 This episode was prerecorded as part of a live continuing education webinar. On-demand CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs. Register at allceus.com slash counselor toolbox. So I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation, Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery. What are the effects of sleep on our mental health? Over the next 30, 45 minutes, we're going to learn about sleep, which you probably thought you already knew a lot about. And when I was putting together this class, I realized exactly how much I still didn't know about sleep. So hopefully you'll get some tips, tricks and tools that you can pass on or use for yourself in order to start feeling better and all that kind of happy stuff. We'll learn about the functions of sleep, except for, you know, to take time so we're not eating and working. What are your sleep cycles? And we hear about REM sleep a lot, but what exactly are those cycles and why are they important? We'll talk about how much sleep is enough and the difference between hours in bed and quality sleep because there's a big difference. And we'll talk about how lack of sleep contributes to feelings of depression, anxiety and irritability. And then we'll wrap up by talking about techniques for sleep hygiene and basically things that you can do to audit your personal sleep hygiene or you can help clients audit their personal sleep hygiene to make sure that you're getting really good quality sleep. Even if it's only six or eight hours, you really want to get as much quality sleep in there as you can. So sleep, as we all pretty much know, is the time to rest and restore. And they found that there's less resting and restoring, if you will, of the body and more resting and restoring of the brain during sleep. Adequate sleep improves memory and learning, increases attention and creativity, and aids in concentration and decision making. So think about a time when you've been sleep deprived. I know when I had both of my kids, you know, you went a couple of months before they were sleeping through the night. So you may have been a little bit sleep deprived. I was. During that time, it was a little harder to concentrate. I always called it mommy mind, because I'd walk into a room and I forget why I had walked in there. I'm like, I know I came in here to do something. Wasn't concentrating. Well, it seemed harder to get certain things done. Creativity is also kind of lowered because your body is focused on just doing what it needs to do to get through the day. So sleep has a lot of important functions. If you are one who prides yourself on creativity or who gets really frustrated when you can't concentrate or pay attention. Then that will be additive, if you will, because it will, it'll cause more grief and consternation throughout your day as you're trying to focus and you're like, oh, I wish I could remember. Toxins that accumulate in the brain are thought to be cleared out during sleep. And we're not going to go into all those toxins, but basically, as the brain goes through its normal function of the day, there are waste by products. And during sleep, that's thought to be cleared out. Healing and repair of cells takes place during sleep. There's a strong correlation between people who get inadequate quality sleep and coronary artery disease and a lot of other health problems. They're not exactly sure what happens during sleep. I mean, if you look at the different research reports and they hypothesize about a lot of things, but nobody can say for sure that this is exactly what happens, which is why if you don't get sleep, you eventually die. But we do know that there is a much higher morbidity of people who are sleep deprived and sleep deprived for long enough, you eventually start to waste. Sleep helps maintain the balance of hormones in the body. And this is one that's maybe really important for you and or your clients. Grayland and leptin regulate our feelings of hunger and fullness. So again, think about a time that you've been sleep deprived and or you haven't gotten quality sleep and we'll differentiate that a little bit later. Were you hungrier? Or did you tend to kind of mindlessly eat more? When these hormones are out of whack, we tend to feel more hungry and not get that sensation of fullness in a timely fashion. So understanding that these hormones can get out of whack. Insulin is responsible for the regulation of glucose in the blood. And that also can get wonky, if you will, when we don't have enough sleep. So it's important to understand that people who are sleep deprived may be more prone to obesity and overeating, partly and maybe largely in part, we don't exactly know, because of their hormones being out of whack. The good thing is, once you get your hormones back in balance, then some of that stuff falls in. I've worked with shift workers for many, many years, and you'll see that a lot of shift workers or residents that are going through doctors that are going through their residency who are working 36 hour shifts and not getting enough quality sleep. The weight goes on for a lot of them. So we want to look when we're working on weight goals, we