May 18, 2025 • 35 mins
Everyone knows we should be getting better sleep, but that's easier said than done. That's why in this episode Toni is chatting with sleep and health psychologist Tracey Gee about why so many people struggle with their sleep, and some practical tips we can all apply to help sleep better at night.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We Need to Talk conversations on wellness with Coast FM's
Tony Street.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This episode is proudly brought to you by Wallace Cotton.
For twenty years, Wallace Cotton has been making homes more
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(00:29):
To find out more, head to Wallacecotton dot com. Now
today on that We Need to Talk podcast, we are
talking about sleep. How is your sleep going? I'm the
kind of person that's still after forty one years of living,
wonders why I feel awful despite getting less than six
hours sleep the night before, and for some unknown reason,
I'm constantly surprised by the fact I feel heaps better
(00:50):
after a hefty nine hours. It is not rocket science.
I should know better, but it turns out as a
forty something year old woman, I'm at the highest risk
of getting poor sleep. Greater sleep data shows that around
the age of forty, people tend to get less sleep.
The scientific survey report showed that we sleep the most
at age twenty and the least at age forty. There
(01:11):
were also gender differences in the data. Women tended to
sleep longer than men at quote most stages of life,
but that changes around midlife. Women are more likely to
experience sleep interruption due to caregiving work, particularly parents of
young children. So how do we change this? Tracy g
is a sleep psychologist and health psychologist who is going
(01:31):
to share the connection between the mental and physical health
and our sleep. It's great to have you with us.
How important is the connection between sleep and our physical
and mental health? First of all, I.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Think that's one of the pillars with regards to making change.
I think it isn't as sexy as some of the
other topics to look at, and so we leave it
as last. But it is the one of the foundations
of making change to physical and psychological or mental health.
And it's probably the easiest because you don't have to
put so much time and effort in versus some of
(02:02):
the other strategies you have to actually do during the day.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I know one thing that I have read time and
time again is not everyone needs the same amount of sleep,
and you know, you read about some of these rich
listers that I operate on four hours sleep, you know,
because I'm always working and I'm functioning fine. Is that true?
Is it true that some people can operate with LEAs
sleep than others.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yes, if you're only measuring it by quantity. So someone
who sleeps six hours, if out of a scale of
one to ten, you're measuring quality. A person that has
six hours sleep but has ten out of ten quality
and they wake up refreshed, and they have no energy
issues during the day and their brain functions working well,
(02:43):
they can manage on six hours. But if you have
someone that has six hours sleep, they have really low quality,
like they might be with one being the lowest quality
and ten being the highest quality. They have like a
I don't know, a six out of ten throughout the
whole night. Of course, they're going to wake up a
lot more tired. So quality is actually more important to
(03:03):
measure than quantity.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
And how do you know whether you're getting quality sleep
or not? You know, how can each person determine what
the optical amount of hours is based on whether they're
actually getting good sleep or not.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Usually it's a bit of a trial and error, just
with regards to when you go to sleep, how long
does it take you to fall asleep? How many times
do you wake up during the night, But it's more
important things like how fast can you back to sleep?
But really how refreshed do you feel in the morning
and how you function the next day, because I think
people leave out that part of sleep. They don't think
(03:36):
about how you function the next day is really telling
you about how good or bad your sleep has been,
And it's not really in either or it's kind of
on a continuum with regards to you know how good
your quality is, because sometimes it's really good and then
sometimes it's not. And then sometimes you're mistaken and you're thinking, ah,
that looks like good quality sleep, but it's actually because
(03:58):
you've been so exhausted, your body is actually resetting itself
after about two or three days, and it's not really
quality sleep. It's more on the exhausted sleep. But you
feel better in the morning, so you think it's better.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
By and large, with the people that you see on daily,
do you think New Zealanders are getting enough sleep in general?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Well, usually the people I see you have sleep problems
and they've got health issues. So those people definitely would
fall into the category of not I think hard to
answer your question apart from the idea that I think
that when we go back to the idea that people
don't value their sleep enough, I'm sure that everyone could
actually do better and get more sleep. And because of
(04:38):
the side effects with regards to the psychological and physical stuff,
both daily and in the long term, I'm hoping to
give people information and motivation to actually make some decisions
to prioritize their sleep a bit more, whereas now it's
sort of very much secondary.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yes, it's the first thing to go, isn't it. Side effects.
Let's start with the physical side effects, both in the
short and the long term.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
In the short term, i'd have to say physical stuff
would be things like brain function and you know, your
ability to think clearly, and also things like reaction times
and coordination. Immune functions are really important one that often
gets missed out, especially for people that have health issues
and just generally, I think that's why little kids and
(05:23):
young adults sleep more, because they need more for their
tissue growth and repair. So those are kind of the
daily things. For the longer term, more cumulative stuff, which
is really about that you've had a long period of
time where your sleep's actually been quite bad, you can
often get lots of problems with inflammation and illness, and
so that's probably why one of the largest populations that
(05:46):
I see is people that have chronic health issues and
they come in and we look at well, they first
of all think that we should be just focusing on
what their chronic illness symptoms are. But then when we
look at sleep. I've noticed because that's been a change
in my treatment process lately, focusing on sleep first more regularly.
They get a lot more benefits overall, and they sort
(06:07):
of are quite surprised by the fact that they're you
know which I'll tell you a bit more about why
you might feel a bit more coordinated, or your balance
is a bit better so you're at less risk of falls.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
I've got netball tomorrow, so all is I'm going to
be going to bed very early tonight.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
I can tell you a little bit is something slightly
different with regards to how sleep can really help with
motor coordination. And if you're particularly interested in things like
a particular skill, if you actually practice it and do
some visualization and stuff around it just before you go
to sleep, you'll actually be able to find that your
(06:42):
actual ability to do it might actually improve somewhat.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Well, I'm going to visualize feeding the circle well at
netball then tonight, and hopefully that lends itself to my
debut tomorrow. Okay, so the other physical side of things,
what about the mental short term and long term?
Speaker 3 (06:57):
You probably everyone can probably easily IDENTI to the daily
ones like stress reactivity, So things like getting stressed really easily.
Or you might find that if you were, say on
that scale of one to ten again, but ten was
the worst stress ever. You'd even find things like you
might even want to cry and you don't even know why,
or you feel like someone says something to you and
(07:18):
you react very fast, or you might even want to
hit something and it makes you feel better or yell.
So often your reactivity is a lot higher. Things like
you're just more susceptible to daily stresses, so things that
normally wouldn't bug you really really annoy you, and you
can fixate on them a little bit more. So you
might find that your mood will actually kind of go
(07:40):
up and down quite a bit when you're actually lacking sleep,
and there's so much restorative stuff that does happen at
night that we don't kind of realize because we just
sort of think we're doing nothing. But I'm sort of
thinking if you knew what all the benefits were, you'd
really and you'd really prioritize it more. One of the
other main things is probably your ability to think and
(08:01):
problem solve and decision make and actually even just change
things like your level of confidence and even things like uncertainty.
