Sleep and Stress

We’ve all been there. Stressful day equals no sleep that night, maybe for 2 nights but what if it’s ongoing? What if you are so tired it starts to impact on your life or even your safety. You know how they say not to drive under the influence? Well yeah, driving tired has exactly the same effect and research backs it up!
Our lives are inherently stressful. We can’t get rid of all the stress in our lives. Sometimes it’s beyond our control. The focus needs to shift from reducing stress to stress resilience. We need to be able to weather the storm. But first let’s understand how stress and lack of sleep actually drive each other then we can look at how to break the cycle.
One stressful day at work becomes a stressful week, month, year. Family get sick, there’s another lockdown, money is beyond tight, groceries and fuel now take up most of your pay and before you know it you are having one after another sleepless night. That’s our scenario. Most of us can relate! Adrenaline and cortisol are key factors here keeping us in a state of permanent fight or flight. Adrenaline is there when we are doing a presentation, explaining to the boss why you need yet more time off or having a near miss accident on the highway. It’s useful then for sharpening our senses, diverting blood flow to our limbs for a quick get away and making sure we survive but it’s short lived. Cortisol, it’s work horse brother, gets us out of bed in the morning. It gives us that get up and go without so much heart racing activity BUT it still keeps us wired. The idea is it’s high in the morning and drops by evening to let us get a good night’s sleep. That’s the theory.
When you are chronically stressed the body releases more cortisol to keep you going. This releases glucose from the liver so the brain can stay well fed and ensures that any function that threatens your survival is shut down like digestion or say, SLEEP.
As time goes by cortisol levels become dysregulated and they are the same at 7am as they are at 7pm. Not ideal just as you are heading to bed. They may even be lower in the morning. Enter wired and tired who needs coffee to wake up wine to go to sleep.
That lack of sleep can actually cause a level of distress that also raises cortisol, so we end up with one driving the other. And, cause that’s not distressing enough, it starts to affect our absorption of nutrients, so imbalances also start to drive stress and sleep further into the ditch. And so it goes, on and on, unless the stress stops. Haha! It’s 2022! Not bloody likely!
So, lets talk about how to break the cycle and improve our stress resilience by getting some good sleep.

1. Practice good sleep hygiene by limiting phone and computer time after 7:30pm. I heard that groan! The blue light from screens is a killer and even with a blue light limiter the fast pace of the movements does not a peaceful night make!
2. Turn down bright lights, stay off social media, have a warm shower or bath, practice a meditation or mindfulness activity in the evening before the bed if you can. 
3. Be in bed, asleep by 9pm (or earlier) if possible. Another groan but if you want to function like a human tomorrow then do it!
4. Maintain a consistent wake time to ensure your body is able to complete its sleep cycles. This is a really interesting theory that when we wake is ultimately the bigger predictor of fatigue.
5. Weightless by Marconi union is good sleep music. It’s a pretty hypnotic piece I don’t recommend for driving! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfcAVejslrU
6. Simple Minds is an excellent FREE meditation app with good sleep meditations. Actually, doing them in the morning and at night will help you sleep better and behave better through the day. Curb those exhausted tanty’s!

That’s the very basics to be honest. If things have gone beyond this, then get in touch! There are supplements, homeopathics and herbs we can use to help settle the nervous system or treat the underlying cause. Don’t give up!
Sleep is essential for life. You literally can’t do without it. And bear in mind there are other reasons like hormones, thyroid issues, mineral imbalances (Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis can easily answer that one), anxiety, depression, other mental illness and so on.  And just like sleep and cortisol drive each other they can also drive any number of other conditions. They are TERRIBLE drivers! Seriously, the worst.
Sleep tight!