want to look at, is this person getting enough sleep? Because the first thought is, well, when you're sleeping, you're not burning a lot of calories. So maybe you need to get up and move more. But in reality, we need to make sure that everybody's getting enough sleep. Because when a lot of the patients that I've worked with over the years have wanted to live a healthier life, have wanted to eat healthier, have wanted to do all this other stuff that's healthy. And one of the things I tell them is, well, one of the first places and easiest places to start is sleep. Most people are not averse to getting good quality of sleep. They may not want to start eating, you know, 11 servings of vegetables or something that comes down the line, but most people are willing to get good quality sleep. So it's a really good early intervention for someone who has low motivation or who is really struggling and needs the energy and the motivation that goes along with that sleep interventions can be really good. Sleep deficiency is linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, strokes, diabetes and kidney disease. Sleep deprivation is correlated to difficulty concentrating irritability and fatigue and loss of energy. Okay, so the physical things aside, so when you start not getting enough sleep, the hormones get out of whack your insulin can get out of whack. You can get frustrated, the cardiovascular disease and stroke they still haven't figured out the causative link between the two but they know there's a strong correlation. Now when we go down to the last three, concentration, irritability and fatigue and loss of energy, those are three symptoms of depression. So when we don't get enough sleep, we could actually be setting ourselves up for a depressive episode, maybe not a major depressive episode, but you're creating the symptoms that most people call depression. So what happens if we start getting good quality sleep and aren't as fatigued all the time, maybe we'll be a little less irritable because it won't seem like life is just so overwhelming, and we'll be able to concentrate more. So, you know, it couldn't hurt. And I said we talked about the sleep cycles because I keep saying if you get enough quality sleep, well what is quality sleep. There are basically four stages of sleep. Stage one non REM sleep is when you drift in and out of light sleep and can be easily awakened. It's, you know that initial stage where if the kid comes and knocks on the door you're not going to jump up and go oh my gosh, who is it. You're just going to be like, what do you want. Stage two non REM, your brainwaves are starting to slow but there are still intermittent bursts of rapid brainwaves going, I'm drifting off to sleep but not yet. I'm drifting off to sleep but not yet. Your eyes stop moving, your body temperature starts to drop and this is important when we get down to sleep hygiene. One mistake a lot of people make is they think that if they take a really hot shower right before bed, it'll help them get sleepy. And that's actually the opposite. Your body needs to be cool to go to sleep. In stage two, your body temperature drops and your heart rate begins to slow down. This stage usually lasts for approximately 20 minutes. Now, I don't know if you have Fitbits or garments or anything that measures your sleep. I know mine doesn't cycle exactly like they're talking about here because it's not measuring brainwaves, it's measuring activity. So, you know, stage one, you're still moving. Stage two, you're still moving. So this would be considered light sleep. Now, stage three non REM sleep is also known as your deep sleep or your delta sleep. This is the really good stuff. It's marked by very slow delta brainwaves and there's no voluntary movement. So again, if you're charting it on a Fitbit or something like that, you're going to see that's when it shows you're in deep sleep because you're not moving. And that's how it decides what you're doing. You're very difficult to wake at this point. If you've ever been awakened during stage three sleep, you have a difficult time getting oriented to where you are, whether it's day or night, what's going on. And you feel kind of lost for a second. And this is very normal for that stage of sleep. It takes your brainwaves a few minutes to jumpstart. This stage usually lasts for approximately 30 minutes. The largest percentage of deep sleep comes in the early part of the total night's sleep pattern. Now, I know that's not true for me and I don't want people to get too hung up. I read an interesting article that indicated that a lot of people with sleep monitors actually tend to get more frustrated and have a higher anxiety level. If they're trying to chart their sleep all the time and it's not falling into that pattern that it's supposed to. So we don't want to get too hung up on that, but there is some information to be gleaned from how much light sleep versus how much dark sleep or not dark sleep but deep sleep you get. And stage four is your REM sleep, rapid eye movement. Now, this is where we dream. You're temporarily paralyzed in your voluntary muscles. Obviously, you're still breathing, your heart