It’s 5.13am.
I’m already sitting in the Hotel Ibis at this time:
My Mac photobooth picture for you there
Just finished watching ‘The Last Witch Hunter’ on Netflix.
Then had a Google of one of my favourite ‘wooden’ actors – Vin Diesel.
I find him very watchable and think I’ll get all of his movies I haven’t watched yet and get them all watched. Might ask my team to make a list
In fact @Lydia – if you’re reading this can you put together a list of all his films.
The Last Witch Hunter did keep me up till 1050pm last night.
But even after that – I didn’t sleep well.
I don’t sleep well most nights.
It’s a whole combination of things I expect.
The pressure I place on myself to succeed.
Worrying about making sure I pay the bills.
Getting to bed at 10pm (ish) ahead of my 430am wake up.
Eating late……
I really ought to sleep more.
Last night wasn’t the greatest then for a couple of reasons:
Strawberry came home from Italy at around 12.30am but I woke before she arrived at 12.11am.
I remember looking at my phone as Strawberry wasn’t back yet.
But also I ate a Calzone with hot pickle late at 8pm and I’d woken because my body was still digesting the food.
She came home, we chit-chatted, she quickly went to sleep.
Before she did pass out I asked ‘is this my digestion?’.
She said absolutely – if you eat too late it interrupts your sleep.
I said ‘I’m wide awake – should I read something?.
She said ‘sure’ and fell asleep.
Strawberry is an Osteopath in training, a qualified sports massage therapist, a Pilates instructor and someone with a keen interest in health and nutrition in general.
I’m privileged to have her as a life partner.
She knows more about this type of stuff than I do – and she’d often (before being any of those things) take to Google to try to diagnose any ailment in her family when someone had a set of symptoms – and she’d often get it right.
Even with our cat Jenny:
Strawberry managed to diagnose her recently as well :p.
Recently I went to see a homeopathic doctor with a specialism in Homotoxicology to see how I could fine-tune myself more – here’s the link
I’ll write about some of the ‘health stuff’ I do in a later blogpost.
Whenever the urge hits me.
But that’s relevant because I spoke to him about my issues sleeping – and one of the things that came out of the 1.5-hour meeting was that I have an overactive CNS which part of his herbal medicine is fixing (I’ll show you all the stuff I’ve been given at some point).
However – I remembered one of the recommendations he gave me when I was at his ‘Garden Clinic’ 3-weeks prior that I had not taken up; until 1am last night that is:
Magnesium to help me sleep.
I then combined this with a quick Google for ‘tips and tricks to help you sleep’ and found out another heap of stuff (some of which I knew, but several things I didn’t).
The first thing I half-knew that was stupid – is that you shouldn’t have caffeine 6 hours before bed.
I had a coke w/my calzone.
That was silly.
Although I DIDN’T know that it’s up to six hours before.
That basically means my last caffeine intake is by 3.30 pm
So I’m adding that to my list of things to keep in check.
The next element is the controversy around eating carbs before bed. My issue is that I need to make sure I don’t eat heavy carbs less than 2 hours of sleeping:
There’s lots of debate around this – but fundamentally Strawberry and I don’t always get to eat right on time (i.e 630pm) so moving forward it makes sense to reduce my carbohydrate intake and focus instead on healthy fats.
So carb-cutting before bed.
My random Google late last night/early this morning continued and I made other discoveries:
So the ‘4-7-8’ method is the idea that as you breathe in you put the tip of your tongue on the inside of your front teeth and count to 4.
As you finish this part you hold your breath for 7 seconds.
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And then you exhale with a whooshing sound through your mouth for 8 seconds.
This is some kind of ‘yoga/meditation thing’ that is meant to help calm my thoughts done.
That’s the problem with thinking about work/being excited about work – it’s that your body is continually in a ‘flight or fight’ mode – meaning that the stress hormone ‘cortisol’ in combination with adrenaline is being secreted by your glands.
As a consequence, your immune system is suppressed in order to act. If this happens often enough your body is almost continually in this state.
I suspect anyone in a high-pressure environment suffers from this problem.
And building on what Marc Salmon told me (I’m back with him this week for another session) – meditation of some kind is something I would definitely benefit from.
This is my start on that journey – and god-damn I’m happy I’m blogging because there is power in writing down your new habits.
I would have probably binned the breathing part (and it still might not work) – but it’s now firmly cemented in my mind, so I’d like to try it at some point today.
The second point we have already discussed but the final one was a nice one.
Upon my Googling I discovered my way onto a blog describing the best foods to eat before bed – of which there were 9.
This for me was a cool life-hack.
Almonds, Kiwi’s, Walnuts and Chamomile tea all contain ‘sleeping agents’ of one kind or another.
Just had a quick Google:
Brilliant.
And the others (which I won’t Google) all contain serotonin I believe or something that aids the serotonin in your body (I lied I googled ‘Walnuts sleep’ lol):
So later today I’ll go out and buy the tea, almonds and walnuts – and have a cup/handful of each after dinner moving forward every day.
Alongside the magnesium tablet when it comes.
I tend to ‘half-dose’ whatever supplement I’m taking – i.e look at the recommended daily amount and then just do half.
I’m not a big fan of synthetic supplements so do this as a safeguard to receive ‘some benefit’ – even just the placebo benefit the worst case.
Just checking the time again:
Just over 45 minutes since I started writing this blog.
At around 6am (i.e now) – they turn up the volume of the television in this damn hotel;
But no matter, I draw my daily blog to a close.
Our little WhatsApp group has 9 participants now, which is great:
If you’d like to join email me
And I should come back as wrap up to the title:
‘Coping With The Sleepless Nights’
Exercise is going to be a big key to making sure I sleep well as well – so I need to get back to training 7-days a week – right now I’m lagging at 4 days I think.
But also training for harder – and for longer. I’ve got slack.
Anyway – my final thoughts upon coping with sleepless nights:
- Build systems to support your goals. Make success easier
- Google strategies and look at what could work for you
- Low difficulty-big return strategies when it comes to sleep are always best
- Also, listen to your body and do what it asks you as well – your body is smart – mostly it will guide you
Last night I wanted to ‘Google’.
Today I like to write.
Until tomorrow 🙂
