 First, I want you to ask yourself two questions. One, do you struggle with depression? Two, does your sleep suck? If you answered yes to both of those, make sure that you watch this whole video. What is up everybody? This is Chris from The Reward Soul, where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel's all about mental health, so if you're someone like me who is actively trying to improve your mental and emotional well-being, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And before we jump into these 10 sleep tips, real quick, for those of you who don't know me, I am not a licensed professional. I am just somebody who has struggled with depression, anxiety, and addiction in the past, and I try to share my experience, as well as all the research and reading that I do for tips that help with depression, anxiety, and all that other stuff. All right, so something that is the consensus across every single book I read and study I read is that sleep is one of the most important things if you're trying to overcome depression, but I know so many people, so many people struggle with insomnia and sleep issues, so we need to get that on lock, all right? Anyways, you don't gotta believe me. Let me read you a little bit from this Harvard University study. Studies using different methods and populations estimate that 65% to 90% of adult patients with major depression and about 90% of children with this disorder experience some kind of sleep problem. Most patients with depression have insomnia, but about one in five suffer from obstructive sleep apnea. Insomnia and other sleep problems also increase the risk of developing depression. A longitudinal study of about 1,000 adults ages 21 to 30 enrolled in a Michigan Health Maintenance Organization found that compared with normal sleepers, those who reported a history of insomnia during an interview in 1989 were four times as likely to develop major depression by the time of a second interview three years later. And two longitudinal studies in young people, one involving 300 pairs of young twins, and another including 1,014 teenagers found that sleep problems developed before major depression did. Insomnia and other sleep problems affect outcomes for patients with depression. Studies report that depressed patients who continue to experience insomnia are less likely to respond to treatment than those without sleep problems. Even patients whose mood improves with antidepressant therapy are more at risk for relapse of depression later on. Depressed patients who experience insomnia or the other sleep disturbances are more likely to think about and die by the time than depressed patients who are able to sleep normally. So yeah, we need to get our sleep in check, okay? So here are 10 different ways to improve your sleep, and I will link a couple resources down in the description below if you want to check this stuff. But remember, I talked about this in my video yesterday. Think about it as the mental health menu. You don't gotta do all these things, but you should try some of them and see what works for you. Maybe you'll do three or four things. Maybe you'll do one or two things. Maybe you'll do all 10 things. I don't know. Find what works for you and then do those, because I'm letting you know, although I've struggled with depression, my sleep is amazing now, and I can tell you, like, my mood, my symptoms of depression, like, all these things are starting to improve, all right? So let's get started with tip number one. Stick to a sleep schedule, all right? Do your best to try to go to sleep every night at the same time, and try to wake up in the morning at the same time, all right? Tip number two. Don't force yourself to go to sleep, okay? Now, this seems a little counterintuitive or, you know, opposite of what I just said in the first one, but something that we have more control over is waking up at the same time. So if you could just do that, do that. When it comes to going to sleep, a lot of us, you know, struggling to go to sleep, it's because of racing thoughts, okay? Or it's because we have too much energy at night. Do not force yourself to go to sleep. Something I used to always tell my clients back at the rehab is, if you're awake, if you have energy, do something else. Do something productive, do something else that helps your mental health. Journal, try meditating, you know, right? Like, whatever it is, okay? Like, be productive during that time, and when you start to get tired, then go to sleep. This brings us to tip number three. The bedroom is for sleeping and for making love, okay? The brain associates different parts of your house with different things, okay? If you are doing a bunch of activities in your bedroom, like, such as like, you know, mindlessly scrolling through social media on your phone while you're in bed, if you're working in bed from your laptop, sometimes even reading, okay? This will associate your brain with, like, doing something. So your brain isn't going to get into that state where it starts to make you tired because it's like, oh, snap, we doing some stuff now, and it stays energized, okay? The reason I was reluctant to say reading, something that has helped me, like, reading physical books, because, you know, I listen to a lot of audio books, reading physical books makes me so tired. There's been times when I've just been reading a book on the couch with my beautiful girlfriend Tristan, and I just, I just nod out. So if there is some kind of activity that you do that is relaxing and makes you tired in bed, try doing that. Tip number four, exercise. Exercise, exercise, exercise. I know a lot of us are stuck in the house right now, but you can still go for walks, you can go for jogs, anything like that. But any kind of physical activity, even if it's just in your house and you do some, like, yoga or some light aerobics or whatever it is, that will help use up some energy so you can fall asleep later. But if you combine this with going outside, being in sunlight helps increase the brain's natural melatonin. You've probably heard of that supplement, melatonin, where your brain actually creates that stuff and it does this by getting sunlight. So if you're going to exercise, go for a walk, go for a jog, you do it outside, you get some of that natural melatonin, baby. Tip number five, be mindful of what you eat and drink towards the end of the day, okay? So with food, you've got to think about your blood sugar, okay? Like when you're eating, that could spike your blood sugar, which will give you some more energy. When it comes to caffeine, like caffeine has pretty much become something that doesn't affect me as much as it used to, so I've been known to have a late night coffee or something like that. But a good rule of thumb, I've heard a lot of people say this, they'll stop drinking caffeine after four o'clock. Like they will have their last cup of coffee at four o'clock because if you're not getting sleep, you're more likely tired during