Overcome Insomnia NOW: Benefit #3: Get ENOUGH Sleep

Today I continue the new series where I highlight all the amazing benefits of overcoming insomnia and restoring healthy sleep.

Benefit #3 of overcoming insomnia now: Getting ENOUGH sleep.

When you overcome insomnia, you get the right quantity of sleep.

I cover:

• What the optimal amount of sleep is for most people

• Why getting enough sleep is important to your health and well being

• How CBT-I teaches you the right amount of sleep you should be getting each night

• What a sleep cycle is and why it’s important to get ALL your cycles

If you’re interested in getting rid of your insomnia NOW, check out the CBT-I playlist below and learn about the first-line treatment for insomnia and where you can find it.

// SLEEP SERVICES //
https://www.drorma.com/insomnia-services

// SUBSCRIBE //
Put Insomnia to Bed channel https://www.youtube.com/c/PutInsomniaToBed

WHAT I DO:
I help people overcome insomnia and get good sleep (without medication, drugs or supplements).

To Your Sleeping Better!
- Steve

RESOURCES
CBT-I Playlist

00:00 Introduction to Overcoming Insomnia
00:14 Understanding Sleep Quantity
00:32 Importance of Optimal Sleep Duration
02:20 Sleep Cycles and Their Significance
03:21 Stages of Sleep Explained
04:02 Deep Sleep: The Restorative Phase
07:01 REM Sleep: The Dream Phase
09:21 Conclusion and Next Steps

TRANSCRIPT
Introduction to Overcoming Insomnia

Today I'm continuing my series on the amazing benefits of overcoming insomnia.

I use for how to know when someone has overcome insomnia. Those are sleep quantity, sleep quality, and sleep consistency.

Understanding Sleep Quantity

Last week I talked about consistency, and today I'm going to talk about sleep quantity, or the amount of sleep that you're getting.

My name is Dr. Steve Orma. I'm a clinical psychologist and a specialist in helping people overcome insomnia and get their normal sleep back, so you can get all the amazing benefits that I'm highlighting in this series.

Importance of Optimal Sleep Duration

When you overcome insomnia, an amazing benefit is that you get the right amount of sleep. The optimal quantity of sleep is different for each person, but generally it's going to range between 7 to 8 hours.

And the process for overcoming insomnia, which is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia, or CBTI, it's the gold standard treatment, one part of it helps you to figure out what your optimal amount of sleep is, because that's key.

So what I want to highlight today is, What are the benefits? Why is [00:01:00] it so critically important for you to get a full transcript? amount of sleep.

Because some people will say, Oh, well, I get five hours or six hours of sleep. They even deliberately limit the amount of time you're sleeping. This is not people with insomnia. These are normal sleepers that could actually sleep a full night, but they'll limit their sleep because they think they can function just as fine on six hours of sleep, let's say.

And the thing is you can function. But you're not going to function optimally and you're going to be missing out on a lot of really critical things that happen during those other one to two hours of sleep that you are not giving yourself.

Now, when you have insomnia, the problem is you're not able to sleep long enough and the range can be very different depending on how severe the insomnia is, but generally, it's probably going to be around six hours on average or less.

Most people are gonna average somewhere between 7 to 8 hours a night. Somewhere in that range is usually optimal for most people.

Why is getting the right amount, the full amount for you of sleep so important?

Well, let's talk about what happens during [00:02:00] sleep. Why are we asleep for 7 to 8 hours a night when we don't have insomnia and our sleep is normal? Why are we sleeping for that long? Because that's, that's quite a lot. It's about a third of our day. Or if you add it up, a third of our entire life is spent sleeping.

So there's some very, very important things happening during that time that when you have insomnia, those things get cut off and you don't get the full amount of sleep.

Sleep Cycles and Their Significance

So the first reason is we need enough sleep to go through all of our cycles of sleep.

