The importance of sleep

0:02 A listener production. Hi, Welcome to Crappy to Happy with Tip and Cass. Thanks for joining us in this series. We take you through tips and tools to help you feel less crappy and much more happy. Last episode we were talking about emotional eating. This episode, we're going to talk about giving it arrest. The importance of sleep. This is a huge topic, isn't it. Cast This is. Probably one of my most favorite topics ever. Mind you, I'm a massive sleep evangelist, and I think that we, or well I know that a lot of people really really significantly underestimate the importance of sleep for mood and for health and for all sorts of things which we will talk about.

0:53 How does it make you feel crappy not getting enough sleep? Wow, that's actually a good question. And we all know that after just one night, for example, of not getting enough sleep, that we can feel tired, irritable, and cranky. And you know it can affect your mood. You know, you might get tearful, you know, if you've had a few nights of yeah. I'm sorry, I don't know where that came from. When you've had a not enough sleep while because of pregnancy or your children or whatever, absolutely the thing is from a psychological perspective, we have always known that sleep problems are a symptom of mood disorders. So, for example, when I talk to people and I'm assessing them for anxiety or depression, one of the questions that we ask is do you have trouble falling asleep? And do you have trouble staying asleep? That, like binging awake at two in the morning, is very symptomatic of mood disorders to people who are depressed, for example, or are you getting a lot of sleep but still waking up feeling tired and not rested. So we've known that sleep problems are a symptom, but what we know now is that actually not getting enough sleep or having sleep problems is also a cause of mood disorders. So if you're chronically sleep deprived, it can actually lead to anxiety, depression and other issues like that. So it actually tends to become a really self reinforcing, like a self perpetuating kind of a cycle, and a lot of people, again, like when you talk to people, they don't realize just how important it is to tackle that sleep issue straight away, to try to

2:23 get that sleep, you know, more balanced and you know, more regular So. In your practice you are assessing people's sleep when they come to you and they're, yeah, well I'm not a sleep doctor, it certainly comes into it. It's absolutely it's a listed symptom. Wow for you know, depression. And with that, can it actually affect your brain and how you think during the day and your cognitive performance? Like this is fascinating too. So during sleep, your experiences are laid down into long term memory, so your memory is formed while you sleep, so you can have problems with memory if you're not getting enough sleep. You also experience you know, decline in things like focus and decision making.

3:07 You know, we sort of get that. You sort of know if you're not getting enough sleep. What I would say is, we know a lot of people. You hear people say, oh I get by on five hours sleep, or you know, sleeps for the week, or you can sleep when you're dead. If you were to put those people we have done. You know, you put people through a range of cognitive tests and they perform poorly on every single aspect of cognitive performance, like they just do not. They might think they're functioning, but they are absolutely not functioning. There is a tiny, tiny percentage of the general population who can get by on, you know, less than five hours of sleep. I wish I could remember the stat It's like four percent or something of the general population. It's a tiny number, so it does affect cognitive performance.

3:49 So studies now show that seventeen hours of no sleep is the equivalent to having a blood alcohol reading of point oh five. So here in Australia, a point oh five is our is the limit for drink driving. You're little bit drunk, don't you? When you're to keep that in perspective, if you get up at seven in the morning, go to work all day, go out at night, even without having anything alcoholic to drink, by midnight, you're essentially at the equivalent of point oh five. So scary. For seventeen hours of no sleep twenty four hours, it increases two point one. So if you think about people we truck drivers for example, not that I want to gang up on truck drivers, but drowsy driving is as bad as drunk driving, it really is.

4:37 And there'd be some moms out there who work all day and come home and have a sick child and they're up all night, and. Oh yeah, there's plenty of people out on the roads every day who wouldn't realize how dangerous that is. The drowsy driving thing causes millions of you know, millions thousands of accidents. Yeah, so sleep can really affect your brain. Can it bring on the onset of any sort of brain diseases or anything like that? Is there a there's some implication now of sleep disorders or not, you know, like poor sleep, chronic poor sleep, and Alzheimer's. So yeah, and they're still you know, that's all being studied. But lack of sufficient sleep over the long term increases a particular level of protein in your brain, which is implicated in Alzheimer's. And so they're working out now.

