Pizza dough and sleep

Raise your hand if you love pizza!  Me, me, me! I love so many kinds of pizza. I could eat pizza most days of the week if my concern about my health and waistline didn’t stand in the way. As a culture we have a national obsession with pizza. Who doesn’t love pizza!?

What the heck does this have to do with sleep, you ask? Well listen up: if you’ve ever made hand tossed pizza dough, you know that there’s a point at which the gluten in the dough stops holding together and you can toss it too much and stretch it out. This then leads to holes in your dough. Then you’ve got to start over, roll the ball into a ball again, and pull out your rolling pin to try to get the dough back into one piece. Such a mess!

Ok, right, but I thought you said you were going to tell me how this related to sleep, right? What gives?

Ah, dear reader, you lack for imagination! Must I spell out everything for you?  OK, here goes:

Sleep, and more importantly our body’s sleep drive, or pressure for sleep, is quite similar to how pizza dough works. Let’s say Suzy’s unique body composition and chemistry leads to her requiring about 6.5 hours of sleep for her to feel most rested. But Suzy is of the mind that she needs to get the nice round 8 hours of sleep per night to feel refreshed. So she gets into bed about 9pm, and granted she may fall asleep fairly quickly. But then she wakes up in the middle of the night, restless, tossing and turning. She might fall back to sleep eventually, but then she finds herself waking up at 3:30, wide awake as if it’s time for the day to begin. But it isn’t: it’s still dark outside!  She tosses and turns in bed and then gives up at 5am, getting out of bed exasperated and just starting her day.

What Suzy’s done is she’s created a sleep window that’s too wide for her body’s ability to sleep! If her body really only needs 6.5 hours of sleep, then when she goes to bed at 9pm, she’s going to wake up at 3:30am with her mind wide awake. By spending more time in bed than her body can produce sleep, she’s basically poking holes in her sleep pizza dough. In other words, she has fragmented sleep! See the picture below to illustrate what I mean. The red arrows show the holes in Suzy’s sleep pizza dough.

So what do I do about my poor pizza dough, you ask? Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. Hop over here to this other post to learn a bit more about an awesome technique that will help you get that pizza dough all in one piece.

And if you’re just sick of it and want someone to guide you through all this mess, simply email or call me for a free 15-minute consultation call and we can see if CBT-Insomnia could be a good fit for you!