In this interview, Vicki Dawson, CEO and Founder of The Sleep Charity educated us on everyday strategies for better sleep, explained how our sleeping patterns naturally change throughout our lives and highlighted the lack of education about health and sleep in medical school.
If you are one of 40% of adults living with sleep issues in the UK, this interview is for you!
Hello everyone and uh glad to see I was going to say glad to see you all but glad that you all joined us because um hopefully uh Vicky Dawson from the Sleep charity who is the founder of the charity is going to give us I think it’s
Is it the the the answer to the Alexia of Youth is which is what sleep is All About Now isn’t it yeah yeah and thank you for inviting me you know it’s great to be here and to be able to speak with you about sleep and you know it is my
Sort of obsession at sleep and I could speak all day about it but I will try to be very controlled and uh not to do so well it’s funny isn’t it I think sleep has become a more apart from the weather which is what we always chitter chat
About sleep is one of those other things isn’t it that we all talk about is about sleep it’s now risen from being you know oh it’s just one of those things that our bodies did and we had to go and do that I think the rec nition of sleep in
The last few years has just escalated and it’s now one of the the top priorities and I think as you know I always qu um quoting Dr um Ron and chaty but saying that it is the found was one of the foundations isn’t it yeah it absolutely is and um you know
If you you’re not getting good quality sleep then there’s all sorts of implications and I think we’ve been probably somewhat unaware of that for many years and certainly when I started the charity which was back in 2012 there was much less awareness about sleep than
There is now and I think there’s still a long way to go don’t get me wrong um you know in terms of people being able to access support when the sleep isn’t as good as it could be um and generally in terms of awareness so you know educating
People about sleep youngsters in school about sleep but you’re absolutely right you know it is like one of the absolute fundamentals in terms of our well-being and when we’re not getting enough you know it has all sorts of knock on effects like mental health physical um sort of implications all kinds of things
That I’d not actually realized until I didn’t get any sleep myself and that’s where my you know interest came from because I’d always I guess taken it a bit for granted you know you just went to bed you fell asleep that was it and actually when it wasn’t in my life
That’s what I realized how enormous um sleep deprivation you know the enormous impact it could have so what we’d like to do today I think is to well first of all hear about you and your story how you set up the Sleep charity and then
What we always try to do is talk about some practical things of what we can all do to maybe help sleep and you know but I think you’re right starting off you know when you were saying about you know if you don’t suffer with lack of sleep
It doesn’t cross your mind because it’s just a natural natural thing supposedly for your body to do and when it doesn’t get so natural that’s when you start thinking about it and obviously there’s different reasons in our lives as to why we don’t sleep and I think for many of
Them people and I think this will suddenly go into your story it’s about having children as well which kicks it off for many people but anyway let over to you tell tell me about how you set up the Sleep charity yeah so um my background was actually in teaching so
Nothing to do with sleep at all and when I think back about that time when I was teaching I was completely unaware about you know the fact that children were not getting enough sleep I was probably aware about that but I had this simplistic view of well put them to bed
Earlier um because I could see that it was affecting concentration and then you have your own child and you realize it’s not that simple and you kind of cringe at the information you’ve given to parents you know in previous years and my interest in sleep came from becoming
A mother and and finding that actually when you do need sleep information sleep advice there’s not a great deal out there and I mean my son’s nearly 21 now so I’m going back you know some years but I wasn’t quite sure what information to trust and there seemed to be lots of
Information about um like safe sleeping practice but not actually about routine and how to do things and what to do when it got it went wrong and I also found there’s a lot of judgment about sleep with children so um you know I might post on a parenting Forum that I was
Having problems and um you then sort of got responses back that were either well just try doing this as if it’s such a simple thing to fix and we get this with adult sleep as well you know just try having a Milky drink and that’ll sort it
Um oh there was a lot of judgment around actually wanting to address sleep issues so you know we just Co sleep with them and they’ll just eventually sleep on their own and yeah lots of judgment about it and um I I did try and get some
Support and some help but there was just nothing available I mean the health visitor gave me a book to read and at that point I was working full-time um probably getting three four hour sleep max and I interrupted sleep at that and um you know even tried to read a book
Was virtually impossible and the GP prescribed anti-depressants that was sort of the answer just like a bit of a sticking plaster over the real issue um so I started to research sleep myself I wanted to learn you know as much as I could about it and I wanted to have a go
At making some changes and for me it was recognizing that what was going on in my life with my child was behavioral so I’d been looking for a probably a pill or some medicine a medical reason um for the Sleep issues and there there wasn’t one it was a behavioral approach that
Was needed which made perfect sense with my teacher headon uh because that’s what I did in the daytime I looked for reasons why behaviors were occurring I looked for then the strategies whereas with the sleep I’d gone in completely the opposite direction and i’ thrown loads of strategies at it but i’ never
