Success Systems

S7E3 Morgan Adams: Can't sleep as an entrepreneur? Here's how to change that...

• Michael Bauman • Season 7 • Episode 3

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Morgan Adams is a holistic sleep coach for women struggling with consistently getting a good night's sleep.  Morgan is an accredited health coach with multiple advanced certifications in sleep science. She’s a sought-after podcast guest and expert for websites like MindBodyGreen. 

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https://www.morganadamswellness.com/

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https://www.instagram.com/morganadams.wellness/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/morganadamswellness/

Morgan Adams:

I would lie there in bed for probably two hours on average most nights waiting for sleep to happen and it was extremely frustrating. My anxiety was through the roof because I had to get up at six o'clock in the morning to get to a job that started at eight or whatever. And it was just really an anxiety provoking time in my life.

How do we truly feel like a success in every area of our lives? How do we feel enough and know that we are not alone? Join me as I interview some of the top leaders and experts in the world, from Broadway directors to multimillionaire, CEOs, neuroscientists, and more to look behind the curtain of success and examine not only the achievements, but also the fears. The. The loneliness and how we can navigate through that to create the incredible life we actually want to live. Welcome to Success Engineering.

Michael Bauman:

Welcome back to Success Engineering. I'm your host, Michael Bauman. I have the pleasure of having Morgan Adams on. She's a holistic sleep coach for women. But you know, the tips apply just for everybody who struggled to get. Good night's sleep consistently. She's an accredited health coach. She has multiple advanced certifications in sleep science, sought after podcast guests, expert for websites like Mindbodygreen whole host of other things. I'm really excited about this show cuz sleep is super, super important. So welcome to the show here, Morgan. Thank you so much, Michael. Absolutely good to have you. So you were, I mean, you're crushing it, basically, you're a pharmaceutical sales rep. You're kind of checking those boxes, quote unquote, in terms of life. But talk to us about what happened. You had a crisis in, your early thirties and this kind of sets the stage for what you do now, essentially as a sleep coach. Can you talk to us about what that happened and what that kind of led you?

Morgan Adams:

Yeah, for sure. So when I was in my mid thirties, I had a relationship crisis that I'll spare everyone the details about But basically what ended up happening with that is that I developed a lot of anxiety, which triggered an episode of insomnia. Now the way that I presented with my insomnia, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners can relate to this scenario, is I had sleep onset insomnia, and that's basically when you can't fall asleep. Mm-hmm. So I would lie there in bed for. Probably two hours on average, most nights waiting for sleep to happen. And sleep did not come for quite a while, and it was extremely frustrating. My anxiety was through the roof because I had to get up at, you know, six o'clock in the morning to get to a job that started at eight or whatever. And it was just really an anxiety provoking time in my life. Mm-hmm. Unfortunately, like a lot of people, actually, 80% of people have side effects the next day from sleeping pills and sleeping pill that I took is called ambient. I'm sure everyone's heard of it. It's a sedative, hypnotic sleeping pill and. I was very groggy. I had trouble concentrating at work. I couldn't focus, I was in a position at work where I had to write very quickly if there was a crisis, like put out a press release. And there were times when I couldn't perform at my job adequately. I couldn't write fast enough because I was still kind of like quote hungover from the Ambien the night before. And it just, was very, very stressful for me to. Have to deal with the side effects. Yet I was uncomfortable unwilling, I guess, to give up the pills because I need, I needed the sleep. Mm-hmm. So this went on for about eight years. and I met my current husband at this point in time and in our early stages of dating. He said to me one night, you know, after you take that pill, you kind of change personality. You kind of act like a zombie. Quite frankly, it's freaking me out. Mm-hmm. and Michael. That was like my wake up call to like, Hey, wait a minute. I have to find a way to stop taking these pills and confront this. Mm-hmm. and so, I decided to do something that I don't advise doing to the, to your listeners, don't do this. Don't do what I did, but I'll don't do, I'll be transparent and share. What I did is I just took myself off the pills myself. Mm-hmm. Okay. Technically. in order to get off of a sleeping pill like Ambien, you really do need the guidance of your prescriber because there is a titration schedule, a tapering down schedule that is advisable to follow. And also it's, it's helpful to have somebody in your corner like a sleep coach. Along with your provider, right? Giving you that accountability and support, because it's not easy to do, it's not easy to take, to stop taking these pills. I managed to kind of, grit my teeth through it, and I got through it. I, I was off the sleeping pills. And I slept pretty decently for many years after that. I wouldn't say I was, like a superstar sleeper or anything, but I got by and I didn't have many issues. But then there was a plot twist and that plot twist was March of 2020 Remember what happened back then, right? This is right, right when the pandemic happened. Mm-hmm. and. I started to have problems with my sleep again, like a lot of people did, and I was committed to not falling back into like the true insomnia pattern. Hmm. So what I did was I started looking at Dr. Google and trying to figure out, sleep tips and ways to, you know, prevent insomnia and so on and so forth. And, I, I did get myself back on track fortunately. And what I ended up doing was just because I was kind of so excited that I could change my sleep that I just started to share organically on Facebook and social media, the things that I was doing to help me with my sleep. And I came to find out that there were a lot of people in my situation who were struggling with sleep during this time. Mm-hmm. and my tips were very well received. And so I started to think. You know the, I was at kind of at a crossroads, like, what do I wanna do with my career? And it was at this point that I said to myself, you have so much information with about sleep and you're so passionate about it, you have to help other people overcome their sleep issues. And so that is what led me to becoming a sleep coach about a year and a half ago. So it was a long and long and winding road to get here, but here I am.

