Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Get everyone.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Sam, we're here with your motivational moment, and we are
going to talk about sleep hygiene. Sleep is so important
for our overall health, our weight loss, our mental health.
But people just don't listen when it comes to the
importance of sleep. And I'm a bit fed up with
(00:23):
the amount of conversations that I'm having with people.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
They're not sleeping very.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Well and they are acknowledging that, but then when you
give them the key advice, they ignore it or they go, no,
I'm just one of these people who doesn't I'm fine
on three and a half hours a night, and clearly
they're not fine.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
It's absolutely debilitating them in some way.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
First of all, if you don't think you need very
much sleep, less than ten percent of us are in
that sort of category that needs very little sleep, you know,
sort of the five or six hours. Ninety percent of
us need seven or eight hours a night to be
functioning at our best, So you are highly likely to
be in that no. Twenty percent hole, So please stop
telling yourself that. The second thing is there's sort of
(01:06):
two tiers of this. So the big picture stuff is
try and go to bed at a similar time of
night each day. Our body loves rhythm, circadian rhythm. Our
body loves consistency when it comes to sleep, so you know,
and this is where we tend to undo a lot
of good work on the weekends.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
We tend to go to bed at.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Eleven o'clock and up at six o'clock during the week
and then on the weekends we throw that routine.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Out of whack and it really messes with our sleep rhythm.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
So try and go to bed as consistently as you
can and get up as consistently as you can.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
At the other end, aim for seven to eight hours.
That's the other big one.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Get some daylight as soon as you wake up. It's
really good for us to expose ourselves to natural light
as soon as we wake up. It's another way of
keeping our rhythm inflow by getting daylight when we wake up.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Have a dark room. Have a cool room.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Again, we sleep better at a nice low temperature around
nineteen to twenty two degrees is what they recommend.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
And nice and dark. You don't want any.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Artificial or natural lights that are coming in and interfering
with our sleep quality.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
That's the big picture stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Now, As promised, many of you might be listening and
going you know what, I do those or I do
most of those?
Speaker 1 (02:22):
What else do you got for me? So we're really
going to deep.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Dive into sleep hygiene and how you can maybe go
from a seven out of ten to a nine out
of ten. All right, you will reap benefits everywhere in
your life if you start to sleep better, because it's
not just about the amount of sleep, it's about the
quality of sleep, and all of these things help the quality.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Of our sleep. The first one, try meditation. Calming your mind.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Before you go to bed will allow you to get
into a deeper rem sleep sooner and for longer, so
you are getting better quality sleep for bigger periods of
time within that seven to eight hour window, and meditation
is a wonderful way to do that. One of my
favorite apps is Smiling Mind.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
It's free.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
It's got brilliant meditations for stress for anxiety, so make
sure you check that out.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
The next one's an interesting one.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Journal right down, just on a single page for a
few minutes at the end of each day, what you're
thinking about. It's like taking files off your computer so
your computer functions better, and it's a great way to
take a load off your mind. It's going to impact
the quality of your sleep.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
One that I have.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Been doing recently stretch and I again I'm not saying
to do a yoga class in the bedroom fifty minutes
before you get to sleep, but do some very simple,
gentle stretches on the floor in your bed, or even
long on your bed, if you've got a nice firm
bed and have a little stretch of the lower back
and the hips and the neck and the shoulders before
you maybe do your meditation practice. It's a really nice
(04:03):
thing to do. Now, this is an interesting one. This
is the one that Seeds introduced me to good leavenercents
on your pillows. It actually creates a really nice association
between a smell and HM bedtime. It's like Pavlov's dogs.
It's the psychological approach, the Pavlov's dogs, the positive reinforcement.
(04:24):
But all of a sudden, you have created a wonderful
association between it. You know, and it might be your
favorite scent. Doesn't have to be lavin, or you can
do something that maybe you love, but a really nice
scent that effectively tells your brain it's time to start
winding down for bed, have a shower. Research shows that
(04:45):
having a warm shower one hour before bed improves our
sleep quality. And this is the big one, because I
think you've all probably gone, oh, that's all good. No
blue light, that's phones, that's iPads, that's laptops, watching Netflix.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
In bed, whatever it is. I'm going to be realistic here.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Thirty minutes before bed, it's very hard to switch off
if you've had blue light right in your face and
stimulating your brain just before you go to bed.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
And if you've got your.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Phone and you're scrolling through social media and checking text
message and checking emails just before you go to bed,
it's going to be very hard to empty out the mind,
like we spoke about. So if you can introduce all
of those things, I guarantee you this is not waffully
it might help. I guarantee you the quality of your
sleep will improve, and even more so, the quality of
(05:38):
your life.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Will improve because of that.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
So what I want you to do is I want
you to identify which of these hacks you are doing,
which of these hacks you're not doing, And across the
next week, you're going to choose the three that you
think could help you the most, and you're going to
introduce use them to your routine every day for the
next seven days, and I promise you, even in such
(06:05):
a short seven day window, you'll already start to feel
the benefits