SPEAKER_02 0:05

Feeling tired all the time, even when you've had a full night's sleep? Whether it's signs of burnout, destructive sleep, or something deeper, constant fatigue has become a normal part of modern life, but it's just. Today we're unpacking why we're all so tired and how affecting it is not just about vector sleep habits. There's something else going on here and we're going to discuss what we can actually do.

Chris 0:28

Welcome to the Gen XD Exchange. I'm Chris Perkins, Gen X parent now 50 something empty next up.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

And I'm Lily Perkins, Gen Z Career Explorer. We swap insights on career choices, work, and life in general.

Chris 0:43

So whether you're a Gen X parent trying to figure out midlife challenges.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Or a Gen Z young professional or student figuring out adulthood, you're in the right place.

Chris 0:52

Lily, why do so many of us feel tired all the time, even when we think we're getting enough sleep?

SPEAKER_02 0:58

I know, because with me anyways, I can sleep in for hours, as you know, from when I lived at home, sometimes until three o'clock or o'clock in the afternoon, which is pretty embarrassing to admit, but it's true. And I could still feel exhausted. Sometimes I feel like you can almost sleep for longer and feel more tired. Do you get that as well?

Chris 1:19

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's what makes this really interesting. Because it's not just about usual advice on getting better sleep. I I think there's something else going on, has been over the last few years.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Yeah, and it's not just you oldies feeling this anymore. And I think everyone's tired all the time, including my generation.

Chris 1:36

Yeah. So let's dig a bit deeper for this one because we are all feeling it. What's really behind this constant tiredness with sleep, stress, and and how we're living.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

So yeah, when we're talking about being tired, let's have a think about what we're actually meaning here. Because of course, there is physical tiredness where your body genuinely needs rest. You need to go to sleep. And we get into something called sleep debt to make our body want to sleep.

Chris 2:03

Yeah, yeah, we'll get into that.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

And then, of course, we have the mental fatigue side of things where your brain just feels completely overloaded and you've got a lot of buzzing around in your head, or maybe some brain fog. And then there's also that deeper kind of tiredness that we're talking about here, where even if you've slept, something still doesn't feel right, and it's more like an emotional exhaustion and has a lot to do with stress and anxiety playing a part as well. And I think that seems to be the one that a lot of people are struggling with at the moment. So let's start with the basics of sleep because it's not just about how long you're asleep, it's about what kind of sleep you're getting. And I'm sure if you've been on any of the wellness pages on TikTok or Instagram, you've seen some information about this or discussions around sleep hygiene, which we can get into. But to debrief for now, we sleep in cycles of roughly 90 minutes, and each cycle has different stages. The two key ones are deep sleep and REM sleep.

Chris 3:06

And it's the deep sleep, which is the recovery part, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 3:10

Yeah, exactly. So deep sleep is where your body repairs itself. If you've been to the gym that day or been out exercising, this is the prime time for your muscles to recover. Your immune system strengthens, so any of the nasty germs your body has absorbed that day, it's gonna be building up your immune system against, and your energy stores are also gonna be replenished. And then if we get into REM, that's where your brain is processing everything. So your memory, emotions, learning, that's where everything gets all organized. You can think of it like you have a little filing cabinet in your brain, and all the little workers in your brain are putting uh putting everything away, organizing stuff. Yeah, exactly.

Chris 3:50

And then the other element is the circadian rhythm, which is basically our internal body clock. It's the signals we get from nature in a 24-hour cycle of when it's light and time to get up, and when it's dark and time to go to sleep. And this is where age comes in to some extent, because as we get older, we tend to get less deep sleep, and that rhythm shifts to being tired earlier, and we also wake up earlier, even if we don't want to, which is the thing I'm experiencing at the moment. Can't sleep past 6 30, which is really annoying.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

And then what about sleep debt? We've covered that briefly and people talk about that a lot.

Chris 4:30

Yeah, so the gap between how much sleep your body needs and how much you're actually getting. So say you need seven to eight hours and you're getting five or six, that's when you're getting into sleep debt building up over time. And you can't really fully catch up just with a bit of a line at the weekend. You know, some recovery happens, but your body doesn't just reset like a bank account. It's more like being slightly overdrawn all the time. So you can't function, you're not at your best if you can't get caught up.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

I think when we take that into account with what you were saying earlier on about your circadian rhythm as well, obviously men and women both float with that rhythm of like day and night, but it's also interesting to think about how men's hormones function on a 24-hour cycle, and women's obviously fluctuate throughout the full 28-day cycle, which can also affect things. So I actually read recently that although we've always been prescribed, you know, you need seven to eight hours as an adult, there's a lot of research coming out now that suggests women actually need closer to nine to eleven hours for some as well, and that can also fluctuate depending where you're at in your cycle, if you're menopausal, perimenopausal too. So that's an interesting thing to consider for women as well, which leads us nicely into our next little segment about physiology.

Chris 5:55

Yeah, on the physiological side, there are hormones and other brain chemicals going on. So cortisol, you'll have probably heard of the stress hormone that helps you wake up and stay alert. And this is what I think I was running on when I was doing my early morning commutes for all those years. I was permanently tired but wired, so definitely sleep debt, but lots of stress hormones, which was all probably cortisol. And when that's elevated for too long, that can cause really bad chronic stress, which disrupts your sleep. Your body is physically tired, but your brain's still in alert mode. So you want to rest, but your nervous system won't let you when you're still kind of buzzing.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Yeah, and we hear a lot of people talking about being in fight or flight mode, which I think is what you've just described, experiencing yourself, and so regulating your nervous system and getting out of that fight or flight is really important. And then the other thing that people talk about is dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter, and it's basically the reward chemical. So every time you're scrolling, checking your phone, watching anything that's gonna stimulate your brain, you're getting blue light, you're getting these little dopamine squirts in your brain. And the problem is, especially late at night, that keeps your brain activated when it should be winding down and getting ready for sleep. And then the next day you're getting a crash, which can actually make you feel more tired overall. And in my case, you're drinking hunters of white monster energy or iced coffees with hunters of sugary silk.

Chris 7:25

Oh yeah, so it's gone beyond just the coffee habit, has it?

SPEAKER_02 7:28

Oh, I think I think you need to have either a Red Bull or a monster can if you're in hospitality, and then let's not even get into the nicotine habits and all the other unhealthy habits people have.

Chris 7:39

Let's just focus on the stimulants to kind of compensate for the tiredness. But if you remember when Wilson was on talking about procrastination in a procrastination episode, he was talking about those dopamine spikes. If we wake up and reach for our phones overstimulating our our brains, and it kind of gets us going, but then we crash later in the day. You know, that is definitely a factor, and it certainly kind of affects my uh productivity. And the cortisol's keeping you alert, the dopamine's keeping you engaged, but if you're still high on those chemicals at night, it's no surprise that your brain struggles to switch off. There's one other thing about what's going on in the brain that I came across recently that really made me stop and think about this, especially as I'm getting older, because I think as you know, the thing I am probably most scared of is developing dementia after seeing what your granddad went through. Yeah. And I listened to another podcast recently with Drs. Dean and Aisha Scherzai, who specialize in brain health and dementia prevention, and they talk a lot about the role that sleep plays in protecting the brain over time. Yeah. And the way they explain it is really interesting because when you're in deep sleep, your brain actually goes through a kind of cleaning process. Essentially, your brain is flushing out the waste products that have built up during the day. And one of those waste products is something called amyloid plaque, which is strongly linked to Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. So their key point was that clearing process happens most effectively during deep sleep. So if your sleep is consistently disrupted, you're not getting enough of that deep restorative sleep. And over time that waste isn't getting cleared as efficiently, and that can have a real impact on the likelihood of you developing some form of dementia in later life. The brain needs to clear it out to protect itself. So what they're emphasizing is that good sleep is one of the most important preventative things you can do when it comes to that cognitive decline, and that really got me thinking.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

That's quite scary to think about actually, especially when you factor in some of the research that's coming out about people's phone use and how our brains are being constantly stimulated and the links to dementia in that sense. So I think the combination of everyone getting really poor sleep and being so stimulated all the time and also ending up in these scrolling rabbit holes when you think about the long-term consequences, especially for my generation, like I dread to think about what kind of neck we're all going to be in when we're in the old folks' homes. It's uh it's a really scary thought. And you don't think of tiredness having that kind of long-term impact, and you do think you can kind of fix it with a holiday, a bit of a reset, digital detox for like a couple days even, and then everything will be okay. But actually, you could be doing some serious long-term, potentially irreversible damage that's going to catch up with you later.

Chris 10:36

Yeah, your generation could have conditioned itself to just survive on maybe not totally disrupted sleep, but less deep sleep than my generation would have had, and who knows what the consequences of that will be. So it reinforces this idea that this isn't just about what you need to do in terms of your bedtime routine. It's about how we're living during the day and setting ourselves up for the future as well. So whether it's seven or eight hours or nine to eleven, as you said, some of the research is showing for women, you need to cycle through those deeper stages multiple times a night for the brain cleaning cycle to do its job. And I think that's the the really important bit. You can be in bed for eight or nine hours, but you still don't get all the benefit if that's poor quality sleep, and if it's if it's interrupted, that's the bit that seems to matter for brain health. So for me, I am now really aware of how important it is to give my brain enough consistent, good quality sleep, and my sleep is better now than it used to be years ago, and hopefully that'll reduce my risk of dementia.

SPEAKER_02 11:39

Yeah, so while we're on the subject of disrupted sleep, like I mentioned earlier, there's also a really important factor we should mention, especially for women in their 40s and 50s, which is the perimenopause. So during perimenopause, hormone levels, particularly estrogen and progesterone, start to fluctuate quite significantly, and those hormones actually play a big role in regulating sleep. So when these drop or fluctuate, a lot of women can experience side effects and symptoms like more waking up in the night, lighter sleep, hot flushes, of course, and increased anxiety. So it's not just bad sleep habits, there's a genuine biological shift happening that can make sleep more fragmented and a lot less restorative, a lot less of what we talked about earlier with clearing away that plaque is taking place. But there are a few things that can help, even if it doesn't completely solve the issue. So one of the things we can do is keep the bedroom cooler. I don't actually know what the science is behind this, but I imagine it's something to do with when we were cavemen and we were sleeping in a cold cave and we had our bear skin rugs around us and we were all nice and snuggled up.

Chris 12:50

It might be because you would think warm and cozy would be better for sleep, but actually you need to bring the temperature down. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

That's my hypothesis, anyways. And also something that I found for me that really helps is having consistent sleep and wake times. That's obviously really tricky depending on what you do for work or if you have children, etc. But going to bed at the same time every single night and waking up at the same time every single morning, even at the weekends, avoiding those crazy long lines can be really helpful. Reducing alcohol, this is another one that some people might be quite sad to hear about, but that can be really bad for waking up in the night. Light exposure in the morning to stabilize your rhythm. This is another one that's huge for me. I have really great blackout curtains, which is really good for going to bed, makes my room really nice and dark, and I also like to sleep with an eye mask to get totally blacked out.

unknown 13:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:45

I like to feel like I'm in a sensory deprivation tank, but one of the things that I've started doing is just cracking my curtains ever so slightly so that in the morning when I am getting some of the light in, it makes it so much easier to wake up because when I'm all snuggled up in my bed and my room's colder and it's completely dark, you're just not wanting to get up. Yeah. So that's a big thing that helps. Another slightly random one. Obviously, this isn't for everyone, but I actually have uh got an Apple Watch recently, and that obviously has a sleep tracking function. And for me being able to see on the watch at what stage in the night I went into deep sleep and being able to kind of track my stats and almost be in competition with myself, like oh, I got however many hours last night. Let me see if I can up that tonight and get an even better sleep tonight. Yeah, gamifying it that definitely helps me out. And in some cases, for the specifically perimenopausal issues, what mum would recommend would be speaking to a GP about HRT or other kind of support that's available. So all of these things in combination or individually might not fix the issue completely, but it's about supporting your body through this transition however you can.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

So moving on, before we get into how we can deal with this constant tiredness, let's just take a look at the three hidden causes of it. The first one, which we've touched on briefly, is alcohol. So while it does help you fall asleep, you'll know yourself. You've been to the pub, had a couple pints, and you get home and you're asleep before you know it, it can actually reduce your REM sleep. So you're getting fragmented sleep and restoration, and surprisingly, that can increase your early waking. That happens to me quite a lot. I'll find myself waking up at five or six in the morning, which I wouldn't even do when I'm sober. So not ideal.

Chris 15:31

And then you can't get back to a proper sleep, then I find that's me ruined and tired. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

Yeah. The worst. And then the second big problem is late-night screens. The blue light that comes off of your screens suppresses your melatonin, which is your sleep hormone. And so your brain stays stimulated, you stay on that high. And then because your bra does your brain doesn't know that you're just watching Netflix, it's getting that blue light and thinking it's still daytime, and that again messes with your circadian rhythm. Your brain is seeing what you think is morning light when it should be seeing the warm glow of evening light, uh, which is the signal to prepare you for sleep. And I know that there's all of these blue light glasses that have come out now, which people are buying as an excuse to basically be able to stay on their phone for longer, but a lot of the research is showing that this doesn't really make that much of a difference. Uh the same goes for switching on night mode in your phone settings. So it's all a lot of bogus, really, and you need to just turn the screen off at least an hour before bed to to get the most.

Chris 16:32

Isn't that funny though that we're we're finding ways of compensating for the bad bed instead of just trying to live a bit more healthily. It's like I want to stay on my phone, so let me buy the glasses that will cut out some of the blue light so I can still do that until midnight or gone midnight, which I'm terrible for this.

SPEAKER_02 16:52

I'm really, really bad for putting my phone down at bedtime, and the hour before sleep thing is immensely difficult for me sometimes. But even if I work up from, okay, let's do 15 minutes, half an hour, and try and get into that habit, and then also replacing it with something else that's still entertainment. So reading a book, really good way to actually get your brain into proper relaxation mod.

Chris 17:16

Yeah. Reading a book really sends me to sleep. I feel like eyelids going like a proper book rather than kind of on the phone. Yeah, really works for just getting your brain into the right rhythm, I think, not looking at the screen. Yeah. And then the third thing, which can mess things up, which as we've said, you have a strong habit for, is caffeine.

SPEAKER_02 17:35

Yeah.

Chris 17:36

And food to some extent. So caffeine uh has a half-life of about five to seven hours. So if you're having coffee from sort of mid-afternoon onwards, there's still a significant amount of it in your system at 10 pm. So that's not helpful for being able to wind down. And if we eat late, digestion increases body temperature, and that interferes with the body preparing itself for sleep because it likes to be cooler. So you need to avoid heavy meals within a couple of hours of going to bed.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

No midnight snacks for me, unfortunately.

Chris 18:07

Ideally not. No. I mean heavy meals at least. Maybe a snack is okay. But again, not nothing sugary or caffeinated.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

Yeah, it's interesting the point about body temp, because that's another little hack that I've learned. A good way to kind of lull yourself into sleep is by having a nice hot shower before bed, because the drop in temperature from you being in the shower to getting out is also communicating to your brain that it's sleep time.

Chris 18:34

So even with all this knowledge about sleep, I think the bigger question behind this isn't just about sleep and nighttime routine, it's how we're living during the day and the impact we can see that having, and and that maybe gives us some clues to this constant tiredness. So you can have all the sleep hygiene in the world, but if your life is fundamentally stressful, you're still gonna feel tired, and one good night's sleep isn't gonna fix that in the long run with some of the things that we've already spoken about.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Mm-hmm. Because I don't think my tiredness is exclusively just about sleep, despite this episode making me realise that I'm doing all the wrong things and my sleep could definitely be improved. I think when I have put the sleep hygiene rules into place, when I have been setting exams, for example, or I know that I have a lot to do that week, my mind is just racing, anyways. So it's about trying to navigate those problems during the day to reduce all the buzz the head at night.

Chris 19:35

Yeah, diet, hormones, lifestyle, all of that matters, and there is something else going on. It's fatigue with modern life. I think what whatever age you are, or we've got kind of constant low-level stress, information overload, lack of proper downtime, pressure, uncertainty about the future with everything that's going on in the world at the moment. So we're not just tired, we're overstimulated, stressed out, underrecovered, and these things don't seem to be going away. If if anything, it's only going to continue to increase. I don't know if you've heard the expression, this is the slowest pace the world will turn from this point on.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

I've not heard that, but I wish I wish I hadn't said it, because now that's gonna be bouncing around my head tonight.

Chris 20:19

It's it's a daunting thought that we think the pace is just getting faster and faster. Well, from today, this is the slowest it's ever gonna be because things are just gonna get more crazy, which sometimes doesn't bear thinking about.

SPEAKER_02 20:30

No. Well, let's try and neutralise that thought with some insights into the changes that we can make to address all of the issues that we've discussed. Yes, let's So the good news is we've got three insights into these changes that we can make to address the problems that we've discussed. So, number one, if we are thinking about the mental exhaustion side of things, one of the most effective things you can do is actually physical activity. So getting out, exercising, whether it's a fitness class, a spin class, doing something that you enjoy, uh team sports, going on a walk even, all the exercise that you do is helping your body metabolize stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. And if you think about it, it makes sense because if your body hasn't done anything that actually makes it need that deep sleep, the deep recovery sleep, then of course our brains are feeling pretty fried. We've not burnt off any of that excess energy.

Chris 21:30

Yeah, mentally exhausted, but physically I underworked we haven't done a lot. You know, we we are sitting down more, we're moving less, and and there are two different things going on there, which I think are easy to confuse. So one is the sleep debt that you mentioned, the other is sleep pressure. So sleep debt is the bad kind of tiredness, it's a cumulative lack of sleep when you need your seven to eight hours, and if you're getting, you know, five or six, you're going to feel The effect of that in terms of how your ability to think might be impaired, your mood might be a bit irritable, poorer recovery. So if you're regularly incurring sleep debt, your body is going to be underrecovered all of the time. Sleep pressure is the good kind of tiredness. The biological drive to sleep that builds up during the day is going to help the brain want to sleep and go through that recovery phase. So that's what makes you naturally feel ready for bed. That's where exercise fits in because it helps build healthy sleep pressure, not sleep debt. So more movement or exercise creates those stronger signals to sleep because your body feels like it's done something, it's ready to recover. As you said, exercise burns off those stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, helps the nervous system settle, so you're not carrying as much stress into the night. And more physical demand means more deep sleep is required, which as we know is really good for your brain, also good for physical recovery. So you don't just fall asleep faster, you're sleeping more deeply, which is a really good thing.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

Yeah. But what about if we are exercising and then like I might go to an exercise class at like half five and then come home and think, oh, I deserve a big chill out now. And then before I know it, I'm watching TV, scrolling, I've looked at the time and it's already near midnight.

Chris 23:23

Well, that's the thing. It it's about how we are structuring our day and are we taking these things into account. So yeah, if the chill out is crash out on the sofa in front of the screens, we know that's not helping. So maybe it's thinking about the chill out, go for a walk, or it's sitting and reading a book or listening to music, not getting that stimulation from the the blue light. So we need enough physical activity to create that healthy tiredness, but also need to be paying attention to the other things that are going on round about us and whether that's helping or not.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

I guess it kind of cancels itself out effectively if you're doing all that exercise and then coming home and still not sweating off.

Chris 24:02

Yeah. And I think it's about the choices we're making in terms of how we're living, how we're spending our time. So if your day is all mental effort, screens, stress, there's no physical output, your body never really gets the signal that it's it's done enough. We've designed our lives that don't really naturally help us get good sleep unless we build in some physical activity, some some movement. So instead of asking, how can I I sleep better, I think it's more about how can I structure my day so that sleep is just naturally going to be the outcome because that's what my body needs. So it's about moving during the day to create that sleep pressure, reducing that stimulation at night, so we're not kind of upsetting the rhythms and feeding our brains the wrong signals, and trying to protect the amount of sleep you need, which you said you've been trying to do, you know, go to bed at a regular time, allow enough time for hopefully kind of deep sleep. So it's not just what we can kind of fix at at night time, but are we building the right habits during the day? So if the first area we can look at is the amount of physical activity and movement we're doing during the day, what's the second thing we can look at?

SPEAKER_02 25:15

The second thing we can look at is true recovery time. So I'll break that down. I am just about old enough to remember that 10 or 15 years ago there were natural breaks in the day. So when social media, for example, wasn't as pervasive and a part of our lives as it is now, there was an off switch which we don't have now. So you know, we can have phones in our beds, we're working late into evenings, we're constantly getting notifications for me if I leave my phone face down, unless it's on do not disturb mode, I'm gonna be getting pings from TikTok, Snapchat, Vintage, whatever it may be, and then naturally I'm picking my phone up. And that wasn't a thing when I was growing up. So we think we're resting when we're crashed out in front of a screen for the evening, like me when I come home from my work at class, but actually we're still being mentally stimulated, and we've learned now that that doesn't help our body, and we're we're not recovering when we're doing that.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:16

So when we're thinking about true recovery time, one of the biggest problems now is that there's no clear end to the day, right? So your brain needs signals that say we're done with the day now. And I don't know if you remember in our procrastination episodes when we were talking with Wilson about getting natural light at the beginning of the day, yeah. And you talked about looking at the sky before you look at a screen in the morning, which I thought was really helpful. And we kind of need to do the equivalent of that in the evening when it comes to getting better sleep. So going for an evening walk with no headphones, not looking at a screen, soaking up the sounds of nature, if you're walking and your vision's on the horizon, or looking at things, you know, 20, 30 feet away, you're actually calming your nervous system down and helping to regulate all of those stress hormones, and you're also getting a little bit of exercise. The further away and the wider you can make your field of vision, the more your nervous system relaxes because it can see that there is no immediate threats. Whereas if you've got your eyes focused on something right in front of you, like the characters in a TV show you're watching or your screen, your brain and nervous system is essentially threat tracking when we're thinking about how our brains used to be back in the caveman days, this is what we're talking about and why it's important to tap into these things. So maybe whenever you have an evening with no plans, just unwinding and deliberately blocking out time to do the things that we've spoken about here is a really, really good idea. So getting that evening walk-in or curling up with a book, but just not staring at your laptop, iPad, iPhone, whatever. So the stuff about field of vision and threat assessment, we basically want to recreate the feeling of arriving back at our cave for the evening, going back to our roots and looking out, knowing that we're safe. So one of the things we can do to create that mood is soft, warm light, like the campfire that our caveman ancestors used to huddle around. Yeah. So no screens or email after a certain time, listening to some chilled-out music, maybe doing some breathing exercises. There's lots of mindfulness apps out there that can be really good for that kind of thing. Anything that creates proper recovery time and tells your brain and your body that it's safe to get ready for sleep. There's no saber tooth tigers or whatever. Actually, I know they didn't exist at the same time as cavemen, but you know, for the sake of the analogy, creating these windown triggers ideally around the same time every night and waking up at the same time every morning is a really good way to go.

Chris 28:47

And number three is that if we're living in constant low-level stress, I think a lot of people are carrying a kind of background stress right now. It's not extreme, but it is constant. So lots of economic uncertainty, the whole geopolitical situation right now, global news, insecurity about jobs, social comparisons. It's not necessarily a full-blown crisis that is stressing us out, but it gives us plenty of things to to worry about. And you can't remove that stress completely, but you can reduce how much of it you're carrying all the time. So if you look at what's draining you or making you anxious, you could be overcommitting, like we talked about in the people-pleasing episode a while ago. You might need to cut back or cut out the constant news cycle that we're bombarded with, or social media, and all the comparisons we see, and try and get a handle on how work maybe bleeds into personal time and the stress that that can cause. So you're not going to be able to fix everything at once, but start by reducing or removing one thing to try and reduce that stress level. And there's something I really liked about what Charlie talked about in the last episode about life design, which was being more intentional with your time. So deciding when you're going to spend time on electronic activity, when you're going to make time for the things you enjoy. He was really good about managing his energy levels. So not just like how can I get more done, but what kind of activity gives me energy, how can I build more of it? And I think the older you get, the more important that becomes to manage your energy levels. And this comes back to kind of how we're living life at the moment and the effects of that in the future, things like dementia risk. Because if we're constantly sacrificing sleep for work, stress, everything else, there is a longer term cost to that. So it's not all of a sudden that we've got worse at sleeping. I think it's the way we're living that's making it harder to feel properly rested.

SPEAKER_02 30:51

Yeah, and I think you could almost frame things as if I say no to putting my phone down and getting into this good sleep routine and waking up at a good time tomorrow and trying to prioritize my sleep, what am I saying no to tomorrow when I wake up feeling groggy and rotten? And what am I potentially saying no to in the more long-term future, whether it's your brain health, your relationships, if you wake up grumpy every day, all of these things are really important to consider.

Chris 31:26

So if we start to sum this up, I think the message isn't just fix your sleep because we know what we're supposed to be doing. It's more what are we doing during the day that is making it hard to sleep and be properly rested. So what would you say are some ways we can fix that?

SPEAKER_02 31:43

One of the things that I heard about in Mel Robins' podcast, she does something, I think she calls it a brain dump. And for me, that's really helpful when I'm dealing with the buzzy head and feeling like I just have thoughts constantly pinging around my mind. Sometimes I think my thought process is if I don't think about this in an almost obsessive way before bed, it's not going to be in my brain in the morning and I will have forgotten everything and my life will fall apart. So doing a bit of a brain dump before bed and just getting everything in your head out on a page that you can put next to your bed and read it first thing in the morning if you want to, that gives me that reassurance that I don't need to sit up for hours thinking and stressing about everything.

Chris 32:24

Mulling it over. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Exactly. I think we all just seem to be living in a really reactive way, like reacting to messages, work, social media plans, whatever it is that's coming in. And if we're not able to shut off from that, it does catch up with us. So then the kind of brain dump activities combined with the exercising and having a bit of discipline about switching my phone off, putting it on do not disturb, at least half an hour before bed. I I aim for an hour, but at least half an hour. Putting all those habits into practice, that's for me a really good way to stop feeling like I have to react to everything during the time that I'm supposed to be recovering.

Chris 33:06

Yeah, because this doesn't just happen by itself. We've got to build it in, be a bit more intentional about it. Yeah. Yeah. So creating those kind of off moments. So no screen, blocking out some recovery time, have that kind of evening wind down.

SPEAKER_02 33:20

And I read something else recently to do with dementia, and that was how prioritizing having quiet time, quiet moments throughout your day where you're not even listening to music or a podcast. If you are out walking in nature, that's supposed to be the best for your brain. That kind of activity is also really good at building brain health and acting as a preventative measure against dementia.

Chris 33:44

Yeah. Forest bathing. Yeah. Going out into some greenery and just kind of listening to the sounds of nature roundabout. I can be guilty of going out for a walk with a podcast on, headphones in my ear.

SPEAKER_02 33:55

Oh, I always need music on, but I'm gonna try and start doing that.

Chris 33:58

Yeah. Be present, take in your surroundings.

SPEAKER_02 34:00

Yeah, similarly to you, obviously, there is a genetic issue there with dementia, and I also don't want to end up in that predicament. So it'll also help out my hearing. My hearing's really bad. And there's also a link between bad hearing and dementia. So you need to get our acts together basically.

Chris 34:16

Yeah, otherwise we are doomed. Yeah, as we uh well, I'm heading into old age a bit sooner than you are, but yeah, it doesn't look good unless we sort some of this stuff out. So let's uh wrap this up with some of the things we could try this week. I would say number one would be notice what's was draining you, what's leaving you feeling more tired than it should. Yeah. Number two would be take a deliberate recovery block, not scrolling, not doing anything, actual recovery at quiet time, and that tends to work well later in the day to prepare us for for sleep. And number three would be trying to do some movement every day, 20 or 30 minutes, make a difference, you know, get out for a walk, have some physical exercise, help burn off those stress hormones. How about you, Lily? What would you take from this?

SPEAKER_02 35:05

I think for me, I am now starting to take my health a bit more seriously for a few years, especially at the start of UNA, it was just kind of like I'm invincible, I'll be invincible forever.

Chris 35:15

But you've got the energy to do that.

SPEAKER_02 35:17

Yeah, exactly. But now linking the exercise and sleep stuff in, we've spoken about the predisposition to brain issues in our family, and I don't want to be facing that same fate. And then also when women reach 30, I think it's you lose 5% of your muscle mass every decade or something like that. So something quite alarming, and obviously sleep plays a role in that. So I think focusing more on getting quality sleep and actually doing exercise strength training and preventing premature aging and health issues, basically, that's really important to me. So this has been a nice reminder that I really need to focus on putting my phone down before bed. I think that's the first habit that I could probably tackle here.

Chris 36:02

Sounds like it.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

I think I said that on the productivity podcast as well. And obviously, I've not quite gotten around to it yet, but I will.

Chris 36:09

Alright, yeah, give it a try. You just have to kind of make make a start and let the habit sort of build step by step. I think for me, the biggest thing this has been a reminder of is that being tired all the time isn't always a sleep problem. No, the reality is life isn't going to slow down. If anything, it's only going to get busier, more demanding. So the challenge then is right, how can we organize our lives around that? You can't stop that happening, but you can block things off, stick to some good, healthy habits, and build what it is that works for you. So it's not just constantly chasing more productivity or or doing more, but making sure our days are giving us kind of the energy we need to keep going because we are all living longer too. And that's that's more important as you get older. So if you're always tired, it might not be about all the usual suspects as far as sleep habits are concerned. It might be what is draining me, what do I need to fix in terms of how I'm spending my time, how I'm organizing my days, so that you can kind of be healthier and not quite so exhausted. Perfect. If you found this conversation interesting, do let us know. You can write us a review on your favorite podcast app, give us a rating. We love that feedback to give us some ideas for new topics. And thank you for listening to this episode of the Gen XZ Exchange.