E231: Upgrade Your Sleep

Welcome back to the Women’s Empowerment Podcast – thank you for choosing us for your ears if you’re listening – or for your eyes, if you’re watching on YouTube! Today’s topic is incredibly powerful and potent to a number of areas of health and our overall wellness. Today we’re talking about SLEEP!

Sleep is a critical factor of our health and I am shocked when people tell me they can function on anything less than 6 hours of sleep. Or when people tell me they wake up multiple times throughout the night, or that they are “terrible sleepers.” If this is you, then keep listening/watching.

For as long as I can remember I have enjoyed sleep and am “a good sleeper.” On average I am head to pillow asleep in like 3-4 minutes – which isn’t necessarily a good thing, and we’re going to talk about this more later in this episode, but I do sleep deeply and soundly most of the time.

Getting quality sleep is so freaking important because our entire body, mind, and system NEED this rest and recovery time. Quality sleep can improve our brain performance, our mood, and our overall health.

Poor sleep patterns or habits can lead to increased risks of diseases and disorders including heart disease, dementia, and obesity.

I’m sure you can think of a time when you had a great sleep and woke up the next morning feeling refreshed and ready for the day, versus when you’ve had a bad sleep and wake up forgetting what planet you’re on and how to use a spoon.

When I polled our Instagram community and asked, how would you rate the quality of your sleep on average using a scale of 1-10 (10 being the best), the average answer was 6.5/10.

Being the curious cat that I am, I needed to do more investigating with our community to really understand their sleep-care, patterns, and sleep routines.

There were quite a few findings that I was really surprised about, and I’ll mention them throughout today’s episode.

But first! Let’s start with outlining what the following terms mean:

Sleep-Care: is the practice of creating supportive routines around sleep so that you can actually reap the mental and physical benefits of quality sleep.

Sleep Patterns: in this episode I’m going to discuss the different cycles and rhythms of our sleep as well as different human patterns or chronotypes that tell us a lot about our sleep.

Sleep Routines: while many people think sleep routines are all about what we do at night time before bed, there’s actually a lot more to them, including how our daytime and morning routines affect our sleep!

[03:04] One of the best ways to upgrade your sleep is by having a sleep schedule, meaning you go to bed and wake up around the same time daily. Out of the people who answered this question in our Instagram community, 12% said they had a sleep schedule, 45% said they woke up and went to bed within 60 minutes of the same time daily, and 43% said they were all over the place! YIKES!

Consistency is KEY with our sleep schedule. While there are a lot of people or “gurus” who have their own ideas of what the best time of day to wake up or go to sleep is, it will be important that it works for YOU. I am not a member of the 5am club. Not for me. Maybe for you? Not for everyone. And that’s COOL!

My body feels best when I wake up between 6am and 7am. There is a blatant difference in my mood and function when I can sleep until at least 6:30am, and it’s not just me that notices it, I’ve heard it from other people in real life.

If you’re trying to figure out what time your bedtime and wake up times are, consider your everyday schedule – like when you start work for example – and keep in mind that adults need anywhere from 7-9 hours of sleep per night. So you can do the math for you and your own schedule.

One of the reasons why a consistent sleep schedule is so beneficial is because it’s part of our body’s natural cycles, known as the circadian rhythm. This is the natural pattern of our body and its functions and processes during the 24 hour cycle/clock. This internal process helps our body prepare for the changes in our day and our environment such as activity, falling asleep, waking up, when to eat, and so much more!

Not long ago I read a book called The Power of When by Michael Breus

[04:43] It’s all about what Breus calls Chronotypes. Chronotypes are the four different types of circadian rhythms. He describes them through four animals: Bear, Lion, Wolf, and Dolphin.

Bears are the most common of the chronotypes. They tend to wake up around 7am and go to sleep around 10pm.

Lions are the early birds. This chronotype wakes up earlier than bears and tends to be most productive before 12pm.

Wolves are the opposite of lions. Someone with a wolf chronotype will wake up later in the morning, and be more productive in the evening/night time with a much later bedtime.

Lastly, the dolphin chronotype is the least popular with easily disturbed sleep, and lacking a sleep schedule.

Only 27% of our Instagram community knew what their chronotype was – the others hadn’t even heard of it before! This was one of the findings that really surprised me!

I highly recommend checking out the chronotype book I mentioned as it goes so much deeper into your type and not just for sleep, but for when the best time is for working out, eating, meetings, productivity, and more!

[07:03] While this tool of chronotypes is helpful for a lot of the daytime rhythms, and when to go to bed/wake up, I mentioned before that the circadian rhythm is all about our body’s functions – in the day AND at night!

In Traditional Chinese Medicine there is something called an organ body clock.

This organ body clock is one of my most favourite tools for understanding my body and what it needs because it shows us when each of our organs is restoring and regenerating!

For example, if you wake up at a specific time every night, let’s say between 2-3am, the TCM clock will tell us that something is going on with our liver detoxification and our liver might need more support.

In our polls and research with our own community on Instagram, there were a lot of people who said they work up around the same time every night 58% of the voters – if that is you, check out this body clock to see what your organs are telling you!

