Sleep Well, Rest Easy

In this episode, we explore how to improve your sleep and get more rest. I share a little bit about why sleep matters, both for me personally and also some studies on how it makes a difference in our lives.

Learn how to improve the quality, quantity, and consistency of your sleep. Get ideas for improvements you can make to your bedroom and your nighttime rituals, plus some of my best tips, tricks and strategies for some of the more challenging aspects of sleep, like what to do if you wake up in the middle of the night and you can't turn off your brain.

• Visit the Show Notes for links, photos, recipes, and more.

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Transcript

Welcome to the Get Yourself Together Chica Podcast, the show that helps you thrive, or, you know, sometimes just survive. I'm Rebecca Fernandez. In each episode, we dive deep into something that has an impact on our lives as women, whether that's money or love, motherhood or friendship, our careers, or just making space for joy.

This is episode number 17, and today is all about how to improve your sleep and get more rest. We're gonna talk about a little bit about why sleep matters. I'll share for me personally why it matters, and also some studies on how it makes a difference in our lives.

And we'll talk about how to improve the quality, and consistency of our sleep. I'll give you some ideas for improvements you can make to your bedroom and your nighttime rituals, and I'll share some of my best tips, tricks and strategies for some of the more challenging aspects of sleep, like what to do if you wake up in the middle of the night and you can't turn off your brain.

Before we dive into today's topic, though, I wanna share what's bringing me joy right now. Last week on the podcast, I mentioned that I saw my first ever Ruby Crowned Kinglet at the Birdfeeder. These are these cute, tiny, teeny little birds, and they only come to North Carolina in the wintertime. But I mentioned last week I had never actually seen the Ruby Crown because I was only seeing, I'm pretty sure, females at the birdfeeder. Well, just this week, I spotted a male, and he was flashing his bright red crown, and I think I must have only been seeing females or maybe he was just really excited because this was like a huge bright red dot. I was quite surprised at how prominent it was. It's kind of like a little crest almost.

However, he was taunting a mockingbird. We have a mockingbird that lives out front that my daughter named Granger, and Granger kept coming by and trying to chase him off of the feeder, so maybe that's why I got to see it. But anyway, it was a delight to see, and it felt like a really special occasion. It's only been that one time he hasn't been back yet, but I will link again to the Audubon page and pictures in the show notes, so you too can keep an eye out for this cute little wintertime visitor.

All right, let's talk first about why sleep matters. I'm not gonna go too far into the weeds on this one because I think if you've been awake and ever watching the news or listening to things or reading things, you've probably seen plenty on this, that sleep is really important.

But I can tell you from me personally, there are probably four areas where I can see a big difference if my sleep suffers even just a little bit. I mean, for me that means dropping below eight or seven hours a night after one or two days, one of these four elements starts to suffer. And granted, I am very susceptible to sleep deprivation effects, not everybody experiences it quite this dramatically.

But the first thing for me that tends to go is my physical coordination. So I start becoming really clumsy. I drop things, my reaction time isn't very good. I worry I'm gonna wreck my car. I spill water. You name it, it just starts to go. I just like trip over my own feet and lose the ability to do everyday normal things.

I don't know why that happens to me, but it definitely does and it has really for my whole life, I can remember even as a kid, if I stayed up too late, the next day I was always spilling things and getting in trouble for knocking over cereal bowls and such.

And the second thing that goes for me is more of my mental concentration. So I just have a really difficult time focusing and I have difficulty with little things. Like I can't remember how to spell words or I can't remember a word for something. Just something inside my brain starts to fall apart when it's not getting enough rest.

The third thing for me that starts to fall apart is my physical health. And by that in particular, I mean my immune system. Normally my immune system is pretty fantastic. I almost never get sick, even when I'm exposed illnesses or people around me are sick or even if I kiss my partner and he has a cold or the flu, I don't catch it. However, if I miss a night or two of sleep or especially get three or four nights of bad sleep in a row or stay up too late, multiple nights in a row, ugh, that is when I always get run down and sick. That's when I'll catch colds, anything will just take me out. And sometimes I even just physically, I start to get achy and I just don't feel right.

