Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Now today I'm going to be talking about sleep. Now we've spoken about sleep in previous episodes. Today I'm specifically going to talk about the importance of a wind down routine before bedtime. And I'm gonna relate this to something that I do quite a lot of, which is theatre. And I have recently directed a show.

And at the end of every show week, we put the show to bed as it were. So we have certain things that we have to do in order to get the theatre ready and packed up before the next show starts. So we have our own stage. So we build a set on the stage. So I've just directed Little Women, which is a play. And if you've read the book you know that it's kind of quite oldie-worldie so we had a set of a front room, all like lots of nice antiques and things in there so it looked really good. That took quite a while to build but at the end of the show it's quite sad because then we have to take everything down.

We have to remove all of the props. We have to, well, this one, particularly we had wallpaper and then some sticky things at the bottom that looked like panelling, which at the time seemed great, easy to put up, was not so easy to remove because we reuse the wood that we build the set with. So they had to scrape off all of this sticky panelling that took ages. But we have a day where we then take it all down.

So we take the props and put them all away. We take the set down, all the wooden pieces, we tidy up the stage, we go round and put all of the costumes away. We clean them or we wash them or steam them, depending if they're able to be clean, they get put away in the cupboard. We then clear up all of the dressing rooms, putting away anything that no longer is needed, packing it away.

We also, at the end of show, would be turning off all of the lights. If we've got curtains, we didn't have for this one, but we often have curtains, you know, in a theatre at the end of a performance, everything closes, all the lights turn down, people in the audience know that it's time to go home and everybody goes out the building.

And everything is quieted down. All of the sound effects are turned off. We turn the lights down and then we pack everything away the next day. So everything is put to rest. Everything is calmed down and then we're left with a nice clean empty stage and it's all finished.

If we kind of liken this to our day, and what we should be doing at bedtime to calm down and close everything down so that we can actually rest. Think about what happens in the daytime. So we're busy, this might be the audience buzzing, coming in, everything's going on in our mind, there's lots of talking in the theatre, there lots of sweet rappers, which can be really frustrating if it's during the performance, people nattering.

Then they're kind of watching the show. I can say everything should be shutting down at the end. But we don't always do that for when we're coming to go to sleep. We often are working until the last minute or watching tellies or on our phone. Our brain is really active. And then we say, okay, we're going to bed now. We're closing our eyes. We're going to need to go to sleep.

But nothing else has been prepared to shut down. It's like a saying, okay, this show's finished, we're done. Now we're getting out, we like run out, right, it's all closed down, but we haven't packed everything away. We haven't turned the lights off. We haven't kind of made everything back to how it will be and reset. But we try to do that with our day and then expect us to be able to sleep and have a good quality sleep.

It's no wonder that our brain is active all night and we literally can't rest. So we need to have a wind down routine, just as we would pack up the theatre. We need that wind down routine for bed. So think about having an hour or two before bed where we slowly calm the body and the mind down.

Blue light is one of the worst things that we can have. So that's the phones, the laptops, the telly. People often say they're falling asleep to the telly and that helps them sleep. But actually what happens when we are exposing ourselves to blue light is as if we were exposing ourselves to bright daylight, that the body doesn't produce its melatonin, which is our wind down and sleep hormone. So this is what helps us sleep.

It is produced when there is darkness. So in olden times when we didn't have all this technology, we would just wake up and go to bed according to what the sun was doing. We didn't have the lights, we were just thinking, okay, it's getting dark, this is our time to wind down, and we would be going to sleep soon. But nowadays, with all the technology, all the lighting, we don't do that. But we need to.

So ideally have at least an hour before bed where you are not on screens or at the very least get something that's going to block the blue light. So you can get special glasses or some things have setting on them so it's not giving out that blue light. Ideally would be not to use anything at all. And then we need to think about when we are eating before bedtime. A lot of people eat quite late.

And that isn't helpful for sleeping because we're not digesting the food in time before we are calming down. We also have a drop in blood sugar, particularly if we've had something that spikes our blood sugar before bedtime and then give it an hour or two and that blood sugar drops down and then we wake up.

Also not drinking too late. Now not drinking alcohol before bed because that is not good for sleep. I know a lot of people think, it helps us to calm down, wind down and will help with sleep. It might help initiate sleep, but it does affect our brain and everything that's going on so that we don't actually then get a good sleep. It's not like a deep sleep that is restorative and we're likely to wake up afterwards. So it might help to get you to sleep, but it is not good quality sleep.

So ideally would not be to drink alcohol at all because it's not good for anything, but that's me because I hate alcohol and I don't drink, but it's trying to limit how much you drink, particularly before bedtime. So I know a lot of people go out and they want to have a few drinks. That's fine. Don't do it every night because it's going to affect your sleep every night.

But drinking anything, so any fluids that could be water. Again, caffeine is not good before bedtime because it kind of wakes you up. It is a stimulant. So we shouldn't be having that before bed. So if you're going to have hot drink in the evening, try and make sure it's a decaffeinated one. Ideally, anything after lunchtime have it as decaf.

