How To Become A 'Care Free Sleeper' 

If You have found yourself on my sleep page it is probably because you are having significant problems sleeping at night.

If so don't despair I can help you get back to sleeping well but you will have to do a little bit of work and have a bit of patience.

What is a Care Free Sleeper?

"A Carefree Sleeper” is an individual who effortlessly enjoys restful sleep and doesn’t think or worry about going to bed,  it represents the ideal state you need to aim for.  Imagine someone you know who sleeps peacefully. They likely just head to bed and drift off to sleep with obsessing about sleep routines, sleep hygiene and avoiding things like caffeine.

To improve your sleep, this should be your goal.

Whilst it requires a change in your behaviour and mindset, it's easily attainable with the right support and help in about four to six weeks

Why does the menopause cause sleep problems?

During the perimenopause (the time before the actual menopause) and menopause you have a reduction in the hormones Oestrogen and Progesterone.

Firstly, the reduction in oestrogen causes a disruption in the way your body regulates heat and this can cause hot sweats/ flashes at night. Secondly Progesterone is a hormone that helps you to relax and when you have less of it you may become more anxious and less relaxed. 

The combination of hot sweats and anxiety in many women will cause some disruption of Sleep which will usually resolve on its own. 

For some women however it can cause more severe problems such as Chronic insomnia.

You have chronic insomnia if you are having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep for 3 nights a week for more than a month 

Why do you develop chronic insomnia?

Let me explain why you have developed chronic insomnia with a typical and common scenario. 

“It’s likely that when you first started waking up with the hot sweats, racing heart etc. you felt anxious.  You may have stayed in bed desperately trying to get back to sleep. If sleep didn’t come you became more anxious and panicky.

You worried about how you were going to cope the next day.

When morning came around you may have drifted off to sleep when the birds started tweeting and got up from bed later than you normally would. 

During the day,  you have a niggly little worry that you may not sleep well again tonight. 

You have now started to set up a connection between your anxious mind and the bed.

Because you slept in late that morning or you may have tried to have a nap during the day you are not as tired when you go to bed at your usual time that night. So now as well as waking during the night you can't even get to sleep in the first place.

Everything you have read about sleep says you must have eight hours sleep so now you start to panic about not getting enough sleep to stay healthy. 

This is the start of a vicious cycle of desperately trying to get to sleep and spending more and more time in bed. 

You may find that even though you are exhausted during the day you can’t even have a nap during the day. Your brain won’t shut down.

You start introducing meditation and yoga but nothing seems to work.

As you continue to have problems sleeping you start to think that something in your brain has gone wrong. 

You start to research why you need to sleep and discover all sorts of awful illnesses that are more likely to occur when you don’t sleep. That increases the worry about not sleeping.

You start buying supplements, lavender sprays, weighted blankets, camomile teas etc. etc.”

This pattern may vary between individuals but generally speaking the insomnia occurs because of anxiety related to going to bed and actually spending too much time in bed. 

What You Need To Sleep

To sleep well you need three things to be in balance. 

1. A good sleep drive
2. A low hyper-arousal state
3. A good circadian rhythm

Your sleep drive is basically your need for sleep. So first thing in the morning after a good nights sleep your sleep drive will be very low. During the day when you are going about your daily activities your sleep drive starts to increase so that by bedtime your sleep drive should be at its highest level, ready for sleep. If however you disrupt your sleep drive for instance by napping during the day, getting up late at weekends etc it will be much harder for you to get to sleep.

The second thing that influences your ability to sleep is known as hyper-arousal. This is a bit like excitability, if you were ever excited about something as a child you may remember not being able to get to sleep easily and lying awake in bed?

With chronic insomnia you develop a hyper-arousal state which is usually linked to the worry and anxiety you feel about not being able to sleep. So for instance when you lie in bed worrying about not sleeping, your fight or flight stress response is activated, your body releases cortisol, you feel hot, your heart starts to race and you become very alert so that you can fight off the perceived danger. 

Unfortunately your brain starts to associate this perceived danger with your bed and you brain learns that bed is a dangerous place to be.  

Now when you go to bed even if your sleep drive is high you are on ‘red alert’ and the chances of you actually falling asleep are much reduced.

The third thing you need is a really good circadian rhythm. Your circadian rhythm is basically a timetable your body can follow so that it knows what to do next and when. 

It's a bit like when you were at school and you had a timetable, everyone knew where they should be and at what time. The school day ran smoothly.

If there had been no timetable school would have been chaotic and no one would ever have learnt anything.

Your body is the same, it needs a timetable so that it knows what to do next and when. So waking up at the same time every day is really important when you have insomnia

1.  Go to bed at the same time every day & get up at the same time too
2. Only use your bed for sleep (very important) you need to start associating your bed with sleep not being awake.
3. If you can’t get to sleep after 20 minutes, get up and do something you enjoy (avoid computer screens or your phone)
4. During the night do not look at any clock (your brain will associate clock watching with anxiety)
5. No napping during the day
6. Stop using any sleep tracking devices and remove all your sleep supplements/ sleep aids etc.

Things to consider about sleep -  we all get enough sleep to survive. Just like breathing sleep is an automatic process so stop worrying that you are not getting any sleep at all.  Your body will get sleep if it needs it. (it may not be enough for you to feel refreshed but you will get enough)

There is no evidence that not sleeping enough causes all sorts of terrible things to happen to you, let go of this thought.

Sleep hygiene measures are useful but don't obsess about them. When you slept well I bet you didn't even think about sleep hygiene.

You don't need expensive supplements to sleep, stop wasting your money.

We were all born with the ability to sleep, your brain has just intervened to prevent you doing it well at the moment.

You can sleep well again  

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