Raising Wild Hearts

Unlocking Better Sleep: Tips & Tricks to Get Rested with Morgan Adams

Ryann Watkin

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Today I'm sitting down with Morgan Adams, a transformative holistic sleep coach, to talk about how to get better sleep (yes, even for tired moms!) without medication.  We delve into the essential role of morning sunlight exposure, unpack strategies to combat insomnia and so much more!

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Speaker 1:

The natural light needs to hit your retina and then at that point there is a signal being sent to your suprachiasmatic nucleus, which is your circadian pacemaker, and that's sort of the kickoff point where all these neurotransmitters and hormones kind of fire off. So your cortisol gets boosted for energy, any residual melatonin gets shut down, and so a bunch of really cool things are happening at this time. So if you're blocking your eyes with glasses, you're missing out on some of those key benefits.

Speaker 2:

Welcome, revolutionary Mama, to the Raising Wild Hearts podcast. I'm Ryan Watkin, educator, mom of three, rebel at heart and passionate soul on a mission to empower and inspire you.

Speaker 2:

Here we'll explore psychology, spirituality, parenthood and the intersection where they all come together. We'll discover how challenges can be fertile soil for growth and that even in the messy middle of motherhood, we can find magic in the mundane. Join me on my own personal journey as I talk to experts and share resources on education, creativity, self-care, family, culture and more. I believe we can change the world by starting at home in our own minds and hearts, and that when we do, friends, welcome back to the Raising Wild Hearts podcast. So happy you're here.

Speaker 2:

And today we're talking about one of my favorite things, which is sleep. I have a sleep expert and coach and consultant with me. Her name is Morgan Adams. She's actually officially a transformative holistic sleep coach who empowers women to conquer their battle with sleepless nights without reliance on sleep medications. So she says that many of her clients are experiencing insomnia and we break down the actual definition of insomnia, because I think it's a word that gets thrown around a lot. And she says with her powerful sleep toolkit, she ensures that women experience a profound enhancement in their sleep quality and guides them in rekindling their relationship with sleep and paving the way for less stressful and more fulfilling days.

Speaker 2:

Who doesn't want that this was a really interesting conversation, because sleep is one of those things that's foundational in our health, and so Morgan had a ton of tips and tricks throughout the entire episode that we can put into practice in our own lives, and I mentioned some of the things that I've already been doing, and she gives her take on that. We also talk about specifically women and sleep, also mothers and sleep, specifically new mothers. We talk about sleep tracking, sleep tracking devices. We talk about if all sleep is created equal and why we have such a hard time falling back asleep at night when we wake up. This is truly such a practical and helpful conversation for everybody. So if you've been thinking about tweaking your sleep habits or wanting to look at how you're sleeping, this conversation is definitely for you.

Speaker 2:

Morgan is so knowledgeable and was so easy to talk to, so I know you guys are going to enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Let's jump in, morgan. Welcome to the Raising Wild Hearts podcast.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, I'm very excited to be here. I appreciate the invite?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, totally. It's a perfect day for this recording, as it always happens, because I got a terrible night's sleep last night. So we're going to talk about some of those things and I'll tell you what happened and maybe you can just like give me some some advice, and then we'll dive into all the other related subjects too. So it was around two o'clock and I know that, cause I checked my phone, which is not in my bedroom, but I went to the bathroom and it was in there. So it was around two and my toddler son got up and my husband was in the room with him and I heard them through my earplugs.

Speaker 2:

And immediately what happens for me when I hear one of my kids in the night, or like a noise or whatever, is I feel this rush of what I think is I don't know if it's cortisol or adrenaline, maybe you might be able to say, but whatever hormone goes coursing through and I get this like heart racing, like oh, it's go time, sort of thing. And then after that it's typically hard to talk myself off this ledge because I'm in this fight or flight response, and so I'm doing four, seven, eight, breathing, and I'm like don't think about tomorrow, don't think about the grocery list. Don't think about this, because I'm sure you hear from a billion people that, like once we start thinking we're done.

Speaker 2:

Um so tell me your like. Let's just jump off with like your thoughts on my terrible night's sleep last night.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, I think what you're you experience is extremely common and I think you actually handled it really well, from what I can tell. I would recommend in situations like that that you do do some like breathing or kind of mindfulness practices, progressive body, progressive muscle relaxation, things like that. That can kind of kind of get you out of that fight or flight response, because it sounded like you definitely had a little cortisol and adrenaline kick. Yeah, sometimes it can be helpful to get out of bed to do that. It kind of depends on on you and like what you're feeling, like you want to do at the time. But some people will lie in bed and do you know the relaxation some people would like to get out of bed.