the day. So you might need that little energy boost to continue with the rest of your work or taking care of your kids or doing stuff around the house, whatever it is. But try to set a schedule where it's like I will not drink caffeine after this time and when it comes to stuff with a lot of sugar in it or whatever it is, like try to be mindful, maybe nothing past seven, maybe nothing past eight, and so on. Tip number six, avoid taking long naps. This is something that I used to be very bad at, like I'd just be like, okay in the afternoon I'm gonna take a nap and it was back when I was unemployed, not working, or whatever it is and I know a lot of people are in different situations right now. But yeah, if you're gonna nap, I recommend like 30 minutes to an hour. Something that I've become a really big fan of is power naps, okay? I will lay down and I swear to God, I will set my alarm for 10 minutes, 10 minutes. And pretty much as soon as I start dozing off to sleep, I'm up and I have this huge boost of energy. Like my girlfriend is like, what the heck just happened, right? Because I will be like, oh I'm so tired in the afternoon and then boom, I just wake back up. Like I've even done this on lunch breaks at work, like I'll go to my car, turn the AC on and I'll just nap for like 10, 15 minutes, wake up and I'm good for the rest of the day. But when we take those super duper long naps, it's kind of hard to get out of that groggy-ness of when you first wake up and because you just got so much sleep, it might affect how you're sleeping at night. Tip number seven, take a little hot shower or a bath. Like if you can't sleep, again, don't force yourself to sleep. But if you can't sleep, this is something that I will regularly do. I take showers every single morning, but in the evening, if I can't sleep, I'll go take like a hot shower. This helps with muscle relaxation and it will help soothe you and calm you down. All right? And if you like being a little chilly when you sleep, like hopping out of the shower and then like, you know, you dry off, but you still got some of those little water droplets off yet, gets a little chilly, helps you go to sleep. But speaking of relaxation, tip number eight, meditation. There are two meditations that I recommend. You can find these on just about any app where you can start, you know, learning them on your own. One of them is progressive muscle relaxation. Okay? So the way this works, like you don't need a guided meditation for this. You start at your feet, you work your way up to like your arms. Okay? You flex your feet and your legs, your calves and everything like that for about five to 10 seconds and you let it go. All right? Your muscles start to relax. Then you flex like your butt muscles, right? And your hips. You flex those for about five to 10 seconds. Then you relax. Do the same thing with your abdomen. Do the same thing with your arms. Do the same thing with your shoulders. And this helps relax the muscles. Second meditation that I'll highly recommend is a body scan. Body scan helps me out the most when I'm having racing thoughts and there are a lot of free apps out there just type in mindfulness in your little app store and mindfulness is paying attention to different parts of your body as it goes through and that helps you get out of your head. Tip number nine, ASMR or some music or sounds that help you go to sleep. All right? I am not a fan of ASMR but some people swear by it so give it a try if you'd like. There are also like different channels on YouTube that just play music or sounds for like hours on end. You can go find those, turn those on. For some people like depending on my mood like sometimes that can be a little bit more distracting and not let you go to sleep but for some people it works and like we said like just try different things on this list and see what works for you. And tip number 10, medications. Okay? So as a recovering drug addict who was addicted to prescription pills I don't recommend Ambien if you have to take it go for it just be very, very careful. I've had a lot of people who came to my rehab because they were addicted to Ambien. A safer alternative is Trasadone. I know they use Trasadone for a variety of different like mental health disorders and things like that but when I first got sober they put me on Trasadone. I think it was God, I think it was like 300 milligrams maybe don't quote me on that this was seven and a half years ago but it was like in a little trapezoid shape and I started out with just like one like you broke off like one third of it and like that knocked me out that knocked me out. One of the things was it was so powerful that the next day I felt groggy but after taking that for a couple months I gained this tolerance so I started having to take two thirds and then I started having to take the whole pill but I stopped taking it after about six months because my sleep schedule just kind of got back on track so I was able to do it naturally. If you don't want to mess with prescription medications at all try melatonin like we talked about in an earlier tip going outside increases natural melatonin but you can get melatonin supplements from any grocery store or pharmacy anything like that. All right so again I will leave you with this those are 10 tips you don't have to do everything you just got to do something. All right like I'm just a huge huge huge believer that you know we can either sit in the problem or we can start getting into the solution like just sitting there and saying I can't sleep my sleep sucks but we're not trying anything and like listen like I get it like you might try one or two things and they don't work that's why I gave you 10 baby that is why I gave you 10 rather than judging what you tried look at it with curiosity be like huh that didn't work maybe I'll try this huh that didn't work maybe I'll try this right go into it like a scientist rather than someone who's like oh this doesn't work and judging it harshly okay you got 10 different things if you I'll make you a deal if you try all 10 of these things all right over the next week or two and they don't work you DM me on Instagram or Twitter and we'll talk and we'll figure some stuff out because there also are other medical issues obviously like sleep apnea and things like that that you would have to see a doctor for but these are some things to check out first if you don't have access to a doctor or it's going to take forever to get in whatever all right anyways that's all I got for this video if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you're new make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and a huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel over on patreon and everybody who supports the channel by buying my mental health books at the rewiredsoul.com slash shop and if you go over to that website right now you can get 25% off any of my mental health books all right thanks again for watching I'll see you next time