5:28 In fact, I just saw something come out yesterday other day before about which aspect of sleep seems to be the critical part. You know, I'm not a sleep scientist, but they're drilling down into like what is it, which part of sleep is it that is really important for that clearing out that protein that's associated with Alzhemer's fascinating, So your brain clears out. People don't realize that when you sleep. You think you're just resting your body and your muscles, and yeah, you know, all of the rest of it. But actually your brain, it's like putting your brain through the dishwashers, like reach is clearing out toxins that develop during the day. Like your brain builds up toxins all during the day, does it. So when you sleep there's certain proteins and stuff that are damaging and when you sleep, they all get kind of washed out. Wow, so you're not getting enough sleep, You're you're not clearing out music brain.

6:17 Yeah, toxic brain. Yeah, well you're it's just like eating off dirty dishes. Yeah, trying to think with the dirty brain. I love that analogy. And if it's bad for your brain, not sleeping, but also it can be very bad for your body. Because you will you all about this, you. Know, if you don't sleep enough, it ups a stress hormone, cortisole, which we've been coming back to in nearly. Every cordisole episode. Yeah, because cortisole can make you feel really crappy. And when you have increased cortisole in your system, it can shut down fat burns. So you get that tired tire that hangs around your belly, that's stubborn fat that you just can't move. My husband, he's a shift worker. So he if he doesn't get enough sleep, and he does very early mornings for a cock get up, he gets that tie around his belly, can't shift and even though he exercises and eats well, it's sleep causing that, and it can slow down your metabolism.

7:10 Yeah, not getting enough sleep has impacts. Also the hormone levels in your body, So the hormone that's associated with the feeling full, like the leptin and the gorellin, so the hormones associated with hunger and fullness, So you feel more hungry, increased quarters, all, you're more likely to feel hungry for sugary junk foods. And then your left and which is what tells you you're full, goes all out of whack as well, so then you're likely to eat more. So lack of sleep or chronic sleep deprivation. When I talk about chronics, people always say, well, how much sleep is a problem. Pretty much, from four days of five hours or less sleep, you start seeing some of these negative consequences. It happens very quickly, these negative consequences. But so chronic sleep deprivation or interrupted sleep is basically as big of an implication are as big a risk factor for obesity as over eating or not exercising. And people don't.

8:06 People think I'm going to attack my food and attack my nutrition, but they're not dealing with. Sleep recovery, sleep hygiene. They're up all night, you know, getting up all morning, or they're trying We see all the time people who are sleep deprived but trying to fit in their workout at eleven o'clock. And what do you say, They go to bed. That's what we say, you. Need to go to bed, because that is actually going to be just as important or more important for your health and fitness and everything else in your body and your brain. Have a nap work thirty minute workout in the middle of the night. Yeah, we always say that it's fascinating not enough sleep affect your hormones. But there are other physical downsides to not getting enough sleep, aren't they. Well, I think all that hormonal stuff is you know broad, there's a broad range of issues and so you know, again without going into the specifics of all of the research, we know that sleep problems are implicated in high risk of diabetes, and that's to do with the insulin.

8:57 Yeap not cleaning out that blood. Yeah, higher blood pressure and hypertension, and we've already mentioned the Alzheimer's. It's actually linked to your longevity. So all of these health issues and risks associated with not getting enough sleep. So when you're chronically short changing yourself of sleep, getting less than say six hours of sleep a night, you know, we've talked about increased risk of currory heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, you know, the brain stuff, the Alzheimer's. Some studies have shown that it increases your risk of early death by seventeen to twenty four percent. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty significant when you. Think about gob smacks like just from not enough enough sleep, and we've been talking about not enough sleep.

9:41 But the other thing is that actually getting too much sleep also has time to ask you this also has health implications, So you know, we need to find that sweet spot. And a lot of people say, well, you know, how much sleep should I be getting? And for adults it tends to be between seven and eight hours sleep over night. Okay, so there's a very small umber of people who can survive on less, very very small noma. They're the anomalies. And then you know, some people maybe between the eight and nine hours, but anything over nine hours is starting to get create problems as well. Okay, and I have a question about naps. Does sleep debt build up? So if I'm deprived the night before and I can get a ten minute sleep during the day, say I've got a newborn soon, it's ten minutes here, twenty minutes there, Does it build up during the day to back to feeling good or because sometimes I'll have a long nap and I feel worse and I feel groggy, So good.

