Rest Your Best: Simple Steps Towards Better Sleep
There are not many things worse than being completely sleep deprived and trying to function normally. We’ve all been there. We lie in bed, bodies exhausted, and stare at the ceiling for hours praying that sleep will come. What if it didn’t have to be this way? What if there were simple, but effective steps we could take each day to help us sleep better?
Ed has seen the effects of sleep deprivation over and over. It can be linked to many adverse health conditions and can wreak havoc on the body. He not only has many great recommendations in this episode, but puts each one of these into practice every night when he goes to bed. If you’re struggling to fall asleep and stay asleep (which is nearly everyone), listen in for some great tips!
Some Topics We Discussed:
Sleep quality, insomnia, and natural remedies. (0:06)
Improving sleep quality through natural methods. (4:45)
Improving sleep quality through various techniques. (8:40)
Natural remedies for sleep improvement. (12:54)
Natural sleep remedies and mindfulness. (17:46)
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CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Ed Jones 0:06
Each morning when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning I am reborn, Mahatma Gandhi. If you hit the play button, it probably indicates that you were having sleep issues. You know, I slept like an old pet dog until my daughter was born about 32 years ago. And the reason that my sleep changed is because I became hyper vigilant over her, which changed the game for how I slept. What was my number one issue? Well, I can generally go to sleep at night, the issue is waking up often that keeps me into that light, non restorative sleep. The more often this happens, the more anxiety and fear is created that I can't sleep. The absolute enemy of quality sleep is fear, not feeling safe and worry, we won't be ready for the next day duties. I often speak of this as what I call losing the rhythm of our sleep. Before I get into the plan of sleep to remedy insomnia, let's ask the question. How truly important is having quality sleep? Many of us including myself felt it was almost a badge of honor to say yeah, I only got five hours of sleep last night and I'm just fine. Dr. Peter, a TIA in his incredible new book called outlive describes current valid research on chronic sleep deprivation and its toxic effects on not only cognition, but on the actual brain health itself. Do you want to raise the risk of dementia and Alzheimer's? Well guess what chronic poor sleep may be your answer. chronic sleep deprivation builds the Taw and beta amyloid deposits that is the probable root of this disease. Even young people and athletes will suffer with lack of sleep. Dr. T, again speaks of a physician who was the doctor for the Navy SEALs. This elite group of Navy SEALs is one of the fittest groups found anywhere. But he observed that the Navy SEALs bloodwork during their training periods because of the radical sleep schedule, actually referred to their blood work as old man's blood due to it being similar to someone decades older. The second part of the puzzle of insomnia is changing the body chemistry that naturally occurs with age. We call it Father Time, the but declining hormones in men and women is one growth hormone lessening cortisol increasing, which is stress hormone melatonin production plummets and insulin going to Hi, James like MTHFR not balanced blood sugar, not within the normal range sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems on full throttle, low iron and low B 12 can be causes. So why don't we just use sleeping pills and being sold over $2 billion worth the first two years that it was brought to market and the sleeping pill industry is $100 billion industry or more? Well, here's my first real serious bullet point number one, sleeping pills will make you unconscious, but they do not give you the quality sleep. And before we move on to the end of this conversation, it is mandatory that we touch slightly on the difference between the different levels of sleep called REM deep and light. Deep Sleep is related to growth hormone, which works to repair muscles, bones and tissues. Deep Sleep promotes immune system functions and glucose metabolism. But REM sleep, which is called Rapid Eye Movement elevates the heart increases the brain activity. Ram plays a role in memory consolidation, emotional processing and brain development. While I sleep is also a key that includes codifying our memories and boosting creativity. But sleeping pills such as Ambien and most of the other 10 that are available on the market will give you the illusion of sound sleep. However, studies show over and over that including my own study using my sleep tracker called the aura ring indicates that my deep and REM sleep are non productive during sleeping pill nights and leave me feeling empty of quality slumber. Natural Remedies also such as delta eight and delta nine and marijuana and alcohol also lower the quality of deep sleep. The ratings that I had received on my aura ring when using these kinds of remedies would decrease my deep sleep over 50% most nights. Let's now get rolling on how to reset your sleep rhythm plan. Number one, because complete darkness is imperative in the bedroom and the inexpensive