Actually unpicked what was causing it and that’s where my interest started and once I’d done that and understood that and put everything in place he started to sleep through the night and um it I was G to say that it was amazing but actually it was quite disturbing because
I’ve been waking constantly because my sleep was all out of sink thinking is he okay do I need to go in there what do I do I was really anxious about it because i’ had six years of you know not having any sleep um but yes he was perfectly
Fine and he’s continued to sleep you know perfectly ever since and that’s where my passion came from because what I started to realize is there are a lot of families out there who had had the same experience that I was having and I wanted to try and prevent just one
Family from going down the dark path that sleep issues led me down and I decided very naively not knowing a great deal about Charities at that point I’ll set up a charity and people will give me money and I can do good things and it doesn’t work quite like that as I now
Know um so it’s been another huge learning curve in terms of that and last year um we decided to change the name of the charity so we became the Sleep charity rather than the children’s sleep charity and that was because we also recognized so many adults who are H
Having sleep issues and quite often there’s nowhere for them to go as well to receive uh information support or or just to be listened to because that’s you know really powerful actually having someone who listens and doesn’t try and fix it but just hears how bad it is at
Times I think that’s also it sometimes you just want to get it off your chest don’t you which I think is a lot with chronic conditions and I you know SE deprivation I assume is a chronic condition um and it is it’s just you don’t always want somebody to say oh you
Need to do this this and this which doesn’t Neary work but you want someone just to listen to you in in the first to start out in the first instance really isn’t it yeah I mean I think that listening to people who’ve got sleep issues is just incredibly important and
It is often what doesn’t happen so if people do seek out help they immediately get strategy suggested and the problem is that the strategies often aren’t aren’t going to be appropriate because there’s not been a proper assessment taken place place so people then become um almost like I’ve just got to live
With it CU nothing is going to work um and the first starting point for us at the Sleep charity is actually to listen and every now and then the phone will ring I I will answer it and someone will tell me all the problems around sleep
And it is really just hearing it and giving them space to talk about it and empathizing with that but not trying to fix it and they will usually draw those conversations to a close and say you know you’ve been ever so helpful thank you so much and put the phone down I
Think I’ve not actually given you any strategies you just you know you’ve just been heard but sometimes if you are heard you can start to see what you need to change as you’re reflecting on it absolutely and you know having spoken to you the other day I mean that’s where a
Lot of your funding goes into your telephone support doesn’t it yeah it does so we have um commissioned Sleep Services in some parts of the country which are for children um and you know it’s frustrating because it’s a postcode Lottery um so it depends where families live as to whether they can access
Support um so my vision is to have a a help line that people can contact that’s what I want so that they can’t get some expert information advice but so they can be listened to so that’s where we lot of uh fundraising around at the
Moment to to get that in place so the areas that were’re able to offer support are quite limited um and again this is why we try to sort of share information widely on our website so we can make sure people have got the information but we also train professionals as well so
That they can filter out our work on a wider level um and one of the things that I was completely unaware of when when I was going through my sleep issues was that sleep is often something that professionals aren’t trained in so you may present with a sleep problem um
Requesting support and help and there may have been no training in that particular professional’s background around it which I find really shocking um because I just presumed that it was there so I mean do you know do GPS get trained in it is that part do you know
Or is there some specific areas that don’t seem to be trained or just across the board yeah um it seems to be quite patchy in terms of where the training is um I remember a few years ago uh we launched a basic sleep workshop for um professionals working with children and
I had a number of Health visitors sign up for that now as a perent a health visitor would be the first professional that I would think of to go to for Sleep support and I actually called them and said you you’ve signed up for a basic Workshop but this is like basic level
And I was so shocked and they said we’ve not had any training around it so um you know that presumption that I had was completely wrong um I do get to go to some universities now and um do some lecturing for postgraduate medical students and again they will say that
They’ve not had any sleep input until this point um and yeah and education as well so I’ve also done lecturing around um education at postgraduate level so um this was particularly in the early years and sleep was not on the programs yet actually if youngsters are sleep deprived in education we know that
They’re not going to meet the full potential absolutely and it shows how the momentum of building so you know we were just talking about the last time we met was in March when you were at well we were all at Westminster sort of shouting the banner about sleep you know
And you had the mental the mental health foundation so there was some big organizations and some prominent people there supporting your cause yeah um so we did we launched um our Manifesto it was the 4th of March um it seem for forever ago now yeah and uh we’d been working really
Hard on it um so that we could get a real campaign going about sleep because I’m really passionate that if people have got sleep issues they need to be able to access support at the earliest opportunity because they can quite often become worse and more deeply entrenched
