383: Midlife Sleep Solutions: Transform Your Night, Transform Your Life w/ Morgan Adams

Transcripts are auto-generated.

Courtney Townley 0:01
Are sleepless nights or anxiety about sleep robbing you of midlife vitality? If so, this Grace and Grit podcast episode is for you. We are doing a deep dive into a lot of the myths around what it means to get good sleep and how to go about getting a better sleep cycle at midlife. So if that sounds like something you might be interested in, stick around, because that’s where we’re headed.

Courtney Townley 0:24
Welcome to the Grace and Grit podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them, not behind them. Join your host Courtney Townley right now as she breaks down the fairy tale health story you have been chasing all of your life into sensible action steps and lasting change.

Courtney Townley 0:53
I’ve always prided myself on what I call being a sleep champion. I mean, I feel like I should have a gold medal in sleep. Well, that was true up until a couple years ago. So for decades, I could hit the pillow at night, drift off without a second thought, and sleep solid through the night. But these past few years, as I roll through perimenopause, that is no longer the case. Now, my sleep is dramatically changing. I have found myself tossing and turning, staring at the clock, waking up and struggling to get back to sleep, waking up too early, not being able to get to sleep when I want to, and so many other things, which, of course, affects my health and my well being. On a lot of levels.

Courtney Townley 1:33
I experience afternoon crashes. I experience more reactivity, and no one’s got time for that. I don’t have time for that at midlife. So this journey has absolutely opened my eyes to how crucial sleep is for our overall health and well being, and why so many of my clients also struggle with this foundational aspect of health, because it really is so fundamental to our health and well being so I am absolutely thrilled to be introducing you today to Morgan Adams, who is literally a sleep coach. So she helps women get better sleep at midlife.

Courtney Townley 2:13
And Morgan isn’t just another sleep expert. She is someone who has walked through the fire of sleep struggles herself, emerging with practical, medical, free solutions that actually work. As a holistic sleep coach and a two time breast cancer survivor, she brings a really unique and powerful perspective to this conversation about transforming our relationship with sleep. So let’s without further ado, let’s get to it, because we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Morgan Adams, welcome to the Grace and Grit Podcast. I’m so happy that you’re here.

Morgan Adams 2:54
Thank you for having me on. It’s great to be here, Courtney.

Courtney Townley 2:57
And I do not think that we can have this conversation enough with the population that this podcast is really marketing to, which is the midlife woman, the conversation of sleep, because there are so many challenges that arise at midlife with our sleep cycles, our ability to get quality sleep, our ability to get enough sleep. And I have long believed, you know, everyone has their anchors, the things that help them to feel grounded in their wellness journey. And what my anchors are might be a little different for you, and what might be a little different for the next person, but we all have the anchor of sleep, right? Sleep helps us with so many things. So I’m so happy that you’re here and we’re gonna have this conversation now you call yourself a sleep coach? Yes,

Morgan Adams 3:41
Yes, I do. Yes.

Courtney Townley 3:42
Okay, tell us about that. Tell us what led you to that and how you really think about that works.

Morgan Adams 3:47
Yeah. So my sleep story goes back, you know, about 20 years. I ended up developing insomnia while I was going through the beginning of a very stressful romantic relationship in my mid 30s, which I’ll spare you the details of, but essentially, that left me in a situation where I was having what they call sleep onset insomnia. So I would lie there in bed, tossing and turning for up to one to two hours every night, waiting for sleep to happen.

Morgan Adams 4:15
After a few months of this, I said, Okay, enough is enough. I went to my primary care doctor to get help, and I was given a prescription for Ambien. Now, at the time that this is all happening, I was actually a pharmaceutical sales rep, so drugs were my currency, the legal so it was sort of like, oh yeah, there’s a pill for that. Sure. I’ll take it.

Morgan Adams 4:37
And it did its job as advertised. It got me to sleep more quickly, but I paid on the back end with a lot of side effects the next day. And we can, you know, maybe elaborate on what’s going on with the sleeping pills and stuff, but I just kind of weathered through it for for about eight years, and then I met a guy who turned out to be my future husband.

Morgan Adams 5:01
And while we were in our early dating, he said to me, you know, when you take that pill, you kind of act like a zombie, and it freaks me out. And I was like, oh my goodness, he’s, you know, like he’s got a really valid point here. And so I started reevaluating my relationship with the pills, and I decided that I was going to stop taking them because I did not feel like they were serving me anymore.

Morgan Adams 5:26
However, I did not go about it in the way that I promote other people going about it, and that is when you are coming off of medication, sleep, medication, psychiatric or otherwise, really partner with your prescribing provider on how to do that appropriately, how to taper it down, or whatever you need to do. But I went rogue. I just, I was like, Yeah, because, I mean, I’m just, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re grace and grit. I have got a lot of grit. And I was like, I’m gonna weather through this. I’m gonna get through it. And I did, and fortunately, I didn’t have a lot of bumps along the way, and I ended up sleeping pretty well for many years after that.

Morgan Adams 6:06
And then there was a plot twist. And that was a plot twist that we collectively experienced in March of 2020, when the pandemic just started and nobody knew it was up, my sleep started to suffer again, and I got really worried. But this time around, I went to Google and started, you know, researching sleep and how to sleep better, and I was actually able to get my sleep fixed pretty quickly. And during that process, I ended up getting on Facebook and just sharing organically with people like, how is getting better sleep. And during that time, I found out that a lot of other women in my age group were having trouble sleeping too, yeah.