The last one for me is my mental health really suffers dramatically from bad sleep. So I start having more difficulty with my thoughts. I have more anxious thoughts, racing thoughts. I get into a funk too where everything just seems dark and gloomy and sad. I have a hard time just being able to shake off little things that normally wouldn't be such a big deal.

And I remember at one point at one of the lowest sleep points in my life, I had a young baby and I think we all know that that is not a time when you get great sleep. But I was trying to nurse the baby and I had with both of my kids just terrible difficulties producing enough milk for them despite all of the best efforts and support in the world that you could imagine just there's some physical reasons why that was the case. But in any case, I was trying to nurse him and I didn't want to supplement with a bottle and I just was not getting any sleep. And this baby was not a great sleeper either. He had some health challenges and it was hard for him to be asleep for even 30 or 45 minutes at a time. 

And at the lowest point of that, I remember he was probably, I don't know, about four or five months old and I was attending a postpartum depression support group because I was really struggling. And I remember one of the women in the group was talking about how her postpartum depression becomes so bad that she had to go check in

at a mental hospital. And at the time, I remember thinking, "Oh my gosh, if I could check into the mental hospital, then I could sleep. And that sounds amazing.” 

And that was the point at which I realized, "Okay, something's got to give here. I can't get up in the middle of the night, every 30, 45 minutes, nurse a baby, try to go back to sleep and do it all over again in less than an hour."

Like, this is not working, I can't function. I was also working full-time at that time. So for me, that was a real indicator that significant sleep deprivation, there's a reason why it's a common torture tactic. It really is torturous. And for me, in particular, it is extremely hard on my body and my mental and physical health.

There are also some interesting studies on sleep and longevity. Getting good sleep can add years to your life or to frame it differently, getting bad sleep can take years off of your life.

I'll link in the show notes to this February 2023 study that was presented at the American College of Cardiology and World Congress of Cardiology. The study had 170,000 plus people participating in it.

Here are some of the findings you might be interested in. Young people who have more beneficial sleep habits are incrementally less likely to die early. In fact, about 8% of deaths from any cause can be attributed to poor sleep patterns.

There were five key factors that they looked at and used to rate people's sleep. First, did they get an ideal sleep duration? Seven to eight hours per night. Second, did they have difficulty falling asleep no more than twice a week? Third, did they have trouble staying asleep

no more than twice a week? Fourth, did they not use any sleep medication? And finally, did they feel well rested after they woke up at least five days a week?

What the researchers found was people who reported achieving all five of those quality sleep measures, their life expectancy was 4.7 years greater for men and 2.4 years greater for women compared with those who had none or only one of the five favorable elements of low-risk sleep.

So when we think about improving our sleep, we really wanna be looking at three factors: quality, quantity, and consistency.

When we talk about quality, you wanna think of this as trying to reduce interruptions to your sleep, trying to minimize how long you're awake for stretches in the middle of the night or how long you're tossing and turning in bed.

When we talk about quantity, recognize that everybody has a set point and for most of us, that sweet spot is in the seven to nine hours a night range. And even though you might think, well, I'm one of those people who can get by on four hours a night or five hours a night, can you? There are some of you out there. You're basically genetic super freaks who only need four hours of sleep a night or five.

But there is no skimping on sleep if you need more than that. So just because you can hobble along on weekdays, getting, let's say, four or five, six hours of sleep a night doesn't mean that your body doesn't actually need more.

If you look at some of the books by Laura Vanderkam, she does these time studies where she has women document and sometimes men too, document how they spend their entire lives in 15 minute increments.

And what she's found when it comes to sleep is that if you're getting minimal sleep or poor quality sleep, especially if you're cutting, you're kind of burning the midnight oil and you're cutting yourself short, you have a tendency, well, your body has a tendency to make up the sleep whether you want it to or not.

So the next night you might be sitting down watching television at seven o'clock at night and you fall asleep on the couch on and off, or you might try to read a book and fall asleep. Or you might lay down with your kid when they're napping and you fall asleep too.