[07:54] Part of our sleep-care and sleep routines take place two hours before our bedtime. If you’re someone who has trouble falling asleep, it might be because you haven’t taken time to wind down for the evening and calm your energy from the day.

I notice this a lot on the evenings that I teach pilates late. Personally, I am someone who prefers to work out in the morning or early afternoon at the latest! But we do have a lot of members who come to our pilates studio and workout in the evenings.

Even though I am not doing the physical exercises, teaching back-to-back classes requires me to be “ON” and alert, and I’m still moving. Plus I close the studio and then drive about 25 minutes to get home which I also have to be wide awake for. By the time I get home around 9pm, I don’t have much time to wind down and I also have to eat some dinner, and do the hygiene routine and all that.

That’s not every night, but it is every Wednesday night for me. So if it’s possible for you, for as many nights as you can, start to incorporate some evening routines or practices that help you calm your mind and body to help prepare you for the sleep you are going to have.

Eating dinner at least two hours before bedtime is a big one! My OURA ring – which I have a $40 USD/EUR code for if you want it!

When I eat dinner late, my OURA ring will show me that my heart rate either lowered very late in the night during sleep, or that my resting heart rate remained high for my sleep indicating that my recovery wasn’t ideal.

This usually happens when we eat really late because our body is working on digesting food, but it can also remain high when our body is fighting off sickness, when we’re going through a stressful time in our lives, or when we had a really heavy workout and we need more time to recover from that.

[09:20] If you are looking for a tool to help you with your sleep, I really love my OURA ring and even though I am a good sleeper, I enjoy the information from this device about my sleep, my readiness levels and my activity score as well. These three main tabs of the OURA app are so informative as to showing us what the body is experiencing, with helpful tips on how to improve each of the areas.

You know me, I’m all about tracking habits – especially for accountability and progress purposes – and the OURA ring does the tracking automatically. Everything from your resting heart rate, to your sleep cycles, to the number of steps you take in a day.

It even tracks your basal body temperature which is really cool for tracking your menstrual cycle! But we’ll save that for another day.

Speaking of cycles, the OURA ring also shows you your sleep cycles and how much REM sleep, Deep sleep, and Light Sleep you get each night.

REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement. Our REM Sleep is important for dreaming, memory, creativity, and consolidation. It is regulated by our circadian rhythm – and yes this is a newer feature of the OURA ring that will tell you if you are an “early morning” or “late morning” rhythm etc. But it doesn’t use the animals haha

REM sleep usually happens in the later half of the evening and can be improved by getting a full night’s sleep, and limiting/avoiding stimulants in the evening such as caffeine, alcohol or high intensity exercises.

Our deep sleep is the most rejuvenating and restorative sleep stage. During deep sleep, the heart and breathing rates are steady, our limbs are relaxed, the blood pressure drops, and it can be a lot harder for us to wake up. Typically our deep sleep happens in the early half of the evening.

For anyone who wants to get more deep sleep, consider the following as part of your sleep-care and sleep routines: regular exercise, avoid heavy meals, stimulants, and bright screens 1-2 hours before bed, and long naps in the afternoon.

[12:39] When I talk to more people about their sleep habits, and evening routines, the insights of the quality of sleep seem to surprise me less.

GENERALLY speaking, the people who have better quality sleep tend to also have a few sleep helpers – no not drugs.

They sleep with: blackout curtains, eye masks, ear plugs, in a cold room, with a humidifier and calming essential oils. These are all really helpful tools/helpers that can improve your sleep quality and I know many of these have worked for me.

Some of the community members who struggle to fall asleep, stay asleep, or have a restful sleep, have shared that they sleep with sleep sounds on YouTube, headphones in their ears for music or noise, and some have the TV on in the bedroom.

Now you might be listening/watching this and getting on the defensive about your TV in your bedroom at night, and trust me, I get it AND ALSO you will sleep better with the least amount of technology in your room at night. Now… this is a process, so it might not feel that way the first night, or the first week, but over time it will improve your quality of sleep to have technology out of your bedroom and your ears!

[14:14] Maybe you don’t have trouble sleeping, but your mornings feel rough. Perhaps at this point in the episode you’re starting to piece together where your sleep-care could be improved. AMAZING!

When I polled the audience asking “How do you feel when you wake up? Do you “need” something to wake you up, like coffee for example?”

It was a pretty even vote between, waking up ready for the day, to needing coffee to wake up, and for others it was time/a cold shower.

In my own experience, I am bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when I wake up between 6 and 7am. Before 6am and… well as I tell my early morning pilates class, “This is not my best time of day, but this is my best at this time of day.”

Translation: if I didn’t have to wake up at 5:30am to teach pilates, I wouldn’t. But here I am so this is the best I can do with where I’m at.

Even on those early mornings, when I prioritize my sleep hygiene and sleep-care I can wake up at 5:30am and not be a total zombie. Again, consistency is really going to be the key here. Consistent bedtime and wake up times.

[16:42] The last bit I want to leave you with today are some ideas to help you with a better/upgrade sleep routine.