10:38 Question that, because yes, having a nap can be really restorative and it can go some way to reversing some of these negative consequences. There is the ideal kind of nap. Link is that and it's found to be twenty minutes. Is that it? I was so happy to hear that because I love a nap to and it is a twenty minute event for me. It is absolutely twenty minutes. I'm awake and I'm good to go again. It is literally the power nap. And if you sleep longer than that, it actually can it puts you into a different sleep cycle where you can actually wake up feeling well. You know, when you sleep too long and you're gross yep. So if you're going to have a nap, you want to be aiming for that kind of fifty to twenty shuch a helpful tip, and it is. And this is where you raise a really good point too, if I'm not getting enough sleep, because oftentimes when you start talking about these stats and these problems of not enough sleep, it really scares people because parents with young babies, or you know, your husband's a shift worker. Yeah, people say, well, what do I do? You can, but I think we need to remember that it can be made up with a nap, and I think we just need to keep in mind that the next day, perhaps instead of cleaning the floors or doing the washing, you need to prioritize that nap, because that's the big issue with mumps is they say, but I'm too busy, I've got you know, you tell me sleep when the baby sleeps, but there's so much to do. But actually some of that stuff can be let go because the sleep is such a massive priority issue, big priority.

12:03 Okay, So if you're tired and you're pushing through that day and you're still at work or you've come home, you're exhausted and you're picking up work that you didn't finish in the office. Should you push through or have an early night? And you know, can it affect your productivity? Well, absolutely it can, and it can affect your attention to detail. You're more likely to make mistakes, cut corners, just miss things when you're tired. I know, I've always sent that email to that person that I was the wrong person. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah. And so obviously there are always going to be times when you've got that deadline and you have to push through. But if you don't have to, then you're probably going to be far more productive and effective because you're wasting time going back and fixing mistakes later if you're trying to get stuff done when you're tired. You know, there's one really famous example of Bill Clinton being asked in an interview if you had any advice for Barack Obama when he was the incoming president, and Bill Clinton said that the one thing he would say is that the most costly or significant mistakes he had ever made had been really caused by a lack of sleep. In hindsight, so you can make and you can make of that what you're will, But you know, in the situation room, you probably want to make sure that you're getting enough sleep because of those really costly errors of judgment. And that applies to all sorts of not just admin errors, but think about people working in factories and dangerous occupations and flying planes.

13:32 Oh my goodness, you know. Yeah, And when people are pushing through and short changing sleep, it's not just them at risk. We're all at risk. And sleep is really important also, just you know, a harmonious home and flying off the handle at your partners exactly, relationship exactly, Yeah, stress, irritability. We just don't have those emotional resources available to us to just manage life. You're listening to Crappy to Happy with Tipping Cast. After the break, we're going to come back and give you some tips on how you can improve your sleep. Stay with us. You're listening to Crappy to Happy with Tiff and Cass. We're talking about sleep, what robs you of a good night's sleep and ways to improve your sleep.

14:20 So let's talk about how we can improve our sleep. And I want to start with talking about smartphones because for myself, my problem is being on my phone in bed, which my husband says isn't sexy. And it's got to the point where he will take my phone off me and hide it in the house because I'm that addicted to scrolling through Instagram, Facebook emails late at night. And I know it's not good. It's a huge problem, and it's understandable. You are obviously not the only one. And you hear stories and you see people all the time. Somebody listening to this right now, who's like always on their bed, in their bed on their phone, yeah, next to their partner instead of on their phone, and they you know, there's a meme that's gone around like, you're the person that I could not I would most want to lie in bed, Yes, reading my phone next. Yes.

15:10 And my my husband says to me all the time, he says, I wish I was an iPhone. I wish, yeah, I would get more attention. And I'm like, and you run an online business, so it's natural, and a lot of people do. My business is through my phone, so. A lot of people are very it's it's work, it's work. I've got to be looking. But then once you're in that rabbit hole, it's addictive and you have trouble pulling away from it. And I've got to say I downloaded an app that tracks how many times you check your phone today, and I was over one hundred and fifty times checking my phone a day. You know, they build stuff into these devices to make them addictive. Oh what, Yeah, well that's a whole other episode. We'll come back to you. So tell me, cass how calm.

