If your mind won’t switch off at night, read this

How’ve you been sleeping recently?

If the answer is not good – great. You’ll likely find something useful in this series.

And to those who sleep like a log, read on anyway. It’s always interesting to understand how the other side lives — and in this case, that’s about 60% of Australians.

That’s right - it’s reported that around 60% of Aussies experience underwhelming sleep on a regular basis. For some, that looks like trouble falling asleep. For others, it’s waking through the night or waking too early and not being able to get back to sleep.

If you’re curious, the Sleep Health Foundation has some interesting breakdowns across age groups — I’ve linked it here.

There are many contributors to poor sleep:

Medical — sleep apnoea, chronic pain, hormonal disruption

Physical — a heightened sympathetic response (fight or flight), caffeine or alcohol intake, not enough physical activity to build sleep pressure

Environmental — inconsistent routines, shift work, light and noise exposure, screens before bed

Mental — overthinking, rumination, emotional carry-over, and unresolved issues

There’s a lot that can be done to improve the medical, physical, and environmental aspects of sleep.

But in this series, I want to focus on something I see often in clinic:

👉 the mind that doesn’t switch off when it needs to.

There’s a way to work with this — without forcing sleep.

I’ll walk you through it over April’s series on sleep.