Rita Black: Is getting a good night’s sleep a challenge for you? More and more people are having trouble sleeping, and this impacts not only our energy levels, but our weight. In today’s Thin Thinking podcast, I am interviewing Annika Carroll, who is a renowned sleep coach. In this interview, she walks through many of the reasons we may be struggling with sleep, how it impacts our weight, and steps we can take to start getting better sleep. So grab your blanket and come on in.

Rita Black: Did you know that our struggle with weight doesn’t start with the food on your plate or get fixed in the gym? 80% of our weight struggle is mental. That’s right. The key to unlocking long-term weight release and management begins in your mind. Hi there, I’m Rita Black. I’m a clinical hypnotherapist weight loss expert, best-selling author, and the creator of the Shift Weight Mastery Process. And not only have I helped thousands of people over the past 20 years achieved long-term weight mastery, I am also a former weight struggler, carb addict and binge eater. And after two decades of failed diets and fad weight loss programs, I lost 40 pounds with the help of hypnosis. Not only did I release all that weight, I have kept it off for 25 years. Enter the Thin Thinking Podcast where you too will learn how to remove the mental roadblocks that keep you struggling. I’ll give you the Thin Thinking tools, skills and insights to help you develop the mindset you need, not only to achieve your ideal weight, but to stay there long term and live your best life.

Rita Black: Hello everyone and happy March. It’s here. March is here. I am enjoying this time of year here. It’s spring in LA and you don’t need to be envious. I know I rub it in early, but then by June everything is brown here, so I just can’t believe it wins Spring Berks fourth. It is always such a miracle. And I’m trying to be mindful and really present this year. This is my year of being just present in my life. And just to really stretch out the moments of awe. You know how in life our brain just wants to go, okay, that was really amazing, but now I’m gonna go on and get back to my negative thinking and worrying about the future and getting into problems. And I’m really focusing on when I am happy, when I am in awe, when I’m having a moving moment to breathe, take five nice deep breaths and just hold that feeling and stretch out that feeling and train my neural pathways to stay in that bliSS state longer.

Rita Black: So I’ve been really working on that with spring. We take for granted our busy lives and like I said, our mind’s just always pushing us forward to the next thing and the next thing and the next, next thing. And we lose out on those moments. So if you’ve been struggling with sleep, as many of my clients and students have, I’m excited to introduce our next guest, Annika Carroll. Annika Carroll is tha CEO of Sleep Like a Boss, an international network of sleep coaches who help insomniacs who want to sleep but can’t. Sleep Like a Boss has been featured in media outlets such as Forbes, National Geographic, Huffington Post, and others. Annika is a former HR Manager and special needs mom who has recovered from burnout and anxiety twice in the last five years. She was a type A stress addict who wrote on an adrenaline and cortisol for years ignoring her body signals like a pro. Today she helps ambitious women as a sleep and health coach to get their energy and sleep back and avoid burnout.

Rita Black: Hello, Annika Carroll. Welcome to Thin Thinking. We’re really excited to have you on today. I am such a big fan of sleep.

Annika Carroll: Thank you so much Rita, for having me. Yes. And that is such a great topic and I love for it. I live for it. I love it. I work for it. It’s just, it’s a great, great topic.

Rita Black: It’s your life. Sleep is your life.

Annika Carroll: It is.

Rita Black: So tell us, you know, because I think a lot of people, I’m certainly fascinated that you are a sleep coach. Like what is that? Like what do people, what is a sleep coach? How do you, how do you, tell me all about that.

Annika Carroll: Yeah, I think a lot of people might know sleep coaches from the pediatric side that you can start sleep training babies and that is how some people have heard about sleep coaches. But there are adult sleep coaches and we all work a little differently in our approaches. But what do we do? We basically help people who want to sleep but can’t. Right? Because a lot of people actually struggle with sleep. For some of them it might be more of a short-term thing. For some people it really manifests over time. And this could be years, this could be decades. I work with people who haven’t slept sometimes 20, 30, 40 years is my longest client right now. And there are sleep cultures who look at purely the mental part of why can I not sleep? Do I suffer from anxiety? Do I have depression? Do I really get this? I hit the pillow and I’m right away again, I’m just so anxious and I can’t fall asleep or wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back asleep.

