Your sleep can get worse over the holidays if you aren’t careful! Here are some tips to help you stay healthy and sleep better this holiday season.


You’ll learn:

  • How to stay calm during the holidays
  • How to stabilize blood sugar
  • What to eat for optimal sleep
  • Tips for drinking alcohol without it ruining your sleep


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Episode Transcript


Have you tried everything from natural to pharmaceutical just to get a good night's rest? Join me, Martha Lewis, certified sleep expert and functional health coach. As I unpack what's really keeping you up at night and how to change it, this is the Sleep Detective podcast and I'm going to show you how to sleep well so you can enjoy your life.


Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Sleep Detective podcast where good sleep, health and longevity are inevitable. Today I want to talk about how to sleep better during the holidays. So I celebrate Christmas, which is fast approaching, so I thought that I would give you guys some tips. So we're going to talk about lots of different things, including how to minimize stress and how to eat during the holidays, stabilize your blood sugar, and if you do choose to drink alcohol, some tips to do that and have it not impact your sleep as much.


So let's get into it. So one of the biggest reasons why sleep gets affected so much during the holidays has to do with stress, right? This is no surprise, definitely the mental stress of getting ready, of shopping, of maybe traveling, of worrying about dealing with tough relatives. All of that adds to the stress of the holidays, but the holidays can be a lot less stressful, and in fact, I love Christmas time because I actually take time off of work and I take the time to relax and enjoy them, and I do a lot of these things that I'm going to share with you today. The thing is to not let too much stress build up. So I see stress as a bucket. So if you imagine a bucket full of stress, that is how much stress your body can handle. Once the bucket starts overflowing with even more stress, that is when your sleep gets affected and your health gets affected.


So the goal is to lower the amount of stress in the bucket, and so this can be mental stress and it can be physical stress such as imbalances in your body. So we're not going to be talking about that today. We're going to talk about how we can lower this mental stress so that your bucket isn't quite as full and maybe it won't overflow as much during the holidays. So one of the most stressful things I find about the holidays is the planning and the shopping and having everything done in time. I used to wait until the last minute and then realize that, oh, I still had to get presents for all these different people and I have to mail them by a certain time and oh, that's coming up. Tomorrow was the last day to mail the presents and I need to order things.


I live in a small town, Jackson, Wyoming, where you can't just go to these big stores and buy things. I have to order a lot of things. So that also has to be done in time. One of the main things I've started doing is planning in advance. So I'm getting ready to do this right now. I'm recording this the week before Thanksgiving, so I'm going to start thinking about Christmas now, and so that is making a list of all the people I want to buy gifts for, making a list of what ideas I have and then writing down the last date that I have to send things and kind of creating deadlines for myself where, okay, I want to have my husband's presence figured out by this date, my son's presence, figured out by this date, my family's presence figured out by this date and start planning them.


If your schedule starts getting crazy with holiday parties and events and things like that, it can help to go ahead and start putting those in your calendar and also put in when you're going to be doing the gift shopping, I like to go to different holiday bazaars and things that happen. So putting those in the calendar and planning the time of when you're going to focus on ordering gifts or thinking about gifts for people. And then once it's in the calendar, what's great is that, and you can move that around, that can be flexible, but it's out of your head, so it's not like swirling around in the background things you're trying to keep track of. Same with writing the list for everyone and everything that you need to do. Once it's out of your head, your brain, your mind can relax about it because it knows that it's taken care of.


You have it written down somewhere else. So that in and of itself can help reduce the amount of stress that you're feeling about planning for the holidays. So I also think that it's so important, especially as my son is out of school or if I'm traveling to be with friends or relatives, to make sure during that time that I have some alone time every day. I also make sure I exercise every day. A lot of times those two things happen together where I just go for a 30 minute run by myself. It gives me a chance to clear my head. It also obviously gives me a chance to get out some energy to get tired and to get the exercise that I need to feel a lot better. So even if it's just five minutes, walk, a 10 minute walk, something to give yourself that time, especially if you're like me and you really need that.


I am an introvert by nature, and so I like spending a lot of time alone and it takes a lot of energy for me to be around other people, even though I totally enjoy it. So it's really important, especially for us introverts to have some of that time alone, which can be hard. Right? Last year I went and stayed with my sister for Christmas and her daughter and my dad and stepmom were there, and so it's easy just to stay in the house with everyone all the time and not get any time alone. But I made sure to go for a walk, to go for a hike, to go for a run so that I could get that time alone. It also really helps to calm your nervous system every day. I recommend this all the time, anytime of the year, but it's even more important during stressful times, and this is what we tend to eliminate as soon as we're busy, then we eliminate this alone time.