Speaker 1:

You know, if you're really struggling, if you're, if you're anxious about sleep in general, I think it's often helpful to remove yourself from the bedroom, kind of per. You know CBTI guidelines. If you're feeling that anxiousness, it's best to like get out of the bedroom, go to another room, do something relaxing and dim light until you become sleepy again. But I think you know the the it's. It's so tempting to sit there and ruminate about whatever it is. But you know, get kind of getting out of your, your head and into your body can be a really helpful tool, and that would be, you know, like the breath work and things like that, to kind of just get you back into that more relaxed state.

Speaker 2:

Okay, that makes sense to me, leaving the room. I never considered, but that's a great idea, because I think, like when we get up in the morning and we're not quite ready and we're like, oh, I wish I had five more minutes in bed, you kind of maybe get that sensation. You're kind of like tricking your brain. Is that what it is Like? Reverse psychology? Like we're up but we don't want to be up, so we're sleepy again. Maybe it's something like that, I don't know.

Speaker 1:

Well, so the idea behind getting out of the bed is we don't want to ever have a link between our bed and anxiety. We want to break that association. So the whole getting out of bed and going to another location is helping you break that connection, because you want to, you always want to associate your bed with a feeling of peace and calm, never worry and anxiety, and that's you know. That advice is really, I think, a little bit more tailored for people who have insomnia. Doesn't sound like that's your, your, but it can be helpful even for people who don't really have insomnia. You may want to get out of bed. If you're riled up, you could get out of bed and read something, but be careful with the reading content.

Speaker 1:

I've had clients who can't sleep and they'll get out of bed and read. They'll read a thriller and then they get so into it. They can't, you know, they don't get sleepy. Just, you know, read something, that's you know. A lot of people like to look at cookbooks and stuff like that, just things that are very neutral, not very stimulating. So that's another option. You could get out of bed and listen to a podcast in another room. I think it's just worth experimenting to see what works for you, because everyone's different. But my advice to people is if you're feeling that sense of panic and anxiety in your bed, it's a good rule of thumb to just remove yourself from the bedroom and do something else in a different room until you feel sleepy enough to return to bed.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so you mentioned the word insomnia. I think it's a word that gets thrown around a lot, but maybe we misunderstand it and I don't exactly know even what it means. And so I you know, for me it's every once in a while I'm up in the night I mean aside from my kids waking up, obviously but I'm up in the night for no, seem like for seemingly no reason and I'm going, oh hello, is it like, is it a certain number of nights in a row? Is it a chronic issue, Like break that down? So someone listening is like do I have insomnia or not?

Speaker 1:

This is a good. This is a good direction to take it, because the word to your point does get thrown around a lot. So what it technically means insomnia is when you're having trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, or you're waking up too early, at least three nights a week. Now, if it's three months or less, it would be considered acute insomnia. If it's three months or more, it would be considered chronic insomnia. Now, also, on top of all those things, there also has to be some sense of daytime dysfunction or feelings of uncomfortableness or feeling like the quality of sleep wasn't good. So there's, there's that subjective piece that I just mentioned and that objective piece about how many nights a week, and I will, I will share that a lot, you know. I would say most people in the course of their lifetime probably do experience a bout of acute insomnia, the kind that's three months or less. It's quite typically that's triggered by something in your life that's disruptive and that could be, you know, having a child that could be getting married, could be getting divorced, a death in the family, a job loss, or some. You know, having a child that could be getting married could be getting divorced, a death in the family, a job loss or some you know, something that really shakes you up. Most people tend to sort of find their way out of it eventually, but with some people it becomes chronic, it goes into that three month or more, because they're developing behaviors and patterns that kind of keep the insomnia going longer term. And that's when it's helpful to work with you know, a professional like a sleep coach, to help you identify those behaviors and to change them so that you can kind of end that insomnia cycle. But I think it's a really wise thing to get that definition off the table, because I've had people say to me oh well, I don't have insomnia because I just wake up in the middle of the night, because they think that insomnia only means trouble sleeping at the beginning of the night, like when you first go to bed. So yeah, I think it's an important definition to have to, to, to, to talk about.

Speaker 1:

And also I want to normalize, though, what you shared, and that is it is absolutely normal as part of the human experience to have nights where we're just not able to sleep well. It doesn't mean we have insomnia If you've got that going on a couple of a month, once a month, whatever. You're just human. Yeah, you know, things get in the way and we, we really I think that I think you know I'm I'm targeted a whole lot of ads about sleep and insomnia and you know, I feel like there's often this pressure, this kind of expectation that our sleep needs to be perfect every night and actually that's sort of odd for someone to have perfect sleep every night. We need to allow ourselves a little bit of latitude and grace for these nights when we inexplicably are having trouble sleeping. But it's just, but it's like, if it's becoming that pattern like three nights a week or more, that's when we need to kind of take, take a pause, you know, evaluate the situation, maybe talk to somebody, but just a night here and there, don't worry about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay, that is so helpful, like tremendously. The next place I want to go is just like a very broad and overarching. Why do we need sleep? Like, what does sleep actually do for us?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a great question because, you know, we often talk about the importance of nutrition and movement.

