Better Days Begin at Bedtime

With bed-rotting, tv binge watching, and procrastination all over social media right now I think it’s important to step back and evaluate why these bad habits are trending in conversation and content.

“Ugh, I’m just sooo tired…”

“I just wanna go back to bed…”

“I should’ve gone to bed earlier but I got into this show that I had to finish.”

“I would totally go, but I think I’m just gonna go home and take a nap.”

Sound a little too relatable? Do you wake up every morning and still find yourself tired? Falling asleep during the day or in downtime? Dozing off while watching tv or reading or commuting on the train? Maybe you’ve had dark circles that just won’t go away no matter what you try. Or you could be finding yourself not feeling the hunger you need to finish a meal.

These are all warning signs that you’re in sleep debt.

I wish I could tell you not to be scared, but you should be. Everyone knows debt is a four letter word, but when it’s about your sleep, it morphs into a loss you can never regain - unlike your credit score.

For myself and so many of my family and friends, we all seem to face the issues of managing a healthy sleep schedule. I think it’s a fairly common concern these days that most people want to fix. The problem is we’re all a bit overwhelmed by the various the tasks, pursuits, and responsibilities that make up our lives. Personally, I knew how important sleep was for my wellbeing overall and the desire to live life in a way that feels more intentional. I had always heard my doctor or elder family members warn how essential rest is for stress management, physical health, memory and good life. It wasn’t until I saw the very real side effects of sleep deprivation that I finally felt the motivation to make the change.

Identifying the need for sleep is the first step in the journey. This understanding chimed into my thoughts around the time I was graduating school in 2022. Once I knew I could no longer keep up my late night lingering, fixing it became a large focus of mine from that point on. It didn’t happen overnight as we all wish - the patterns from years of all-nighters, hang outs, and nightmares fed into my ability to push sleep onto the back burner. Unwinding it was a process of conscious actions that I had to train my thoughts and body into choosing. I think only now in 2024 have I really solidified my bedtime habits.

The reasons behind poor sleep or inability to rest vary widely due to factors such as work schedules, home/child care, mental health, and distraction. I’ll be speaking on my own personal pain points and how I managed to escape the zombie daze of sleep deprivation.

My long-standing history as a night owl stemmed initially from my mom - who is a major nigh owl to this day. Hi mom, ILY <3 She would struggle with achieving peace or personal time due to the demands of having to care for 5 kids, working on and off, and helping my dad with running his business. This led to the accidental revenge procrastination that so many apply to their own lives today. I remember her often tucking us into bed and then taking up a spot on the couch with my dad to either sew or catch up on her favorite shows. When morning came and the tasks piled up, she would peel herself out of bed, brew pot after pot of coffee, and attack the day with vigor.

By 12, I found myself picking up on those same habits. To me, sleep seemed like a waste of precious life. I remember proudly sporting the motto “Sleep is for the weak” or “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” for years as I thought this allowed me to be more productive in the undisturbed twilight time. I would push off my bedtime into the wee morning hours of 1-4am from middle school onwards in order to be working ahead on homework or sewing my own outfits to display my personal style or simply avoiding the nightmares I knew I would have to face in my sleep after experiencing certain traumas. This equation overtime would develop into intense insomnia which plagued me for years no matter what I found over the counter or prescribed.

Fast forward to this modern age of screen time, social media, and FOMO and I found those habits only worsening. It didn’t help my schedule at all when I began to work in restaurants or late night retail shops. That paired with the want to keep up with my friends had me quickly loosing majority if not all of the time I needed to sleep. It was easy to tell myself “I can just catch up on my sleep tomorrow, or maybe I’ll take a nap.” What I thought and what I felt were totally different. Though everyone says you can go without many comforts or structures in your younger years, I’m here to offer a rebuttal. No matter the age or schedule, a life without sleep is literally WEAK.

Why is sleep important?

Sleep not only gives the body a period of rest and recoup, but it also helps with the release and regulation of hormones. The essential hormones that maintain appetite, fight stress, repair cells and tissues are all reliant on sleep.