And it could have a devastating impact on every area of life um thinking about mental Health you know there’s lots of um links between sleep deprivation anxiety depression it can impact on relationships it’s just enormous even like safety and it’s got that wider impact in terms of road traffic
Accidents you know it can not just affect your family but you know you could be the victim of someone who’s sleep deprived who’s actually driving um so I wanted to really bring that to the government’s attention because we need sleep to be on the public agenda um
Children need to be educated about sleep um families individuals who are having sleep issues need to be able to access education because we need to empower people with knowledge so they can understand why they may be having the difficulties and what practical tips they can put in place to help them and
We need that training for professionals too so that when they are giving information out they feel confident that the information they’re giv is based on the latest research that it is actually high quality information so yeah that launched on the fourth of March and we were hoping to follow that up by
Establishing an all party parliamentary group unfortunately that’s not happened because of the pandemic so um it is frustrating but you know we’ve got plans to continue with that as soon as we can because this is affecting so many people I mean statistically it’s 40% of the adult population have got a sleep issue
Which is enormous and we’ve seen it rise during the pandemic as well well you must let us know about the Parliamentary groups because we um have been involved in a couple of them and they really can force through change and I think that’s really important that as as sort of
Individuals can realize that we can go to Westminster we can actually pressurize and we can make things happen and we were involved in the mesh I don’t want to say Scandal but you know for want of a better word you know the mesh Scandal and um you know a couple of
Other things and is really important that we can get a ground swell of people and you really can make a difference so yeah so please let us know and then we’ll absolutely let everybody on the talk Health platform know about it as well yeah that that would be great and I
Mean the thing about sleep is it it sort of encompasses so many different areas as well so you’ve got the mental health but then you’ve got um you know all sorts of individualized areas so I’ve spoken to a number of other Charities this week uh ex immaturity for example
Um and the common thing is that there sleep there as well you know sleep issues in sort of every different field like I’ve worked with this week um adults who’ve got a diagnosis of autism sleep issues that there as well so we talk about like sleep experts but
Actually we’re the experts on our our own sleep because we all do it so differently so it’s really important that we do come together so that we are stronger and that we are um inputting all the different um sort of beneficiaries or potential beneficiaries of our work and absolutely I mean so you
Know we’ve spoken a lot about how sleep can affect children and their development um and then then you know then the flip side is you know is trying to do your best with sleeping habits as you get older to stop potential problems with dementia because we know that
Dementia can worsen um due to lack of sleep so it’s across you know all ages is a very important aspect of your health to pay attention to isn’t it it absolutely is yeah and um you know the thing about sleep is it changes as well as we get
Older um sleep you sleep patterns don’t just stay the same there’s all sorts of different changes that take place and changes that take place while we are asleep as well um so you know thinking about sort of newborn babies and the fact that they have like lots of REM
Sleep which is like the light sleep the old flickering eyelids but then as we get older that diminishes and diminishes and we need less of that and thinking about adolescence when we become night ows and find it harder to fall asleep and then sort of lying in in the morning
Um and then moving through life I’m thinking particularly for ladies like menopause um you know the the hormonal changes that can impact on sleep so sleep does change over periods of time and we need to be able to understand the changes that are happening to us so that
We know as well when it what is normal you know is this what I should be expecting um it’s that again it’s that understanding and educating people around it because it does affect right from the cradle all the way up through our lives lives and if we can get good
Sleep in place I like the term it helps us meet our full potential whatever stage of life you’re at if you’re not getting the best sleep you can get it’s hard to be the best version of yourself because you’re going to be forgetting things your emotions can be all over the
Place um it it can impact on immunity your immune system becomes compromised um every single area and I try to flick it the other way as well so rather than thinking about sleepers you know if you don’t get enough all these Dreadful things are going to happen I try to
Think about sleepers actually if we can improve it all these amazing things are going to happen you’re going to look better you’re going to feel better you’re going to feel happier calmer because we often feel quite hyperactive jittery anxious if we don’t get enough
Sleep so I do try to CH change it to the positives um yeah yeah and I think what we’ve established is you know a how sleep does change through the years and also just how important is it I think if people understand how important it is to your
Health then people can start really taking it on board and looking at their sort of their sleep habits yeah and we don’t prioritize it you know we will do things like think I’m not going to have a nap because that washing up needs to be done but actually if your body is
Telling you that you are tired and you need to rest how important is that compared to doing the washing up at that moment in time or we will sleep deprive ourselves for um pleasure we will think I’ll not go to bed I’ll watch the end of this
Series on whatever station it might be and you might be nodding off but you’ll force yourself to watch it and I always think about my cat because my cat well all cats love sleep and I always think you know would a cat do that I know a