still beating. Your breathing may be irregular. It may be fast. It may be slow. You have an inability to regulate body temperature. So if you've ever awakened like right after a dream, you might find that you're either really, really sweaty or you're really, really cold. Faster brain waves resemble the activity of the person, whoever it is, when they're awake. So it's kind of like this is when they theorize that we're consolidating and sorting through all of our memories from the day and that's kind of what they think makes dreams. They're still not sure. So when we're talking about those four stages. Remember, I said in Delta sleep, you have paralysis of your voluntary muscles. In REM sleep, you have temporary paralysis of the voluntary muscles. So both of these are going to show as very little activity on a tracker. Now, stage one and two are going to show as your light sleep because you do have more movement and we tend to move after you come out of REM sleep. Then you go back into phase one, which is that light, very, very little sleep. And then you go into stage two again and you cycle like that throughout the night. These cycles theoretically last about an hour and a half. Don't get too hung up on it. What you really want to do is look at total light sleep compared to total deep sleep and just get an idea about how much you're getting. I encourage my clients to keep a log of their sleep, just the total amount of deep sleep and the total amount of light sleep and how they feel throughout the day. To get an idea for how much they need, if they're recovering from surgery, if they've undergone a trauma recently, if there's a bunch of stress going on, they may need more deep sleep than the average person. It's important for them and their mindfulness and vulnerability prevention and all that kind of stuff to know how much of my mood variability and stuff is due to not having enough deep sleep for me. So the age groups, when we're talking about how much is enough and I'm not going to go through each one of these. I'm just going to jump down to 12 to 18 years old. Generally, sleep eight and a half to 10 hours, as opposed to I know my teenagers don't, and they need about 1.7 to two hours of deep sleep. They say about 20% of your sleep should be deep sleep. Over 187.5 to nine hours and I bet many of you are going, I wish I could get 7.5 hours of sleep. I just don't have that kind of time. And we theoretically need 1.5 to 1.8 hours of deep sleep. I can tell you if I don't get at least three hours of deep sleep. I'm a crank the next day. So understanding how your body works and how much recuperation you need is important and not just go by these. So let's just throw some more things into the mix. Other things that impact your sleep estrogen usually improves the quality of sleep reduces time to fall asleep and increases the amount of REM sleep. Now, if you remember some of the from some of the other presentations, when estrogen is present there, it tends to raise the levels of serotonin. We know that serotonin is broken down to make melatonin. So it makes sense that if there's estrogen in the system at a reasonable level, there's going to be more available serotonin, which will help us sleep better. Too little or too much testosterone may also affect sleep quality. Cortisol, your stress hormone. This is the one that tells you you need to be on alert. If you've got too much cortisol coursing through your system, guess what? You're not going to be able to relax enough to get deep sleep to get that restful sleep. So figuring out how to deal with cortisol levels is really important, which goes back to basic stress management. And you can see how a lot of this is going to fold in for for our clients when we're talking about managing depression and anxiety. Well, depression and anxiety are generally linked to cortisol levels, as well as estrogen and serotonin, and all of this impacts sleep. Poor sleep impacts all of that other stuff. So it's a reciprocal and it can be positive or it can be negative. And what we want to do is start them on a positive trail. Thyroid hormones, which are too high can cause insomnia because hyperthyroid hyper people are a lot more stimulated and hypothyroid tends to mimic symptoms of depression, among other things, which includes fatigue and lethargy. So understanding that tiredness is not just caused by not getting enough sleep, but sleep can be impacted by all of these hormones. Nutrition. You didn't think you needed to eat to get good sleep, did you? Well, you do. Tryptophan is the only precursor to serotonin, nutritional precursor to serotonin. And so people need to get enough tryptophan, which is a protein in their diet in order for their body to make serotonin so it can make melatonin so they can sleep. So encouraging patients to eat a healthy diet. It's tryptophan found in just about every protein, basic protein out there. You know, your meat, your fish, your dairy products. So it's not that hard to get, but making sure they're getting some of that and not avoiding it. When I work with people who are in early recovery, a lot of times they haven't had much tryptophan for a long time because they