All right , listener , welcome back . I'm your host , dr Beth Tramal , my licensed psychologist and an associate professor of psychology at Indiana University East . I'm also the director of the master's of mental health counseling program , where I talk a lot about this topic with my students , with my clients . We're talking about sleep .
Today and on Monday I talked a little bit about how much sleep matters to our kids , and today I want to just briefly talk a little bit about what it means for us as adults , and some of this has always been true in the work I do .
Right , I mean talking about sleep hygiene , that sort of set of behavioral strategies to try to increase the quality and quantity of our sleep . But another piece of sort of my understanding , my push for us to pay attention to sleep , came when I read Matthew Walker's book why we Sleep .
So Matthew Walker is a let's see what is his official , our neuroscientist at UC Berkeley , and he has written this book on sleep . But he's also done a lot of studies on sleep and there are lots of folks who've done studies , and so I'm just sharing one example .
He has a TED Talk and some work that he's done with NPR , also a link to some additional resources from him , but at the heart of his many discussions or presentations has been that we cannot skimp on sleep , and when he talks about skimping , he talks about less than seven hours , and so if you're a listener who is really struggling to capture seven hours , you
really want to pay attention to some of the resources that we're going to talk about today and find some additional resources , either by searching up sleep hygiene , thinking about additional behavioral strategies not necessarily using medication or substances to get better sleep and , in fact , matthew Walker has talked before over and again about how those things are not
necessarily helpful to getting better quality sleep . Now , if you're a person who has been diagnosed and is being treated by a medical doctor with medical treatment for sleep , then obviously follow your doctor's advice . Please don't take this as hey I'm saying stop all of your medications . That is certainly not what I'm saying .
So , with that being said , there are some behavioral things that we have found to be helpful , and so your goal is to make sure that you can consistently get good quality and quantity of sleep , and a lot of this comes by training your body right going to bed at the same time , waking up at the same time and trying to be within 10 or 15 minutes of that ,
so that your body can be trained on when to go to sleep and when to wake up . Another huge part of this and Matthew Walker talks a lot about this is recognizing that sometimes waking up earlier , staying up later , thank you is not going to be a better answer , even if you might be able to get some extra work done or get that early morning workout in .
Sleep matters a lot , and so disrupting your REM and non-RAM sleep cycles can have very negative impacts . His research has found that it is connected to sickness and disease can be linked to mood swings . If you're struggling with fatigue or kind of that afternoon can't make it through the day , I'm gonna fall asleep at my desk , sort of thing .
Trying to focus on getting better quality sleep may be a big part of that . Trying not to have devices or media that you are engaging in before bedtime is really critical .
In fact , he would recommend , an hour before bedtime , dimming the lights , turning off all the screens , using blackout curtains can be really helpful , because essentially what we're doing is we're training your body to recognize hey , it's nighttime , I should go to sleep .
I read another book no , I can't remember what it was called , but it talked a lot about kind of seasons that our ancestors didn't have light switches .
They didn't have electricity and lights , and so the changes that have happened in our bodies because of having artificial light has already disrupted that which our ancestors had mastered , which was when it's dark our bodies go to sleep and when it's light our bodies are awake .
Now , even when it's dark outside , you can turn on a light and trick your body into believing it should still be awake .
So thinking about especially if you're a person who struggles to get that seven hours in , maybe trying an hour before bed , turning off screens , dimming the lights maybe you have a book that you can just sort of flip through keeping your bedroom cool . Perhaps the recommendation of 65 degrees Fahrenheit might be optimal .
Wear socks if your feet get cold , and these are all recommendations . I can share the link for these , but essentially these are all recommendations around sleep hygiene . Try not to have caffeine after one o'clock . Never go to bed when you're drunk or tipsy .
Alcohol , but it's a sedative and sedation is different than sleep , so that will get in the way of you getting better quality sleep . If you can't go to sleep , get out of bed . Do something quiet and relaxing . Maybe you stretch a little bit , you get on the floor until the urge to sleep comes back and then you can go to bed after that .
So a few things to just think about . As you're a person who recognizes I really need to sleep , maybe you can try some of those things .
If you're really struggling with sleep , using a sleep diary would probably be really helpful in conversations with your medical provider , so you might consider keeping a diary of when you go to sleep , when you wake up , how long , how many times you woke up in the middle of the night .
Just roughly , maybe you can rate the quality of your sleep on a scale of one to 10 , anything that can kind of provide some additional information to help your medical provider . Perhaps doing a sleep study , although those are not fun , but doing a sleep study might be something to talk with your doctor about as well .
Obviously , as you are talking about anything related to your physical body , I'd recommend reaching out to your medical provider and seeing if there might be other things going on for why you might not be sleeping .
They may recommend seeing a therapist , particularly if it's related to stress , depression or anxiety and a part of your therapy may be , yeah , getting better sleep and practicing some of these sleep hygiene things . This is obviously not always the easiest thing to do , and so I'm presenting this brief episode , not because it is a simple task to get better sleep .
I know that I have had encounters with folks that are very frustrated with their bodies for not being able to stay asleep .
I know it can be really hard to have that initial insomnia where it feels like you just can't get your body to fall asleep , and so all of those things may be a part of sleep challenges , and so , like I said , if you're having kind of chronic sleep disturbance and none of the things that we've talked about have helped , then it's probably time to see your
doctor or find a therapist who might be able to talk you through with some relaxation strategies , some meditation , some guided visual imagery . All of those things may be helpful and are things that you could also search up and find some great resources for .
Hopefully , this might have given you just a few ideas , and if you have more questions or interest in learning more about this , I will connect to those TED Talks and those resources , and until then , stay safe and stay well , friends .