Honesty time: I have been suffering from insomnia for the past two months. I get anywhere from 3-5 hours of sleep per night. Prior to this bout of insomnia I would easily fall asleep and wake up after 8 or 9 hours. Last week was “Eat, SLEEP and Exercise for Your Health” and I found it extremely difficult to write a post on sleep when I am currently terrible at it.Luckily for you my close friend Irene has chosen to do a Vibrant Life Cleanse and she focused on sleep last week! She is a Freelance Writer and has written this post for us suffering with sleep issues.<3 Mae------Hello sustainable happy people!Last week I started my vibrant life journey, following the lovely Mae’s lead. I embarked in clearing out my fridge of all things unhealthy and non-real (that is, processed foods) so that I can restock it with healthy, delicious real foods. This week I emailed my supervisor to figure out how to obtain an ID so I can start to utilize the free gym membership available through my current organization. The biggest lifestyle change I started last week was a coffee/caffeinated drink cleanse! Yes, I am cutting it out for 20 weeks. This is related to the self-love area I focused on the most last week: sleep!Sleep has always been a challenge for me. In my teens I had trouble falling asleep once I was laying down, and would constantly toss and turn for sleepless, hellish hours. Now I can get into a relaxed enough state to fall asleep once in bed and under the covers. However I procrastinate, filling valuable mental, emotional and physical rejuvenation time with entertainment and relaxation. So I decided to monitor my own sleep habits by keeping an informal sleep journal. Here is an excerpt from it:Monday 2/25/13I woke up from a deep sleep and a vivid dream this morning at 7:19 am. I slept so deeply that when I woke up I thought it was a Saturday morning. I did not expect to feel so well rested, considering I fell asleep sometime between 1 and 2.I know my body was telling me to jump start this journey. It’s like it knew that I would need an extra boost this morning, to commit to a 20 week caffeinated drink cleanse and full on lifestyle shakedown.My challenge is that I try to squeeze in personal relaxation time right before bed. I have a need to spend about a half and hour or so of private, uninterrupted, quiet time to read, do internet research/blog browsing, write or just think. I know there are other factors too, like basic time management. This week I will find a library book on sleep and find out how to personalize my sleep routine to fit my needs.Tuesday 2/27/13Today I woke up even earlier—6:30 am! Today I was more tired at work than the day before. I think this is because I had the weekend to rejuvenate for Monday and a busy and stressful Monday to drain me again for Tuesday. The good news is that there was no coffee headache today. The negative effects of coffee withdrawal I am feeling are an abnormally high state of tiredness much earlier in the evening than usual. I was dead tired by 7 and I am overtly less alert. I don’t know whether to attribute this more to my lack of 8 hours, or my lack of artificial wakefulness (the coffee), but both are wreaking havoc. I WILL get more sleep tonight…Wednesday 2/28/13What I didn’t mention on Monday—because my time management was lacking—was that after work I stopped by the library around the corner from my apt. to look for sleep books. I didn’t look at the book Monday, and skimmed the chapter a little last night—not enough to report on it yet. I did notice a very impressive sleep journal in the form of a table.As for my day three of my coffee cleanse (side note: although I am avoiding coffee and other caffeinated drinks, I am not giving up chocolate, which contains some caffeine), I am still surviving! Not drinking caffeine is making me tired much earlier in the day, but it also allows me to sleep, if I don’t resist the urge to wrap myself up in blankets and disappear into dreamland as early as 9 and the desperate need to by 11. So I did in fact lay down at 11 last night and fell asleep shortly after. I woke up and let myself lie still for a while before looking at my clock, which read 7:30 am. So I estimate I got about 8 hours. It does suck to be fatigued all day pretty much after 10am, but as long as I am just caffeine-withdrawal-tired and not sleep-deprived-tired it is bearable. The former is different because, for example, it doesn’t cause me to fall asleep at my desk or in a long meeting. It just makes it harder to focus and problem solving is exhausting.I really, really hope this goes away. And now unfortunately, I don’t have time to read the sleep chapter, but I will lay down on time again because it is now 10:55 pm.Here’s to getting over humpday!Friday 3/1/13The bad news is I didn’t manage my time well enough to write last night, or to read! The good news is I went to bed close enough to my target time (11:09). Although I fell asleep after midnight, I woke up around 6:15 feeling very refreshed and awake. I managed to be somewhat productive too! Gathering my laundry that I had left in the dryer overnight, analyzing my dream, looking up my horoscope (yes, I consider these productive activities—on a different level!), editing and most importantly for this project: reading the sleep chapter! Yay! I am about a third of the way through it—and the chapter is short. My goal is to finish it and post it tonight.Welcome, Friday!Sunday 3/3/13Well, it’s been a weekend. I ended up getting through the sleep chapter of Food and Mood—today. Here is some of the information I got out of it:There is a difference between insomnia; trouble falling asleep, and sleep deprivation; trouble getting to bed.
