that was really silly of you to have a cup of coffee after supper because that's not going to be helpful for deep sleep. So I know that that's not going to be a good seat, for me anyway.
Deb Timmerman 04:57
Yeah. So sleep issues we find generally fall into one of three categories, maybe there is somebody that really has a problem with sleep apnea. So they're not getting enough air at night when they sleep so they can get deep sleep, and the body mechanisms them up, and you may hear them go, or gasp for breath. When I first started staying with my husband, my current husband, I noticed that I never slept deeply at night, because he had sleep apnea, and he was gasping. So the nurse in me is always listening, and part of my job, when I first got into nursing was working with ventilator dependent quadriplegics, I can't say that well, and we were listening for alarms. So I've never been a really deep, deep sleeper, and those kinds of things wake me up, and I was afraid to sleep because I thought something was going to happen to him, you know, I push him. So the fix for that is really simple, you can get a test, a sleep test. And if you are waking up like that, or feel yourself gasping, or maybe your partner's saying, Hey, you're scaring me at night, go get that test. Because unless you can get enough air in your lungs, and actually fall into deep sleep, it's really harmful to you, it's very wearing on your heart. So the next piece is sympathetic activation, and Barb, I would call you an expert at this. So I'm going to ask you to dive into this. So tell us what sympathetic activation is and what that means to our sleep?
Barb Fletcher 06:35
Well, it means that our body is on high alert, fight or flight 24/7 365 and as a result, not only are we becoming fatigued, but our adrenals are getting warn out. And we're sending constant signals that we need to produce more adrenals more adrenaline, more cortisol, and can't wind down from that. We are always on high alert and ultimately, that will screw up our hormone systems. And, of course, our circadian rhythms, which allow us to get that deep sleep. And I just wanted to share one point about deep sleep. Sometimes I'm not always clear as to whether or not I get deep sleep. And so one of the things that I have is an app that allows me to measure how much deep sleep that I'm actually getting at night. It's related to my watch. And I really appreciate that, because that provides information, you know that that otherwise, I probably might overlook, I might notice some outward symptoms, whether it would be you know, those irritability, or maybe just not feeling well in the morning. But that's a helpful solution.
Deb Timmerman 07:58
The third point is that some people don't have a good bedtime sleep routine. They don't go to bed at the same time every night. They're on technology a really long time. Can you talk about the importance of having that good sleep hygiene routine to get to sleep?
Barb Fletcher 08:15
I'm a pretty early evening girl. And you know, I guess it's dark, I always figure it's time to go to bed. One of the things that we're distracted with these days is with technology and those lights and that constant high alert that we place ourselves on by using technology is really a distraction and a deterrent from us getting deep sleep at night. So for me the practice is quieting the screens for a bit at a time before it's actually time to go to sleep, and there are a number of strategies that I can put in place that will help our away from the screens.
Deb Timmerman 09:08
The research shows that those blue screens mess with our natural melatonin production, as well as what you said about keeping that high alert state on so we don't produce that naturally like we should, as it's starting to get dark out to feel like we need to go to sleep. It's like you think about that forced light in your face, it tricks your body and messes it up. What's your favorite bedtime wine down routine?
Barb Fletcher 09:37
So I think it's probably Inner Balance. So I use that to measure the heart rate variability just to get a sense of how are the messages moving between my brain and my heart and that's a good indicator for me as to how quickly I'll fall asleep. You know there are others, I might be just sitting quietly. It might be listening to music. I enjoy warm water. So hot tubs or showers are good as well. So for
Deb Timmerman 10:09
For those of you who don't know what an inner balance device is, it is a biofeedback tool with a little ear clip, Bluetooth, that's on your phone. And as you breathe and follow the app, it traces your heart rate variability, and as Barb says, gives you wonderful information. I like all those things, too. My favorite is really breathwork at night, and I have a gratitude practice. I start to wind down. I'm also an early-to-bed girl, but I'm an early riser. I get up everyday, naturally 5:36am. Because that's what I've done for my entire work life. You know, we start working at 630. And there's commuting, so I'm still on that schedule. So that works well. for me, I see that a lot of people use different ways to relax at night, like they might have a glass of wine, or maybe two glasses of wine. Now that marijuana is legal in my state, I hear a lot of people are smoking at night, because there are some strains that are more beneficial for sleep, or they're having a gummy. What do you think about all of that? And how does that help for the long term? Or does it help for the long term?
Barb Fletcher 11:24
Well, I think, you know, everybody has a mix of solutions, and I not sitting and in any kind of judgment about what might work for somebody. For me, I what I find is I'm looking for a longer term solution, from time to time, something that doesn't wear off that the edge is a little wobbly. So you know, I've taken melatonin, you know, and I've taken the smallest amount and then find that I need to increase it in a little bit more and a little bit more. And what I would say to that is that is okay, except that sometimes there are things that are within your control that you can do. You know, whether it is music, or biofeedback or breathwork, or gratitude that you can couple with those other things that may be sustaining for longer periods of time, because I don't know about you. But if I go away on vacation, it might not be easy to do all of those other things. Maybe you forget, is sleeping aids, maybe, you know, it's not easy to have access to gummies, and those kinds of things. So, it's always nice to rely on those things that we have close at hand and breath work and warm showers and a number of others are things that pretty much we have most of the time.
Deb Timmerman 12:55
And I would add to that, when we're turning off that sympathetic activation, some of the tools that we work with, particularly the inner balance, gets our nervous system into a place of neutral and allows it to reset. When I have a glass of wine, I like the taste of wine, I like that it helps me relax, but if I have it too close to bed, I'm too warm all night. And so it helps me relax, but my nervous system isn't in the place that I get really good quality of sleep, because the sugar bothers me... very sensitive to that. So pay attention to how those interventions that you're using really help and if they're not helping, it's time to do something a little bit different. So here's our call to action this week. Pay attention to your sleep patterns and the quality of your sleep. If you're not waking up refreshed in the morning, maybe stress is playing a role in preventing you from getting good deep sleep. And if you think that you have sleep apnea, for heaven's sakes, pick up that phone, call your doctor and make an appointment. The interventions now are pretty simple. They're not as uncomfortable as they were. I never even hear my husband's as he puts his on. It's just really quiet and nice. And then if you think you'd like to try some of the tools and solutions we have to offer, we would like to invite you to what we call we add heart meditation. It happens the last Wednesday of every month, and it's 35 minutes and we take you through some of those tools. There are other groups throughout the world practicing those same techniques, not necessarily at that particular time, but throughout that same day for we add heart and it's really a nice way to connect mind and body and see how these tools could help you sleep better on any given night. So, with that we'll put the link to the connection point for reserving space in the #WeAddHeart meditation in our show notes. Send below today's video. And do you have anything else to add to our sleep discussion?
Barb Fletcher 15:06
Well, #WeAddHeart is one of my favorite times each month to get together and so I look forward to people coming in. And I often hear from people saying, Oh gee, I really slept well that night. So, if you're looking for an intervention that you know, you give about 35 minutes for, this might be just what you're looking for.