Everyone has to achieve a certain amount of sleep per night in order to have a fully functioning body and a fulfilling life. I learned how all it takes is one night of lost sleep in order to offset your body’s natural cycle for up to FOUR DAYS. That’s worse than the mother of all hang-overs. And that fact is only based on losing one single hour of sleep. For people who loose more than an hour regularly, they’re shown to suffer deprivation for up to NINE DAYS. The most common signs of this choice can show as:

Dark Circles: The gray or blue discoloration under the eyes, sometimes accompanied by puffiness. Hence the term “eye bags”. And while you can treat this concern slightly with eye patches or other skin care products, the true underlying cause has to be addressed in order to rid yourself of the permanent raccoon eyes. The skin under the eyes specifically is very thin, and only becomes more delicate as we age. This is accelerated by lack of sleep as the skin can dull, swell, and loose oxygen. When the skin thins, the blood vessels underneath show through easier. The blood vessels then enlarge below the eyes to combat the lower levels of oxygen in the eye balls themselves.

Heart Health and Seizures: Just like the external areas, the internal parts of the body need sleep to help heal and maintain our organs. The heart is extremely at risk when you don’t get enough sleep. There are many people who end up facing heart complications down the road as they cannot get enough sleep due to work schedules or lifestyle. You can develop high blood pressure, heart palpitations, and eventually heart failure. In fact, 70-80% of patients with chronic heart failure attribute that to not getting restful or adequate sleep. The possibility of having a stroke or seizure skyrockets with poor sleeping patterns.

Depression, Anxiety, and Psychosis: Another cause for change is the fact that many people today are coping with mental health challenges. Sleep is a major healing remedy for the mind, as we know. Within two days of no sleep or very low sleep you may become more irritable, impulsive in decision making, paranoid, or even feel like you’re going crazy. That’s because you are. Studies have proven how not sleeping can induce hallucinations and delusions, and even schizophrenia in prolonged cases. Being sleep deprived is actually worse than being drunk - ever heard people say to pull over and rest when on long drives and you start to feel tired? And for those with existing mental health conditions who face trouble sleeping, the conditions can worsen, making life feel miserable and hopeless very quickly. You get more stressed out over small things and feel a sense of impending doom that can overwhelm you. People who sleep better are also shown to live longer; not sleeping is literally sucking the life out of you.

Hair Loss: Noticing a lot of breakage or thinning in your hair? This could be a result of poor sleep over a longer period of time too. Hormones run the world inside our bodies, and they release on a schedule. That schedule can only get moving when they get the correct signals from the brain. In order to properly send those signals, the body has to be getting sleep regularly. Without those hormones’ working to repair different areas, the hair follicles may weaken. Cortisol (the stress hormone) is often the biggest culprit in bad sleep and hair thinning or balding. So of course, if your body is flooded with stress chemicals, it’s going to take a toll on your hair and scalp among other things.

Appetite: TW for those with potential eating concerns. When all my friends and I were in high school we commonly skipped meals for various reasons. Some of us couldn’t always afford every meal. Many of us were vaping or smoking and drinking coffee or energy drinks constantly, which ruined the desire the eat for lots of us. The hormone Ghrelin that helps you feel hungry can unbalance and make you feel hungrier (which often leads to binge eating) or it can make you feel so nauseous that eating is the last thing you want to do. It also causes blood sugar levels to rise and remain higher, meaning the potential to develop diabetes jumps up since insulin can’t regulate the amounts of sugar in the blood without enough sleep.

Development and Fertility: During infanthood and puberty, kids are known to nap often as sleep is a large driving force in growth. The hormones released help to grow new tissues, muscles, repair weaknesses and maintain fertility levels. This hormone is only activated in deep sleep, so you can easily stunt growth in kids and teens or affect the body as it changes during puberty if bedtimes are unable to be followed or sleep is unfulfilling.

Immunity and Illness: Not only can it stall development, but it can weaken the body’s immune system to create prolonged illnesses and infections. The body’s defenses are weakened without sleep and the hormonal release that sleep provides which can lead to a cycle of getting sick over and over again. Even fighting off common colds can become too hard for the immune system and those can progress into more intense sickness like pneumonia, diabetes, inflammation in organs and skin tissues, and long-term autoimmune diseases.

All of these symptoms are major alerts that you must be aware of and from that point on, consciously change what is within your control.