Speaker 1:

Those are, like you know, the key things people are talking about regarding health, and sleep is one of those pillars of health as the third pillar, but in my opinion it's sort of the, the foundation upon which the other pillars are built.

Speaker 1:

Because, if you think about it this way, if you're not sleeping well, you're not going to be able to have the, you know, the hormone balance to like choose healthy foods, you're not going to have the energy to work out and do the healthy things.

Speaker 1:

So, really, when we think about sleep, why we need it is because it affects, affects literally every part of our life. It affects our brain, it affects our cardiovascular system and metabolism, our hormone balance. It affects our relationships Because, like we can all I mean I know that and you probably can attest to this too If you've had a bad night of sleep, you know you're not as chipper in the morning, you're not as nice to people, I'm not as nice to my husband in the morning and it can, you know, over time impact our relationships. They've done studies showing that when people just are sleep deprived by like one night, they are less likely to help a stranger or less likely to donate to a nonprofit. So it affects us on a very profound level in literally every aspect of our life. There's no area that sleep doesn't touch.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's fascinating and so true. And sometimes we're like I'm grumpy or I'm this or I'm that, and maybe we're not connecting the dots of like our sleep is not the quality that it could be for us to feel revitalized and re-energized in the day. Cause really I think about it when I wake up in the morning, like I want to feel good, like let's start off in a good, you know mindset, a good not like oh gosh, I'm so tired. Cause I think that's like the um, that brain synapse, like that connection can be kind of deep, like I for a while, like was just waking up, especially when all my kids were like really little of like immediately open the eyes and go God, I'm tired, like and that's like the first thought, and like the day is not going to turn out great If that's your first thought upon waking is how tired you are.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's, that's such a good point. It's like, um, I feel like sometimes we we don't give ourselves a little bit of leeway in the morning. Like we, we have this thing called sleep inertia quite often, and that's when you're really groggy in the morning. You take a while to get going, and I feel that a lot of times people will kind of make a snap judgment on how their day is going to be based on that initial little bit of sleep inertia they have. So I usually tell people to you know, give yourself half hour an hour to kind of get up, move, move around, start your day, before you kind of like determine oh, it's going to be a bad day because I didn't get great sleep, Because just just because you've had a bad night of sleep doesn't necessarily mean the whole day is shot.

Speaker 2:

Right, you know. Yeah, that's a good mindset shift for.

Speaker 1:

So much about this is my is mindset, right, you know, yeah, that's a good mindset shift, for sure. So much about this is is my is mindset, you know. And then you know, like, when we have our REMS stage of sleep, which is a really important stage of sleep, we do get this sort of emotional regulation boost. It helps us kind of process the emotions from the previous day, kind of almost makes them a little more neutral. If we've had an argument or something, that REM sleep can help neutralize a situation, so it's, it's in a way overnight therapy for us. So if we're not getting that REM sleep, we we do tend to get a little bit snarky, a little bit grumpy, a little bit emotionally reactive. So there's, you know, there's definitely reasons why we may experience those things in the morning.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's so interesting. Okay, so this also segues perfectly into my next question, which is all sleep created equal? You mentioned like the REM cycle. What other cycles are there and maybe what are those helpful for? And what's the most important, are they all equally important?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, they're all important, but the two most important ones from the research are the deep sleep, and that is typically happening in the first half of the night. So deep sleep, what goes on in our deep sleep is essentially more of the bodily repair it's what happens. We've discovered fairly recently is we have something in our brains called the glymphatic system, so it's like the lymphatic system but for your brain, so it's got a G in front of it and you can imagine it's sort of like a car wash. These toxins are kind of getting wrung out while you're in that deep stage of sleep to kind of clean, kind of a good brainwashing, if you will. And so that really is about 20% of our sleep for a healthy adult. So it's not like a huge chunk of the time we spend asleep. And then, as I mentioned before, the REM stage, that's when we're doing the emotional regulation, memory consolidations, helping us kind of take those memories and kind of solidifying them overnight, and that's usually about 25% of our night. So, again, not a huge chunk. And then really like light sleep is about half of our night. So that's like there are things happening in light sleep.