A sleep cycle is a series of stages that our body goes through as we sleep. So we go through four to six cycles of sleep per night, and each cycle is around 90 to 110 minutes. And each cycle has four stages of sleep. So there's four stages of sleep that we go through, through every cycle. And during these stages, this is where all the really important things happen.

Now the reason we go through multiple cycles of these stages is different things happen during different cycles. And in some cycles we're going through more of one stage. And getting more recovery in a certain area of our [00:03:00] body and in other stages or in other cycles, we're getting recovery in different parts of our body and our system.

So we need to go through four to six cycles each night to be able to get through not only all the stages several times, but to get through all the different recoveries and recuperation and reparative processes that our body goes through during those cycles.

So let's just talk about the different stages.

Stages of Sleep Explained

So we have four stages of sleep. The first three stages are called non REM sleep, meaning non dream sleep. And then the fourth stage is dream sleep, or what's called REM sleep. REM just stands for rapid eye movement because during that stage, our eyes are kind of moving really quick. If you see someone when they're dreaming, their eyes are kind of moving very rapidly.

So stage one and two are actually light sleep. But light sleep doesn't mean it's not as important because we, in fact, spend about half of our night on average in stage two, in the stage two sleep, which is light sleep. So it's a very important stage because half of our sleep. So somewhere between three and a half to four hours of [00:04:00] sleep is in that stage two light sleep.

Deep Sleep: The Restorative Phase

Stage three is our deep sleep. And this is where we really get that deep restorative recovery that is so important to be able to feel that refreshed feeling in the morning.

But a lot of other things are happening during this stage of sleep.

So deep sleep is also referred to as slow wave sleep. And deep sleep is essential for a lot of different restorative processes.

So number one, tissue repair. So tissue repair is any tissue that's been damaged. You know, maybe we've pulled a joint or pulled a muscle or, you know, we're healing from surgery to be able to get that tissue repair, we really need to get our deep sleep to be able to really function well and be able to have those repair systems work optimally. So it's really important for repairing and restoring our body when we're injured or when we have a cut or whatever it happens to be.

Secondly, muscle growth. So in order for our muscles to grow, there's processes that happen during our deep sleep that help muscles grow and stay strong. And this is critically important to be able to have muscle mass as we go through life because [00:05:00] we need it to be able to move and use our body and be able to function on a daily basis.

Also, if you exercise, which everybody should be doing, we need tissue repair. To be able to repair our muscles for when we work out, especially when you're doing weightlifting and things like that, where you're, you know, you're really straining the muscles to be able to build strength. It's really important to get that deep sleep to be able to repair those tissues and, and build strength in the muscles.

Another important thing is immune system functioning. Our deep sleep is really important for a strong immune system, so we could fight off colds and flus and other different diseases and viruses.

It's also important for memory consolidation. So, if you're learning things, I mean, you know, if you're in school, or you're going through some kind of education program, or you're just somebody who likes to learn and you read a lot, To be able to consolidate that learning, you need to be able to get the deep sleep, meaning just because you're studying something doesn't mean it's going to stick in your brain.

But when you get to that deep sleep, that memory gets stored in your brain in the long term memory for longer. So you [00:06:00] restore the things that you learn.

Okay, another important functioning that happens is cell regeneration. Okay, so our cells actually regenerate themselves. Right, so we're constantly regenerating cells, but if we're not getting enough sleep or deep sleep in this case, we're not getting as good a regeneration as we normally would get.

Getting deep sleep also increases blood supply to the muscles. Okay? So that help, again, helps with movement and exercise and being able to just do basic activities during the day. We need blood flow to our muscles.

Our deep sleep also regulates hormones. So this is especially important for people who are having hormonal problems. If you're perimenopausal or going through menopause, really important to be able to get sleep, but everybody has hormones and everybody needs those hormones regulated as they go through life in your different stages of life. So your deep sleep helps to regulate that system as well.

So you can see like so many different systems are being affected and being restored and repaired when you're sleeping. And this is just in one stage of [00:07:00] sleep, the deep sleep.

