Speaker 1: Hello everyone, I'm Beth, and this is social Leopards. Do
Speaker 1: you struggle with sleep quality? Are you an insomniac? I'm
Speaker 1: raising my hand and waving it wildly in the air
Speaker 1: as I pose these questions. This is totally me. Today,
Speaker 1: I'm sharing some practical and scientifically based ways to start
Speaker 1: enjoying better sleep. I'll also be reflecting on what's been
Speaker 1: working for me lately, at least. Today's featured contributor is
Speaker 1: Tara Parker Pope, who is a substack dot com creator
Speaker 1: and also founder of the New York Times well Section.
Speaker 1: She shares a lot of good information on a wide
Speaker 1: range of wellness topics, and she backs her words with
Speaker 1: multiple sources, and you'll be able to reference a short
Speaker 1: list of links in the show notes. I'll be narrating
Speaker 1: Tara's article as written, but know that these referenced bits
Speaker 1: will be available to you self service. And before I
Speaker 1: start yawning because I am tired today, I'll begin sharing
Speaker 1: this article titled science Backed Secrets for Better Sleep. Two
Speaker 1: gentle workouts for better Sleep. The first time I ever
Speaker 1: wrote about insomnia for The New York Times, I was
Speaker 1: stunned at how fast it moved up the most read list.
Speaker 1: I also noticed that many people were reading it around
Speaker 1: three am. The experience taught me that people with insomnia
Speaker 1: or other sleep problems are desperate for answers. Insomnia, which
Speaker 1: affects thirty to forty percent of the population, can start
Speaker 1: in different ways. For some, it's chronic stress, a medical condition,
Speaker 1: or pain. For others, it's a body clock that's out
Speaker 1: of sync, or a stressful event that conditions the brain
Speaker 1: to link the bed with wakefulness. Over time, these factors
Speaker 1: can feed into each other, creating a cycle of worry
Speaker 1: and performance anxiety that locks people into chronic sleeplessness. Cognitive
Speaker 1: behavioral therapy CBT is still the best treatment for chronic insomnia.
Speaker 1: CBT retrains you to break the cycle of tossing, turning,
Speaker 1: and worrying about sleep and creates healthier sleep habits that stick.
Speaker 1: It really does work, but it can be expensive and
Speaker 1: time consuming, so it might not be the right answer
Speaker 1: for everyone. Sleep medications offer a short term solution, but
Speaker 1: they come with risks and diminishing returns. Drugs don't address
Speaker 1: the root causes of insomnia and may actually reduce restorative sleep.
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, the FDA issued a chilling boxed warning
Speaker 1: about popular insomnia drugs like ambient, Lunesta and Sonata, noting
Speaker 1: they can trigger dangerous and bizarre sleep behaviors, including sleep
Speaker 1: driving yik that have led to serious injuries, arrests, and
Speaker 1: even death, sometimes after just one dose. A large new
Speaker 1: study offers some hopeful news for the sleep troubled. Researchers
Speaker 1: analyzed twenty two clinical trials involving more than thirteen hundreds
Speaker 1: insomnia patients to determine whether certain types of exercise could
Speaker 1: make a difference. The results showed that when it comes
Speaker 1: to insomnia, all exercise isn't equal. Yoga and tai chi
Speaker 1: stood out as particularly effective. Yoga was the clear star
Speaker 1: of the study. Compared with people in control groups, those
Speaker 1: who practiced yoga slept about one hundred ten minutes longer
Speaker 1: each night, that's nearly two extra hours. They also fell
Speaker 1: asleep faster and woke up less often. The studies tested
Speaker 1: different yoga traditions, but the common thread was that the
Speaker 1: yoga practice was gentle, not vigorous. Movements were low impact,
Speaker 1: and every trial emphasized prana, yama, regulated breathing, or other
Speaker 1: breath based meditation practices. Tai chi, the gentle, flowing martial art,
Speaker 1: also helped people sleep about fifty minutes longer, and they
Speaker 1: reported fewer nighttime awakenings. Impressively, tai Chi's benefits lasted up
Speaker 1: to two years after the practice ended. Walking or jogging
Speaker 1: had a different benefit. It didn't extend sleep as much,
Speaker 1: but it led to the biggest drop in insomnia's severity scores,
Speaker 1: which means that people felt like their insomnia had improved.