Annika Carroll: There are coaches who just address that with what it’s called, Cognitive Behavior Therapy for insomnia. And then there are other coaches like myself who look at yes, that mental part to sleep because stress, mental stress is a huge component of it, but also the physical parts that might be underlying why people can’t sleep. Cause there could be physical, physiological reasons why people can’t sleep. So yeah, we’re basically all there to help people address their insomnia and help them really get a good night’s rest so they have energy throughout the day.

Rita Black: Right. So in essence, you’re helping them get physically aligned and mentally aligned so that they can sleep through the night on a regular basis.

Annika Carroll: Yes.

Rita Black: Okay, cool. Well how did you get into this? Like how does a person get into being a sleep coach? What’s your sleep story?

Annika Carroll: Yeah, it’s, it’s funny. I used to be, what I always thought I used to be was a rockstar sleeper. Apparently not when I was a baby, but when I was like at university and when I had my job in my twenties and early thirties, I, you know, I would wake up before the alarm, I would go all day, I would go to bed, hit the pillow, be out, same thing over and over and over. It was perfect. Not knowing that this hitting the pillow and and passing out is already a sign of exhaustion and that you’re actually not so well rested.

Rita Black: Oh wow.

Annika Carroll: Yeah. But I didn’t know, I felt great. I had tons of energy and then I had my son in my thirties and that was a very traumatic experience. For myself and him because he was born extremely early.

Rita Black: Oh wow.

Annika Carroll: And a year later I, well, so that was already all of the health discussions we were having and stuff was already very stressful. And then after a year I went back to work full-time and, you know, I went into a job that I didn’t like. I had somebody at home who really needed extra care and I kind of, and then I actually got a job that I loved. I gave it everything, burnt myself out. I really just burnt the candle at both ends. Had a burnout, pretty significant. And even though I was exhausted and not able to function, I still wasn’t sleeping.

Rita Black: Wow.

Annika Carroll: And that just didn’t go together for me. I was like, I don’t get it. My body is screaming for rest. And yes, I’d fall asleep at night okay. But I was up at one every morning till four o’clock, sometimes longer. And I just wasn’t getting the rest that I needed. And I went to the doctors, of course. And they were pretty thorough, I have to say. No, it’s all good. Like there’s nothing there. I went to see a naturopath, she started finding a few things that she helped me with, which made me feel better. Then we moved to Canada, which was a big change of course. That kind of put me in a second burnout. Went through that whole sleep phase again. And then I started working with a functional practitioner and she kind of, she was like, yeah, we’re gonna run a few tests.

Annika Carroll: We’re gonna see what’s going on. We’re gonna get the big picture and we’re gonna fix this. And I wasn’t actually, I didn’t approach her because of the sleep. I approached her because of hormonal imbalances that I was experiencing. Like my periods were changing and everything. And I was like, and she was like a hormone expert. So I went that route with her and my sleep improved and I felt amazing. And I was like, yeah, there’s more to the story. And then I got into that whole, okay, if we can, if there’s physiological challenges in the body that are actually what’s preventing me from sleep, then that is probably not just happening to me, but also happening to other people. And then, and that’s kind of how I got into that. And then I found somebody who was working with that approach and joined her team and have since taken over her company. And yeah. And that’s what we do. We just help people get their sleep back.

Rita Black: Right. And I’m sure there’s many different roads in depending on the person, depending on their age, depending on their past. So I know, you know, our Thin Thinking community is we, you know, powerfully manage our way using our mind. Tell me about the weight piece with sleep. Like, you know, how does sleep impact, like not getting sleep impact our way? You know, what correlations do you see with that? Like, kind of walk us through that.

