Episode 182: Supporting Your Sleep

doTERRA: Sleep plays an important role in your health, and a lack of quality sleep has been linked to an increased risk for many different health problems, which is why supporting your sleep is so vital.

Welcome back to Essential Oil Solutions with doTERRA, the podcast where you'll hear exciting, useful, and simple everyday uses for essential oils from experts in the field. If you like what you hear today, rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen. We always appreciate hearing from you.

Today, we're excited to talk to Eliza Bacot about what you can do to support your sleep every day. And if you're interested in any of the products we talk about today, make sure to click on the link in the episode description. Eliza, thank you so much for sitting down with us today.

Eliza Bacot: Hi, thank you so much for having me here! I'm so excited to talk about this really important topic.

doTERRA: Yes, it is so important. So let's just dive right in. Can you tell us what the current recommendations are for nightly sleep?

Eliza: Sure! So sleep is so important, as we know, from a young age up into the elderly age range. But typically, if we're talking about adults, we recommend 7–9 hours. Most organizations do, including the CDC. But really, I like to tell people, you really want to stick to that eight-hour range.

Now, when we're talking about teenagers and school-aged children, they really need a couple more hours than that. So typically, school age, we say 9–11 and teens about 8–10.

And when we get down to under five years old, they each have their own little time frame of sleep that they need, depending on their developmental age, and it changes—shaving off a little bit as they go through each extra developmental stage.>

doTERRA: Well, that is so good to know, and like you said, so good to remember that as you move through different stages of life, your sleep recommendations are going to change.

Eliza: Absolutely.

doTERRA: Now, I think we have all experienced those nights where we just cannot fall asleep or those mornings where we wake up feeling like it's just been a terrible night. What are some of the common reasons that I might not be getting my best sleep?

Eliza: Well, there's a lot of common reasons out there that sleep can be disrupted for many people, and I first want to talk about, I would say, probably the most common one, the one that causes the most sleep disruption, and that's actually stress.

Stress

We live in a really stressful society these days. We're doing a lot of things. We’re inundated with a lot of different things coming our way, so much more than we were even 50 years ago. And so managing stress is going to be one of probably the most important things you can do to stop that barrier from sleep happening.

Screen Time or Medication

But some other things that could also disrupt sleep, or it can interfere with it, are screen time before bedtime, especially. Certain medications that people may be taking can be sleep disruptors. So don't forget about that either. And going through your medication list.

Alcohol

Definitely alcohol consumption, any sort of alcohol consumption within typically four hours before bedtime. People don't realize that, too. They'll say, “Oh, I have a couple of drinks of alcohol, and it makes me sleepy.” But alcohol is one of the largest sleep disrupters out there. It's very disruptive to the sleep patterns.

Caffeine

Too much caffeine or consuming caffeine after the noon hour. I usually tell people stop around noon.

Chronic Conditions

And other certain chronic conditions can certainly be disruptive to sleep. It's why it's really important to follow up with your medical provider too. And those are things like sleep apnea, people with pain, people that have frequent urination, or people that also are suffering from mental illness. So it's really important to refer back to your medical provider when you're having sleep disruption because you want to make sure that any of those conditions are ruled out.

doTERRA: Absolutely. Now you mentioned many different factors that could be impacting our sleep, and not everything is under our control, but some things we can change. So what are some of the lifestyle changes I can make to be able to support that really healthy sleep?

Eliza: Yeah, great question. I love that question because a lot of times we tell people we really want to focus on what you can do and, you know, not focus so much on the things that you cannot control, right? But there's so much in our environment that we can control, and it just sometimes takes a little bit of prep and consideration, right?

Adjust the Temperature

So I have this sort of sleep hygiene recommendation that I give to people. People sleep really well in cooler environments. So making sure the temperature, if you can program it, like about 30 minutes before bedtime, you can dial it in to your temperature thermometer and your heat and cooling system like to where it does it automatically to where the temperature drops a few degrees. Usually, that 68-degree range is a really nice place to be at. Some people need it cooler.

Limit Blue Light Exposure

Blue light blocking glasses if you are on screen time at night before bedtime, that's really important because it stops the brain from being triggered that it's light outside, right? So we're trying to calm the brain down.

Take a Bath with Essential Oils

There’s certainly different, other wind down things like warm bath is so important and wonderful with magnesium bath salts. I love to add essential oils to my magnesium bath salts.

And typically, what I look towards are those more calming oils, the oils that help me kind of slow down a bit and encourage the environment to slow down a little bit.

