Sleep is the foundation to a healthy, happy life. More than food, more than exercise, sleep is the #1 nutrient for good health. Without good sleep, our minds are restless and exhausted, our emotions frayed, and our bodies age quicker and get ill more often.

Despite research that says 8 solid hours is the foundational amount of sleep we need, most people who come to see me are in the 6-7 hours category and often surviving on even less.

It’s the modern phenomenon of trying to get by on minimum hours of sleep while maintaining maximum output in a 24-hour world. Throw in Netflix, phones, and social media, it becomes increasingly hard for our nervous systems to wind down and actually relax enough to get into deep sleep come bedtime.

Many people have actually forgotten what relaxed looks and feels like. Wired and tired have become the norm - where they are hyper alert but actually exhausted underneath.

Reduced Immunity

Short stints of reduced sleep often result with the flu - which is where the body forces us to get the rest we need by staying in bed.

Long stints of insomnia, however, result in a harder way to manage any health diagnosis if the problem has gone on for many years. The body has been robbed of repair time and hasn’t kept up with the backlog of servicing it’s needed to do. Now you’ve got a bigger issue to deal with!

Cultivating consistent, restful sleep is so vital for a healthy, balanced life. But when people struggle to achieve deeper rest the first thing they turn to are sedatives to just knock them out.

But if we don’t focus on fixing the underlying reason that you can’t relax enough to go to sleep - you’ll continue to struggle with poor sleep for many years to come.

Usually it’s a combination of poor habits we’ve gotten into.

• Excessive daytime stress and anxiety will fill the body with adrenaline and stress hormones.
• Lack of exercise to flush out these hormones from the body
• Negative and worrisome thoughts that continue throughout the night
• Phone use and screen time - the light, content and the rapid eye movement on your phones that’s telling your body to stay hyper alert, releasing hormones to keep you awake
• Too much light - your body releases melatonin to help you sleep when it gets darker. Try turning lights down or off to get your body ready for bed

When you ignore the underlying stress, triggers and daytime habits that contribute to an overactive nervous system, the body eventually adapts to sedatives and sleeplessness returns.

While sleep may seem like a time when the mind and body are shut off, our bodies are actually still working - carrying out deep and active repair at a cellular level, where hormones that mend tissues and balance energy levels are released, regulating the body’s inner rhythms.

Turning insomnia around

Supporting our relaxation response throughout the day and night helps temper stress hormones that often lead to a bad sleep. Whilst adaptogens and sedatives get all the attention in sleep product marketing, herbs are often our greatest allies for stress, sleep, and anxiety.

When clients come to see me for help with sleep we look at three main areas - first, creating a positive internal environment (reducing stress), secondly, the external environment and thirdly, using nature to nourish and relax the nervous system.