Annika Carroll: Yeah. A lot of people who don’t sleep well do struggle with weight. And there’s actually, I think there’s multiple reasons that you can look at why that is. So the one that has been studied really well is the one it is basically a hormonal reaction. So if we don’t get a significant amount of sleep, we’re not sufficient sleep, signaling of hormones in our bodies is off because we’re supposed to rest and repair overnight. Right. Like kind of conserve energy. And that’s not happening if we’re not sleeping enough. And so if we have a short night and studies are showing people who regularly sleep about five and a half hours versus seven end up consuming 400 calories more the next day.

Rita Black: Oh, interesting.

Annika Carroll: And that is because your hormone signaling for the hormones that either signal you’re hungry or you’re satiated, leptin and graylin, they are very sensitive and they become out of balance immediately. And that is, and a lot of people probably have had this, if you’ve had a short night the next day, even if you work really hard on eating healthil, yeah. You just gravitate towards the carbs.

Rita Black: Right. The quick energy.

Annika Carroll: The quick energy. Because that’s what, that’s exactly what it is. It’s the body needs energy because it didn’t rest. And you make it go for maybe 20 hours. 24? Right. Because you had a very short night. And because that signaling is often, the body is just constantly hungry and asking for food. So if that happens for longer periods of time, definitely contributes to, to weight cortisol, which is our stress hormone. It’s, well it’s always deemed the stress hormone that makes it sound so negative. It’s actually also our awake hormone. So it helps us, we need cortisol, it helps us to get up and going in the morning. But if we are constantly going, going, going and are stressed, our cortisols constantly elevated and that stresses the body. The body’s in a constant stress state that makes your thyroid slow down your metabolism because your thyroid is like the gas and brake of your car. And if we constantly hit the gas with that cortisol, the thyroid’s gonna push the brake and say, you know what, I’m not gonna give any more extra into the system because you’re already going at a very high speed.

Rita Black: Right.

Annika Carroll: And that slows your metabolism down, then you’re just not making good use of your, the calories and that energy burning, that fueling is happening. Well, and also if you’re not sleeping, you’re exhausted. Are you energetic enough to exercise? Like, I know the time when I slept I didn’t sleep well and they were like, what be really important for you to start like exercising, you know, I don’t even know how I’m just on the floor. I just don’t feel like it, I don’t have the energy, I don’t have the motivation. That is, I think another thing that then longer term really starts to to hurt people actually.

Rita Black: Yes, absolutely. Wow, that’s fascinating. So do you see that are your, when they start to get more regular rest, that they are able to make better choices, get healthier, exercise, so it, they are putting all those pieces of the puzzle together. That is very, very interesting because I do know that so many and so many of our clients are of varying ages. Do you see this happening a lot more? Like for instance I see a lot of menopausal women or premenopausal women starting to struggle with sleep that never struggled before. So obviously this is hormonally based as well. Or would you say that that might be part of the challenge?

Annika Carroll: Absolutely. That is definitely a part of our journey as women. Not the, not not being able, no. Yeah. But well not the not being able to sleep, but just those changes in hormones. And I’ve, I find that women, and I can only compare it to the generation of my mother who is also, she is still working, but I still find women in like perimenopause close to menopause now have a lot more on their plates versus my grandma. I’m not saying that my grandma wasn’t busy. She had four children, she raised them all, but that was her job. She did not have a part-time or a full-time job on top of that. She didn’t actually, in her case, that might have been different in other cases, but she did not have to take care of an aging parent.

Rita Black: Right.

Annika Carroll: Those kinds of things that all kind of send with just these days and all that stress of everyday life, I think is just something that pushes our hormones out of balance earlier in a lot of cases. At least that’s what I see that in a lot of cases menopause starts earlier for women. Or perimenopause becomes a lot longer.

Rita Black: Yeah.

Annika Carroll: And the symptoms just pop up more. And does that affect sleep in a lot of cases? Yes, it absolutely does. But are there things you can do about it? Yes. You absolutely can.

Rita Black: Right. Well, it’s interesting too because I have been in practice for 20 years and I’ve seen, so I was, my practice started before there were cellphones or smartphones. There were, you know, I, I mean when I started my practice I didn’t, I don’t even think I had a computer in the office and you know, that was the world I lived in. So as of 2007 when the app, you know, apple invented this amazing little thing well, amazing, I say that very loosely. The demonic little thing. I started to see brains, people’s brains just get way more stimulated and the issues that people were up against just on a daily basis because now they’re waking up with their phone and their brain is getting stimulated and then they’re going to bed and their phone is, they have their phone by their bed and their phone might, do you know what I mean? So do you see that

Annika Carroll: Absolutely.

