It’s no secret that most small business owners struggle to get enough sleep,  as do those of us with ADHD, and the majority of women over 40 have trouble sleeping due to hormonal changes and the complexity of their lives. 

But getting enough sleep is not just the key to fewer dark circles and less coffee consumption.  Adequate amounts of quality sleep are actually necessary for mental and physical health and wellbeing and even longevity.

I invited Morgan Adams, MSW to join me to set the record straight on how much sleep we actually need according to the research,  the most effective strategies for improving sleep quality and straight talk about sleep medications like Ambien.

Here are some of the highlights: 

🌙 Consistency is more important than the number of hours, and exposure to morning sunlight (without sunglasses) can improve sleep quality and regulate circadian rhythms.

🌟 Shifting negative self-talk and reframing our beliefs about sleep can lead to significant changes in our rest patterns.

🔄 By drawing firm boundaries on work time and allowing for decompression before bedtime, we can set ourselves up for restful nights and productive days

Mic Drop Moment: 

“They actually, did a study recently of thousands and thousands of people. There was a higher life expectancy when people had 6 hours of consistent sleep versus 8 hours of inconsistent and interrupted sleep."

Want more sleep strategy from Morgan?

Morgan’s mini course: https://www.morganadamswellness.com/sleepresetsolution

MidLife Sleep School: https://www.morganadamswellness.com/midlife-sleep-school

Mentioned in this episode:

Professor Matt Walker, PhD: https://www.sleepdiplomat.com/

National Sleep Foundation: https://www.thensf.org/

If you are a solopreneur who can’t sleep because your business is not living up to its potential, this might be the perfect time to work with me.  

As announced during the episode,  I am opening up opportunities to work with me 1:1 for different lengths of time.  Until now, the only option was my 12-week Boss Up Breakthrough, but not everyone needs or wants that level of intensity. 

It starts with a free consultation where we discuss your needs, goals, strengths, and obstacles. I will help you figure out why your business is where you want it to be, and make sure you are including mental wellness in your business plan so that you’re not just successful on the outside, but aligned with your values, and priorities on the inside.  

Want to know more?  Schedule a free consultation here: https://bit.ly/3qrJ9YQ

H: Morgan, one of the things that you and I agree on, of the many things we agree on, is how important sleep is. I mean, that's what you do for a living, and I talk about it a lot on this podcast and with my clients. But let's get specific, why is sleep so important?

G: Yes. Well, people like to talk about the 3 pillars of health, sleep, movement, and nutrition. And I feel like for a very long time, sleep has been sort of the redhead's stepchild of that trio and my job is really to be a better PR agent for sleep. I really feel strongly, and, yes, I am biased, but I feel like sleep is the foundation upon which the other pillars of health are built. So, for example, if you are not getting good sleep, you're probably not gonna be very motivated to exercise. You might get injured if you haven't been getting good sleep, your food choices are probably not going to be very good. So it really is, you know, to me, at the top of the pyramid.

But to answer your question more specifically, there's a whole slew of things that sleep helps with. So there's chronic disease prevention, it's helping with our cardiovascular system. It's helping prevent infection, injury. It's helping us with memory consolidation and emotional regulation. It's helping with our hunger hormone balance. And then something that I don't think people talk enough about is how it helps us in a social way. And what I mean by that is when you are well slept, you are more apt to be empathetic.

You're more apt to be willing to solve conflict. And those things are extremely important, you know, that we don't touch on upon enough. I think that the physical aspects of sleep are talked about a lot, and they're very important. But if we're in a, work relationship or in our family or our friends, like, we can all identify. Like, if we've had a bad night of sleep, we're kind of not as nice the next day to the people in our environment. So if people were getting better sleep overall, I just feel like the world would be a more harmonious place, for sure.