Morgan Adams 6:49
So just backtracking a couple years before that, 2018 is when I had my first breast cancer incident, and that was actually a pivotal moment for me in terms of figuring out, like, Hmm, I think I need a new career. I think I need to do something to help women with their health. And so then when the whole sleep situation happened again in 2020 it was like, Ah, okay, all the stars have aligned, and how I’m going to help women with their health is by helping them with their sleep and so it was, it was 2020, when I decided to be a sleep coach.

Morgan Adams 7:25
Now, deciding to do something and actually doing it are like two different things, unfortunately, like, you can’t just hang up your shingle and say I’m a sleep coach. Now, I had to spend some time getting prepped up for that. So I took a year and got my certification as a health coach, a couple of different sleep coaching certifications, and then started this practice in 2021 so it was a very long and roundabout route to get to where I am, but it’s been an incredible privilege to be able to help so many midlife women struggling with sleep during this time in their lives.

Courtney Townley 8:00
Oh, no doubt, no doubt. I have a question for you. When you did get your first breast cancer diagnosis, you’ve had breast cancer twice, correct? Twice? Yes, yes. The first diagnosis, you mentioned that that was a wake up call, that you know you needed a shift in career, which I love that as well, because I think so often when I’m because I talk a lot about the midlife renovation, and to me, that sounds like a part of your renovation. Yes. How old were you at that stage?

Speaker 1 8:25
I was 48 at the first one, and then 51 on the second, okay, breast cancer. So I was actually already kind of in the beginning stages of my business during the second diagnosis.

Courtney Townley 8:38
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so before we get further into sleep, I’d love to ask you, now that you are a health coach, and you’ve obviously gone through your own health journey in so many different ways at this age and stage of your life, how do you define health?

Speaker 1 8:55
Ooh, that’s a good one. I define it as not necessarily like things that you look at from the outside like. So when I was younger, I did things that were, quote, healthy, because they made me look good, right, of course. So, you know, I would count calories. I would do a lot of cardio. I would try not to eat sweets, because all of these things, you know, I didn’t want to be overweight, I didn’t want to have bad skin, but now, like, the shift for me is that, like, I’m doing all of these really healthy things, quote, healthy things that are actually really healthy now, because I Want to feel good, right?

Speaker 1 9:40
And you know, if the side effect is, you know, I’m having good skin and, you know, I like my body composition, well, that’s icing on the cake. But it’s a different it’s a different mindset for me in terms of health, and it’s a lot. It goes a lot deeper than it had been. It was, you know, rather soon. Superficial, I have to say, in my 20s and 30s and even earlier into my 40s,

Courtney Townley 10:05
oh yeah, you’re so not alone in that. I think that everyone listening can relate to that. I know I certainly can. So let’s talk about how sleep intersects with that, like with health and the feeling good, like, what is the value? And I know that most listeners, they’ve heard these things before, but again, I think we can’t reiterate them enough. What is the value of sleep to our health?

Speaker 1 10:25
Yeah, well, there’s no area that it does not impact. So we can kind of run down the list. It’s brain health, it’s immune health, it’s heart health, it’s metabolic health, and it’s also a mental health as well. So if we are not sleeping well, you know, we’re going to be more prone to getting anxiety and depression. We’re going to have more stress in our life. And one thing that people don’t talk about enough, at least, in my opinion, is sort of the the way that sleep helps our relationships, so it helps us with empathy. They’ve even done studies showing that when people are sleep deprived, they’re less sympathetic, they’re less likely to donate to a nonprofit or help other people who need help at work.

Morgan Adams 11:08
So I think, you know, a lot of times, like, for example, if you’ve gotten cut off and someone in traffic and someone yells at you or gives you an unfriendly gesture, like when that, whenever that happens to me right now, I think they might not have slept well, you know, like my lens goes there, because some of the bad behaviors that we see in day to day life, I think, can be attributed to people’s lack of sleep, honestly. And I think sometimes we forget about that, but literally, there’s no aspect of our health that sleep does not touch.

Courtney Townley 11:41
Yeah, I love that you bring up the relationship piece, because so often, with my clients, they’re often rationalizing staying up late to connect with their loved ones, to watch the movie with their husband, to make sure that you know their kids are going to bed their teenagers, whatever it may be. And we’re often having this conversation of, okay, let’s really consider what’s going on here. Because what is the cost to this relationship if you don’t get enough sleep tonight, right? And it’s exactly all the things you were just speaking to that it does make us more reactive and emotionally volatile, and we’re not such good problem solvers all the things. Yeah.

Speaker 1 12:20
I mean, you’re right, it seems good in the moment, yeah, of course, because you’re enjoying time on the couch, but then the next day, like, if you haven’t slept well, you know, how are you going to manage the conflict, right? How are the daily stressors? Are you going to be able to ride those out well? Or are you going to, you know, snap at

Courtney Townley 12:39
somebody Exactly, exactly. I had a my dog, like, this was several years ago, passed away. He was 15, and I remember, like, those last couple of years of his life, he was very, like, snappy, right? Because he didn’t feel good. He had arthritis, and, you know, he just didn’t want to be touched. He didn’t want to be looked at. Like, just leave me alone. And that is how I feel when I don’t get a good night. So, yeah, right. Oh yeah, definitely, yeah. So it’s, I think it’s so relatable and just so relevant. So obviously, for the midlife female population, there are some, you know, unique considerations in terms of why we particularly struggle in the sleep department. So can we just touch on that before we go into like, some of the strategies to help improve it?