Michael Bauman:

But I, but I love right one cuz it's just like, it is obviously so personal, like it's just like something that you have worked with for years and even, decades like working through this and. Even, even having like in 2020, like the stress things happened, it started to come back again. But you're like, no, I'm gonna double down on what I know to be true to, to work for this. And then sharing that with other people I think is so, so powerful. So let's, let's dive into it and kind of talk to, cuz a lot of my listeners are, are entrepreneurs and things like that and we have that mindset where it's just like, I'll kind of sleep when I'm dead sort of thing, right? It's like, it's just, we're really busy, we have all these things we need to do. Sleep gets chucked to the back burner.. So can you share about how important it is, like the benefits of it, and then also kind of the detriments when we don't end up getting that sleep?

Morgan Adams:

Sure. Well, we often hear about the three P pillars of health, which are, you know, nutrition, movement, and sleep. And I feel that sleep has been kind of the redheaded stepchild of the trio. And my mission is to really become like a PR agent for sleep because I, I personally believe, and yes, I'm biased, but I, I truly believe that sleep is the foundation, the upon which of those pillars. You could not eat for several days and be okay. You could not have movement your whole life. I wouldn't advise it, but the longest record that someone has not slept has been 11 days. And you know, in the media there are a lot of articles about sleep cuz I've track all of the articles and the, and the press and stuff like that. And there's a lot of scary things that you read about sleep deprivation and what happens if you don't sleep. And, you know, I really, I find that. Pieces of content are helpful for only a certain segment of the, the world, and I think that kind of scary information is only helpful to an extent for people who willingly s sleep deprived themselves, who are burning the candle at both ends. The person who's, hustling until 2:00 AM working. But those kind of scary media stories are very detrimental for people who have insomnia to read. Mm-hmm. because the people who have insomnia are trying, they're giving an effort, a full effort to sleep, but they're just not able to attain that sleep. So I really like to talk about all the benefits of sleep over the, the things that are scary. So if you think about sleep and all the benefits it brings, I mean there, there's so many and we'll, I'll just go through a few. First to, to my mind comes, brain health. We need adequate sleep to have functioning healthy brains. We found recently, you know, within the last 10 years or so, that we have something called a glymphatic system, and it's basically the lymphatic system for our brain. And so when we are in that phase of deep sleep, It's sort of like we're getting a brainwash in a, in a good sense, and so some of those some of those toxins get flushed out of our brains. So we have that as far as like brain health benefits, We also have some really good cardiovascular benefits. When we sleep, it helps us lower our blood pressure while we're sleeping, we're able to achieve hormone balance. When we have a really good night of sleep, we're able to balance our cortisol, our sex hormones, our hunger hormones. We are able to better regulate our moods and emotions when we've had a good night. I think everyone here listening can attest to the fact that if they've had a really poor night of sleep, they're on edge the next day, right? They're grumpy. They might be more combative with their coworker or partner. And as far as becoming healthier, for fighting infections. We know that having adequate sleep helps boost our immune system. It can protect us from getting colds and flu. So, and if you're looking at somebody who's an athlete, for example, we know that having good sleep helps muscle repair. And recovery from a hard workout. So there are just so many benefits. I will touch on things that happen maybe negatively for a minute about when you're not having enough sleep and short term consequences of not having enough sleep would be. Just like we I said earlier irritability, grumpiness bad mood. You'd also experience some low energy, some problems concentrating memory. You might get sick more often. If you're looking at long-term sleep deprivation, you're looking at things that are more like obesity, risk increasing, cardiovascular issues arising high blood pressure, that kind of thing. Now, I will say, because I don't like the scare tactics that a lot of the media present as far as like long-term sleep deprivation, I feel like. You know, I, I wanna promote sleep. That's what, that's what I do for a living. It's my passion. But I just also wanna share that when they are doing, when they're talking about these studies in the media, some of the studies aren't done very well, and it's actually hard to do these studies. So they're almost looking at correlation data. Hmm. And correlation is not the same as causation. So they're looking at links. Not actual A causes B. So I just, I wanna throw that out. Just, especially for the people who are dealing with insomnia and are very frightful of the fact that they're not sleeping. Because when you're, when you have insomnia, having the anxiety that it comes from, seeing all these scary things does not help your insomnia. At all

