Sleep Smarter

If you want to optimize your health or lose weight, getting a good night’s sleep is one of the most important things you can do.

Few evidence-based tips to sleep better at night:

- Get some sunlight

• Get 30 mins of direct sunlight between 6:00 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. Direct exposure to sunlight increases your cortisol levels bringing your circadian rhythm in sync.
• When melatonin level rises at night, cortisol level drops to its lowest and vice versa.
• Abnormal levels of melatonin and cortisol rhythm result in problems with sleep.

- Avoid Screens Before Bedtime

• If you want to give your body the deep sleep it needs, make it a mandate to turn off all screens at least 90 minutes before bedtime in order to allow melatonin and cortisol levels to normalize.
• Use a blue light blocker on your laptop/mobile.

- Have a Caffeine Curfew

• Your body constantly produces adenosine. Your nervous system constantly monitors this, because once it crosses a threshold, your body nudges you to sleep/rest.
• Caffeine is considered an adenosine blocker. It comes into play by similarly attaching itself to the same receptors that adenosine would normally latch onto. In turn, it prevents the drowsiness that occurs as the levels of adenosine in the body increase and further disrupting yours sleep cycle.

- Be Cool

• Being warmer than normal at night will inherently lead to a heightened state of arousal and a struggle to fall asleep while your body tries to reset its internal thermostat.
• The best sleeping temperature for most adults is 15 to 22 degrees Celsius.
• Tip: A hot bath about 90 minutes before bed could help people fall asleep more quickly. The hot water actually helps change your body’s core temperature so that you go to bed with a lower temperature.

- Get to Bed at the Right Time

• Much of what we are doing late at night can be done during the day with some smart planning and prioritization.
• A sleep cycle lasts about 1.5 hours. So we should aim for multiples of that.
• Try going to bed between 9:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. most of the year. By doing this, you are giving yourself a huge hormonal advantage.

- Fix your Gut to Fix your Sleep

• Some of the foods that have been found to naturally boost your body’s melatonin levels are pineapples, tomatoes, bananas, and oranges.
• Taking a bath in Epsom salts (Magnesium) was great for eliminating pain, reducing stress, and getting a good night’s sleep.
• Warm milk is a common home remedy for sleeplessness. Milk contains four sleep-promoting compounds: tryptophan, calcium, vitamin D, and melatonin.

- Create a Sleep Sanctuary

• Neurons that fire together, wire together. Use your bedroom only for sleep and sex. If you use it for any other work getting into sleep mode becomes harder.
• Different scents can affect you in several ways. Lavender, lemongrass and vanilla are all proven to create a relaxing atmosphere.
• Make sure your room isn’t noisy or has too much light exposure.

- Have a Big “O”

• Prolactin is a hormone that’s linked to sexual satisfaction, and it’s also heavily related to sleep. Studies show that prolactin levels are naturally higher during sleep.
• Sex and orgasm have many benefits that go far beyond the realm of sleep, from boosting the immune system, to fighting depression, to actually helping you to live a longer life. Our ability to have and give orgasms is tightly linked to our health and well-being.

- Get it Blacked Out

• Did you know that your skin actually has receptors that can pick up light? Skin cells also make rhodopsin, a light-sensitive chemical found in the retina. If there’s light in your bedroom, your body is picking it up and sending messages to your brain and organs that can interfere with your sleep.
• Sleep experts suggest that your room be so dark that you can’t see your hand in front of your face.

- Train Hard (But Smart)

• People who exercise at 7:00 a.m. sleep longer and have a deeper sleep cycle than the people who exercise in evening.
• One of the big issues with working out late in the evening is that it significantly raises your core body temperature, and it can take upwards of 4 to 6 hours for your temperature to come down again.
• Make sure that you’re lifting weights at least 2 days per week.

- Get your “Friends” out of your Room

• Keeping cell phone by your bed side makes you more likely to check it often and get disturbed by notifications. Plus, many more will admit that the first thing they do is reach for their cell phone as soon as they wake up each day.
• Keep your cell phone far away from your bed, or in another room unless you are a first responder everything will be fine.

- Lose Weight and Don’t Find it Again

• If you really need to have something to eat closer to bedtime, have a high-fat, low-carb snack. This will ensure that your blood sugar stays stable. In contrast, if you eat a higher-carb snack right before bed, your blood sugar will spike, and the impending blood sugar crash can be enough to wake you up out of sleep.
• Give your body a solid 90 minutes (more is better) before heading off to bed after eating.
• Keep insulin down through the first part of your day.

- Calm your Inner Chatter

• The more you meditate, the more calm and presence you’ll have in your day-today life.
• One of the best times for meditation is when you’re already close to the alpha and theta brain waves. This would be as soon as you wake up in the morning, or right before bed at night.

- Be Early to Rise

• Going to sleep early and waking early syncs the body clock with the earth’s natural circadian rhythms, which is more restorative than trying to sleep while the sun’s up.
• Oftentimes when people decide to get up early, they throw their sleep cycles into such a shocked state that they’re more tired and irritated, plus they’ve created a neuroassociation between more pain and waking up early. This causes them to burn through their willpower within days and revert to their old habits before they know it.
• Go to bed within 30 minutes of the same time each night and wake up at the same time each day.

Quote:

We tend to wear our ability to get by on little sleep as some sort of badge of honor that validates our work ethic.

But what it is, is a profound failure of self-respect and of priorities.

What could possibly be more important than your health and your sanity, from which all else springs?
- Brain Pickings

Resource

Sleep Smarter - Shawn Stevenson