eyemask are perfectly fine to purchase to help light throws off the production of several important systems within our body that are vital to quality sleep. Keep in mind we have spent 99% of our existence on earth without electricity and programmable lights. We are deeply ingrained to find homeostasis or balance within the natural rising and setting of the sun. Ancient Wisdom is the pursuit that I continue with daily for optimizing my health and looking at what nature truly intended for us to be, which is optimal temperature of your bedroom is next, the balance of sleep is improved with the body when it lowers the temperature at night. Setting the thermostat at no higher than 70 degrees is a key step to conquering and helping insomnia. I am now experimenting with one of the electric cooling pads that goes on my bed. These will take the temperature down many degrees and yet does not feel uncomfortable in any way which I was surprised. I'm recommending these now if you have a budget to support it. Next, do not use loud alarms sounding in the morning to wake you startling our systems daily is just flatly unhealthy. Again, let's follow nature's ancient wisdom, which means that in the world of nature, there would not have been an alarm unless something was dangerous in the moment, which would be rare. Next, reserve your bed for sleeping and maybe intimacy but nothing else. Other than that, I consider a sleeping location a sacred space, not one that we're going to be watching television. So especially honor it as a sacred space. And then you create the subconscious attitude of embracing sleep when you go to the bed instead of getting your drilling system wired up by watching something that's going to excite you or scare you on TV or even reading books. Next, if you want to follow the ancient wisdom instead of social norms, consider separate bedrooms if your partner tosses turns or snores, if that's simply not possible, get two separate beds in the same room. Several of my friends have found a vast improvement in their sleep quality when they have done this. And they are perfectly at peace with the fact that society does not view this very kindly. But that is in my opinion, not sensible. The next point is one that I feel is probably one of the most valuable of my 44 year career regarding sleep. Every single night I have practiced this for the past 20 years and which is taping my mouth shut. This tape is the kind that I use. And I run it just in the middle of my mouth where I can actually still kind of cough or speak a little bit. I learned this from studying and reading a physician named Dr. Boone TECHO, who's a Russian physician from the 70s and 60s who had as his career focusing on the imperfection of mouth breathing and the devastation of that for our health. Dr. Boone TECHO found ways to improve many people's asthma and other health conditions by the use of training them not to mouth breathe, mouth breathing at night cannot be trained so we must use tape in order to for it to work. A book by James Nestor called Breath is absolutely astounding, where he actually had a physician block his nose for a period of time, many weeks and run blood test and it showed a devastation after only a few days when he was totally mouth breathing. Next tip is 90% of the time do not vary your bedtime and wake up more than 60 minutes from each other. Again, we go back to we have to need to set up a healthy rhythm of sleep. And this has to be done by using consistent schedules.
Ed Jones 9:00
Next tip is to stop extra fluids past approximately four or 5pm In the evening, and then also stop caffeine around 11am as the half life of caffeine is approximately five hours, but all human systems may vary on that. Next is to consider using natural remedies to strengthen the bladder. If getting up at night is becoming an issue. swagga Pro or life extensions bladder control are truly amazing and usually can be felt within the first few days of using the product. I do recommend double dosing it for the first seven days. Research has also pointed to possible improvement just by wearing socks to bed at night. So that's another tip regarding the mask I previously mentioned on here on helping to maintain darkness we also need to consider dark curtains or and or blinds in the bedroom. We have light receptors that are not only in our eyes, but our spawn specific parts of nobody that can pick up this light, even if your eyes are blocked, such as behind your knees, which has receptors. Next tip is Imagine yourself driving home from work. And you are living in a house in a nice neighborhood and you pull up to your driveway still doing the same speed that you were driving on the interstate. This obviously makes no sense, because the normal routine would be to start slowing down from the interstate speed when you first get off the road. And then further slowing as you get to the neighborhood, and even further slowing as you get near your house. This is how we should approach sleep at night. Many years of my life, I was wide open until five to 10 minutes before crawling into bed. And then I wonder why was my mind not wanting to slow down and allow sleep, we should have approximately two hours before bed where we decrease the bright lights in the house. And we also are very cautious about the activities that we're