Speaker 1 13:29
Yes. So yeah, there’s kind of three main reasons why women in midlife are struggling more with their sleep the first one is kind of an obvious answer. It’s It’s hormones that are declining and fluctuating. So the progesterone in particular is sort of like our anxiety hormone or anti anxiety hormone. So when that starts to starts to decline, a lot of people find themselves more anxious, more wound up. And then the estrogen is so important, because that helps keep our blood sugar regulated, helps keep our temperature regulation intact. Helps Prevent the nighttime, the early morning, cortisol awakening.

Speaker 1 14:07
So that estrogen, when we don’t have it, it really can affect our ability to stay asleep, in particular and then we move on to the issues of mental health. So when women are in midlife, they tend to have more tendencies towards anxiety and depression, and both of those leave us more vulnerable to sleep struggles.

Speaker 1 14:29
And then the third reason is really more of a socio cultural reason, and it’s relating back to the fact that we’re, quote, in the sandwich generation. So we have a woman in mid life, let’s just say 45 to 50. She may have children at home that she’s responsible for. She may have aging parents who need help, you know, maybe getting to appointments and managing their lives. And then on top of all that, she’s likely at the height of her career, and maybe she owns her own. Business, maybe she’s a manager, and all of those competing demands create extra stress and anxiety, which can impact sleep. So if you just consider all three of those variables happening at once, you can see why it can be a, you know, a really unfortunate situation for a lot of women in midlife with their sleep, yeah,

Courtney Townley 15:19
and they kind of all feed each other. So I definitely, I mean, in this conversation, I’ve struggled. I’ve been, first of all, I would consider myself a gold medalist in the sleep apartment most of my life. But I’ve noticed a couple years ago, I started to have some sleep challenges, mainly with waking up and then struggling to get back to sleep. Yes, and what happens when I wake up is I start spinning out about things I’m not even spinning out about during the day. Mostly it’s about my kid. I have a great kid, but I still worry, like, oh my gosh, he just got his driver’s license, what he gets in a car accident?

Courtney Townley 15:51
Like we go into doom and gloom in the middle of the night. And of course, that doesn’t help me get back to sleep. It just perpetuates me staying awake. So I love that you kind of brought all that together, because it’s, it’s definitely been my experience, for sure. So when we we often, I think, tackle the problem in a similar fashion to what you shared from the outset of the podcast, which is, we reach for the pharmaceuticals, right? Like, or we reach for, maybe it’s at over the counter, like something that we can get, you know, just at the grocery store, or even at our natural food store, like a lot of people are using melatonin and, you know, different supplemental support. So whether it’s a supplement, whether it’s a pharmaceutical, it’s maybe not the best starting place. Would you agree for helping to improve?

Speaker 1 16:39
Yeah, I 100% agree with that. So I look at supplements so well, I’m not particularly in favor of sleep medications, and that’s a whole different thread, unless they’re last resort. But supplements are super popular, and I’m not opposed to them, and I sometimes take them myself. But if you’re looking to sleep supplements as your first line strategy to fixing your sleep problems. You’re majoring in the minors, honestly.

Speaker 1 17:06
So there are a lot of other things that we can do before the supplements. So I look at supplements as something that you add on at the very end, versus something that you try the very onset of the sleep struggle. So people sometimes have it backwards. And I follow so many like on message boards and like support groups for midlife women, and it’s all you know, when people start asking about sleep, it’s like a list of women just giving out different supplements. And I’m like, You’re you’ve missed the boat here. You know this? This comes last. There’s so many other fundamental foundational pieces of getting better sleep that come before the supplements. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 17:45
so before we go there into the fundamentals, what are some other mistakes that you see women making around maybe trying to tackle this problem? Is there anything else that like comes to mind in terms of things that we do that aren’t really all that helpful. Or, like you said, they’re trying to major in the minors.

Morgan Adams 18:05
There are tons of them, yeah. So where do we start? So okay, I think, I think, I think what we can, we can look at, you know, as a basic are things that are just, like, kind of obvious, but like, sometimes people brush off, and things like alcohol and caffeine, just things that we’re ingesting now. Please understand I am like, I love my morning cup of coffee. Do not take it from me, and I will not ever try to take my clients coffee from them in the morning. But there’s a difference between a cup or two in the morning and relying on it all day long, right?

Morgan Adams 18:41
So if, if you are drinking caffeine after lunch, you may want to think about like potentially dialing back to, you know, decaf or having tea or some other drink quite often, I’ll just recommend that my client will go out and take a walk instead of having that caffeine, because that actual natural light gives you more energy than the caffeine, yes, without the side effects, and then with alcohol. I mean, this is a really tricky, touchy subject for a lot of women, but that nightly glass or two of wine may serve you well in terms of getting you to sleep more quickly, but you are going to probably be paying on the back end with some more awakenings and so again, I don’t, I don’t try to coerce anybody to, like, go completely sober, but if you’re going to have alcohol, think about having it earlier in the night, right?

Morgan Adams 19:37
So like, maybe Happy Hour versus a nightcap, maybe having one drink or two drinks instead of three or four drinks, because you really want to, you really want to allow at least three hours from the alcohol to clear out of your system, yeah, before you go to sleep. I mean, these are, these are all kind of pretty obvious things.

Courtney Townley 19:55
They’re great. They’re great refreshers.

Morgan Adams 19:56
They they are and then, you know, on the food front, I. Uh, keeping, like, dinners fairly light, like kind of eating on the earlier end can be really helpful. Giving your your body, like two to three hours at least of time to digest your your dinner before you go to bed. There’s a lot of talk lately about snacks before bed, and we should probably just kind of touch on that real quickly.

