EAT SLEEP REPEAT

SOME THOUGHTS ON STRESS, DIET AND SLEEP AND LOOKING AFTER YOURSELF

“Put simply: sleep – a consistent seven- to nine-hour opportunity each night – is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day, and the reason I revere and adore sleep (scientifically and personally)”

Matthew Walker

Sleep is so important.  Sleep is where your body rests and recharges. Sleep is where healing takes place.  Sleep enables you brain to process the day and download to long term memory.  Indeed, a number of studies show that after 22 hours without sleep, human performance is impaired to the same level as that of someone who is legally drunk. 

This great article published in the Guardian in early 2019, warns of the numerous negative impacts of not getting enough sleep. Which ironically, is enough to make the worriers amongst us lay awake at night!  

We know that sometimes stress affects our sleep but often we also feel stress because we can’t sleep.  What can we do about this?  

Both The Sleep Foundation and the NHS list a variety of tips that support sleeping well. A lot of these will be familiar things that we’ve heard before; reduce blue light on an evening, put a relaxing bedtime routine in place, make sure your bedroom is the right temperature. As we think about these we’d like to suggest that simply doing all of these thing isn’t best for our wellbeing. To make time and space for good sleep and to invest in our wellbeing, we need to take these tips and make them work for us.  For starters you could take time to:

1.     Understand you – how do you sleep, what works best in your sleep patterns?

2.     Be realistic – try one thing and see how it works. 

3.     Start well and be consistent - research has shown that it can take anywhere from 18 – 254 days to establish a habit; the average is usually around 66 days. 

So we wanted to share some tools to try over time.  Here’s Ben with some suggestions on how sleep can be improved and it’s interaction with the other two pillars of your wellbeing – diet and exercise. 

Stress has a negative impact on the body, and over time can supress our immune system. This makes us more susceptible to illness which can then add to our stress. To compound this further, when we’re stressed, we’re more likely to make unhealthy choices about diet, exercise and find sleep more difficult.  

Most of us know what a good diet looks like, what helps our sleep and that we need to exercise regularly, and so the suggestions below are a reminder and will build on what you already know. Use them as a prompt to consider what you’re already doing, and how you could tweak your current habits. 

Investing in good diet, exercise and sleep will give us the best chance of facing and managing stress.