haven't been eating much in the way of anything besides, you know, junk food and alcohol. And tryptophan is not in those. So helping them understand that eating some balanced meals will help them get better sleep. Melatonin helps us feel sleepy. When we've talked to people before who have taken melatonin, they say, yeah, I take it to help me sleep. Well, basically, you're bypassing that whole neurotransmitter route and you're not waiting for the tryptophan to make serotonin, which can be broken down from melatonin. You're just bypassing and go, here, here's a dose of hormones. Thinking about it, is this what our body really needs? And some people, when they take melatonin, even if they only take a really low dose, have a hungover feeling the next day. If they are on SSRIs especially, but obviously I don't tell people to take melatonin. I advise them to talk with their doctor because it can't interact with certain medications they're taking. Caffeine, wonderful, wonderful invention, but it's a stimulant with a six hour half life. What does that mean to us? It means whatever you drink takes 12 hours to get out of your system. Half of it is out of your system in six hours. So if you drink a really good cup of coffee at noon, it's just going to be finishing getting out of your system at midnight. I don't know about you, but I go to sleep at like 8.30. So that means that first four hours of sleep when I'm supposed to be getting the majority of my deep sleep probably isn't going to be quality because I have stimulants in my system still. Nicotine is also a stimulant with a two hour half life and a lot of people use nicotine and or caffeine in order to calm down and there are certain effects of both of those that can help people kind of get refocused. Some of them are psychological. Some of them are chemical, but it's important to understand other ways to calm down and start to relax besides ingesting a stimulant. Decongestants and the Christmas crud as we call it around here is going around right now and there are a lot of people are on decongestants and antihistamines. Decongestants are also guess what? Stimulants, pseudoephedrine, and I can't pronounce all the other versions of that, but understand that if you're taking a decongestant, it may make you wired, which may negatively impact your sleep. Antihistamines. You know, I find this really, really interesting that if you look on a lot of the boxes of sleep aids, you know what they are, diphenhydramine. What's diphenhydramine? Benadryl. And what's Benadryl? Antihistamine. So yes, antihistamines do make you drowsy, but they contribute to poor quality sleep. So they'll help you get to sleep. But the research shows that you're probably going to stay in that lighter stage or more agitated stage of sleep, and you're not going to get good, deep sleep. So it's imperative that we look at what are all the reasons that might be contributing to me not getting enough good sleep, which could be contributing to my anxiety, my difficulty concentrating, my fatigue, my lethargy, my irritability. Sleep is good. Alcohol. A lot of people have a glass of alcohol in the evening in order to go to sleep. Now, a glass may not be a big deal. But we do know that alcohol blocks REM sleep, that rapid eye movement where you're dreaming and you're consolidating memories and you're doing a lot of your learning, actually, they've found. It can cause sleep apnea because it depresses the respiration rate. So if you drink, especially if you drink a lot right before bed, or even a couple hours before bed is going to impact your sleep until it's out of your system. So eating a high protein dinner to ensure you have enough tryptophan in the body is important. Another thing I learned when I was doing the nutrition presentation, which is coming up. Your body is actually able to access that tryptophan a lot more if you eat carbohydrates with it, because carbohydrates make your body absorb a bunch of the other amino acids that are competing to get into the brain. And so tryptophan just slides right on in there when all the rest of them are getting absorbed into the body. Make sure you're getting enough selenium, vitamin D, calcium, a magnesium and zinc. Most of these are in a good multivitamin, but they're also found in a relatively healthy quality diet. And I always state, if you will, that a relatively healthy diet means eating three colors on your plate at each meal. And that's three colors three times a day. And if you can do that, you're probably going to get a pretty good spectrum of what you need. But if you feel you need to take a multivitamin, then it will probably have all of these. Vitamin D is really important because it helps us regulate our moods and regulate our circadian rhythms. That's our sleep eat something else cycle. We need to know when we're supposed to be awake and that sets off all of the other activities for the day. So if your circadian rhythm gets out of whack, you're just kind of looking outside going, is it time for dinner? Am I supposed to be satiated? What's going on here? We've had a lot of rain recently and it's hard to know when you go out and it's also, let's see, it's still