Prioritising good sleep is good self care

Eight weeks ago, I fractured my rib playing footy.

For the first week afterwards, I barely slept. Every time I moved, rolled over or tried to get comfortable, the pain woke me up. By the end of that week, I was absolutely exhausted.

It reminded me just how much we take good sleep for granted until we are not getting it.

It was not only that I felt tired. Everything felt harder. My concentration was not as sharp, my patience was shorter, my energy was low and I simply did not feel like myself.

It got me thinking about the different seasons of our lives when sleep can become difficult, sometimes through circumstances completely outside our control.

Sleep really is one of the foundations of our health

I have been reading and listening to more of Dr Mark Hyman's work around sleep, and one of the things that really resonates with me is the importance he places on sleep as one of the foundations of our overall health.

He talks about how poor sleep can affect so much more than simply how tired we feel the next day. Sleep is connected to our hormones, blood sugar, appetite, stress response, mood, metabolism and our body's ability to repair and recover.

He also talks about cortisol, our stress hormone, and the role it plays in our sleep cycle. Ideally, cortisol should be higher in the morning when we need to wake up and get moving, and then gradually decrease towards the evening. When stress, lifestyle and disrupted sleep interfere with this natural rhythm, we can end up feeling exhausted but still unable to properly switch off at night.

That certainly made sense to me after my injury.

My body needed rest and recovery more than ever, but the pain was preventing me from getting the quality sleep that helps support that recovery.

It was a pretty good reminder that sleep is not wasted time. There is a lot happening in our bodies while we are asleep.

Then there are the years when you have kids

Anyone who has had children knows there can be whole periods of life when a good night's sleep feels like a distant memory.

When your children are babies, you might be feeding during the night, settling them, changing nappies or waking at every little sound.

Then they get older and the reasons change.

There are sick kids, nightmares, early mornings, late nights and teenagers coming home. Sometimes everyone else in the house is asleep and you are still awake because being a parent means your brain does not always get the memo that everyone is safe and it can switch off now.

I think this is also where we need to talk more about asking for help.

If you are going through a season where you are constantly exhausted because you are caring for a baby or young children, you do not have to prove how capable you are by doing everything yourself.

Ask your partner to take a shift. Ask your family for help. Let someone have the kids for a few hours so you can rest. Accept the offer when somebody says they can help.

If your lack of sleep is ongoing and you are struggling to function, tell someone and speak with your doctor or another health professional.

Sometimes self care is not adding another thing to your routine.

Sometimes self care is simply being able to say, 'I am exhausted and I need some help.'

We need to get better at doing that.

And then along comes menopause

Just when many women finally get beyond those years of children waking them throughout the night, menopause can come along and mess with sleep all over again.

This is something I do not think we talk about enough.

Sleep problems are a recognised symptom of perimenopause and menopause. Changes in our hormones can affect our sleep patterns, and hot flushes and night sweats can make staying asleep particularly difficult. Women can experience trouble falling asleep, staying asleep or waking earlier than they want to.

Dr Hyman also talks about the relationship between our hormones and sleep. Oestrogen and progesterone are among the hormones involved in sleep quality, alongside cortisol, melatonin and thyroid hormones. Changes in these systems can be one of the reasons sleep suddenly becomes much more difficult during menopause.

I know from my own experience that menopause can change so many things about how you feel in your body.

Your energy changes. Your body changes. Your hormones change. Things that worked for you previously can suddenly stop working, and sleep can become another piece of that puzzle.

What I really want women to understand is that we do not have to simply accept feeling exhausted as part of getting older.

If menopause symptoms are consistently affecting your sleep and your quality of life, talk to a doctor who understands menopause. There are lifestyle, behavioural and medical options available, and you do not have to simply put up with symptoms that are affecting your everyday life.

Good sleep is not just about getting eight hours

Something else I have taken from Dr Hyman's approach is that good sleep is not simply about counting the number of hours we spend in bed. The quality and consistency of our sleep matter too.

There are simple things we can do to support better sleep.

Keeping reasonably consistent sleep and waking times can help our body establish a rhythm. Getting natural light in the morning helps support our body clock. Reducing bright lights and screens at night and creating an evening routine can also help signal to our body that it is time to slow down.

I think the important thing is not to turn sleep into another area of our health where we feel we have to be perfect.

There will be seasons of our lives when getting good sleep is genuinely difficult.

We cannot control a crying baby. We cannot always control pain from an injury. We cannot simply tell our menopausal hormones to behave themselves. Life happens, and sometimes our sleep is going to be affected by it.

What we can do is stop treating sleep as the least important part of our health.

We can protect our sleep when we can. We can create better habits around it. We can ask for help when we need it, and we can speak to a health professional when something does not feel right.

Eight weeks ago, lying in bed with a fractured rib and desperately wanting to sleep, I was reminded just how different everything feels when you are exhausted.

It also reminded me how easy it is to take sleep for granted when we are getting enough of it.

I am certainly not writing this as someone who has sleep perfectly figured out. There will still be late nights, busy weeks, times when my brain does not want to switch off and circumstances that are completely outside my control.

What I am trying to do is become much more conscious of protecting my sleep because I now understand how much it affects everything else.

That is what flourishing looks like to me. It is not having the perfect evening routine or getting exactly eight hours of sleep every single night. It is understanding what my body needs, paying attention when something does not feel right and asking for help when I need it.

If you are going through a season where sleep is difficult, whether you have a new baby, young children, teenagers, menopause, an injury, stress or simply a lot happening in your life, please do not think you just have to push through it.

Perhaps your starting point is asking someone for help. Perhaps it is talking to your doctor. Perhaps it is putting your phone away a little earlier tonight or giving yourself permission to leave something until tomorrow.

It does not need to be a complete overhaul.

Perhaps it is simply asking yourself one question.

What is one small thing I can do today to help myself sleep better tonight?

For me, that is another way of choosing my health.

Ali V.