Scared Straight

A very real wake up call from within my own life is the long term battle I’ve had with insomnia. Since my tween years, the night terrors that often plague my sleep caused me to avoid falling asleep by any means possible. I’d read, draw, re-organize random parts of my house, listen to audio books, talk to other night owl friends on the phone, make snacks - really anything but give into sleep. I knew that it was affecting me by the lower energy levels I’d have trying to get through the day constantly yawning or fighting migraines. I also started to get colds a lot more often, and for a lot longer than others too. It was something I thought about, but didn’t take seriously until November 21, 2023. I was home visiting family for my birthday and Thanksgiving festivities. I had taken advantage of my late nigh tendencies (and the airline cheap tickets) to catch an 11pm flight out of NYC and land in Dallas by 2am. The next day we woke early to get ready for the drive we’d planned to San Antonio where our family events would be. The day was busy, spent hanging out, catching up, shopping and even getting tattoos with my best friend. As we sat down to our Whataburger at about 12:45am that night, I felt a pain in my chest and a wave of heat rush over me.

The next thing I knew I was being surrounded by my mom and siblings, my best friend staring at me in horror.

I remember asking, “Is it time to leave? I don’t even remember falling asleep.”

A few confusing minutes passed before I fully came to and realized I was hanging off the dining table chair and being held up only by mom and brothers. Everyone was panicking, attempting to take me to the car and go to the hospital. I still didn’t understand what was going on, and asked what happened.

My mom told me she was pretty certain I had just had a seizure before completely blacking out and falling backwards. I was in shock and denial and stupidly refused medical attention, saying I just felt tired and shaky. They all kept close and watched me for the rest of the night and the next few days I was still in town. My memory from that night is super fuzzy and I still remember feeling disconnected from my body and thoughts.

The check up I received later confirmed I had suffered a seizure which was likely caused by lack of sleep and job-related stress. They told me how lucky I was it hadn’t caused permanent damage and told me again I had to prioritize my sleep. That night really changed my perspective to how I had pushed off sleep to the back burner. I decided that no matter what it took, I would focus on having a better relationship to sleep and giving myself the grace to rest. That urgency to never experience another out of control episode like that has forced me to want to sleep the way that I should be.

I know based on my goals for how I want to live my life anyway that sleep is an important tool to help me have the best lifestyle I can. Knowing not only how I want my days to be, but how I want to FEEL during my days, it would be sabotage of myself to not make a change. Living life to the fullest is a huge part of me, and that is exactly what motivated me to take my bedtime routine more seriously. In spring of 2024, I can not only already see how much better my days are, how much more I enjoy making plans, and how much less overwhelmed I am - but I really can feel how these changes have improved my mentality, my happiness, and my body.

Life is still life, things aren’t perfect or easy, but my changes in my routine have changed how heavy life feels. It’s sort of similar to the idea of parenting yourself. I’ve given myself a curfew of sorts when I cut off screen time, late night snacking, staying out late with friends. And this time frame allows me to actually relax into the rest I need. I have the time and ability to refill my cup before pouring energy into a new day.

I like to be active and fill my day with activities and social events, but I could talk myself out of doing these things a lot easier when I was tired. I noticed how worse sleep had shortened my workout sessions, or enabled me to pick up take out under the excuse of not having time or drive to cook and meal prep something healthy and yummy.

I saw the times I spent procrastinating or in freeze mode from emotions and outside factors as thieves of joy. They would steal the magic pieces from my day I’d always enjoyed - whether it be my admiration of street art in the city, the fiery glow of sunset over my cooking dinner, or my bedroom mood lighting into the evening.

I can see how I fell into a habit of operating in survival mode. I would think, ‘Okay, well I can do this at the very least, and that’s something.’ Such as, my makeup and skincare routine. An example would be how I felt too tired/busy/unmotivated to take off my makeup before bed and follow up with my skincare routine. An easy ‘at the very least’ method of makeup wipes allowed me to not sleep with makeup on. But it wasn’t really doing my skin the service it needed by using makeup remover and treatment products. That choice only made my skin appear more dull and lifeless, which is the opposite of what I want.

Me and my life are worth so much more than the bare minimum that survival mode traps you in, and if I recognize that mentally then I have to make it so physically too.

What I’ve Changed

Here, I’ll share the parts of my routine that I’ve seen create my idea of success. Use them as inspiration in your own life for how it best fits your needs and goals.

Something I’ve done for years now is use herbs to enhance my wellbeing or help with my hormones. (see my past article Cycle Care to learn how I healed a hormonal imbalance with natural remedies) Plant medicine is very real, and it has been proven time and time again for hundreds of years now. I like to drink tea with calming herbal benefits before bedtime instead of taking supplements like melatonin since they can throw off your bodies natural process. I recommend valerian root, chamomile, lavender, passionflower, skullcap, and lemon balm. Ashwagandha is another magical herb that is known to help with stress. I’ll usually take two veggie caps daily with my allergy medication.