January in Tennessee. So when you go out at 430 in the evening, it's starting to get dark already or still. So it's hard to know exactly what you're supposed to be doing because you're not on that 15 hours of daylight like you get during the summer. So sleep hygiene, create a wind down ritual. We did it with our kids and then for most of us, I think, we quit enforcing that with our children when they got to be elementary school age, which probably isn't the best thing. We still need to be doing it for ourselves and encouraging our children to do it so they maintain good sleep hygiene and sleep habits as they grow. What is this ritual? Usually two or three things. With babies, you would come home from work, pick them up from the sitter or whatever it was, make dinner, you'd eat, they'd bathe, they'd get a story, and then they'd go to sleep. Doing those same activities each night cues the body that, hey, it's time to start breaking down serotonin because it's going to be bedtime pretty soon. Whatever you do, you don't have to go to bed at the same time each night. Close to the same time is ideal, but not necessarily the same exact time. But if you do the same wind down ritual each night, it will help your body kind of kick it into gear and go, okay, it's time to go to bed now. It doesn't have to be elaborate. I've told you all before, I usually either play Scrabble or Checkers on my Kindle before I go to bed. And that cues my body in that, you know, it's time to quit thinking about writing classes or whatever else and just focus on what I consider mind-numbing activities that helped me wind down. Reduce or eliminate exposure to blue light one hour before bed, or more if you can, but at least one hour before bed. Blue light is any kind of fluorescent light or anything that comes from a monitor like your phone, your iPad or your television. It has a blue hue to it, and that tells the brain that it's time to be awake. It's not time to go to sleep. So it prevents the melatonin from being created and released. They have for your phones, and I don't know why I feel they need to show you a phone, but whatever. You can get apps for your phone, for your iPad, for just about any of your devices that will put a red hue over it so you don't mess up that melatonin being created. Turn down as many lights as you can. At night, when you're doing your wind down ritual, try not to sit in a room that's like brightest daylight. Try to sit in a more quiet room. Try to sit in a room that has the yellowish lights with the soft bulbs and the lowest wattage that you can deal with. When you go to bed, you know, sometimes you have to get up. If you can avoid turning on all the lights on the way to the bathroom or wherever you're going. That's also helpful to not mess up this whole cycle. It happens. You got to get up sometimes. If you can put little red nightlights throughout the house and still stay away from the blue lights, work more towards the red hue lights or orange hue lights and use the minimal amount of light necessary to do what you need to do. When you're sleeping, you know, sometimes you can't get your bedroom completely dark. If you're working night shift or if you live in the city and there's a streetlight outside. But there are a lot of reasons. Consider a sleep mask. It does wonders to help you sleep if you can get all of that light out. Eliminate as much noise as possible. You can use white noise devices like we use in our offices. You can use earplugs. You can use headphones with, you know, white noise on them, whatever works for you. Obviously, if you're using headphones, I'll state the caveat. Try to use cordless headphones so you don't end up wrapping it around your neck. That's bad. But anything you can do to make it quieter or at least maintain the same decibel level, which is kind of what the white noise does. Try not to exercise or take a hot bath within two hours of bed. Now there is something to be said for taking a relaxing hot bath or hot shower after work or going to the gym. You know, great. That's awesome. It helps you relax. But then you got to give your body time to start cooling down before it's time to sleep. Keeping your room cool. 72 degrees is ideal. But how many of us want to pay that electric bill? So, have a fan on if you can tolerate the fan. A lot of research has recommended or indicated that your body is, you'll stay more the same temperature if you wear jammies instead of sleeping in the buff. So, you know, consider doing that too. Consider a cooling pillow and mattress topper. A lot of us have those memory foam mattress toppers, which are wonderful. But the old fashioned ones tend to hold heat. They would conform to your body as they got hot and or as they felt your body heat. And that would kind of help it become softer and conform, but then it would hold that heat throughout the night. They've replaced a lot of those or made the advancement to add a gel layer on top of the memory foam, which helps maintain your body temperature instead of getting you overheated. And they have these for pillows as well as for toppers. Definitely something to consider if one of the reasons that you wake up is you're too