- A few signs of sleep deprivation:
- Falling asleep very quickly after you lay down
- Drinking caffeinated beverages throughout the day to stay alert, and alcohol at night to relax
- Having had two or more colds or viruses within the past six months
Diet and lifestyle changes are effective in improving sleep habits!Nix: coffee after 1 pm, Alcohol within two hours of bedtime, heavy meals, spicy or gas forming foods at dinner time (a few gas formers you may not have thought of include: broccoli, cantaloupe, corn, cucumbers, onions, and watermelon)Try:-Tryptophan, “nature’s sleeping pill,” which is an amino acid, and a building block for serotonin, a chemical in the brain. Serotonin’s effects include increasing pain tolerance, reducing insomnia, and even relieve mild depression. It is available as a supplement, or you can self-regulate your natural tryptophan level by eating a high-carb, low protein snack one or two hours before bedtime. To be effective this must be done in the evening, as during the day an enzyme is produced that counteracts tryptophan’s effects.-Eating to sleep: One example- Consume a carb-rich, low protein snack an hour or two before bedHowever make these changes gradually: strict dieting or drastic changes in eating habits can disrupt sleep patterns as well.- Sleep journal
- Food and Mood has a great Sleep Journal in the form of a table. Each column is a day of the week, and rows are aligned with a list of daytime habits and by sleep habits.
- Daytime habits to track include: amount of caffeine and alcohol consumed, amount and type of exercise, stress level and source, and moods.
- Sleep habits to track include: details about the time and duration of sleeping, thoughts and emotions surrounding sleeping, frequency of waking, and alertness after sleeping).
I learned a lot last week, and so far this week I have had two out of three good nights of sleep—Monday night I only got two hours, but I was able to pin point why: I was stressed and excited about work and ideas for week two of the vibrant life cleanse. What I could have done better was to get up and out of bed, as the sleep literature suggests, and read or write. I could have written down the causes of my work stresses, and possible solutions, I could have planned, I could have edited this post sooner… you get my drift.What I have learned is that I can take control of my sleep habits by becoming aware of the bad ones and their causes and finding solutions that work for me. My personal sleep plan, which I will continue to improve upon, is:
- No caffeine (*except chocolate*)!
- Lay down by 11 o’ clock pm
- No computer after 10:30 pm
- Read more before bed, when possible
- No proteins, alcohol, or spicy foods within two hours of bedtime
- Be aware of the amount of liquid I drink before bedtime
- Wind down by writing when stressed (in my ideal sustainable happy life, I will make time to write a lot more!)
You can find out more about all of these tips and more tools to track and improve your sleep habits in Food and Mood by Elizabeth Somer.For more information on the topic of sleep, please refer to:The National Sleep Foundation: http://www.sleepfoundation.org/GetSleep, a project of the Harvard Medical School Division of Sleep Medicine: http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/need-sleep/Sleep Disorders Information from the National Institutes of Health: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/sleep/Do you have any challenges surrounding sleep? If so what are they? If not, please share your insights and sleep secrets. I hope everyone sleeps well tonight!-Irene