H: And who doesn't want that? You know, this is fascinating because everybody is familiar with the expression getting up on the wrong side of the bed. Everybody knows, I mean, no one would debate the fact that if you haven't had a good night's sleep or enough sleep or enough restorative sleep or enough high quality sleep, you're gonna be crabby, cranky, irritable, short-tempered, silent, whatever your particular way of presenting with that is. But I don't think I've ever actually thought about the flip side, which is and if you do get enough sleep, you're going to be more empathic. You're going to have better social relatedness. You're going to be more present. You're going to be more available. It makes perfect sense, I just don't think I ever thought about it.

G: It's a good way to look at it, Diann, because we have a lot of scare tactics out there with sleep, you know, you see a lot of scary headlines you know? If you're sleep deprived, this is gonna happen, that's gonna happen. And I feel like that's not a very motivating way to approach people with a with a aspect of change. So I think if you can flip it, like you just said so beautifully, if we can focus on the benefits and, like, how awesome we can feel, I think it's gonna be more of a motivator for people if they are maybe not prioritizing sleep, for example.

H: I wish that I could agree with you a 100%, but since we both studied human nature as much as we have. Unfortunately, most people do seem to be more motivated by the stick than the carrot. I would like to think that's changing, I would like to think that just knowing you could be a better person would be enough to get people to sleep more. But, hey, we do what we can to influence them. One thing I have noticed though is that women tend to have more sleep issues than men. I'm sure there's all kinds of reasons for that. Not the least of which is that we have more complex lives. We tend to take on more roles and responsibilities, and then we have the whole hormonal situation, but what else is there in addition to that?

G: You're spot on, women are more apt to have sleep issues. We're about 50% more likely to have insomnia and sleep problems. And so you did hit on one of the major points, hormones. From teenagehood, you know, through menopause, our hormones are in flux, and that influences sleep. We're also, as women, more prone to anxiety and depression, and those both leave us more prone to or vulnerable to sleeping issues. And then, really, the last main issue is that is a social sociocultural issue. And so what that means is women are carrying so many roles in our society that it does create stress.

We're constantly juggling and so I'll just you know, I've worked with a lot of midlife women. And so, when women are in midlife, quite often, they are still raising children at home. They've got kids at home they're responsible for and then on the other end, they have parents who are aging, and they're responsible for those parents, so this sort of like a sandwich generation. And then a woman in midlife, potentially, is at the height of her career game, and she's got a lot of demands on her from the work angle. So all of those, you know, conflicting roles and pressures can actually influence, their stress level and anxiety, which influences their sleep, unfortunately.

H: No, it's absolutely true. It's supposed to be the time of your life where you've got everything dialed in, but the more roles you have, the more stressors you have. It makes complete sense. And I need to get the updated, statistics on this but, several years ago, I've been quoting that over 40% of women at midlife are either on antidepressants or, antianxiety meds or both. I think a whole lot of them are also on sleep meds. So I know that you have a history with Ambien, and and I have a little Ambien story I can share as well. But what are your current thoughts about sleep medication because there's gonna be plenty of people that are gonna say, I'm not gonna work with a sleep coach. I'm just gonna get a prescription, what do you have to say to them.

Hence and I was, you know, just a walking example of that because they were still having the medication in their system in the system in the morning, hence grogginess. And it's not just the grogginess, but, like, I sometimes think, well, gosh, I could have caused an accident on my way to work because I was so, like, just out of it still. It hadn't washed out of my system so, there are some issues with the side effects for a lot of people. About 80% of people have the same side effects, grogginess, trouble waking up, trouble focusing. But it's not a complete, like, terrible situation with the sleeping pills because they do have their place in some instances, in my opinion and that is when you do have some kind of a tragedy in your life.

You know, you've had a death or divorce, a job loss, and you really need something in the short term to help you get to sleep. The problem is is when primary care doctors prescribed the pills, and they don't really give the patient an exit strategy. They just keep refilling them and refilling them. When you look at the package insert for the sleeping pills, you'll clearly see it says they're meant to be short term use only up to, like, maybe 3 to 4 weeks. But that's, unfortunately, not how they're being used these days.