Speaker 1:

But the real kind of juicy, beneficial pieces are the deep sleep and the REM sleep. So we we definitely want to make sure we're getting those, but we need to understand that you know our sleep is variable from night to night. We may not get, you know, an equal amount of REM and deep every night. I mean, I wear an aura ring so I'm tracking and you know there is variation from night to night. And then another little side note, not to bum anyone out, but as you age, you know, as you get into midlife and beyond, your deep sleep starts to kind of peter away, kind of peter down. And that's very normal because I work a lot with people in mid life and beyond and they're so concerned, you know their deep sleep isn't as solid as it used to be and you know, while that's not ideal, it's actually kind of a normal part of the aging process. So I like to kind of normalize that for anyone listening who's, like you know, maybe 40 plus and and getting you know into the midline.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

You're raising your hand.

Speaker 2:

I'm definitely.

Speaker 1:

I'm definitely I'm 50 plus, so so I like to you know, kind of share that, because I do get a lot of questions from people about deep sleep scores and, oh my God, I only got 15%. Oh my gosh, that's terrible. Actually, it's not that bad. If you're 50 years old, 15% is not bad, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so there's so many places I want to go. So in the beginning of the night is that deep sleep, Because I've heard somewhere like the earlier you go to bed before midnight the better, or going to sleep when the sun goes down. You hear so much info and so like info and so much noise out there. So like is that beginning of the night chunk really important? I've been personally prioritizing it for me, but what's your thought on that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that we know that the deep sleep is happening in the first half of the night. So you know, I will say, when I look at my aura ring, I go to bed around nine, nine, 30. I will typically see a large chunk of deep sleep between like 10, 11, 10 and midnight. That's usually when my deep sleep is happening. So we want to make sure that we're. I mean, this is a whole other sidebar.

Speaker 1:

It's kind of a controversial topic right now in sleep about the chronotypes and that's basically like if you're a night owl or an early bird, and so you know, there's this myth that says, you know, every hour of sleep before midnight is worth more than you know sleep after midnight. That's not necessarily true, you know. I feel like if you are somebody who is a true night owl and you really don't get sleepy, you're not really ready to sleep until midnight. You need to kind of respect that and not not fret too much. But yes, the the deep stuff does happen in the first part of our sleep. Okay, and we sleep, you know, as the night goes on. So, like later in the night, our sleep becomes a little bit lighter and that's why a lot of people have those three three o'clock awakenings is because we are naturally in a lighter kind of stage of sleep, so it's easier to wake us up at three versus maybe midnight, you know, if we're going to bed around 10 o'clock.

Speaker 2:

Right, and a theme that I'm kind of hearing come up here too is like different seasons of life. So it's depending on your age, it's depending on do you have kids? Are you having life stressors, like so I think and you've already mentioned this to give ourselves grace's, not like an answer to this, but maybe let's just explore it a little for moms with really young kids, like babies and toddlers, like our sleep is just getting interrupted. So maybe you have just like words of wisdom or solidarity for those who are just getting interrupted for sleep and they can't stop, like maybe people who don't want to sleep train their kids, et cetera.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, super important issue, because any parent can attest has gone through this. And you know, my best advice is really giving yourself grace, understanding that this is like you said, this is a season in our lives. You know, this is just sort of a blip on the radar. There's really not much we can do, but our kids are going to wake us up. It's just part of part of what's going to happen, but in terms of you know the ramifications or how to kind of mitigate, a couple tips I have would be, you know, trying to give your. You know, if you, if you're able to get yourself a nap the next day, if you're feeling like you know you're dragging, just get that 20 minute nap, you know, preferably before three o'clock, because sometimes with people they will nap a little bit too late into the afternoon and it kind of cuts off their initial sleep drive for when they want to go to bed for real.

Speaker 1:

Another thing is, you know, I mean this is a whole, this is kind of a societal observation, but the way that our society is right now it's not very well set up for that sharing of child caring responsibilities. It's so much, you know, like if you think back to our ancestors it was more of a communal type of scenario where we had lots of relatives who could kind of pitch in when mom was sleepy or maybe get up and feed the baby, and we don't really have that anymore in our modern society. So I think that it's possible, you know, trying to get help in any way you can. You know, having a neighbor come in and let you take that nap, or, you know, do a trade-off with a friend or a neighbor, and just, you know, not being afraid to ask for the help, because we're not, we're not meant to do this alone, you know.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we're really not I. I so agree with that. I'm glad you brought that up. And also, one of the things that I never utilized but I thought I might with my third child, is a night doula, so somebody who, or, yeah, like a postpartum doula, but someone who comes at night and who just like wakes up with the baby and just like snuggles with them while you can maybe get one more sleep cycle in.

Speaker 2:

And I considered that by the time I had my third child, of course, with my first I was like I've got all of this, like I can do this, which led to a very unhealthy experience of postpartum depression and just like feelings of like massive anxiety Cause, even when I would lay down to go to sleep, I had that association, wow, light bulb moment for me. I would lay down and go to sleep. I had that association, wow, light bulb moment for me. I would lay down and I would immediately, immediately feel this like dread or panic because I knew that she was going to get up and I didn't know when it was. But that's really interesting. So, yeah, I think this is a big, big issue for new moms and even old moms like me asking for help. I like it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Uh-huh, that's important. What's your? This is like kind of unrelated, but I'm just so curious. What's your take on dreams?

