Sleep Soundly Every Night, Feel Fantastic Every Day (9 page)

    
  
One man painted the wall opposite his bed with a lush forest theme, complete with a path meandering through the tall trees.

    
  
One woman asked her friend, a nature photographer, to blow up images of beautiful flower gardens from his extensive collection. She was delighted to see her small bedroom so full of bright colors. She said, “I smile every time I see the array of colorful flowers.”

    
  
In her young daughter's bedroom, a mom left one wall to paint a different scene each year on her
daughter's birthday. When younger, the scenes included jungle animals, and the next year the same animals were depicted in a circus scene. At age six, her daughter now loves dolphins, and the wall has become a colorful rendition of beach sand, blue sky, and dolphins swimming.

Specific cells in the eyes that are sensitive to blue light also regulate your sense of night and day and the seasons. The eyes detect and associate the blue light with daylight. The blue light travels via cells to the hypothalamus, which then shuts down the production of melatonin, one of the major sleep-promoting hormones. If your body does not produce melatonin for sleep and the blue light stimulates you, you are in for a very long night.

Electronic devices:
I have had countless patients who cannot fall asleep for hours. However, they are watching their televisions in bed. They are on their computers, playing their video games. Do you do this? Perhaps you do not realize that the blue light from your electronic device is stimulating you to stay awake. Your bedroom should be a sanctuary for sleep and intimacy; eliminate the electronic devices from the room.

Light bulbs:
White low-energy fluorescent and LED bulbs typically produce much more blue light than conventional white incandescent bulbs.

Late night nicotine
such as the bedtime cigarette is also counterproductive. Many of my patients who cannot fall asleep or stay asleep tell me a cigarette helps them to relax. Indeed, with the first puff this may be true. Nevertheless,
within a short time nicotine promotes the release of the brain neurotransmitter acetylcholine. This is one of the most powerful wake-promoting chemicals produced by our brain. It increases the activity of the major wake-promoting circuit of the brain called the reticular activating system.

Alcohol
is another problem. It initially can induce sleep and can promote increased deep sleep. Unfortunately, many fall into the drinking trap, because as your body metabolizes alcohol, this causes a withdrawal characterized by an increase in the release of stress hormones such as adrenaline and noradrenaline. This then results in a rebound of wakefulness, causing an inability to return to sleep.

Caffeine
-containing foods such as coffee, caffeinated teas, and dark chocolate should be avoided if you have trouble sleeping. I usually recommend to my patients with insomnia that they eliminate all caffeine. If they cannot comply with that request, then at least curtail caffeine intake after 10:00 a.m. Some patients have severe headaches and anxiety when they stop cold turkey. For these patients, I recommend a 50% reduction every two days until they are off caffeine.

Taking a warm bath
before bedtime can help to induce sleep. A warm bath will raise your body temperature. Exposure to room air after exiting the bath cools you down. A drop in body temperature is a potent signal to the body to enter sleep.

Morning sunlight
is the cheapest and most widely available sleep aid. Exposure to sunlight within two hours of awakening is a strong signal to your circadian clock. It helps you to synchronize with your environment and promotes a normal sleep time the following night. That is why sleeping late on the weekends and exposing yourself to light late in the afternoon can desynchronize your internal clock and lead to problems getting up for work on Monday.

Shift workers working the night shift are a special case. They often have problems reorienting their inner clocks to a completely new and, for many, unnatural sleep–wake schedule. If you are a shift worker, I recommend bright light at work, especially during the first half of the shift. This promotes wakefulness and alertness. However, on the way home when the rest of us are just getting up, you need to get ready to fall asleep. To facilitate this, I suggest that you wear sunglasses that wrap around to prevent sunlight from hitting your retinas. In fact, there now are glasses that specifically screen out blue light. This part of the light spectrum is the most potent in facilitating wakefulness, and yes, I speak of the same blue light emitted by your electrical devices.

Check worries at the bedroom door. Too many people take their worries into the bedroom, which makes falling asleep very difficult.

Scott was a delivery driver for an international beer company in his small territory located in an area of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. He started driving his truck as a young man fresh off the ranch and a new high school graduate. He was excellent in his work because he greeted hundreds of people a week, and tens of thousands every year, and remembered every name and face. He developed a powerful physique from loading and unloading those crates of beer for 20 years. Everyone admired him.