hot. Some people like to have a big blanket over top of them. I know I do. But again, if it's 80 degrees, it's not real practical to have a huge comforter on top. So how do you get that feeling of comfort, that feeling of security without having a big blanket over you? And for people who have this issue, they have weighted blankets now that you can either make or you can buy. And basically it's a thin blanket that has like a little cotton layer in it. It's nothing too elaborate. But then it has channels that are filled with weighted beads. The nice thing about having channels is that you can actually still wash it. Because it's not this huge thing that weighs 50 pounds. But you can get them. And it helps a lot of children that have anxiety issues and people who feel more secure sleeping under a heavy blanket to use a weighted blanket. Try to avoid anything. And I typically tell my clients within two hours of bed that might get you upset. So if you tend to get on social media and end up getting in a fight with somebody, or watching the news and getting upset about what's going on or whatever it is, stay out of it. If you check your email and your boss has no boundaries and emails you at 8.30, 9 o'clock at night, and you check it and then you start getting stressed out about work, what's going to happen? You're going to dump cortisol. What do we say about cortisol? It keeps you from getting good sleep. So we don't want to do this. Anything that's going to upset you that you don't have to tend to right then probably can wait to morning. Reduce or eliminate caffeine at least six hours before bed. Drink the majority of your fluids during the day. And you know, I tend to always have a water bottle with me so I get my fluids throughout the day. But in the days I don't, I come home and I notice that I drink a whole lot of fluid, which makes me have to get up twice during the night or something. If you're working with a client who has issues that they're getting up multiple times during the night every single night, obviously refer them to their physician to get that checked out because they may be able to do something about the bladder issues, which is a psychological cause for this that can be addressed. If you have allergies, keep an air purifier in the room so you're not coughing. It may not wake you up, but if you're coughing, it's still keeping you from that deep sleep. And this is the one I'm bad about keeping animals off the bed. I love my animals and I have a really hard time sequestering them. When they move around, they will disturb you. When they shed, they can aggravate your allergies. When they decide that they're going to clean themselves at two in the morning, it can wake you up. So there's a lot of reasons that animals probably shouldn't be on the bed when you're trying to sleep or preferably at all, especially if you're allergic to them. This may be something that you or your clients are not willing to do. So I'm putting it out there. It's a best practice, but we can't do everything all the time that's in our best interest necessarily. Make the bedroom a place of relaxation and sleep. Don't do bills in the bedroom. Don't fight with your significant other in the bedroom. Anything that is, again, going to get you upset. You don't want the bedroom to be a stimulus to remind you of a bad time or a stressful time. So have the bedroom be, try to keep it relatively organized and clean, whatever that means for you. So you can walk in there and just go, okay, it's time to relax and go to sleep. Not be looking around going, oh my gosh, there is just stuff everywhere. We have a thing in my house called flat surfaceitis. And the suffix itis means inflammation of and all of our flat surfaces get flat surfaceitis throughout the week sometimes. And it just drives me absolutely bonkers. But all I have to do is tell the kids, you know, flat surfaceitis got to take care of it. Whatever it is for you that makes your environment relaxing, make it happen. And pay attention to all your senses, not just sight but smell. Back to those lovely animals again. We live on a farm and mine love to roll in things that they really shouldn't be rolling in and I won't elaborate. And that means when they get on my bed and they roll, they leave a little trace of that odor and it can get to you after a while when enough noxious odors kind of build up. So make it smell good, whatever that means for you. Make it the right temperature. Try to have bed clothes, you know, sheets and comforters and stuff that are comfortable. And, you know, I don't get too particular about sheets myself. You know, it can anything over about 300 fret thread count I'm good with. But some people really need or prefer something much, much softer. So encourage people if they're going to splurge on making one room at the house really comfortable and really nice, the bedroom might be a good place to start. Keep a red light again with the red light. A lot of flashlights now have a red light setting. So keep a red light a notepad and a pen by your bed. So if you think of something while you're dozing off to sleep that I need to remember to put out the garbage tomorrow