Half of the week I talk with folks about their health as part of the health coaching team at Kaiser.
I talk with 20-30 people a week about weight management, exercise, stress and sleep.
Why does sleep come up so often? It’s often the missing piece in peoples’ plans for getting healthy and feeling better. One reason it’s so important is that it is often the source of the biggest barrier for people changing: energy and motivation.
“I want to eat healthy and meal plan. I want to go to the gym. But I’m tired.” So at the end of the day, instead of going out for a walk or working out, they watch TV. And eat.
One of the main things that you can do to improve your mental and physical health is improving your total sleep time and the quality of your sleep. And one of the key ways to do that is by limiting your smartphone, Netflix and social media activity as part of your bedtime routine.
Kicking your phone out of your room is one of the best things you can do for your self. It can even significantly improve your marriage and sexual intimacy.
Here’s a video I did on sleep, stress and insomnia four years ago. It’s representative of the coaching conversations I have with my patients. I touch on screentime then but it’s impact and significance has increased even more since then.
The National Sleep Foundation put out some guidelines for healthy sleep during Covid-19.
The CBT-I Coach app is a free app that I recommend to patients and counseling clients. I’ve had patients see and feel an improvement in their sleep as quickly as 2-4 weeks with this app, increasing their total sleep time as much as an hour each week with it.
If you want to learn more about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (especially if you are a therapist) CBTIWeb is a tremendous site that started offering their resources for free online, including worksheets and patient education materials and videos.
