Scientists estimate the average adult spends 26 years, or 33 percent of their life sleeping. We spend another 7 years falling to sleep (or trying to) for a grand total of nearly 42 percent of our life spent in bed. That’s more time than we spend eating, laughing and having sex combined.
Evolutionarily speaking, sleep is enormously important not just to humans, but to all creatures, as every known species studied to date sleeps. According to Matthew Walker, Neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley (my source for this article unless otherwise noted), “sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day.”
Yet two-thirds of adults throughout all developed nations fail to obtain the recommended eight hours of nightly sleep (as recommended by the World Health Organization and National Sleep Foundation).
This certainly rings true for me, and I don’t think the following statistics in regards to mothers’ sleep and exhaustion levels will surprise you.
How Much Sleep are Mother’s Getting?
- 42.6% of single parents sleep less than seven hours per night compared to 32.7% of adults in two-parent homes and 31% of adults with no children.
Kids or no kids, there are many reasons for the sleep deprivation epidemic sweeping the globe. The industrialization of our society over the last 150 years has dramatically changed our sleeping patterns compared to the 3.4 million years of human sleep that preceded it. Now that science is starting to uncover the importance of sleep for the human body and the harmful effects of sleep deprivation, we can do something about it.
How Can I Do Anything More When I’ve Got No Energy To Do It?
My life was in a holding pattern, stagnant of growth and progression, because I simply lacked the energy to expand beyond my current responsibilities of parenting and work. The reality was that unless something changed in my life, NOTHING ELSE was going to get done.
Life-long goals and dreams, passions and interests that were important to me as an individual, as a woman, would never come to fruition because I lacked the energy, time and capacity to let them in. Even simple concepts like creating a wardrobe capsule, that were meant to lighten my load, overwhelmed me and felt like a burden because it was one more thing I wasn’t getting done.
So with that in mind, sleep became my number one priority. I was falling well below the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep per night and knew it was a leading contributor to my low energy levels. I tried to learn everything possible about sleep, and what I found was quite shocking.
How Does Sleep Deprivation Affect your Body?
Ends up lack of sleep can have a catastrophic impact on your body, dramatically weakening your immune system, increasing your risk of cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as significantly contributing to some of the most common psychiatric conditions like depression and anxiety. This is by no means the full laundry list, but I think you get the gist.
By all means, I do not want cancer or any other disease that will bring ill health to my body. But I must admit, my sleep goals originated from much humbler beginnings. I aspired to something far more simple.
I simply wanted to wake up in the morning with enough energy to make it through the day without losing my shit.
That is all I wanted. No raised voices getting my girls ready for school. No crying in the work bathroom. A day where I was a good enough mother. A good enough employee.
What Did I Hope to Gain from Better Sleep?
- Improved Mental Clarity
- No more Brain Fog
- Increased Patience
- Calm and presence
Expected Benefits from Greater Mental Clarity?
- The ability to make swifter and more confident decisions at work and home
- The desire to take action more freely, instead of being burden laden and anxiety driven
- The energy to see things with new eyes and initiate change
And then look what one of the world’s sleep experts had to say…
Benevolently servicing our psychological health, sleep recalibrates our emotional brain circuits, allowing us to navigate next-day social and psychological challenges with cool-headed composure.
Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep
Ding ding ding, JACKPOT!!! It became my mission to learn how to not just get more sleep, but an improved quality of sleep. That’s when I found something entirely new I had never heard of before…sleep hygiene.
The Rise of Sleep Hygiene
Something about the phrase “sleep hygiene” just doesn’t roll off the tongue. But please don’t judge a book by its cover.
According to the Sleep Foundation, sleep hygiene is defined as “having both a bedroom environment and daily routines that promote consistent, uninterrupted sleep.”
It’s pretty simple really. Remove the habits and behaviors that do not promote good sleep and add habits and behaviors that do promote good sleep. Let’s start with the bad news first.
3 Key Factors Impacting your Sleep Hygiene
Caffeine is a stimulant that remains in your body for hours and keeps you awake; limit caffeine from mid-day.
Devices project blue light, decreasing melatonin production, the chemical that tells your body it’s time for sleep. Turn off your devices at least one hour before bed. If you can, remove them from your bedroom to resist the temptation.
Alcohol reduces your quality of sleep resulting in less of the important REM sleep and more waking in the night; reduce the quantity and frequency of alcohol for a better night’s sleep.
Top 7 Tips to Improve Your Sleep Hygiene
- Maintain a consistent bed-time and wake-up time every day (including weekends).
- A thirty minute walk is great exercise for your body and helps you get a better night sleep.
- Getting outside into the sunshine supports your circadian rhythm.
- Hot bath or foot soak with bath salts actually cools your body temperature down helping your body prepare for sleep.
- Night time wind down – for millions of years humans woke when the sun rose and slept when the sun set, so dim the lights and tell your body you’re nearing time for sleep.
- Turn your bedroom into a sleeping oasis that encourages reading and relaxation.
- Try yoga nidra, a wonderful guided meditation practice you can do while lying down with your eyes closed.
What on this list do you do well? What are your opportunities for improvement? Can you incorporate any of these ideas into your self-care (preservation) routine? Can you identify a few small steps you can take that will elevate your sleep hygiene and your overall night’s sleep?
There will always be sick kids, snoring partners, airplanes flying overhead and our monkey minds (a Jay Shetty-ism). However, if you can harness a way to get just a bit more sleep, gain a bit more energy each day, just imagine what could be around the corner for you. One Step at a time.
If you’re not convinced, listen to this:
A study was conducted on working women, whereby researchers implemented a 5-week sleep hygiene education program. Topics addressed good sleep environments/habits, emotional stress, the influence of diet/alcohol/tobacco on sleep, exercise, and alternative therapies. Results showed sleep hygiene education to improve participant sleep quality significantly. The sleep quality of all participants improved over both the 3- and the 5-week education program.
Imagine waking up feeling more refreshed than you have in ages, knowing your metabolism was working faster while you slept and you’ve woken less hungry. You have the energy to put a bra on for your first zoom meeting of the day and you keep kicking ass throughout the rest of the day!
Or, put more eloquently, the expert says this about reclaiming our right to a full night of sleep…
…we can be reunited with that most powerful elixir of wellness and vitality, dispensed through every conceivable biological pathway. Then we may remember what it feels like to be truly awake during the day, infused with the very deepest plenitude of being.
Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep
Please comment below and share your thoughts with this community of female peers and like minded women! Forward to a friend or woman you believe would find value in these words…Together we are stronger.
