Easy Sleep Solutions

16/09/2026

Catching up on sleep…it’s something I’m often asked about.

But is it actually true?

Well… sort of. And sort of not. 😂

If you’ve had a short night, getting some extra sleep afterwards can absolutely help with recovery. Your body is rather clever and can make adjustments to how much you sleep and the structure and intensity of that sleep when you’ve been sleep deprived.

There’s also evidence that getting more sleep beforehand can help when you know a period of sleep loss is coming (my personal favourite!).

So, for example, if you’ve got a late night, an overnight shift or a particularly ridiculous weekend ahead, going into it well rested isn’t a bad strategy.

Where things get trickier is when ‘catching up’ becomes your normal weekly pattern.

Five short nights followed by spending half of Saturday in bed isn’t necessarily the same as getting sufficient sleep consistently across the week. Big swings in sleep and wake times can also shift your body clock, which may make Sunday night and Monday morning particularly delightful. 🙃

So no, one lie-in doesn’t magically erase everything that happened during the week.

But equally, if you’ve had a rubbish night’s sleep, you haven’t irreparably damaged yourself and you don’t need to panic about your ‘sleep debt’.

Your body knows how to recover.

As with so many things in sleep, the answer isn’t:

NEVER HAVE A LIE-IN.

It’s:

It depends.

And frankly, I wish the internet would allow sleep to be a little less bloody black and white. 😂

EasySleepSolutions

14/09/2026

It’s 3.07am.

You’ve woken up.

You check the time.

Then you make the fatal mistake of starting to calculate…

‘If I fall asleep RIGHT NOW, I can still get 4 hours and 23 minutes.’

3.18am.

Still awake.

Obviously, the sensible thing to do now is Google:

‘Why do I keep waking up at 3am?’

And before you know it, you’re reading about cortisol, hormones, blood sugar, your liver, magnesium deficiency and approximately 47 other things that may or may not have anything whatsoever to do with why you’re awake.

Your brain, meanwhile, has got the message:

🚨 THIS IS A PROBLEM. WE NEED TO SOLVE IT. 🚨

Which isn’t particularly conducive to sleep.

Waking during the night is actually a normal part of sleep. We move through different stages and cycles, and brief awakenings can happen between them. Most of the time we don’t even remember them.

The difficulty can sometimes be what happens after we realise we’re awake.

Clock watching. Calculating. Googling. Worrying about tomorrow. Trying REALLY HARD to get back to sleep.

All of that can increase arousal at precisely the point we’re trying to reduce it.

And there’s an especially annoying truth about sleep:

The harder you try to make it happen, the more elusive it can become.

So if you wake tonight, you don’t need to immediately work out why you’re awake.

And you definitely don’t need Brenda on TikTok diagnosing your cortisol levels at 3.14am. 😂

Sometimes the most useful response to waking is simply:

‘Oh. I’m awake.’

And not turning it into an emergency.

EasySleepSolutions

11/09/2026

If your teenager appears clinically deceased at 7am but miraculously springs back to life at 10pm, they’re probably not just being difficult. 🧛

There’s actually some biology behind it.

During puberty, the body clock can naturally shift later. Melatonin, one of the hormones involved in signalling that it’s time for sleep, can rise later in teenagers than it does in younger children and many adults.

In simple terms, their brain starts saying ‘sleep’ later.

Which would all be absolutely fine if school also started at 11am.

Unfortunately, nobody appears to have consulted teenage biology when designing the school day. (Don’t even get me started!…).

So we can end up with teenagers who genuinely aren’t sleepy when their parents think they ‘should’ be going to bed, but still have to get up early for school the next morning.

And that’s where the problems can start.

It doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do to help. Morning light, evening light exposure, routines, weekend lie-ins and what happens during those last few hours before bed can all influence the body clock.

But sometimes the first useful thing for a parent to understand is this:

They’re not necessarily refusing to sleep. They genuinely might not be sleepy yet.

And that’s a very different problem to solve.

If your teenager’s sleep has become a battle, or you’re wondering what’s normal teenage sleep and what might need a bit more help, that’s exactly the sort of thing I help families unpick.

🧛 Vampire tendencies optional.

04/09/2026

Have you tried:

Going to bed earlier?
No screens before bed?
Magnesium?
A new pillow?
A sleep spray?
Meditation?
Cutting out caffeine?
Listening to whale noises while lying perfectly still and desperately trying to sleep? 😂

The internet is absolutely FULL of sleep tips.

And plenty of them are perfectly sensible.

But if you’ve been struggling with your sleep for months (or years), there’s a good chance you don’t need another generic list of things you’re apparently doing wrong.

You need to understand what’s actually keeping YOU awake.

Because two people can both say ‘I can’t sleep’ and have completely different things going on.

Maybe you’re spending too long in bed trying to catch up.

Maybe you’ve started worrying about sleep so much that bedtime itself has become stressful.

Maybe your routine, work, hormones, lifestyle or environment is playing a part.

Or maybe you’ve tried so many different things that you genuinely don’t know what helps anymore.

That’s why the first thing I do with my clients isn’t hand them a list of sleep hygiene rules.

We investigate. 🔎

What’s happening?
When did it start?
What’s maintaining it?
And, most importantly, what can we realistically change?

Because better sleep isn’t about doing all the things.

It’s about figuring out which things actually matter for you.

And frankly, life’s too short to spend it buying increasingly expensive magnesium and listening to whales. 😂

02/09/2026

Back-to-school season can come with a LOT of pressure to get routines ‘right’.