Speaker 1: Feeling like your insomnia is better matters because it reduces stress,
Speaker 1: restores confidence in your ability to sleep, and improves how
Speaker 1: you function during the day. Other forms of exercise, like
Speaker 1: strength training and aerobic workouts helped somewhat, but weren't as
Speaker 1: consistently effective. Why does exercise work at all? Scientists think
Speaker 1: it helps regulate stress hormones, improves mood, and even boosts
Speaker 1: brain chemicals tied to sleep. Yoga and tai chi in particular,
Speaker 1: may calm the nervous system and quiet the anxiety that
Speaker 1: so often drives insomnia. The takeaway being active is linked
Speaker 1: with better rest and gentle, consistent movement seems especially effective,
Speaker 1: So roll out of yoga mat try a beginner chai
Speaker 1: chi class. Or lace up your walking shoes. Speed round
Speaker 1: of sleep tips my favorite sleep trick. When my busy
Speaker 1: mind keeps me from sleeping, I use a method called
Speaker 1: cognitive shuffling. I start with my dog's name Sugar. I
Speaker 1: think of as many S words as I can sun, smile, sofa, sandwich.
Speaker 1: When I run out of s wards, I moved to
Speaker 1: the letter you, umbrella, ukulele, umami. I always fall asleep
Speaker 1: before I get to g Cognitive shuffling distracts your brain
Speaker 1: with random, unrelated words, just enough to pull you out
Speaker 1: of worry loops, but not enough to keep you alert.
Speaker 1: Christina Karen at The New York Times wrote a good
Speaker 1: story about this method. Read more. Go to bed earlier.
Speaker 1: Staying up past one a m takes a toll on
Speaker 1: mental health, no matter if you are a night owl
Speaker 1: or an early bird. In a Stanford Medicine study of
Speaker 1: nearly seventy five thousand adults, late sleepers were up to
Speaker 1: forty percent more likely to develop depression or anxiety. The
Speaker 1: takeaway your brain will thank you for turning out the
Speaker 1: lights earlier. Read more. Try a nappuccino. I learned about
Speaker 1: nappuccino's from one of of my favorite writer's Daniel Pink.
Speaker 1: In his book When the Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing,
Speaker 1: Pink calls naps Zamboni's for the Brain a Napucino. Pairs
Speaker 1: caffeine with a nap. Drink a cup of coffee, then
Speaker 1: immediately lie down for a ten to twenty minute nap.
Speaker 1: By the time you wake, the caffeine is just kicking in,
Speaker 1: leaving you more alert and refreshed. Pink suggests timing naps
Speaker 1: about seven hours after waking, creating a quiet environment, setting
Speaker 1: a twenty five minute timer, and making napping a consistent habit.
Speaker 1: For the best results, check out Daniel Pink on Substack.
Speaker 1: Write tomorrow's to do list at bedtime. A Baylor University
Speaker 1: study found that people who wrote a detailed to do
Speaker 1: list at bedtime fell asleep faster than those who wrote
Speaker 1: about tasks they had already completed. The more specific the list,
Speaker 1: the faster participants drifted off. Writing down tomorrow's tasks helps
Speaker 1: offload mental clutter, reducing rumination and easing the transition to sleep.
Speaker 1: Turn off lights for brain and body health. I have
Speaker 1: always had a tendency to leave haul lights on at night,
Speaker 1: but I've learned that stray light is bad for your brain.
Speaker 1: Even low levels of light at night from a bedside
Speaker 1: lamp or an eReader can suppress melatonin and disrupt circadian rhythms,
Speaker 1: making it harder to fall asleep. Exposure to dim light
Speaker 1: at night has been linked in animal and human studies
Speaker 1: to weight gain, insulin resistance, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and depression.
Speaker 1: I spoke with Randy Nelson, Professor and chair at Rockefeller
Speaker 1: Neuroscience Institute at West Virginia University, who suggests limiting your
Speaker 1: exposure to bright light two hours before you want to
Speaker 1: go to bed. He recommends a palaeolithic lighting regime bright
Speaker 1: days and dark nights to keep the body clock aligned
Speaker 1: and to support better sleep and metabolic health. So at bedtime,
Speaker 1: turn off the lights, pull the shades, and wear a
Speaker 1: sleep mask. When you wake up, take a morning walk
Speaker 1: in the sun, and bask in bright light during the day.
Speaker 1: Doctor Nelson recommends outdoor walks, especially if you're stuck in
Speaker 1: low level office lighting. A walk in the morning, you're
Speaker 1: just going to feel better, he said. And if you're
Speaker 1: working in low level office lights, you're going to be
Speaker 1: in perpetual jet lag. Dogsomnia is totally worth it. One
Speaker 1: of the most popular stories I wrote during my tenure
Speaker 1: at The New York Times was about dogsomnia, which is
Speaker 1: the sleep loss that results from sleeping with your dog.