REM Sleep: The Dream Phase

The final stage of sleep or stage four is REM sleep, rapid eye movement, which is your dream sleep. So this is when you're dreaming.

Now, dreams are something that they're just starting to learn about. And there's probably a ton more that we haven't learned that are important in terms of our dreams and why we dream and what happens. But they already know a lot of things that happen during this stage.

So what happens is in the deep sleep. Information gets consolidated, meaning it gets stored in the long term memory. But what happens during REM sleep is that we integrate that knowledge, right? This is actually where we get creativity, right?

So if we store knowledge and we just store it in there, that's good. But we want to take our knowledge that we learn and integrate it with our other knowledge and combine it with a lot of different things so we can think creatively, we can come up with new ideas.

So this is really important for really anybody, but particularly artists, or if you're in any kind of creative line of work, if you're an entrepreneur, really important to be able to get your REM sleep so you have that sharp creative mind.

Another thing that happens during dream sleep is [00:08:00] our emotions and our thoughts get processed. So if you're having emotional things going on in your life during the day, you're anxious, you're depressed, or you're upset, or you're just going through a difficult time. If you get your REM sleep, it actually helps to process those emotions and process your thoughts. So when you wake up in the morning, if you've gotten that full amount of REM sleep, then you will feel better. You will feel less upset. It just helps to regulate and calm those emotions down.

And when you don't get enough sleep, then you don't feel so good. Those emotions are still very heightened, they're not processed, and it's just kind of harder emotionally to deal with life.

Okay. And the last thing is dream sleep also helps with brain development. Okay. Just like deep sleep, developing our brain in different ways, which we want to be constantly doing throughout our life. Not just when we're younger, but through our entire life, we want our brain to be functioning and regenerating and restoring and functioning at its optimal level.

So if you're not getting, you you're not getting enough sleep. Meaning, you're not getting your optimal amount of sleep that we talked about. Somewhere between 7 to 8 hours. It [00:09:00] could be a little more for some people. But generally, for most people, 7 to 8 hours, you're cutting off some of these stages of sleep.

And I would say, probably most common, is you're cutting off your REM sleep. Because your REM sleep You get a lot of it in the latter part of the night. So the last cycle of sleep is where you get your most REM sleep and you get your least amount of REM sleep at the beginning of the night.

Conclusion and Next Steps

But all of these stages are incredibly important, and this is why when you overcome insomnia and you get a normal pattern of sleep and you're able to maintain that for life, then you're able to get the full amount of sleep, the quantity of sleep that you should be getting optimally through your life. And you're getting all of these benefits during the night because you're getting your full amount of sleep.

And also, if you come off of medication or any kind of drug like CBD It also helps you get these cycles, because if you're taking those things because you have insomnia, I understand that, but the problem with that is they interfere with some of these stages of sleep and you don't get the full benefit.

So I'll talk about that in more depth in [00:10:00] another video, but that's another benefit that you get when you overcome insomnia and you do it through this process that I've talked about called CBT-I or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia.

And I've actually created a playlist now for this series of the different amazing benefits. I'll put a link to that below the video so you could watch the other videos if you haven't seen them yet. So you can see all the amazing benefits and this is just to give you like inspiration, motivation. I know you want to get rid of the insomnia, but sometimes taking that step to go through the process to, to do it, you know, it's another thing and it takes a little motivation or drive for you to want to finally take that step.

And this is what is waiting for you on the other side is this benefit in others of being able to get your full night of sleep and all these amazing benefits. By going through all the stages of your sleep, and I'll put a link below the video as well to the CBT-I playlist. The CBT-I is the gold standard treatment.

When I talk about it, you can learn more about that and where you can find it.

Okay, if you found this video helpful, just press the like button. You can also subscribe to the channel. I do two of these videos [00:11:00] every week and I hope you have a good rest of your week and I will see you next time.