Stress and Sleep: Could the Pressures of Life Be Keeping You Awake At Night?
Stress is a normal part of life, and yet if it’s not managed properly, it can impact many areas of your well-being, including your sleep. If you’re feeling stressed out, you’re not alone. Whether you are dealing with work-related stress, relationship issues, financial concerns, or other life pressures, the effects of stress can be far-reaching and significant.
But don’t stress! You can proactively manage your stress levels using natural remedies and holistic health practices that work with your body’s systems rather than against them so you can get a good night’s sleep. In this blog post, we’ll explore a variety of helpful tools and tactics rooted in traditional healing approaches like yoga, herbalism, guided meditation and more that you can use as proactive measures for dealing with stress on a daily basis. Ready to take a deep breath? Let’s dive in!
How Stress Affects Your Sleep – Unravelling the Truth
Stress can trigger a cascade of reactions throughout our bodies – it’s not just your mind that is affected! When we’re stressed, our bodies release adrenaline and cortisol, which prepare us for a fight-or-flight response. While these hormones are helpful in short bursts, prolonged stress can lead to an overabundance of these hormones, which can interfere with our sleep patterns. Stress can also cause high blood pressure and heart disease, digestive issues, such as heartburn, constipation, diarrhoea and ulcers, and weakens our immune systems, making us more susceptible to illnesses. Understanding the hidden impact stress has on your body is crucial to overcoming its effects.
Here are some of the ways in which stress can affect your sleep to highlight why it is so important to keep your stress under control:
- Modern life is especially hectic and stressful – work, family, relationships, and financial uncertainty. If you don’t find time at the end of your day to relax and unwind your stress hormones may be high at bedtime causing you to struggle to fall asleep, or wake throughout the night. Melatonin and cortisol have an opposite relationship; that is, when cortisol is high, melatonin is low and vice versa. Melatonin is your sleep hormone, it makes you feel sleepy, if you are still feeling the effects of a busy day in the evening you may struggle to fall asleep as your cortisol levels will be high, thus your melatonin levels will be low.
- Additionally, your brain may remain in a state of alertness, making it harder to switch off and relax, keeping you awake for hours on end.
- Even if we manage to fall asleep stress can interfere with the quality of our sleep. This is because high cortisol levels when you are trying to sleep cause fragmented sleep, it reduces the amount of time you spend in deep sleep and it reduces the overall time you spend sleeping.
- Stress may be the reason you wake up still feeling tired. When you are stressed you often find yourself waking up feeling unrefreshed and groggy. This can lead to daytime fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and other negative consequences.
- Just as stress causes poor sleep, having poor sleep can increase stress. Understanding this can help you break this cycle and focus more on prioritising your sleep.
- In some cases, stress can lead to chronic insomnia, which is characterized by difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up too early. This can have a significant impact on our physical and mental health, leading to increased risk for conditions such as depression, anxiety, and chronic pain.
Keep Your Cool: Manage Stress Naturally
Now that you know how stress can take a toll on your sleep, what can you do to overcome this? Often we turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms, junk food, mindless scrolling, and Netflix without the chill… but why not try some natural ways to manage your stress that actually work?
Here are the top five tips I give my clients to help establish a regular sleep pattern:
1. Get some movement in your life!
Exercise is one of the best ways to reduce stress as it boosts your feel-good endorphins, reduces cortisol levels and distracts you from your daily worries. As a bonus regular exercise increases the amount of deep sleep you get. Choose whatever you enjoy, walking, jogging, yoga, dancing, swimming, bike rides, or gardening. However, avoid exercise too close to your bedtime as it can be too stimulating.
2. Try a short meditation
Meditation is a proven way to reduce stress and improve sleep. Additionally, regular meditation improves your overall ability to cope with stress. A great resource to help you meditate is the Insight Timer App. Insight Timer has a Sleep option filled with guided meditations to help you sleep. Download it and get started!
3. Take some deep breaths
Your breath is a powerful tool to ease stress and promote sleep. A super easy breathing exercise you can do anytime anywhere is to breathe in for a count of 5 then breathe out for a count of 5. Repeat this a few more times. Both deep breathing and meditation can be used to help you settle your mind and fall asleep more easily.
4. Eat calming foods that nourish your nervous system
When you are feeling tired and frazzled you often find yourself craving sweet, carb-rich foods. However, these foods are low in the nutrients your body needs to help you sleep. Instead aim to eat a wide variety of fruit and veg, such as broccoli, green leafy veg (e.g. spinach, silverbeet, kale), nuts (e.g. almonds, walnuts), seeds (e.g. pumpkin, chia and sunflower seeds), berries (e.g. blueberries, raspberries), avo, or banana. Don’t forget to add some protein such as salmon, chicken, eggs, lentils, or chickpeas. As well as some good fats and whole grains – extra virgin olive oil, avocado, nuts and seeds, oily fish, brown rice, quinoa, oats, rye, and whole grain bread. A cup of chamomile tea before bed can also help you unwind and get some shut-eye.
5. Find tranquillity with essential oils
Research shows that lavender essential oil can help you sleep more deeply. You can burn a few drops in a diffuser in your bedroom while sleeping or add a few drops to your pre-bedtime bath. If you don’t like lavender other options include chamomile, clary sage, sweet orange, and ylang-ylang. Experiment and find a blend you enjoy.
All in all, stress is part of life, but it doesn’t have to control your life.
Can you now see how managing your stress is essential for anyone looking to get a restful night’s sleep?
By caring for yourself and practising healthy habits, you can manage your stress levels and improve your overall health.
If you’re struggling with stress, let me know – I’m here to offer support and I have helped many of my exhausted clients with too much on their plate overcome stress and get a good night’s sleep.
- If you live in Emerald, Qld, I consult at Emerald Natural Health in The HUB on Fridays and some Saturdays. Pop in or phone 0480309734 to find out more.
- For online appointments within Australia Book in for a free discovery call today and together we can explore how I can help you!