I want to use specific examples for the super awesome community members who really took the time to share/interact with me during this poll. If you aren’t already hanging with us on IG, slide into those DMs @vallavignelife

The party is in the stories and I often use conversations from my coaching clients and IG community for content here on the podcast!

I think it was Jess from @thewatercooler who said they want to “wake up feeling more rested.” A really helpful tip for this is actually to get out of bed within 5-15 minutes of waking up and avoid hitting snooze. You can also start the day with some cold therapy like a 30 second cold burst in your shower, or splashing cold water on your face to help wake you up right away.

Amy said, “I would like to go to sleep earlier and wake up earlier.” And to that I say, “Amy, you’re on the right track!” because we can’t really have one without the other and similar to Jess, don’t hit that snooze button first thing in the morning and start with waking up earlier and avoiding naps in the day!

Suzanne wants to “sleep through the night or more than 3 hours consistently.” Suzanne is one of my clients in the Healthy Habit Membership community and I know that the evening routines is something she’s working on. Some of the habits she is incorporating include:

Consistent bedtime
Eating earlier in the evening and less or no wine at dinner
As well as wind down rituals like baths, skincare routines, reading before bed

Emilia says she wants to “fall asleep as fast as my partner.” The amount of time it takes you to fall asleep is known as latency. According to the OURA app, the ideal latency is 15-20 minutes, and a sign of overtiredness is falling asleep in 5 minutes or less - SO your partner could be overtired.

Now, I typically fall asleep within 3-6 minutes, which I mentioned at the beginning of this episode. And sometimes my OURA ring does say I fell asleep too fast, but I think because this has been something I have been able to do for years and years I don’t feel that I’m overtired because of it, since it’s part of my regular insights.

But Emilia, you can create a solid wind down routine in the evening with routines or rituals that help to calm your nervous system such as listening to relaxing music, drinking a cup of relaxing tea, meditation, or inverting your legs up the wall before bed. And of course, avoiding sugar… which I know Emilia is working on because she just completed our 21 day healthy habits challenge!

For Joanne, who wants to “go to bed at 9:00 every night” – take a moment to set a timer at 8:00pm and let that be your cue/trigger to start relaxing and preparing for bed so that when 9pm rolls around you’re not in the middle of a project.

Jenn wants “deep sleep within a few minutes.” Similar to Emilia you can start your evening routine and really support your body in preparing for sleep, and remember I mentioned before that deep sleep can be improved by avoiding bright lights, heavy meals, and stimulants before bed.

Kennedy is wishing for “no more nightmares” for her sleep-care. As a very vivid dreamer myself, and knowing that Kennedy is a spiritual human, I would recommend a meditation practice before bed. Something with calming the mind, programming positive stories/affirmations, as well a shield of protection before sleep and also around the bed and bedroom.

I had a giggle when Kaylie said, “Make me want to go to sleep. I love evenings and I don’t want them to end” Maybe you have a wolf chronotype Kaylie! FOMO Is real and I have this too sometimes. One of the “rules/boundaries” I have around sleep is that I must go to bed the same day I woke up. If it helps, you can tell yourself that there is a beautiful day waiting for you tomorrow and it needs you at your best energetically.

Similar to Jess, Ceri wants “to wake up feeling less sluggish.” and shared that she “takes a good hour or so to come around.” You could try the cold therapy, or see if removing screens/technology from the bedroom and maybe going to sleep a little earlier is more helpful.

Jana says, “no more 3am witching hour. Also hormones in your 40s are bonkers; they mess with sleep.” and Lisa says, “sleep through Even if for 6.5-7 hours”

Hormones can certainly affect our sleep! When we look at the TCM body clock, 3am is when our lungs are detoxing as well as deep sleep, dreams, and memory. We could use this to experiment with practices that help support our lungs, perhaps our dreams are trying to tell us something, or we are working through a memory.

For Lisa specifically, notice when you’re waking up and use the TCM body clock to identify any patterns!

And last but certainly not least, Candice says, “Relax my brian in the evening to sleep instead of frenzied feeling.” The busy monkey-mind working hard at night is super annoying and also very common. When I’m feeling mentally active before bed, I give myself 10-20 minutes to write or type everything in my brain out. Usually I make a list, sometimes I organize the list, or make notes about the notes, but I just get it all out of my head and after 10-20 minutes it’s now time for sleep.

Anything “left over” is for tomorrow. I also tell myself, “just focus on today. What can you actually do today?” and usually I'm in bed so the answer is, “Today is done, we can focus on tomorrow’s tasks, tomorrow.”

And on that note… this concludes our special sleep episode! I hope you learned something today about sleep and can take ONE ACTION to upgrade your sleep routine!

Let me know in the comments of this video, what part of your sleep are you working on? What was your biggest takeaway from this week’s episode?

Podcast Host

Valerie LaVigne

Valerie is the creator and founder of Valerie LaVigne Life and the Women's Empowerment Show. She helps busy and empowered women create healthy habits so that they can become the best version of themselves and transform their lives. Learn more about Valerie here!