Studies show that around two thirds of adults report some kind of sleep difficulty and that on average even those who sleep well have around 90 minutes less sleep per night than they require to stay healthy. The reasons for this are many however they broadly fall into these categories:
Being ‘over wired’
Being over stimulated
Being stressed
Being in pain (physically or emotionally)
This is an area I have researched a lot over the last year or so, particularly the benefits of using mindfulness and meditation to solve these issues – and the best thing is that the only side effect to this treatment is beneficial! Not only does meditation help solve sleep problems but it also boosts the immune system, reduces anxiety, depression and pain, and increases overall happiness.
So, this month’s blog looks at the main reasons people struggle to sleep and how a few simple exercises – if practiced regularly – will help.
1) Being over wired – I just can’t switch my brain off!
Living in a fast, 24-hour, noisy environment where work even follows us home these days means that we are losing the ability to switch off – small wonder then that so many of us lie awake thinking, worrying and planning instead of sleeping.
Mindfulness meditation involves focusing on your breathing and then bringing your mind’s attention to the present without drifting into concerns about the past or future. It helps you break the train of your everyday thoughts to evoke the relaxation response, using whatever technique feels right to you. Just ten minutes of meditation has been shown through MRI scans to calm the brain considerably, switching off the overactive ‘thinking’ parts.
Overthinking can be part of wider anxiety issues linked with GABA – gamma aminobutyric acid, generally produced by physical exercise. Not having enough of this super-important chemical can create an array of problems, including anxiety, nervousness, racing thoughts, and sleeplessness. In 2010, Psychiatrists at the Boston University School of Medicine found a 27% increase in GABA levels after only 60 minutes of mindful exercises – proven even more effective than physical exercise! So a combination of exercise and meditation is a very powerful way of boosting these levels – and many other hormones needed for sleep.
2) Being over stimulated
See a sleep consultant! Over stimulation of the brain comes from the blue light given off by TVs, Computers, phones, games consoles etc. A sleep therapist can suggest many simple changes to your bedroom and your pre-sleep routine to help.
In a study published in 2014, Harvard researchers found that “The use of light-emitting devices immediately before bedtime is a concern because light is the most potent environmental signal that impacts the human circadian clock and may therefore play a role in perpetuating sleep deficiency.” See http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/112/4/1232.full.pdffor the full article.
3) Being Stressed
The relaxation response, a term coined by Dr. Herbert Benson in the 1970s, is a deep physiological shift in the body which produces the opposite of the stress response. The relaxation response has been shown to ease many stress-related ailments, including depression, pain, and high blood pressure. For many people, sleep disorders are closely tied to stress, says Dr. Benson.
A 2015 study published in the JAMA Internal Medicine, observed 49 middle-aged and older adults who had trouble sleeping. Half completed a mindfulness awareness program and the other half completed a sleep education class that taught them ways to improve their sleep habits without using mindfulness. Both groups met six times, once a week for two hours. Compared with the people in the sleep education group, those in the mindfulness group had less insomnia, fatigue, and depression at the end of the six sessions. More recent research is showing that a combined approach using CBT based sleep education with mindfulness meditation is having better and longer lasting results than medication.
4) Being in Pain
Emotional pain
University of Montreal scientists (Perreau-Linck et al) have shown that activities like mindfulness have a direct impact on the brain’s production of serotonin levels. It is thought that meditation “bathes” neurons with an array of feel-good chemicals, effectively melting away the stress that leads to low serotonin levels and depression.
Specific meditations can help with troubling, negative or destructive thoughts which accompany depression, grief and worry as well as generally improving mood and boosting oxytocin – another ‘happiness’ hormone. Regular practice physically alters the way the brain works (called neuroplasticity) and then permanently changes the structure of the brain so that we use different areas associated with positive emotional responses. (See ‘The Blissful Brain: Neuroscience and proof of the power of meditation’ by Dr. Shanida Nataraja).
Physical Pain
This is one I know very well and cannot stress enough how important meditation is to my own management of pain and my ability to sleep well. Not only do I go to sleep more quickly with less prescribed medication, but I rarely wake for long in the night. When I do wake I know which exercise to practice and I go back to sleep quickly (within thirty minutes).
Compare this to my previous pattern of several years which involved waking between 3am and 4am every night when my painkillers wore off, and then lying in pain until 6:30am when I could take the next dose and you can see why I rave about using meditation to control pain. This is not a quick-fix but worth persevering with. Although I had meditated for many years I had to learn how to use it to control my pain and the accompanying emotional response. (See ‘Living Well with Pain and Illness’ by Vidyamala Burch & ‘How Your Mind Can Heal Your Body’ by Dr. David R. Hamilton, and my previous blogs on living with chronic pain).
Some easy exercises:
There are many meditations which a skilled teacher can suggest after taking a personal history, however all the exercises below are very useful and can be learnt quickly either from guided online meditations, or by attending a class. It usually takes 8 weeks of daily practice to achieve results.
Mindful breathing – The 3-step breathing space: use three times a day, every day for just a few minutes to generally reduce your stress levels and to stay mindful i.e. in the present moment.
The Full body scan for relaxation before bed or when awake in the night, or the Compassionate Body Scan for pain.
A Gratitude Meditation just before bed helps us to move our thinking away from negative thoughts towards focusing on the many small things we have to be grateful for (such as a bed!). This can seem impossible at first but perseverance with this has been demonstrated to produce remarkable benefits even with prolonged depression.
A Loving Kindness Meditation for an hour once a week (or every day!) has too many benefits to list here so why not just give it a go and find out for yourself? One of the effects is in boosting Serotonin and Oxytocin, needed for good sleep. (See ‘The Five Side Effects of Kindness’ by Dr. David R. Hamilton for details of medical research linked to promotion of kind emotions).
The most important thing is to find a meditation or mindfulness exercise that works for you and use it.
For more information on classes and workshops see https://www.stillworksmeditation.com/sleep-easy or www.easysleep.me for information about sleep programs from sleep consultant Jo Teague.
Stillworks (SleepEasy) and EasySleep.Me also offer a combined approach to improving sleep. Next workshop: Sunday April 22nd 10am – 4 pm, Cost: £40, @ Health Conscious, Llantwit Major. Booking until April 15th.
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