Morgan Adams 20:24
For the most part, you want to allow that two to three hours before bed and not have food. However, there are certain instances, and you’ve probably seen this with your clients, where a little bit of a small snack, maybe an hour before bed, can help stave off middle of the night wake ups for some people, not for everybody, but it’s what’s happening in those situations, is people maybe have eaten too early, and there’s way too long of a period of time that they’re not getting fuel, and their body wakes them up because their body’s like, we need more fuel, and They go into this sort of, like, higher cortisol adrenaline response that wakes them up.

Morgan Adams 21:04
So sometimes I’ll have my client just do a little test to see, like, what happens if you an hour before bed have maybe half a cup of Greek yogurt? Will that keep you from having the middle of night awakening? And sometimes it will, sometimes it won’t. But it’s definitely worth a try to see.

Courtney Townley 21:22
Can you clarify too, like, the maybe the makeup of that snack, like, what’s important in terms of maybe, like, what we should stay away from, and what might be more useful if we want to run that experiment?

Morgan Adams 21:35
Yes, great point with that. So a lot of times middle of the night. Snacks, mean, cookies, ice cream, cake, things like mine, just, you know, like, Yeah, and you know those, so if you’re, like, if you’re gonna eat, like, sweets and stuff like that. Like, believe me, I eat sweets. I don’t I have a sweet tooth, but I eat them like, after lunch, like, you know, way far from bed. The sugar that will just kind of overheat you and tend to make you wake up more often, have a higher body temperature, higher heart rate.

Morgan Adams 22:07
So the snacks that are going to be the most useful are snacks that are like one to 200 calories, ish, you know, small we’re not talking about a second meal, something that’s got fairly high protein, some fat and maybe some complex carbs. So like maybe Greek yogurt with some with some nuts, or maybe some hummus and celery something, or sometimes even a few bites of your leftovers from dinner. Could could suit you well. Those are perfectly fine snacks.

Courtney Townley 22:37
Those are great. I love those examples. Anything else that comes to mind in terms of, like, the mistakes that we’re making before we move into some of the strategies that really help.

Speaker 1 22:46
Yeah. So I think one of the mistakes that I see quite often, you touched on this a little bit, but it’s, I think it’s worth delving into a little bit more, is it’s called Revenge, bedtime, procrastination, and basically

Courtney Townley 23:00
what this heard that term.

Speaker 1 23:03
It’s basically what you were alluding to earlier, when a woman will be like wanting to stay up later to have time with her partner and

Courtney Townley 23:11
or even herself, right? It’s like the only time we have in the day for ourselves.

Speaker 1 23:16
Yes, that’s exactly right. And so this concept revenge, bedtime, procrastination has been around for a while, but it started getting a little bit more publicity during the pandemic, and typically, the person who is dealing with this is usually a busy professional and a mom. So what’s going on is that this person who’s dealing with it is spending their entire day doing things for other people and not doing anything for themselves. And so the end of the day happens, and she’s like, Whew, okay, I finally have some me time. And then what she will often do is maybe do Netflix and wine or popcorn or scroll.

Speaker 1 23:59
I mean, like these are just very typical behaviors, and they’re under sand scroll or next, yeah, all a combination of there above, and it’s a total normal reaction. So what I usually suggest to clients is if they’re and honestly, most of my clients don’t do this. Most of my clients have insomnia and so different thread, but there are a lot of women who I talk to in my daily life and just, you know, here and there and everywhere, who are doing this. And what I usually suggest is taking some time during the day to block off a period of time, 510 minutes a few times a day to do things that bring you joy. And if that is watching YouTube video about cats, then so be it, you know, but just taking some time to do something that you enjoy so that you will be less tempted at night to do that thing when you need to be

Courtney Townley 24:53
sleeping, right? It reminds me a lot of when a woman isn’t well fed throughout the day, what happens in. Knight is we eat the cookies and the chocolate and the pizza and all the things because we’re just, you know, our blood sugar is just tempting us to do so, yes. And so I hear just that similar response that when we’re and I see it so much in my clientele too, that when we’re not pollinating our day with joy, we end up trying to catch up for all that missed joy, yes, at a time in the day when really the best nutrient is going to be sleep.

Speaker 1 25:26
Yes, yes, yeah, you said it so well, and then like reminding yourself as to your why, about why you want to get good sleep, because sometimes I think we forget our pro why we want to get good sleep. So you may even want to consider writing a sticky note and putting on your bathroom mirror about why you want to sleep. Well, you know, maybe you have a presentation the next day that you really want to knock out, right? You want to just wow the whole entire office with it. Maybe that’s your why for getting good sleep and not doing the bedtime procrastination. We all have our own whys, so it’s really getting clear on what that why is for you and why you want to prioritize that sleep,

Courtney Townley 26:03
because there really is, even though we understand the value of sleep and we know it’s going to benefit us, there is a level of discomfort with giving ourselves more of it, especially when we don’t have a practice of it, because we are sacrificing other things, whether that’s alone time or it’s time with your family, or everything has a sacrifice. But in this case, I love what you said there. It’s like, what am I actually saying yes to tomorrow by putting myself to bed tonight? Yeah.

Speaker 1 26:37
So one of the things I like to say is, don’t, don’t think of sleep as an inconvenience, think of as an investment in your next day.

Courtney Townley 26:45
Beautiful. I love that because it really gets you focused on the benefit rather than the sacrifice. Exactly, so good, so good. Okay, let’s get into some of the things that I know a lot of listeners are just itching to hear, which is, what do I do?

