Hello, this is Eva May, and I'm speaking to you from the Women's Radio Station for another of my Healing Image Hi series. My broadcasts go out for a whole week, so that's Monday through to Sunday at 7 in the morning and at 7 PM, and I'm covering topics that are really to highlight problems or issues surrounding mental health. I have a diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID, which is something that has resulted from abuse that happened to me in my childhood. And Healing Image High was a self-project for, for me when I managed to get in contact with some absolutely amazing image professionals who helped me with my, my makeup. They gave me some skills and helped me with what to use on my skin and also with what to wear and how to feel a little bit better about myself when I went out, or even if I was just being at home. They also gave me some, some quite useful tips about looking at my, my wardrobe in particular and seeing what I had tended to do, which people do do, is buy more of the same thing rather than add something new and different to your wardrobe. If you've bought something that you really, really, really like and you've had it for a long time and you see something similar, then you can possibly be more likely to buy that. So you're just adding more of the same, whereas now I can think about adding, um, new things to my wardrobe. The other thing that I had happen which I never dreamt in my whole life I would find a friend that would want to do this with me. But I get extremely overwhelmed when I need to sort of sort out areas within my home. We've lived in our house for 23 years, and I would say that You might call me a hoarder, or I'd quite like to call it that I'm a bit nostalgic, so I hang on to things because they give me good memories. But our house is literally bursting at the seams, and one of my absolutely amazing friends who I met through having a dog— we got our first dog nearly 7 years ago, and she became my sort of support, emotional support animal. I was able to start going out a little bit more on my own. I'd spent nearly 4 years not being able to go out because I had a fairly massive breakdown sort of following the police investigation into what happened to me. It was extremely traumatic. I thought that once I sort of spoke about it and the people who could help were involved, that I would just feel nothing but a massive release and be relieved of the burden that I'd carried for such a long time. And to some extent, this is true, that did happen. But on the other hand, as the days, the weeks, and the months went on where I was required to be, you know, questioned under oath, video recorded under oath, read transcripts, sign— signed them to say that they were accurate and everything, speak words that I never ever thought I would have to ever speak because I was being asked questions which the police obviously they had to do this, but it took a massive toll on me physically and mentally. And I actually, I lost my job as a result of this. I became unable to function. And I also had to witness my, my family and my friends, you know, my parents and my brother, my husband, and my my children and my friends, they all actually were, were questioned too. And that was extremely difficult to, to witness and to be a part of and to be the cause of. Um, I think anybody who, you know, who's not gone through anything that affects their mental health could even understand that this is something that is very, very traumatic and it's really not something I would wish anyone to have to go through, but it is part of the process once you disclose. So, having gone through that and— because the police have to— they have to be accurate, they have to present their— what their findings and their evidence in a, in a correct way, and things have to go to the CPS, and they can't afford not to have sort of crossed all the T's and dotted all the I's. So for me, it was just a massive thing, and so having someone to help me with my image was great, and then getting a dog, which we'd never had before, but I was at home and our children really, really were desperate to have one. It was a massive decision of something else to take care of, to make demands, but it's been one of the best things that for me and actually as a family that we've ever done. And through my dog, I feel far more supported emotionally when I am out with her And we are very close, she and I, we do pretty much everything together. If, if I can go somewhere with my dog, I will take her, so that's how close we are. And I started walking into the town in the mornings. I didn't want to walk around the countryside on my own, I didn't really feel safe, but walking into my town, which is fairly small, but it does have quite a lot of places where you can grab a coffee, which is not unusual these days. And I met some people who wanted to sort of stop and see my dog and ask how old it was, and what she was, and her name, and things like that. And they had dogs, and they were sitting there having coffee every morning. And one morning, they said would I like to stop and have a coffee with them. So, 6 years on, these are friends that I meet pretty much every single day, every morning at about 8:30. We call it morning briefing, and we sit there and there's probably 3 or 4 of us. Sometimes, you know, the numbers can vary. There are other people, too, that we know now. And they are just, you know, I start my day in a really positive way and I listen. I think having actual conversation with people and sort of meaningful conversation day to day, we pick up on how each other are feeling, is something that is rare these days. But if you do have the chance to go and meet you know, somebody and they ask you out, then human contact I think is extremely important for your— well, for physical well-being with the walking, and also mental well-being with talking. So, one of my friends is very, very good at organizing. So, bless her, she actually comes— we do this thing called Bottoming Wednesday. So, on a Wednesday we go through an area of my house and absolutely clear it out, go through every single thing, and we have piles of what we're going to do. So, some for the charity shop, some that need to be put in other ways. I've bought storage boxes and organized things, and we usually end up with a Wednesday afternoon afternoon trip to the tip. So she, she's, she's been absolutely amazing, and we've done my wardrobe, and it's so much easier now to see what I've got to wear, uh, what I like to wear, and to what maybe if I do want to buy something new for an occasion or because something's worn out, then what to do, because I was buying a lot of more of the same stuff. I ended up with an awful lot of sort of navy trousers because I tend to go for those and grey, so I don't need to buy any more of those for years and years. I'm pretty much like grey and blue trousered out, so that's been really nice and we actually have quite, quite a laugh while we do it, So, we went through the other day my wardrobe and we found some hat boxes. Well, goodness me, the hats that I wore sort of 30 years ago, they're certainly not going to take me anywhere at the moment. They are extremely outdated and yeah, we had quite a giggle over that. So, I'm trying to declutter sort of my life now. And actually doing it with someone has, has been really, really good. And I'm extremely grateful, and so is my husband, because things are looking a lot better in our house and we actually know where things are now. So the other thing that I wanted to talk about this week is sleep, because sleep is something that, you know, for most of us, we need to do that. We go to bed and go to sleep, hopefully, every night. But it's also a prob— an area where a lot of people have problems, and maybe they don't talk about it an awful lot. I wasn't aware that a couple of my friends, really struggle with sleep. These are my coffee friends, and one of them was talking recently about a podcast that they'd listened to about sleep and how a few simple changes had actually helped them get better quality sleep and improve how they felt during the day. So I've listened to this podcast, and I'm going to speak a little bit about that today. But I also want to talk about my sleep issues because I don't think I'm the only person with mental health issues that has sleep problems. And sleep, I also know that I do use it when I feel overwhelmed with something, upset, distressed if I've had some flashbacks, and I will just hope that I can just lie down and try and go to sleep. I can't usually drop off to sleep naturally. I do have medication to help me sleep, and I was prescribed that medication nearly 7 years ago when I was at a residential facility for trauma, so mental trauma, in the United States. And in the UK, I have still not found a psychiatrist who can help me with my medication to review it, because the NICE in the UK, the people that write out guidelines for medical the medical profession, they haven't written any for the UK for things like Dissociative Identity Disorder. So I need to try and find a psychiatrist who's trained in this, but he would have to— or she would have had to have gone through the European Society for Complex PTSD and Dissociative Identity Disorders training to really do this properly for me. So I'm still on a mission there to hunt for one of those people. So I take sleep meds every single day, and when I'm asleep with these meds, I am completely like knocked out. I can snore through 3 walls, which is not great for my family, and In fact, recently we went to a graduation ceremony for one of my kids because it's all been postponed because of COVID and they put on a ceremony which meant we needed to go and stay overnight in a hotel. There was too, too much travelling to do there and back in a day. And the room that we had in the hotel was on two levels, So it had two bedroom areas, so one for one of my kids and the other for my husband and I. And although it was all partitioned off, there wasn't actually a main door to the second area. So I took my meds, I went off to sleep, and at 3 o'clock in the morning I got woken up because my poor child, who was looking forward to their graduation, could not get to sleep because of my snoring, it's so bad. So the idea was that I tried to stay awake so that they could go to sleep, and then if I fell asleep after that, then they would get some sleep which they needed. Well, it just didn't happen. Once I'm knocked out and zonked, I'm zonked. So I took the sort of decorative throw that was on our bed into the bathroom with a pillow and went to sleep on the bathroom floor, and I slept really well there. Once my meds have kicked in, I can sleep anywhere, so even on the bathroom floor. So I think I'm on quite a strong dose, and I'm probably addicted, and my body expects to have these meds at night. I'm hoping this isn't going to be forever, but until I can find the right person to help me, then it's— nothing's going to change like this. I also had another time where I spent the night with another one of my children in their room in a house that they were renting when they were at university. I was fine, I was like sleeping very well, I thought, and I got woken up and I was asked, could I try and just stay awake for 10 minutes just so that they could go to sleep first. So we decided that I needed a task, something to do to keep me awake while my daughter's trying to sleep, so she gave me an orange to peel. So I sat in a chair at a desk trying to peel an orange and stay awake, but I couldn't. I kept falling asleep sitting up and my head was going down and she would go, "Mum, wake up, you've got to peel the orange." I don't think that she got very good sleep that night, but yeah, once I'm in sleep, these meds are pretty powerful and they really are something that I would like to wean myself off. Although I take these meds, having Dissociative Identity Disorder means that I have different parts, so different parts, different alters, so different personalities that come into play that I don't really have complete control of. And despite the fact that I am pretty much knocked out I can get up in the night, I do things like walk downstairs, go to the pantry, get out some like rice cakes or crisps, something like that, and then I get upstairs and I sprinkle them by the side of my bed on the floor. I also do this with water bottles, I can go up and down the stairs several times carrying bottles of water which I've taken out of the fridge, and they are like arranged like badly organised Skittles by the side of my bed. And my husband, he follows me about to make sure that I'm, I'm safe and I've not done anything that could harm me, but I've got no awareness of this apart from in the morning when I can wake up and see the evidence of either food on the floor or all these bottles of water. I have at my, my worst— the worst thing that can happen for me with this is that I can go outside and I've got no idea why, um, and I can end up with, um, like going through the garden, so not on the grass, like going through sort of trees and shrubs, and I've got cuts on my arms, or thorn, you know, scratches and things like that. So I think the mind is a very powerful thing, and I really do try and strive to put into my care plan that I'm going to try and improve my sleep. So people who have sort of complex dissociative disorders or complex post-traumatic stress disorder, they almost always suffer from disturbed sleep. Might not be every night, but it's something that is pretty likely is going to happen. And if you, if you're also struggling in your daily life with your mental health, it's quite exhausting. Your body is hypervigilant and, you know, you're on this high alert state for fight, flight, or freeze. If you're not getting enough sleep and then you're having all that extra energy drained from you during the day just trying to get on and stay present, then you have less energy and you can become more emotionally vulnerable. So it's a bit of a vicious circle. So at night, for me, I can get like restless legs where my legs just for no reason, they have this funny sensation in them that was no reason I can actually consciously think of. They move, they kick, they kick and kick and kick for ages and it won't stop. It feels like you want to kick, but the more you kick, the more you have to kick. So I'm not really quite sure of what happens, the medical reasons for restless legs, or it could be that my legs are trying to perform some sort of action of kicking and keeping things away, or maybe even running. I don't really know. I do suffer from nightmares, the sleepwalking I've spoken about, Teeth grinding is another thing that I know I have done in the past, and in June 2021, so not even a whole year yet, I actually required and had done a bilateral jaw joint replacement, which is a pretty major op. So both sides of my jaw, the TMJ joint, they are now medical-grade titanium, and I'm extremely grateful to the surgeon that corrected that for me. Because my jaw was all crumbling in the joint and wouldn't have kept going for much longer. I can wake up and feel like in a panic and disorientated, not really knowing where I am, and I can also have difficulty in actually waking up. I don't mean to— it probably looks like I'm a bit bit lazy. Like, my family can get up a good 2 hours before me and I'm still asleep. About 15 years ago, because I was doing a lot more sleepwalking then, I went to a center in Cambridge that specializes in sleep disorders, and I spent 24 hours there with all these Oh, there were loads, loads, I don't know, 50 maybe, little electrodes, wires stuck to my head, and I had to walk around with like a shoulder bag with some sort of data collecting machine in it. I then went to bed in a room at this center where you're videoed and also your sleep is monitored through all those sensors that are attached to your head. And I got told that I don't ever really go into a deep REM sleep. I'm sorry, I don't know what REM stands for, but it means that if you get to that place, you can spend— you can get some better quality sleep because there are stages of sleep. So I know that I don't get that, and that's probably due to trauma because some part of my body doesn't switch off, or maybe more than one part. So at night, um, your main personality can, um, can be sort of asleep, I suppose, and off guard. So things, uh, connectivity can happen during the night, and that's why I can feel tired in the morning. I have spoken about this with various people who are interested in this particular field in medicine, and the best advice that I got was to try and make my own sleep kit. So it doesn't mean to say that I've got a box where I get everything out before I go to bed, but I try to make my, my bedroom a nice place and I have the window open. There is evidence that if you sleep in a slightly colder room, it's better for your body to get off to sleep. And I also use a weighted blanket. I was actually gifted one by a company, they're called REMY, R-E-M-Y, and they do different weights for them. I'm not quite sure how you decide. I think mine's about 8 kilograms. And my husband has one as well, and so we've got two single ones of those, and they— so they sort of overlap. But I must say, I've slept an awful lot better since I've got a weighted blanket, and so has he, and he doesn't suffer from complex trauma. I don't know if it's a feeling of being held, a feeling of a bit of safety, having some protection over you as well as under you, but it means I don't move as much and certainly, definitely sleep a lot better with it. And I'd recommend if somebody wants to— thinking about trying one of these, then I would actually recommend it. I also have a, a little light that is, um, it will fit in the palm of your hand and it's oval, so it's— it wobbles. It's not going to fall over if you knock it, it will just wobble, but if you pick it up and just put it down, it gives a low light. So if I need to get up in the night, I've got that, because if I don't have that and I get up and it's dark, um, darkness is, is a trigger for me, so it's important that I have that light. So that's one thing, and I can also take it away with me because it is so small and it only requires a battery. Don't have to plug it in. I also sleep with a bear. He is really soft, and I really do use him as a, like, a pillow sometimes, or just to use on an arm or something to to hold or to make myself a little bit more comfortable, and that works for me as well. And having something to, to hold— and as a child, I had favorite soft toys which did give me comfort. So if at the age of 56 I could have got this bear that helps me sleep, then why not? The other good thing about the bear that I've got is from a company called Cuddle and Kind. It's based in America, but you can put in Cuddle and Kind UK and they ship them over to you, and they are absolutely, they're beautiful, they're very, they're extremely well made. They're made by women in Peru in villages, so by knitting these dolls, they're earning a fair wage. For their family, and then every doll that is sold, the Cuddle and Kind, they donate 10 meals for children on the World Food Programme. So it's a pretty— it's a really good— if you want to buy a bear, or they do other animals, um, yeah, they've got cats, koalas, there's rabbits, there's other different types of bears to the one that I've got, then they're really, really nice. They also make quite a nice gift as well, and they have a lovely Facebook community page, which in these times when sometimes things aren't always so pleasant to read about on the screen, these— this is— it's a really nice thing to see. And they're, they're great. A lot of people collect them. I think we've got about 4 now, but I have gifted them to people. See, I have a bear. I also am a big fan of pajamas. I think it has been suggested that wearing something in bed, like pajamas, feels protective and, and comforting. I keep a notebook by my bed in case something really comes into my head at night so that I can write it down, and I also make sure that I don't look at the time and keep— if I'm not sleeping, checking on the time, because that could become a little bit obsessive. I do— I can't read in bed. I'm not— I just can't do that. It's not, uh, especially at night. I can't— can in the day, but not at night. But I do have things that I could watch, and I have some headphones. I'm very careful about what I watch. And what I listen to because I don't want to be triggered by anything. So I usually go for something fairly, fairly safe, fairly light, and make sure that I look after myself with that. I've got some friends who've got these watches that you can wear when you sleep that actually record your quality of sleep. Sleep. And I have thought about whether or not I should get this, but I don't think it's going to make a difference to how I do sleep. And one friend in particular, we were talking about it, she was saying that every morning she wakes up, the first thing she does is check her watch to see what her quality of sleep was like, whether she was in the yellow, green, or red zone. I'm not quite sure which, which way around those zones go, but it will give you a percentage of your night's sleep in each one of those. And it's actually made her a little bit more anxious about sleeping. So I'm— it's not— I'm not going to go for me. I don't— if I can't sleep, then If I can't, I don't get angry about it. I don't sort of blame myself. I try not to get anxious about it. It's just one of those things. If we're going on holiday and we need to leave like really early in the morning for, um, you know, an early start, then I quite often, even with meds, don't sleep. I just don't have any sleep. But I usually catch up when I'm— where we've been, when we've got to where we're going, and even having a nap in the day. And in fact, listening to the podcast that I was listening to, a lot of top athletes do actually have either a lot of sleep in one chunk or they have the naps during the day and actually finish those naps pretty close to the sporting event that they're going to compete in, and they think it makes them perform better. So, um, if I do wake up and I'm having a bad night, I will do something like clean my teeth and then run some warm water and wash my hands in some nice scented, like, hand wash and smell that. So just something that will bring me back to something that smells— it can anchor my senses, really. So the podcast that I listened to is one that is a re-release. It was recorded 4 years ago, so 2018, and it's a conversation by a Mr. Rangan Chatterjee with Professor Matthew Walker, and it's about why we sleep. I think Professor Matthew Walker has written a book called that, and they have a conversation about why sleep is the most important pillar of health. And Professor Matthew Walker is a professor of neuroscience and psychology. So, he was saying that, you know, your impact of sleep— there's going to be several physical factors that you can't change. So, maybe jet lag, an early start, if you've got something coming up that you're slightly anxious about, These things are all— can happen, it's normal, and you can try and do something about them, but they should just self-correct as you go. But having good quality sleep, there are so many studies that go to show that it can actually enhance sort of your— how you perform with exercise. Caffeine consumption has a major impact on your sleep. Your sleep quality has impacts on your blood sugar levels. It also raises the risk of a heart attack and can attribute to poor mental health. And if you are not having great sleep, it, it can also increase the risk of you being injured. Now, last week I had a fall. I've no idea if it's related sleep, but I had quite a bad fall. I'm quite an accident-prone person actually, and I have broken my shoulder, and I've also done damage to some muscles and tendons in my arm. I'm waiting to see for if the results of my scan mean that I need surgery to correct it, but just having this physical pain now is, is, uh, disturbing my sleep. It's not something that I can help at the moment because if I roll over and wake myself up and lying on my painful arm, then I'm going to have reduced quality of sleep and I'm just going to accept that. But globally it is recognized that, you know, sleep Sleep loss is a really big thing. So we— if we look back from 100 years ago, we are now getting a lot less sleep than people used to have. There's different things in society now, the coffee culture, café culture, has come up. I mean, I don't know how many times I hear, "Oh, should we grab a coffee?" or "We'll just grab a coffee." or "Do you want anything?" "No, no, I'll just have a coffee." So caffeine consumption, not only just in coffee, but also in other things like soft drinks, is— it's a mis— understood drug, and it's a really highly traded commodity, so we use a lot of it. If you have a cup of coffee, it takes between 6 and 7 hours to have a half-life, so that means to get rid of half of it out of your body. So, if you have a cup of coffee at 12 o'clock, it means that you've still got a quarter of it in your system by the time you might want to go to bed. So the, the best sort of advice that, um, that from this podcast is that you stop drinking coffee sort of around noon or 2 o'clock, or try decaffeinated. Even herbal teas have got caffeine in, but it is something that you can make a lifestyle choice in and giving up. I gave up alcohol, it will be 7 years ago in May, that was when I went to a residential center for trauma in the United States where we weren't allowed alcohol. They did help people with addiction problems, so we were— whether you're there for trauma or depression or addiction, alcohol was not allowed on the premises, and I felt so much better for not having it that I gave it up completely, and I've not had any since I returned home from there. I was lucky, it was easy because there was no alcohol around, and I was there for 70 days, so for 70 days I'd managed to function better, and certainly my mental health improved by not having any alcohol. But I'm— I must think it must be incredibly difficult to do it if you're just at home and trying to do something on your, your own without the sort of support that I had. And I think alcohol did affect my quality of sleep. If I'd had too much to drink, then it would put me to sleep, you know, needing to lie down, and wake up not feeling very good in the morning. So that's one thing that I really do not miss in my life, is a hangover or feeling grotty or staying up late drinking, because I don't drink alcohol. I do drink non-alcoholic sort of like cocktail-y things and things that I enjoy the taste of. It doesn't matter whether it's meant to be trying to be a non-alcoholic cocktail or a mocktail, or if it's just a nice drink. Then once I've had enough then I go to bed, whereas I used to find when I had alcohol and if we were with other people, then we would just stay up and drink and drink and talk and talk for really too late. So going to bed too late and having a lot of alcohol on board wasn't working for me. So I think, um, stopping caffeine is one of their, their suggestions, and in fact Professor Matthew Walker, he's when he's talking on this podcast that was recorded first 4 years ago, he's actually caffeine-free. He stopped caffeine. He does say that you are quite likely to experience headaches, and— but then after that, you can actually start to to improve how you feel, how you function, that you don't miss that, that kick of caffeine. And really, that it just reinforces the fact that caffeine is a sleep disruptor. So if you try to, to reduce it and see if stopping it does improve your quality of sleep and the quality of your day. It can improve your exercise ability to perform better, your metabolic rate, and also the productivity of what you're doing, doing during the day, whether it would be work or, or other things. So he suggests that you try to do your own little experiment And, um, so it's coffee, you can have decaf tea, make sure you have green and herbal teas that are decaffeinated. Not all of the things that say they're decaffeinated are fully decaffeinated. Some of them can have up to 20% of caffeine in, and some of them have very, very little. So if we look at the foundation pillars of life, you have diet, exercise, and sleep, which are absolutely key to that. So if you have, um, you're, uh, you're eating, drinking caffeine in some form, it can affect your sleep so that you'll, you actually experience a decrease in motivation. So if you're not getting enough sleep, risk of injury, which I've said. So if you can improve your sleep, and it will also help you to correct your diet and your physical activity. People talk about, you know, exercise, "I'm going to the gym, I've done this class, I'm doing this Tough Mudder, I'm training for this." They also talk about if they are on a diet, maybe cutting certain things out or trying to eat, so they have their evening, evening meal earlier. People do talk about those things quite openly and quite readily, but talking about sleep problems, it's not such a thing that we really discuss. You have to remember that there are people who work shifts, and that is extremely difficult. When you're looking at quality of sleep. There are— how many members? 1, 2, 3, 4 members of my family who can work shifts or who are— and are also like on call. So, and the nights that they're on call, they don't sleep properly at all. They're probably not— they're not in their own beds. They're sleeping in the doctor's accommodation of a hospital. So their sleep kit is just not there, but it's something that needs to be just recognized in the same way that if a baby has, or a young child has, broken night sleep, then they might— the parents or carers might say, oh, they didn't sleep well last night, so they they're a bit crying today, or they might need a nap. Well, that goes to the same with adults, because we are— we've been that baby, we've been that child, we've had that experience of not having a good sleep, whether we're teething, or I can't remember why on earth I did, but I know I didn't sleep for a long time, and my kids certainly didn't sleep through the night for months. And that's hard even on new parents. So if I'd— if I'm going to try and cut this caffeine out and go for decaf coffee or try and drink water, I'm a big water person. So it is really, really important that if you've done exercise before bed, so you go to work and then you come out and then you want to go and play squash, you know, maybe meet someone about 7 o'clock and you've done this really quite high-intensity exercise, then your core temperature is up, your heart rate's up, everything's up. So it will be harder for your body physically to go to sleep because the best conditions are for your body to be cooler. So what Professor Walker suggests is that if you have a warm bath, or, or fairly hot bath really, that then the blood in your system goes up out peripherally, so around to your skin, and it loses heat. So it's a way that your body actually loses the heat, and that might help you go to sleep. He also mentions that Roger Federer, the, the tennis player, he has at least 12 hours' sleep And Usain Bolt has not less than 9 hours' sleep. And sometimes before an event, Usain Bolt, he will have a nap and be woken up about half an hour before the event that he's going to take place— he's going to compete in. And these are the things that he actually goes and wins gold medals and beats world record times. So sleep can definitely enhance your performance and, um, aid recovery. I'm not suggesting that if we all start going and getting 12 hours sleep that we're going to start winning big trophies and prizes at Wimbledon, but it's interesting to know that these people who have a number of expert advisors, and I have done for many years, are using sleep to enhance their performance, both before and after being physically active. So, um, we as adults probably need about 7 to 9 hours. So if you give yourself an 8-hour window of sleep, you're probably going to achieve sort of less than 7. And too little sleep is the baseline for sort of overall health. So if you are getting consistently disturbed sleep or too little sleep, then you're going to present as somebody with, with probably lower mental mood and lower physical energy. So It also improves the more sleep. It actually means that you should live more. You are a lot, lot less risk of having a heart attack or getting some physical condition that can lead to a shorter lifespan. And it also helps with better relationships. There are millions of people who've been involved in studies that shows that this sleep, lack of sleep, does shorten your life. We're so, so conscious on our diet and exercise, but we now need to, I think, have the conversation around sleep. These two doctors who are having this conversation, they've been through med school, and the way that they've become interested or gone into specialize about sleep is through taking time off and going to conferences, because there's so much data now and so many studies that there are conferences about sleep. But they said— they both say they cannot remember being taught about sleep and sleep difficulties during their time at medical school. They both say that patients and people that come to see them, in 80% of cases, sleep, poor sleep, sleep deprivation, a sleep disorder, is a part of the problem that they come to. So I'm just— sorry, I'm just reading my notes. We need to— that, um, it's not having sleep is— I mean, I've had to sleep today because my arm really hurts, so I needed that sleep, and I've listened to my body. And it probably wasn't a huge deep sleep because I was aware of people, uh, coming up and down the stairs. But I— it's not that I was wanting to be lazy. I needed to sleep. My body physically has suffered a trauma with a broken shoulder, so I need some sleep because it is a time when your body physically and actively repairs. So people— there's a book written called Relax Eat, Move and Sleep, and that is written by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. And Matthew Walker asked him why he chose to put sleep in the title, um, you know, was it an actual conscious decision? And he said yes, it is, it was absolutely 100% because so much of the medical profession based their sort of what they look at, what they're trying to cure, with pharmaceutical solutions. When if you've got 80% of your patients that are saying that their daily lifestyle and their, um, is being impacted in some way, in a negative way, they're trying really hard with their diet, the diet looks good, they're doing some exercise, they're busy in their day, but if you ask them about sleep, then they will say that they're not getting what they think that they need. So, it also helps if you're in your sleep to improve your autoimmune system. So, if you do— they were looking at cases where patients had come to them feeling stressed, having some sort of, you know, mental health issues around anxiety and depression. And then if they looked at a timeline during the time of this presenting anxiety and depression, then there were sleep issues involved, so poor sleep. And if you went back and looked 4 or 5 weeks, 6 weeks prior to this visit, there would be some sort of stressful episode which has impacted on their sleep and is still doing that 4 or 5 weeks later. So you can be offered sleep medication. I have a friend who recently went through a a bereavement, and she's going through a terrible, terrible time, and she has required— well, she's opted to, to use, and it's been a benefit to her, some medication to help her sleep. But that's not going to be forever. That's a short-term thing. So we need to, to realize that We need to look at getting better quality of sleep and to make sure that we look after our bodies and make sleep, going to bed and getting some rest, a good thing. I find when I go on holiday, I'm better if we go to the same places I feel far more settled about knowing where I'm going to be. Knowing where I'm going to sleep is one of the main things, and as I travel, even though I may not have slept the night before because I'm worried about missing transport times, I cannot see the point of booking something weeks and months in advance and then leaving it to chance. So I don't sleep that night, and that's just going to be how it is for me because I need to make sure that I am up and at where I need to be in good time. But knowing where I'm going to be sleeping, so going back to the same places, is so helpful for me. And I think it is because, you know, if you're in a hotel, you're booking a room. So to know what's in the room and what it's going to be like there, um, it really, really does help me. And it's not meant to be, you know, I don't— it's not, it's not a bad thing for the rest of, of the family either. They quite like going to the same familiar places. It does take out a lot of stress in some ways on the holidays of sort of where to eat, where to go, and things like that. So, but, um, it— I feel when I, when I'm going to these places, as I travel, almost like stress is sort of leaving my body behind as we get nearer and nearer the place that we're going to be. And usually I think I get probably better sleep when I'm away than when I'm at home because I don't have the everyday-to-day things to think about. I don't, um, it just feels that there's less less stress for everyday life. I might not need to drive for the whole time. I find driving quite stressful, so just losing those stresses, it really does help me improve my sleep. And probably the first couple of days, I might go and have a nap in the afternoon. So that's what works for me. So we're coming up to the end of this. Um, I wasn't really sure that I was going to be able to record anything this week because I have had this bad shoulder injury and it is extremely painful. I've managed to do a few things that I wanted to do over the, over the week, apart from seeing doctors about and having x-rays and scans, but I'm listening to this podcast, it was just really interesting that, you know, we, we now have screens, we've got our phones, our iPads, our computers, work emails, you can't get away from them, they— you can access those 24/7, and how important it is to try and stop, give yourself a cut-off time, so 6 o'clock, 7 o'clock, say, "I am not going to be going on the internet and doing, uh, sending off one more email," to be a little bit more strict and to put in some self-care around sleep. So I'm going to try, and when I go out, meet my friends, which I do every morning, as I've said, for coffee, I'm going to start tomorrow by having a decaf coffee. I have decaf coffee at home. I'm not quite sure what the percentage is in it. I think I might check that one out on Google and see if there's a lower one, because I don't really want— if I'm giving it up, I want to give it up. I don't want to drink like 20% caffeine. I don't— if it's decaf, I want none of it. So, um, yeah, I'm gonna try that, and I'm I'm going to then let you know how that works for me, and I'm going to stop drinking coffee as well in the afternoon, even if it's decaf, because it's got a small amount in it, and I've already had some from the morning, which is going to take between 6 and 7 hours to get out of my system. And we are definitely— I don't remember my, my mum going out and meeting friends in a coffee shop, and the coffees that you get served now, there's quite a lot of coffee in a cup. They're saying that sort of 200ml is what we're talking about of caffeine coffee. Obviously it depends how much coffee you put in there, but that's going to take between 6 and 7 hours to get out of your system. And it is a drug. It does impact on you. There's a huge amount of research, and there— it's something that you can do, and sleep is free, and it's got huge, huge amounts of health benefits. If we— if the whole world was to address their sleep issues, um, we would actually have, um, an awful lot more money. The total of, um, the GDP for the UK is 2%, and that's caused by sleep problems. So if we didn't have those, if we took some steps to try and be responsible for improving our sleep quality, that could leave us with like £30 billion that could be used in other areas. So focusing on, on other areas of medical care or of education. So it really is freely available It's a health changer. Take it seriously. Go to bedtime and get some routines. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to have some supper in a minute, and then I'm going to start— I'm going to have a bath, and then I'm going to go to bed. You do need darkness, but not— don't— make sure you've got access to light in case you're going to get scared. And stay away from screens and lights for about an hour before you go to bed. And I hope you get some good results. So I'm going to wish you all a very good week's night's sleep and afternoon naps, and I'd like to say goodbye and thank you very much for listening.