Stacking the Zeds

 

What on earth is stacking the zeds I hear you ask. Well I could if I was close enough.

On this side of the pond, we say Zed not Zee  so stacking the zeds is….sleeping!

No doubt a phrase coined from seeing this kind of thing.

 

So it’s been a difficult year and I’m way behind in my CPD, so to catch up we went to the coldest hotel in the world ( IBIS in Birmingham) and attended two days of therapy Expo where I felt very old, and very out of touch.

                                               

                                                           I wasn't going in this room!

I couldn’t even use the headphones- they glowed a different colour depending what lecture you were listening to.  Or you could look at the graphics for one lecture while listening to another, get double CPD points and a migraine.

                                           

                                               

                                                       This looks good - World Duty Free.

And that didn’t take into account the farting elephant.

One of the lectures I  did attend, and listened with my ears, not headphones was the healing power of sleep, or as I think of it, how the body goes out of synch with lack of sleep. That’s called Disruption Of The Sleep Architecture. Seemingly.

So if you’ve been at the bar until 3am at Bouchercon, you don’t look awful the next morning because of the drink, it’s just the disruption of your sleep architecture.

Seriously though, it is a big problem with patients so I thought I’d pass on The Ten Golden Rules of a good night’s sleep.

Firstly, pay attention to your smartwatch and the sleep monitor. Ask yourself how you feel when you wake up? Good and ready to face the day- enough sleep. Dopey? That’s not enough sleep.  There’s a thing called the Pittsburg sleep index. I’m not putting the obvious joke in here.  A human being needs between 7 and 9 hours sleep.

Secondly, humans are dimmer switches not on/off switches. Good sleep requires a wind down.  So, no exercise three hours before bed. No internet or work two hours before bed. And no screen one hour before bed. Blue light supresses melatonin by 50% and that can delay sleep onset by 1.5 hours.

Blackout blinds are good and use the night mode or sleep mode on the phone.

Thirdly, bedroom should be cool between 16 and 18 degrees but your extremities should be warm. So what does that mean? Sleep naked but with gloves and socks on?

Fourthly, there is a 65% improvement in sleep quality if somebody does 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week, and it’s best if that is in three sessions. Movement is medicine but timing is everything. Exercise in the morning increases sleep at night. Exercise at night decreases sleep as the body is still in adrenaline mode.

Five, bad sleep can decrease your pain tolerance by 30%. And pain interrupts sleep so the vicious circle there is obvious. Patients up at three AM and spending money on QVC is no good for anybody except QVC. If you are sore, take a  paracetamol last thing at night as chronic pain severely disrupts the sleep architecture for a long time. People in pain wake during the night and catastrophize, mostly about the pain and the perception of the pain then escalates.

Six, human beings have a 90 minute sleep cycle. If you wake up after a complete cycle and before the next cycle begins, you will wake refreshed. If you wake mid cycle you will wake very groggy. Short wave sleep makes you happy and that’s an early event in the 90 minute cycle. This could be the secret of the power nap. And don’t nap after 3pm, as that could steal night time sleep.

Seven, caffeine has a 6 hour half life. So if you have a coffee at 3pm, 50% of that caffeine is still in your system at 9pm. There should really be a caffeine curfew. (Mine is 10 am). Tea, chocolate and many medications also contain caffeine.  Caffeine really disrupts an important chemical in the going to sleep chain.

Eight, no stressful situations after 7pm as REM sleep is adversely affected by stress. No arguments after 7pm, no stressful discussions after 7pm. The advice is to park it for the weekend. Hmmm, I really see that working with the whose turn is it to take the bins out debate.

Keep a notepad by the side of the bed and write down important things so it’s out your head, it’s on the page, and you can relax. Also, you can make a note of who is taking the bins out next.

Nine, consistency trumps duration. Go to bed and get up at the same time. Pay off sleep debt by going to bed early, don’t try and sleep in.  This is one of golden rules of a long life, getting up at the same time if you are at work or not.  Early birds catch the worms and all that.

Ten, you can’t pour water from an empty cup. All self care. The burnout rate of Health Care Professionals in the UK at the moment is at crisis levels, and that was reflected in the nature of the lectures available at the Expo. You can’t care for others if you don’t care for yourself first.

I think that was what was said. I couldn’t really hear all of it because of the noise of the farting elephant through the curtain. Now, I have to say that I have no idea what a farting elephant sounds like. This is the expertise of Stan and Michael.  But I suspect it sounds very similar to a portable hyperbaric oxygen chamber deflating.

I am determined to get that into a novel somehow.

A friend from Englandshire sent me this, just in case you could do with a laugh...

Sleep well.