In this video, Dr. Jameca Cooper challenges the common cultural mantra “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” arguing that chronic sleep deprivation harms both mental and physical health. She cites examples ranging from NBA teams hiring sleep specialists to her own clinical observations that patients with insufficient sleep exhibit more depression and poorer therapeutic outcomes. Cooper explains the physiological basis for sleep’s importance: during sleep, the brain’s interstitial space expands, allowing cerebrospinal fluid to flush out metabolic waste, a process linked to reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease. She then presents a practical 90‑second bedtime routine: (1) place ice cubes on the eyelids to calm the nervous system, (2) place a hand on the heart and conduct a brief body‑scan to notice any physical tension, and (3) perform a “brain dump” by writing down lingering thoughts, worries, or to‑do items. This routine is framed as a way to reset the nervous system, increase bodily awareness, and clear mental clutter, thereby improving sleep quality. Finally, Cooper promotes her broader sleep‑focused curriculum (Module 2: Sleep Sanctuary) and offers discovery calls for personalized self‑care coaching.
Chapters
I'll sleep when I'm dead. Everybody says that, right? It may sound good. It may even feel like you're sounding cool and like a hustler, right? But it's not good, and it's not good to our bodies because your body is always keeping the score. And right now, if you're not a person that sleeps a lot, you're down. You're not winning. You're losing, in fact. Sleep is important to everybody, even if we look at NBA players like the team, the San Antonio Spurs, some years ago, they hired a sleep specialist for the team. Why? Because they realized just how valuable sleep is. They wanted to make sure that the team was optimizing sleep and that everyone on the team was getting good sleep. They even modified their practice schedule to make sure that that also played into players' overall wellness and relaxation. They wanted to make sure they had players that were balanced and getting the rest that they needed because You can't play well if you don't get the sleep you need, right? So it's not just important to NBA players, but it's important to everyone. I see it in therapy all the time. Usually what I find, especially when I'm looking at depression or screening for other mental health issues, people who don't get adequate sleep, they tend to have more problems overall, right? I can't even lump myself in this group because I'm a person that believes in sleep. I get my sleep. I don't even care what else has to suffer, but I lay down, I get sleep, I take naps on weekends. I make sure I get all the rest that I need because what I've learned, especially as I've gotten older, is I can't be the best me when I don't get enough sleep. And I've even played around with it, did a little experiments with myself. The therapist that people get when they come in my office that is based on me getting 4 hours of sleep is not the best therapist, especially as it compares to the therapist they get when I get 7 to 8 hours of sleep. That's a really good therapist right there. That therapist can really do some things. She can think through some things, honey. She can come up with some solutions, and she can think on the spot, and she has really good reactions, like with her face. She's like, mm, mm, mm. But that 4-hour one, not so much. She's just not equipped that much. She's missing some tools. So I've learned myself that sleep is important, so I make sure I get my sleep. Why is sleep so important? Because what happens when you sleep? Your body washes your brain. And there's a type of fluid that flows through your brain, spinal fluid that goes through your brain. And the purpose of that is to, as we go to sleep, parts of our brain shrinks to allow more room for the fluid to move through. That fluid is very important because it washes out all the toxins and the waste in your brain. And some of the studies in Alzheimer's disease shows that Alzheimer's is caused by a buildup of those very toxins and proteins that are left in the brain if you don't get sleep to help wash them out. So you want to go to sleep. You want that brain to wash itself because it's going to save you later. It's very important. So try this 90-second sleep hack. First thing, ice cubes on your eyelid. It's like a central nervous system reset. Just to kind of calm your brain, ground it in a way. A lot of you are familiar with grounding. The other thing I want you to do, because the body is important, like I told you before, the body kind of tells you what you need to do. So put your hand on your heart before you go to sleep and sit and think and kind of really scan your whole body and see what you feel, like any aches or pains or any unusual parts of the body, and ask yourself why your hand is on your heart. What parts of my body is— what parts are unsettled right now? What's going on? Unsettled could be pain, strain, palpitations in your heart, aches somewhere, numbness. It could be any of those things, but this is going to teach you to really kind of pay attention to your body because lots of times what I see with my therapy clients is that your body can give you some signs and some symptoms. It's just that sometimes we don't pay attention to those signs and those symptoms. So you're going to put your hand on your heart and you're going to do that to, to before you go to bed. And that 90 seconds, you're going to monitor, scan your body and see what you see. And then the last thing you're going to do, because everyone has things on their mind, and sometimes those things that are on your mind before you go to bed will keep you from going to bed or sleeping peacefully during the night. So before you go to bed, you, whether you do this on a hard copy, you write it down, or you put it in some type of notes um, in your phone, but you're going to do a brain dump. So all of the things that are on your mind at that time, you're going to write them down in that notes section. Then you've been thinking about everything you're probably gonna think about tomorrow, anything that you might think about in the middle of the night and that might keep you up, stresses, worries, to-do lists, whatever that is. For women, it can be a lot of things— lunch, packing lunch, going to school, dropping off, I have to do this, what about this, what am I wearing— all those, write it down on that brain dump. Because it's going to get it out of your head. Once you get it on some paper or get in a note, usually you've dealt with it, you've done something with it. It's there, and you can tell yourself, I'll deal with this tomorrow, or I'll deal with this when I wake up. So that 90-second hack is doing a few things. It's resetting your system, scanning your body, eliminating waste from your, from your thoughts. Because remember I said the purpose of sleep is to rid your brain of waste and toxins. This brain dump, the purpose of it is to rid your thoughts of all the things that typically keep people up at night. You're going to do all of those things, and what you're going to realize is that your sleep is going to improve. Now, how much it'll improve, it will improve. We don't know that yet. Everybody is different. But if you would like more information and more help in this area, in my course, In Module 2, we have a sleep sanctuary. We also have other assignments such as time audits, etc., that will help you figure out what you need to get rid of in your life. But more importantly, it's going to focus on your sleep because sleep is a huge part of self-care. So if you would like more information or deeper dive, comment more info here and we will get more info on the course. Or you could set up a discovery call with me so that we could meet one-on-one to help you decide and help us decide what you need to do personalized just for you to get your self-care on track.