Speaker 1 27:01
Yeah, okay, so things that we can do to improve our sleep. So I always start with circadian rhythm, because having a strong circadian rhythm, you need, actually a good, strong circadian rhythm to generate good sleep. So the circadian rhythm is really the foundation. And there are few practices that I usually recommend to everybody, because they’re accessible, they’re free, they’re simple. I don’t want to say they’re easy, because they’re not always easy, but they’re simple to do you don’t need to buy anything, or, you know, download a whole bunch of stuff.

Speaker 1 27:35
So the first one is getting natural light in the morning as soon as you can when you wake up. So what you want to think about is like the times in the morning when you can get out in the morning like so sunrise happens at different times of the year for different locations you want to like. You can actually look at your weather app or look at there’s an app that I use called My circadian app, and it will tell you when the sunrise is, when the sunset is, and you want to aim for getting out as soon as you can to the sunrise and staying out there for about 10 minutes without your sunglasses. Can I ask you a question about this? Yes, please.

Courtney Townley 28:21
So I typically, especially now, because we’re out of winter in Montana, like it’s obviously very hard to do in Montana during the winter, but I usually take my coffee and drink it outside on my porch. But I have worn contacts my whole life, and I cannot stand not having my contacts in my eyes when I’m awake because I can’t see anything. Yeah, I don’t like I don’t wear glasses very often. And so I’ve been wondering lately is, am I actually getting that light in my eyes properly if I have a protective cover over my eye

Speaker 1 28:55
like contact? Sadly, the answer is no. I thought though, yeah, I know. Well, there are, there are certain. Now I don’t have the names of these contacts, and I could

Courtney Townley 29:03
find them for Google Search recently because I had the same question, yeah, how to be contacts that don’t have that level of protection? And I’m definitely going to talk about it with my ophthalmologist. Great,

Speaker 1 29:12
great. Yeah, they make those. So what I see often in my neighborhood, because I take my dogs for a walk around sun, sunrise every morning, and I’ll quite often see people with their sunglasses on, yeah, and you don’t really want those on at that time of the morning, because what you’re doing is you’re blocking all of the happenings. So essentially, when the light hits your eye, it sends a signal to your super Chis nucleus, that’s your circadian pacemaker. And from there, there’s this really beautiful cascade of neuro hormone neurotransmitters and hormones happening, boosting your cortisol, naturally, shutting down any residual melatonin. So when you have sunglasses blocking your eyes, you inhibit those processes from fully happening. Okay, so.

Speaker 1 30:00
And then there’s another part of the morning that I want to tell you about that I think a lot of people have missed. And some circadian scientists would argue this is even more important than the sunrise, and it’s called UVA rise. Now I mentioned my circadian app, that is an app where you can actually see when the UVA rise is happening, and basically what’s happening at UVA rise, it’s when the sun is at between a 10 to 30 degree angle above the horizon, okay? And it’s usually about an hour. So it’s like literally right after sunrise, and it’s right before UVB rise, when vitamin D is available. So really interesting things happen.

Speaker 1 30:45
During during that period of time, you have amino acids in your eyes, and when the light hits those during the UVA period, it converts those amino acids to the neurotransmitters serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine, the feel goods, the feel goods, and it also helps regulate your regulate your thyroid, and helps appetite regulation. So I off. When I learned about this a couple of years ago, I started going out a little bit after sunrise, sun, sunrise, because I wanted to collect those benefits I call, I call the UVA rise period, the internal pharmacy. It’s tapping into so many powerful benefits for your body. So what you would want to do is, I mean, I know it sounds like a lot, but what you would want to do is think about your schedule and how you can weave maybe 10 minutes of time during that UVA rise using either the app. There’s other apps too, but you want to find that time period and think about your day and when you can get outside, and it doesn’t have to be all at once.

Speaker 1 31:54
So I’ll sneak out for like, 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there, because my goal is to get 20 minutes of that time during the morning of the UVA rise. It doesn’t happen every morning, because things come up with work and family, and so I can’t always do it, but I I don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. I just get out and get what I can, because I have felt the difference. Seriously, Courtney, when I am when I’m taking advantage of the morning sunlight. It’s a huge difference in my mood, energy and sleep. And I talked to all of my clients about this, and they’re all kind of, like, in the beginning, a little skeptical, like, Are you sure? Like, why haven’t I ever heard this before? Well, the reason why you haven’t heard this before is because who’s going to advertise it? There’s no There’s no money to be made. I mean, who’s gonna fund the who’s gonna fund the ads for this, right? Like, really? So they end up doing it because, you know, they’re like, Okay, well, this is my coach, and I’m gonna follow some of her, guy, some of her, you know, suggestions. And they’re all like, oh my gosh, I made a huge difference. So that is one thing that you can do, a big, big deal. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 33:06
exactly what you said earlier about like pollinating the joy right into the day. I think that’s such an easy thing to kind of you can stack those things together, like giving yourself that permission to have that 1020, minute break where you’re outside, maybe feet in the grass, and just looking at nature, or, you know, doing whatever you want to do, that brings you joy in the light of the sun.

Speaker 1 33:30
Yeah. And here’s the most beautiful scenario of all, Courtney, is if you can rally a neighbor to do to go on a 20 minute walk with you in the morning, you’ve got your movement, you’ve got your sunlight and you’ve got your socialization. It’s like trifecta. It’s like something amazing. So then second thing I would recommend for like, if you’re on your journey to beginning to get better sleep, and you’re talking about circadian rhythm optimization, I would say the second thing is to have a stable, consistent wake time every morning, even on the weekends. I know people kind of fight me on that, but your body and brain don’t know the difference between Sunday and Thursday, and so the your body doesn’t know.