Those things change when you get better sleep. In the
longer term, if you're experiencing long term sleep issues, you'll
have things like problems with anxiety because then the actual
(08:21):
mechanics which I can tell you a little bit more,
the mechanics that actually go on when you're going to sleep,
if you're not restoring them, you're going to get more anxiety,
which means you'll be breathing faster, and your body will
actually be reacting faster because it feels more under threat.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
So you're almost giving yourself the physical symptoms as well
via the mental.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
You'll even find things, like I guess one thing that's
quite interesting is if you're sleeping better, you'll actually find
that some of those things around anxiety and depression change
because we do know that when we're asking people about
anxiety and depression, we always ask about their sleep and
what it's like, and we use that as a symptom
to tell us kind of at what level that it
(09:00):
is some sort of thinking. What we do is we
just change that. And it's one of the things that
I found really helpful with approaching people who have anxiety
and depression, especially in populations who don't want to say
they have an issue. And you go, oh, well, if
we talk about your sleep and we change your sleep
and this will happen and that will stop that happening,
(09:22):
and they're like, oh, let's do that instead rather than saying, okay,
well you must worry a lot and you must feel
really low and that must mean something, which they have
the stigma of I don't want to have a mental illness. Yes,
and a lot of the time people don't necessarily have
a mental illness, but all of us at some stage
have psychological well being issues. Is what I prefer to
refer to it, because it's a little bit more the appetites,
(09:44):
a bit more appealing for it.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
When it comes to the quality of our sleep, What
do you think is impacting that?
Speaker 3 (09:51):
What it is?
Speaker 2 (09:52):
It environmental Is it a mental state we'rein. Why are
people getting disturbed sleep and not getting the quality they need?
Speaker 3 (09:59):
There's three hearts to the answer with regards to the quality.
Is it about them missing out on the need for sleep,
around them not following out the processes of sleep because
they're like, for example, napping in the middle of the
day or napping for too long. But napping is important
for people with health issues and for certain situations. Or
(10:21):
is it their thing about their ability to sleep, So
it'll be things like are they to aroused either physically
or psychologically, like they're worrying too much about things, or
is it the opportunity Like sometimes people with sleep issues,
it's just because they're not getting enough time to sleep.
So people who you want to burn the candle at
(10:41):
both ends, the reason they having sleep issues is because
there's not enough time, not that they can't sleep.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
That was me over the weekend, so going late to
shows and they're having to get.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Up early too exciting your life.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah, I need to calm it down, but it sounds napping.
I'm interested in how you said napping has its place
for some people. When is napping a good tool to
use for napping.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
We only recommend about twenty minutes, and the twenty minute
mark has been you know, pretty much research to like,
there's a lot of research around it, and one of
the main reasons is is that you don't want to
go into two deeper stages of your sleep because then
you wake up and you feel a little bit disorientated,
Whereas if you nap for twenty minutes, it can be
(11:24):
a really good power nap and then that will actually
have less of an issue on your sleep at night.
Which brings me to when you should nap, which is
they reckon only between about one and three pm. But
the earlier you can nap, the better because if you
think about it like a meal, you know, say you're
(11:44):
going out for a fine dining, you don't eat an
appetizer just before you go because your appetite goes. So
what we're looking at is making sure that there's enough
time between your nap and the time you want to
go to bed so you can build up one of
those need issues, which is your sleep.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Press This is we need to talk with Tony Street.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
So should everyone be napping or is it just for
certain people?
Speaker 3 (12:09):
People that I would suggest napping to are usually people
like who've got health issues like chronic pain or a
chronic health issue or a concussion, because their nervous system,
specifically their stress response has actually been overworked, and so
they actually are more likely to need to have a nap,
and if they actually kind of try and stay awake,
(12:31):
it actually they just feel really exhausted and can get
quite bad fatigue, and so napping's actually okay for them.
People that probably don't need to nappers because they've actually
just got bad they're just not sleeping well in the
sense of say they've got too short a time that
they're not allocating for them to actually sleep, and they
(12:53):
might nap. Like I've heard people say to me, Oh,
I nap for like an hour, or I nap for
forty five minutes. And I say, you're either going to
nap for like twenty minutes or you'll better to try
and sleep for an hour and a half or a
bit more, which is the whole sleep cycle, yep. But
preference not to do that.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
You better to still do the pound nap and then
just get a good night sleep. What about the timing,
So you've given us the timing of the nap between
one and three PM. What about the time we go
to bed? Is there any ideal optimum time and is
there a cutoff where you should be that's way too late?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
I think it's hard to answer that because people have
different chronotypes, which are different types of sleep patterns. I
sleep really early, but I wake up really early, So
I'd be really good if I had a job that
like my job, Like you're chopper to sleep like nine
nine thirty easily, but I like waking up at four
(13:46):
thirty five o'clock easily, So there's for me, I sleep
in that time and that's perfect. The chronotype is you've
either got one that you go to sleep at sort
of quite early and you wake up really early, like me,
or you might go to bed at like ten ten
thirty and you easily wake up at six. That's kind
of the standard of what you want, okay, And then
(14:07):
you've got the night owl, who is the person who
goes to bed at midnight and then wakes up at
sort of eight or nine, And there, genetically, naturally, you
actually have a chronotype that you're better suited to.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
How do you determine that? Is that just a sort
of noticing how you feel?
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Yeah, Like usually you just ask someone if you had
nothing to do tomorrow or in the next few days,
when when do you actually want to go to bed
and when you want to get up? Most people kind
of naturally have an idea of when they want to
do it.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Can you change your natural chronotype or whatever it was?
So let's say, I mean, I know that about myself.
I like to go to bed early and wake up early,
thank goodness for my job. But I know a lot
of people in broadcasting that would just never do early
shift because they're night ours. When I had to do
the night shift at TVNZ, I thought I was dying.
I was like, why am I still up? Can you
(14:59):
change your type to fit your job? Is what I'm saying.
So can you not be a morning person and force
yourself to do breakfast sifts because your job requires it.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Yes, you can change it, don't. It doesn't change in
the sense of you can change it because you do
things like you expose you off to light, or you
do activity to wake yourself up more, and you might
plan to so for example, if you wanted to shift,
say you're a night out and you would normally wake
up at eight or nine, but then you're doing your job,
(15:29):
and you have to actually instead get up at five
or six. All you'd have to do is actually work
out what you'd have to do as a sleep pattern,
a schedule for a person that would be refreshed when
they woke up at six, and then you just have
to live it. You actually just have to do.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
It, fighting your natural instincts for a while, yep.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
And it will actually take over when you actually keep
fighting it. And then you actually do things like you
learn strategies which are part of the ability and opportunity
strategies around things like you might be doing meditation, or
you might be doing particular slowbray that, or you do
things that calm your nervous system down, or you kind
(16:08):
of have techniques so that your brain isn't quite so
active at that time of day.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Should we all have those techniques every time we go
to bed. Should there be a routine we go through? Yes.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
I think some people who don't have problems sleeping, they
don't they don't need them. But for the majority of
us who do have problems sleeping, I think you do
need them and you need to put them in regularly.
But people good question, because what I think is people
only use them when they're having problems sleeping, But if
you actually put them in all the time, it would
(16:40):
be kind of like learning and association, and your body
would actually want to go to sleep or put itself
to sleep.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
So what are those strategies you mentioned? Meditation?
Speaker 3 (16:49):
So I'll bring up my charts and show you.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
I'm actually one of these people that doesn't struggle to
go to sleep, but I get really grumpy when I
have an odd night where I can't, and that is
very really and I go, what is this? I can
always go to sleep, so I can't imagine what it's
like for people that have that regularly. It must be terrible.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Well, if you only sometimes have problems going to sleep,
I wonder if when you're starting to challenge yourself at night,
why am I having this problem? What's going on? I
normally can go to sleep early.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
It's adding to it.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
What happens is you're adding sleep effort, which raises your
quartersol which should be low at night, and so it
should just be like just let it happen, Yeah, just
chill out. So in this diagram is your autonomic nervous system,
and for ease of understanding, you have an on button
which is like your stress response or your fight flight
(17:41):
freeze response, and you have an off button, which is
your relaxation response. These two are always working in opposition, right,
And the reason that breathing, as an example, would be
one of the best things to focus on is because
you have different styles are breathing depending which side you're engaging.