New Speaker: See that as a huge factor for people as well?

Annika Carroll: Yes, absolutely. In two ways. I think the one thing is this and maybe the pandemic also kind of contributed to that with that self is kind of, people have lost or we, a lot of us only have online communities and yes, community is very important, but I think we’ve kind of gravitated to this online thing. Your Facebook groups, your chat groups, your whatnots. So do we want that community? Yes. But we kind of have given up a lot of, I find personal connections which I think for sleep, like just this feeling of safety maybe I, I just feel loved and cared for and seen and heard. Right. And people then use these online communities a lot even at night. And then this never ending scrolling on social media, this chatting in these rooms all the time. Does that enhance your sleep? No, it doesn’t. Unfortunately. It doesn’t because it’s not yeah. It’s that constant stimulation like you’re saying. You’re being exposed to information that your body has to process. Right. And it’s even like, oh, let me just send my best friend a quick good night text. She’s gonna reply and say, maybe I had a really bad day today. I’m super stressed. And then you take that on. Which is very empathetic and it’s great that you wanna, but not at 11:30 at night because you are not gonna fall asleep right away. It just doesn’t happen. Your system is starting to like start again.

Rita Black: Get jazzed up again. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So that is so interesting about community and the online community versus being with people. That is very fascinating. So let’s talk about people taking matters into their own hands with sleep, because I’ve certainly in my quest to get a better nice rest, have gone to the drugstore and bought melatonin. I’ve, you know, I’ve, when you need to get sleep, you’re willing to like, you know, do crazy things, buy crazy products. So tell me some of the stuff you see with people trying to self-medicate themselves and tell us, you know, like if somebody might be overdosing, melatonin, is this a good idea or a bad idea? I mean, yeah.

Annika Carroll: I think what I see a lot is, yeah, melatonin is probably one of the first ones that people go to. It doesn’t actually work that well for a lot of people.

Rita Black: Right.

Annika Carroll: Generally my goal is always to really test what’s your melatonin level and if it’s low, we can talk about temporarily doing something about it. If it’s actually high, I wouldn’t. And if you react to it, like I see so many people who take it at night and they feel awful the next day, they have like a hangover. Their energy just doesn’t kick until lunch because it’s kind of a delayed metabolizing of the melatonin. And in that sense it’s not great. Generally melatonin is amazing. It’s one of the body’s strongest antioxidants. So that is why you also see a lot of biohackers, we see high dosing melatonin. Like I would recommend people to never take more than three milligrams, like between five and three.

Rita Black: Okay.

Annika Carroll: You see people going 20, 30 times that dose.

Rita Black: Right.

Annika Carroll: Because they say it’s an antioxidant. I would never, there’s no long-term study that tells you that this is a good idea. Like longer term general melatonin studies are out there, there was always a discussion, your pineal gland is gonna down-regulate if you take melatonin for too long and your self production’s going down. There’s just studies out that say this is not true. They’re relatively new, but they say that’s been proven wrong. So I wouldn’t be scared of that. If that’s something that you wanna take at a low dose and it helps you, great. It’s, it’s a bandaid. But it, it works. If it does make you feel groggy the next day, then it’s probably not the right tool for you. Other things I see people take, of course, magnesium, which I’m generally a fan of, a lot of as a magnesium deficient, you just have to take the right forms and you have to take the right doses. And the right doses really depend a bit on your age, your weight. But those are things that I cannot recommend to anybody I’m not working with because they’re definitely significantly above the recommended daily amounts and those are great, that’s what you can buy and that’s when you can self medicate supplement for for yourself. However, I think what people never know when that is really important, these daily recommended values you see on nutrition facts, on supplements, that is to not cause deficiencies.

Rita Black: Ah.