Earlier bedtime.
Bath.
Pyjamas.
Story.
Lights out.
Child peacefully drifts off to sleep while you gaze lovingly at them.

Lovely.

Also, not necessarily how actual children work. 😂

Because here’s the thing. There is no ‘perfect’ bedtime routine.

A bedtime routine is really just a series of predictable cues that help your child’s brain and body recognise that sleep is coming.

And different children need different things.

One child might find a bath really relaxing. Another gets out of it behaving like they’ve just been released into the wild.

Reading settles some children. Others need to move, have some quiet time, get some sensory input or just have a bit of extra connection with you before they’re ready to wind down.

And this is especially important with neurodivergent children, because the standard sleep advice quite often just… doesn’t work for them.

So, with school starting again, don’t worry about creating the ‘perfect’ bedtime routine.

Instead, get curious about your child.

What actually helps them settle?
What seems to wind them up?
What causes the same battle every night?
And what can you realistically do most evenings without losing the will to live? 😂

You don’t need to copy the bedtime routine you saw on Instagram.

You need one that works for the child you’ve actually got.

And if you’ve tried all the usual advice and still can’t work out why sleep isn’t working, that’s where I come in.

A bit of sleep detective work is very much my thing.

NeurodivergentChildren SleepSupport

31/08/2026

Is September the new January?

There’s something about September that always feels like a fresh start.

The summer holidays are ending here in the UK, routines are returning, evenings are getting darker (🫣) and suddenly there’s an urge to GET YOUR LIFE TOGETHER. 😂

New routines. New habits. New goals.

And if improving your sleep is somewhere on that list, I’m all for it. But you don’t need to completely overhaul your life.

You don’t need the perfect bedtime routine.
You don’t need to be asleep by 10pm every night.
And you definitely don’t need to start getting up at 5am because somebody on Instagram told you successful people do. 🙄

Instead, pick one thing that could make sleep a little easier.

Maybe that’s getting up at a more consistent time.
Getting outside in the morning.
Putting a bit more distance between work and bed.
Or finally getting some help with the sleep problem you’ve been hoping will magically sort itself out.

Because the best routine isn’t the ‘perfect’ one.

It’s the one that actually fits your life.

So, what do you reckon? Is September the new January? And is there anything you’re resetting this month?

28/08/2026

Back to school = back to routine…including sleep.

After weeks of later nights, lazy mornings and the words ‘but it’s the holidays!’, getting back into a school sleep routine can feel a bit brutal.

If bedtime has drifted over the summer, don’t panic. You don’t need to magically fix everything in one night.

Start with the morning.

- Get wake-up time back to roughly where it needs to be for school.
- Get some daylight soon after waking.
- Keep them active during the day.
- If bedtime has shifted significantly, gradually bring it earlier rather than forcing a huge jump.
- And (if it’s slipped) start reintroducing that familiar wind-down routine before bed.

Most importantly, don’t obsess over creating the ‘perfect’ first night back. Sleep responds well to consistency, and the routine will start doing a lot of the work for you.

And if your child’s sleep struggles go beyond the usual back-to-school wobble, that’s exactly the sort of thing I help families with.

Here’s to fresh stationery, forgotten PE kits and getting everyone out of the house on time. 😂

EasySleepSolutions

26/08/2026

Better sleep doesn’t always need a complete overhaul.

In fact, some of the most useful things you can do are pretty boringly simple:

Get outside in the morning
Natural light helps strengthen your body clock and supports alertness during the day (even when it’s cloudy).

Move your body
Regular exercise can support sleep quality. And it doesn’t have to mean smashing yourself in the gym. Walking absolutely counts.

Give your brain some downtime
Rather than scrolling right up until you try to sleep, give yourself a little space to wind down first (no, I’m NOT talking about the blue light!).

Keep some consistency
Our body clocks love regularity. You don’t need military precision, but wildly different sleep and wake times can make things harder. Concentrate on your wake time, and the rest should follow.

You don’t have to fix everything at once.

Pick one small thing you could do more consistently and start there.

One step at a time, not the whole mountain! 😉

21/08/2026

MEN: How well are you actually sleeping?

You might be getting through the day. You might even tell yourself you’re ‘fine on 5–6 hours’.

But poor sleep doesn’t just leave you tired.

It can affect your energy, focus, mood, performance, recovery and long-term health — and sometimes the signs that your sleep needs attention aren’t as obvious as you might think.

On Wednesday 9th September at 6pm, I’m hosting a live Sleep Masterclass specifically for men with Dan Glyde , where we’ll look at the 5 key pillars of better sleep and what you can realistically do to improve yours.

We’ll cover:

- What actually drives good-quality sleep
- The connection between sleep, stress, mood and mental performance
- Sleep, recovery and physical performance
- Why your body clock matters more than you might realise
- The everyday habits that could be quietly sabotaging your sleep
- Practical, evidence-based changes that work in real life

No ridiculous sleep hacks.
No expectation of a perfect bedtime routine.
And no telling you that you need to be tucked up in bed by 10pm. 😉

Just straightforward, research-backed advice to help you understand what your sleep needs and how to make it better.

🎟️ Tickets: £20
📅 Wednesday 9th September
🕕 6pm
💻 Online

If your sleep could be better — or you’re curious about what it might be doing to your health and performance — come and join us.

👉 Book your place via the link in my bio.

21/08/2026