Speaker 1:

Oh well, there's a lot we don't know about dreams. But, um, you know, they don't really teach us a lot of that, a lot about dreams, uh, in sleep coaching school. But I picked up some things here there just from podcast, and what we do know is that, like the from the perspective of when dreams happen, they do tend to happen more often in the REM stage. So the REM stage I didn't quite mention this, we mentioned deep sleep happens in the first half of the night. The REM, the REM is sort of concentrated more towards like the second half of the night and that's really why we wake up sometimes remembering a dream, because we just have come out of that REM stage. So there's so much about dreams. We could talk about it for a long time.

Speaker 1:

But I think a lot of people ask me is it okay If I don't remember my dreams? Yeah, it's okay. It doesn't really. There's not really anything negative if you don't remember a dream. But for people who, like, are really into it and want to like kind of analyze their dreams and and record them, really the best thing to do is have a notepad by your bed and then, just immediately after you wake up, just capture it on paper, because if you wait a certain amount of time it's just going to kind of fly out of your head. So but yeah, there's, there's a lot of we. Just we don't, we don't know a whole lot about dreams. I mean, it's almost kind of like a new frontier that there's so much to talk about and there's so much more to learn.

Speaker 2:

Right, it's so fascinating to me because I think that dreams evoke certain emotions, and for you to like feel a visceral emotion in your sleep is like so interesting. It's like is this something that needs to be healed from the past? Is this something that I'm envisioning for my future? Is this like? I am so fascinated by it, and one of the things I keep saying that I'm going to do but I haven't done yet, is keep a notebook by my bed to write them down, because very often I'll wake up and it'll be like right on the tip of my consciousness and then, as soon as my feet hit the floor, I've like lost it you know, but yeah, I just I'm like curious for myself, so I wanted to know what you thought.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so for me, something that I've been trying to, something that I have been doing like a practice for myself, is when I get up in the morning, I want to, in some form or fashion, get outside and I want to like look East, I want to look like where or fashion get outside and I want to like look east, I want to look like where the sun's rising and kind of get my eyeballs like acclimated to the sun, and then at night I've been putting the device away. I go to bed pretty early, but so I put the device away, I put it in a different room and I try and shut it down. I'm not perfect with that. What's your take on like sunlight in the morning and then devices off at night, and is there anything we can add to that list? Oh my God.

Speaker 1:

This is like one of my favorite topics. I'm obsessed with this whole topic. I call it circadian health, circadian biology, light science. So you're doing the right things. So basically, in a nutshell, what's happening with most of us right now in our current society, is we are inside too much. We are not getting outside and getting that natural daylight. I think it was like 2001,. They did a study that showed that we are either inside or in our cars 93% of the time. So that leaves 7% of our time outside. I would argue that in today, 2024, we're even inside, even more than that because of all you know work from home and all these things. So we just if you think about our ancestors, they were outside all the time. We're actually our bodies are more designed to be outdoor creatures versus indoors. So what I really try to emphasize with my clients who you know this is not common knowledge for a lot of people, but you really want to emphasize the bright days and the dark nights. So you're starting your day, like you are so beautifully with that sunlight in the morning, and it's really best to try to get that within an hour of waking up. So you want to get that sunlight in your eyes Facing East is great. It doesn't take long to get the benefits. It takes 10 minutes maybe to really reap the benefits. And one thing that I would like to note, though, is that a lot of people make this mistake, so no shame if you are, but, as an FYI, try not to use your sunglasses when you're doing this, because the natural light needs to hit your retina, and then at that point, there is a signal being sent to your suprachiasmatic nucleus, which is your circadian pacemaker, and that's sort of the kickoff point where all these neurotransmitters and hormones kind of fire off, so your cortisol gets boosted for energy, any residual melatonin gets shut down, and so a bunch of really cool things are happening at this time. So if you're blocking your eyes with glasses, you're missing out on some of those key benefits. And then to what you said at night, we want to really make sure that we start kind of dimming things down a couple hours before bed. If we have overhead lights, turn those off, turn on a table light instead. Ideally, you know, it would be awesome if we could all have like candlelight in our house, and that's not realistic for everybody, but, but really being mindful of, like, our light environment, putting dimmers on our phones, maybe using one of those those night shift programs to like make the screen more warm than cool. So those are some things that are definitely going to be helpful.