Cat wouldn’t think I’m you know I’m not going to go to sleep because I’ve got to go out now and catch mice or whatever ridiculous they just listen to the bodies and animals do but human beings we go we’ll just push the fact that we’re tired to one side and we’ll keep
Going going going and the difficulty as well that I think we’ve got around that is that there’s this like 247 Society now so um you know when I was growing up there was nothing to watch nothing to do it was boring the TV stopped and I remember they started breakfast TV and
That was revolutionary that you could get up and watch something at 6:00 a.m. um whereas now there’s just stuff streamed all the time we’ve got technology coming in at us messages and it’s easy to get absorbed into it and to forget about how important it is to to
Get you sleep definitely so I was just looking through some of the things that we said we would cover um and one of them was the impact of pain on sleep you know and our sleep Sleep Quality because it’s not just obviously about you know are you asleep it’s the quality which is
Really important and you know our members you know obviously we specialize in chronic Health and Pain is a big part regardless of what symptoms you might have pain is quite often the I was going to say one of the backbones of the you know the things that you have to deal
With every day is there is there anything that you would suggest that would can help on things like that yeah um it’s so tricky with pain because if we are in pain it can disrupt sleep obviously because it’s one of the things that can wake us up or it can make it
Hard to fall to sleep at the start of the night um so it is it’s the thing with sleep is it’s so individual so what one person will find helpful another person may not and I think it’s around acknowledging that because people are always looking for these five top tips
And actually you can’t give them because what you’ve got to look at is each individual case and then start to draw out how that person sleeps so what their sleep preferences are um what the needs are in terms of comfort and when we’re thinking about pain it might be that we
Need to look at um pain management so it may be that it’s more like going back down the Health Care Route it might be that we can look at other things that can be done in the runup to bedtime to help with that pain so you
Know does having a bath help with the pain does having like massage I got a lot of pain in my back and my leg and I’ve got like a massage gun that I bought and it really helps to use that at night time because that pain can stop
Me from sleeping at times so that’s a strategy that I’ve found um helpful for me and it’s also looking at what we’re sleeping on you know in terms of the bed and pillow and again you know the there’s lots of preferences around that so Some people prefer firmer mattresses other softer um
It might be that using a pillow between your legs for example helps to take some of the pressure off and that’s helpful um it could be certain types of pillow helpful it’s kind of experimenting with what is comfortable and what helps to reduce that pain for you and I think
It’s as well as much as I hate to say it because I like to think yeah we can help with all sleep issues if you’re in pain actually you just need to get up at that point and I sometimes do this you know if I’m woking up with my my back on my
Hip and it’s really bad there’s you can become really anxious about lying there waiting for sleep to happen and you can’t control sleep I think this is a really important message we try to we try to force ourselves to get to sleep because we think oh I’ve got to get up in the
Morning I’m going to be exhausted and we give all these negative messages to ourselves and then it makes it even harder to fall asleep so sometimes you know for me personally it’s about I’m not going to get to sleep because this really hurts right now I need to just
Get up it is rubbish and I might just go get a drink um have a little walk around that sometimes helps me and try again when I’m feeling that actually could happen I’ll change position even I found myself in the in the uh chair i’ got like a recliner chair that sometimes
Just takes the pressure off a little bit for my pain so it is just thinking about outside the box sometimes and yeah it’s not going to happen because of this and I just need to get up and I think that’s the same with anxiety as well you know
Getting anxious about I’m not getting to sleep clock watching getting up and maybe just sitting in a quiet space that’s dimly lit maybe just reading a book until feeling that sleep might happen because we want to build an association with the bed and with sleep
And if we’re not careful we can build an association with the bed and it can be more around anxiety stress um the naturual relaxation and I mean I know that whenever I can’t sleep and I’m not a great sleeper is I always try not to worry I’m easier said than done not to
Worry about it and accept it and I know that acceptance is one of those the big key things to accepting if you’re not a great seeper don’t fight it accept it as opposed to feeling so you know which does make yourself more anxious which is exactly what you’re saying isn’t it and
Then it sort of start snowballing your anxiety but um I think also the message that’s come through from you is very much where I think we’re so used to saying right tick box this is how you get better sleep tick tick tick and what you’re saying is no everybody is
Different and try and listen to your own body and what your own body naturally needs and is looking for yeah uh you know when I give talks uh people will s go that that won’t work for me that won’t work for me and it’s like no it probably won’t it’s taking
The bits that will work so it’s understanding the facts that we do sleeping Cycles it’s not just like you fall asleep and you stay asleep all night and you wake up we’re dipping in and out of these sleep cycles all night going through different stages and everyone’s got different
Sleep needs in terms of how much sleep they need um and we get sort of hooked on oh I must have like seven hour sleep and if I’ve not had that much sleep you know it needs looking at it’s how you feel so actually is that enough sleep