Annika Carroll: So if I’m already deficient because I’m super stressed, I don’t eat very magnesium rich foods or soils are depleted anyhow. There isn’t that much magnesium in food, stress burns through magnesium like crazy. If I’m not if if I’m then supplementing into a deficiency already, that will help a little, but it probably won’t. You get, get you out of the deficiency. But it is a legitimate tool. Also if people just wanna take an Epsom salt bath at night, it’s more for detox. Like it’s a magnesium type, it’s more for detox but it is like a calming ritual and it does help the body relax. So even something like that that’s very non-invasive, really helps. For a lot of people it doesn’t for everybody, it’s just everybody’s different. Right. And everybody has underlying different reasons why they can’t sleep. So things like Valerian can work well for some people don’t work well for others. Ashwaganda, one of those adaptogens that people love. I have several clients who are like, you know what I’ve, everybody’s been telling me to go on Ashwaganda, and it actually makes me wake up. It really, you’re either in the camp where it works or you’re in the camp where it doesn’t.

Rita Black: Right. Interesting.

Annika Carroll: And Yeah. And Right. It’s just, physiology is different. Everybody reacts differently and then some things just really don’t work for some people while they work very well for others.

Rita Black: Right. Well if somebody was gonna work with you, how do you start to break things down and put them back together again?

Annika Carroll: I try to not break them down.

Rita Black: Sorry, maybe that was a bad leading question but –

Annika Carroll: What my goal is actually is to I work with clients for six months because if you haven’t slept for a while, we kind of need a bit of time to get the body back and balance. So what we do is we run a bunch of functional tests on the person. So I look at what’s happening in your gut. Are there any, is there any form of dysbiosis? So overgrowth of bad bacteria that might have an inflammatory reaction in the body? Are there parasites? Is there something like H pylori infection, something I see a lot with my clients. These things –

Rita Black: What’s – I’m sorry. What’s an H – Pylori Infection

Annika Carroll: Pylori is a bacteria that about 50% of the world’s population have. A lot of us go without symptoms. We, we’d never know. Some people have like burning sensations in their stomach. They burp a lot after eating. And a lot of them are then put on protopump inhibitors for high stomach acid, which is actually the exact wrong thing to do.

Rita Black: Of course.

Annika Carroll: Because you actually have low stomach acid if you’re actually burping a lot. It’s the food that’s kind of not getting broken down that keeps pushing right against your esophagus. So it’s a lot of people and I was one of those when I, my burnout, you kind of get treated for the wrong thing sometimes if you don’t, how should you know? So we look at that and h pylori lives in your gut, in your stomach lining, lowers your stomach acid because it lives of that and causes inflammation. And a lot of these things cause inflammation. And the interesting thing that a lot of people don’t know is that cortisol is an anti-inflammatory. So what does, and that’s great, right? Like if we, if you cut yourself or you need something that heal, something to heal quickly and acute inflammation, that’s great. We want that cortisol to help the body heal.

Annika Carroll: We don’t want that chronically because A, it stresses you all the time because your cortisol all levels should be high in the morning and then decline throughout the day. And we don’t want them high in the afternoon and we don’t want them high at night because you can’t, sleep if cortisol is high. So looking for inflammation in the system with the stool test, looking at your hormone. So at your cortisol, at your melatonin, at your estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, because all these, if they’re out of balance can also contribute to sleep issues. And then I look at people’s thyroid health, I look at people’s minerals and heavy metals because if we have something like mercury or lead or something in there that we have accumulated also doesn’t help with sleep because the body’s constantly trying to detoxify that, probably overburdens the liver at some point. And if the liver doesn’t get extra support you can also wake up the classics two to four in the mornings people.

Rita Black: Yes.

Annika Carroll: Yeah. So we look at all that and then my goal generally is to get people more energy within a few weeks by looking at how are you eating, what are you eating, when are you eating, how are you exposing yourself to light and darkness? Are you moving like some basic stuff so they have more energy and then we address the sleep

Rita Black: Right.

Annika Carroll: Through protocols and supplementation, through lifestyle changes and through really also working on mindset.

Rita Black: Do you believe in going to bed at the same time and waking up like sleep schedule as well? Just like a baby?

