East Dallas Chiropractor;
Get Better Sleep to Stay Healthy!
Shared by Dr. Travis Downs
One of the biggest problems we see in the clinic is that our patients have trouble sleeping. Normally, this happens because our patients come into the office in pain. When pain signals are constantly being sent to your brain, your body stays in fight or flight which prevents us from resting and healing. As we get our patients out of pain the next thing that keeps them from sleeping is that they are under too much stress and can’t turn their brains off to get the sleep they need. To try to get your brain to stop racing patients will play games on their phone, scroll through social media, or turn on the tv to try get to sleep. This is one of the worst things you can do because any light and especially blue light will decrease your body from producing melatonin. Melatonin is the chemical our bodies produce that puts us to sleep and without it we will just stay awake.
Now that we know that we need to eliminate the blue light, how do we handle the constant go go go of our brain? That’s where Wayne Dyer’s ‘the last 5 min before you go to sleep’ trick comes into effect. If you spend the last 5 min before you go to sleep thinking about the things that went wrong during the day, the million things you have to do the next day, and all the stressful things we have running through our minds, then you are training your brain to think negatively instead of thinking positively. So, when we are laying there we want to start to reprogram our mind and our subconscious mind to be positive. Start to visualize your goals and what you want to happen in your life in a positive way. This will calm your mind and stop the racing. The worrying will start to go away and sleeping will come very quickly. This is something personally I use every night because I used to be the person who’s brain never turned off, now I get a little upset that I fall asleep too fast and don’t get through all of my visualizations before I’m out for the night. We always want to get great sleep because decreased sleep will cause more stress and that stress will lead to poorer health.
“Daytime sleepiness (ESS) and sleep quality (PSQI) correlated statistically significantly with both health/illness measures (CHIPS and PILL); poorer sleep quality and greater daytime sleepiness were associated with poorer health.”
Reference:
Sleep: An Important Factor in Stress-Health Models
Grant Benham*
Give it a try this for three days in a row. Turn everything off at night and for 5 minutes, just lay there and think about positive things in your life. Let me know what you think and if it helps you as much as it helps me.
Our Message
Our Chiropractors located near the corner of Mockingbird Ln. and abrams Rd. are here to help educate our patients on how to live a healthier lifestyle. We also look at nutrition to make sure you are getting the proper nutrients while helping you manage stress to give your body the best fighting chance against pain and disease! Give it a try this for three days in a row. Turn everything off at night and for 5 minutes, just lay there and think about positive things in your life. Let me know what you think and if it helps you as much as it helps me Get Better Sleep!