So you ultimately make up whatever sleep that you miss, your body finds a way to steal it from the other hours in your day. And unfortunately, when you are stealing sleep like that or when your body is, it's not good quality sleep. So you may not feel rested enough, but your body will make it up and take it from time that you'd probably rather be doing other things. So Laura says, an easy way to test and see, are you one of those super sleepers who doesn't actually need seven or eight hours a night? Well, an easy way to test is let's say you're getting less than that on weekdays. What do you do on the weekends? If you are one of these super genetic freaks who needs minimal amounts of sleep, you will wake up after that same six hours or whatever it is that you get on weekdays. You're gonna wake up at that time on weekends too. You won't be able to sleep in.

But if you are not a genetic super freak and you do actually need more sleep than that, if you're skimping on the weekdays, you're gonna sleep in on the weekends. And again, if you look at the research into this, getting sleep that's broken up like that, where it's clustered too long at sometimes, too little at others, it's not as good for your performance or your health.

So that's why I list consistency as the third factor to consider. You really wanna aim to keep your bedtime and your waking times within an hour or two from day to day, whether it's a weekday or a weekend.

So if on weeknights you go to bed at 10 o'clock and you wake up at seven, you wanna aim to keep your bedtime, within an hour or two of that on the weekends too and your wake up time. And yes, that does mean you ought to consider giving yourself a bedtime.

So to that end, a couple ideas for how you can improve your sleep. Let's start with your bedroom. There are ways to improve your bedroom to make sleep and rest much better. And by the way, some of these are really helpful for your kids or your babies as well.

So for me, I like to root out all sources of artificial light. That means I cover the lights in my room that are on like little appliances. I even have one on an internet router in my room that I keep the little light covered because it keeps me awake. You wanna make sure that the hall lights are turned out that you don't have night lights going. Look all over your room. If it isn't pitch black in there at night, try to figure out how to get rid of those lights.

You can also invest in blackout curtains, especially if you have street lights outside of your window or there are things that maybe go on and off in the middle of the night outside your window such as siren lights, cars, that sort of thing.

This sounds extreme, but you'd be surprised not only will it improve your sleep dramatically, but it also will improve your menstrual cycles if you are still cycling because artificial light actually interferes with your body's circadian rhythms and hormones. Fun fact.

The next thing that's really helpful to do is to have white noise in the room. I have a white noise machine that I love. I've been through probably five of them in the last two decades. Mine's made by Homedics and I'll put a link in the show notes. I love it so much. I actually keep a spare in my suitcase so that I have it with me when I travel because hotel noises and Airbnb's are not always well situated for silence.

For me, I like to do ocean waves. I find that that's very soothing. If you use the same type of white noise, no matter what you choose, rain or traditional white noise or vacuum cleaner, whatever setting you like to use, if you use the same one consistently, it actually becomes sort of a Pavlovian cue that helps you go to sleep. So when I hear the sound of ocean waves, I'm automatically shifting towards sleeping mode.

Now, I know there are some studies about, just white noise interferes with your brain development and your brain signals, et cetera, but if you are like me or your kids are and you startle very easily and you wake very easily to noises, I think it is more than worthwhile to invest in a white noise machine. You can also get white noise apps on your phone, but I prefer to keep my phone as far away from you at night as possible, which is actually a key improvement you can make to your bedroom. Get the TV out of there, do not use your phone in your room and if you can, even charge it somewhere else. If you can't charge it somewhere else, at least bury it under lots of blankets or something so that you're not seeing the light from it and it's not emitting right next to your head.

If you have babies or young kids or other types of nighttime responsibilities such as a puppy or an aging pet, maybe a parent who needs you in the middle of the night and you have a partner, consider alternating who is on duty and who is off duty at night. Either split the night in half or do it every other night, but getting unbroken long stretches of sleep really helps a lot when you have nighttime responsibilities. So if you can, figure out a way to share the load and get creative on how you enforce that. So for example, if one of you wakes up every time someone is needed, even if it's the other's responsibility, you're not really reaping the benefits of getting unbroken sleep, are you?

