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If you can't sleep, you can't heal. And in this video we're gonna talk about the 27
secrets to a good night's sleep. I think it's wonderful to help you get a
sleeping sanctuary and to learn how to heal. Check it out.
Hello everyone this is
Dr. Jason west I'm excited to share with you this topic on the sleeping sanctuary.
In this video I'm gonna talk about why it's so important to sleep but I'm gonna
share with you 27 secrets to having a good night's sleep because if you can't
sleep, you can't heal. And one of the things I tell people is we don't think
anything of going out and spending ten or fifteen or twenty or thirty thousand
dollars on a car that you're gonna be in ten percent of your life and then when I
tell people one of the most important things that you can do is to make sure
that you have a good bit. Because you're gonna spend 33% of your life. Eight hours
at night and you're gonna spend in your bed. You got to make sure that it's a
good bed. It's not one that you got it at good will. And now when you picked up
from grandma or grandpa or hand-me-down or got it from a cousin or anything like it.
I mean invest in a bed. It's the most important investment that you're gonna
make. But if you can't sleep, again you can't heal. I think it's one of the
absolute pillars of health. We know that it helps with brain function, we know it
helps with performance, we know it helps with mental cognition. It's a significant
risk factor in making sure you don't get type 2 diabetes. So all of these
wonderful benefits of your sleep and your sleeping sanctuary when you go to
that place this is where your body recharges and so let me start sharing
some of the topics associated with sleep. The first thing is it needs to be a dark
place. You can't sleep, you can't get into good healing patterns and REM mode if
you have too much light and the second thing is is you can't have too much
sound. Now what happens with that is if you have all these sounds and it's
disrupting your sleeping patterns you can't get it into restorative mode and
that also goes along with number three which is alarm clocks and LED lights and
and lights coming off your TV. Our body is an electrical system and if we have
other electrical systems in the area it has a tendency to throw them off which
leads to tip number four which is to have a grounding path. Now there's
actually a really neat way where you can take a grounding sheet and you can plug
it into the third little bowl in your electrical socket. The grounding socket
and you can ground electrical impulses. And you don't even have to
believe in this to see if it makes it work. I have had so many skeptics that
I've told about this to say that doesn't work and then what happens is they
ground themselves and they get way better restorative sleep. Another tip
that we need to follow is, I really like using alarm clocks just not LED alarm
clocks. Because what happens when you set an alarm clock and even if you wake up
at the same time every morning you're a creature of habit. What happens is if
you're struggling get to sleep and you tell your body I'm gonna rest because I
know my alarm clock is gonna wake me up at the time I'm supposed to get up I
found that a lot of people get better rest. Another sleeping tip I like to
share with people is journaling. I don't know if you ever had the experience of a
little woodpecker on your shoulder where it'll sit there and I'll say don't
forget about this don't forget about this what about your neighbor what about
your kids what about your to-do list. And if your journaling, you're actually write
those down it helps to get rid of your brain won't stop turning. It's a
fantastic way to get better rest. One of the best things you can do for sleep is
to give yourself positive affirmations. And tell yourself, I don't have a
sleeping problem. I get to sleep on time. I can get to sleep quickly. I can get to
sleep easily. I'll have restorative sleep. The ability to reconnect and to tell
your body that you're going to get rest is a really important step in making a
sleeping sanctuary. I think it's really important to make sure that you're going
to bed at the same time and you're getting up at the same time and this is
hard when you're in college. I'm guilty for this where I wanted to have a great
social life and on the weekends I go out and have a lot of fun and I would work
graveyard and grave shift and stuff like that as I was supporting myself, my wife as
we're going through school. But if you can get insistently go to bed at the
same time and get up at the same time every night it really helps with your
sleeping patterns. Now one of the neatest things that I found is to have some
white noise. I like waves crashing. You can get these little tiny recording
devices or you can plug it into your phone to give you relaxing white noise
or relaxing music. You want to make sure that it's not music that really gets you
up and excited to do different things. Maybe the hard rock or some of your
workout music isn't appropriate for trying to wind down but it'll really
help you get into a nice rhythm and get you to not off to sleep. One of the hard
things that so many people do are *** themselves and they go to bed is they
get some type of sugary snack. You know my neck that was one of the favorite
things so many people do is to get a bowl of ice cream or a bowl of cereal or
eat a cookie or a brownie or have some type of sugar
drink and that's like adding energy to the system. It's really hard for your
body to show. So if you're one of those people that struggles with blood sugar
levels, hypoglycemia or the new terminology is neuroglycopenia which
means if your blood sugar gets too low the nerves fail. If you're waking up at
night it's a really good idea to have some protein before you go to bed. Some
cottage cheese or some nuts or some beans or even a piece of beef jerky
really helps you have sustainable energy. Your blood sugar doesn't drop and wake
you up in the middle of the night. Now an unpopular thing that I tell people in
your sleeping sanctuary, it's a good idea to get the electronics out of your room.
Whether it's your smartphone or your iPad or your TV because if you're
getting lots of stimulation to your body it's really hard to wind down and get
into sleep. Now I almost caused Merrill discord with this next recommendation
but sometimes people's extremities get cold and it makes it hard for them to
get to sleep and so I recommend with some people to try an experiment to
sleep with socks. Their response back when I say hey we should wear socks to
bed. I wear socks to bed my wife doesn't she thinks it's weird.
