Episode 106. What does pain mean? How can you get better quality sleep with kids & more.
Episode 106. This week we spoke about pain and its connection with the brain and sleep. How can you improve your sleep quality when the quantity is out of your control.
What is pain?
In short, pain is an unpleasant sensation and emotional experience usually caused by tissue damage. It allows the body to react to and prevent further tissue damage. People feel pain when signals travel through nerve fibres to the brain for interpretation.
THE USUAL PAIN PROCESS
You whack your finger; this inflames the tissue on site (noxious stimulation)
Chemicals inflame and activate nerve endings in your finger
The nerves then transmit the signal up into the spinal cord via nociceptors and into the brain
The message gets to parts of the brain to be recognised as pain
Examples of Pain being Psychological:
The same nociceptive input (touch or pressure) can be manipulated to create more or less pain. We spoke about a man being bit by a snake while walking in the bush and experiencing the same pain again when touched by a stick while walking in the same environment months after the painful event. When a stick touches him, it is perceived as more painful because the brain associates it with being bit by a snake. This can be related to the pain people experience in the gym. Someone might say they have knee pain and touch their knee, which the brain then associates your hand on your knee with pain in the area.
You can watch his TED Talk here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwd-wLdIHjs
We can also use this more positively. When feeling stressed or in pain, we can have a cue like crossing our arms over our body or touching a trinket to signal to our brain we are safe and reduce negative emotions and possibly pain.
A negative mood causes the same input to be perceived as more ‘painful’, and a positive mood can buffer or improve pain.
Pain can be generated WITHOUT nociceptive input (without any touch)! We spoke about The Rubber Hand Illusion. When a participant had their hand covered, and the researcher poked a rubber hand filled with sand that was on the table next to the participant's arm, they could feel the researcher poking “their” hand. When in fact, their hand was not being touched at all!
You can watch the experiment here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DphlhmtGRqI
How you can improve the QUALITY of your sleep
We have many mums reach out to us saying they know how important sleep is, but their kids obviously don’t! If the amount of sleep you can get is out of your control, there are a bunch of things you can do to improve the quality of sleep you get.
Our first and most effective recommendation is to invest in blue light blockers. Good ones!! When you get up multiple times a night, being exposed to blue light is one of the worst things you can do for your sleep. Jumping on your phone will signal to your brain that it's time to be awake and alert, making it extremely hard for you to fall into a deep sleep.
Our other tips include the following:
Have a consistent bedtime and waketime
Getting natural sunlight into your eyes first thing in the morning
Getting your body moving in the morning, whether it be a short walk, yoga or a workout
Minimising the time you spend on your phone or watching tv of an evening
Keeping ALL devices out of the bedroom - making the bedroom solely the place you sleep
Getting a sunrise alarm clock
Taking a hot shower
Getting some red light bulbs for when you have to get up and tend to kinds in the night
Listener questions this week:
How can I get to sleep at 3 am after working the night shift?
What happened to the 75 hard challenge? Will you guys do it again?
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