And, you know, I don't completely fault the doctors because they, mostly in the United States, have not had adequate training in sleep science. They get on generally about 2 hours of sleep science education in medical school, which is a little bit strange to think because we're spending a third of our lives sleeping, right? They're getting more training on something like diabetes, for example, which doesn't affect everyone right? Sleep affects everybody and so wouldn't it make sense that they would have more of a knowledge base? We have work to do, Diann, we do.

H: Oh my goodness, there's so much I could say about this, but I have some other questions to ask you. I mean, it does it does not surprise me that women were being overdosed and that it took them a while to figure this out. I was not on Ambient nearly as long as you were, but I was going through a very stressful period in my life. My doctor gave me the prescription, it did help me sleep. I was absolutely groggy the next day.

I felt like I had a terrible hangover without the headache. But what finally pointed me towards the fact that that this was doing things that were not intended is my husband's from Germany. His family sends him these wonderful Swiss chocolates a couple of times a year. They send a whole bunch of them, and he eats them very slowly over time. I'm not so much into chocolate so, generally, he they're his. But during the time that I was on Ambient, the supply of these chocolates were disappearing. And he said, if you wanna eat the chocolates, Di, just ask me.

I said, I'm not eating your chocolates. And he gave me that look, and I said, I don't appreciate what you're implying. Why are you doing this and he said, Diann, who else lives here? Who else would be eating them, you think someone's breaking into our house at night and just going for the chocolates and leaving everything else? I was so butt hurt, Morgan and I started thinking, where the hell are these chocolates going? Well, guess what, I started finding the wrappers at the very bottom of our trash receptacle. So, I thought whoever's eating these is trying to hide the evidence. We happen to have a part time cleaning lady at that time, so I thought maybe it was her. Anyway, long story short, it was me.

I was getting up in the middle of the night, eating an entire bar of chocolate that I don't really even like, and hiding the evidence, and then going back to sleep and having no memory of any of it. Yeah, and I thought, oh my gosh. Then I started doing a little research, and I'm sure, you know, there's plenty of stories out there. People sleepwalking, sleep talking, sleep shopping, getting in their car and driving places under the influence of Ambient and having no recollection the next day. That is dangerous and scary.

H: Well, yes, me too. I mean, I gained a little weight, but, you know, yah it could have been way worse. But speaking of waking up in the middle of the night, if even if you're not on Ambient and you're not waking up in the middle of the night to eat chocolate, most women I know, especially those midlife and beyond, find that they can fall asleep okay. So I know there's primary insomnia, just difficulty falling asleep and then secondary insomnia, difficulty staying asleep. And a lot of the people I know, they fall asleep fine, maybe because they're exhausted from their life. And then somewhere between 1 AM and 3:30 AM, very predictably, they're waking up, and then they either toss and turn or just can't get back to sleep. What is the cause of this, it’s so annoying.

G: It's is probably my number 1 most, talked about, worried about issue with my clients Is those, middle of the night awakenings. But I do wanna just say, though, that we need to normalize middle of the night awakenings only and here's why. Because when you look at our sleep cycles, we have, you know, 5 5 or 6 during the night. It is actually very normal for us to have a brief awakening after each sleep cycle. And it's really, evolutionarily designed to help us scan for safety. So, oftentimes, we wake up so briefly that and our scan our scan around the room is it's so brief that we don't even remember, we're awake. So for a healthy adult, up to 12 times, having a brief awakening at night is normal.

So I just wanna kinda normalize the fact that you're not broken if you have an awakening. And as we get older, those, awakenings happen more frequently. It's just part of our sleep architecture changing as we age so let's normalize that. However, yes, they are annoying as hell, I will attest. A few reasons why that happens often, we are dealing with blood sugar issues.