participating in to not cause adrenaline and excitement and nervousness of any kind. That would decrease sleep quality. One of the hardships that I had to learn the hard way was I needed to learn to come to peace with a fact of life. The fact is, usually when we're past 30 years of age, waking up during the night is actually quite natural and it is not an error in the system. If we continue to fret over our waking up during the night, it almost guarantees not returning to quality sleep. Because we start worrying that something is wrong, we won't go back to sleep, we have way too much to do tomorrow and excetera etc. Once I came to peace with the fact that it was going to be normal to wake up maybe at 12 and maybe even at two, it allowed for easier access to going back into the deep sleep from that point. The next bullet point that's very important is a product that I have personally used since I was in my late 40s. And I'm now 66 As I speak this GABA is a neurotransmitter GA ba that the brain naturally has that allows calmness to be felt within our system and brain. One of the closed early morning awakenings and why it doesn't work well for most is because we have a lack of calmness during that wake up period. So the question is, how do we reduce that anxious period? I do it by having 1000 milligrams or maybe 1500 milligrams of GABA, sitting next to my bed with a small glass of water. GABA does not make you drowsy. It makes you calm. So there is no hangover effect. Taking the GABA upon first awakenings is the key because it does not last long enough when you take it at bedtime, but does last about three to four hours during the middle of the night. Our next discussion has to be about pharmaceutical drugs and the fact that they can have many side effects, one of which is lack of sleep and insomnia. Many drugs are certainly life saving and some are also very dangerous. And we have to consider the fact that the fourth leading cause of death in this country by the New England Journal of Medicine is prescribed pharmaceutical drugs. The Main St mainstream medical system is simply not regarding the risk of drugs to the degree that I believe is important. So take this upon yourself to do your adequate research. Next on the list is exercise. Of course exercise is an important aspect of our health. But if we are doing it too late in the evenings, we may be producing cortisol, which is the stress hormone. This is something we each have to determine individually as to its positive or negative effects. I personally work out in the mornings always. So that is not an issue for me. Next is my story of going to Carabas and my insomnia from eating there. I have this sleep monitor called an aura ring which is state of the art. And I highly endorse that so that we can have monitoring of the truth of our sleep at night. I was finding that every time I went to karabits, my resting pulse would go from 50 to almost 90 for three hours. And after several times and actually asking questions at the restaurant, people who work there regarding Do you have MSG, they said no, they kept confirming they did not have MSG in their food. But I came to find out later that it was in the Caesar salad and was hidden MSG under the label natural flavors. Of course immediately I just simply stopped eating that particular food at Carabas. And my pulse never elevated again. But we must be cognizant of the effects of certain foods and certain spices that are put on foods regarding our sleep. But coming to a detective is so important on this journey to sleep. Next is a nutraceuticals that I call from In the green pharmacy, I actually in my life cannot even consider where my health might be if I had not had the benefit of the natural remedies for not only my health, but my lack of sleep. Here is my experience take on the array of sleep remedies that I value, and have also observed and not only myself, but in many others for over four decades. We must remember that natural remedies are not the cure for this. They're just managing. They're wonderful helpers to assist as we work towards setting up a program that regains our natural sleep cycle. So the natural remedies are here to help and manage our frustration with sleep. The first one is fossil totl sarine. That is the natural product that lowers cortisol, which is stress hormone. I have found that taking 400 milligrams three to four hours before bedtime has helped me immensely with my numbers on the deep sleep. I think we have an epidemic of elevated cortisol so phospho totl sarine is good for many of our health conditions that exists today. Next to the herb ashwagandha 900 milligrams twice daily, have a quality brand can act as what we call an adaptogen and adaptogens are a product or natural ingredient that helps us to have the ability to handle more stress. We've mentioned GABA before and again neurotransmitters that allow increased calmness to aid and for me to repeat lack of calmness and overthinking which are called cognitive popcorn is the primary reason for early morning awakenings. five HTP are called hydroxy. Tryptophan is a natural product also. This is an amino acid that our brain uses to produce serotonin and also melatonin. It is the building block for these two neurotransmitters. I respond very well to 100 milligrams of five HTP about 30 minutes before bedtime.
