Prioritizing rest & relaxation in our lives
Learn new ways to ensure your sleep improves. Richard Schwab, MD, gives tips to improve overall sleep hygiene, Domenick Sportelli, DO, helps us identify burnout and more.
Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The health advice I would give to my younger self would be take the time to rest.
Take the time to rest. I always felt like I always had to be on the go and to get better at whatever I was doing at the time,
and how important rest is to growth and progress.
My number one tip for living the healthiest life is rest. I don't know how to do it yet. But I keep hearing that if I get eight hours of sleep,
I'm gonna be golden. So I'm gonna say rest. So how many times have you spoken to somebody, they've asked you how you are, and it's, ugh,
I'm so busy, so busy. And it becomes rewarding. You're like, yeah, me too. We're all so busy. And it becomes this implicit value.
It's our self-worth. If we're so busy, then we have value, we have worth. And that's how you're doing the right thing if you're so busy.
So change the tone of it. Ask different questions. Even if it feels awkward, ask, how are you resting?
Ask those questions. And offer them. Say, I just had the best nap to your friend
or to somebody else. Rest means not doing things and valuing having a slower pace of life.
Post-COVID, we've seen huge spikes in anxiety. And I imagine more and more people are hoping to get more rest, pursue meditation, relaxation
more often and more easily. Can you explain this conversation, and maybe also how it's shifted over the course of your work?
We don't prioritize rest. And what I've noticed just for myself in the last couple of years, especially post-COVID,
rest is so incredibly important to us. I mean, there have been so many studies
that have shown the benefits of getting proper sleep. It regulates hormone health. It helps your cognitive function.
It improves anxiety and stress. It's almost as if it's the cure-all for all of our stress
and anxiety. Yet we don't prioritize it as much as we should. We prioritize being productive and being busy more.
[WHOOSH] When people engage in mindfulness activities, their A1C decreased. We also know that for people who have high blood pressure,
they have lower blood pressure when they're able to sleep. It's not something that they're in the habit of doing. But it's something that we need to think about
how do you schedule it in. We know that at midnight, you're not going to be nearly as sharp and productive as, you know,
at noon. Also, we know that if you're not well-fed, you can't be well-rested.
So we talk about the interplay between nourishing your body giving yourself enough time and space and then going to sleep.
[WHOOSH] [MUSIC PLAYING] As medical doctors and behavioral health doctors, we are finally paying attention to the rest and relaxation
as much as we are some of the other proactive things that we're used to. Rest is so important in your productivity,
in your physical health, in your mental health. So paying attention to your body is a very important thing. Do you feel fatigued?
Do you feel tired? Do you feel drained? Well, listen to your body. Listen to your mind. That means you need some time to rest.
So a few things that I would suggest that I think are unbelievably important is mindfulness and meditation and relaxation
time for at least 20 minutes per day. That's a perfect goal to start. It can be just time where you sit and relax
in a beautiful place. Try not to let your thoughts get away from you because what we see as doctors, guys, is unquestionably better
cardiovascular health, better mental health, better brain health, less mood disorders, less anxiety and depression.
[WHOOSH] So there's something very clinically relevant. And it's called burnout. You can experience burnout being a parent.
You can experience this at your job. Just about anything we do, we can experience burnout. And one thing that we notice is that people
tend to experience this overwhelm and this burnout when they don't make time for themselves. Every once in a while, it's very important
to stop, look back, and say, am I sleeping OK? How's my diet? Am I eating OK? Am I exercising and taking care of myself?
Am I making time, at the end of the day, to relax? And before you know it, the day is over, the week is over, the month is over, and you're completely exhausted.
So pay attention to some of the basic qualities of your day-- eating, sleeping, exercise, nutritional diet.
And pay attention to how you feel. Do I feel stressed? Do I feel anxious or nervous? Do I feel sad? A lot of times we don't really ask ourselves these questions,
is that when people start to burn out and they start to feel overwhelmed in life, they stop enjoying things.
Now the fancy term for that is anhedonia. That means that we don't enjoy things that we used to like to do. And this could be your job.
It could be taking care of your kids. You start to notice, I'm really just not enjoying this anymore. When you start to experience that,
that's a big red flag to stop and think about your day. Assess your circumstances exactly how I asked you to.
And make that time for yourself. So just pay attention to some of those cues and you'll be just fine. [WHOOSH]
Sleep is clearly important. We spend roughly a third of our lives sleeping.
You need enough sleep to be able to function as best as you can from a daytime sleepiness standpoint. Go to bed at the same time.
