Why Counting Sheep Does Not Work for Sleep – Cause of Insomnia & Improving Sleep – Dr. Berg

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today we’re going to talk about why counting sheep is not the best technique to help you fall asleep because counting is a form of thinking because any time you start counting or thinking about cheap or thinking in general you’re gonna activate the mind and an activated mind is not gonna help you sleep people are thinking way too much in fact I think thinking is overrated especially when you’re trying to get to sleep solving problems activates stress and then you might think of positive thoughts and then you might get excited that’s gonna keep you up so thinking is the worst thing to do if you’re trying to sleep but sometimes it’s hard just to turn it off so I’m going to show you a really good technique that I use to help you stop thinking but first let’s talk about some basics I’ve done a lot of videos on sleep so this is a quick review so alcohol will definitely keep you up unless you drink a lot of it in which case you’re going to be unconscious and you’ll wake up with a hangover so this is not a good option for sleeping caffeine in coffee and tea and there’s a little bit in chocolate but chocolate has a stimulant okay so choc that will keep you up and other caffeinated beverages and not to mention all the sodas that people are drinking so if you do a bit too much and I’m talking about like more than one in the morning you may find that that’s the reason why you’re not sleeping because it’s not cycled out to the system your liver has not fully detoxified it yet and that’s keeping you up stress okay this is a big one I’ve done a lot of videos on this I’m gonna put some links down below but if the adrenals are overstressed or your adrenal fatigue it can activate a lot of thinking and solving problems you’ll be in this state where at night like at 2:00 o’clock in the morning you’re totally awake and you’re thinking excessively and then during the day you’re ready for a bed okay right so it’s everything is flipped now I personally had a problem with sleeping it was so bad there were nights I did not even sleep one minute I would lay there the whole night counting sheep counting backwards from 100 forwards to a hundred I tried everything and it didn’t work until I started to address my adrenals I’m gonna put some links down below if you have that there’s a way to solve that problem but stress is probably the number one thing okay so then we have digestion what you eat can definitely affect your ability to sleep especially if you ate something you shouldn’t be eating that you feel bloated that’s gonna keep you from sleeping I’ve done tons of videos on this okay too much light in the room so if you have the light on before bed and you just try to go to bed light in darkness activate certain things through your retina that go into the pineal gland that will either stimulate or inhibit the sleep hormone called melatonin so melatonin which helps you sleep is activated by darkness so it’s best that you turn the lights off and you start to wind down that way the artificial lights during the day also do not help so I like full-spectrum lights around my desk all day so I get that go outside get some Sun get vitamin D that also will help you with sleep greatly also your cell phone right next to your bed or being on your cell phone or your computer way too much the EMF the light from the computer can really mess up your sleep cycles I’ve done lots of videos on that I put the link down below I’ve also did videos on sleep apnea getting enough oxygen if you have that you should watch that I’m not going to get into that in this video because I did a whole video just on that one topic leg cramps I put the link down below but if you have leg cramps Tamila night you need more magnesium potassium maybe sodium or even calcium I talked about that extensively and that can be the reason why you’re not sleeping a really effective herb that I used in my sleep aid is called foti root okay it’s been used to in China for a long long time as an anti-aging herb a he shoe whew a very effective herb for a lot of things for your adrenals for sleep there’s several other key ingredients in my sleep aid if you’re interested I put a link down below but for tea root is one of the key things in that hormone so you want to limit your caffeine of course aerobic exercise is going to be a very very vital the days that I don’t exercise I know the sleep is not as good vitamin D this will help you sleep minimally 20,000 I use a vitamin d3 take k2 with it I’ll put some data down below but this really will help you get into the deeper sleep it will help also if you have excessive amounts of stress in cortisol so if the adrenals aren’t right this can help you right here and then getting more Sun that would be ideally what you should do but it’s hard to get this during the winter okay so vitamin b1 will help you stop thinking so much nutritional yeast that’s the best source especially if you have this nervous tension and you’re excessively thinking thinking thinking this can help you too much stress too much sugar too much alcohol will deplete b1 but B 1 is really really important in having a calm mind ok magnesium potassium essential for calming down the nervous system especially the muscles so try to sleep if your muscles are all tight and your stiff it’s not gonna work so you want a nice big salad during the day it’s interesting the days that I don’t have as much salad I find that my muscles aren’t fully relaxed like they should be okay there’s something called the autonomic nervous system and that is a system that is working on automatic okay there’s two parts of this system there’s the sympathetic nervous system which is the flight or flight mode it’s kind of like the stress part of the nervous system that activates things you’re being chased by a tiger that system kicks in then you have the parasympathetic this system is all about rest and digest it’s the system that is always active pushing your heart rate down helping you sleep so it kind of these two work opposing each other if you have a sleep problem most definitely you gonna have a problem with this system right here so the question is how can you activate this system and inhibit this system I mentioned all the things that you can do nutrition wise exercise wise but this is a great technique that relates to a simple way of breathing now when someone’s stressed their breathing is altered okay so they have a shorter exhalation so the breathing in and their exhalation is always shorter which is interesting so there’s not this balance now the thing about the lungs as far as in relationship to the autonomic nervous system is that it’s not just involuntary it’s not just on automatic you can voluntarily stop breathing if you want you can hold your breath but if you forget about it your breathing will just go on automatic and you will just start breathing normally you don’t have to think about it that’s called involuntary but you have the ability to control your breath as well so this is the technique it’s very very simple all you have to do is balance out the inhalation with the exhalation okay so you want to slowly breathe in okay and you want to slowly breathe out and you want to make sure these are the same as far as the timing goes okay so let’s just say I was gonna breathe in for four seconds there we go and then breathe out for four seconds what’s gonna happen is you’re voluntarily stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system and you’re turning this off to a certain degree you don’t have to get into counting all you have to do is focus on your breathing in and out and make sure they’re the same and try to slow them down this is one of the most effective quick things that you could do just to get you into sleep without having to think so much so you want to turn off the thinking just f