(18:02):
So you're always breathing in when you're using your stress response,
and you're always breathing out when you use your relaxation response.
So a good example would be if you're driving and
if you've had to stop him because the car stopped
in front of you suddenly, and you go, that's your stress.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Response breathing in.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
And then when it goes away, no threat and you're
feeling safe to goes ah and you have a sigh
of relief. And so I know there are lots of
different breathing techniques out there, and I always say to
people the only thing that I like to tell people
is the inn is on, outer is off. And so
whether you're doing Lamar's breathing, warm off breathing, square breathing,
(18:44):
there's so many different types of breathing that are helpful
for different things. If you just know the in and out.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Part.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
What I would actually get you to do is make
sure that when you're trying to sleep at night, which
is this side you're trying to engage, you're trying to
turn this off. So imagine that during the day you've
been over using this side and the stress response is
more active. At nighttime, you're trying to turn it off
and bring the side back up. So as an adult,
you'd be trying to breathe between six and twelve breast permanent,
(19:12):
and you'd actually be just doing things like I always
get people to just focus on the out breath, because
you're going to breathe in no matter what. But if
you focus on the out breath, it's just so much easier.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Would that happen not just for sleep? Like I'm thinking now,
I like to relate things to sport. I've got some
year eight netballers that in a tight netball game with
two minutes to go, they can, when the stress is high,
they can start throwing away balls. Do you think the
outward breath would be a good thing for them to
adopt at that time in a game too, just for
the relaxation side.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Yes, because you're going to be the greatest coach.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Ever, I'm going to take these diagrams to them.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
I'm going to tell you how you can do it.
So if you time them out, get them come over
and see you and you go, because you need to
actually time them out so that they can actually feel
a bit more safer, because otherwise they're probably caught up
in their head, but to fill up their kind of space.
What I'd even get you to do, if this is
not uncomfortable for you, is get you to link your hands,
(20:11):
put them behind your head, and pull your elbows back
by your ears. And if you can lean back into
your chair of bit, if you haven't got your legs crossed,
what you can do is I hope you can notice
that you're only breathing from your tummy. Yeah, so this
is the I used to work in the respiratory department
(20:32):
at County's Manaka, and this was what we used to
do for people is just go right, Just learn how
to know the feeling of breathing in and out, breathing
in and out to your tummy. And if you just
sit there and do this, you'll actually be doing it,
like instead of having to focus on all these other
things that actually make people anxious. Like, can you feel
it coming in and out? Can you feel your tummy?
(20:54):
All that sort of stuff, which is still important to
actually highlight awareness for them. But if you actually get
all your girls to come over and you're just like,
all right, we're going to stand here. What are we doing,
let's regroup, let's and so at the same time as
they're listening to you, their body is really calming down.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
So what is that with the putting the hands above
the head? What is that doing?
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Well? I thought you'd just like it because it might
be funny. I'm kidding.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
I was like, I was quite relaxed. So I mean,
at this point I'm heavy.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
This pose with your elbows actually back blocks your accessory
muscles in your chest, so that stops you being a
chest for either And to your question before, is that
a good idea to do it? Other times? Absolutely? You know,
if you've a walked into an office and you see
guys who go, hey, do do that, they're like, oh
my gosh, I'm doing world domination thinking and I'm going
(21:46):
to do anything. And then what happens is it's really
because you've intuitively found a way to relax your body,
but you didn't kind of know that that was the
science behind it, yep. Whereas you can do that for
going to sleep at night. So that would be my
probably number one, because if you're trying to turn your
nervous system off and you're getting kind of caught up
(22:07):
and you can't find the right meditation or you can't
find the right anything that's making it work, I just say,
just lie with if you can on your back, put
your hands behind your head, and just notice that your
tummy's kind of going up and down, and it just
takes care of itself for the pace and everything. But
if you have like I would even say leading up,
(22:29):
which is where I'd like to mention, is the wind downtime,
because everyone thinks of a bed time routine just before
you go to bed. But there's some really important things
you should be doing for your wind downtime, which should
even be like an hour to an hour and a
half out from sleeping. What are those Those would be
things like, because you've got small children, don't you, yes.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Oh, with my youngest is six now he's starting to
get okay, less young.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
You should get them all to line up on the
couch and well just sit there and do the behind
in the head do the breathing posture because it helps
them start to slow down their body to want to
go to sleep, so help the onset of sleep. The
wine down time is really important because everyone thinks that
you should just have a bed time routine, which you
(23:15):
should because if anyone knows about Pevlov's dogs, which is
that association idea that you just keep doing the same
thing and you can behaviorally get patterns in yep. Probably
since you've got small children, or you've had they were
small at some stage, I'm sure that you had bedtime
routines for them, and you did things the same way.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
And I slowly get more useless at them as they
get older, so I should probably get back to a
bit of a structure.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Well, they might like the structure because then it actually
helps them know what's coming next. But the way you
do the structure is really important. So for example, an
hour and a half out to of two hours out,
things like having a hot shower or a hot bath
or a hot drink, something to get your body temperature
(24:01):
to lift so that it falls because so falling off
the body temperture sleep helps you sleep. The things around
the wind down time is kind of all about timing,
so that hour and a half out your body naturally
starts calling down anyway, so you can actually speed it
up and actually kind of almost give it vitamins by
reducing your body temperature. You can do things like wearing
(24:25):
blue light glasses although they're kind of funky, or just
dimming your lights at home. That makes a real big
difference for your natural sleephomone to increase.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Oh, I love that one. I feel like I've got
an aversion to bright light. I have got my dimmers
and my lamps going all the time because it's just
so bright and it is not conducive to winding down.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
As you say, I mean, naturally, the malatonin is meant
to be actually kind of building up to actually help
you fall asleep. So it's high at night time and
then it gets low during the daytime. But it has
a natural pattern, right, It's when it's dark it's high,
and when it's light it's low. But your cortisol, which
is your stress hormone, actually goes the exact opo way,
(25:09):
and so naturally that should be what it looks like.
But what happens is which is why actually often although
I had a discussion with you a little briefly about mindfulness.
That's why you need mindfulness during the day because you
will have spikes in your cortisol and so to keep
it low so that at nighttime you can easily fall asleep.
(25:29):
You actually want to try little things like doing mindfulness
because what it will actually do is actually allow you
to get your nervous system to calm down or do
all things that kind of reduce stress during the day.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
So that can impact your sleep later on at night.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Yeah, because everyone thinks sleep is just nighttime, but it's
the whole day from beginning to end.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
If you end up a frazzled mess and then just
want to hit the sack quickly.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Now that we need to talk with tony'st.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Can we talk about the environmental factors as well? What
is the optimum when it comes to and I have
this debate with my husband firmness of bedding, types of bedding,
types of light, whether you're in a cold or a
warm room.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
So your normal body temperature stays around thirty seven degrees
and so what we want is you'd have like a
comfortable body temperature, but the ambient temperature or the temperature
that's in your room surrounding you. Usually the best kind
of environment is around fifteen and a half to nineteen
(26:37):
and a half degrees, So if you're going to set
your fan or your air con or anything, that's probably
room temp. Room temp the best one to have. I
think the body temperature thing is a really interesting one because.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
This is whether you're putting the flannelet pjs on or
h you're sleeping in a singlet.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
Well, because it's also if you've got a partner, it's
how hot are they?