We eliminate exercise, we eliminate taking care of our nervous system. It's even more important to take the time to do this when we're more stressed, which includes during the holidays because we have two parts to our nervous system. We have the sympathetic nervous system, which is our stress response nervous system, and we have our parasympathetic nervous system, which is our relaxed part of our nervous system, and our bodies cannot be in both of those systems at the same time. It's either one or the other. This is why if you're living in that sympathetic, that stress part of your nervous system, most of the time you need to make sure you're taking time to relax and to calm that nervous system. So things you can do, meditation, I'm sure you've heard of this, right? But this does decrease our blood pressure, our heart rate, it's shown to decrease cortisol levels.


So even doing this for two to five minutes a day at any time that's going to work for you, even first thing in the morning is going to set the stage for the rest of your day. It's going to help. And you can't do this wrong. A lot of people don't like meditation because they think that they're doing it wrong. If thoughts enter your mind this day and age in our busy lives, thoughts are going to enter our mind when we're meditating. The goal is to then notice them and then let them go again and come back to the breath or whatever you're focusing on, and then the thoughts are going to come in your mind again, and then when you realize that you notice them and you let them go. So that is what meditation can look like. There are lots of really helpful apps like Calm and Headspace.


I think it really helps to start with guided meditation in the beginning to get used to it. You can also do simple breathing exercises, even just breathing in for say four counts and then breathing out for longer than counts for five counts. That helps to decrease your nervous system. So that is something you can do anytime. If you're feeling stressed, you're driving around, you can just take some time to inhale for four and then exhale for five and then try and make the exhales even longer to where you're inhaling for four, exhaling for six or seven or eight counts. So that does an amazing thing to help us calm down. There's also progressive relaxation where you lie down and tense and relax each part of your body, there are videos and audios on YouTube that you can find to guide you through this. There's something called tapping or emotional freedom technique, which involves tapping on these acupressure points on your body that helps relieve physical pain and stress.


And studies show that this also lowers cortisol. So I recommend an app or website called the Tapping Solution. They have specific tapping for anxiety even for sleep that can help. It's also really important to play. So in the book Essentialism, Greg McKean, I think that's how you say his name, he talks about play and how important it is for a creativity in our work and also for lowering stress. So play is doing something just for the joy of it. So making time to play every day is also really helpful. Laughter is really helpful. So this is playing with your kids or I like listening to comedy in the car sometimes also feeling gratitude. So anytime you're feeling stressed, if you can write down or think about what you're grateful for, that helps shift you out of that stress response and it helps you keep in mind all the good things in your life.


Those are some options for calming your nervous system. You don't need to do all of these things instead just find one or two and practice them every day, and you want to start doing them before you're actually stressed so that you get in the habit of it so that your brain is used to it. So something new is also stressful, so start making it now this daily habit, and then you have that tool when you are especially stressed and it can help when you're starting a new habit like this. Again, to put this in the calendar, have a time of day where you're planning on doing it. It can help to have a reward afterwards. So if you treat yourself to a piece of chocolate every day, do the meditation first and then have the chocolate, and then it's a lot more motivating to be able to do it.


Alright, another thing I find stressful about the holidays is being with tough relatives. So especially I have one in particular who comes to mind, who I love dearly, but she triggers me and we stress each other out. So what I found is that it really helps to observe everything that's happening around you with all the people around you kind of observe it from a distance, be really curious about it, and that can help you be less judgmental. Now, if you're still finding yourself judging that person, which is what I do, then don't judge yourself for doing that. Just know that this person may always trigger you and just be okay with that. And then again, doing these things to calm your nervous system every day is going to help you not help those frustrated feelings not escalate. And if you need to walk away, if you're feeling triggered, walk away and do some of those breathing exercises or whatever that is going to help you calm down so that things don't explode.


Alright, now let's start talking a little more about physical things you can do. Blood sugar is especially important for sleep, and I've talked about this in a couple of other episodes, which I will link to in the show notes. But to summarize it, when our blood sugar is crazy up and down during the day, that's going to continue into the night. And whenever our blood sugar drops too low, our bodies release cortisol because that gives us energy and because we're stressed when that happens. And so when your body's releasing cortisol at night, it's going to wake you up. So we don't want that to happen. So the best thing you can do to stabilize your blood sugar is to start your day with breakfast with a very balanced meal. What I mean is plenty of protein for most people, that's at least 25 grams of protein, some healthy fat and some complex carbohydrates.