Speaker 1:

And then there's something that I recently learned a few months ago that I'm just really into. It's an app that it's a free app called Circadian, so you can go to the website circadianlifecom. I'm not affiliated with this app or anything, I'm just obsessed with it. But essentially what you can do is you enter your location and then, from your location, it will say exactly what time the sun rises. It'll say when the sun sets. It'll tell you what is called the UVA rise time and that is a time right after sunset sorry, sunrise when the sun is at a 10 to 30 degree angle and you're getting extra hormone and neurotransmitter benefits during that window.

Speaker 1:

So where I live in Virginia currently at this moment in time, that's, like you know, only an hour and a half and it's like you know between what? Maybe 730 and nine I'm just kind of ballparking, so it's really important to get outside for a little bit during that time and then after that you've got your UVB, that the app will tell you when your UVB starts and that's when you can process that vitamin D. So that's you know most of the day. So getting outside, I mean I know we can't spend all day outside unless maybe that's your job, is, you know, most of the day. So getting outside, I mean I know we can't spend all day outside unless maybe that's your job, is, you know, gardening or something like that. But if you can just take little light breaks, you know, a few times a day just to get some of that natural light, it can really impact your health overall and your sleep.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, those are amazing tips. I'm so glad you mentioned the sunglasses thing. I used to be like sunglasses queen and I read yeah, and I cause they're cute, Right, and if you haven't had a good night's sleep then they're like double bonus right.

Speaker 2:

Nobody look at my eyes, but yes, I've been really intentional about leaving the sunglasses at home, even like throughout the day. I'm in Florida and so you know it's sunny most of the time, like we're kind of in a rainy season, um. But I heard somewhere maybe you can give me your take on this that sunlight. I don't know if I'm going to put it right, but it's almost like nourishment or you know, uh, like nourishment for our brains, right, and I thought that makes so much sense, and so I've been ditching the sunglasses whenever possible, you know, unless I'm driving or whatever it is. So what's your take on? Like nourishment for our brains?

Speaker 1:

Absolutely yeah. So when you look at light science, there's often talk about light, a light diet. You know our light is our nutrient. We talk so much about our macros, our protein, our fat and our carbs, but our light is a really important nutrient. It's so fascinating yeah, it's really fascinating. I mean it's a big area. I think we're going to start seeing a lot more information coming to the masses about this whole circadian health, circadian biology topic, because it affects literally everything. It's affecting our hormones, our neurotransmitters and that affects, like, our sleep and just our overall health.

Speaker 1:

So I can personally say that like I've been this summer so you know, about a month or so I've been doing this, you know, going out, literally I've been doing this, you know, going out literally right as I get up, like I would usually just wait a while to go outside, but the way that my wake up time is coinciding with the sunrise, it's like totally in sync. So I'm going outside, I pull out a lawn chair, I take my shoes off, I plant my feet on the ground and I sit there for about 10 minutes watching the sunrise, and I do have my cup of coffee in my hand, which I know some people are going to be like what? There's this whole thing about delaying your coffee, you know whatever. I just really like to drink it in the morning when I wake up.

Speaker 2:

But thank God, the sleep coach drinks coffee. Y'all, thank God.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I'm going to give you a little realism here, but I will say it's been really an interesting experiment because I have noticed just an uptick in my mood, my energy level, just overall. My sleep has gotten a little bit better because of that, just hit right there at the sun, at the sunrise, and of course the grounding can be helpful too. But I mean these things people, you know, when I'm working with people on their sleep and I suggest these practices, sometimes I'm met with a little bit of skepticism, right, they're sort of like really, and I understand why, because the things that I'm suggesting here they're not sexy things, they're not a gadget, they're not like technology, they're just literally simple, basic things that we have had the ability to do all our lives and all of our ancestors have done them. But we have kind of lost touch with the power and the beauty of them. And you know, because they're so simple, sometimes they're just sort of like scoffed at. You know what I mean? Yeah, I do, they work.

Speaker 2:

Because we want things to be complicated, we want the squeeze to be worth the juice, whatever the sayings are, we have this kind of mindset that says it has to be hard or it's not. It's like it, I believe it. I believe that you're like noticing changes because I also have seen like the benefits in my own life. For sure, and my kids I mean my kids are. I'm like okay, go look at the sun now, you know, and they do, and they have like pretty good, I would say ish, sleep hygiene aside from the toddler, but that's a whole nother podcast. And then we do like an Amber light bulb in our you know room, and when my poor children, and when one of them turns on the overhead light by accident, I'm like we don't use those lights at night.