Speaker 2 (26:58):
He runs very hot? That's why I send them to
the other side.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Or I've even known people who actually have to get
two such a sheets so that, yeah, you know, someone
who's a very hot sleeper can actually kind of move
over a little bit and be on the cooler sheets,
whereas a person that's kind of a you know, likes
to sleep a little bit warmer. They have their flannel
sheets and they like lie on that.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
I even put sometimes an extra blanket just on my
side of the beers because he resists the extra weight
and I like to have the weight on me.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
So weighted options are really good because we've got pressure
sensors all over our body. Not everybody likes it, but
generally most people like being hugged. And the reason that
people like being hugged is because it's addressing our pressure senses.
So what happens is having weight on us actually feel safe.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
So a weighted blanket's a good option, yes, yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
But for a weighted blanket, it's only meant to be
I can't quite remember that. There's only a percentage of
how heavy it should be according to your body.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Body weight formula to it. Yep, I'll write that down.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Because if you had like someone who is I don't know,
forty kgs and then you put a twelve to fifteen
kg blanket on them, they're going to feel like they're trapped,
and it would actually have the reverse effect.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
So I'm interested in that because they can make you
quite warm. Right, So it's okay to be warm as
long as the with like lots of nice blankets, but
your room has to be in that fifteen to nineteen.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
That's usually the idea. You keep your room kind of cool,
and then for the body temperature as long as I
guess it sys thirty seven, but I mean it goes.
Your body temperature keeps dropping overnight by four or five
in the morning, it's said its lowest and then it
starts picking up. That's why there's this really great system,
but it's really expensive from overseas where it can actually
(28:50):
detect what your temperature is and it actually changes your
bedding to that actual wow accommodate your body temperature. Wow
and amazing stuff. But for the rest of us, what
we do is we tend to have things like you
might have weted blankets or like I have one of
those throws that has a timer and a heater on it,
(29:12):
ah and blanket, Yeah, heated blanket and just put it
over me. And then it's got a timer on it
because it has to turn itself off, yes, and then
also a temperature that's low on it. And then when
I get in bed, I turn it off because my
body temperare is going to drop anyway, which is why
you know they always say you shouldn't really leave your
electric blanket on overnight because you might stay asleep, but
(29:36):
your body's always combating to try and keep the body
down and so you actually feel really awake where you
feel like you haven't rested.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Well. What about and when it comes to sheet options
and pillow options, are we going for lightweight cotton vibes
or are we going for heavy duty? What would you recommend?
Speaker 3 (29:52):
I don't have a recommendation. It's more just what your
own preference is, okay, Yeah, And I mean maybe that
might have to do with how that might change your
body tip as well, So it just kind of depends.
I don't know. Have you found a difference with the sheeting,
for you know, if your husband sleeps hot and you
sleep colder.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
I personally like quite a light sheet, but I would
rather layer myself up with a nice sort of feather
douve and then add potentially a weighted blanket or another
blanket on top, because I can take them off of
the night. So I don't want to start too thick
with the sheets. I want to have them nice and
light so that I can then layer and take them
off because apparently I end up kicking everything off.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
Yeah, so I think that's the way to go then,
definitely is to just have that would be well. That's
what I do too, is just have something. I have
several different layers and then I gradually take them off
during the night because I might get up to go
to to a little or something and come back. But
I think that's definitely a helpful thing to have, like
to know the difference between how your temperature works with
you and your partner and just.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Work out what suits you individually and don't feel like
you have to go for the same just because they're
running hot and you're cold. Yep, pit what's right for
each side.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
And I think the ambient temperature that's the sort of
the outside stuff that can stay the same. But then
each of you probably change, or you could even if
you just were by yourself. As I say, you can
have different sorts of sheets, so like you might want
to roll on one side if you want to get
a bit cooler, and then roll to the other side
if you want to get a bit warmer, and have
different blanket arrangements as well.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
I just want to go back to the optimal time
we're sleeping, because there are a lot of devices now
that people can wear on their wrists, you know, your
garments and your eye watchers that determine what sort of
sleep we're getting. So what is the minimum amount of
good sleep that we should be getting a night.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
I don't think there's just one answer to that, because
I keep going back to the quality of your sleep
versus quantity, so there's no real quantity, and even if
you look at some of the recommendations, they definitely change
as you age, and even the stages that you go through,
the percentages of the stages from non re to rem
(32:01):
to even the way that you go through them, they
change as you age as well, and it depends on
what you do during the day. I think that makes
there's no sort of one answer for everybody, which is
why sleep is such a complex kind of issue to
kind of deal with, because everyone would hope that, you know,
everyone looks at doctor Google, including myself, and you kind
(32:24):
of go, oh, that sounds like some really great ideas,
and then you go through them and you're like, sometimes
I see people and they'll say I've tried everything, and
then when you go, what have you tried? And then
you go through and you go, well, that's not actually
really addressing what your issue is, but that probably is
the easiest, the easiest things to try.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
So it's not a one size fits all, which is
why you exist as a sleep psychologist. And I know
you sity people with sleep issues, but do you think
there are more people out there with sleep issues than
perhaps realize? You know, enough to see a specialist.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Yes, and I think and that should be I guess
where I talk to you a little bit about when
to see someone. So the chronic sleep issue is the
three months for more than three days a week. What
we're actually addressing is your sleep habits versus back here
in the early stuff, we might be addressing your kind
of issues like the job loss or the relationship breakup,
(33:16):
or we're trying to manage that, and then that's how
you sleeping prose. But if you've had it for a
long time, you've often developed all these other bad sleep habits,
like napping during the day when you shouldn't, or going
to bed early. One of the biggest ones is going
to bed early thinking that your make up for lost time,
and you end up just lying in bed, awake, trying
to sleep, and your quarters OL levels are going really
(33:36):
high because you just I want to go to sleep.
I want to go to sleep. Why can't I go
to sleep? I should be going to sleep, house it's
going to affect me tomorrow, and you just end up
staying in bed building a connection of sleep effort or
quartersole building up while you're in bed, and then so
your bed becomes somewhere where you end up just waking
up whenever you go to bed.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Because it becomes a habit almost Oh gosh, so the
overarching messages sorted out before it becomes a chronic issue. Yes,
as soon as it's a problem.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
Early rather than later, because the longer you leave it,
treatment changes. And I guess that's what people also don't
seem to understand is if you leave it for longer
and you sort of think I'll just try a few
sleep hygen things, it's not really necessarily going to work
because it's actually more than that because your body does
just kind of your body keeps score on things.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yeah, you have to almost break the cycle. Oh, Tracy,
that was fascinating, and I've taken heaps of notes that
I can use outside of sleep as well. Thank you
so much for sharing it all. And I'm sure after
listening today there'll be a lot of people that refocus
on their sleep, and you know, maybe that is a
reason why they have other issues that they didn't perhaps
(34:45):
think started there. So I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
We need to talk with coas FM's Tony Street. If
you enjoyed the podcast, click to share with family or friends.
