Improving Your Sleep
Coaching health and wellness for over 10 years has given me insight into some of the key topics that require immediate focus in order for us to achieve a significant shift in our overall health. Sleep is definitely up there in the top 3.
Over this next campaign we will be breaking down the science of sleep and how it relates to the broader topic of wellness. Our next articles, social media content and E-book will be designed to:
Guide you through practical implementation of changes to improve sleep quality.
Raise your awareness on the impact of sleep on health and wellness.
Educate you on some sleep science and why it matters.
Provide you with tools to improve your day to day performance.
At the end of this campaign we will be releasing an E-book with an easy to follow step by step guide to help you focus on key aspects of your routine, identify what your sleep chronotype is, and what immediate steps you can take to improve your sleep patterns and ensure you are resting and recovering from your days activities optimally.
In the last article we reviewed how sleep works, and how our bodies work in many different time cycles. Sleep being one of the biological functions determined by a circadian rhythm.
In this article we will review the main influences on sleep quality to bring your attention to the very things that matter.
What Influences your sleep and sleep quality?
Many people believe only those who snore have a sleeping disorder, but this not the case. Though snoring is a telling symptom, there are several other symptoms of sleep disorders. Some of the more common symptoms of a sleep disorder include:
Daytime sleepiness
Teeth grinding
Anxiety
Depression
Digestive problems
Cold hands and feet
Falling asleep during the day or too quickly
Brain fog
Forgetfulness
Below are the key areas to review to help improve sleep quality.
Internal Factors
Digestion
Your gut and sleep patterns work in an axis – a two-way street of communication. They influence each other in either synergistic or antagonistic cycles. When you’re unaware of this connection, it can lead you in a downward health spiral, which can be confusing because symptoms (such as teeth grinding) seem unrelated to the gut. This Study shows that both the microbial rhythm of your gut and that of your circadian rhythm greatly influence each other, which may directly affect your quality of sleep.
Stress
Stress can impact your life in many ways, including negatively affecting the quality of your sleep. If you don’t sleep enough at night, your body boosts its levels of stress hormones. The brain chemicals connected with deep sleep are the same ones that tell the body to stop the production of stress hormones. As a result, when you don’t sleep well, your body keeps pumping out those hormones. The next day, you feel more stressed, the following night you find it harder to fall asleep, and so on.
Breathing
Snoring can do a lot more harm than just annoy your partner—it can lead to poor sleep quality and quantity. In some cases it is an early sign of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA). Sleep apnea is a serious condition in which your breathing is obstructed, causing you to wake up in order to start breathing again. Regular snoring doesn’t typically wake you up. One way to tell the difference between snoring and OSA is to look for the symptoms of sleep apnea: waking up in the middle of the night gasping for air, continual sleepiness during the day, and always snoozing with your mouth open. Aside from OSA, these are a few other reasons that you may be snoring:
Age: Once you reach middle age, your throat becomes narrower and its muscle tone decreases.
Sinus and Nasal Congestion: When airways are blocked with mucus, that makes breathing difficult, which causes snoring.
Being Overweight: Poor muscle tone and fatty tissue around the neck and throat can lead to snoring.
Smoking, Alcohol, and Medications: These can all increase muscle relaxation, leading to snoring.
Posture / Sleep Position
Your sleeping pose can have a major impact on your posture—as well as your overall health. Poor sleep posture could potentially cause back and neck pain, fatigue, sleep apnea, muscle cramping, impaired circulation, headaches and heartburn.
This is a recommended list of sleep positions best to worst;
1. On Your Back
Though it’s not the most popular position—only eight percent of people sleep on their backs—it’s still the best. By far the healthiest option for most people, sleeping on your back allows your head, neck, and spine to rest in a neutral position. This means that there’s no extra pressure on those areas, so you’re less likely to experience pain. Sleeping facing the ceiling also ideal for warding off acid reflux. Just be sure to use a pillow that elevates and supports your head enough—you want your stomach to be below your oesophagus to prevent food or acid from coming up your digestive tract.