So, for example, a blood sugar our blood sugar could tank at that time of night, and the consequence is rising cortisol and adrenaline level, which wakes us up. So one solve to that is to have a very small snack about an hour before bed that consists of a protein, a carbohydrate, and some fat. So, like, half a banana with some almond butter, that could potentially, stave off an awakening. You'd have to kinda test this for yourself. Second reason that that's very commonly, that's common for these wake ups is people are too hot. Now it doesn't necessarily mean you're having a hot flash or a night sweat, but you're just overheated. So then in that case, we'd be working on some strategies to keep you cooler at night.

Pretty, you know, fairly simple. And then thirdly, I one of the most common wake ups that I'm seeing with my population of mainly midlife people is sleep apnea incidence. So sleep apnea is something that is, woefully underdiagnosed, especially in women. So quite often, we think of somebody who's has sleep apnea as, like, the Homer Simpson on the couch. Middle aged guy with a big belly snoring on the couch making a racket right? But we have definitely a lot of women who are in midlife who don't fit that kind of physical criteria have sleep apnea episodes. And when we are in midlife as women, our sleep apnea incidence rates match those of our peers, our male peers okay.

So we need to be very cognizant of this and, you know, the fix for this is getting a sleep study or getting your sleep breathing measured, talking to your doctor. And I will tell you that sometimes, in my experience, women have to push for this because sometimes doctors will look at us, and and, you know, if you're not overweight, if you're in shape and they'll be like, oh, you don't have sleep apnea. You're athletic, you're not overweight. You have to keep pushing sometimes because you may not meet the quote criteria for getting a screening. So long winded answer, but there are several reasons why. Those are just a few of the most commonly one common ones I see.

I think that though the key takeaway when you are having, an awakening at night is to try not to panic. Often, what we do is we start to worry about the fact that we've awoken. And that worry and that anxiety actually perpetuates us being awake. So it's interesting with our brain when we wake up in the middle of the night is mainly working from our amygdala. We're not really in a very rational spot with our brain at in the middle of the night. And so I can attest personally, I've had some of my most drastic thoughts, at night, you know, just catastrophic thoughts, quite honestly.

And I wake up in the morning, and I'm like, I actually thought that when I woke up at night. That's crazy. That's crazy talk, you know? So really understanding that I think can be helpful to people, to just remind themselves they're not quite thinking rationally and for whatever they're thinking. You know, let's postpone thinking about that until the morning when we're operating from more of a rational, vantage point.

H: That's absolutely fascinating. I think I'll have to go back and think about that. Like, my most irrational thoughts, when do they tend to occur? And you're right and also because I've had sleep difficulty at different stages of my life in different circumstances. And I definitely recall that waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep before I sort of realized, okay, this is not catastrophic, this is not a life threatening condition. I would start to panic and then start thinking, oh my god.

It's 3 o'clock in the morning, I have to get up at 6 AM. I've got a big day ahead of me that means I'm only gonna get and I start calculating how much sleep I got versus how much I was supposed to get. And I'm literally working myself into a state of total aggravation so, of course, there's no chance of going back to sleep after that, right? It did not help.

G: And another thing, you mentioned this is something that a lot of people do. I did it myself when I had insomnia is having a clock next to your bed. Because what you'll end up doing, I did this a lot, is I'd look at the clock and go, oh, shit. I've only got this more many hours until I have to wake up. And then you're like you're kinda it just, again, kicks that anxiety and stress into gear, which in turn makes it more difficult to fall back to sleep. So I tell my clients, get the clock out of your bedroom. Because when you wake up in the middle of the night, it doesn't matter what time it is. It's still the middle of the night, that's all you need to know.

H: Yeah, you do not need to know that it's 3:21. You really don't, that information at that time is irrelevant, unnecessary, and probably harmful. But to this point, how we love to monitor, we love to track. We love to several people I know have wearable sleep trackers. Sometimes it's their, Apple Watch or some other device. Some people have something they, that, that they put on their sheets that tracks their movement during sleep. I mean, how much of this is really necessary and helpful? Like if you're just a data, you know, oriented person, you love to know all of these things about yourself. Okay, fine, knock yourself out. But is it actually helpful, strategic, and necessary from your perspective.