One day, Scott didn't appear for work, and his manager called numerous times and finally went to his home. His boss found Scott on the floor and guessed he had a heart attack. Scott was very lucky to recover and returned to work, but not before having a serious talk with his manager, who thought Scott was going to quit. The manager would
offer whatever incentive he could to keep his valued friend and employee.

“Scott,” said the manager, I need you to stay on with the company and take over my job as manager. I just don't know anyone who can befriend and care for people like you do.”

“I don't want the job.”

“What? But when I offered it to you last month, you said you would think about it.”

“I did think about it … sitting in your chair day in and day out … missing my friends and customers along the routes. Heck, Jim, even my big Shepherd dog knows everybody like I do. Sitting on this tile floor all day would kill him, too.”

“Are you saying you don't want the raise or promotion?”

“I guess that is what I'm saying. I went to bed each night of the last 29 days, and I'd worry so long and hard, that I'd sweat and toss and turn. After a couple weeks, I just yelled into the night,
‘What am I afraid of
?' Next thing I know, you found me on the floor, boss. I don't remember getting up.”

“What worried you so much, Scott, that it gave you a heart attack?”

“Heck, that's easy … not driving … not seeing my customers … not stopping by the diner to have my bacon and tomato sandwich with Jules … not keeping my great abs.”

“Okay Scott, you like what you do, and people love you. Why change a great job? I'll tell you what, Scott … I am giving you the raise anyway, and please stick with me.”

Scott's story speaks to a good-hearted young man who was lucky to love his work, and his work loved him, despite its physical requirements. He was a people person, and supplied his people with great emotional connections for years. His heart condition was caused by prolonged stress and lack of quality sleep. Scott's anxiety was acute and exacerbated by no sleep or poor quality sleep. Returning to the job he loved was his best medicine. Acute distress and anxiety can happen to anyone, and the following two
techniques, constructive worrying and the brain dump, can help you fend off or alleviate any escalating stress symptoms.

Constructive worrying:
In the evening, make a list of your problems or worries. Place the list in a drawer and leave it there. No need to act on them. Getting the worries out of your mind and onto the sheet of paper, where you can see and acknowledge the list, is enough to calm the mind.

Brain dump:
Have you ever attended a workshop or seminar where the facilitator passed around a wastebasket, going from person to person, and asking for your brain dump? You lower your head over the trash can and shake out all thoughts and become clear and focused for the meeting or seminar. Sounds silly, doesn't it? Yet, it works. Try it before sleeping if worries turn through your mind like a merry-go-round.

Edmund Jacobson, MD, once said, “An anxious mind cannot relax in a tensed body.” Dr. Jacobson studied the relationship between tension and the varied results in health disorders. He developed a progressive muscle relaxation technique to relieve tension in the body. Based on this technique, I've created the following relaxation sequence for my patients. You will feel the benefits right away.

The goal of progressive muscle relaxation is to relax your mind and body by alternating between tensing and relaxing muscle groups. In this exercise, you will tense and relax muscle groups without straining. As you tense each group, take a slow breath through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Even better, inhale while tensing the muscle group and exhale as you relax the group. Try to tense each
group for 5 seconds and release and relax each group for 10 seconds.

The total experience is to relax and feel the rhythm … tensing, relaxing … inhale and tense, exhale and relax. Remember to keep breathing as described above throughout the exercise.

Find a comfortable and quiet place to lie down, such as a couch, bed, or mat when practicing. When you feel you are adept at doing this, move the exercise to the bedroom. Focus on the muscle group you are working. Focus on the breath. If your attention wanders, return to the breath and that muscle group.

  
1.
 
Begin by progressively tensing the muscles in your feet by curling your toes for a count of 5 as you breathe in, then release the tension as you breathe out and pause for a count of 10.

  
2.
 
Repeat the process with your calves, thighs, and then buttocks.

  
3.
 
Now tighten the muscles of your abdomen. Do this by inhaling again, holding for a count of 5, and then relaxing for a count of 10.

  
4.
 
Then do your lower back by gently arching it for a count of 5, release, and relax for a count of 10. Remember to keep taking those nice gentle breaths and feel the tension released from the muscle as you exhale.

  
5.
 
Proceed to your hands by making fists, then flex your biceps, and then tighten your triceps by extending your arms out and locking your elbows. Breathe out and pause for a count of 10.

  
6.
 
Next, inhale and tense your shoulders by lifting them as if to touch your ears, remembering to hold for 5, then release, and relax for 10.

  
7.
 
Tighten your chest by taking a deep breath in, hold for a count of 5, and exhale, releasing all the tension.