Annika Carroll: Yes. And the reason for that is that we are cyclic human. Like humans are cyclic beings. And women, even more, our cycles are shorter than men’s. Like we have a, actually we have another cycle, right? Men are basically like day and night maybe like an annual cycle or a seasonal cycle, but we also have our hormonal cycle in there. So we’re more in that regard. We’re more complex and our hormones or enzymes, anything that helps with digestion and mood and all those things get excreted in a rhythm.

Annika Carroll: In a, in a circ it’s called a circadian rhythm. Our sea wake cycle. And those signals that we get from the light that tell our body, oh it’s daytime, I need to digest, I need to make energy, I need to, whatever I need to do depend on light. And then when it’s dark, the body has another program that it runs and it really likes that to be in a well oiled machine. And if we keep changing the shift times, then the kind of well-oiled machine is all over the place and the body really doesn’t function well with that. So if you can, and I understand people sometimes on the weekend say wanna sleep in, which is mostly because we didn’t sleep enough during the week.

Rita Black: Right.

Annika Carroll: So we’re trying to catch up. But if we can get to a reasonably consistent sleep schedule where I would say don’t fluctuate for more than an hour in your seven day period. Try to go to bed at the same time or within 15, 30 minutes. That makes a huge –

Rita Black: So no staying, I’ve been watching binge watching Netflix

Annika Carroll: Binge watching Netflix, that’s always the big problem. I know, I know. But that is one of those things. And then what do you, you know, and then what are you watching? Like sometimes it’s like most of us, like there’s some good stuff there. Like some of those things are good. Yeah. But they are also very exciting. Yeah. And then it’s one in the morning because I binged watched, but I just watched something that is not super mellow. So you’re not going to hit that pillow and sleep. Because you’re still processing Yeah. All that information. Right. And troops there, we have at 2:30, it just happens. And that’s the thing, that’s really a thing. Record it, watch it the next day, break it into sections.

Rita Black: Yeah. Yeah.

Annika Carroll: It’s really not helpful.

Rita Black: You have to kind of take a step back from your life and really I can see that this is like an overhaul of your choices, decisions, the way you take care of yourself. It’s it’s not just about sleep, it’s about resetting, self-care and making certain things a priority that maybe weren’t before.

Annika Carroll: Exactly. Because sleep is so fundamental, but it is so impacted by everything we do. It just all kind of goes together. Like we were not, we haven’t evolved from the caveman times faster than our lifestyle has. Right? The technology, the light, the noise, the hectic around us just is not what our bodies are made to do well under at this point. We just haven’t, evolution just hasn’t been that quick.

Rita Black: I have a quick question for you. This might be a little off topic, but because I know the, the general rule of thumb is get those eight hours or seven hours, like would you say eight hours is premium optimal or seven hours or is it more the quality of the sleep that is the most important part?

Annika Carroll: I think it’s both. There’s a big discussion in the sleep world, right? You have the people who are like, you need a minimum of eight hours every night. Then there are people who say it’s only about the quality. Make sure you get your deep sleep and you get your REM sleep and you get all the sleep phases and at least 20% rep, you know, I think there’s truth in everything.

Rita Black: Right.

Annika Carroll: I think what’s I, and it is individual. There are people who do very well on seven, seven and a half hours. There are people who need eight and a half to nine. It’s very individual. Do we do well on six hours long term? I don’t believe that is the case. Does everybody need eight hours? I don’t think that’s the case either. But the, to me it’s this, if you can fall asleep and wake up without an alarm ideally and make it through the day on okay energy, then you know that you’re getting enough sleep.

Rita Black: Okay. What about naps? What do you think about naps or naps? A bad idea? Good idea?

Annika Carroll: I love them. I think they’re great idea.

Rita Black: Me too. I’m glad you like them.

Annika Carroll: You just have to do, I think you just have to do them right.

Rita Black: Okay.