So starting your day like that sets you up for more regular blood sugar throughout the day. It can also help to eat three meals and not really snack. And when you want a treat, which I don't think that we need to totally deprive ourselves and say, we're not going to have any cake or cookies or candy or whatever it is, have it after a meal instead of between meals by itself because that's going to spike your blood sugar a lot if you have it just by itself. It's also important to think about your diet. So I recommend an anti-inflammatory diet, especially if you aren't sleeping well. But of course, again, I'm not saying don't have the cookie, don't have the cake, don't have those things that you love. But what if you make the majority of your diet very healthy and anti-inflammatory, which means no refined sugar, no refined flour, limiting alcohol, even gluten and dairy are inflammatory for a lot of people.


So if you can eat that way, say 90% of the time, and then feel free to have the treats that you want and not feel guilty about it. But I think a lot of times we have this all or nothing idea. I know I've done this in the past during the holidays where you just let it all go, right? You're like, well, I'm eating this crap and I'm eating this cookies and these things are always around, so I'm just going to eat like crap the entire two weeks. You don't have to do that. You can still eat healthy most of the time and then let yourself splurge and have these treats that you love and really enjoy them and don't feel guilty about it. Now let's talk about alcohol because 80% of people in the world drink alcohol, and this has shown that this increases during the holidays, which makes sense.


We're going to parties, we're around family where for a lot of us, alcohol is a part of how we celebrate things and get together and it can make things easier and it can also make tensions worse, but it definitely affects our sleep. Sometimes alcohol can help you fall asleep faster, but it always disturbs our sleep in the night. And for those of us with sleep issues or who can't tolerate alcohol as well, it's going to wake you up in the night because your liver is trying to detoxify that a few hours later after you go to bed. Now, dehydration that happens from alcohol also reduces our sleep quality. And what alcohol does is it increases our deep sleep and then decreases REM sleep at first, but then it increases REM sleep at the end of the night to make up for it. And REM sleep is more restless sleep.


That's our dream state. And so you may find after drinking that maybe you sleep hard at first and then you wake up and then are in more light sleep the rest of the night. So that is because that's how alcohol affects us. So what can you do about that? Well, here are some tips to drink alcohol and minimize the effect it's going to have on your sleep. So you can have one to two glasses of water for every drink that will help you stay hydrated. You want to have at least one hour before bed for every drink. So if you're just having one drink, then that last drink can be at say, eight o'clock and then you go to bed at 10 o'clock. But if you're having multiple drinks, you want those earlier in the day. I tend to happy hour drinking more than that night cap after dinner.


So I would follow that advice as well. It's really helpful to go to bed sober, and so giving that time between drinks and bed can really help. It can help to increase the electrolytes you're having the day you're going to drink to eat fermented foods to support gut health. You can also support your liver with glutathione or N-Acetyl cysteine and other liver supporting nutrients. You also want to eat before or while drinking. So drinking on an empty stomach is going to spike your blood sugar too. It's going to make you that alcohol metabolize a lot faster. Having a little bit of a nibble of food before you start drinking or eating dinner while you're drinking is best. It can also focus on drinks that have the least amount of hangover. Those tend to be beer, vodka, Jen, and then white wine. Some of the things that give you the biggest hangover are going to be brandy and red wine and rum and whiskey.


So focus on the drinks that are known to make you less likely to be hungover, and then you can plan ahead how much you want to drink. And that way you don't get called up in the moment and before you realize that you've had five drinks and you are drunk and you're going to sleep and feel horrible, while I do tend to recommend not drinking, especially if you have sleep issues, I realize that that might be unrealistic for the holidays. I don't drink often anymore because I can't handle it very well, but I probably will be drinking more over the holidays and enjoying that. But yeah, I definitely keep track and plan ahead of how much I actually want to drink and decide if I know I'm going to have a few drinks, is that worth it? I decide that ahead of time. Am I fine not sleeping well tonight, probably feeling like crap tomorrow.


Sometimes it's worth it to get a little buzz on and have a good time. Most of the time I find it's not worth it these days. So decide that ahead of time. And I, I found this graphic of Santa. He's sitting around these candles and he's meditating, closing his eyes, and these elves are sneaking by behind him and they say he's preparing for the holiday season, so even Santa realizes the need to do these things. All right, everyone, thank you so much for listening and I hope you have a great Christmas or whatever holiday you celebrate, and I will talk to you next week.

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