15:53 It's so bad for me being on that bright phone in the dark room. So what we know about about these screens, these small greens, is that the blue light behind them actually suppresses melatonin production in your body. So melatonin is the hormone in your body responsible for making your drowsy and putting you to sleep. So in the morning when you wake up, you have a surge of quartusol cordsoles. We talk about quartisolet in a bad way. It's actually very normal. Natural gets you up and go and doesn't app Yeah, we. Need cortisole to survive, but it's the chronic overproduction of coutersole that's the problem. And then in the evening, if we were going by the stars and the sun, you know, naturally when the sun goes down, then the melatonin production increases, and that's designed to make austrossi and put us to sleep.

16:35 So already we have a lot of artificial lights, and we're already sort of teaching our bodies to you know, go by artificial you know light and day as it is. So, but you add the blue light from screens and it is actually literally sending a message to your brain, like sending an alert signal to your brain when your body is wanting to shut down. So it's actually halting the melotone and a production. And it can keep you awake, upset your circadian rhythms, I guess, because your body thinks it's like daytime with that bright light in the darkness when you're lying in bed. So you know, your natural.

17:16 Yeah, messes, It messes with you, like's yeah say that. Yeah, it's not good. It will keep you, it will keep you awake. So that's number one. When people are having problems with sleep, when people tell us all the time that they have difficulty falling asleep, and it's really it's really widespread, it's very common. The first tip has to be to get off your screens at least thirty minutes before bed. I always say to people, even aim for an hour before bed, like just give yourself some downtime away from all of that stimulation of the light from the screen. The other thing is with the phones and computers and all the rest of it is that it's not actually just the light, it's the content that you're consuming. So if you're on your phone and you're getting, for example, message or work emails, or you're seeing things on Facebook that weren't a response, it's constantly kind of triggering you to want to respond, which is keeping you in that active, aroused you know, that reactive state, as opposed to that more calm winding down, you know, slowing down, parasympathetic, nervous system kind of relaxation state.

18:20 So it's not just the light. It's definitely also this constant triggering of you to want to pressure fresh you know, you know, read another thing, scroll scroll. That's it, like you know, like com posts. But one of the things that I've been doing, which is a great tip, is turning my smartphone into a dumb phone where I turn off the mobile data so it just works as a phone. If there's an emergency, it will ring, but I can't check Facebook or Instagram or emails, and that is helping rather than hiding the phone and ed running away with it, which might not be realistic for everyone. I just say, look, I'm turning into a dumb phone. Leave me alone and fine, And how do you do that?

19:01 Just put it into flight mode, yeah, flight mode, or you turn off the mobile data. You can change your settings on your phone to sleep mode. You can change the light setting on your phone. You can make it a little bit less stimulating or turn it into a dumb phone. Yeah. Or you can just leave it out of the bedroom completely, yes, exactly, which I highly recommend keeping it out of the phone. And then what we know is that the first argument is number one, I use it for my alarm, so in which case maybe you need to go and buy. An alarm, an old. School alarm clock. Or the other objection is always but you tell us, And I do tell people that meditation is great for helping you sleep, but ash or the apps are on your phone. So the other thing. I learned this from Arianna Huffington's Thrive podcast. Actually she's another massive sleep evangelist, and so all of her podcast episodes are all about sleep. But she suggested, well, you know what about get an old school iPod so which is just tracks, like just audio, and then you don't have the Facebook and the emails and all of the rest of it. But you can actually if there's a meditation app or something and relaxation audio you want to listen to, you can listen to it on your eye.

20:12 It's totally good too. I think it's a great idea. It's like, oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, that's simple. That's simple. And having your charging station not next to your bed, but maybe. Out of the room, in the kitchen or in another room. And while I'm on the Ariana Huffington thing, she also I'm going to get on her podcast because she gives all of her guests this thing called a sleep bed where you put your phone to sleep in this little bed. It's like a charging station, but you like tuck them in for the night and put them away in another room. And I'll work out how I get one of those. Yeah, that's cute. Put your phone to sleep, save it there. Yeah, so you leave it, you physically leave it out of the room so that you're not tempted by it. Because it's not just the going to sleep, you know, looking at the phone before bed. It's that often for people, it's when they wake up, you know, it's the waking up in the middle of the night and then reaching Like if it's within arms reach, you likely you tempt you can't reach for it. I think you may have.

