Tired? Learn to get deliberately better sleep 😴

Good everyone, Sam here. I am back and great to be back. I mean this sincerely. I think as much on New York was incredible, amazing. I'm not saying New York was terrible by any stretch. It was great. But I really do love coming home and it sometimes takes an overseas trip for us to realize how lucky we are to have such a beautiful country here and a

My question is around getting back into a healthy routine after the loss of people you love. I've recently lost both my parents within the space a couple of months, and I'm struggling to get back into a healthy routine of eating and fitness, even though that's something I've always enjoyed doing. Just wondering if you have any suggestions on what I can do to help get that back on track.

That's all coming up next.

Welcome back to the WOODLFE.

The timing couldn't be better because I've just done thirty nine hour flight back from the US. I was thirty nine hours total travel, not on the plane, but total travel with the levy. So I'm a little bit weary. But we've got just the guest to fix that. Doctor day Ashworth is a clinical psychologist. He's done a lot of work in the sleep space. In fact, he works specifically with sleep clients for over eight years, and he's

Yeah, definitely. I think it's probably about thirty percent of people struggle with sleep on any given night, right, So it really can. Yeah, it can impact a lot of people. And there's something called chronotypes, which is someone's body clock or preference, and it's pretty understandable that people have different preferences.

Yea.

You know, some people might be more of a morning person, some people might be an evening person. And generally that's not the first thing that we're looking at when we're choosing a partner.

Yeah, that wasn't a question I asked on The Bachelor. What's sleep kind of type? It's something you do find out once you're in the relationship. You know, we've got three young kids, so sleep's been very disrupted for the last five years. Literally almost. Yes, she is nocturnal and likes to go a bit late, but she's still getting up early. Okay.

So would you say, is it is because of her body clock type or she just doesn't prioritize.

She'd say it is. I've never sort of tested that theory. But I mean, there's what chronotype you are, and then there's the reality of your life situation too, and I mean she's just not getting enough. How much is the magic number? I'd love to know what your what your magic number is.

I'd say there probably isn't a magic right, Okay, Okay, we're looking at the recommendations from the government level. People will say anywhere between seven to nine hours is healthy amount for an adult. But I would say each person is slightly different. So there are some people if they get by on five or six hours a night, that's enough for them, and then other people might need that nine to ten hours a night, So it can vary from person to person.

So my concern is the people that are saying they only need inverted commas five to six, how do they know that that's actually true? And are there many of them in your opinion that actually they do need more, but they sort of hide behind set of saying that I won't mention my wife one more time after this, I promise, she tells me, I'm fine. I know her

I think that's the key thing what you're talking about there,

Yeah, so that's good advice, isn't it. Don't you don't have to jump to eight just for a month, get half an hour extra night. See if it does make a positive impact and then you know, maybe go again or find the sweet spot for you. I really liked that.

Yeah.

I read Outlive by doctor Peter Tire. Oh yeah, yeah, and he said there's really only five things we need to think about, and the fifth one he didn't even go into. So the fifth one, there's certain supplements that you can take, but the main four of the pillars of health, which is exercise, nutrition, and sleep, they're the three,

Yeah. I like that. So we've spoken about the number and that can vary. Your book is called Deliberately Better Sleep because it's not just about the amount, it's about the quality. What are some tips from your book or from all of this experience you've had working with people to help improve the quality of your sleep that you think are the I guess, the best bang for your buck bits of advice that you give people. Yeah.

I think it's about understanding what leads to sleep difficulties and what we can do about it.

Yep.

So I do bring it back to the underlying mechanisms. And not a lot of people that talk about sleep necessarily talk about these things.

Okay, So explain that a little bit. Yeah.

So they'll say what we need to do, but they won't necessarily say why.

Okay, So I'll.

Talk to people about sleep pressure and how it's important to make sure that that's high enough when we go to bed at night time.

So what does that mean?

Explain that to that sleep pressure is a homeostatic drive so it's something that builds up in our brain. It's a dentisceine and essentially the longer we're awake for the higher that pressure gets. So we want it to be nice and high when we go to bed at night. And if someone needs eight hours of sleep, ideally we want them to be out of bed for about fifteen and a half hours at least, right.

So you can go to bed too early and you can not build that pressure up enough so that when you go to bed you're not tired enough to get a quality not sleep.