Annika Carroll: And especially people who struggle with sleep. I often suggest them and they’re like, but I learned I have to build this sleep pressure. Like I have to get really tired so that I can actually sleep. And doesn’t that take away sleep pressure? Yes. But it also puts the body into a relaxed state and the body gets this feeling of, oh I’m safe, I can sleep. It’s all good. And it kind of relearns that through that. So I suggest people nap is if you’re just a bit tired and you’re like, oh I could really use a nap today. Have a power nap. So 10 to 20 minutes Yeah. Set an alarm and that’s it. And you won’t feel super groggy because you haven’t gone into a speed cycle. But it restores your energy for I would say three to four hours in a good way. Like you’re also, you’re thinking better all that kinda stuff. With just 10, 15 minutes investment.

Rita Black: Right. I read a study where the brain actually expects like a, you know, a refresh, like a, a little power nap around in the afternoon. Like, and that if you do that it kind of changes the hormones in your brain in a good way. Where then you’re able to function better, et cetera, et cetera.

Annika Carroll: It does, you just have to do it early.like I would try to be done with the nap by two.

Rita Black: Oh okay.

Annika Carroll: So you still have enough time to like build up that sleep pressure again. So you’re actually tired at night. If you, if you had a horrible night, like a lot of my clients would be, right? They might call me and say, yeah, I just slept for like three, four hours if you can, if your schedule allows for that, have a full nap in the afternoon, so an hour and a half to two hours like actually get a full sleep cycle and to really recover.

Rita Black: Right? So you’re either doing a power nap like 10 to 20 or do the whole thing. Don’t do it like just an hour. Right. Like?

Annika Carroll: Just don’t do an hour because you’re gonna feel you’re gonna wake up, you have this what we call sleep inertia. You’re gonna be like, I’m so groggy I can’t, function’s gonna take you half an hour to get going or a cup of coffee. Which at that point you like they don’t want anymore. Just because you’ve kind of woken your body up out of the middle of a sleep cycle.

Rita Black: Right. Oh, okay. Wow. So, so there’s just so much to it. And segmented sleep. Are you, what do you think about that? Do you know where people actually sleep? A few sleep cycles, then they wake up, they do some stuff and then they try to go, you know, then they go back to sleep. What do you think of, what’s your way in on that?

Annika Carroll: I don’t really know. You know, there’s studies that show that this is how our ancestors actually lived. And that is why this would be the optimal way. I don’t know. I think I I actually think it doesn’t work for most people in the way just in our society and I wouldn’t stress myself trying to fit that.

Rita Black: Yeah. Well I think we’re different than our fourth, our primitive fathers because again, you wake up then you go probably get online and you do some stuff and you super stimulate your brain and then you can’t get back to sleep for that last sleep cycle or it’s not a quality one.

Annika Carroll: Exactly. That’s one thing. And the other thing, I don’t know if there’s been studies done on this in regards to that is sleep. We always go through sleep cycles, four to six sleep cycles at night and they have different sleep stages. So we have light sleep, we have deeper sleep, we have REM sleep. REM sleep is that phase where we dream and where we consolidate memory and where we process emotion, deep sleep is that really rejuvenating, rebuilding phase of sleep. And what’s interesting is the sleep stages, even though we kind of have one sleep cycle after another, every one and a half-ish hours and we keep going through these same phases again of light, deep, rem light, deep, rem, light, deep, rem, the amount we spend in each phase changes throughout the night depending how long we are sleeping for. So in the early stages at night we have more deep sleep. That’s why we kind of want people in bed by 10:30 because from 11 to 1 is kind of this really deep, really restorative brain being washed out all the time on prevention, all that kind of stuff. If we go and then we sleep longer and longer, the longer we sleep, the longer our REM sleep gets.

Annika Carroll: And the more, the shorter we sleep, the less emotionally regulated we are. So like you kind of get, sometimes you have that with kids, you’re like, oh my god, they’re just having the worst day. They just didn’t sleep well. They throw temper tantrums, they’re just impatient. Right. We are the same if we don’t get enough sleep, we are not focused, we are not caring as much empathetic. We just can’t, we just don’t have to to keep the capacity. And that’s because we didn’t regulate what we went through the past few days at night. So all that burden, so to say is still there.