Speaker 1 34:14
The benefit of this anchored wake up time is that it’s it really sets your circadian rhythm to have consistent cortisol and melatonin pulses throughout the day, and it tells your body and brain, hey, it’s the morning. It’s time to do all these different processes. And by virtue of having a consistent wake time, you typically will become sleepy around the same time each night, so after about 14 to 16 hours after you wake up, you’ve built up an accumulation of adenosine, which is your sleepy chemical, and that needs to be released in form of, you know, your bout of your big bout of sleep in the night. So you’re gonna basically become sleepy around the same time, maybe not to the hour, but in the. General vicinity, you’re going to be sleepy around the same time when you have that consistent wake time.

Speaker 1 35:06
Now I will just kind of caveat that and say a lot of people are like, Okay, does that mean I have to go to bed at the same time every night? No, it doesn’t. Actually, your wake time is a lot more important than or the consistency of your wake time is a lot more important than the consistency of your consistency of your going to bed time. So the going to bed time ideally would be like picking an hour window to go to bed and then waiting for like, the sleepiness cues to hit you. A lot of women will, you know, we talked about the women who are going to bed too late because they’re scrolling and Netflix thing? Well, there’s also another subset of women, and these are actually the kinds of people that I typically see. They go to bed too early. They go to bed too early because they feel like they need to catch up on sleep because they haven’t slept well. So they’re essentially perpetuating this kind of insomnia cycle. They’re getting into bed at eight or nine and they’re not sleepy, they’re fatigued. And fatigue and sleepiness are two different animals altogether. So they’re not waiting until they’re sleepy. Yeah,

Courtney Townley 36:08
I love that you’re bringing that up, because I literally just had that conversation with a client yesterday who was talking about she was she had a bedtime but then she was saying on the call, I think I’m gonna, I’m gonna play with it a little bit, because I think I am putting myself to bed too early, yeah? And I was like, that’s great,

Speaker 1 36:24
yeah? What a lot of people will notice too, when when they go to bed a little bit later, if they’re having middle of the night wake ups, yeah, they will find that those wake ups are reduced because their sleep is a little bit more consolidated. They’ll end up sometimes sleeping through the normal wake ups that they would typically have. So

Courtney Townley 36:42
on this note, like, how do you know that you’re getting enough sleep? Like, because I know that you know the eight hour, you know, isn’t necessarily true for everybody. And I think sometimes maybe we aren’t tuning into our bodies enough to maybe get those signals. But what are the things we should be looking for to identify that, yep, I’m I’m kind of nailing this right now. Yeah,

Speaker 1 37:04
I think the things to look out for are, are you feeling generally refreshed and energized for most of the day? Now, I say most of the day, because sometimes we need to take into consideration the fact that we have these circadian dips in our day, and the circadian dips typically happen in the early afternoon for most people, so that you know that post lunch slump. A lot of people blame it on the food. Well, it’s actually, in most cases, our circadian dip naturally kind of declines, and that’s why a lot of countries will have the siesta period. They’re actually doing it right.

Speaker 1 37:39
They’re taking advantage of it and working with their circadian rhythm. So don’t pan like don’t freak out and panic if you get a little bit drowsy, it’s at a certain point of the day. That doesn’t mean necessarily you haven’t had enough sleep. It could just mean that you’re having a normal circadian dip that you should be having. So if you are able to, you know, essentially, have enough energy to get through your day and do the things that you’re supposed to do during the day without having to take, like, a lot of naps or have to dose yourself on caffeine all day long. If you’re, you know, if you’re feeling like you’re able to think clearly and you’re relevant, relatively emotionally stable and you’re not snappy, I think that those are all good signs that you’re doing pretty well with the quality and the quantity of your sleep. Okay,

Courtney Townley 38:29
great. Before we go back into other things, I do want to just ask you, what about nap? What about napping?

Speaker 1 38:37
Yes, napping can be a good practice for many of us in terms of just a little bit of a boost for cognition and focus, but we need to use them strategically. So if you have insomnia now, and these are most of my clients, like, we don’t really recommend a lot of napping for people who have insomnia, because it will often cut it’s like snacking before dinner. So if you if you have a nap too late in the day, like at four or five, you may not be quote, have that sleep hunger that you would want to build up during, you know, the evening, sure. So if you’re going to nap the the best strategy would be taking the nap before two or 3pm and limiting the nap to, like, 20 minutes. Great.

Speaker 1 39:29
Now you could go if you’re really, if you had a really rough night and you really need to, like, prepare for something later. You could manage to do, like, a 90 minute nap. But that 45 minute nap can be a little bit of a of a tricky issue, because you will probably wake up in the middle of the sleep stage. So you want to wake up in a stage of light sleep you don’t like, if you have you ever been in done a nap where you wake up really groggy and you’re just like, out of it, that’s because you woke up and is like, probably your REM deep. Sleep phase, and it was so you want to wake up while you’re in a light sleep. So that’s why the sort of the 20 minutes is sort of the recommended amount of time. Oh, great. I love

Courtney Townley 40:10
it. I’ve always my grandmother used to take 11 minute naps, 10 for her and one for God. I’ve always maintained that, like I literally, I think at this point, can just fall asleep and wake up in 11 minutes, because I’ve done it for so long. But I love that. I love that practice, and I am, I am a pretty big Napper, because I do just find that often, just revitalizes me, yes, and I have focus back, and I hear what you’re saying too, like that circadian dip in the afternoon. It makes a lot of sense why I might want to lay on the floor and just rest for a few minutes. Yeah, before you’re gone with my day.