2. On Your Side
This position (where your torso and legs are relatively straight) also helps decrease acid reflux, and since your spine is elongated, it wards off back and neck pain. Plus, you’re less likely to snore in this snooze posture, because it keeps airways open. For that reason, it’s also the best choice for those with sleep apnea.
3. In the Fetal Position
With 41 percent of adults choosing this option, it’s the most popular sleep position. A loose, fetal position (where you’re on your side and your torso is hunched and your knees are bent)—especially on your left side—is great if you’re pregnant. That’s because it improves circulation in your body and in the fetus, and it prevents your uterus from pressing against your liver, which is on your right side. This pose is also good for snorers. But resting in a fetal position that’s curled up too tightly can restrict breathing in your diaphragm. And it can leave you feeling a bit sore in the morning, particularly if you have arthritis in your joints or back. Prevent these woes by straightening out your body as much as you can, instead of tucking your chin into your chest and pulling your knees up high. You can also reduce strain on your hips by placing a pillow between your knees.
4. On Your Stomach
While this is good for easing snoring, it’s bad for practically everything else. Seven percent of adults pick this pose, but it can lead to back and neck pain, since it’s hard to keep your spine in a neutral position. Plus, stomach sleepers put pressure on their muscles and joints, possibly leading to numbness, tingling, aches, and irritated nerves. It’s best to try to choose another position, but if you must sleep on your stomach, try lying face down to keep upper airways open—instead of with your head turned to one side—with your forehead propped up on a pillow to allow room to breathe.
External Factors
Light
Whether its the glare from your iPhone when receiving a message, or the television screen glows bright on your bedroom dresser, artificial light is all around us. While it may help us be more productive during the day, all of this artificial light comes with a cost, especially when it comes to sleep.
As lamps and indoor lights have allowed you to remain awake long past sunset, they’ve also caused you to move farther and farther away from natural sleep patterns. People who lived during the Industrial Age, before artificial lights, slept very differently from the way we sleep today. Many snoozed in two four-hour shifts, separated by a late-night period of being quietly awake. When artificial light is taken away, humans tend to revert back to this natural, two-shift sleep pattern.
Fixing the Problem
A few small changes can help minimise the problems associated with sleep and artificial light. For starters, don’t keep your phone near you when you sleep, and avoid all artificially lit screens (like televisions, iPads, and iPhones) right before bedtime. Shield artificial light properly in the bedroom (by turning your alarm so that the light faces away from you, for example), and use light only when absolutely necessary.
Where possible get black out blinds and curtains to completely remove light from the room and create complete darkness optimal for sleep.
Temperature
In general, the suggested bedroom temperature should be between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal sleep (16-18 Celsius). If your room is cool, rather than warm, it will be much easier to shut your eyes for the night. Thermostat settings far lower or higher than what’s recommended could lead to restlessness and can also affect the quality of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, the stage in which you dream.
Sleep Kit
It is important to highlight the importance of choosing the right mattress for you personally, lie on the mattress when choosing both on your back and side to check fro comfort. The most expensive are not always the best choices. The bed linen you choose will also contribute to your body’s ability to regulate temperature. Again check what works best for you, Egyptian cotton has a lot of good reviews for bed linen. The last item for consideration is the aid of a sleep mask to assist with darkness if you are not able to create blackout in your bedroom.
Routine and Schedule
Creating a routine and habits for your sleep will help to improve overall quality. Based on the research of Nick Littlehales It is advised to plan sleep time based on 90 min cycles. The best starting point is 5 cycles per 24 hours (5 x 90mins) equivalent to 7.5 hrs sleep. What is of particular interest is that the 5 cycles can be had at anytime referring to the benefit of a 90 min snooze during the day when possible if you have a poor nights sleep.
As an example if I want to build a routine of 5 cycles per night of sleep, you start by setting an alarm on your preferred wake up time then work backwards to plan ideal bed time.
6am wake time requires a bed time of 10.30pm
6.30am wake time requires bed time of 11pm etc.
If you have not yet filled out our sleep questionnaire and would like to check in to see what your chronotype is refer back to our first sleep article
We have one final article in our sleep campaign which will be released in the next few weeks followed by our latest Sleep Program E-Book. If you have friends or family members that would benefit from this information please share. Thank you in advance your support is appreciated.