To get in touch email, Need to talk at Coast online,
dot co dot inz,
We Need to Talk conversations on wellness with Coast FM's
Tony Street.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This episode is proudly brought to you by Wallace Cotton.
For twenty years, Wallace Cotton has been making homes more
beautiful with timeless bedding, elevated essentials and sleepwear. Their collections
are thoughtfully crafted from natural and sustainable fabrics and produced
in small batches. Wallace Cotton is passionate about comfort and luxury,
helping Kiwis to enjoy a better, more RESTful night's sleep.
(00:29):
To find out more, head to Wallacecotton dot com. Now
today on that We Need to Talk podcast, we are
talking about sleep. How is your sleep going? I'm the
kind of person that's still after forty one years of living,
wonders why I feel awful despite getting less than six
hours sleep the night before, and for some unknown reason,
I'm constantly surprised by the fact I feel heaps better
(00:50):
after a hefty nine hours. It is not rocket science.
I should know better, but it turns out as a
forty something year old woman, I'm at the highest risk
of getting poor sleep. Greater sleep data shows that around
the age of forty, people tend to get less sleep.
The scientific survey report showed that we sleep the most
at age twenty and the least at age forty. There
(01:11):
were also gender differences in the data. Women tended to
sleep longer than men at quote most stages of life,
but that changes around midlife. Women are more likely to
experience sleep interruption due to caregiving work, particularly parents of
young children. So how do we change this? Tracy g
is a sleep psychologist and health psychologist who is going
(01:31):
to share the connection between the mental and physical health
and our sleep. It's great to have you with us.
How important is the connection between sleep and our physical
and mental health? First of all, I.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Think that's one of the pillars with regards to making change.
I think it isn't as sexy as some of the
other topics to look at, and so we leave it
as last. But it is the one of the foundations
of making change to physical and psychological or mental health.
And it's probably the easiest because you don't have to
put so much time and effort in versus some of
(02:02):
the other strategies you have to actually do during the day.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I know one thing that I have read time and
time again is not everyone needs the same amount of sleep,
and you know, you read about some of these rich
listers that I operate on four hours sleep, you know,
because I'm always working and I'm functioning fine. Is that true?
Is it true that some people can operate with LEAs
sleep than others.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yes, if you're only measuring it by quantity. So someone
who sleeps six hours, if out of a scale of
one to ten, you're measuring quality. A person that has
six hours sleep but has ten out of ten quality
and they wake up refreshed, and they have no energy
issues during the day and their brain functions working well,
(02:43):
they can manage on six hours. But if you have
someone that has six hours sleep, they have really low quality,
like they might be with one being the lowest quality
and ten being the highest quality. They have like a
I don't know, a six out of ten throughout the
whole night. Of course, they're going to wake up a
lot more tired. So quality is actually more important to
(03:03):
measure than quantity.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
And how do you know whether you're getting quality sleep
or not? You know, how can each person determine what
the optical amount of hours is based on whether they're
actually getting good sleep or not.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Usually it's a bit of a trial and error, just
with regards to when you go to sleep, how long
does it take you to fall asleep? How many times
do you wake up during the night, But it's more
important things like how fast can you back to sleep?
But really how refreshed do you feel in the morning
and how you function the next day, because I think
people leave out that part of sleep. They don't think
(03:36):
about how you function the next day is really telling
you about how good or bad your sleep has been,
And it's not really in either or it's kind of
on a continuum with regards to you know how good
your quality is, because sometimes it's really good and then
sometimes it's not. And then sometimes you're mistaken and you're thinking, ah,
that looks like good quality sleep, but it's actually because
(03:58):
you've been so exhausted, your body is actually resetting itself
after about two or three days, and it's not really
quality sleep. It's more on the exhausted sleep. But you
feel better in the morning, so you think it's better.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
By and large, with the people that you see on daily,
do you think New Zealanders are getting enough sleep in general?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Well, usually the people I see you have sleep problems
and they've got health issues. So those people definitely would
fall into the category of not I think hard to
answer your question apart from the idea that I think
that when we go back to the idea that people
don't value their sleep enough, I'm sure that everyone could
actually do better and get more sleep. And because of
(04:38):
the side effects with regards to the psychological and physical stuff,
both daily and in the long term, I'm hoping to
give people information and motivation to actually make some decisions
to prioritize their sleep a bit more, whereas now it's
sort of very much secondary.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yes, it's the first thing to go, isn't it. Side effects.
Let's start with the physical side effects, both in the
short and the long term.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
In the short term, i'd have to say physical stuff
would be things like brain function and you know, your
ability to think clearly, and also things like reaction times
and coordination. Immune functions are really important one that often
gets missed out, especially for people that have health issues
and just generally, I think that's why little kids and
(05:23):
young adults sleep more, because they need more for their
tissue growth and repair. So those are kind of the
daily things. For the longer term, more cumulative stuff, which
is really about that you've had a long period of
time where your sleep's actually been quite bad, you can
often get lots of problems with inflammation and illness, and
so that's probably why one of the largest populations that
(05:46):
I see is people that have chronic health issues and
they come in and we look at well, they first
of all think that we should be just focusing on
what their chronic illness symptoms are. But then when we
look at sleep. I've noticed because that's been a change
in my treatment process lately, focusing on sleep first more regularly.
They get a lot more benefits overall, and they sort
(06:07):
of are quite surprised by the fact that they're you
know which I'll tell you a bit more about why
you might feel a bit more coordinated, or your balance
is a bit better so you're at less risk of falls.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
I've got netball tomorrow, so all is I'm going to
be going to bed very early tonight.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
I can tell you a little bit is something slightly
different with regards to how sleep can really help with
motor coordination. And if you're particularly interested in things like
a particular skill, if you actually practice it and do
some visualization and stuff around it just before you go
to sleep, you'll actually be able to find that your
(06:42):
actual ability to do it might actually improve somewhat.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Well, I'm going to visualize feeding the circle well at
netball then tonight, and hopefully that lends itself to my
debut tomorrow. Okay, so the other physical side of things,
what about the mental short term and long term?
Speaker 3 (06:57):
You probably everyone can probably easily IDENTI to the daily
ones like stress reactivity, So things like getting stressed really easily.
Or you might find that if you were, say on
that scale of one to ten again, but ten was
the worst stress ever. You'd even find things like you
might even want to cry and you don't even know why,
or you feel like someone says something to you and
(07:18):
you react very fast, or you might even want to
hit something and it makes you feel better or yell.
So often your reactivity is a lot higher. Things like
you're just more susceptible to daily stresses, so things that
normally wouldn't bug you really really annoy you, and you
can fixate on them a little bit more. So you
might find that your mood will actually kind of go
(07:40):
up and down quite a bit when you're actually lacking sleep,
and there's so much restorative stuff that does happen at
night that we don't kind of realize because we just
sort of think we're doing nothing. But I'm sort of
thinking if you knew what all the benefits were, you'd
really and you'd really prioritize it more. One of the
other main things is probably your ability to think and
(08:01):
problem solve and decision make and actually even just change
things like your level of confidence and even things like uncertainty.