So it might make sense during this season of your life, maybe you sleep in separate bedrooms and one of you has the white noise cranked away up and has all the things that are there that are blocking out the interruptions and you switch rooms as needed. It's not easy, none of that is easy, being on call in the middle of the night, but whatever you can do to make it easier on both of you or on yourself if you don't have a partner, so much the better.

And look, when it comes to babies in particular, if you are a young parent, there is a lot out there to make you convinced that anything you do to try to improve your child's sleep is either going to have life-altering consequences for them in a good way or in a bad way.

And I will just tell you as a parent of two kids who are now teenagers, each who slept very differently and who had very different levels of difficulty with sleep, you're not gonna screw things up that badly. Just do your best, but recognize everybody in the house has needs and that includes you. So, you know, if they have to cry a little bit sometimes so that you can get some rest, great. If they sleep better and you sleep better with them in your room, it's fine, they're not gonna still be in your room when they're 17 years old.

You know, figure it out, one kid or situation at a time and let go of the guilt because there's just so much of that in the parenting world.

The next thing I find helpful is to have a really consistent bedtime ritual. There's a reason why we do this for little kids and yet somehow when we grow up, we forget to do it for ourselves.

So for me, I like to do a couple of things. First is, I notice that if I wait too long to get ready for bed, I start putting off the going to bed process because I'm tired and it feels like too much work. So whenever possible, I actually like to wash up and brush my teeth and change into my pajamas and all of that, pretty much when I'm done cleaning up from dinner. That's gonna be hours before I'm ready for bed but then when it's time for bed, it's very little I have to do and also it keeps me from snacking or drinking wine at night which is, you know, generally not a great habit for your sleep or for your health.

The next thing I like to do is turn off my phone entirely or at least move it into gray scale mode, minimum of one hour before bed. I actually like to do that after dinner and not go anywhere near the computer or my phone after dinner. But if I, for some reason, am on my phone, I will switch it to gray scale mode and that makes it much less appealing and it's just kind of tiring to look at. So I usually don't spend lots of time on it.

I like to use meditation in particular the Insight Timer app. I like the guided meditations on there. I like to use that as either a transition activity or as something I do while I'm already in bed and I'll talk more about that in a minute. But it's a nice way to kind of indicate to myself and slow down a little bit that, okay, I'm moving from wake to wake up time, thinking time, work time, family time, into quiet sleep alone time.

I also like to keep an easy to read book and I mean a physical book, not a Kindle or an e-reader by my bed. When I say easy to read, it has to be something that's kind of light and fun, but not so good and engaging that I'm tempted to stay up late reading it and definitely nothing that's suspenseful or scary or anything like that's gonna give me nightmares.

But what I do at the book is I'll read a chapter or two in bed or sometimes I'll sit in an armchair that I keep next to my bed. I try to keep the light kind of low as low as I can and still comfortably read and as soon as I start getting sleepy, then I will put the book down and climb into bed. I also keep that book there as a reminder that if I wake up in the middle of the night and I can't fall back asleep that the book is a good thing for me to get up and read for a little bit.

The last thing is a more recent addition to my bedtime ritual. Consider buying yourself a weighted face mask. This is like a face mask sort of like an eye mask, you know, you think of you might use on an airplane or at the spa, but it has little tiny weights in it. So it gives you deep tissue pressure.

I use one from Nodpod and I'll put a link in the show notes to it, but this is just revolutionized my sleep at night. There's something about that gentle pressure on over my eyes at night that helps me to fall asleep. And it actually also helps me to stay asleep if I wake up in the middle of the night.

So let's talk about that nighttime wake up thing. I do have some difficulty with this. Usually I can fall asleep easily, but if I'm going through a time of high stress or anxiety, my brain decides middle of the night is the best time to wake up and try to work the problem.

So if you wake up in the middle of the night, first rule of thumb is do not lay there tossing and turning, trying to fall back asleep. If you don't fall back asleep within a minute or two, go ahead and just get up out of it. The way that I usually test this is I will put on a little weighted face mask. I'll put it back on my head and I will also turn on my meditation app and try a sleep meditation.