21:02 To do that. Yeah, I wake up in the middle of the night two am, can't sleep. Look at my phone. Oh google this or that or Yeah. It's horrible. It's the worst thing that you can do. It just wakes you up. It stimulates you instead of helping you to relax and go back to. Okay, So divorcing your device at night, that's one device. I love that just that night. That's a really solid tip. But you know, watching Game of Thrones on Netflix is okay, right. It is actually like all screens, we want to be off all screens. Television is just as bad. And again it can be the content of what you're watching can be really you know, arousing your sympathetic nervous system as well. You're watching games for example. You know, maybe not the most relaxing content to be consumings right before bed, but no, we're talking about computers, laptops, televisions, iPads. I fans all the screens. Just find something else to do for thirty minutes.

21:57 And it's really important to teach our kids this too, because I know my teenage brother he's having sleep issues at UNI because he's on that phone all night in his bed. It's not good. It's really not. My daughter's only eleven, and she doesn't really take her she's an iPad mini, she doesn't really take it into her room. But I hear stories all the time of teenagers who are in their rooms and like the parents are saying that they can. In fact, I've had a story recently of a parent whose daughter's teenage daughter's phone was actually on the kitchen table and it was binging with messages at about eleven PM or midnight right and she was actually she was saying, who are these people messaging my daughter at midnight? Like why are they all asleep? This is teenagers who are messaging each other in the middle of the night, just keeping each other awake, and obviously having their phones in their room.

22:40 It's something to be mindful as a parent, isn't it. Very much? So very much so, you're teaching our kids those screen limits as well. So before bed, something that's much better to do is to read a book. An actual paper book is ideal, what but if you've got a kindle, well, let's you know, they're lighting in those is different. It's designed to it's not that blue light that's that really stimulate stimulating, like, it's designed to be more of a natural backlight. I do like my kindle. Yeah it's light, it's easier to hold onto. But you know, reading a book, having a warm bath, mediation cup of tea, you know, something that's kind of designed to tell your body, we're winding down now where you're going to sleep now.

23:24 And that's a really good point. Having a routine at night where you are teaching your body and your brain it's time. And you think of little kids like babies, you bath them at night, and you you know they respond to that routine as well. And they start to associate those things. Yeah, their body and brain starts to associate that this is the order that things happen. And then I go to sleep. And we all can benefit from that. We all learn from those same associations. So, you know, having a warm shower, having some like I often will say to people, obviously, no coffee, we want to get coffee and alcohol. They will both stimulate on that. Yeah, food, you can probably come back to that, but there's a you know some herbal teas are really calming, you know, bedime tea yep. So something like that, you know, as a nightly sort of ritual, it has the physiological effect of being relaxing, it's beautiful, as well as you know, becoming part of that nighttime routine.

24:19 Yeah, it's so important. And creating a few boundaries where people will work. People in my business they were calling me six seven o'clock at night and I had to say, you know, seven o'clock, you won't get onto me. My phone's off. And then you know, people just will stop calling. You've got to create those boundaries sometimes as well, even with your friends. If you text me late, I won't get back to you till tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, yep. And being mindful of that in a workplace I think is really important. If you're sending emails to people constantly around the clock, what sort of examples that's setting and what sort of messages it's sending. It's not good for anybody available. You're on, you're on, you're on. Yeah, turn it off. People. So you just mentioned cass our and coffee, and I think this is so fascinating because I read some research that the alcohol actually in a course of a night, we usually get about six or seven ARAM sleep cycles, which leaves us feeling really good. However, a night of drinking alcohol, like you know, one or two glasses of wine, will typically only have one or two cycles because initially we'll go to a deep sleep because the alcohol puts us into a deep sleep, but as the alcohol wears off, you wake up, Yeah, and you're robbed of that deep, deep sleep. So can really affect it.