G: So it's sort of a mixed answer. So I would say that for people who want to optimize their sleep and are able to look at the data they get from their tracker and then make behavioral changes based on that data, I think sleep trackers can be a great way to improve your sleep. However, there are some people out there, and most of my clients actually have insomnia. So people who have an insomnia or anxiety about their sleep, I would definitely not recommend them using a sleep tracker because what ends up happening a lot of the time is they see the amount of deep sleep or the amount of REM sleep, and they start to panic. Like, oh my god. I didn't get x, y, and z and it actually exacerbates their sleep issues because they're more anxious about it.

So what I tell my clients is, like, you know, you don't have to, avoid a sleep tracker forever. But while you're in the process of overcoming this insomnia, let's just put a sleep tracker on hold, because you probably don't need it at this point. So there's not like a one size fits all answer for this. It really kinda depends on you and really how you feel you're going to react to the data. A lot of people will use a sleep tracker. I'm wearing one myself, I mean, I wear it, you know, every day, and I do check-in on it every morning, kind of a part of my ritual. But if you don't want to become too focused in on the data, what you can do is wear the ring.

And then once a week, look back on the data to kinda get a more generalized view. So, essentially, you're looking at, you're not looking at each day's headlines. You're kinda looking at the generality of your sleep in in totality. Because that's what you really wanna focus on is, like, over time, is my sleep improving, you know, months to month, year to year? You don't wanna get tangled up in the minutiae, which a lot of people can do if they're looking at it every day.

H: Absolutely and that's true of whatever you're trying to change in your life, whatever metrics you're trying to move, losing weight, being more physically fit, you know, cutting back on alcohol, whatever it is, paying too close of attention to the data is usually not helpful and also not necessary. And to your point, why are you tracking? Are you tracking because it's a cool thing to have. Are you tracking because you just feel like you need to know day to day to day? It's not gonna change that fast. What are you going to do with that information? That I think makes a lot of sense. If you're not gonna do anything different with that information, it is probably a source of unnecessary suffering and stress to know.

G: I would agree with that, for sure.

H: You know, one of the things that, I teach my clients, most of whom are entrepreneurs with ADHD traits, are the benefits of morning and evening routines. I like to say that for people with ADHD traits, they only have 3 types of problems, starting, stopping, and switching gears. So to that point, you know, the starting is how you set up your morning, tends to set you up in one direction or another. Stopping is sort of, you know, letting go of the waking day, letting go of work, especially for people who work from home, which can be really difficult, and then transitioning from, like, work mode to family mode. I'd love to know what your thoughts are about morning and evening routines and the impact that they have on sleep. Are you pro, con, or it depends?

G: Pro on all of it. But what I will say is that the mistake a lot of people make when they are on a journey to fix their sleep is they focus a lot too much effort really on the evening routine. They are running themselves ragged all day, and then they're trying to cram all this stuff into, like, a wind down routine that that wind down routine can't really, sufficiently do the job because they're so wound up during the day. They haven't had a chance to deescalate during certain parts of the day. But, you know, my real take on the evening morning and evening routines is that the morning routines aren't getting enough attention.

And the reason I really focus in on a morning routine as a starting point for getting better sleep is, better sleep start starts the second your feet hit the ground in the morning. And what I mean by that is we wanna build in some intentionality and predictability about our mornings, and that can look different for everybody. But I will say that, you know, I worked with a client last year who literally would spring out of bed, which didn't really spring out, but she was kinda drag dragging herself out of bed, but she basically went from her bed to right to brush her teeth and get dressed.

She had literally no routine at all, so she went from just the bed to driving to work. And she was very stressed during the day because she didn't have any time to ground or to, build an intentionality practice to her day. So once she started doing that, things started to turn around for her. Now with the evening routine, that is important as well. And when people ask me, what what should I do during my evening routine? Well, there's no, like, real answer to that because it really depends on what relaxes you personally. What is the thing that makes you feel, like, feel relaxed? So it's a very individual choice, but I definitely recommend that, you know, you draw a very firm boundary on, your time and not have, like, this frenzy of work and then shut off your computer and think you can fall asleep. Like Matthew Walker, a very well known sleep scientist, talks about sleep is like a plane, you know.