I think she's weird but we both get good sleep. One of the most important things
you can do for health and sleep is to make sure that you have good self
communication not only with yourself but your supreme being. This isn't a
religious video but I do believe that there's something bigger than us and if
you communicate with your supreme being I think it really helps with your
sleeping pattern so I'm a really big advocate of prayer. I'm a voracious
reader. I love to read and when I'm trying to not often I have sleep
problems so this is one of the reasons I was so excited about this video but if
I'm reading the wrong type of book where it's really suspense, it's a mystery, a
thriller, a spy shoot-'em-up book, sometimes it makes it hard for me to
wind down so be really careful with your what you're reading at night. One of the
hardest things for people that when they start the morning is if they have a
great big bell or alarm clock or some really really not loud obnoxious noise
it throws your body into a state of stress and panic in the beginning of the
day and I think those light alarm clocks where you get gradually more and more
and more light just like you're waking up in the morning are the healthier
alarm clocks. Be careful that the sound isn't too jarring in the morning. One of
the things that I've seen that really helps with sleep is your vitamin.
Magnesium, molybdenum, selenium, it can really help to get you
into your relaxation mode. Also I think melatonin is really good. Melatonin has
some really neat effects in the body. One of them has
to help to not often go to sleep it doesn't work on everybody but anywhere
from one to three milligrams of melatonin I think is really good before
bed. There's some research they read that shows that every hour of sleep that you
get before midnight may be up to the equivalent of two hours after midnight
and so maybe a better way to say that it's like Benjamin Franklin said early
to bed early to rise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise. If you go to bed before
midnight, I think you get a lot better sleep than you do after midnight. Now
something that's almost caused a divorce for your sleeping sanctuary is to make
sure that you don't have any electromagnetic frequency radiation
sickness going on in the background. Which means our bodies, our electrical
devices, if we have a lot of electrical noise or disturbance in the background
it can throw off our own energy or electrical patterns and so something
that worked really well for me is to go downstairs into our utility room and
flip off all the breakers of the house. Shut off all the electricity, it really
seemed to help me sleep better. Now my wife was always worried about the food
in the freezer and the refrigerator going bad but as long as those aren't
open it will maintain the temperature. It's a wonderful suggestion of really
getting restorative sleep. Now if your bedroom is too hot it makes it difficult
to sleep and wind down. I recommend your bedroom be a little bit cooler than the
rest of your house even have a window open or a fan as long as the fans not
right above you because in acupuncture we found, where I learned that there are
perverse winds they can enter in and throw off your in and your yang and your
Chi and so everything else I don't like it when it's directly on you but a fan
over on your dresser or on the floor this getting air to circulate has been
really helpful for some people to get better sleep patterns. As a natural
doctor I'm not anti medicine but I'm always cautious when it comes to
sleeping aids. Whether it is the unisom, whether it is prescriptive medications,
as much as possible you want to avoid those it's really really important to
get sleep if that's the only way you get to sleep maybe that's just how you're
hardwired. If you follow the steps for the sleeping stained sanctuary which is
making sure that it's dark, you getting some minerals possibly some
melatonin, then you get electronics out of the bedroom that you were making sure
that you're warming off possibly wearing socks to bed and depending on if that
was working for you or not. Journaling, meditating, and praying, not watching TV,
not reading books, it really really helps to get you into the right restorative
sleep mode. Another tip that I frequently advise people not to do is to avoid
alcohol and avoid stimulants before you go to bed.
What happens is that just wraps up your system too much. Sometimes some people say
if I have a little sip of wine or a little bit of red wine before I go to
bed it seems to really help calm me down. But for the most part alcohol and
stimulants like caffeine or energy drinks or diet soda really make it hard
for you to nod off. I've had this experience happened myself when I had
sleeping problems. I loved to go play basketball about nine o'clock. I'd come
home at 10:30 or 11:00 and I could not wind down because I had how all this
energy and I got my body all into the movement patterns and so I prefer to
exercise in the morning and I've routinely found that to be really a
helpful suggestion for people that are struggling if they exercise in the
morning and wind down at night it helps them get into good sleep patterns. A lot
of people's sleep gets interrupted when they have too much liquid in their
system and they're having to get up and go to the bathroom and so I recommend
really not drinking a lot of stuff after 7 p.m.
it'll help it so you don't have to get up and interrupt your sleep patterns. One
of the neat things that you can do to help with your circulation is to do
something that's hot but you're not doing a lot of exercise. So a really warm
baths with epsom salts or an infrared or even a wet sauna to get the blood
circulation to the extremities really helps people to sleep. Now when we talk
about a sleeping sanctuary, you want to make sure that that's where you go to
sleep and not to work. And so if you are in the habit of looking at your iPad or
your smart phone or your laptop in bed I'd advise you to do something to
interrupt that habit and the reserve work for work places and sleep for sleep
places. Hopefully you got some good ideas from the tips for a sleeping sanctuary.
Again if you can't sleep, you can't heal. I think it's one of the most important
cornerstones. It's a risk factor reduction for so many chronic disease
and when people are struggling with their energies throughout the day and
they need a diet coke or they need a powder donut or an energy drink in the
afternoon, if you'll engineer your life to have a good sleeping sanctuary you
can usually get rid of those crutches throughout the day. This is Dr. West see you
in the next video.
Thanks for watching our video on headaches. In the
description there's actually a bonus link on how to go to a good hormone
specialist and how to balance your hormone so that you get better sleep
outcomes so that you can heal and achieve and maintain optimal health.