For you um and if it is that’s fine you sort of can’t force sleep um so it’s it’s very much an individualized approach and it’s moving away from the number of hours as well and it’s like you said it’s the quality so you could have 10 hours sleep at
Night but actually the quality is awful because you just keep waking up constantly in and out of sleep and you know it’s fragmented um so we’ve got to go back to thinking about our own individual sleep what we need to get to sleep what we like in terms of the
Environment um and it it’s the whole picture really about diet what we’re eating what we’re drinking because it all affects sleep and temperature regulation that that’s a key part of it and sort of unpicking all these different areas to then be able to identify strategies that might be
Helpful for us and I always say to people you know when I talk about strategies the ones that I talk about and you think that won’t work completely ignore you need to pick out the ones that you think actually I’ve not thought of that that could be useful because
This is basically about changing behavior and changing behavior is hard work it’s easier to stay as we are and go I’ve just got a sleep problem it’s just how it is because what you can find is when you start to change things you can almost start to resist it and this
Is where our work really comes in and the research that we’ve done with children shows that actually what people need is coaching along so they need somebody who’s going to um phone them up a sleep practice you know go how’s it going and someone who can listen to them
But also celebrate success because you don’t see your successes and keep them going and I liken that to things like you know if you if you join a weight control group and you’ve got to go and get on those scales every week it’s a bit like that with the Sleep
Practitioner stuff you know you’re GNA have some on going which bits have you done you know how you’re getting on and it sort of moves you forward a little bit with it rather than just going yeah I’ve got a sleep issue but there’s nothing I can do actually the more we
Talk about it the more I kind of think you know then you started talking about diet and all you know and then what people’s work is and all those things and I’ve got so many questions so by the way please ask your questions now at the
Bottom you can I think it says but it’s Q&A you can add your questions so we’ll we’ll come on to your questions um in in a minute but um trying to think what I was sort of going to say I mean when people I mean and obviously there’s
Certain different types of you know there sleep happa and all those diff you know then we can go into all of those things but people often talk about going to a Sleep Clinic I mean what does a Sleep Clinic do I don’t I have no
Idea yeah um so um with the Sleep clinic they’ll do an assessment um around what the Sleep difficulties might be and some of them might be around uh the work that we do which is like mother behavioral cbti it’s called um uh so you know looking at changing routine sleep
Hygiene assessing diet assessing bedroom environment um that kind of thing but they will also look for medical Sleep Disorders um and this is something that we are sort of trained to filter out so um the staff at the Sleep charity aren’t healthc Care Professionals um but what
We do is we pick up if there is something that we think needs to be looked at from a medical point of view and you mentioned like obstructive sleep apnea so that is one of the things which is um sleep disorder breathing so usually characterized by snoring and
It’s the pauses in the breathing that um are cause for concern um so if someone’s got obstructive sleep apnea they’ll probably snore but then they’ll sort of do they all snorting waking the themselves up business and I likely to be very sort of sleepy during the daytime as well because they’re not
Getting the quality of sleep at night time um they might look at things like restless leg syndrome so the legs are moving a lot at night time that’s a really common problem isn’t it I know some some friends of mine have and just suddenly they’re just jumping all over
The place yeah yeah we get it you know lots of those sorts of cases and there is a link with um iron deficiency around that so yeah we’ll talk to people about you know maybe just go and get your iron levels checked it is it is difficult one
To treat you know warm baths um s of leg massages but it is tricky to treat it h but also tricky to fall asleep if your legs are sort of jumping around all over the place um so yeah they will they will um sometimes do overnight sleep studies
Where they will um take people into their sleep Laboratories and wire them up uh with various sensors uh and that will produce um lots of data so that they can have a look and see what levels of sleep they’re getting into what different stages they’re getting into whether
There are any apneas um and also look at the movement during the Sleep um and I think it’s probably a good point then to just talk about things like fitbits because people often think that if they wear a a device at nighttime they can get similar result so I get a lot of
Anxiety calls about the fact that a watch has told them that they’re not getting enough sleep like please do not sort of interpret that data and be anxious um these sleep units have got a whole host of equipment and experts who are looking at the data it’s nothing
Like a Fitbit um which works on the movement um alone so I would would say get rid of your watch at night time because it’s just going to probably make you more anxious I was just going to say that sorry there’s so many apps now aren’t there about you know looking at your
Sleep to track it I mean do you I mean do you think they’re credible or do you think as a generalization they they make you more worried than the good they do yeah I see a lot of anxiety around them so when people say to me I don’t get
Enough sleep I’m worried about my sleep off so tell me why and when they start to say you know the watch told me so the app told me so um I’m like well let’s just forget about that and let’s think about how you feel so how you know are you feeling sleep
Deprived are you falling asleep during the daytime you know what how do you feel when you’re wake in the morning do you you know do you feel like you need to go back to sleep even like half an hour later so it’s looking at those sorts of signs rather than trying to