Get up at the same time as much as possible. So make sure that your routine is the same night
in and night out. Make sure the bedroom is quiet, cool, dark and there's nothing that's disturbing it.
The more you can make the bedroom quiet and cool the better. Don't do work in bed. So you know, watching TV in bed, not even a good idea.
Looking at your computer in bed, terrible idea. Looking at your phone in bed, terrible idea. Use the bed for sleep and nothing else.
And then a common problem-- or I see it as a problem, but people do this all the time-- is they use the snooze alarm.
Often, the early morning hours are where we have REM sleep, which is Rapid Eye Movement sleep. And it's the most important time in terms
of important stage of sleep. And so you don't want to disturb that. So if you wake up at 6:15 and you were in a period of REM,
well, that was not a good idea. So the snooze alarm, you should never use, and just wake up at the last possible moment.
Set the alarm for when you have to get up and understand to do that. And then in terms of the clock in general, don't clockwatch.
So if you're having trouble sleeping, the last thing you want to do is look at the clock and see, wow, it's 2:00 in the morning. Just turn the clock the opposite direction
so you can't see what time it is. In order to break your bad habits, it takes-- sleep habits, you need to have some discipline. And you have to, again, go to bed at the same time,
wake up at the same time. Alcohol is another problem. Alcohol disturbs sleep. It may put you to sleep, but alcohol is really
a sleep disruptor. And it never is a good thing. The alarm clock is easy. I mean, that one, just set your alarm
for when you have to get up. And then just turn the clock the other way. That's also pretty easy to do. So some of this is just making sure that you're disciplined,
that you do it the right way. Obviously, there's gonna be time periods where people go to bed late because they stay out late. That's fine.
But you need to be as consistent as possible. And that will help your sleep. [WHOOSH] [MUSIC PLAYING]
Our memories do us a disservice. We are really bad remembers.
We often have a tendency to define ourselves by our successes that other people can see and can quantify.
If we change that, if we shed that way of assessing our worth, we actually might be able to enjoy our life a little bit more.
So rather than deciding, I need to get something done that I can show to somebody else, we need to make those choices to prioritize rest and relaxation.
We can make it a habit. Every morning, we set our clocks for 10 minutes earlier than we otherwise might want to get up.
And for those first 10 minutes, we make the conscious choice to meditate, to do some yoga,
to not just pick up our phones or get right into our morning routine, but instead, take that time to just enjoy the peace
and quiet before the pressures of the day start to loom upon us. And that might be hard to do. It might be challenging to get up a little bit earlier.
And it might make you feel guilty to actually do that, to take those 10 minutes for yourself. By making that conscious choice to add those 10 minutes
into the start of our day, eventually we'll pick it up as an automatic habit. The other thing we can do to automate that good habit
is to create an environment that allows us and reminds us to choose rest and relaxation.
If we try to meditate in our living room one day, our bedroom the next day, our bathroom the third day, we aren't setting ourselves up for creating that good habit.
Our environment can trigger that choice that we want to make. So find a space that encourages rest and relaxation, make
the choice to practice that rest in that space each day, and then you'll find that it sort of opens your mind up
to that possibility every time you see that space. [WHOOSH] Hi. I'm Rosie Acosta. And this is a meditation for better sleep for the new year.
We all need to prioritize rest. So let's take this moment to make rest a priority. Let's begin.
Let's actually do this practice lying down, because we're gonna focus on rest. So lie down wherever is most comfortable for you.
And if it's comfortable to close your eyes, you can do so now. Take a moment. Take a big, deep breath in, nice, long exhale.
As you're laying down, just feel your body in the position that it's in.
We'll do a scan from your feet all the way to the crown of your head. But we'll do it slowly. So just begin to imagine almost like a slow-moving wave is
moving from the soles of your feet, the backs of the legs, your lower back, your upper back, shoulders,
back of the neck, crown of the head. And now from the crown of your head, back down to the soles
of your feet. So we'll move down through the face, throat, chest, torso,
legs, soles of the feet. On your next exhale, feel your body moving further
into whatever base you're on. As your body sinks down into its surface,
begin to let go of any tension you may feel. Relax your hands, the soles of your feet.
Relax your throat, the center of your chest, the muscles of your face.
Feel free to stay in this position as long as you like or purely just
setting it as an intention to making rest a priority. When you're ready, you'll slowly roll over to your side.
Use your hand to press yourself up to a comfortable seated position. When you're ready, slowly blink your eyes open.
Arrive back into your space. You can do this practice any time you're just wanting to refocus on making rest a priority
or if you just need a little bit of help falling asleep. Thank you so much for doing this practice. And I hope that it serves you in some way.
wellness
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