Speaker 2:

They're like okay, mom, like we get it. But yes, we're like pretty mindful of some of these things and this is like this is just really still illuminating and it's it's not complicated to do it, Can we? I'm curious if you have. I mean, I'm assuming, like you're a woman, I'm a woman, so I'm assuming, like you're looking at it from a women's lens, but is there a difference between women and men that you know of? Like you're looking at it from a women's lens, but is there a difference between women and men that you know of, and is it different because of our hormones? You mentioned, like women mid-age. Does that happen for men too? And then, like, can we talk about, like I don't know, maybe some specifics on how, as women, we can, because I feel like it's a little bit different from my husband. I don't know if that's an accurate assumption or not, but I feel like maybe I need more sleep than him. I always am like I need more sleep than you and he's like you're right, you do so I don't know.

Speaker 2:

Maybe you know some differences.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, there there are some differences. So what we do know is that women are about twice as likely to have insomnia as men. So we do typically struggle, as a gender, with sleep more often, and there are many reasons, but there are kind of like three main reasons why we're more prone to insomnia. The first you touched on we have hormonal shifts from teenagehood all the way through menopause, so our hormones are in constant flux and then, you know, they take quite a nosedive, and you know, once we hit perimenopause. And then, secondly, women have more issues with, you know, mental health, depression, anxiety, and those leave you a little bit more prone to insomnia. And then the last reason is really more of a socio cultural reason, and that is because we have so many roles in our lives. You know, caretakers, we're, you know, working often, and we're, you know, especially like with women in midlife, what happens.

Speaker 1:

I called it. You know I didn't make this up and you know I often hear this we're the sandwich generation, because a woman who's in her 40s could potentially be caring for kids at home. She could also be responsible for taking care of aging parents and on top of that she might be working in a really demanding role at work or have her own business. So all of those competing demands create this like heightened stress and anxiety that can impact sleep. So there's a lot of interplay with all of these things affecting women's sleep.

Speaker 1:

And you know it's interesting you mentioned do we need more sleep? There has been over the past maybe six months, this strange rumor on Instagram Maybe I don't go on TikTok, but I'm assuming it's there too if it's on Instagram but there's this sort of like rumor that women need like an hour or two more sleep than men and that is actually just a rumor. So what we do know is that women need about 10, 15 minutes more sleep, maybe 20 minutes more. It's not a very significant amount of sleep, but we do need more sleep.

Speaker 1:

Our sleep tends to be a little bit more fragmented Because you know things were, you know, I think you know with the children issue, you know, I think maybe we're just sort of more prone to that fragmentation. So we do need a little bit more sleep. But as far as, like, the stages of sleep, those are pretty much, you know, gender, you know they're not specific to gender. Everyone's kind of going through the same sleep stages as far as we know, I don't think they've done a lot of research on that. So yeah, that's kind of the differences between men and women and sleep.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's helpful. And then should we be aiming for a certain amount of hours per night, or does that really not make a difference?

Speaker 1:

So the National Sleep Foundation recommends seven to nine hours of sleep a night for adults 18 to 64. And you know that's that's a good target. But I really do want to stress that it's sort of our sleep need is like our shoe size, like it's not a one size fits all. So there's this sort of myth about eight hours of sleep and I like to bust that myth as much as I can because you see it in the media. You see a lot of people stressing themselves out about trying to meet that eight hours of sleep. And not everyone needs eight hours. Some people need seven, some people need nine, some people there are a few people out there who really only need six and a half, some people need a little bit more than nine. In fact, when you look at the National Sleep Foundation's the fine print for those particular recommendations, you'll see that it says anywhere from six to 10 hours can be appropriate for some people. So just like our calorie needs different are different from different from person to person, so our sleep needs.

Speaker 1:

But I think the conversation is actually starting to shift a little bit more into the realm of quality of our sleep. So are we getting enough REM and enough deep, like we mentioned before, and also a big one right now, is consistency. So they did this huge study a few months ago. It was like 60,000 people or something like that, and what they were looking at was how our mortality rates played into our amount of sleep, and so what they were showing is that people who were getting six hours of sleep consistently on a consistent basis, consistent schedule, had lower mortality rates than people who were getting eight hours of irregular sleep or inconsistent sleep. So I think what we're going to start seeing soon and at least I hope we do is more guidance on the consistency part of the sleep versus that kind of like number of that range of number, because that's just part of the, that's just one piece of the puzzle. It's it's a lot more than just the number of hours. It's that consistency, it's our quality that needs to be taken into account for sure.

Speaker 2:

Okay and the best way to track our sleep. You mentioned that you wear an Oura ring. Is that your go-to method and are there others that you would recommend?

Speaker 1:

There are others. There are several digital trackers out there. I do think that Oura is the best one for accuracy technology and I think that anyone who's a sleep expert or works in sleep would probably agree with that. But the sleep trackers can be a little bit of a conundrum for some people, so let me let me kind of elaborate on that. If you are a normal healthy sleeper who wants to just kind of keep tabs on how your sleep is going, you may want to optimize it a smidge and you're actually able to take the data from your dashboard and make behavioral changes from that data, then I think you're a pretty good candidate for sleep tracker.