Rely on that kind of Technology um to be able to tell you so I I think there can be quite anxiety provoking um uh I had somebody just the other week say that I just didn’t you know I I I appeared to be dead on my watch well you weren’t clearly so just
Do not worry about it get rid of the watch yeah no we we shouldn’t rely on I mean I’m I’m a great believer in listening to your body yourself as opposed to what other external mechanisms are necessarily telling you what your body saying so this that would
Be a very good example is don’t listen to the your watch or whatever app isn’t it um just very quickly before we go on to because people are starting to post questions um one of the thing and we always end up talking about it is you know vitamins and supplements and things
Like that is there anything that you would recommend for sleep in particular um magnesium has been abanded about as being helpful um in order to sort of a relaxation um it’s not an area that we go into uh we would be saying you know if you need to if you think that you
Need to look at vitamin supplements then perhaps you ought to be looking at blood test and seeing if you are deficient in anything one of the things that we do talk about that is light and I’m thinking you know of like the vitamin D stuff there we talk an awful lot about
Using light because light and dark are have really important cues for our body so when it is dark our bodies produce the sleep hormone which is called melatonin and that’s the hormone that helps you to feel sort of tired and ready to nod off and in the daytime our
Bodies suppress that hormone so we need natural white in order to do so so I will talk to people about when they get up in the morning if the can sitting by a window um um or getting out for half an hour for some natural daylight so
That helps to keep their body clock on track and of course we don’t always get great daylight in the UK um but you can use light boxes as well so you know the light boxes that they use for sads so you can put a light box on for half an
Hour in the morning and that can help you um as well to regulate your body clock so yeah right I am now going to read some of the questions um right my 10-year-old child cannot sleep alone in his room he needs other people in the room in order to
Sleep through the night what can be done to make him sleep alone yeah that’s a real common one um so a bit of sort of sleep education to start with so we like I said earlier we sleep in cycles and what happens is at the start
Of the night we sort of gradually start to fall the sleep and we’re going to a really light sleep which we call stage one sleep um and while we’re in this really light sleep it’s really easy to get woken up so if you are staying um
With a child and you think yes they’ve gone to sleep and you start to do the whole Commando crawl out the bedroom and they go where are you going how did they know well that’s how they knew it’s because they were in stage one of sleep
So so um you need to wait until they’re in a bit deeper sleep to be able to successfully escape and then what happens is we go down to stage two and stage three so stage three is a really deep sleep and it’s hard to be woken up from that sleep
So that’s the stage where people will carry children from like the sofa to upstairs and they won’t wake up um we then come right back up and we come to what we call points of partial Awakening so if everything’s the same as when we fell asleep at the start of the night we
Might just roll over and we won’t even remember it sometimes we do remember it so you might like glance at the clock and think oh it’s two o’clock that’s great or you might do it my how like I need a week and I last till the morning thing but generally speaking you’ll just
Not really remember it the problem we’ve got with children who need someone to fall asleep with them at the start of the night is um it can become a sleep Association and what I mean by that is we all need certain things to fall asleep um well some people don’t some people
Just could fall asleep anywhere quite easily but for most of us we need certain conditions in place that might be one pillow two pillows complete darkness a bit of light coming in whatever um quite often for children it becomes a parent and they need that parent there to fall asleep at the start
Of the night and parents usually try and tip to out and disappear but then when they come up through the sleep cycles they can’t go back to sleep because you are their sleep associate ation bit like if you sleep with a a partner next to
You in bed and if they get up to go to the bathroom when you’re in stage one you will go where you’re going I was just nodding off if they disappear when you sort of a bit further down the cycle you’ll not know that they’ve gone but
When you come up to this point of partial Awakening you’re much more likely to wake up and think where have they gone and um it depends how much you like them whether you go find them or not or you just enjoy having all that space so I always try to liken it back
To our own sleep and then go oh yeah actually I get that I get why like they can’t do it so um I think the question was about how to get them to do it was it um yeah so um what I would say is
This um this is up up to you really this is about parenting style and sometimes I have done work with families where we’ve actually put the parent in the child’s room as a St in points so don’t even try and leave them right now if they’re used
To sleeping with you in your room you sleep with them in their room so that we can get them used to that environment like baby steps um there’s also something called gradual Retreat whereby you stay with them in the room um and when they wake in the night you have to
Go do the same that’s tough and um you’ve got to try not to fall asleep yourself um but consistently making taking them back to bed waiting for them to fall asleep and then what you do is you gradually move it a little bit further away so you know if you if
You’re lying on the bed you get to sitting on the bed you get to sitting on the floor and then gradually moving it out of that room so that you’re teaching them to be able to fall asleep in the room by themselves um there’s also a technique
Called rapid return which is not as gentle but you put them to bed you wait outside the door and then you just keep going back in to reassure them um you know I’m here it’s sleep time back out again um that’s hard to work and it just