Speaker 1 40:45
Yeah, you’re just, you’re, you’re going with your body’s circadian rhythm rather than fighting it. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 40:50
Okay, so circadian, like promoting circadian health, was the first piece, the consistent bedtime. Yeah, was the second. What else I

Speaker 1 41:00
would say the third one that I would recommend the most strongly would be exercise. And I know I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but I think a lot of people don’t realize how important exercise is and our sleep quality, especially as we get into midlife. They’ve done like, several different studies showing that moderate exercise and midlife helps with deep sleep. And deep sleep is so, so very important.

Speaker 1 41:24
And unfortunately, as we get into midlife, we naturally lose our amount of deep sleep. So if we can do exercise to bolster that deep sleep, we’re in a much better spot. Yeah, so it doesn’t really matter whether it’s like cardio or strength. I mean, there’s, I’ve been following the research, and I see different research coming out, but like the latest research that I saw, showed that strength training for midlife people was more sleep promoting than cardio, which is interesting, but don’t, don’t give up your cardio. Still do your cardio, but there’s study after study showing that, you know, a few times a week, moderately can significantly help with sleep, on all different measures, our quality time to fall asleep, efficiency, because exercise helps build up our sleep drive. It helps regulate our circadian rhythm, and it helps reduce cortisol long term.

Speaker 1 42:23
So it’s just a great and I know, you know, exercise is simple, but it’s not easy all the time, because, you know, we have different factors that may kind of throw us off, and we may not always be motivated to do it, but I definitely recommend it as a strategy for better sleep as a starting point.

Courtney Townley 42:40
So I love that you’re bringing it up, and where I see the struggle for specifically, like clients who aren’t good sleepers, then they lack the energy, like they’re always rationalizing, well, I shouldn’t exercise today, or I can’t exercise today because I didn’t sleep well last night. What would you say, like in that scenario, would you encourage someone to, like, just give a little little push. You don’t have to, like, go fierce and hard and long, but

Speaker 1 43:07
move? Yes, I would. And what I would say to that person, and that person was me, I went through a little I went through a little challenge recently with my sleep. It’s all good now, but on the mornings where I didn’t sleep well at all, I would make myself do, like, I work out every morning, like I’m just That’s always how I’ve been, and so it’s just part of my life. But on the days that I don’t sleep well, I will, like, maybe cut my workout short, but like, I usually do a 30 minute whatever, whether it’s weights or cardio, I’ll do 20 minutes and I won’t go as hard, yeah, but I want to get, I want to get my body moving, because I know absolutely 100% I’ll feel better just having some movement, some blood flow going to the brain to help, you know, give the energy back To me. So I do, I would, you know, gently push somebody to challenge themselves, to do something. Don’t do a HIIT workout, or don’t do, you know, something really strenuous if you haven’t slept great, but do something to get your body moving.

Courtney Townley 44:14
Yeah, I love that. That’s great. Okay, can we talk about sleep trackers? Because it’s a thing. Yeah, we get people to be very enthusiastic about it. And I would love to know just your take, like, what are the pros and the cons to sleep trackers?

Speaker 1 44:29
So I have four sleep trackers that I use. I don’t recommend it, only four, but that’s, you know, my job is to stay on top of this technology so I justify it. So I think that sleep trackers are can be a really great tool for a lot of people who are wanting to get on a better sleep journey, who are sleep optimizers, and somebody who can look at their data and then make behavioral changes based on the data they see. So if they see, for example, hmm, when I have. Of my dinner or my alcohol later in the evening, I noticed that my deep sleep is lower and my sleep efficiency is lower. What does that mean? So if someone could take that information and make the behavioral changes to change when they have their intake of the alcohol or the food, that would be like an ideal use case for a sleep tracker.

Speaker 1 45:21
Now, the people who have a sleep tracker and like notice that they have really worse sleep when they do X, Y and Z, but don’t do anything about it, well, they’ve kind of wasted their time and money using one, right? Because they’re not going to apply anything to it. The people who don’t do as well with a sleep tracker are, quite honestly, most of my clients, because they have insomnia, and with with insomnia often comes this, yeah, this heightened anxiety around sleep metrics. There’s a concept called orthosomnia, which is basically fixating on sleep data and sleep hygiene. So quite often someone will have a sleep tracker and be like, Oh no, Morgan, I only got like, 7% deep sleep, and what’s going to happen to me? I’ve even heard of people who will check their sleep trackers at night if they wake up and like, that’s like, completely counterproductive.

Speaker 1 46:17
So typically, I would say, if you have insomnia that you’re working on, maybe lay off the sleep tracker. There’s also what I call the middle ground approach, and that’s when you wear your tracker every night, but you actually look at the data only once a week, so that you’re not so hyper fixated every morning on the data you’re able to when you have that week of in between, looking at it, you’re able to get some distance and less emotionality is tied up in your scores. They’ve even done studies showing that when people get good sleep, but then they’re told they didn’t get good sleep by their sleep tracker, they start like having behaviors that are indicative of a poor sleeper. So a lot of this is almost like a self fulfilling prophecy. You set you tee up your day according to what the tracker told you, and that’s like going to be quite counterproductive for a lot of people. So the bottom line, though, is really to tune into your own body and assess your quality of sleep based on how you feel, based on what versus what a tracker tells you. Because, quite honestly, they can be inaccurate sometimes, so we can’t look at them as the gospel truth.