morning. Whatever it is, you can just sit up, turn on that red light, write it down, go back to sleep. So you're not bouncing that around in your head all night long. We've already talked about weighted blankets, you can Google weighted blankets, you can Google. Not recipes, instructions for making weighted blankets and learn a little bit more about them. They tend to be really helpful and they were first used, if you will, with children who have autism. But they've gained popularity among adults and a lot of other people and they've extrapolated that to the thunder vests that they made for a lot of dogs because that feeling of pressure and security does make a lot of animals feel a lot more secure. Keep your daytime naps to under 45 minutes. After 45 minutes, you're probably starting to hit that deep sleep, that delta sleep. Remember the stage two only lasts for about 20 minutes. We don't exactly know how long stage one lasts. But you know by the time you're ending about 40 minutes, you're starting to nose into deep sleep and you don't want to go into deep sleep during the day if you're taking a nap. Although an afternoon nap they found that is of short duration does help increase norepinephrine and concentration throughout the rest of the day. Consider diffusing essential oils. And I use the word diffusing very loosely, whether you put it on a cotton ball and put the cotton ball in your pillow. If you put it in a tart warmer that you have plugged into the wall, if you spray it, however you get the smell in there. Lavender, chamomile, patchouli, and catnip are all found to be sedative to humans. And yeah, catnip. Now catnip has a really unique odor. So, you know, you might want to try it out at your local health food store before you go okay I'm going to get catnip it'll help me sleep it'll make my cat happy at the same time. Remember that a lot of cats aren't sedated by it they're actually stimulated by it. So if you have a cat that you let in the bedroom when you sleep catnip is probably not a good choice. Select the right pillow. When we have neck strain, and most of us that carry stress in our neck and back carry it in our neck. And when you don't have the right pillow, your neck stays stressed a little bit throughout the night which can impair your sleep quality. They found that the, the foam pillows that have the medium sized role and then kind of the divot and then the little roll tend to be best for supporting your neck and your head. But try out different pillows and find one that works for you. You know, as long as you don't take it out of the package, generally if you get it at Walmart or something you can take it back. So, you know, if you don't want to lay down on the floor on the bed at the, at the store and say let me try this out. If you get a home, you try it out, see if it makes your neck feel like it's relaxing at all or not. So insufficient quality sleep contributes to fatigue. Now, when I'm fatigued, I have difficulty concentrating. I tend to get cranky because I'm not getting as much done as I think I should get done. And it has negative reverberations kind of throughout life. So, you know, multi-concentrating reduced reaction time. And that's one we really didn't talk about. But remember I said some people who take melatonin report that the next day they feel kind of hung over. Some people who take some of the prescription sleep aids that I won't name have reported feeling very, very hung over the next day. Not all people, but some. You know, it's going to be significantly reduced if you're not getting enough sleep. And you can start to feel apathetic because your norepinephrine levels may be going down. During deep sleep is when researchers think that the brain rests and rebalances. So this is the time that the excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters kind of all balance out. And I always use the analogy of taking a warm bath. If you had a really hot day all day long, then you're calming down and balancing out and getting ready for the next day. Over time, sleep deprivation can cause changes in neurotransmitter levels. So your serotonin, which is basically your happy chemical for lack of a better term. Norepinephrine, which is your motivation and your excitation neurochemical, that and glutamate. And dopamine, which is your pleasure and reward clinical chemical, those can all get out of balance if you're not getting enough sleep. And then your immune functioning can go down. Think about a time that you were really stressed, you weren't sleeping much used to be for me the last week of the semester when I was studying for finals, because I would pull all nighters to three nights in a row. And really wear myself down and you could pretty much bet that as soon as I finished my last final, I was going to be sick within 24 hours. And it's just kind of how it works when we get run down, we make ourselves more susceptible. And when I'm sick, I tend to be cranky on and when you're sick, you can't breathe through your nose, which inhibits your sleep quality. So what do you do you take medication, what medications do you take decongestants and antihistamines, both of those make it so you're not