Play Music and Start Your Diffuser

Playing music, diffusing by the bedside, and typically what I tell people to do is start your diffuser at your bedside about 30 minutes before you're going to be actually moving into your room to sleep.

So typically a lot of times what I will do is as I'm moving my children towards bedtime, we'll go ahead and start the diffuser in our bedroom. That way, the bedroom is filled with the aroma of that sort of peaceful essential oil, one that promotes a calming environment that is kind of just really telling me to slow down a little bit and get the body ready for rest.

doTERRA: I think those are all amazing recommendations, and you mentioned a couple of ways that you like to work in essential oils and doTERRA products into that sleep hygiene routine. What are some of your favorite products to use to help create that restful environment?

Eliza: Yes, great question. And in fact, I would say essential oils within that sort of sleep hygiene pathway is really one of the most unique and interesting ways that we can help improve our sleep and our sleep hygiene.

You know, it's not that interesting to program my thermostat, but it's really interesting to explore like the—really the beauty of different smells within essential oils that can help provide a calming environment. And I sort of take a three-pronged approach to this.

We look at aromatic diffusion of essential oils. We look at topical application of essential oils and then, of course, internal, and we'll talk about internal.

Aromatic Use

But some of my favorite tools, aromatically, which doTERRA does a really great job of this because I don't know about you guys. I have three kids like, I don't always have time to be a mixologist. And so doTERRA creates these sort of amazing blends that are for different purposes, right?

So we look at the doTERRA Serenity^® blend. The Serenity blend is unique because it really has and encompasses a lot of those calming oils calming for the environment like Vetiver, Lavender, Roman Chamomile. And so that's a beautiful blend that I love.

I love to take the hero out of the Serenity blend called Vetiver. That is one of my favorite sleep oils, and I love it so much because again, it creates this wonderful, soothing aroma in my room. And you only need a drop or two in your diffuser. Vetiver has a very strong scent, and what I found in the beginning—it was like it was this very beautiful aroma, but it needed a little pep to it. So I actually love to add a drop or two of Wild Orange to my Vetiver, and that's really one of my favorite sleep healthy hygiene aromatic oils.

But some other blends that doTERRA makes that would be fantastic for this would be the doTERRA Peace® blend. It also has Vetiver and really a unique and different scent than Serenity. A little bit extra Vetiver in that Peace blend from when I smell it, I can really smell the Vetiver in there. It's really beautiful.

And also the Adaptiv^™ blend that doTERRA makes. It actually has some great essential oils in there that promote a calming environment.

Topical Use

I also love to do topical application, so actually one of my favorite topical blends is a blend for kids called Calmer®, which is great also to use with your kids to help promote restful sleep.

But it's one of my favorite topical bedside oils that I keep right beside my bed. And what I love to do before I lay down to sleep is I just take some of that topical oil in the roller bottle, and I rub it into pressure points. So that's a wonderful way to apply essential oils topically as you're sort of moving the body into that stage for rest and really preparing it to say, I'm going to have my best night of sleep possible.

And so those are some of my favorite tools. You can use those aromatic blends topically as well.

And then I'll be honest with you. Keep it simple sometimes. My husband's favorite go-to is Lavender on the big toe, and he doesn't need any of the other blends like I do. He just loves just straight Lavender.

And I always tell people, like, if you find the thing that works for you, stick with it. And also don't be afraid to experiment a little bit. Sometimes it takes a little bit of experimentation, of diffusing different things and trying different combinations before you actually find the blend that you find the most soothing to encourage sleep.

doTERRA: I love that, and I think that's such an important thing to remember that you can't be afraid of messing up or be intimidated by the different choices. Just try some stuff out, see what works for you, and find your favorites.

Eliza: Absolutely.

doTERRA: Now you mentioned internal use of some doTERRA products. What are some of your products that you use internally to support healthy sleep?

Eliza: Yes, great question. And this is what I call the Step Up approach, when I'm sort of educating people on how to use essential oils and the different ways our bodies can receive them. That Step Up approach, of course, is aromatic, topical, and then we have internal, right? I tell people, “Fantastic. If a couple drops of Vetiver and your diffuser gives you an awesome night's rest, maybe that's all you need.” But if you're like me and probably 75% of the American population, we need a little bit extra to kind of unwind.

And again, I will make a point here that it's really important to start this process 45 minutes before you want to go to bed because again, many times for people that are unwinding from stress, you don't want that unwind period to be you laying in your bed, staring at the ceiling for 45 minutes. You really want that wind down process to be happening as you're sort of wrapping up your things for the day, finishing up your routine.