25:35 And it's like that REM sleep, the RABBITI movement sleep, that is where a lot of this important stuff in your brain actually happens. So, yeah, you're right. Alcohol will oftentimes people think that it helps them to relax and to go to sleep, but then what happens is that you'll go straight into quite a deep sleep and then some hours later it sends. It actually triggers an alert system, so it wakes you up so that you're not getting that rem sleep. So you know, if you're going to have a drink, just make sure again that there's a good It's not like in those last few hours right before bed, you know, so all the screens and the caffeine, it's just like making sure that there's a pretty solid space between any of those activities when you're actually planning to go to bed and to sleep. Oh, you can tell us about sugar.

26:20 Well, that's just a stimulating you know, chocolate as well. All these things that we might have as a dessert or a treat late at night in front of the TV is quite stimulating. And even I've read some of my members they have decafs late at night. They love the taste of coffee, so they have decaf coffee. But you have to decode your decafs. A lot of decaf coffee actually has a little bit of coffee in it. And I know that being pregnant, you have to be very careful when you're looking into decafs and things like that. So I would even stay away from decaf coffee late at night as well. Yeah, and other foods that can affect spicy and fatty food. I've heard that too. They cause heartburn, So that will keep you up and stop you from falling asleep or wake you up. Food's containing a chemical called tyramine, which includes like bacon, cheese, nuts, red wine, can keep us really alert and away. Tyramine causes the release of ner adrenaline, a brain stimulant yeah, you can probably tell us more about that. Carbohydrates such as bread and pasta can have the opposite effect, where the serotonin release can actually make you more sleepy. But then eating carbs late at nights sometimes that can impact your waist, so it's not so good. But also you have to be really careful of just black black tea that's got caffeine in it, decaffeinated black tea. It can be a trap.

27:42 Yeah, and look, I've got a friend who she will have a coffee at nighttime. She says it has no impact on her. Like that at all. It Well, I think it's probably a personal thing. You have to, like chaffeine sensitivity check. In yourself what's appropriate. I mean, I would normally say to people no caffeine after like two pm, because it gives you like a really nice long window. It gives plenty of time for that to be metabolized out of your system. But I know people who will have a coffee after dinner or a tea black tea after dinner, and they don't seem to think that it has any negative effect. So maybe it is a bit of a personal thing. But maybe it's also that the quality of sleep's actually being affected without people realizing. And another thing that can be quite stimulating is working out late at night. I sometimes it can make you tired, but not usually. Often I find that it will pump you out. And a problem for me. My black belt class is an eight thirty class, and so I was finding I just couldn't sleep afterwards. So that's why now I'm like, I'll have to try and change the timetable there because I'm keeping all my students up with that.

28:49 It really is quite stimulating. I was even finding the same with a yoga class. Yea yoga late. Yeah, they're late at night, and I get home and I'm kind of all feeling up and energized. Which it because. You know you're working and you want to go to a class after work, but maybe think about stretching or doing it from home, or getting up early and doing a class before work. I'm not sure everyone's got a different schedule something that really helps me. And it's my own fault because I have plantation shutters in my bedroom, so a little bit of light leaks in from the street at night. It's not complete darkness, and that can be quite stimulating. But just wearing an eyemask the darkness can help stimulate the melotone and the sleep hormone Canna. Yeah, and that's a really simple fix. If you just can't fix the lighting in your room, that can help. But do you have any other tips to help us have a beautiful sleep?

29:42 Well, I certainly recommend for people who have difficulty with sleep to start with, apart from what we've already discussed, obviously, to have a really consistent sleep and wake time and bedtime exactly, and make that consistent through out the weekend as well, because your body responds to a and so I also say, well, what time do you need to be up in the morning, because what happens is people will stay up. You need students, I know the mill people will stay up in their night hours, so they step until like ridiculous one o'clock in the morning and then but they have to be up and they know they have to be up at six or seven to get where they need to be. So I say, well, what's the latest that you need to be out of bed? And then let's work back what time do you actually need to be in bed to give yourself the opportunity for eight hours of sleep, which is the optimal eight hours sleep and then working back from there. So okay, so if we've decided that you need to be in bed at ten, then working back from there, what time do you need to start shutting down devices, turning off the TV? What time you know? Then what will you do?