Michael Bauman:

Right, right, right. And it's, it's like the difference, as a, like a health coach, but the difference between approach goals and avoidance goals. So, so often, in the health world or just in general, we're like, I wanna, avoid getting unhealthy, or I, I wanna like, Lose weight where the, all the studies have showed if we set approach goals towards what do you want, rather, what do you not want? Yeah. Like, like who do you wanna be? What life do you wanna live? What energy levels do you wanna have? You know, and you can check all of those boxes. You can Google sleep in any, thing of life. It's like you're talking about that, that underlying. it's shown to benefit all of those things, and I think that's really important. So, but talk to us talk to us about that insomnia thing, right? Because you have just general kind of not sleeping well, and we'll get into tips with that. And the tips, you know, correlate across both for insomnia. But what can people do that are struggling with insomnia and don't know where to start?

Morgan Adams:

Yeah. Well, I would say, you know, the biggest reason that I personally see for people having insomnia is anxiety. And one of the things that I think works the best to deal with that anxiety is a mindfulness practice. So when I'm working with my clients, we really delve into this pretty deeply because most of my clients are having anxiety about sleeping and they're having anxiety about the consequences of not sleeping. So, some of, there's so many mindfulness practices out there, but a few that I'll just mention that, that are attainable for pretty much everyone would be meditation. There are some studies showing that meditation does help with insomnia. And the really cool thing about meditation is, is that. If you are a beginner, you have so many free resources out there to get started. You know, off the top of my head there are, there's Insight timer. There's a meditation app called Calm. I mean, you just Google meditation apps. They're countless and there's something for everybody and, and meditation. And there's also breath work, which is quite helpful to help people especially who have maybe more physical. You know, their breathing really ha their heart rate's going pretty quickly and they're breathing quickly. There's breath work that can kind of calm the breath. There's progressive muscle relaxation. That's often helpful. And there's another technique that I really like to implement with my clients that has been really effective. It's sort of mindfulness, but it's a little bit more I guess it's called constructive worry. And it's an exercise and I'll just share with you what it is. It's kind of like brain dumping. So the whole idea behind this is that you get some of your thoughts out on paper before you go to bed because a lot of times people who are fall trying to fall asleep, or if they wake up at night, they'll start ruminating on the things that they're worried. So if you can get these things on paper, the theory is that you'll worry less at night when you're supposed to be sleeping. Mm-hmm. So how you do this is you get a piece of paper. I prefer a j like a journal, like a nice looking journal to kind of make it a ritual. But any piece of paper Will, will do, you just draw a line down the center of the paper and on the left hand side, co side column you write worries or concerns. And then on the right hand side column, you write solutions and you basically just brain dump all the things you're worried about. And then for each thing that you're worried, In the solutions column, you write the next, so next step to solving that problem. Hmm. And it could be something very concrete, like, you know, my, I have a flat tire. Okay. Very concrete solution to that. If it's something more nebulous like you're worried about, I don't, I don't like the way Sally looked at me at work yesterday. You know, you could, troubleshoot on like, well, can I talk with her? Or whatever. It doesn't, you don't have to have an immediate solution, but you're just really. Trying to pin down the next step to working on that problem. I recommend that people do this kind of early in the evening. Usually my clients like to do this after, after dinner. It's nice, a nice anchor point because you don't wanna really do it right before bed because then you've kind of just got it too fresh, freshen your mind. So those are some ways that I really find My clients who have insomnia to get some relief from their stress and anxiety before they go to bed. And just to kind of circle back to the meditation and breath work, I call things like this, mindfulness snacks, right? Yeah. And my suggestion for folks who want to, to have a mindfulness practice for their sleep is not to just rely on the mindfulness practices right before they sleep. Really, mindfulness begins from the second you wake up and your feet hit the floor, so, mm-hmm. I recommend that people do something in the morning, some kind of mindfulness practice, and then maybe during their workday or you know, their day, like midday, take a break and do another kind of mindfulness snack, and then in the evening before bed, do a mindfulness snack so that you're really kind of dealing with things in the moment versus letting things kind of pile up. And by the end of the day you're like, Ugh, there's just too much. Mm-hmm.