Speaker 1: It's real, but a male clinic study that tracked the
Speaker 1: sleep of people and their pet dogs found that dogsomnia
Speaker 1: only amounts to about fifteen minutes of lost sleep per night.
Speaker 1: Doglovers will be glad to know that your presence doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to disrupt your dog's sleep at all. The researchers
Speaker 1: found that the dogs slept just find no matter where
Speaker 1: they were, and notably, when the dogs did awake at night,
Speaker 1: they squeezed in about two minutes of playtime before settling
Speaker 1: back down. Read the story the end again. Check out
Speaker 1: the show notes to read the referenced stories, or to
Speaker 1: check out Daniel Pink's substack account. In addition to TERA's
Speaker 1: newsletter One Day Better. Okay, the first statistic that kind
Speaker 1: of shocked me when I first read this article was
Speaker 1: that thirty to forty percent of the population struggles with
Speaker 1: insomnia issues. That was a bit higher than I thought
Speaker 1: it would be, and so it surprises me that the
Speaker 1: medical community isn't more dialed into this issue. More on
Speaker 1: that in a moment. When I say I struggle to
Speaker 1: fall asleep, I'm not exaggerating. I forced myself to lie
Speaker 1: down and be in the dark, but it's often upwards
Speaker 1: of an hour or so before I am finally unconscious.
Speaker 1: I had to stop peeking at the clock because that
Speaker 1: just makes it worse, and to watch that time slip away,
Speaker 1: I think that just makes it even harder to fall asleep.
Speaker 1: My other issue is that, at a very personal level,
Speaker 1: my loving husband can fall asleep in way under five
Speaker 1: minutes with extreme consistency. Even if he falls asleep in
Speaker 1: his easy chair while we're watching TV before going to bed,
Speaker 1: he can still hit the pillow and be out like
Speaker 1: a light in no time flat. And that, to be honest,
Speaker 1: light's a bit of an envious spire for me. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I'm lying there just wishing I was him in certain moments.
Speaker 1: Now he also snores, which impedes my ability to fall
Speaker 1: asleep sometimes, but luckily I found some earplugs that were
Speaker 1: eh about night percent of the time. But I digress.
Speaker 1: I actually started doing the whole cognitive shuffling exercise. While
Speaker 1: it's not quite as effective for me as it is
Speaker 1: for terra. I do find that my mind sort of
Speaker 1: starts to slow down, and I stop churning through random
Speaker 1: thoughts of earlier today or what the plan is for tomorrow,
Speaker 1: and I focus in on this word game of sorts.
Speaker 1: I've always been a fan of word games, so that's
Speaker 1: probably another reason that it appeals to me. I start
Speaker 1: losing focus, and then that leads to falling asleep for me.
Speaker 1: I will notice that my mind starts to drift, and
Speaker 1: then eventually it kind of just drifts away into nothingness.
Speaker 1: And then the next thing I notice is that my
Speaker 1: bladder is full. And that's like three hours later, and
Speaker 1: I'm up for that reason a little over disclosure. But
Speaker 1: I know it's a thing for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: especially once again, people of a certain age. I have
Speaker 1: talked to my or I had to my previous doctor
Speaker 1: about my inability to fall asleep and stay asleep, and
Speaker 1: she kind of blew me off, and she just told
Speaker 1: me it's something a lot of people deal with and
Speaker 1: that it comes with getting older, and that was it.
Speaker 1: Not inconsequentially, I have a new doctor now, and this
Speaker 1: one actually listened to me. She did prescribe something and
Speaker 1: that helped me a little, and then I started a
Speaker 1: bit of a weight loss journey. Yes, folks, I am
Speaker 1: on the GLP one train at the moment, and the
Speaker 1: nurse practitioner working with me as part of that weight
Speaker 1: management program suggested progesterone capsules because the sleeping medication I
Speaker 1: was taking works best on an empty stomach, and if
Speaker 1: you've ever taken a peptide, you know that it slows
Speaker 1: down the digestion rates, so your stomach is rarely empty,
Speaker 1: and so that makes that sleep medication less potent. I'm
Speaker 1: guessing the progesterone. I'm still on the fence about that.
