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Good morning and welcome to Episode 018 of the Train Your Brain Podcast with Dr. Michael Trayford. Every Monday we produce a 30-minute episode. Tuesday through Sunday we produce episodes with five-minute tips. Every episode of the Train Your Brain Podcast features a tip, so you can receive pointers 365 days a year that will help enhance the performance of your brain!

In Episode 018, Dr. Trayford gives another brain training tip about sleep. Do you find that you have a hard time falling asleep? The cause of your difficulty sleeping may be that your brain is having a hard time “turning off.” Dr. Trayford recommends keeping a notebook by your bed so that you can write down all the things that are on your mind. This will relieve your brain of the burden of trying to remember them all night and you may find that you have a much easier time falling asleep. Join us for the show!

If you have any concerns regarding the information and applications discussed in this podcast, please consult your physician and a doctor who is experienced in functional neurology. Michael Trayford DC, DACNB is available for consultation by calling (828) 708-5274. Thanks for listening.

The tip for today is about journaling. We have many categories we’re going to talk about like nutrition and stress management and sleep and exercise.
So journaling can really fit under several different categories, but I like to put this under the stress management category. This can be a very powerful tool and most people are… I’m not going to say most people are, but many people are unaware of the value of journaling. I talk to many people all the time that have not heard of this tip and it turns out it can be one of the most valuable tips for them.

Tip number 16, if you recall, was about sleep aids and medications.

So Journaling is a really great asset or tool to utilize to help with trying to come off of sleep medications or to help decrease the number or amount of sleep medications that one is taking. So what does that mean?

Very simply just like it says, when you’re trying to get to sleep, which is a problem for many people. Obtaining sleep is a big challenge for many people. You simply have a book and a pen by your bed and hopefully a little light that can assist with that. You don’t want to wake anyone else up that might be in the room, but you can have one of these little book lights or something on your night stand.

That you can go ahead and simply jot down what’s on your mind that’s keeping you awake. Because really that’s what’s keeping most people awake right?
Jason: Ohh Yeah! So you’re saying that, you’re kind of keeping this thought in your head and if you just write it down and get it on paper, you can kind of let go of it, so you’ll know you have it in the morning.

Exactly! We just call it a brain dump, basically because people have ideas come to them at all times of the day, but it seems when we’re sleeping or we’re in the shower or we’re somewhere that we don’t have access to something to write down or record that it seems the best ideas come to us. And that may or may not be the case because often times, I’ve journaled a lot of things and I’ve never even gone back to them.

But The bottom line is that it gets it off your mind so that you don’t have to worry about it and play it back over and over and over in hopes of remembering it when you wake up in the morning.

What you simply will not do. So getting it on paper, dumping it onto the paper, from your brain is a tremendous tool. I actually had one of my personal coaches that I work with and I ran this idea by him and he was talking about having challenge with getting to sleep. I brought up the idea and I figured of all people he probably would have known of something like that. And it was just a tip he didn’t know about.

So he’s incorporating this into his life and it’ll no doubt be having an impact. I’m still waiting to hear the results but based on my 16 years in practice and providing this tip to people and having them follow through and do it. It works 9 times out of 10 it works for people.

So the brain dump, getting it on the paper. Absolutely critical. So keep a pen and paper by the side of the bed and whatever comes into your mind, no matter what time of night. Get it out there and you won’t have to worry about it anymore.

Jason: It seems like that term could have some kind of a more catchy or colorful name like the brain-share or the brain drain or the brain… I don’t know.

We’ll have to work on that. Let’s have a little talk after the podcast and come up with something. The brain dump is the one I heard, so that’s the one I go with.

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