Depends on your child and what you think is best really um next question I fall asleep early wake up about 10: and go for a walk have something to eat try and go back to sleep and it is often between 3 and 4 when I get back to sleep I’ve
Tried putting um the TV on and reading but still awake I usually then sleep till about 8 and I’m quite tired all day I try not to m is that right so I think what this person saying is that you know it’s up and down up and down basically
With their sleep pattern yeah and it can be it can be up and down um what our bodies thrive on is routine um so if we can get like really set sleep times that does help um in terms of not napping that’s a difficult one that’s a tricky
One because I’m you know I’m a fan of napping if it’s at the right time because our bodies naturally have a bit of a slump round about this time actually um so uh you know it’s a long time to be going throughout the day and if we’re feeling naturally tired a a
Sort of short nap at this point can help to boost you back up can help to make you feel better but what we’ve got to be mindful of is a sleep drive so let me explain about sleep Drive um we wake up in the morning and I always think about
It like our battery our sleep battery should be full I know not every body’s is at the moment but it should be full you should feel like yeah I’ve had my sleep I feel good and then as you go through the day your battery sort of
Gets depleted and if you have a nap it tops your battery up a little bit and you want to just top it up a little bit not enough for it to be full because then what will happen is your bedtime will come along and you’ve not built
That sleep drive up we need your battery to be sort of empty again in order for you to be able to get in bed and fall asleep easily so knp can be good um and I would just say that it needs to be like round about this time and a short
Knp so that it doesn’t have a knock on effect on your nighttime sleep for real um oh this is so does magnesium help you sleep so we discussed that in the answerers we think it does um if so when is the best time to take it um so the research last time research
On magnesium it wasn’t great um there was like you know some links with it may Aid relaxation um and there’s different ways that you can take it so I’m no expert at all on magnesium but um the ways that I have seen and heard people talking about
Successfully is salt you know in a bath all right yeah yeah that you can get like magnesium salt um and you know they people have said that they can be useful the difficulty is you read sort of academic research and and I always listen to real life people as well so
There’s research out there about all kinds of different things and it sort of says you know it’s not particularly helpful but then I hear people going it really helped me and if someone saying it helped them I think you know it’s something that’s worth exploring and looking at so I’ve seen that there’s
Magnesium sprays that you can get as well as in like sprays for your body creams so I would just explore what’s out there um and you know read about it and see whether you think it’s something that could be you know helpful for you to try Okay um is passion flower helpful for
Sleep I don’t know I’ve got no idea that’s a new one for me but I I’m gonna write it down now I’ll know by the end of this afternoon so passion flower okay um what about what about reading before you go to sleep I can go many nights
When I read put my book down to try to fall asleep and fail so I read again again and go on for some hours like this yeah again an individual one so some people go I read a few pages or fall asleep and they find it helpful
Other people find reading in you know before bed not helpful because it might be that it actually can make them more engaged it can light up your imagination you can get really into the characters I mean I had to stop reading Harry Potter books how ridiculous is that because I
Couldn’t put them down but when I put them down I was having the most vivid dreams about owls and all sorts I was like this is not helping me at all so I never read Harry Potter which is my disappointment um so I think it’s very
It’s very personal again and if it’s not helpful what I would suggest is does the person say whether the reading in bed or just before bed they’re read I think they’re reading INB bed yeah so I might be tempted therefore to not read in bed but read as part of your wind down
Routine so we always look at like the hour before bed as being like the part that you need to plan as in what am I going to do that helps me to feel relaxed and calm and like tips around this are dim the lights so that you’re producing this
Melatonin um maybe have a bath if you find that helpful and think about the activities that help you to feel calm and reading could be one of them um f motor skill activities are usually pretty good so crafty type stuff um like coloring painting knitting sewing anything like that can help people to
Feel calm um so do it then and then maybe leave your book downstairs and um go upstairs do your like bathroom routine get into bed ready for sleep I would suggest trying that oh just very quickly the the the first who put about passion blur passion blur um
I need really need to put my glass up passion FL tincture helps my sister and my husband but not me and my mother so it’s obviously is one of those things helps some people and maybe not another um next question I feel as though I sleep excessively what could be the
Potential causes and how could I help myself with this but I suppose it I don’t know what the definition of excessively is M maybe 10 hours yeah well well some people do sleep excessively um and it does warrant some investigation as well as to why is that you know what’s going on around
That and there can be a whole manner of reasons um so what I would suggest is actually speaking to Medical Professional about it and I would um if you can try to keep some sleep Diaries so that you can quantify what excessively looks like for you so you
Can say you know this is a two week period and these are how many hours I’ve slept each day um and it’s also useful to talk about how you feel when you wake up so is it do you feel refreshed or actually do you still feel