Those things change when you get better sleep. In the
longer term, if you're experiencing long term sleep issues, you'll
have things like problems with anxiety because then the actual
(08:21):
mechanics which I can tell you a little bit more,
the mechanics that actually go on when you're going to sleep,
if you're not restoring them, you're going to get more anxiety,
which means you'll be breathing faster, and your body will
actually be reacting faster because it feels more under threat.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
So you're almost giving yourself the physical symptoms as well
via the mental.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
You'll even find things, like I guess one thing that's
quite interesting is if you're sleeping better, you'll actually find
that some of those things around anxiety and depression change
because we do know that when we're asking people about
anxiety and depression, we always ask about their sleep and
what it's like, and we use that as a symptom
to tell us kind of at what level that it
(09:00):
is some sort of thinking. What we do is we
just change that. And it's one of the things that
I found really helpful with approaching people who have anxiety
and depression, especially in populations who don't want to say
they have an issue. And you go, oh, well, if
we talk about your sleep and we change your sleep
and this will happen and that will stop that happening,
(09:22):
and they're like, oh, let's do that instead rather than saying, okay,
well you must worry a lot and you must feel
really low and that must mean something, which they have
the stigma of I don't want to have a mental illness. Yes,
and a lot of the time people don't necessarily have
a mental illness, but all of us at some stage
have psychological well being issues. Is what I prefer to
refer to it, because it's a little bit more the appetites,
(09:44):
a bit more appealing for it.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
When it comes to the quality of our sleep, What
do you think is impacting that?
Speaker 3 (09:51):
What it is?
Speaker 2 (09:52):
It environmental Is it a mental state we'rein. Why are
people getting disturbed sleep and not getting the quality they need?
Speaker 3 (09:59):
There's three hearts to the answer with regards to the quality.
Is it about them missing out on the need for sleep,
around them not following out the processes of sleep because
they're like, for example, napping in the middle of the
day or napping for too long. But napping is important
for people with health issues and for certain situations. Or
(10:21):
is it their thing about their ability to sleep, So
it'll be things like are they to aroused either physically
or psychologically, like they're worrying too much about things, or
is it the opportunity Like sometimes people with sleep issues,
it's just because they're not getting enough time to sleep.
So people who you want to burn the candle at
(10:41):
both ends, the reason they having sleep issues is because
there's not enough time, not that they can't sleep.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
That was me over the weekend, so going late to
shows and they're having to get.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Up early too exciting your life.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Yeah, I need to calm it down, but it sounds napping.
I'm interested in how you said napping has its place
for some people. When is napping a good tool to
use for napping.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
We only recommend about twenty minutes, and the twenty minute
mark has been you know, pretty much research to like,
there's a lot of research around it, and one of
the main reasons is is that you don't want to
go into two deeper stages of your sleep because then
you wake up and you feel a little bit disorientated,
Whereas if you nap for twenty minutes, it can be
(11:24):
a really good power nap and then that will actually
have less of an issue on your sleep at night.
Which brings me to when you should nap, which is
they reckon only between about one and three pm. But
the earlier you can nap, the better because if you
think about it like a meal, you know, say you're
(11:44):
going out for a fine dining, you don't eat an
appetizer just before you go because your appetite goes. So
what we're looking at is making sure that there's enough
time between your nap and the time you want to
go to bed so you can build up one of
those need issues, which is your sleep.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Press This is we need to talk with Tony Street.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
So should everyone be napping or is it just for
certain people?
Speaker 3 (12:09):
People that I would suggest napping to are usually people
like who've got health issues like chronic pain or a
chronic health issue or a concussion, because their nervous system,
specifically their stress response has actually been overworked, and so
they actually are more likely to need to have a nap,
and if they actually kind of try and stay awake,
(12:31):
it actually they just feel really exhausted and can get
quite bad fatigue, and so napping's actually okay for them.
People that probably don't need to nappers because they've actually
just got bad they're just not sleeping well in the
sense of say they've got too short a time that
they're not allocating for them to actually sleep, and they
(12:53):
might nap. Like I've heard people say to me, Oh,
I nap for like an hour, or I nap for
forty five minutes. And I say, you're either going to
nap for like twenty minutes or you'll better to try
and sleep for an hour and a half or a
bit more, which is the whole sleep cycle, yep. But
preference not to do that.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
You better to still do the pound nap and then
just get a good night sleep. What about the timing,
So you've given us the timing of the nap between
one and three PM. What about the time we go
to bed? Is there any ideal optimum time and is
there a cutoff where you should be that's way too late?
Speaker 3 (13:26):
I think it's hard to answer that because people have
different chronotypes, which are different types of sleep patterns. I
sleep really early, but I wake up really early, So
I'd be really good if I had a job that
like my job, Like you're chopper to sleep like nine
nine thirty easily, but I like waking up at four
(13:46):
thirty five o'clock easily, So there's for me, I sleep
in that time and that's perfect. The chronotype is you've
either got one that you go to sleep at sort
of quite early and you wake up really early, like me,
or you might go to bed at like ten ten
thirty and you easily wake up at six. That's kind
of the standard of what you want, okay, And then
(14:07):
you've got the night owl, who is the person who
goes to bed at midnight and then wakes up at
sort of eight or nine, And there, genetically, naturally, you
actually have a chronotype that you're better suited to.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
How do you determine that? Is that just a sort
of noticing how you feel?
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Yeah, Like usually you just ask someone if you had
nothing to do tomorrow or in the next few days,
when when do you actually want to go to bed
and when you want to get up? Most people kind
of naturally have an idea of when they want to
do it.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Can you change your natural chronotype or whatever it was?
So let's say, I mean, I know that about myself.
I like to go to bed early and wake up early,
thank goodness for my job. But I know a lot
of people in broadcasting that would just never do early
shift because they're night ours. When I had to do
the night shift at TVNZ, I thought I was dying.
I was like, why am I still up? Can you
(14:59):
change your type to fit your job? Is what I'm saying.
So can you not be a morning person and force
yourself to do breakfast sifts because your job requires it.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Yes, you can change it, don't. It doesn't change in
the sense of you can change it because you do
things like you expose you off to light, or you
do activity to wake yourself up more, and you might
plan to so for example, if you wanted to shift,
say you're a night out and you would normally wake
up at eight or nine, but then you're doing your job,
(15:29):
and you have to actually instead get up at five
or six. All you'd have to do is actually work
out what you'd have to do as a sleep pattern,
a schedule for a person that would be refreshed when
they woke up at six, and then you just have
to live it. You actually just have to do.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
It, fighting your natural instincts for a while, yep.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
And it will actually take over when you actually keep
fighting it. And then you actually do things like you
learn strategies which are part of the ability and opportunity
strategies around things like you might be doing meditation, or
you might be doing particular slowbray that, or you do
things that calm your nervous system down, or you kind
(16:08):
of have techniques so that your brain isn't quite so
active at that time of day.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Should we all have those techniques every time we go
to bed. Should there be a routine we go through? Yes.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
I think some people who don't have problems sleeping, they
don't they don't need them. But for the majority of
us who do have problems sleeping, I think you do
need them and you need to put them in regularly.
But people good question, because what I think is people
only use them when they're having problems sleeping, But if
you actually put them in all the time, it would
(16:40):
be kind of like learning and association, and your body
would actually want to go to sleep or put itself
to sleep.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
So what are those strategies you mentioned? Meditation?
Speaker 3 (16:49):
So I'll bring up my charts and show you.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
I'm actually one of these people that doesn't struggle to
go to sleep, but I get really grumpy when I
have an odd night where I can't, and that is
very really and I go, what is this? I can
always go to sleep, so I can't imagine what it's
like for people that have that regularly. It must be terrible.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Well, if you only sometimes have problems going to sleep,
I wonder if when you're starting to challenge yourself at night,
why am I having this problem? What's going on? I
normally can go to sleep early.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
It's adding to it.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
What happens is you're adding sleep effort, which raises your
quartersol which should be low at night, and so it
should just be like just let it happen, Yeah, just
chill out. So in this diagram is your autonomic nervous system,
and for ease of understanding, you have an on button
which is like your stress response or your fight flight
(17:41):
freeze response, and you have an off button, which is
your relaxation response. These two are always working in opposition, right,
And the reason that breathing, as an example, would be
one of the best things to focus on is because
you have different styles are breathing depending which side you're engaging.
