Sleep Physiology, Home Sleep Tips, and How Chiropractic Can Help
Don’t we just love sleep? Being able to relax on a soft bed, feel comfortable, muscles relaxing, and drift off into our sweet dreams.
If only that happened so easy.
For many of us, we have trouble sleeping at night. It can range from periods of ‘overactive minds’, too much mental and emotional distress, not feeling drowsy, neck pain and shoulder discomfort, or the dreaded insomnia. If you notice a constant sleep difficulty pattern, or reoccurring poor night’s sleep, it can be hard to identify what the problem is!
In this article, we’ll focus on the common patterns of sleep difficulties we see in our clinic, what’s occurring with your body during sleep, what happens if you aren’t getting enough good quality sleep, and how certain Chiropractic care can help!
During sleep, we have N-REM (non rapid eye movement) stages 1-4 which lead to the widely known REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Throughout the night, your N-REM and REM cycle back and forth, with REM occurring for about 25% of a 90 minute cycle. Each cycle creates progressively more deep REM sleep, so cutting your hours short will limit how much REM sleep time you get.
So.. if you’re not getting proper sleep, your brain isn’t getting cleaned as well, and you won’t feel as refreshed in the morning. If this goes on for years, we can start to see other health problems arise.
1. Stop Being Blue
The biggest aggravator we find with our patients is the prevalence of blue light late into the evening.
Your brain is smart, and it senses different wavelengths in the light your eyes pick up. During daytime and twilight, your eyes detect a larger amount of blue light which can boost attention, mood, and reaction times. Unfortunately, every computer screen, phone, tablet, and TV emit a lot of blue light, so using these within an hour before bed can be troublesome. Blue light also limits your melatonin hormone production, or your ‘sleepy hormone’, making it harder to fall asleep.
2. Limit Long Naps
The science on napping benefits are mixed, but taking naps longer than 2-3 hours can often change your internal clock too much, making deep and restful night-time sleep difficult.
4. Don’t Use Your Bed As A Workstation
While this was more easily prevented before our ‘circuit breaker’ measures, most people are still working from home and often in bed! Unfortunately for many, your work stress can follow you to your bed if you don’t separate those two environments. So instead of getting tired, you’re thinking about work. Make sure to work elsewhere at an ergonomic table, or if possible somewhere outside for a bit of fresh air!
5. Get Into a Normal Routine
Binge watching a Netflix show until 11:30 pm or scrolling through Instagram in bed may sound like a relaxing activity, but it takes time to get the body prepared for rest and shut-down time. Give your brain a fighting chance by sleeping at the same times weekdays and weekends, and not oversleeping significantly on the weekends. Remember, sleeping 6 hour weekdays creates a sleep debt can’t be caught up by 12 hours Saturday and Sunday.
6. Exercise… But Not At Night
This is a general rule, and will apply differently to everyone. On average, people who workout a 1-2 hours before sleep don’t give their body enough time to calm down and relax. While exercise itself can tire you out, and is a very important factor to curing insomnia, make sure you are applying it appropriately. Often people will ‘use’ exercise to exhaust themselves before sleep, but there is early evidence that it may not allow for as much deep sleep to occur.
Chiropractors work with your spine and joints in order to affect the Nervous System, which is your body’s highway of information. We improve Central Nervous System function by clearing out mechanical and neurological blockages, which we call Vertebral Subluxation, throughout the body in various ways.
There can be a lot of interference along your spine and other joints that can contribute to sleep difficulties. From the most simple example, if you have joint pain and stiff muscles, Chiropractic adjustments can provide fast pain relief and easier mobility, which can help with a comfortable sleep.
The body also has to down-regulate it self to become calm and relaxed before sleep. Often having nervous system irritation makes that process more difficult. Adjustments can help clear out these neurological obstructions and help develop better sleep health and hygiene.
The largest focus for patients with sleep difficulties is the upper cervical area, involving your occiput, C1, and C2 joints. While all seven cervical vertebrae(C1-C7) are important, the upper neck is much more neurologically far-reaching. Your C1 vertebrae is nicknamed ‘the atlas’ in reference to a sculpture where the greek titan Atlas is shown holding the world on his shoulders. The articulations of C1 help to hold the head in a neutral and strong position, but when there are small misalignments from poor posture and old injuries, this can offset the delicate balance. As these upper cervical joints are the first areas that can interfere with nerve flow exiting the brain, correcting their alignment is an important focus.
At Align Chiropractic, we also practice S.O.T., or Sacro-Occipital Technique, which excels in checking patterns often missed by other general Chiropractors. Most notably, the focus on detecting and restoring proper C.S.R.M. (Cranio-Sacral Respiratory Mechanism) helps to balance the Nervous System in a very powerful way.
“CSF maintains the electrolytic environment of the central nervous system (CNS),
influences systemic acid-base balance, serves as a medium for the supply of nutrients
to neuronal and glial cells, functions as a lymphatic system for the CNS by removing the waste products of cellular metabolism, and transports hormones, neurotransmitters, releasing factors and other neuropeptides throughout the CNS.”
With gentle pressure, palpation, and a few breaths, we can help to reset poor CSF rhythms and patterns. We can also use specific Cranial work involving light pressure to mobilize parts of the skull that may be restricted and affecting CSF patterns.
Closing Thoughts
Sleep is unfortunately very complicated. There are many factors you can improve in your daily life that severely affect your quantity and quality. Always start with those and set yourself up for success. If you’re still finding sleep difficult, come in for a spine check-up to see if your case is right for Chiropractic.
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