Michael Bauman:

Yeah. I think that's super, super important. And it's, it's similar to David Allen's Getting Things Done. If you're familiar with that productivity kind of framework, but looking at like what, what does done actually mean and what's the next action to get there? Mm-hmm. And getting that out of your brain. And he, he talks about having like an external brain, you get that information outta your brain cuz your brain isn't actually really great at storing all that stuff. So getting that out, putting that out on paper. And like you talked about, not doing it right before bed because then you're not getting all your cognitive stuff ramped up and your anxiety stuff ramped up, but you're bookmarking your day to, go, I sorted a little bit of the solutions and stuff to this. And it's a trigger to like start winding down as well. I think that's really, really important. Can you talk about like, you were starting to talk about with the mindfulness in the morning, so talk about the three M'S of the morning routine. And this goes right into right into mindfulness to what you're talking about.

Morgan Adams:

Yeah. So I, I'm a real big proponent of a strong morning routine and there's a quote by Louise Hay that I absolutely love. It's how you start your day is how you live your day. So really good sleep begins the second you wake up. And so the morning routine is, I think, a little bit more important than evening routine. I know that sounds somewhat counterintuitive, but we really wanna be intentional about our mornings and be purposeful because they can set us up for the rest of the day. If you're able to tackle some of those kind of I guess, buffer yourself up in the morning to protect yourself against those stresses because you don't want those stresses to pile up over the course of the day. So the three M's that I talk would be movement, mindfulness, and mindset. And so ideally you would want to allot about an hour for this whole morning routine practice. And I've realized, you know, that we all are living different lives. I'm sure a lot of your audience members are, really busy entrepreneurs raising a family and their mornings can be probably really chaotic. So if you don't have an hour, no. See if you have a half an hour. If you don't, half, half an hour, 20 minutes. If you don't have 20 minutes, devote 10 minutes to this. But really just make sure that you have some kind of movement in the morning. And ideally that would be something like, maybe a walk outside, for example, because you really wanna make sure that at some point in the early morning you're getting sunlight in your eyes because that is really triggering like a cascade of really important hormones and neurotransmitters to be lined up for the rest of the day and into the evening. But the movement could be yoga or stretching. Just something to get your body. And then the second part of this, and these, these can be done in any order, but the second component would be mindfulness. And that would include, you know, like the meditation or the breath work or even just sitting in silence.

Michael Bauman:

Talk to us a little bit about the difference between meditation and breath work.

Morgan Adams:

Yeah, so meditation I, I think is more like, I mean, you can mix the two for sure, because there's certain meditation tracks that I've listened to that have breathing as well. But meditation to me seems more like you're listening to some verbal cues and you're kind of going on a journey. Breath work, I just, I find that. It's really more just the act of paying attention to the breath. There really isn't a lot of, there's no really no talking. Now there is sort of a, a rule of thumb that it's a general rule of thumb, but you know, I think it's a good place to start if you are the kind of person who is more in their head, ruminating. You kind of wanna get out of your head and into your body. And so in that instance, I think breath work is probably a good practice. But if you're the kind of person who is sort of more physically wound up, like your, you know, your breath is, is fast, your heart rate is fast, you may wanna get out of your body and into your mind and do meditation. So that's just a general rule of thumb. And then the third element of the morning would be mindset. And that could be a variety of different things. So that could be a positive book, like a self-development book. It could be journaling, it could be doing affirmations. There's just a variety of different things you could do, but I feel like if you can do all three of those elements, even if you have five minutes to do each one, you've you're setting yourself up for a more productive, less stressful day that will carry you into. Hopefully a less stressful evening for better sleep. Mm-hmm.