And then we need to make sure that we've got enough time that our bladder can empty everything. It takes a while for our kidneys to get all the fluid and get it down to the bladder. So we need to make sure that we've got a bit of time so we can have a last empty of the bladder and then we're not waking up again to have lots of wees at night time because that's going to disturb your sleep as well.

And then if we think about that chatter of the audience or chatter going on in the theatre, that is often our thoughts. If we're racing thoughts, if we've had a stressful day or we've got lots on our mind that we need to remember, that still happens overnight. Our brain doesn't really settle down, it struggles to get all those thoughts out. It just kind of keep going so we don't forget things. So ideally would be to do a brain dump before bedtime.

Any worries, anything that you're trying to remember, anything that's going on in your mind that is racing in the background that is stopping you from calming down, write it all down. You don't have to keep it, you can just throw it away. But once it's out on paper, your subconscious isn't then thinking, I must remember that I've got to do this tomorrow, or I'm worrying about this, because this is what's happened in the day.

We often replay what's happened in the daytime and thinking it over, just get it on paper. And then think, right, okay, on paper, I can deal with it tomorrow if I need to deal with it, or I can just forget about it. So that's a really good way to just try and calm that mind down. You could also listen to some like ⁓ guided meditation or hypnosis, doing a bit of a body scan and gradually just releasing the tension in each part of the body. Or there's some specific sleep hypnosis that just helps to calm the mind and the body. They're really useful before bed as well.

Having the light simmer again helps to produce our melatonin. So if you, some people like to have nice scented candles around just to calm down or have a bath and wind down and just have the lights low. Obviously make sure you're not going to fall asleep if there's candles around, but it's just dimming everything and just having that calm down.

Also, it's having a consistent bedtime and get up time. We have circadian rhythm in our body so that we get used to waking up at a certain time and going to bed at a certain time. And then our hormones work around that. So we have a spike of our adrenaline and our cortisol that gets us up in the morning. And then it calms down and reduces the production of that at nighttime to help us calm down.

And we need to expose ourselves to bright light first thing in the morning, because then it gets the body used to, okay, this is our awake time. And then that dim lighting at nighttime. But if we've not having a regular get up and bedtime, then it messes with that. And then the body doesn't quite know where it is in that, that system or that rhythm. So it might be that we're struggling to get to sleep because it's not sure that it is bedtime.

And if it varies a lot, then it is going to mess with all the hormone production and things. So try and have a consistent get up and bedtime, as well as that consistent wind down routine.

Having a good environment for sleep is essential as well. So thinking about packing away everything at the theatre, making sure everything is clean and tidy, making sure that the heating's turned off so that's not on overnight so it's kind of too hot and making sure everything is back to how it should be. Similar at night time, making sure you've got a nice environment to sleep in.

It might be you need some background noise. It might be like some white noise. I listen to rain sounds all night because I like that nice calming background. It also helps to block the noise of my husband because he either snores or breathe quite heavily and it's quite irritating. But having that nice steady background rain sounds is quite soothing. And so I have that every night. So it might be that's what you need.

And having an environment that's not too hot not too cold I tend to start with a heat pack and then have a fan if I need to forget to you hot and making sure that you've got sheets or blankets that are different thicknesses that you can adjust your temperature, Particularly if you're waking up with night sweats or hot flushes at nighttime then.

It might be that you need a fan on for a few minutes or then you get really cold and then you need all the blankets on. So just make sure you've got everything nearby. it might be that you need a eye mask. So if you've got a bright light this outside that's irritating or there's something else in the room that just gives a bit of a glow, then just trying to block it out with an eye mask is really helpful as well.

So I would just encourage you this week to think about how do you normally go to sleep? Do you have good quality sleep and you wake up feeling refreshed? If you do, great. You don't necessarily need to change anything.

If you're starting to notice that your sleep quality isn't great and you're waking up feeling unrefreshed, a little bit groggy, then you may well need to look at your little wind down routine. Try and decide what it is that you would enjoy doing. It might be that you do a little bit of yoga before bed, you maybe do some journaling, maybe reading a book.

So just thinking about how you are packing down your brain and the body, getting it a bit of reset so that you're ready for the next day. If the analogy of the theatre helps you then think about packing down one show ready to start the next one.

And you need to have that consistent wind down in order to have that effective sleep. So write the plan or just kind of work it out in your mind thinking like, this is what I'm gonna do half an hour, an hour before bedtime to really help the sleep.

And it might be that you only do one of those things to start with and then build on it. It might be, right, I'm not gonna have my screen on for half an hour before bedtime. Or it might be that I'm going to listen to some meditation before bed, or I'm going to have a nice wind down with a bath and just calm everything down, or just do like a mind dump.

Just choose one or two things that you could add to your bedtime routine this week, and then see how that improves your sleep. And it might take a couple of weeks or a few extra things in order to improve the sleep, but just choose one this week and see how you get on.

Take care and I will see you next time.