I Am Rested
Did you know that two thirds of the population in developed countries don’t get the required 8 hours of sleep a night which may or may not surprise you. The problem is, even just having six or seven hours sleep reduces your immune system, raises certain hormone levels to make you crave sugar and reduces other hormones that tell you when you’re full and satisfied and research is even saying that it can double our rate of cancer, but I’m not into scare mongering over here so it’s up to you whether you take that on board or not.
What does happen when we get enough sleep are a whole heap of health benefits, such as helping our brain to make sense of the day, helps it make logical decisions, improves its ability to learn and memorise things. It helps refuel our immune system, balance our metabolic state, helps our gut’s microbiome and regulates our appetite. Not only this but sleep also boosts blood to the skin, helps make collagen, helps our hair grow through ensuring the right nutrients are getting to our hair follicles and helps our beauty products work better because of the blood that is being sent to the skin whilst we are catching our zzzz’s.
Impressed? Want more sleep? Thought so. How would you feel if I said I’d like you to commit to 8 hours of sleep a night?
If you wake up earlier than that fine, but allow for 8 hours of sleep for now. This is because our body needs to mentally and physically process everything we have done that day.
If you want to start glowing inside and out this is a vital step. And it’s simple.
For now, just think about getting some more sleep. If you have little ones then try and get as much as you can and remember to breathe, they are little for a short time so it won’t be like this forever!
To help you sleep better, I’d like you to do a few things from the below list as this will
help with a restful night’s sleep.
Avoid caffeinated drinks especially fizzy drinks (coke etc) or energy drinks. Keep Black Tea, Coffee & Green tea to pre midday, and use really great quality if you can
Avoid spicy food at night
Avoid eating huge meals later on in the evening
Start to increase your protein at night as this helps your body convert it into sleep
hormones.
Have a chamomile tea as it will help you relax.
Try and eat before 7pm as getting to sleep is harder after a large meal.
Stop watching tv half an hour to an hour before bed and head up early with a good book to limit your blue light exposure. Set your alarm if you use your phone as soon as you get into bed to read and ignore till morning.
The first thing we need to do is figure out the time that we need to be up at and work 8 hours back from that. Then an extra hour again for our evening routine to start.
The second thing we want to do is turn our phones onto airplane mode (I do this every night) and pop our alarm on. We want to avoid social media and using anything that emits ‘blue light’ to us before bed because there has been extensive research to show that this affects our sleep through firstly delaying us getting to sleep because it delays our melatonin levels peaking (the levels that send signals to the pineal gland in our brain that looks after our circadian rhythms (controls our wake and sleep cycles). Secondly, it reduces the quality of our sleep because the REM part of our sleep is lighter (Rapid Eye Movement) which is when we dream and the final stage of our sleep and we also take longer to wake up and feel sleepier upon waking if using a device beforehand. Crazy, no?!
So – no phones before bed!!
We then want to get ourselves our own evening routine sorted. Do you go and have a bath or a shower? Do you make yourself a cup of herbal tea with sleepy properties in it? (my personal favourite!) and then read a book? Another personal favourite of mine is to put my Lumie light on and turn the main light off. This gradually dims so it helps my melatonin levels increase as the light fades and helps set me up for a restful nights sleep. If you don’t have one of these, you could easily pop a few candles on and turn the main light off to help relax you in the evening.
Pop on some Jasmine Lavender and Cedarwood face oil for an extra large dose of Zen.
Id love to know how you get on, pop me over an email and let me know.
Sending Love,
Alice x