Michael Bauman:

Yeah, absolutely. And, and it's super important, and I love how you talk about too, like you, you have the ideal, and this is actually how you know, I, I structure my days. I'll set a minimum. So it's like there's minimum things that it doesn't matter what's going on, I'll do, you know, one minute of something or five minutes of something. And those activities actually like what got me through covid, right? It might be like five minutes of jump roper, five minutes of sun's salutation yoga or whatever it is. And that got me through. But then when, when I have more energy and I have more capacity, then I might be, you know, hitting that hour. So it's like I actually plan for the minimum and I plan for the maximum. But allowing yourself, I like how you talk about allowing yourself, it's okay. Just do, just do those small things and do'em, you know, throughout the day to kind of reset is, is really important. And I think, I really appreciate you, you mentioning that. I'm curious for you, what is what does your kind of morning look like?

Morgan Adams:

Yeah, well it's, it's pretty similar to what I just shared, But my morning routine I'll first meditate. It's kind of interesting. I have something called Brain Tap. It's a really cool device that you have a headset and then there's an visor that you kind of pull over the headset. it's in front of your eyes and you, you can see lights and the, there's audio where you hear different tracks and there's different tones. And I wish I knew the words or the way to describe the tones, but It's like meditation on steroids is the best way to describe it. No way. And it's kind of like, I'm not, I'm, I would say I'm not a great meditator cuz I have kind of like the monkey mind. There's a lot of chatter and I find that this device the brain tap helps get me into a s more of a calm state where I'm able to kind of focus on the meditation. So I do that for about 10 to 20 minutes. Then I do my movement, I do actually a full workout routine in the morning. I do more than a few minutes, probably half hour to an hour, depending on what I'm doing. I do a sauna, and then I do some kind of journaling. Sometimes it's about how I want my day to go setting goals for the day. So I have a, a fairly lengthy morning routine to be honest, but I've, I plan for it. I don't have kids, so my morning is, is really mine and I really, I'm protective of, of it. So that's kind of my morning. Yeah.

Michael Bauman:

Yeah. I think it's really important, you know, so, so often we think about, money. Well, I mean, if we're talking about success, we think about these resources that we have and we think about money then we think about time sometimes, right? We think about how we trade money, but what's overlooked a lot of times is like energy, like our energy capital that we actually have. And what you're talking about is all about just going like, how do I actually come into the day where I am, you know, contributing energy? And I, I had. Mark Verstegen on, he's the founder of EXOS and the N F L performance director and he's talks about as a leader, what you're needing to do is you're needing to generate energy. So many people, you know, they're like trying to get energy from other places, but as a leader, you need to generate energy or if you want to like step into your life or, you know, live it however you want, like you talk about it, you're like, I have this morning routine. I protect it because it is creating the life I wanna live and it's generating that energy. So talk to us about on the other side, the power down hour of the evening routine.

Morgan Adams:

Yeah, so I I'm a big fan of winding down in the evening because sleep is not an on off switch. We really, it's more like we're. Kind of landing the plane as, as Matthew Walker likes to talk about, we're landing the plane. You have to just kind of glide into it. And if you think about folks who have little children like yourself you know, you don't just like, let them run wild and then just, Place'em in bed, right? it's time for your bed. You, you do those things to get them kind of just calm. You read them a story, you give them a bath. And what I find so interesting is that we as adults often don't give ourselves that wind down routine that we give our kids. So I really like to encourage people to to do some kind of wind down routine and, you know, sort of like the morning routine. An hour would be excellent, but if you don't have an hour, at least give yourself 30 minutes. So let's just say that you had an hour. I would say the first 20 minutes would be devoted to things that you need to do to prepare for the next day. Now that could be like packing a lunch, picking out your clothes for the next day, you know, to-do list followed by like 20 minutes of your own personal hygiene, like brushing your teeth washing your face, putting on your pajama. And then, you know, the final part, the final 20 minutes or so would be your relaxation technique, and that could be really whatever you find relaxing, you know, it could be again, meditating. It could be journaling, breath work stretching I think a lot of people get a chuckle out of the fact that my evening routine, honestly, I watch TV people are like, what? That is a sacrilege. You are a sleep coach Let me tell you how I watch TV without it impacting my sleep. Mm-hmm. And negatively. So, the way I do this is I watch TV on a regular tv, not a laptop. So the TV is actually fairly far from me. Hmm. I also put on blue light blocking glasses. Now there's, you know, there's some evidence, I mean, there's mixed evidence about blue light blocking glasses. But I use them just for good measure and I personally find that when I use like the dark red lenses, I do become sleepy within 30 to 60 minutes. Mm-hmm. But I think really the biggest thing that you have to look out for if you're gonna watch some kind of content at night, is you have to make sure that it's not stimulating or too scary or anxiety provoking. That is key. So I, do this TV watching with my husband. We always choose shows that are just very neutral, like cooking shows or maybe just documentaries of something interesting. So I think, if TV relaxes you, then why not watch it? Hmm. The only thing I would suggest as far as like the room that you watch it in, I really would suggest that you don't watch it in. Because sometimes you may end up falling asleep with it on, and then that light and the noise of the TV disturbs your sleep. Mm-hmm. so. That's

Michael Bauman:

super refreshing. You know, it's, it's nice. It's nice because like, lot of times we talk about, you know, myself included, right? You just have like, oh, it looks like this perfect thing. Right? But there's just the reality of living and I appreciate you talking about TV like that. It's interesting in the winter. Yeah. I'll typically watch more TV. In the summer I won't just cuz it's, or not as much, just cuz it's lighter. But I, I appreciate you talking about that. Yeah. Talk, talk to us about Temperature as well. Yeah. With both, you know, in your bedroom and things like that.

Morgan Adams:

Yeah, that's a great subject because we really need our body's core temperature to be lowered two to three degrees in order to initiate sleep. And so one way we can do that is by lowering the temperature of our bedroom. So you basically wanna make your bedroom temperature slightly lower than the temperature of the rest of your. A lot of people are like, well, how many degrees is that? And you know, there's kind of a general rule of thumb, like maybe 65 to 70 degrees would be ideal. I have heard that over like 70 degrees, you're more at risk of having nightmares. So I would definitely try to keep it below 70 to prevent nightmares. Also like for people who are hot sleepers, well, I'll just back up and say that bamboo sheets tend to be more cooling than cotton sheets and bamboo sleepwear as well. And for people who are hot sleepers menopausal women, I'm raising my hand on that one. You know, something like a cooling mattress pad can be an absolute game changer for your. And I use one myself called the Chili Pad. You can program it to be as cool or as warm as you want. And the really cool thing is that the cool thing, no pun intended, is that when you have your body temperature low, During deep sleep, you're gonna really facilitate more of that deep sleep. Hmm. I've noticed definitely an increase in my deep sleep when I, when I have that chili pad, because I track my sleep every night and when I'm out of town and without the chili pad, my deep sleep is never as profound.

Michael Bauman:

Mm-hmm. talk to us about what you use to track the sleep?

Morgan Adams:

Yes, I use an Oura ring. I like the Oura ring because it stays on your finger as opposed to ones that are worn on your wrist. There are three ones that I think are basically seen as the top three most accurate aura ring Fitbit, and Woop. I think they're all really great. It just kind of depends on do you want something on your finger or your wrist. The sleep trackers are pretty accurate for certain metrics, like, time sleeping. You know, your basic metrics where they kind of fall short a little bit is in sleep staging. So tracking your REM and your deep and your light sleep, they're not super accurate. However as of just a couple weeks ago, or Ring has upgraded their algorithm. They're doing some beta testing and I'm in, I'm, I chose to be part of that group, so I'm seeing some differences in, you know, my staging scores. It's not as impressive as it was before the algorithm changed. The ego was a little bit bruised here, but I know that. Andrew Huberman, the, the very well-known scientist who's been prolific in his content about sleep has now joined the Woop advisory board. And with that, I think they're going to be having a lot of upgrades or, and different things happening. So it's a competitive landscape with these trackers. I will say that they can be great tools for people who want to optimize their sleep. People who are responsive to data and can look at data and then implement changes behaviorally. For example, I can see quite clearly that two glasses of wine at night impacts my readiness and deep sleep So with that, would, you know, you would think in a perfect world that would You know, encourage one to maybe dial back on the alcohol. So if you're the kind of person who can use data to change behavior, I think these sleep trackers are awesome. But if you're an insomniac and you're stressing a lot about your sleep, I would say hold off on a sleep tracker until you get your sleep straight. Because the anxiety that that can happen, there's something called ortho Somnia. and that's basically heightened anxiety about sleep. Mm-hmm. due to sleep trackers. Hmm. So, people get very, very wound up when they see their data not doing well. So I would suggest that people hold off on a sleep tracker if they have insomnia.

Michael Bauman:

I love all those, I love all those caveats. Cuz it's not a one size fit all. And Yes. And you have to look at, is this actually helping me or not? So I really appreciate you mentioning that. Talk to us about wine, about alcohol, cuz that's something a lot of people, you know, they wind down, they have a couple glasses or more for sure.

Morgan Adams:

Yeah. I mean it's, it's kind of part of our society. You know, unfortunately, Wine or, or just alcohol in general is the most commonly used sleep aid. Mm-hmm. And yes, it actually will help you get to sleep a little faster because it is a sedative, so you are going to be more relaxed, perhaps sleepier. But the problem is, is that the quality of your sleep decreases quite a. What ends up happening is your, your deep sleep gets less. It's not as strong or as long. Your REM stage in the beginning of the night gets suppressed, and then towards the latter part of the night you have something called the REM rebound effect, where you have more REM but you have lots of awakenings towards the end of the night. So in the early morning, you're gonna be, you know, kind of just up and down. You might also have trips to the bathroom because alcohol is a diuretic. I do know that drinking more than one serving of alcohol for women per day decreases your sleep quality by 39%, and that's pretty significant. That's pretty significant So, you know, I, and as women get into their midlife stage alcohol is Even more detrimental for us as, midlife women. So, I definitely recommend, you know, examining, your relationship with alcohol. If you do drink, if you feel like you really do want to have an alcoholic drink, think more of like happy hour versus nightcap. So in other words, think four to 5:00 PM versus like seven or eight or nine. Because if you can give yourself like four hours between your last drink and your sleep, you're gonna see a lot less impact on your sleep than you would if you just drank like up until an hour before bed. Yeah.

Michael Bauman:

Maybe not a popular opinion. I

Morgan Adams:

know, but it's a good one, I know. I know. People don't like to hear it, but I'm here to deliver the hard news. Right,

Michael Bauman:

right. No, it's important. It's important to realize and, and you know, the other thing too, Is, you know, you get to choose what you wanna focus on too. And any one of these things that you're recommending is beneficial, right? So you can start with something that's easier for you, or you could tackle the big one. You know, maybe, maybe alcohol's the big one, you could do whatever you want. But taking any of these things obviously benefits in, in any way. What about, what about people that wake up in the, like the middle of the night? What can people do about that?

Morgan Adams:

Yeah. Well one of the things we, we kind of mentioned earlier is the, well, let me just back up and say, That waking up during the night is, is normal and common. So a lot of times people are like, I need to sleep throughout. I need to sleep all the way through the night. We really are designed to wake up several times through throughout the night, specifically, like after the end of each sleep cycle has completed. The theory behind that is that we wake up after the sleep cycle has ended, we briefly scan our surroundings for safety, and then we return back to sleep. It's, it's. Primitive kind of safety check to make sure there's no, you know, sa sabertooth, tigers lurking in our bedroom, So, you know, just all that, just say it's normal and okay to wake up once or twice a night briefly. The problem becomes evident when you're doing. These wake, you're having these wake-ups, you know, maybe three, four times a night and you're really having trouble getting back to sleep. Like it's taking you over a half an hour to get back to sleep, cuz that really impacts your sleep quality. So if you are waking up at night and you are ruminating and starting to worry about the next day that worry journal or that constructive worry exercise can be really useful to help you get back to sleep more quickly. As far as you know, preventing the wake-ups, you could definitely look at the alcohol intake, your caffeine intake. You wanna make sure that you have some kind of caffeine curfew. I recommend cutting off caffeine at noon because caffeine has a long half-life. And if you have, you know, a cup of coffee at two o'clock in the afternoon, it could potentially be in your system by 10. And some of us don't clear our caffeine as quickly as others. You also wanna make sure. The foods that you eat at night are more sleep promoting. But even more, more important than the actual foods, I think is the timing of your food. You wanna try to eat your dinner on the early side. If you can try to eat like between I guess maybe four hours before bed would be ideal. and keep your dinner sort of light on the lighter side, maybe have your, you know, your heavier meals, be breakfast and lunch, have a lighter dinner, making sure that you're not having you know, desserts that the sugar can be really a sleep staler, making sure you have some complex carbs. Those can be really helpful for sleep promotion and complex carbs in the term, in the way of like sweet potatoes or. You know, Brussels sprouts or green vegetables and avoid like really heavy like saturated fats. So, those would be sort of some eating guidelines to help prevent you from, you know, those wake-ups.

Michael Bauman:

And then what what about naps? What are your thoughts on naps during the

Morgan Adams:

day? Yeah, so I think naps can be a really good self-care practice, and there's a lot of evidence showing that naps can be, you know, very restorative. They can be helpful for learning and memory. But the best advice for naps is that if you're going to take a nap, make it like a real regular part of your routine. So in other words try to make your nap, not too late in the day. I think the best time of day for a nap would be like, after lunch because you think about people in you know, Mexico and places like that. They have a siesta. They're actually working with their circadian rhythm. We have it circadian dip in the early afternoon, so you could take advantage of that to take your nap. I would encourage people just to not nap too late in the afternoon. and if you are having problems sleeping or if you have insomnia, I would say not take naps if possible because they really do. They could potentially interfere with your sleep hunger and prevent you from getting to sleep at the, at your desired bedtime.

Michael Bauman:

Gotcha. That's, that's important. Another kind of individualized thing going through there. No, I, this has been super, super helpful. I know a lot of people will get just a ton, ton from it. Any last things that you'd wanna say here before we wrap up?

Morgan Adams:

Yeah. I would say that one very, very important sleep tip that has been very helpful for my clients has been having a consistent wake up time. I think that is super important, and I know people don't like hearing this, but that consistent wake up time means even on the weekends So, you know, a lot of times people will sleep in two or three hours on the weekend. And what ends up happening is that they get social jet lag, which is basically like the same thing as jet lag, but you're not getting the benefit of traveling a few time zones away what social jet lag does really is it makes sunday evenings really challenging as far as getting to sleep. Mm-hmm. it can make you more groggy on Monday and then, you know, maybe by Wednesday you're recovered only to repeat the pattern, you know, week after week. So, you do have about an hour of leeway though, on the, on the weekend. I think that as far as like when I'm coaching my clients, I kind of give them the green light to get up to an hour more sleep on the weekends, especially if they are a little bit short on sleep on the weekday. But if you're creeping over an hour more as far as variance, it's, it's kind of a tricky scenario. Mm-hmm.

Michael Bauman:

Gotcha. Okay, excellent. So, I usually end with, with this question, I'm curious to hear your response on it. So, how would you go about defining success

Morgan Adams:

personally? That's a great question. I think the best definition of success that I've ever come across is by the prolific writer, ma Maya Angelou, and she said, success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it. I just love that.

Michael Bauman:

Yeah. Perfect. It's one of those, drop the mic kind of things like well know. There you go. Set enough. Right. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you so much. Where can, where can people go to connect up with you if they, if they need the sleep? The sleep help?

Morgan Adams:

Yeah. Well, my website is morganadamswellness.com I offer a complimentary clarity call for anyone who wants to chat about their sleep and potentially working together. I'm also very active on Instagram. I do silly reels, sometimes and you can find me morganadams.wellness on Instagram.

Michael Bauman:

Excellent. I'll put all the links to the show notes there. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your tips. It's super, super helpful. Some, definitely something that needs to be addressed and you're doing your part in address again.

Morgan Adams:

You're welcome, Michael. Thank you so much for having me.

Michael Bauman:

You're welcome. My pleasure.

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Michael Bauman

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