You have to descend, you don't just, like, crashed down. So giving us that ramp, that runway of decompressing for at least a half an hour, ideally, an hour would be lovely. I do have a free mini course that I offer people all about morning and evening routines for better sleep that with some more specific guidance on that, if they're just kinda getting started and need, like, some starting point. But again, I think they're both extremely important to build into our days and nights.

H: That's awesome, and I will make sure that we link to that free mini course in the show notes. You know, I have a lot of people tell me that their lifestyle is too chaotic to have any kind of an morning or evening routine. They don't have a schedule. They don't have any set, habits. They are literally just life is just coming at them one day at a time from the moment they get up to the moment they go to bed. I'm wondering what your thoughts are about the importance of mindset when it comes to making these changes. Because you and I are both trained as clinical social workers, and we understand that behavior moves the needle, but mindset moves the behavior. So what are some of the things that people typically think about sleep that prevent them from even being willing to make the kind of changes that we've been talking about.

G: I think sometimes, at least with the people that I work with, they tend to, feel like they're doomed like, that they're, like, quote, bad sleepers. I have a lot of clients verbalize to me, I'm a terrible sleeper, my sleep sucks. And what I really try to work on that work with them on is really on a very basic level is their languaging around how they describe their sleep. So instead of saying, you know, I caught a client in this process just a week ago, and I stopped her, and I said, you just I want you to kind of reflect back on what you said about your sleep. You just threw a bunch of expletives at it. And and, you know, if we and then and I'm not suggesting that we talk about our sleep in a way that it's like toxic positivity or polyana.

But if you're routinely saying to yourself, I'm the worst sleeper, my sleep sucks. Perhaps change language to be at least just neutral. Saying I'm having some struggle sleeping, but I'm committed to working on figuring out the issue and getting better sleep. That's a lot more, it's not reeking of positivity, but it's neutral to positive right? So I think that often that is really the first place to start is looking at how we're talking about our sleep to ourselves and other people.

So I think that the obstacles that we oftentimes have to overcome are willingness to believe that we can change the situation. And certainly, as you describe someone who says, I'm a terrible sleeper, that goes all the way to identity. That's not even saying I'm having trouble sleeping. I don't seem to be able to sleep. I've had decades of sleep problems. I'm a bad sleeper. That's an identity issue. I don't think our brains will even let us negotiate with identity, that’s really hard for.

G: Thing is I don't even use the word insomniac anymore. Well, I just used it but I don't what I don't refer to my clients as that. I don't refer to myself as a former that because that work, it's you are not insomniac, you're having an experience with insomnia or trouble sleeping. So I feel like even just saying that can be, It can be part of your identity and sometimes people kind of relish that. Sometimes they relish the attention they get for being, quote, an insomniac because they get a lot of coddling.

Like, how did you sleep oh, you've, let me just not give you that assignment at work because you probably didn't sleep. So sometimes there's, like, a secondary gain. I don't run into this a lot quite honestly with my clients, but there are people out there like that, you know, who are, it has become their identity as being a bad sleeper. And when you've made that your identity, it's you're like to your point, you're not as likely to be open to change.

H: Yeah. I can't imagine someone who overly identifies with being an insomniac or a bad sleeper. That's become an identity and they are getting secondary gain from embracing that. I can't imagine them being someone who would decide to work with you because you won't indulge that for 1 minute.

G: No. No.

H: It they wouldn't they wouldn't get the desired result.

G: Yeah, you're right. These are the people who are on insomnia Facebook groups, commiserating with their fellow insomnia folks, passing along bad tips. What's the latest supplement? It's just they're now in a a community that's not necessarily, uplifting, but more like, I'm gonna I've got bet I've got worse sleep than you. Let me show you right now, I'm the worst sleeper in this group, guys, I see it happening.