Tired um but yeah it would it could definitely be worth looking at and there can be all sorts of reasons and I kind of don’t want to throw uh ideas out there because then it can alarm people um but again it could be something like simple iron deficiency that kind of
Thing um but it really ought to be looked at that’s really interesting what you’re saying is about throwing out too many ideas because I think the trouble is when you plant an idea especially with something it’s not as if with sleep you can go and have a plant um plant you
Know a blood test and then that’s it tick you’ve been diagnosed with this it doesn’t work like that and it’s very clear it’s very indiv individual for everyone and the the next person um is which I’ll I’ll read and it’s quite a long one and she one thing she says is I
Think um too much info can be damaging and I think that’s absolutely right as well because it’s very easy to read something go I’ve got that which is one of the the big problems with the internet as we know but let let me read this person’s um uh I’m not sure it’s
Just a question I think it’s just a comment really I’ve been an insomniac all my life it never bothered me as I didn’t feel tired in the morning and didn’t think about it I functioned fine however as you said there’s so much more in info and publicity about sleep and
How bad it’s and how bad it is not to get it and all the issues for mental health and dementia my mom had dementia although she was a great sleeper the result of all this that sleep has now become a big issue for me I’ve gone from
Having three to four hours to two or none although I function I really worry about Dementia or long-term health I think too much info can be damaging I never had an issue with it till I till it became highlighted as an issue and I just want to go back to accepting I need
Very little and I I think that sort of says it all really doesn’t it yeah and that is uh that goes back to what I said in the beginning about actually yeah we we can see this research that’s coming out and it can be quite scary if you
Sort of read it and that makes you feel anxious and then you can’t sleep and that’s why I prefer to look at the positives around sleep and to put it in those sort of ways and the fact that it is such an individual thing you know we we need to really just think
About how we feel and if that is good enough for us um rather than being like fixated on the amount of hours and people do need variable amounts um you know it’s I I always try to liken it to all the things and sometimes the things are liken it to are ridiculous but
Things like you know eating and because someone’s 40 years old doesn’t mean that they’re all GNA need the same number of calories because everybody different they all function differently you know not every 10 year old is going to be in a size four shoe because we’re different
We’re individual well so not every adult is going to need this set amount of sleep um and it is how you feel on that and just try to ignore all those stats all that research if you’re feeling if you’re feeling good on it then that’s what’s important and I think it’s around
Managing those anxieties as well because what happens is if you can’t sleep you then focus more on it and it builds it into a bigger problem so like for me I literally get in bed and go to sleep because I’m relatively good to sleep er um but there’s been periods in my life
Where I’ve not been a good sleeper and I think we’ve got to normalize that as well um particularly at the moment during the pandemic you know there’s lots of anxiety uh there’s lots of change in routine there’s more screen time and that has an impact on um you
Know our brains but also the Light dark stuff we getting light from screens U we might not be exercising as much as we used to um lots and lots of change and as a result that will impact on sleep and some people’s sleep has improved
Because they may not have to go to I don’t know like do a stressful Drive in the morning to work or whatever but a lot of people’s sleep has got worse because they’re out of that routine and it is saying that is normal that will happen and we will have periods in our
Life where we experience things and it affects our sleep um what we need is Tools in our tokit to get back on track and with that particular scenario we can really identify why so there’s a lot of anxiety there about you know M who’s got dementia and actually fearful of is this
Going to create it and what I would say is it sounds like you just don’t need much sleep you were absolutely fine before um it’s trying to manage that anxiety now and go to go to bed when you’re tired so that you build up that association with bed and sleep again
Rather than than laying there trying to force it because you can’t force it and look at ways of um even if you are in bed and you you’re not sleeping actually look at ways of thinking positively about that my body’s resting this is good my body’s resting for tomorrow okay
Definitely right well thank you everyone for um all your questions um and obviously I have to do a plug because we do have a sleep program um we’ve had thousands of people go through it and I think gives lots of helpful information and absolutely directs people to The
Sleep charity and to other areas for you to consider and have a look so please do go and have a look at um our sleep program and obviously go and visit Vicky’s um website because I know there’s loads of great information on there because we’ve got some information
On there as well I think so clearly great um and yeah Vicki that’s really interesting and I think thing that I’ve taken home or the one big thing which is actually the thing that you said at the start and what you know what are a lot of your really important work about is
Just listening to people talk about their issues and I think you know quite often when you do let people have the space to talk about it they start figuring it out for themselves absolutely yeah you’re the experts in yourself and just listen to your body but also you know allow people
To talk about it it’s so so important so anyway thank you very much everyone for um joining us oops I hope I haven’t lost everybody sorry I think I did something with the screen then it all just went all horribly wrong then um so yeah thanks very much everybody for
Joining us um and look forward to um hopefully seeing you again soon and thank you once again Vicki it was great you’re welcome thanks everyone bye bye