Courtney Townley 47:35
Yeah, and data like, I think it’s, you know, all around data is important, like it gives us some valuable information, but data alone does not tell us our complete health story, right? Because we have to tune in with how we’re feeling and and do some self inquiry as well to to optimize that. So I do want to clarify this, because I’m interested in this answer, and I’m sure listeners are too you. You obviously work with anyone who is it? Is it only women? Or do you work with a wide swath? I mean, do you work with men and women? On sleep, I work with

Speaker 1 48:09
men and women, but I really kind of market towards what to women. And so probably 80% of my clients are women. The men who find me are usually through like their female partner, or Yeah? Susan grapevine, you know,

Courtney Townley 48:22
so working with women, how do you differentiate between someone who has insomnia versus someone who’s just rumbling with sleep?

Speaker 1 48:32
Yeah, so the insomnia definition is really like having trouble falling asleep, staying asleep or waking up too early, at least three days a week for three months or more to be chronic insomnia. Okay, so that’s, that’s, it’s very clear, in addition to those parameters, there also has to be some kind of daytime dysfunction or feeling unsatisfied with their sleep. And quite often, there’s a bit of anxiety around sleep that is attached to the insomnia. So it’s really there’s honestly two different conversations in the public that are being had about sleep. There’s conversations and recommendations. So there’s a whole conversation around people who have insomnia and recommendations, and then there’s the people who are not prioritizing sleep and who are burning the candle at both ends, quite often.

Speaker 1 49:27
Courtney, the public health messaging is so fixated on the number of hours people need for sleep, sure, and that that message is directed toward the people who are burning the candle at both ends and who are deliberately not giving themselves enough sleep opportunity. Now, when the people who have insomnia see those public health messages and those scary headlines about X, Y, Z is going to happen, they freak out and I they, yeah, they because they’re like, Damn, I’m trying to. Sleep, I can’t get it. What’s going to happen to me?

Speaker 1 50:01
Yes, so I’m always having to talk them off the ledge, because in reality, a lot of these studies are based on people who are getting poor sleep for a certain amount of time, and they’re like, there it’s in a very clinically controlled you’re only getting four hours of sleep at night. Well, most people are getting over four hours of sleep at night. So it’s really, it’s it’s not a really, the studies are not often very useful or reliable. So when the wrong people see them, like the people who have insomnia, it’s just it can be a real trigger to them

Courtney Townley 50:40
absolutely and I can, I’m literally thinking of like three or four clients right now who are just in that camp of it’s not that they’re not giving themselves opportunity. It’s that they really rumble with sleep. They don’t fall asleep. They can’t stay asleep. They, like you said, they wake up too early. So this will, this episode will be going straight into their inbox. Yay. Absolutely. Okay, so this is, this is awesome. Like, I feel like we’ve covered a lot of ground with even though we’ve talked about this topic on the podcast multiple times, I feel like we’ve really kind of tackled some different angles. In closing, what would you what is there anything else you want to say to say to a woman who might be listening that really just is has been struggling along her sleep journey?

Speaker 1 51:27
Yeah, I would say that there is hope. You know, I feel like a lot of times, people come to me like I’ve tried everything. I guess this is just what getting older means, and I’m, I’m, my fate is bad sleep because I’m getting older, and I challenge that, because I’ve seen so many people turn their sleep around, including me, that I really believe that there is, there is the possibility of getting better sleep. And so much of this has to do with our mindset around it, and how we what we call ourselves and how we label our sleep.

Speaker 1 52:03
So if we’re talking now, I had a client once who was just she was using expletives to describe her sleep, and I just had to stop her and say, Listen to how you’re describing your sleep, like, let’s change the language. I’m not saying that we have to be Pollyanna like, I’m the best sleeper ever, but if we can at least move that, that languaging into the realm of neutrality, that’s a great start. So a lot of it is, is the mindset and how you speak about your sleep. You know, not always calling yourself a terrible sleeper, using using different ways to like instead of saying, I’m a terrible sleeper, I’m having some sleep challenges, but I’m working. I’m trying to work through those by doing X, Y and Z. It’s a lot, it’s, I think it’s going to change your outcome a lot more when you’re using that, like neutral to positive language,

Courtney Townley 52:51
absolutely, I love that. That’s your sort of closing message with this, because it’s neutral? Is always a great place to start. And is it useful? Like is talking about sleep that way actually helping you to want to sleep? Probably not exactly. Yeah, that’s brilliant. Okay, how can people find out more about you? And I think you also have a PDF people can download. So tell us about those.

Speaker 1 53:18
Sure. Thank you. So my website is morganadamswellness.com there you can find the opportunity to have a what I call a sleep clarity call. It’s a free consultation, just to chat about your sleep issues. There also is a free guide you mentioned. It’s a PDF. It’s a very rich piece of information. It’s called awake again at 3am your guide to why you’re waking up and what to do about it. So if you are the kind of person who’s having the middle of the night awake awakenings, and you want to know a little bit more about why it’s happening, how to manage it, that’s a great free resource for you to get from the website. I

Courtney Townley 53:53
love it so good. I will definitely be downloading it. I’m sure a lot of listeners will. We will house all of that on the page of the website where this episode is housed. You’re doing great work in the world like truly, I’m so like you exist. I love this conversation. We may have to circle back at some point and talk about some other things or go deeper with this conversation, but this was great. I really appreciate your time and energy and mission.

Speaker 1 54:19
Thank you. I appreciate your hospitality. So much awesome.

Courtney Townley 54:23
Thank you. Have a great day.

Courtney Townley 54:31
Thank you for listening to the Grace and Grit podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story, and it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self care. You are worth the effort, and with a little grace and grit, anything is possible.