Magic…while you are sleeping
Apr 21, 2022
Over the years I lived in Hawaii, I knew a self-described clean freak who resided in a community that housed a number of young adults. Sounds like a hopeless set up for frustration, right?
You might imagine that the place got pretty messy. A small crowd eating, drinking, doing projects all over the place, bathrooming, tracking messes in and out on their shoes, all day long.
She had it figured out though. On a regular basis, she would kick everyone out, get her cleaning products, and clean all surfaces, top to bottom. A cleaning dervish, she liked to have the space to herself when she cleaned!
Much like that community house, our bodies and minds make messes all day long. We eat and drink, start projects, leave things around, dishes in the sink, and debris on the counters and floors.
Cycling through a range of emotions such as excitement, worry or confusion during the day, unresolved emotional residues often linger in our minds and bodies at day’s end.
When the lights go off, and we lie down, closing our eyes, we invite our breathing and heart rate, and all bodily systems, to slow way down.
In this quietude, our inner cleaning dervishes get busy, like my friend in Hawaii! Sleep provides vital clean up time for our bodies and minds. You don’t want to miss it.
If we have eaten an abundance of whole plant foods during the day, the nighttime cleaning shift will be energized and stocked with abundant cleaning and maintenance products to use, such as antioxidants and fiber.
In a recent blog, Why Fuss About Fiber, we explored the short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) that our microbiomes (guts) make from the range of plant fiber that we eat.
Our cleaning friends, these SCFAs go everywhere through our bloodstream, scrubbing and repairing. They will repair leaky gut, take the trash out of our cells, clean up our bloodstreams, clean plaque out of our brain tissue, tune up the lymph and endocrine systems, and kill cancers and disease start ups.
SCFAs scrub us clean and oversee tissue upgrades.
As the microbiome becomes more healthy and calm, through diet and lifestyle upgrades, the whole nervous system calms down, and sleep tends to improve over time.
We can support this virtuous cycle with good sleep hygiene:
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Having a regular bedtime
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Nurturing bedtime rituals (dimming lights, getting off electronic devices)
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Stopping eating a couple hours before bedtime
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Regular exercise
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Calming activities (journaling, meditation, nature walks, EFT-tapping, stretching)
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Calming herbs
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Low dose of melatonin
Sleep often gets tricky at middle age and beyond.
Getting up to pee in the middle of the night seemed to start when I was pregnant, and never really stopped.
Mind racing with creative ideas, my mom routinely wakes up at 3 AM, and needs to get up and journal.
For many of us, anxiety sometimes makes it hard to get back to sleep.
Other people get up at 4 AM and work out, and go to bed really early. Some people swear by naps.
We can get creative about getting rest, but we have to make sure we get enough of it. When our sleep patterns breakdown, we need to take the steps to restore them.
Try sleep hygiene first, and if it’s not working, look into sleep medicine. Let me know what works for you!
Recommended Reading:
Fiber Fueled by Dr Will Bulsiewicz. This fascinating, well documented, read/listen will inspire you to feed your gut a wide range of whole plant foods every day.