getting good sleep quality. So a lot of times when you're sick, you're not getting a lot of good deep sleep. Important fact to remember just to be kind to yourself and say, you know what, I am not going to be on my a game today. It's just it's not going to happen. But that's okay, because if I take care of myself, then I can get better and get back up to speed faster. Most people can benefit from auditing their sleep quality, reducing light, reducing noises, reducing bathroom trips, reducing wake ups because of dot dot dot, you know, whatever wakes you up. If you've got small children, you may still end up getting awakened once or twice a night for whatever reason, but trying to reduce how frequently you get awakened. Change your caffeine and your nicotine habits. But the big take home is sleep has huge impacts, huge, huge, sorry, couldn't help it. It has huge impacts for mental health, for depression, for anxiety, for your day to day functioning and your concentration, which contributes basically says if you get good sleep, you're going to be more likely to be able to feel happy. If you don't get good sleep, you're stacking the deck against yourself. These are some resources and they're in the PDF that are in the classroom that talk about the some of the things that we talked about today. So if you are like me and you really like looking at studies and research and analyzing the data yourself, you know, more power to you, you can feel free to click on some of those links and take a look because as I said earlier, when I've worked with clients before, sometimes they're not, they're pretty contemplation about a lot of things. But if you say, all right, you know, what about looking at making some changes in your sleep and explaining to them what sleep can do for them and how much better they can feel if they're, if they start getting good sleep so their body can rebalance and feel better on its own, then they may be a lot more willing to start that. And if that starts to make help them feel a little bit better, then they're going to be motivated to follow through with other things. When you lose sleep, can you catch up? The research says yes, but it usually takes a couple of days. Because most of us don't, you know, if you sleep four hours one night, it's not likely that you're going to be able to sleep 12 or 13 hours the next day. So most of us catch up, you know, we get a little extra hour here and extra hour there for shift workers, if they're juggling their sleep. One thing that I encourage them to do is look at the week as a total. And if you want to get, and I'm going to use number 10 because it's easier on my math skills, if you want to get 10 hours of sleep a night, that 70 hours of sleep a week. So try to keep track of how much sleep you get each night. So on your days off, you know, whether you might need to give yourself a little bit of a birth to sleep in. But yes, you can catch up on your sleep. The other thing that we can point out here is jet lag. If you happen to be a person who travels and between time zones. One time zone isn't usually a big deal, but if you're traveling across the country, then your body is going to be out of sync. The Canadian rhythms are not going to know when you're going to sleep when to eat when to do anything. So you will probably not have good quality sleep for the first couple of nights, but you can catch up. It's all about creating that routine, learning how to cue your body in for sleep, knowing what you need to get good sleep, you know, whether it's good sheets or quiet or white noise or whatever. It's not going to happen. So you can stay rested and refreshed. The other thing I tell people is to bank their sleep. And I didn't find much information on it. But if you know that you're going to have a period where you're not going to sleep a lot. Maybe you're getting ready to go on vacation and you just plan on being wide open the entire time you're in Vegas or wherever it is. Then make sure that you're really well rested going into that. Then going through it, it may not be as draining when you come out the other side. Are there any other questions, comments, concerns, insights? I always love to hear insights too. All right, everybody, thank you. You can go take your quiz and I will see you on Tuesday. What are my thoughts on guided sleep CDs? I'll have to get back to you on that because I'm not sure. I'm familiar with guided meditation but not guided sleep. So I will research it today and I will put in the additional resources section of the class. I'll put something in there as once I look it up and learn more about it. It usually takes me about 36 hours to get the video downloaded and processed and up on the YouTube channel. But it will be up on the YouTube channel by Saturday. All right, everybody. Thank you so much. If you have any other questions, feel free to email me at support at allceuse.com. If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe either in your podcast player or on YouTube. You can attend and participate in our live webinars with Dr. Snipes by subscribing at allceuse.com slash counselor toolbox. 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