(18:02):
So you're always breathing in when you're using your stress response,
and you're always breathing out when you use your relaxation response.
So a good example would be if you're driving and
if you've had to stop him because the car stopped
in front of you suddenly, and you go, that's your stress.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Response breathing in.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
And then when it goes away, no threat and you're
feeling safe to goes ah and you have a sigh
of relief. And so I know there are lots of
different breathing techniques out there, and I always say to
people the only thing that I like to tell people
is the inn is on, outer is off. And so
whether you're doing Lamar's breathing, warm off breathing, square breathing,
(18:44):
there's so many different types of breathing that are helpful
for different things. If you just know the in and out.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Part.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
What I would actually get you to do is make
sure that when you're trying to sleep at night, which
is this side you're trying to engage, you're trying to
turn this off. So imagine that during the day you've
been over using this side and the stress response is
more active. At nighttime, you're trying to turn it off
and bring the side back up. So as an adult,
you'd be trying to breathe between six and twelve breast permanent,
(19:12):
and you'd actually be just doing things like I always
get people to just focus on the out breath, because
you're going to breathe in no matter what. But if
you focus on the out breath, it's just so much easier.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Would that happen not just for sleep? Like I'm thinking now,
I like to relate things to sport. I've got some
year eight netballers that in a tight netball game with
two minutes to go, they can, when the stress is high,
they can start throwing away balls. Do you think the
outward breath would be a good thing for them to
adopt at that time in a game too, just for
the relaxation side.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Yes, because you're going to be the greatest coach.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Ever, I'm going to take these diagrams to them.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
I'm going to tell you how you can do it.
So if you time them out, get them come over
and see you and you go, because you need to
actually time them out so that they can actually feel
a bit more safer, because otherwise they're probably caught up
in their head, but to fill up their kind of space.
What I'd even get you to do, if this is
not uncomfortable for you, is get you to link your hands,
(20:11):
put them behind your head, and pull your elbows back
by your ears. And if you can lean back into
your chair of bit, if you haven't got your legs crossed,
what you can do is I hope you can notice
that you're only breathing from your tummy. Yeah, so this
is the I used to work in the respiratory department
(20:32):
at County's Manaka, and this was what we used to
do for people is just go right, Just learn how
to know the feeling of breathing in and out, breathing
in and out to your tummy. And if you just
sit there and do this, you'll actually be doing it,
like instead of having to focus on all these other
things that actually make people anxious. Like, can you feel
it coming in and out? Can you feel your tummy?
(20:54):
All that sort of stuff, which is still important to
actually highlight awareness for them. But if you actually get
all your girls to come over and you're just like,
all right, we're going to stand here. What are we doing,
let's regroup, let's and so at the same time as
they're listening to you, their body is really calming down.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
So what is that with the putting the hands above
the head? What is that doing?
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Well? I thought you'd just like it because it might
be funny. I'm kidding.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
I was like, I was quite relaxed. So I mean,
at this point I'm heavy.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
This pose with your elbows actually back blocks your accessory
muscles in your chest, so that stops you being a
chest for either And to your question before, is that
a good idea to do it? Other times? Absolutely? You know,
if you've a walked into an office and you see
guys who go, hey, do do that, they're like, oh
my gosh, I'm doing world domination thinking and I'm going
(21:46):
to do anything. And then what happens is it's really
because you've intuitively found a way to relax your body,
but you didn't kind of know that that was the
science behind it, yep. Whereas you can do that for
going to sleep at night. So that would be my
probably number one, because if you're trying to turn your
nervous system off and you're getting kind of caught up
(22:07):
and you can't find the right meditation or you can't
find the right anything that's making it work, I just say,
just lie with if you can on your back, put
your hands behind your head, and just notice that your
tummy's kind of going up and down, and it just
takes care of itself for the pace and everything. But
if you have like I would even say leading up,
(22:29):
which is where I'd like to mention, is the wind downtime,
because everyone thinks of a bed time routine just before
you go to bed. But there's some really important things
you should be doing for your wind downtime, which should
even be like an hour to an hour and a
half out from sleeping. What are those Those would be
things like, because you've got small children, don't you, yes.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Oh, with my youngest is six now he's starting to
get okay, less young.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
You should get them all to line up on the
couch and well just sit there and do the behind
in the head do the breathing posture because it helps
them start to slow down their body to want to
go to sleep, so help the onset of sleep. The
wine down time is really important because everyone thinks that
you should just have a bed time routine, which you
(23:15):
should because if anyone knows about Pevlov's dogs, which is
that association idea that you just keep doing the same
thing and you can behaviorally get patterns in yep. Probably
since you've got small children, or you've had they were
small at some stage, I'm sure that you had bedtime
routines for them, and you did things the same way.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
And I slowly get more useless at them as they
get older, so I should probably get back to a
bit of a structure.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Well, they might like the structure because then it actually
helps them know what's coming next. But the way you
do the structure is really important. So for example, an
hour and a half out to of two hours out,
things like having a hot shower or a hot bath
or a hot drink, something to get your body temperature
(24:01):
to lift so that it falls because so falling off
the body temperture sleep helps you sleep. The things around
the wind down time is kind of all about timing,
so that hour and a half out your body naturally
starts calling down anyway, so you can actually speed it
up and actually kind of almost give it vitamins by
reducing your body temperature. You can do things like wearing
(24:25):
blue light glasses although they're kind of funky, or just
dimming your lights at home. That makes a real big
difference for your natural sleephomone to increase.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Oh, I love that one. I feel like I've got
an aversion to bright light. I have got my dimmers
and my lamps going all the time because it's just
so bright and it is not conducive to winding down.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
As you say, I mean, naturally, the malatonin is meant
to be actually kind of building up to actually help
you fall asleep. So it's high at night time and
then it gets low during the daytime. But it has
a natural pattern, right, It's when it's dark it's high,
and when it's light it's low. But your cortisol, which
is your stress hormone, actually goes the exact opo way,
(25:09):
and so naturally that should be what it looks like.
But what happens is which is why actually often although
I had a discussion with you a little briefly about mindfulness.
That's why you need mindfulness during the day because you
will have spikes in your cortisol and so to keep
it low so that at nighttime you can easily fall asleep.
(25:29):
You actually want to try little things like doing mindfulness
because what it will actually do is actually allow you
to get your nervous system to calm down or do
all things that kind of reduce stress during the day.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
So that can impact your sleep later on at night.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Yeah, because everyone thinks sleep is just nighttime, but it's
the whole day from beginning to end.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
If you end up a frazzled mess and then just
want to hit the sack quickly.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Now that we need to talk with tony'st.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Can we talk about the environmental factors as well? What
is the optimum when it comes to and I have
this debate with my husband firmness of bedding, types of bedding,
types of light, whether you're in a cold or a
warm room.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
So your normal body temperature stays around thirty seven degrees
and so what we want is you'd have like a
comfortable body temperature, but the ambient temperature or the temperature
that's in your room surrounding you. Usually the best kind
of environment is around fifteen and a half to nineteen
(26:37):
and a half degrees, So if you're going to set
your fan or your air con or anything, that's probably
room temp. Room temp the best one to have. I
think the body temperature thing is a really interesting one because.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
This is whether you're putting the flannelet pjs on or
h you're sleeping in a singlet.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
Well, because it's also if you've got a partner, it's
how hot are they?