And if I'm not conked out by the time that sleep meditation is done, then okay, that's not working, time to move on to the next thing. So for me, the next thing is I will get up out of bed. I will turn on my little reading lamp if my partner is not there and if he is there, then I will usually go downstairs to the living room and turn on one lamp there. And I will read my easy book until I feel sleepy. A lot of times I might only be at a chapter or two and then I will fall right back asleep. Other times I might finish the book before I finally fall back asleep, but it allows me to not stress about the fact that I'm awake and it helps ease me back into sleep.

And there's quite a bit of research behind that. So if you need further convincing, do a little googling, you will find that there is very strong evidence that reading is a good activity to do if you wake up in the middle of the night, laying there stressing about the fact that you're awake is not a good activity and screens are no good. So don't watch TV, don't get an e-reader out, don't look at your phone above all else.

If like me, you have the particular challenge that when you are under stress or you've undergone some kind of difficulty, you wake up in the middle of the night with your mind working a problem over and over and over again. But you're in that like half awake, half asleep mode where you can't really remember not to just lay there trying to fall back asleep or you keep like drifting in and out of consciousness, but you keep waking up with those same thoughts.

Well first, know that you're not alone. That is a big challenge I have too. And here are two things I found that's helpful. One is if I keep my weighted face mask right by my bed, I for some reason will remember if I wake up in that state, I'll usually remember that it's there and I'll put it back on my face. And for some reason that light pressure really helps me a lot to go back to sleep and unhook from my brain. I don't know why, but I can't usually remember at that time of night in that sort of lucid, half awake, half asleep state. I can't remember to get up and read a book, but I can remember to put the mask on.

The other thing that's really helpful is actually a tip I got from Cole Baker Bagwell who was on the podcast a few episodes ago. She said, you know, you can prime yourself with a mantra that you say before bed. If this is a struggle for you, maybe even say it a few times throughout the day and then remind yourself before bed. And she made the suggestion of using, “I am here, I am safe, I am loved.”

So I tried that one out and it actually did help a lot. I said it a few times during the day to myself, kind of on top of the hour sort of thing. Well, I said it to myself before I went to sleep and when I woke up in the middle of the night with my racing thoughts, 'cause I was going through a tough time at the time, those words actually popped into my head and I was able to unhook and go back to sleep.

So as I wrap up today's episode, I wanted to give you a quick update on two items from my 24 in 24 list, which you may remember from episode 15. Number 18 was to investigate and heal my wounded wing. I told you that I had made an appointment after suffering for about a year with pain in my left shoulder. I'd made an appointment to have it looked at on January 2nd. And so I am pleased to report that last with many things we put off because we are worried that we're gonna find out something we don't wanna hear. That was not the case. Turns out that it is a rotator cuff injury, most likely could be tendonitis, might be a minor tear, but she said I have fantastic range of motion in that shoulder still, thanks to yoga. And so while I might see a difference in how flexible that shoulder is, and while it's certainly causing me a lot of pain, it actually probably is not going to need surgery. So she's given me a month's worth of exercises to do at home, to rehab it, a whole bunch of anti-inflammatory meds to try to bring the swelling down. And with any luck, we'll be back in motion.

List item number 14 was to have a proper date night each month. And I'm really glad I put this one on the list because January is my birthday month, but with our schedules being busy as they are, if I hadn't had this on the list, I wouldn't have taken the time to realize we only have one weekend in the entire month of January when we can actually do something together and we don't have kids or other plans. So we have something fun planned and I am excited to start planning ahead for February and March.

I've been meaning to tell you what I've been reading lately. This is a really fun cozy mystery called Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Sutanto. I will put a link in the show notes. Highly recommend it is hilarious.

And if you're wondering what I've been cooking up in the kitchen this week, well, after a whole lot of holiday cooking, the only thing I've really been making is tea. I found this wonderful herbal tea called winter spice from Twinings and it has apple and chamomile, cinnamon, cardamom, clove, it's just delightful. And caffeine free, so I've been enjoying lots and lots of cups of that.