Ed Jones 17:02
Now if a person is taking antidepressants check with your doctor before doing this. But my aura ring showed significant improvements of deep sleep, sometimes from a level as low as three minutes of deep sleep all the way to 40 simply by using five HTP. Next is the headliner for sleep of course the natural world which is melatonin melatonin has research that confirms the human need for melatonin is very significant. Melatonin is produced from our pineal gland, and its purpose is to trigger the body for a good night's sleep. facts show many of us as we age are decreasing our production of this amazing molecule. The decrease in melatonin often decreases the quality of sleep because there's no trigger to instruct the body that it's time to go to bed. I have learned however, that dosing can be tricky on melatonin. Some individuals can get a feeling of depression or grogginess with too much melatonin. There's a brand called Symfony natural health which is the only company in the United States that produces a naturally produced melatonin from plant sources. Symfony natural health is their name, and it cannot be sold online and you can call or come by nutritional world. If you want more information on that I find that I respond slightly better to the natural melatonin than the synthetic which is all the other brands carry synthetic is perfectly fine for many people. So don't think you have to use natural to start with but go ahead and begin with point three to three milligrams of melatonin each night. One hour before bed if going to sleep is the issue or take directly at bedtime. If early morning awaking is the problem. I have clients whose melatonin rains can go all the way from point three to 10 milligrams so no that not one size fits all. Next is the host of herbal remedies for sleep issues. herbs such as valerian can often relax the body when overly tense valerian does have a very strong odor but I feel it is worth the effort. As part of our helpers are required to to four capsules of Valerian and using it on several nights in a row seems to make it more effective. I also like formulas that combine Valerian with chamomile and passionflower the next big hitter is glycine. Glycine is a naturally formed amino acid. And research shows that I it actually may slow down the firing of neurons, reducing anxiety and also lowering core body temperature, which is a powerful method to assist sleep and health. The next product is theanine, which works to calm the brain again and works similar to GABA. theanine is derived from green tea and is a wonderful day off Knight remedy as it brings calmness but not drowsiness. How about magnesium. Magnesium is not a traditional sleep remedy. However, a lack of magnesium creates a physiological issue of constriction within the body. And that always decreases sleep. Magnesium has over 300 functions within our body would and I do explain this in detail on one of my podcasts, the holistic navigator, if you simply Google the holistic Navigator, and magnesium, you can hit the play button and listen, one of the other categories that I think needs to be journeyed into which rarely spoke about his blood testing, getting the proper blood work and uncover many of the inconsistencies within the physiological state with that could be contributing to poor health with with knowing with bloodwork and empowers yourself with getting actual tests that you need, that can address aging, inflammation and nutrition levels that potentially can benefit our entire being, and also improve the quality and quantity of sleep. Very few people realize that insomnia may be sometimes due to low B 12, thyroid dysfunction, inflammation, such as C reactive protein, MTHFR, Gene, magnesium, high iron or other tests that need to be investigated, to ensure they're not contributing to insomnia, because if they're elevated or low, they will do that. And nutrition world offers a walk in lab for cash only blood testing. To learn more, go to nutrition w.com Hit the blood testing tab for more information. One of the topics that I think has certainly become popular in the past years is being mindful. What is mindfulness is actually being more in the present moment. I lived half of my 66 years always with a to do list always tomorrow. Let's get it done. And then we'll we'll enjoy the next episode of my life. And I've learned now to use more meditative, slowing my mind down and my awareness so I can actually be in the moment. The app that I like the best is Insight Timer. It's free. And one of the people on there's is a woman named Sarah blonde and blonde and with a B, I encourage you to practice mindfulness that is one of the very actual techniques that can improve your not only sleep, but your quality of life. But now what if all else fails, nothing is working. You've done everything, you have some kind of crisis that may hit that simply makes it impossible to sleep well. You know, drugs are worthy if they're appropriate and are safely used for the right condition. And one of those can be like a momentary crisis of insomnia. The only sleep medicine that I personally feel comfortable with is doxepin. And I'll again only recommend it for three to five nights. This is an antidepressant that came to the market in 1969. I have found it to be wonderful for allowing my quick sleep and my deep sleep during the night. The doses range that are prescribed up to 100 milligrams from the pharmaceutical company. However, for sleep, I actually get a 10 milligram prescription, pull that capsule apart and use approximately 1/3 of that capsule, which is three to four milligrams. But the key to this doxepin spelled do X epi and working however, is mixing it in about three ounces of warm water and swishing it in your mouth for 30 seconds before swallowing. If I swallow the capsule, it simply does not work. Now that I am closing out our time together on our sleep discussion, I want you to promise yourself that you will give your life the permission to sleep. Many of us including myself have felt guilty about taking the effort and time to recuperate with proper sleep. adequate sleep does not equate to being lazy. So set up your sleep life for success right now. Know that you have the wise tools at this point to change your life forever. So let's get going. We have no time to waste. Thank you very much.