Speaker 2 (26:58):
He runs very hot? That's why I send them to
the other side.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Or I've even known people who actually have to get
two such a sheets so that, yeah, you know, someone
who's a very hot sleeper can actually kind of move
over a little bit and be on the cooler sheets,
whereas a person that's kind of a you know, likes
to sleep a little bit warmer. They have their flannel
sheets and they like lie on that.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
I even put sometimes an extra blanket just on my
side of the beers because he resists the extra weight
and I like to have the weight on me.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
So weighted options are really good because we've got pressure
sensors all over our body. Not everybody likes it, but
generally most people like being hugged. And the reason that
people like being hugged is because it's addressing our pressure senses.
So what happens is having weight on us actually feel safe.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
So a weighted blanket's a good option, yes, yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
But for a weighted blanket, it's only meant to be
I can't quite remember that. There's only a percentage of
how heavy it should be according to your body.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Body weight formula to it. Yep, I'll write that down.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Because if you had like someone who is I don't know,
forty kgs and then you put a twelve to fifteen
kg blanket on them, they're going to feel like they're trapped,
and it would actually have the reverse effect.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
So I'm interested in that because they can make you
quite warm. Right, So it's okay to be warm as
long as the with like lots of nice blankets, but
your room has to be in that fifteen to nineteen.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
That's usually the idea. You keep your room kind of cool,
and then for the body temperature as long as I
guess it sys thirty seven, but I mean it goes.
Your body temperature keeps dropping overnight by four or five
in the morning, it's said its lowest and then it
starts picking up. That's why there's this really great system,
but it's really expensive from overseas where it can actually
(28:50):
detect what your temperature is and it actually changes your
bedding to that actual wow accommodate your body temperature. Wow
and amazing stuff. But for the rest of us, what
we do is we tend to have things like you
might have weted blankets or like I have one of
those throws that has a timer and a heater on it,
(29:12):
ah and blanket, Yeah, heated blanket and just put it
over me. And then it's got a timer on it
because it has to turn itself off, yes, and then
also a temperature that's low on it. And then when
I get in bed, I turn it off because my
body temperare is going to drop anyway, which is why
you know they always say you shouldn't really leave your
electric blanket on overnight because you might stay asleep, but
(29:36):
your body's always combating to try and keep the body
down and so you actually feel really awake where you
feel like you haven't rested.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
Well. What about and when it comes to sheet options
and pillow options, are we going for lightweight cotton vibes
or are we going for heavy duty? What would you recommend?
Speaker 3 (29:52):
I don't have a recommendation. It's more just what your
own preference is, okay, Yeah, And I mean maybe that
might have to do with how that might change your
body tip as well, So it just kind of depends.
I don't know. Have you found a difference with the sheeting,
for you know, if your husband sleeps hot and you
sleep colder.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
I personally like quite a light sheet, but I would
rather layer myself up with a nice sort of feather
douve and then add potentially a weighted blanket or another
blanket on top, because I can take them off of
the night. So I don't want to start too thick
with the sheets. I want to have them nice and
light so that I can then layer and take them
off because apparently I end up kicking everything off.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
Yeah, so I think that's the way to go then,
definitely is to just have that would be well. That's
what I do too, is just have something. I have
several different layers and then I gradually take them off
during the night because I might get up to go
to to a little or something and come back. But
I think that's definitely a helpful thing to have, like
to know the difference between how your temperature works with
you and your partner and just.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Work out what suits you individually and don't feel like
you have to go for the same just because they're
running hot and you're cold. Yep, pit what's right for
each side.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
And I think the ambient temperature that's the sort of
the outside stuff that can stay the same. But then
each of you probably change, or you could even if
you just were by yourself. As I say, you can
have different sorts of sheets, so like you might want
to roll on one side if you want to get
a bit cooler, and then roll to the other side
if you want to get a bit warmer, and have
different blanket arrangements as well.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
I just want to go back to the optimal time
we're sleeping, because there are a lot of devices now
that people can wear on their wrists, you know, your
garments and your eye watchers that determine what sort of
sleep we're getting. So what is the minimum amount of
good sleep that we should be getting a night.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
I don't think there's just one answer to that, because
I keep going back to the quality of your sleep
versus quantity, so there's no real quantity, and even if
you look at some of the recommendations, they definitely change
as you age, and even the stages that you go through,
the percentages of the stages from non re to rem
(32:01):
to even the way that you go through them, they
change as you age as well, and it depends on
what you do during the day. I think that makes
there's no sort of one answer for everybody, which is
why sleep is such a complex kind of issue to
kind of deal with, because everyone would hope that, you know,
everyone looks at doctor Google, including myself, and you kind
(32:24):
of go, oh, that sounds like some really great ideas,
and then you go through them and you're like, sometimes
I see people and they'll say I've tried everything, and
then when you go, what have you tried? And then
you go through and you go, well, that's not actually
really addressing what your issue is, but that probably is
the easiest, the easiest things to try.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
So it's not a one size fits all, which is
why you exist as a sleep psychologist. And I know
you sity people with sleep issues, but do you think
there are more people out there with sleep issues than
perhaps realize? You know, enough to see a specialist.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
Yes, and I think and that should be I guess
where I talk to you a little bit about when
to see someone. So the chronic sleep issue is the
three months for more than three days a week. What
we're actually addressing is your sleep habits versus back here
in the early stuff, we might be addressing your kind
of issues like the job loss or the relationship breakup,
(33:16):
or we're trying to manage that, and then that's how
you sleeping prose. But if you've had it for a
long time, you've often developed all these other bad sleep habits,
like napping during the day when you shouldn't, or going
to bed early. One of the biggest ones is going
to bed early thinking that your make up for lost time,
and you end up just lying in bed, awake, trying
to sleep, and your quarters OL levels are going really
(33:36):
high because you just I want to go to sleep.
I want to go to sleep. Why can't I go
to sleep? I should be going to sleep, house it's
going to affect me tomorrow, and you just end up
staying in bed building a connection of sleep effort or
quartersole building up while you're in bed, and then so
your bed becomes somewhere where you end up just waking
up whenever you go to bed.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Because it becomes a habit almost Oh gosh, so the
overarching messages sorted out before it becomes a chronic issue. Yes,
as soon as it's a problem.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
Early rather than later, because the longer you leave it,
treatment changes. And I guess that's what people also don't
seem to understand is if you leave it for longer
and you sort of think I'll just try a few
sleep hygen things, it's not really necessarily going to work
because it's actually more than that because your body does
just kind of your body keeps score on things.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yeah, you have to almost break the cycle. Oh, Tracy,
that was fascinating, and I've taken heaps of notes that
I can use outside of sleep as well. Thank you
so much for sharing it all. And I'm sure after
listening today there'll be a lot of people that refocus
on their sleep, and you know, maybe that is a
reason why they have other issues that they didn't perhaps
(34:45):
think started there. So I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
We need to talk with coas FM's Tony Street. If
you enjoyed the podcast, click to share with family or friends.
To get in touch email, Need to talk at Coast online,
dot co dot inz,
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