30:46 What will be part of your routine, the warm shower, changing into pajamas so your body knows that it's bedtime, you know, having the herbal tea or whatever it is, reading the book. You know, I love to diffuse, we have and even mentioned I love to diffuse loven to oil in my ears essential quite calming as well. I love it in the bath as well, nice. In the bath as well. And so work backwards and then you know, if you have to set yourself alarms and reminders that oh it's time to start winding down for bed, and then you start taking yourself through that process. But it's the consistency, because there's no point, you know, kind of having that consistency all during the week and then just it all going out the window on the weekend and you have to get yourself back into.

31:28 The relapses a bit, yeah, into. The routine again on Monday. That is so helpful and it's amazing that you can be at home feeling crappy, and really it's just sleep hygiene. It's just getting your sleep on traps sleep hygene, and then you feel great and there's resilience, and then yeah, you might feel like adding in a workout or adding in addressing your food and what you eating things. But often people come to us saying, I feel so crappy, I need a personal trainer, I need to overhaul my diet, and it can just be this, some more sleep then you can tackle. And I always say to people as a good indication of not getting enough sleep is if you have to wake up to an alarm every morning, and if you're pressing snooze on the alarm because you're waking up feeling tired.

32:11 I never pretty much never set an alarm. That's amazing, so I just wake up naturally. I've always been an early riser, so I know some people are more of a night our kind of person. But regardless, if you're getting enough sleep, your body will naturally wake up when it has had sufficient sleep. So if you're a person relying on alarm clock, there's a pretty good indication test that you need to be working backwards and getting into bed earlier. That's really I've got one more tip for people who are chronic insomncs, and I know that there will be one listening right now saying this is all really well and good, but I've tried all this and I just cannot sleep. And you know, sometimes people end up going and taking sleep medication. Things like that we don't want to talk about. You know, there are those options out there, But I say to people, if you're lying in bed and you can't sleep, then it just focus on resting. Focus on putting your hands on your belly and feeling the movement of the breath in and out of your body, and just feel how your body relaxes and sinks into the bed. Because what most people do is they wake up and they immediately start going into stressing about the fact that they're awake, and then that's angst and that anxiety. They're looking at the clock, they're counting down the aisles until they have to be out, anticipating how crappy they're going to feel the next day, and then that just makes the whole thing worse. So if you can just focus on the fact that rest is actually very restorative, same as meditation is very restorative, So even if you're not sleeping, you're still getting a whole lot of benefit by resting your body, resting your brain.

33:40 And I often find if it happens for me, like I just do that thing where I just focus on my breathing. Your brain can't be in two places at once, so if there's a lot of stuff in your head and you're focusing on your breathing, it can switch back and forth. But by focusing on your breathing and the physical sensation of the breath, your brain literally cannot be up in your head stressing. You bring it back to your breath over and over, and I usually find that that actually helped I just got to sleep. That is so helpful. And my daughter is eleven and she's been doing that since she was five. That's how she gets to sleep as well. She just focuses on her breathings. Might I do the breathing thing? Yea, so yeah, So don't stress. It makes things worse. Cass, I always wake up in the middle of the night. So am I better to just lie there and rest and just concentrate on the resting or should I get up and do something? Make myself tired and go back to bed.

34:29 I yeah, good question. If you can lie there and be resting for a while, but you're finding that you're really you know, you're wide awake and you're not getting sleep, then sometimes it's actually better to get up and leave the room, get out of the bedroom, because you don't want to have that association of being awake in bed. You want your bed to be associated with rest and sleep, So going into another room. The key is here not to go out to another room and turn pick up your phone or turn on the TV and go. To the blue line email. Yeah, but maybe to read a book by a dim light, do some that helps to make you feel tired again, and then put yourself back to bed. One thing, I don't know if there's any science to this, but what I used to find when I would have difficulty sleeping, if I was lying there for a long time and really couldn't sleep, if I took myself into the spare room.

35:14 We always had a spare room made up in our house for visitors. If I went in hopped into a different bed, I would fall asleep. I don't know what it was about that, but if I couldn't sleep, in my own bed. I would go and I'd fall asleep in another bed. It was just some change of scenery or change of pillow or something. So maybe that's something you can try as well. Okay, Couch, try it well, Cass, thank you, that's so helpful. I'm going to go take a nap if it gets so helpful. You're listening to Crappy to Happy with Tip and Cass. The next episode we're going to be talking about self sabotage, a really good one. We'll see you soon. Produced by Daves Lensky.

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