“Sleep is Magic Medicine” is what I used to say to my kids. Teaching and modeling good sleep patterns and sleep hygiene were priorities to me as a mother. I fully acknowledge that parents of babies and young children are probably going to be sleep deprived for a long time. I know I was. I also know that quality of sleep matters a great deal. I might not have been able to change the length of time I slept but I could greatly influence the level of good sleep I got.
I saw a post on social media the other day that said something to the effect of “Can you even imagine getting in bed and then easily falling asleep and then waking up feeling rested and then having a good day and then doing it again”. And it made me so sad that people do not think they have agency over their sleep. It was posted by a 30 year old without kids. I often hear similar comments from adults I work with and again it makes me so sad. I am here to share with you that great sleep is possible. Completely possible and within your reach. After you start getting better, regular sleep you will feel like a million bucks. You will feel younger, have more energy, be happier and more hopeful about life. Honestly, I think some people are so used to feeling sick and tired that they do not even remember how good it feels to feel good.
Follow/work with me to learn how to get chemicals out of your diet. Drink lots of cleansing water. Get out and walk in the sunlight each morning (best) or just outside each day. Avoid eating right before bed. Avoid blue light at night. Have a pre-bedtime routine. Sleep in a dark place (did you know that our skin has photoreceptors on it)? Try to sleep the same hours each day. We all know that this is not possible for those doing shift work or incurring jet-lag from travel. What we can do though is decrease social jet-lag. If you have a habit of drastically sleeping during different hours on the weekends this can throw your entire system off.
Sleep is where your body integrates nutrients, physically grows, finishes digesting food, and cleans you from the inside out. Think of it as a restaurant after hours. It needs to be shut down and cleaned.
Q. I’ve heard that toxins are flushed out of the brain during sleep. Is that true?
A. One of the most interesting discoveries in the past decade is that the brain has a “waste management system.” Like people, in order to have the energy to do their work, brain cells need to eat (to absorb, primarily, sugar and oxygen). And, as in people, meals lead to wastes that need to be disposed of. The waste management system (called the glymphatic system) is a series of tubes that carry fresh fluid into the brain, mix the fresh fluid with the waste-filled fluid that surrounds the brain cells, and then flush the mix out of the brain and into the blood. This occurs primarily during deep sleep. health.harvard.edu
Training your body for solid sleep will affect your digestion, your healing, your sharpness each day, your gut microbiome, your circadian rhythm, your infradian rhythm, and this will make you feel better ♡.