Rita Black: Right.

Annika Carroll: And so if you wake up after three sleep cycles and then you kind of are awake for one or two and then go back, I don’t know if that is actually interrupting that whole process I would assume.

Rita Black: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Annika Carroll: And that, but that’s why I said I haven’t seen any studies on that, but I would assume it would do that and that would be then super counterproductive. Got it. I think in my opinion.

Rita Black: Yeah. That makes sense. So tell us you know, if, if somebody wanted to connect with you, because Annika you work primarily online with people even though you were on tests, they’re you’re, you’re having them send stuff to labs and stuff like that. Tell us a little bit about that. And I know you had a little freebie, a sleep freebie for people to take advantage of. Tell us all about all the goodness you have to offer.

Annika Carroll: Yeah, so how I work is I work with people only online. It doesn’t matter where you live basically. I do the people who wanna work with me, they get an hour and a half intake where we really turn their life upside down and I wanna know everything that’s been going on to get a picture. And then they get sent all their test kits home so they can run those tests at home. They don’t have to go to a lab or see anybody for that. And then they get picked up at home and they get shipped to the lab. I get the results and then we have regular calls within that six month period that I work with people with where a, we go through the results, we go through a protocol that I would suggest for them and where we have frequent touch basis to see how is it going, how’s your sleep, how’s your energy, what’s improving?

Annika Carroll: Everything else we’re looking at digestion, hormones, whatnot. But, and also then work on stress management, mindfulness, helping the person deal with things that might be interfering with their sleep right now. And people also get my phone number so they get text message support the entire time Monday through Fridays that if things come up and that always happens that they don’t have to wait for next appointment, but that I’m there in their back pocket and that I can help and take stress out of things of changes because we’re making changes. Right. Like you said, you’re kind of like looking at your lifestyle and you’re addressing a lot of different moving pieces and Yeah. Change can be triggering some resistance. Or some anxiety or things. Right. So, and then I’m just there for people to guide them through the process.

Rita Black: Oh, amazing. That is great. So Annika your information and details how to get in touch with you will be in the show notes and tell us about the the freebie you have for people to take advantage of as well.

Annika Carroll: Absolutely.

Rita Black: I was was gonna say, to get a little piece of Annika, to get a little, a naps size version

Annika Carroll: A naps size version. So what I would love for people to do I would invite you to go and play the game of sleep with us. So that is, yeah, it is actually a little game you can download and it gives you 15 super easy to implement tips for better sleep. They are all free. Yes. They’re all free. And you can do them all and you can kind of see how well you’re doing already, what scores are you getting, and then what are things that you might consider for yourself doing and optimizing a little so you can start tweaking your sleep.

Rita Black: Wow.

Annika Carroll: Without hopefully seeing somebody if us but I, if that doesn’t work, then like, if you’re doing all those things, then it might be a good idea to reach out to somebody to see what’s going on.

Rita Black: Okay. Well this has been really informative. Thank you so much. And I hope that we can have you back to talk about sleep more the second sleep cycle.

Annika Carroll: Absolutely.

Rita Black: Well, thank you for your time and your expertise. Annika. This has been amazing.

Annika Carroll: Thank you so much, Rita.

Rita Black: You, Oh, thank you. It’s been a joy.

Rita Black: All right. Thank you Annika for joining us. And don’t forget to grab her free sleep game, which is available in the show notes. Wow. I feel ready for a nap now. And while you’re at it, leave us a review and send us the photo. I will send you a coupon to go into the shift store and pick up a free weight loss download hypnosis download of your choice. So send us that screenshot to rita shift weight mastery.com. Have an amazing week and remember that the key and probably the only key to unlocking the door, the weight struggle is inside you. So keep listening and find it.

New Speaker: Do you wanna dive deeper into the mindset of long-term weight release? Head on over to www shift weight mastery.com. That’s www shift weight mastery.com, where you’ll find numerous tools and resources to help you unlock your mind for permanent weight release tips, strategies, and more. And be sure to check the show notes to learn more about my book From Fat to Thin Thinking. Unlock Your Mind for Permanent Weight Loss.