Yeah, and that can be especially problematic on say a Sunday, in that someone goes out late Saturday night, they sleep in till say eleven a m. Sunday, and then they try to go to bed at nine nine pm that night. That pressure is just not going to be high enough. And that would bring to the second point, which is around circadian rhythms or body clock yep, in that the more consistent our sleep is from day to day, the

Yeah. Yeah, it's funny. Yesterday I was telling you when half final wasn't today, and hit me at I thought I'd baiting it.

I was wearing a real hero for having my chairs.

I'm I'm fine, I'm back at work, and then today my leads feel about one hundred kilos ech. So, yeah, you're timing. You couldn't be better with that one. It really has got me. If people are feeling like their pressure isn't high enough, what should they do?

Well, it could be just making sure that they're up enough time during the day.

Yeah.

I think a good night sleep does start from the morning before, right, you know, if you want to sleep at say ten pm, then definitely try not to sleep in much later than say six or seven that morning. Well, ensure that you're able to have.

Yeah, there's going to be a carryover from the day before. Yeah. And what about exercise and actually physically wearing yourself out.

Yeah, that can increase our pressure a little bit too. But for someone if they had insomnia, I wouldn't say go out and exercise four hours in the day, and I think you sleep problems abound, that's definitely, But it's about getting into that consistent routine. If we're exercising regularly, we are going to sleep better over time.

Okay, so we've got pressure getting it as high as we can for our head hits the pillow. Yeah, Cicadian rhythm, nice consistency. Yeah, probably get little asterix next to the jet lag. What else should people be doing?

Yeah, So in terms of the Cicadian rhythm, I think getting some morning sunlight can be really good. Oh okay, yeah, so even twenty minutes of sunlight in those first few hours is going to help you wake up for the day as well as help you feel tired at the right times at nighttime. And then the third is all about arousal. So often, especially with people with insomnia, the main f actors house stress. They are how much they can't calm down their body or switch off the mind.

So I promised I wouldn't bring my wife up again, but I'm going to. She likes to be busy, she likes to be active, she likes to be doing things. But I give advice like hallroom, darkroom, no screens and phones, you know, let's wind down properly. She gets almost tense by the thought of all of those things. And so her argument to me, and probably pretty fair, is that doesn't relax me. In fact, it does the opposite. So she'll say to me, let's watch some crappy series on

Yeah, I think you're spot on. So arousal plays a huge impact on our sleep, and if we're too stressed out or our mind's too active, we're not going to sleep well. And so whatever we can do to lower it, it doesn't matter what it is. If it works for that person, then stick with that. Yeah, okay, And so it might be that meditation helps some people, but for others it does stress them out or it makes it worse. And if it does that, then I wouldn't recommend that as a strategy for them.

Yeah, I've been a little bit too rigid. I think what about going to bed too close to exercise? I mean, is that something that does spike arousal for a lot of people and they don't have the proper wine down.

So if we're again thinking in terms of what's ideal, we'd probably not want to do too much to exercise in that last two to three hours before bed.

Yeah.

Okay, there are some more recent studies that's safe. For some people it doesn't matter so much, and that they're able to exercise pretty close to bedtime, it's still sleep pretty well. But for the average person, I'd say if they're trying to sleep at ten thirty, if they can stop by seven thirty or eight, then it's not going to have too much of a negative impact and it should be more of a net positive yea.

And what about food digestion and eating or snacking too close to bedtill?

Yeah, I do think that is important. I have an or ring which tracks a lot of different variables from my health, and what I've noticed is on those nights where I eat a heavy meal, especially too late or too close to bedtime, my resting heart rate is high for quite a while even after I fall in asleep.

Interesting.

Yeah, so probably about a three hour window for that would be ideal as well. So if we're going to about eleven to stop by eight.

Yeah, I like that. What about these tools, these sleep feedback tools like the or Ring the Whoop? I don't really I can't think of others by name off the top of my head, but they're two very popular ones. What is your advice on those for people? Would you recommend either of those or both of those?

I would say it depends. I love them both a fit bit and or and I look at the data and I find that it helps me to look after myself and for people, if it does that for them, it's great. If people feel like they're not getting any sleep at all, it could be really good for them to use one of those as well and to notice that maybe they're getting a little bit more sleep than

Yeah. That's a really good answer, isn't it. Because if you infatuate or fixate on the data and it's an unhealthy obsession, then you can really get in your head and you can start to overthinking.

What about alcohol, I would say it has a much more negative impact than most people would realize.

Well, we almost, we must tell ourselves it helps almost. I have a nice glass of red and I'll put me or I'll have a little you know, I'll have a little nightcap or whatever. You know, we use terms like that, and you might fall asleep more easily, but you don't you don't know the quality of your sleep when you're in it.