Speaker 1:

However, if you have insomnia which is actually most of my clients then a sleep tracker may not be the wisest option, because what we find often is that people get the same called orthosomnia, which is like kind of a hyper focus on sleep, sleep data and sleep numbers, and they can get overly fixated on the amount of REM they get or the deep oh, I didn't get enough sleep and so they get. You know, I haven't actually worked with anyone like this, but I've heard of people who will literally like wake up in the middle of the night and check their sleep tracker, it's like wait, you don't do that. You don't check it at night, don't do that. So that in essence, what can happen is the tracking can backfire to raise someone's anxiety about their sleep and make their sleep worse. So whenever I work with clients and they come to me with a sleep tracker, I will say look, let's just, let's pause on the sleep tracker until we've like kind of gotten your sleep in a better spot and then you can resume it. You know completely.

Speaker 1:

But if people are sort of like teetering on that like I'm almost obsessive, you know I have a lot of people in the gray area what I will often recommend is you know, wear the ring, you know, every night, but don't look at the data every morning. Like, maybe look at your data once a week on Saturday or Sunday, and that way you get a little bit of emotional distance from the data. Because I think what can happen is we get reactive to the data every morning when we look at it and get a little bit too attached. So getting that space, you know, maybe once a week kind of checking in, I think can be a great habit if you're just teetering on that verge of like getting a little too obsessed about it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that makes sense, and I would assume that you would also suggest for a new mom to not track her sleep either.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, goodness gracious. No, that would be very, very sad to look at it. We're like we already know yeah, yeah, okay, don't do that Okay.

Speaker 2:

So heads up for all you new mamas, if there's any out there. I think there's a few. Okay, this is amazing. Thank you so much. How do we find you and follow your work? First of, all no-transcript.

Speaker 1:

I'm also on Instagram very active. There I do a lot of stories and all that stuff. My handle is morganadamswellness Okay, so if you find me, follow me, shoot me a DM and tell me. You heard me on your podcast. I love to talk about sleep and connect with people who are interested in sleep, so don't be a stranger.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, definitely reach out, do the free consult if you're thinking about it. The value that you've provided in this short conversation is tremendous. So, yes, please reach out to Morgan if you need some help with your sleep and if you have questions. Thank you so much. I'm going to ask you now the three questions that I ask everybody at the end of the interview, and the first one is what's bringing you joy today?

Speaker 1:

I would say my pets. They're just so fun. I have two doodles and they are just so full of personality. They're my actual children, since I don't have human children, so they're like kind of my fur babies and I just think they're just so much fun.

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh, we have a doodle too.

Speaker 1:

We have a little bird, oh gosh.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we have a Bernie doodle. He's so goofy and I love it. And all doodles are just I look at them and I'm like, oh my gosh, you guys, they're so funny, they're so cute. Oh my gosh, love it. And you know, I side note I heard somewhere that when dogs wag their tail, they're like emitting like the vibration of love. So like I was like, so I always think about that. When I see my dog wagging his tail, which is pretty much constantly, I'm like look at you, you little love ball. Like they're just little balls of love. It's so sweet.

Speaker 1:

I love them yeah.

Speaker 2:

Cute. Okay, the next question is what, if anything, are you reading?

Speaker 1:

I am reading a book about insomnia because I'm always like curious to see different takes on how people treat insomnia, because I'm always like curious to see different takes on how people treat insomnia and I'm just constantly seeking out new information in that field. So I'm to be truthful, I'm a little bit narrow in my choices of reading these days.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, that shows that you've got the passion for it and you just you're so, you're so knowledgeable. So obviously it's we're thankful that you're reading books like that, because you're passing the information along to us, so yay. And then the last question I have for you, morgan, is who or what have you learned the most from?

Speaker 1:

I think I would say my husband. He is just somebody who is so committed to self growth and self development and bettering himself as a person that he rubs off on me and that way makes me want to become a better person. And, my God, I sound so cheesy right now. It sounds so like, but it's true, because he's just an incredible person. I feel very fortunate to have him in my life.

Speaker 2:

That's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that and thank you for sharing your wisdom, and thank you for the work that you're doing in the world. It's definitely making a difference, I know it. Thank you so much. Hi again, friend, if you're listening to this, you made it to the end of a Raising Wild Hearts episode. Yay, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so you can hear more amazing conversations just like this one. And here's the deal. If you made it this far, go ahead and hop down on your podcast app and rate and review the show. Your words and five stars truly mean the world to me. Thank you for your support of the show. Thank you for showing up and listening week after week. I will be dropping new episodes every Monday, so tune in then and I will talk to you soon.