Sleep Myths and Muddles: Surprising Truths for a Better Night
You probably know a lot about sleep already. But do you know enough to sleep well? As a long term chronic insomniac, I knew loads, and so did the many therapists I consulted, but still, five hours sleep was a rare victory. It took leaving a job I loved, and thinking about fundamentals to chip away my patterns of poor sleep. I am fascinated by our brain, by our sleep, an incorrigible reader of research, and I listen and collect data.
Here are a few lesser-known factors to address that could make a dramatic difference to your sleep.
1. Do I really have to eat breakfast?
Answer: To sleep as well as you can, you have to eat before 12.30p.m., but what you eat and do may be very different from a normal breakfast.
My own post insomnia breakfasts don’t include toast, muesli, croissants, or cereal. They do include great coffee, look similar to my dinner, and I usually eat them outside. It’s all about maximising my body’s natural melatonin.
Melatonin, often called our sleep hormone, is made at dusk by our pineal gland from serotonin made in our brain the morning before. In order to make that serotonin, we need the right nutrients and “morning” light (before 2pm). Some of the nutrients we need are stored in the body, but the amino acid tryptophan has to be eaten and digested earlier that day. In practice, that means that a breakfast, snack, or early lunch, containing tryptophan is essential if we want to sleep well. A protein shake won't do: Amino acids cross the blood-brain barrier in a hierarchy, and tryptophan, the largest amino acid of all, can get left behind if it's muddled up with other proteins. Scrambled eggs with avocado is better for sleep than bacon and eggs, and leftovers from dinner can make a very good breakfast.
2. Water is good for sleep ... but with a caveat
Our brain can't produce the powerful electricity needed for deep sleep if we are dehydrated. However, drinking too much water can also be a problem.
We had a user called Brian who had struggled to sleep for years. He had Lymes disease, had excellent nutritional advice, and unsuccessful CBT. He was drinking lots of water, but that was diluting his minerals including magnesium and he was making it worse by double-filtering the water to improve its taste. With our recommendation of more magnesium, less water, and our tech, Brian slept better: “The Zeez has definitely improved my sleep. The sleep I'm getting is much better and feels like the sleep I used to get years ago. I’d always thought there was some sort of link between the water I was drinking and sleep patterns, I just didn’t know what!“
3. Why must I switch off my electrical devices?
We know that the light from our tech damages our sleep, but did you know electromagnetic fields, that occur wherever there is electricity, do too? The worst culprit is probably our humble electrical alarm clock. Why? Because it amplifies the current flowing in our bedroom cables to stay accurate—50 times per second in the UK and Europe, and 60 times per second in the US.
That's about the same speed as the neurons of the thinking brain become electrically negative and positive. It's as if our brain is bombarded by a message saying "think, think, think," 50 times per second. It's worth thinking twice about charging your phone on the bedside table.
4. But alcohol helps me fall asleep...
Do you think you sleep better after a nightcap? Alcohol may help you fall asleep, and even allow some deep sleep, but it's a real problem for the latter stages of sleep. Alcohol interferes with our REM sleep, the stage when we process emotions and store memories. That means that our ability to learn and remember is impaired. It is definitely not good for our mental health.
5. I need to get up in the night to pee
Really? Or do you just need to move a bit more? What did you do before you went to bed? A bit of telly, emails at the computer? Gentle movement before bed can help shift liquid from your tissues to your bladder.
One of our users visited London from his home in Dubai. The Zeez was helping, but he was still waking in the night. Then he called me: “Anna, I slept all night!” What had he done differently? Gone shopping with his wife at Westfield … That evening walk around a shopping centre had moved liquid into his bladder before he had gone to bed, and he slept undisturbed.
Westfield may not tempt you, but doing the washing up, some easy hoovering, or walking the dog might help you to stay asleep all night rather than waking at 3 or 4am.
6. Feeling tired in the morning?
Do you wake up feeling as if you haven’t slept properly? More deep sleep would help, and you may also benefit from increasing your cortisol in the morning. Cortisol, our “stress hormone”, often gets a bad rap. It can wake us up at 4a.m. But in the morning, cortisol makes us feel bright and energetic. How can you increase it? Small changes can be easy: go outside soon after waking or simply open your curtains, look at the brightest part of the sky that doesn't hurt your eyes, and do 4 minutes exercise at whatever pace you can manage. Raising your morning cortisol also tends to lower your cortisol during the rest of the day, so you stay calmer and more rested.
7. The best time for morning coffee?
You may wake up desperate for that first coffee, but that’s a dreadful time to drink it, even though it wakes you up. Why? When we wake up, our body is still coursing with the neurotransmitter adenosine, which makes us feel sleepy. Caffeine blocks our adenosine receptors so that we feel alert, but it doesn't eliminate the adenosine from the body. As soon as the effect of our early morning caffeine wears off, that lingering adenosine is likely to make us crash. With that crash can come a desire for a sugar fix, and we are into a cycle of yo-yoing glucose and cortisol which can seriously affect our metabolic health. Give your body about 45 minutes to naturally clear adenosine, and you can drink your first coffee without experiencing plummeting energy, followed by a delicious and sustaining protein rich breakfast.
Coffee is a great antioxidant and a surprisingly good source of fibre, and for many of us, it's fine to drink in the morning.
8. Why do we need magnesium and vitamin D to sleep well? Surely good food is enough?
If only ... We need many vitamins and minerals to sleep well. Most can still be obtained from food, but intensive farming over the last 150 years has depleted our soil of magnesium, and we haven't been putting it back. Vegetables today commonly contain only 10% of the magnesium that they contained 100 years ago, and that's not enough.
As for vitamin D, we were designed to live outside in Equatorial Africa. We no longer get the exposure to sunshine and vitamin D that a caveman existence would offer. We can get enough vitamin D from the sun, but we need it on our skin at a time of day when our shadow is shorter than us, without the impedance of sunblock. Remember that, everyone who tells me they get enough vitamin D because they walk their dog every morning and evening.
Want Better Sleep? Magic without Myths?
Many factors affect our sleep. Some known and some unknown. Some fixable, and some not. Sometimes, we get stuck in a neurological pattern that persists even after we have dealt with its cause. Whatever the cause of our poor sleep, there is one factor in common: our brain is not following a good pattern for sleep. Almost always, our brain activity is too fast at certain stages of the night: too fast (too stressed) to fall asleep, too fast to stay asleep, too fast for deep sleep. Zeez technology prompts our brain to follow a pattern for good quality sleep. Provided that we are sufficiently nourished, with our tech, tips and support, we usually succeed.
Best Wishes,
Anna