H: Everybody's gotta be good at something.

G: It's like an awful experience sometimes to hop on these groups, but I do it just because I kinda wanna keep my finger on the pulse of what's going on and really understand a certain type of person who has insomnia. Yeah, it's nerve racking to see it but.

H: That's the dark side of social media that such groups exist. But in truth we can only help the people that are ready to be helped. And because I work predominantly with business owners with ADHD traits, many people with ADHD have a lot of trouble sleeping for all kinds of reasons that we don't need to go into. But one of them as many people have a hard time sort of getting fully awake in the morning. And then they stay up too late to catch up because they haven't had enough productive hours, and it becomes kind of a relentless cycle.

But, in helping people who aren't getting enough sleep or helping people try to get better quality of sleep. A lot of people wanna know, okay, what's the minimum amount of sleep I can get, and how many hours of sleep do I actually need? I know it's not that simple, but if we're talking about quality versus quantity, what should people be shooting for if they don't have sleep problems, but just regular people who wanna know that they're getting enough.

G: So the National Sleep Foundation does recommend 7 to 9 hours a sleep for adults 18 to 64. However, when you look at their fine print of those recommendations, you'll see that they say anywhere from 6 to 10 hours may be appropriate so that's quite a bit of latitude. However, what we do know is that there's only about 3% of our population who is able to function properly on less than 6 hours of sleep. So all those people, you've probably stumbled across these people many times. They like, yeah, I'm good with 5 like, I'm totally good. I'm great.

H: Or 4, I've heard 4 too.

G: Yeah. I mean and so unless they're part of that 3%, they're honestly kind of fooling themselves. But the quality issue is so important because I would rather see someone get 6 hours of quality sleep, then 8 hours of broken, disrupted sleep. They actually, did a study recently of thousands and thousands of people. It was one of those retrospective cohort analyses where they showed that if you're looking at life expectancy, there was a higher life expectancy when people had 6 hours of consistent sleep versus 8 hours of inconsistent and interrupted sleep.

So that's actually pretty good news for people who, at some point, like, there are people out there who are you know, they're in a place where it's hard to actually carve out the hours to sleep, and they're feeling guilty that they're getting 8. But if you can devote that 6 and you're making sure that it's consistent and, you know, as uninterrupted as possible, you're in a pretty decent spot overall. So we really wanna build that that consistency, into the equation versus just focusing on the numbers because the number doesn't tell the entire story.

H: I hope you're not gonna tell me that this is wrong, but I usually advise people to try to keep a consistent sleep routine 7 days a week. So that they're going to sleep around the same time, getting up around the same time every day of the week instead of, you know, getting more sleep on the weekend to catch up or less sleep on the weekend because they're out doing things and staying up late. What are your thoughts about the importance of consistency in terms of what many people call sleep hygiene and sleep schedule.

G: I'm a huge proponent of having that consistent, wake time. We have shown, the data shows that that we are, really in a better spot when we have that consistency. In fact, they did, a study where they showed that women who had over 90 minutes in variability in their sleep and wake times had more body fat than women who had 60 minutes or less of variability in their sleep wake times. So it affects us on, it affects our circadian rhythm or met metabolism. But the most important thing to that discussion is the wake time. So I'm very, very much a proponent of having a very consistent wake time every day of the week because your brain doesn't know the difference between a weekend and a weekday.

H: Exactly.

G: So when you have the consistent wake time, what it does is it acts like an anchor. So when we've woken up, we have about 16 to 17 hours of sleep pressure, a sleep pressure chemical called adenosine building up in our brain. And if that 16 to 17 hour point is when we're sort of at our kind of max, we're kind of we have to release that sleep pressure, and that's when we start to get sleepy. So if you're getting up at the same time every morning, you're fairly likely to become sleepy around the same time every night. So, you know, ideally, you would want to go to bed within, like, I would say, a 1 hour window. The problem with very strict bedtimes, especially for people with insomnia, is that, well, what if you're not sleepy at 10 o'clock, your normal bedtime? Well, okay, if you're not sleepy, just kinda wait for that wave of sleepiness to hit you and then go to bed versus while I'm there for 2 hours trying to become sleepy, you just can't will yourself to sleep.

