Josie Gibson has admitted that her sleep issues have left her “shaking.”
As Dr. Sara Kayat presented her top suggestions to This Morning viewers, the 38-year-old celebrity and her co-host Craig Doyle opened up about their difficulty sleeping through the night.
Josie said: ‘I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve literally not been sleeping a wink. The other day, I probably had about three hours sleep a night in a four days, and I was shaking.
‘I was actually shaking by the fourth day, I felt like I wasn’t really here. So I need all the tips that I can get.’
Craig added: ‘I’d bite the hand off you for three hours sleep a night. Honestly, yeah! It’s bad at the moment, isn’t it, for a lot of people.’
Dr. Sara noted that the UK is ‘known to be chronically sleep deprived’, which can have some ‘really significant health impacts’.
‘So it is so important we get on top of this, absolutely. I’m so sorry to hear both of you are struggling so much,’ she said. ‘Ideally, you want to be sleeping anywhere between seven or eight hours a night on average.
‘People that get significantly less than that are at increased risk of health conditions, strokes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression, even early death. It is really important that we regularly get better sleep.’
She added that a lack of sleep might be caused by “a number of different underlying issues.”
She explained: ‘Lack of sleep can have a number of different underlying issues. It could be something physical like sleep apnea where their tongue is going down the back of their throat and causing them to block up, it could be things like too much caffeine, lifestyle things, exercising too close to bedtime so endorphin levels are going up.
‘It could be depression, we know that’s a large cause for many people to suffer with poor sleep and early wakenings.’
‘For a lot of people it could just be that they’re having to get up frequently to go to pass urine,’ she added, which prompted Craig to share his own experiences.
He responded: ‘I know this cloud! Is this just a man thing, when you get to a certain age? You need to go to the loo at 3am.
‘I don’t know if you know this, but as you come out of the bathroom there’s little demons that hide behind the door.
‘They jump in your brain as you walk back out, “Did you pay that bill?” “Is the dog gonna wake up early and annoy you?” It doesn’t have to be a big panic. That’s really common, anecdotally from friends of mine.’
Dr. Sara Cox’s sleeping tips to get between seven and eight hours a night
- Write thoughts in a pad by your bed to leave them until morning
- Avoid using your phone before bed or during the night
- Use dark curtains to block out the light
- Don’t rely on catching up at the weekend – ‘We can’t really have an overdraught of sleep’
- Napping – ‘As long as you’re napping for short periods of time and not near your bedtime, napping can really improve alertness, cognitive performance, your mood’
- Don’t count sheep because it might be too boring and ‘lead to distractions’
This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV.