And so what I encourage people when they use internal products from doTERRA to help support sleep is really take those about 45 minutes before you'd like to be asleep.

doTERRA Serenity Restful Complex Softgels and Copaiba Softgels

Now, two of my absolute favorites for internal support for sleep are the Serenity Softgels that doTERRA makes. We'll talk about that, and I love to add a Copaiba softgel to that. I do recommend to people with the Serenity Softgels to take 2–3. Typically, I've seen in my experience that one is not enough, and these have a beautiful combination not only of essential oils but also herbs. And so that beautiful combination actually has great, great support in our body to kind of what I call pump the brakes a little bit.

And when we're pumping the brakes, the body does that naturally, right? Like in the evening, our cortisol levels lower. That's slowing everything down and the body rate, the body's getting ready for sleep on its own.

And so some of the doTERRA products can also support the body to do that. So that Serenity softgel has some wonderful herbs and essential oils in that combination, again, 2–3.

And my little tip that I have been using so much since they introduced the Copaiba Softgels is including one Copaiba softgel with that. Copaiba, as we know, comes from that beautiful tree resin and works on our endocannabinoid system. Again, another system that helps us really pumps the brakes. So that Copaiba is wonderful to support that system and really help us again, just get into that really, really beautiful window of winding down, that way, when you put your head on the pillow, you're asleep within 3–5 minutes.

doTERRA: Which sounds amazing. That sounds like a miracle sometimes. Eliza, before we end today, can you just walk us through your nightly bedtime routine?

Eliza: Yeah, sure. Now, my nightly bedtime routine does not execute itself as gloriously and as simply as it sounds here in this podcast because I have three kids. And so I was thinking about that earlier. I was like, wow, I should have added that to the reasons why some people don't sleep is if your kids aren't sleeping, then you’re not sleeping. And so, so many of us that are parents, part of our nighttime routine involves—part of the wind down is also getting our children to sleep.

Wind Down for Kids

So what my night kind of looks like is when I'm getting my children into bath time, into that routine, that's when I actually start my wind down routine because they're going to go to bed. I typically stay up an hour, sometimes, maybe a little bit more if I have work after them, but so I want to go ahead and start getting myself into that window. So as I'm winding them down what I typically do, that's when I take my two Serenity Softgels. That's when I take my one Copaiba with that, and then I set up my diffuser in my bedroom.

So basically that trigger of a habit of that thing that I'm doing when I know that I'm going to be in bed an hour later is triggering of my routine, right? So I set up my diffuser then, put my kids to bed, do my other little things. I love to make a cup of tea. Sometimes I'd love to put a drop or two of Wild Orange in my tea at night and promote restful sleep as well.

Use Your Essential Oils

And then as soon as I get into bed, I do that sort of exercise of topical application. That can also exist on the wrist. I actually do a lot of topical application on the wrist, and then I inhale also that oil that I'm applying topically, and then to the temples, that Calmer blend I love. And sometimes I do use Peace topically there too. And on the back of the ears, and that is my really simple wind down routine.

I almost always have blue light-blocking glasses on during the day. So I'm always doing that, and I have exactly done what I recommended to you guys. We have our thermometer, our thermostat programmed in our home to kick down the temperature right around the 9:00 pm hour, when we're walking into our bedtime routine.

doTERRA: Well, whether or not it is executed perfectly every night, I think what you said is so important that it is key to have that routine and try to make sure that you are taking that time to focus on your sleep hygiene.

Eliza:Absolutely. And there's going to be some days, let's say, more stressful days for me. I may not utilize a magnesium salt bath every single night with my essential oils. But there are definitely those days where I'm like, “You know what? Tonight, it's like a warm bath night because it's been a super stressful day,” or the kids were kind of wild, and I just need that extra wind down. So have that tool in your tool belt too. I tell people, is that you have your typical routine and then sometimes you know you need to step that routine up a little bit and add something else in there so you can really help the body wind down.

doTERRA: Absolutely. Eliza, it has been amazing to talk to you today to learn a little bit more about how we can control the things we can control to support healthy sleep every day.

Eliza: Awesome! Thank you so much for the opportunity. I hope this helps everybody so much get restful sleep. It is so important to our overall health to have adequate sleep, and we spend a third of our life doing it, so we need to make sure it's really, really impactful for us.

doTERRA: Thanks for joining us and congratulations on living a healthier lifestyle with essential oils. If you liked what you heard today, rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen. Also, if you want to try any of the products you learned about, go to doterra.com or find a Wellness Advocate near you to place an order today.