Speaker 1: I need to do some more research before I start
Speaker 1: taking that regularly. I tried it during the summer months
Speaker 1: when I'm a lot more active, and so all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I went cold turkey again and it wasn't
Speaker 1: as bothersome and I seem to be doing better. As
Speaker 1: Tara noted, maybe the increase inactivity was the factor there. Now,
Speaker 1: what really excited me after reading this article was the
Speaker 1: evidence that yoga and tai chi were so effective. I
Speaker 1: struggle with yoga a little due to an old ankle injury,
Speaker 1: but I have been looking into tai chi and It's
Speaker 1: also highly recommended for people of a certain age, so
Speaker 1: that's at the top of my personal list at the moment.
Speaker 1: I've also been seeing some reels that show some of
Speaker 1: those tai chi movements that appear to be gentle enough
Speaker 1: that I may be able to keep up and actually
Speaker 1: succeed at doing it. Moving on to the topic of
Speaker 1: activity being helpful as it relates to me personally, my
Speaker 1: relationship with vigorous exercise, well, it's not good. I do
Speaker 1: love swimming, and I can get some decent activity in
Speaker 1: the pool, but of course that's only during the warmer months.
Speaker 1: As the summer faded into autumn, and now we're right
Speaker 1: around the corner from winter. Tai Chi looks like my
Speaker 1: best bet to double up on my journey to achieve
Speaker 1: a better night's rest. Wish me luck on that. Two
Speaker 1: more things I've worked on to fall asleep gonna admit
Speaker 1: with some success, but again not a miracle level solution,
Speaker 1: are meditative in nature. I either listen to something on
Speaker 1: the Calm app. That's not an advertisement for Calm. I
Speaker 1: just use the app to help me out on a
Speaker 1: particularly non RESTful night, and also focusing into the sound
Speaker 1: of my own breathing. That helps me the most when
Speaker 1: I'm wearing earplugs, actually, because then I can hear my
Speaker 1: own breathing a lot better. I do find that that
Speaker 1: listening and just trying to focus in and focus on
Speaker 1: nothing but the sound of your breathing, that kind of
Speaker 1: also helps my mind start to drift, and that sort
Speaker 1: of leaves me feeling more relaxed and ready for sleep.
Speaker 1: The last thing I need to work on, I think,
Speaker 1: is getting used to wearing a sleep mask. I haven't
Speaker 1: had a lot of luck with that so far. It's
Speaker 1: distracting for me rather than helpful. I just I don't
Speaker 1: like the feel of it. I don't like the feel
Speaker 1: of my eyelashes against the sleep mask. You know that
Speaker 1: there was the statement in the article that the dark
Speaker 1: room is another key to the deeper sleep. In my bedroom,
Speaker 1: we do have blackout curtains, but there's still a little
Speaker 1: ambient light. There's like this little red light on the
Speaker 1: TV that lights up a section of the room, and
Speaker 1: then there's a clock that I moved over to my
Speaker 1: hubbies' night stand, but that still emits a little bit
Speaker 1: of light, so it's not pitch black in there. I
Speaker 1: did see on Amazon or something. Something came across my
Speaker 1: phone random ad and it had like a special sleep
Speaker 1: mask that gave you more They had little cups around
Speaker 1: your eyes so that you wouldn't feel anything up against
Speaker 1: your eyeballs or eyelids, and so I think I might
Speaker 1: try that anyway. In summary, I suppose I feel hopeful
Speaker 1: that a better and more RESTful sleep is in my future.
Speaker 1: I am encouraged by the variety of options presented in
Speaker 1: this article alongside my personal experiences. I did appreciate that
Speaker 1: I'm totally not an outlier and I'm not alone in
Speaker 1: this journey slash struggle to find the perfect sleep routine.
Speaker 1: I hope that if you're in the same boat as
Speaker 1: I am, you did find at least one helpful suggestion today.
Speaker 1: Thanks one last time to Tara Parker Pope for agreeing
Speaker 1: to be today's featured contributor. Okay, time to move on
Speaker 1: to next week. I'll be featuring Skip Concannon. He writes
Speaker 1: about how a move from Boston to rural Oregon changed
Speaker 1: a lot about how he views life. It was actually
Speaker 1: hard to choose which of his stories to share. You
Speaker 1: don't have to be someone who has migrated from one
Speaker 1: end of the country to another, to find relatable wisdom
Speaker 1: in what he has to share about how he use
Speaker 1: life and how he discovers things about himself as he
Speaker 1: relates to his community. I'm looking really forward to sharing
Speaker 1: it with you until next week. Take care,