I’m one of the people who can’t settle around clutter or unfinished tasks, so I like to tidy up as I go and before bed to make things easier for my future self. This lets me feel at peace at home and in myself. Your environment is a reflection of your inner state and if your home is always a mess then it could be a sign that your thoughts or emotions are going unchecked as well. Being busy is one thing, but being lazy is another.

In the concept of creating the best version of myself, I chose to take care of my skin and body in the present. Things I can control would be choosing to drink water more than another other beverage. I can also control the treatments of my skin by removing my makeup every day, and using skincare products that work for me. My skin typically only changes during my cycle or when traveling and being exposed to changing weather and water qualities. Because of that, if I stay consistent with my day to day habits I know my skin will thank me and look how I want it too.

I love spending time with my family, friends, and pup. Though I do love to chat and explore, I’m naturally a very introverted person and I find my social battery empties fairly quickly. Reflection on my daily life, experiences, and lessons from this school we call life are all areas I’m called to act in. Journaling and art are two of my favorite ways to process/decompress which allow my inner self to feel refreshed. This sort of purges whatever I’ve been carrying with me to be able to be still and sleep with a little stress as possible. I find this ritual to be my biggest saving grace as an introverted and empathetic person with remnants of trauma. I highly recommend others with past hurts, insomnia, night terrors, or intense feelings to give this sort of brain dump a try and let me know if you feel any different.

The biggest and best change for my life come from the finals steps before bedtime: Red light therapy paired with breathwork and meditation.

Red light therapy is still a fairly new treatment and it is used for many different things ranging from skin health to healing bodily injuries. The few studies from NASA and the CDC are still understanding how exactly it can affect sleep cycles. The general idea of it within the subject of sleep benefits is that it could help increase melatonin before bed. Since we are exposed to so many blue lights during the day (which lower melatonin) it’s possible that red light could cancel out that result because it is on the opposite side of blue on the spectrum of wavelengths. Even if it doesn’t help melatonin or the circadian system (the body’s natural internal clock), it does help to create a visually soft space after all the screen time and harsh lighting we encounter in our world.

I don’t keep the light on all night, as that was shown to disrupt sleep patterns. But, in the last hour or so before bedtime, I will switch my LEDs over to red and turn off all my artificial lights. I have noticed improvements in hyperpigmentation in my skin and other areas of pain that would often bother me into sleep, and for that alone I plan to continue to use red light. Look into it more on your own if that is something your curious about too.

I’ve been training myself to meditate for around 2 years now. It’s definitely a learned skill, which I didn’t fully understand at first. It’s easy to sit with your eyes closed; but to remain still and undistracted by your environment and thoughts is where the challenge comes in. It took a few months to feel I had reached the place where I could shut everything around me out, and months more still to quiet my internal landscape. There are endless guided meditations on YouTube or podcast sites that are super easy to follow - plenty of them are under 5-10 minutes too.

Breathwork is actual magic, I swear. Breathing is the easiest way to reset the nervous system and turn off survival mode in the body. Survival mode (aka fight, flight, or freeze) is the instinctual response to a perceived threat. You can have this defense triggered in situations where you feel out of control or that remind you of past dangers. It happens to everyone whether you want it to or not and it becomes more easily brought up again and again after experiencing certain hardships because the brain has one main goal of keeping you safe.

These feelings of vulnerability can build up to the point of burnout or breakdown if you don’t find a way to replace them with new feelings. There are many techniques you can try. My favorite is ‘box breathing’. Use one set amount of time, say 5 seconds. Inhale for 5 seconds. Hold your breath for 5 seconds. Exhale for 5 seconds. Hold your breath for 5 seconds. And repeat as many times as you like. I can literally feel the racing thoughts or anxiety leaving my body as I complete this process. Sometimes, I’ll even fall asleep mid session because I end up so relaxed.

I wish everyone knew about this practice because I truly feel like it can make everyone’s life a bit more peaceful. If there is one thing to take away from this and apply to yourself, please let it be breathwork.

I truly hope this has been insightful, helpful, and inspirational. I hope by seeing my own learnings you can find ways to improve your habits and create a better life.

Stay sincere, be happy, and live life like art beautiful people!