How Successful is Sleep Success Summit?
It is Day 3 already, and I’ve so far only been popping lightly into each day picking up a talk here or there because honestly this one hasn’t grabbed me.
So by day 3 this is certainly putting me to sleep alright! 🙂 Some good speakers, some not so good. Not really what I was expecting, but maybe because I’ve heard so much good information at other summits that this one is falling a bit flat and maybe because I’ve reclaimed good sleep myself I can see this one is a little empty at times.
A speaker I did enjoy on Day 1 was Shawn Stevenson. He cured himself of an ‘incurable’ bone condition, I just love when people do this – so motivating.
Day 2 saw a speaker from NASA, I’ve benefited in the past from things created for astronauts so tuned into this one, but it wasn’t so inspiring, a bit on shifting our day patterns with LED lights, blue light, etc. All the new SAD lamps have that going on. And perhaps some advice for shift workers, though really it will never be good for you to keep those hours.
As for Day 3, well I’m just surprised to see David Brady there with his own personal and very wrong notions of ‘fibromyalgia’ and ‘ME’, he is no expert despite his claims to be so, there are better people on those conditions. But for now, don’t be discouraged any of you who are not getting refreshing sleep right now or who have fibro or any similar syndrome like CFS or ME – I’ve been there and back again, if you just work on the rest of your body this whole sleep thing can clear up by itself, and you’ll look back and say oh, I used to have that and now I don’t – and without anything Brady has to say on the matter! 🙂
I know it is alarming to get up and feel unrefreshed after a night in bed, and wonder if you will ever get rest again, but you can 😉
But let’s not let one speaker here or there throw the conference off, if you want an overview of all issues sleep related then it is worth a visit, the Sleep Success Summit may be a starting point for your personal research, but you will still need to do some research elsewhere yourself.
Nuggets:
The importance of sleep is emphasized – and it may be much more important than you had ever thought or appreciated in this modern world where people like Sherlock and most of the TV programs tell us it is a wast of time! And it is good to be motivated back into wanting a full night’s sleep at the right time especially if you’ve let bad sleep habits kick in.
Weight gain, adrenals, hormones, performance, productivity, memory, healing and repair – the list is endless – all depend on sleep .
But actually I did a class once with the Hypnosis Motivation Institute on Dream Therapy, it was by George Kappas, and it seems the knowledge about the importance of sleep and what it does for the brain has been known much longer than any speaker here seems aware. So summits like this can be good for making you aware of all the issues and latest trends but as far as solutions go, some age old ones have been around a very long time and still work.
There are different types of sleep problems:
- Some people don’t get refreshing sleep even if they’ve slept all night…
- Some people can’t get to sleep
- Some people can’t stay asleep, they wake up in the middle of the night.
- Others can’t get to bed at the right time, their body clock is off.
- Others have painful problems lying down that can prevent sleep.
- And others have simply got some bad habits they don’t realize are depriving them of quality of sleep, ‘sleep hygeine’.
- And then for some special people who have gone through and conquered all of the above, there are the neighbours from hell who kick off just when you’ve gone to bed! Ah!
There are a bunch of things we can do to improve our sleep:
The particular approach will somewhat depend on which type of issue your sleep problem is. I will be writing some more posts on this and share some of the solutions I have found along the way. But as Day 5 of the Sleep Success Summit confirms, inflammation is behind a lot of sleep issues.
Inflammation is behind a lot of sleep issues
And when you work on your body as a whole and not just pursue one symptom [sleep], then the sleep issues can clear up by themselves.
Functional medicine is wonderful, it combines natural healing with science and it can pinpoint exactly what is happening in you. But it wasn’t available to me when I was working on my sleep, so I had to go ahead and use natural medicine and now I can look back and say, oh, so that is what was going on with me back then. I can also say, hm, but the natural healing people knew how to fix some things better even if they didn’t have billion degrees and letters after their names. So we can just go straight to solutions folks. Much more on that later.
For now, some nuggets from the current summit, especially now that [update!] we’ve got to Day 5: ‘Functional Medicine Day’ Amy Myers has shared some of her personal sleep hygiene tips, and Dan Kalish. The new NASA light bulb has got a mention – spin-offs from the space program actually have been a lifesaver to me during serious illness when nothing else worked, I never thought I’d say that!
And in summary good sleep hygiene starts first thing in the morning
- Getting your stuff done earlier rather than later:
- Eating at the correct times, breakfast is important and keep that blood sugar stable from the start
- Getting your tasks/work done earlier rather than later
- Keeping hydrated, keeping blood sugar levels even, things like regular detox and ensuring you are getting proper nutrition.
And I’d always add doing some self hypnosis, let’s not forget the subconscious mind.
Then more specific ‘sleep hacks’ like:
a. No bright lights a couple of hours before bed. Blocking blue light in particular. There are things available like night time light bulbs, or justgetflux.com free software to dim the blue light on your computer – that is a great help but having lived in a time zone where it is daylight at 11.20pm, I found even this was blindingly bright, so still wise to shut off devices a couple of hours before bed – yes it helps melatonin and deeper sleep.
b. Care with TV before bed – best not at all, but if you must then think about the last thing you are feeding your mind to process during the night – and process it will!
c. Care with fluids directly before bed, get hydrated and fed early so your kidneys don’t wake you up during the night to go to the loo!
d. A routine is a good thing, for some a bath, for others massage maybe using magnesium oil, journalling, preparing mentally for the next day/stress relief, self hypnosis, or maybe even a coffee enema 🙂 etc.
e. Is it necessary to take ‘sleep aids’ like pills or melatonin? I never needed them. There are good herbal aids that don’t have side effects and I’d suggest something like the Dr. Christopher Slumber, which you can get here at 10% off your first order. I use this brand myself, but actually haven’t needed the sleep herbs.
f. I’d always suggest self-hypnosis or a good track from someone like Glenn Harrold. He is both a hypnotherapist and a musician, so his tracks are really relaxing. I’m currently using his Law of Attraction as my bedtime track. I have used his Solfeggio series in the past, very beautiful.
These are just some general things, once you clean up your ‘sleep hygeine’ then you can get way more specific, and think about what you eat and when. More on that later, along with some stuff on other types of sleep issues.
Robin.