I've definitely noticed that with the trackers that I use for myself as well, that it increases the resting heart rate, It decreases our heart rate variability. It definitely lowers those recoveries.

Yeah, okay, so they're the two.

There are two sort of factors that we look at, and it doesn't have to be much. It can even just be two drinks and it will lower that recovery score for the next day. What about napping, I would say napping is good, right, with some limitations. Okay, so I do think there's a big difference between say a twenty minute pound ap and two hours, yeah, and napping for four hours during the day, which is really just

That's great. I mean, as soon as I asked the question, I was thinking back to the pressure point that you brought up. You know, if you do nap for too long, surely that's going to have pulled your pressure down if you're still going well, I normally get a bed at ten. I stuck a two hour napy and I'm still going to try to get a bet at ten. Let's say we're tossing and turning and we're not getting into good

Just puts a lot more pressure on our immune system. I think we're more likely to get sick over time. And there is some more recent data that's even saying that if you have long term problems, it can lead to increased risk of Alzheimer's.

Yeah.

So I know that there are those health complications, but I do think it's important to know that there's extremes. So if you're sleeping somewhere between say five and eight hours, it's probably not going to be heaps of negative impact over time. But if you're only sleeping say two, three or four hours a night, then people will really start

I'm glad you brought that up, because I think I think we tend to go straight to the short practical implications, you know, the commliness, the forgetfulness that you know, not struggling at work a bit or whatever it might be. But actual long term health ramifications in these extreme cases I think is really important to point out.

Yeah, and so I guess the last thing I'd say about that is it is important to get help. And if you get help. It can make a big difference. My clinical trial was four sessions across eight weeks, and that improved most people that we saw. Yeah, right, Whereas if people don't address it at all, those sleep problems can remain for ten twenty thirty years.

What advice can you give to our listeners out there to give them a bit of a shakeup?

I try to give people this sense of try it as an experiment. You know, let's prioritize this for a few weeks or a month and see what difference it makes in your life. Now, after that month it doesn't feel like it's worth the time, then maybe you don't have to make that a priority and you can focus on the other two and maybe that's enough. But if they're really not prioritizing it's probably having some type of

It's really good advice. I was sort of as I was asking you that question, I was thinking I was putting it in the exercise in my own you know, for my own advice that I give people and I adopt a pretty similar attitude. You know, if you try too hard to push it on someone, they just push back or falls on deaf ears that I want to know about it, But just get up a movie body for thirty minutes, five days a week, and if you don't feel better in a month, you'll never hear from

Yeah, it's a ten step process, right, Okay, So it walks people through in terms of how can they really identify what their problems are? Where can they get the information they need, What are the best strategies out there? How can they figure out which strategy is going to be best for the problem they're trying to fix?

It really individualizes it like that.

How can we put this plan into place? How can we do a bit of an assessment beforehand to see where you're at and then doing it and tracking it, see how it goes afterwards. And if you don't know where you're at, how you're going to know if you're improve exactly?

Exactly? Yeah, and sleeps the hardest one it can be.

But with the sleep trackers now and people can do a sleep direa, they can fill out some questionnaires. There are some ways to get a good picture in here.

I like that. I like that. So they can find it at book topia. And where can they find you if they want to track you down?

Yeah, so people can check me out at demon Ashurth psychology dot com and send a message. I'll always respond to it.

Thank you so much, dam for your time and I learn a lot. Thanks so much for Johnny's on the woodline as thank you. Well, there you go. A great chat with Damon and I'm feeling more awake than I was half an hour ago. And I mean that. I think with Damon that I really liked was he wasn't extreme, he wasn't trying to be controversial for being controversial sake, I see a lot of stuff out there, not just

Hi, Sam. My question is around getting back into a healthy routine after the loss of people you love. I've recently lost both my parents within the space a couple of months, and I'm struggling to get back into a healthy routine of eating and fitness, even though that's something I've always enjoyed doing. Just wondering if you have any suggestions on what I can do to help get that back on track.

Thanks.

First of all, answer, I'm sincerely sorry for your loss. I've actually had this question quite a bit, typically from people from my twenty eight program who were in wonderful routines and then a tragedy of some kind happens in their life and they really do lose their way. So the advice that I'm going to give you is advice that I've given them, And the first thing I say is don't rush, don't stress yourself out about it, don't put too much pressure on yourself. I think the advice