H: No, that makes sense. And I think, you know, if we're if people are listening and thinking, okay, I know I'm not getting enough sleep. I know that my sleep habits are all over the place. I know I haven't made this a priority. The first thing they could do, and it's not even a baby step. It's a really important step from everything that you've said, Morgan, is that I'm gonna start waking up consistently at the same time each day. What else would you want them to know if they are not yet ready to work with you or someone like you, but they do want to start moving the needle towards getting better quality and more consistent sleep. What are some other strategies that they can adopt.

G: So the 2 other strategies that I feel, like, are the biggest needle movers for my clients are that consistent wake time that we just talked about. Also, getting morning sunlight, morning natural daylight as soon as you can in the morning, ideally within, like, an hour of waking up. Now I know that, the sunrise is coming up at different times for us. But if you can do your best to when the sun's coming out, get out for about 10, 15 minutes without your sunglasses, that's key. I see all these people in my neighborhood when I'm walking my dog with their sunglasses on. The reason why we don't want our sunglasses on is because when the natural light hits our retina, that sends the signal to our suprachiasmatic nucleus, which is our circadian pacemaker. And from there, there's beautiful cascade of hormones and neurotransmitters that happen.

So any residual melatonin from the night before gets shut down, it boosts your serotonin for better mood. A booster cortisol for energy, and it also prepares the melatonin release for that following night. So, essentially you are setting yourself up for a better night of sleep by just getting out in the morning. So it also you know, the whole thing about the walking is kind of like you can feed 2 birds with 1 stone because you're getting activity. You're getting your body moving, so that's gonna make you feel more alert. And then, really, the third thing that I think is so important, and I don't think it's talked about nearly enough, is the value of exercise for our sleep.

And so they've done a meta analysis of 13 studies showing that our sleep can become deeper when we've had exercise on a regular basis. So exercise helps not only deep sleep, it helps our quality of sleep, time to fall asleep, sleep efficiency, and our quality. So it doesn't mean that you have to knock yourself out. But if you're getting, like, 30 minutes of moderate exercise 5 days a week, that's probably a sufficient amount to really improve your sleep. And it's something that not only improves your sleep, but it improves your metabolism and all these other wonderful functions that we are looking for.

H: And that would be regardless of whether you do that exercise in the morning, afternoon, or evening, you're still getting the same benefit.

G: It doesn't really matter when you do the workout. Now some people who our early bird chronotypes do prefer the morning workouts. If you're a late a late owl, night owl, chronotype, you might prefer early evenings. The only caveat I would say is you wouldn't wanna do vigorous exercise like an hour before bedtime. You wouldn't wanna go out and go stress.You could do a yoga class or whatnot, but, you really wanna allow your body to, to cool off a bit because your core body temperature needs to be lowered in order to sleep. You don't want your cortisol increased right before sleep. So you just have to kind of kind of dial back the real intense work, you know, an hour before bed.

H: So even though you have all this, data and can even say some really complicated medical terms, I'm impressed. It's not this it doesn't have to be so hard. Like what you're saying is very practical, common sense, and the benefits are enormous. So I really want to encourage people to take this seriously. Go take Morgan's free course, follow her on social media, learn from her, get better sleep because your life actually depends upon it. One of the things that I think about when I sometimes think, oh, I can just stay up late, I'm gonna watch this movie or a few more episodes of something I'm watching is, you know, there's a reason why sleep deprivation has been one of the most effective forms of torture throughout all of human history because it really freaking works.

G: It sure does.

H: So that usually gets me headed for the bedroom when I remind myself of that.

G: Good call.

H: Thank you, Morgan. This was really, really enjoyable and informative. I appreciate you.

G: I appreciate it.