By: Lauren Panoff, MPH, RD
It’s one thing to get enough sleep, let alone sleep considered to be restful. If you’ve found yourself struggling to feel rested after a night of sleep, you’re not alone. Many things work against the ability to rest well at night, particularly stress. Fortunately, you may find that some natural approaches can help manage stress and prepare you for restful sleep.
How Stress Affects Our Sleep
We all experience stressors on a day-to-day basis. While some types of stress are short-lived, more chronic stressors can have negative consequences. One of the biggest ways stress impacts rest is by interrupting our circadian rhythm, or our natural wake and sleep cycle.
When stressed, our adrenal glands produce a glucocorticoid hormone called cortisol. Cortisol is released after your body produces “fight or flight” hormones like adrenaline, in order to help you stay alert. It also triggers glucose to be released from your liver to be available as a quick source of energy when under stress.
While cortisol has good intentions, it can interrupt our sleep patterns when levels are out of balance. Under normal circumstances, cortisol levels naturally decrease in the evening when you’re preparing for bed, and increase in the morning right before you wake up. But when you’re experiencing extra stress, cortisol levels may remain consistently higher than normal, making it difficult to fall asleep and stay asleep.
This is why practicing healthy stress management habits is an important aspect of improving sleep. Reducing negative stressors helps your brain and body calm down and recharge when they’re supposed to and wake up when it’s time to start the day.
Good Sleep with No Worries and Rest Assured
While we can’t control the types of stressors that enter our lives, we can take action to cultivate stress management habits. For example, learning how to intentionally prepare your brain and body to wind down later in the day when your body is having trouble doing this on its own.
A daily tea routine can help you create space for relaxation as well as practice mindfulness, both of which are helpful for stress management. Good Pharma teas, specifically No Worries and Rest Assured, have been designed to work together to encourage relaxation and healthy cortisol levels, and support your natural circadian rhythm.
No Worries is a whole leaf caffeine-free rooibos, herb, and jujube seed extract tea to help promote calmness. Its formulation is rich in full-spectrum plant extracts to support stress and anxiety relief, such as Lemon Balm, Holy Basil, Passionflower, Skullcap, Mother of Pearl, Ashwagandha, and Poria Mushroom, among others.
Rest Assured is an herbal tea blend of Lemongrass and Lemon Balm with other plant extracts to promote high-quality rest. It contains Holy Basil, which helps support normal cortisol levels and healthy cognition, and Ashwagandha, one of the most integral Ayurvedic herbs for stress reduction.
Find both teas in our Good Sleep Set. We recommend No Worries earlier in the day and Rest Assured later on in preparation for bedtime.
