Not getting enough sleep might be sabotaging your health goals
Sleep is one of the most powerful things we can do for our health. And the good news is, that it is free. The bad news is, that our sleep can very easily be snatched away from us by those little people. You might never be able to go back to lie ins until lunchtime, however, there are plenty of things you can do to increase your sleep if you decide to prioritise it.
Have you ever noticed when you have had a bad night, that the next day you are hungrier and/or crave sugar? It is scientifically proven that if you consistently do not get enough sleep, then you are hungrier, eat more, weigh more and find it more difficult to lose weight. Inadequate sleep decreases levels of leptin (the hormone that signals to you that you are full), increases levels of ghrelin (the hormone that tells you that you are hungry) and your cells also become less responsive to insulin. This means, you are less able to control blood sugar levels, which contributes to weight gain. So after a night of bad sleep, if you feel the need to eat sugary food all day, it’s not your fault, but rather it’s your hormones fault.
Having a rubbish night’s sleep can make us feel stressed which raises cortisol (our stress hormone). But having high levels of cortisol means that we don’t sleep very well. So it can be a vicious circle. Usually, cortisol starts to rise in the very early morning and rises to a peak around when we wake up. Then it tails off so that when it gets to bed time the levels are low enough to allow easy sleep. If we are going through a stressful or anxious time then cortisol might be high in the evening meaning that even though our bodies feel exhausted, our head might feel wired.
Loss of sleep also decreases our focus and our ability to think creatively and can leave us unmotivated to follow through with our goals.
Boris & Trump are both very vocal about not needing much sleep. I’m not sure why they feel the need to tell everyone about it – maybe they think it makes them both very unique and powerful? Not sure. Anyway, neither of them look like the picture of health. And we’ve all seen the effects of their decision making with the lack of sleep. So if that hasn’t persuaded you as to the benefits of sleep then I’m not sure what will!!!
There is a brilliant book: Why we sleep, by Matthew Walker (a sleep scientist). He says:
Not getting enough sleep is associated with memory problems, increased cancer risk, depression, diabetes, anxiety, heart disease and Alzheimer’s.
After just one night of only four or five hours’ sleep, your natural killer cells—the ones that attack the cancer cells that appear in your body every day—drop by 70%.
People who get less sleep—six or fewer hours a night—have higher levels of inflammatory proteins than those who get more. Inflammation is linked to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, arthritis, and premature ageing.
But how do we get more sleep? Unfortunately we cannot sue out children for our sub-standard sleeping conditions
Here are my tips:
GO TO BED EARLIER. I cannot stress this enough. We can’t control if the kids have a bad dream / wet the bed / cry at night for no apparent reason / climb into our bed so we have to perch right on the edge with no cover / sleep walk etc etc. But if you go to bed earlier, then you are maximising your chances of getting more sleep than you currently do. Obviously this will mean that you have to reprioritise some things and this might bring up some resistance.
Eat in a way that balances blood sugar levels (especially if you eat later in the evening). If you tend to eat lots of starchy carbs later on in the day (bread, rice, pasta, sugars), this can create a sugar dip when you are sleeping, which releases cortisol and can end up waking you up or moving you into a lighter sleeping phase.
Try to minimise blue light exposure in (at least) the last hour before bed.
Make sure that you have spent some time outdoors & moving during the day. I appreciate that this could be hard if you are self isolating or have kids that are having to isolate
Try to create a relaxing bedtime routine. This doesn’t have to be drinking a glass of milk and listening to lullabies (I mean, it could be if that is your thing……). Some things that could be incorporated are: taking off your make up, reading a book, deep breathing, writing down any worries or a to-do list or a gratitude list, listening to a podcast or a meditation.
Don’t have caffeine in the afternoon. The quarter life of caffeine is 12 hours, meaning that if you have a coffee at 1pm then at 1am a quarter of that caffeine is still in your system.
If you know that disrupted sleep is contributing to you falling off track with your health goals, then I challenge you to prioritise sleep for the next week and see what differences it makes. It’s lockdown, now is the time to try it, and see how you feel. Focusing on this one thing might be the thing that you need that will make a difference in other areas of your life.
& if you need any further help, then please get in touch: carolinehainescoaching@gmail.com. Or book a free 45min call where we can chat: