Worry is becoming more common today and serves no purpose other than to fuel anxiety

Is worry keeping you awake? If you’re experiencing stress in your life, chances are that you might be struggling to fall or stay asleep at night. Your anxious worry about life and its problems may keep your brain from settling down, and the disruption of sleep is likely to keep you feeling more on edge the next day.

Over 40 million Americans say they experience a long-term sleep disorder, with many others experiencing occasional sleep disruption. 70% of adults report that they experience daily stressors, so it makes sense that Americans on average are reporting they get less sleep than in previous decades.

All of this tossing and turning is taking a toll on our health and happiness.  According to sleep specialist and director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Matthew Walker, two-thirds of adults fail to get the recommended 8 hours of sleep a night. Over half of Americans are trying to survive on less than six hours of sleep per night, which causes them to meet the medical definition of sleep deprivation.

None of this lost sleep is necessary

Yes, we live in stressful times. There’s unexpected stresses to deal with, not to mention the normal, everyday anxiety caused by concerns like how to pay the mortgage and take care of the kids. Those anxiety "triggers" aren't going to go away.

But there ARE things we can do to reduce anxiety and get the sleep we need.

What Is Anxiety, and What Are Its Symptoms?

Anxiety is a general term for multiple disorders that can cause worry, nervousness, fear, and apprehension. Anxiety is defined as: "an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts, and physical changes like increased blood pressure."

Mild anxiety may be merely unsettling, while severe anxiety can seriously affect your life. It can certainly affect your ability to fall asleep or stay asleep, leaving you tossing and turning and waking up still tired, instead of dozing off easily and waking feeling refreshed.

Common symptoms of anxiety

Anxiety can manifest in many different ways, and present differently from person to person. Almost all types of anxiety involve a magnified sense of worry about something, but other symptoms may include:

• Nervousness, irritability and restlessness
• Trouble sleeping, and fatigue that results from it
• Feelings of fear, uneasiness, or even panic
• Cold, sweaty, numb, or tingling hands or feet
• Rapid breathing or shortness of breath
• Fast heartbeat or palpitations
• Dry mouth
• Nausea
• Tense muscles

Anxiety is an emotion that actually wakes us up, which is the exact opposite state of what you need to be in when you're trying to fall asleep.

What does anxiety do to your mind and body?

Anxiety has many effects. When you first experience stress that triggers anxiety, for example, you may notice tension in your muscles. That's because the muscles actually "seize up" as a reflex reaction to the stress. The body also responds to anxiety by dispersing additional fluids to different parts of the body, which can cause the throat to become dry, and the throat muscles to tighten.

Stress also causes an increase in the chemical cortisol, which in turn causes the liver to produce more glucose. This causes a spike in your blood sugar levels that, if not used in the form of exercise, can have the effect of producing sleeplessness.

Why sleep is important

Dr. Walker has explained in his book Why We Sleep that sleep is the most important factor to our physical and mental wellbeing – more than exercise, more than diet, and even more than our economic circumstances. "Without sleep," he says, "there is low energy and disease. With sleep, there is vitality and health. More than 20 large scale epidemiological studies all report the same clear relationship: the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life."

Sleep – and getting the full recommended eight hours of it per night – is one of the most important factors determining how healthy and happy our lives will be. Getting enough sleep affects everything from vitality and energy to weight gain and having a healthy immune system. It affects our mental health, as well. Deep sleep – the point at which we begin to dream – is an incredibly therapeutic state of mind that helps us to build emotional resilience and handle the stresses of our lives more easily.

Things that happen to your body and your mind as a result of sleep deprivation

You've been told for most of your life about the importance of getting enough sleep. But why?  Here are a few of the  "down sides" of allowing anxiety to rob you of sleep.

Ways that sleep deprivation affects your mental and physical health include:

• It literally makes you dumber. Sleep deprivation impairs attention, concentration, reasoning, alertness, and problem solving. In addition, learning abilities become impaired, because without the brain consolidating and organizing what you've learned during sleep, you can't retain new information and add it to your memory.
• Impaired judgment. The more sleep-deprived you become, the more liable you are to believe that you're "handling it," and doing fine. Chances are you aren't.
• Depression. People who sleep less than six hours a night are five times more likely to develop clinical depression. Studies have shown that sleep deprivation can lead to mental conditions such as reduced optimism and sociability.
• Increased accident risk. Lack of sleep is cited as a major cause of over 100,000 accidents each year. It's actually more dangerous than drunk driving. According to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, having a blood alcohol level of 0.08 (the legal limit in most states) makes you 2.7X more likely to have an accident, while missing two hours of sleep makes you 4.3X more likely to have an accident.
• Increased risk of serious illness. Sleep deprivation increases your risk of cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, and other diseases.
• Decreased sex drive. One of the most common symptoms of sleep deprivation is lowered libido, and a lack of interest in sex.
• Premature skin aging. Lack of sleep releases more of the stress hormone cortisol and less human growth hormone, both of which can lead to damaged skin, more wrinkles, and permanent dark circles under your eyes.
• Weight gain. Lack of sleep increases hunger, appetite, and thus increases your risk of becoming obese. Sleep deprivation also increases your cravings for high-fat, high-carbohydrate foods.

What to do when anxiety is keeping you from sleeping

Because anxiety is triggered by what we're thinking and worrying about – often obsessively – the good news is that we can help to banish the anxiety by changing what we're thinking about.

Many people dread going to bed due to anxiety

Sleep specialists often recommend the following tips for dealing with anxiety that is keeping you awake:

• Pinpoint the source of your anxiety as a first step to banishing it. That is, if you can identify what is worrying you before you go to bed, you are less likely to lay there dwelling on it, unable to sleep.  Writing it down may help.  And if you feel really anxious and are tossing and turning, get up.
• Develop a regular sleep schedule, and stick to it. If you can, try to avoid staying up late and "sleeping in" on weekends, because a regular schedule is better for both falling asleep easily and feeling better during the day.
• Try to avoid alcohol, caffeine, smoking, and heavy meals in the evenings.

• • Remember that consuming alcohol within 2 hours of going to bed is more likely to disrupt your sleep than enhance it.  You will wake up more frequently in the middle of the night.  Same with coffee, black tea, and other forms of caffeine.

• Light significantly affects your sleep cycles, so increase your exposure to light during the day and reduce it at night by avoiding TV and computer use before sleeping.  And create a bedtime routine that allows you to "wind down" before going to sleep.
• Try to create a bedtime routine that allows you to "wind down" before going to sleep.

Additional way to  reduce anxiety and aid sleep

Finally, there are functional foods and plant medicine that can have a profound effect on reducing anxiety and making it easier to get the healthy sleep you need.

If you have muscle soreness or body tension, try Lineage's Daily Balance Performance and Recovery Cream on your neck, tensions, and any areas of tightness.  The carefully crafted combination of ingredients will help your muscles relax so you can drift off into dreamland.

"I have had trouble falling and staying asleep for many years now, because of anxiety. Shift's Delta 8 chocolates have been a game-changer. I drift off into a deep sleep easily and wake up feeling refreshed and recharged. There are no lingering groggy feelings that many sleep aids leave you with. And best of all, I love a little chocolate before bed! Perfect way to end a long day.” - Lauren, Dance Teacher

The standard recommended dosage of our Shift Delta 8 Chocolates is 1 10mg piece.  Dose is always personal so start slow, go slow, and find your sweet spot.  We hope you wake up rested and refreshed.

Try a two-pack today and use the offer code: ilovefall for 20% off your order.