I don’t know about you, but I’ve committed to a full 8 hours. I want to tap into the best, most potent, most effective, health and overall life enhancer there is – sleep! Drug free, cost free, not a single side effect, and promises to enhance every single aspect of my life? Yes, please!
I want sleep to be my superpower.
In case you missed this on Day 1, Sleep Week, here it is again.
How To Sleep
Ready for this? It may be disappointingly simple. There are no magic tricks, shortcuts, secrets – there is nothing here you haven’t heard before. Much like eating healthy comes down to simply eating healthy, good sleep has requisite basics.
Twelve Tips For Healthy Sleep
Directly from www.medlineplus.gov, Summer 2012 edition.
1. Stick to a sleep schedule – As I mentioned yesterday, Mother Nature doesn’t care about weekends, your odd work schedule, or social plans. Our bodies work best when on the same schedule every day.
2. Exercise is great, but not too late in the day – Finish exercise 2-3 hours before bedtime.
3. Avoid caffeine and nicotine – It takes up to 8 hours for the stimulating effects of both to wear off. Additionally, smokers tend to wake up early due to nighttime withdrawal.
Here’s the results of a weird test that was done on spiders and their web making abilities after exposure to various drugs. Imagine our brains functioning similarly.
4. Avoid alcoholic drinks before bed – Alcohol robs you of both deep sleep and REM sleep and leads to many nighttime wakings. Alcohol may sedate, but it does not induce true sleep.
I may go so far as to say to drop alcohol altogether. This excerpt is sandwiched within several alarming studies on light/moderate afternoon drinking.
“When the body metabolizes alcohol it produces by-product chemicals called aldehydes and ketones. The aldehydes in particular will block the brain’s ability to generate REM sleep. It’s rather like the cerebral version of cardiac arrest, preventing the pulsating beat of brainwaves that otherwise power dream sleep. People consuming even moderate amounts of alcohol in the afternoon and/or evening can inadvertently deprive themselves of dream sleep.”
Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep
5. Avoid large meals and beverages late at night – Be gentle on the digestive system, avoid indigestion, eliminate nighttime potty visits.
6. If possible, avoid medicines that delay or disrupt your sleep – If they are unavoidable, maybe the timing can change? Ask.
7. Don’t take naps after 3pm – This goes back to Process-S, the adenosine pressure. If we release too much pressure too late in the day, it makes falling asleep at night more difficult.
8. Relax before bed – What does this mean for you? Reading, meditation, gentle stretching? Think of the things we do for babies each night as a wind-down routine and apply it to yourself.
9. Take a hot bath before bed – This helps cool our core body temperature so we are primed for sleep. This works for babies, so go try it on yourself. Nobody is too old for a bath.
10. Have a good sleeping environment – Appropriate bed, darkness, cool temperature (65º is ideal), no electronics, sound machine if you like, and perhaps ditch the clock, at least the face. There’s nothing new here, but do you really do all of these?
11. Have the right sunlight exposure – This helps regulate our circadian rhythms. Aim for 30 minutes a day of natural sunlight, the earlier in the day the better. Additionally, turn down indoor lighting in the evenings, simulating natural darkness.
12. Don’t lie in bed awake – if more than 20 minutes have passed lying in bed awake, get up and do something else until sleepy. Shed the sleep anxiety and keep the bed a place for sleep only.
Personal Inventory
How are you doing with those twelve? Be brutally honest and identify where you can improve, even a tiny bit.
For me, I could add more evening baths, a cooler house at night, more early day sunlight exposure, and curtail water/tea consumption earlier to eliminate nighttime potty trips (SO annoying!).
Three Extras I Enjoy
Here are three of my own additions that are part of my evening routine.
1. Apollo Neuro – I wear this in the evening on Relax and Unwind mode and then move in to the Sleep and Renew Mode when I turn off the lights.
2. Casper Glow Light – This light is awesome! In the evenings I turn it on and turn off other lights. Over the course of 45 minutes it dims and finally shuts off, simulating evening into night. In the morning, it does the reverse as an alarm clock if I set it. And in the middle of the night, I give it a gentle shake and it illuminates to a level only bright enough to safely get to the bathroom and back without waking me up too much.
3. Headspace – This is my favorite mediation app. This is the last thing I do before going to sleep, often falling asleep during the meditation.
How To Sleep – 30-Day Challenge
OK! We are armed with information, tools, books, podcasts, resources galore. Are you motivated to reclaim your naturally-given superpower? Are you convinced that “good enough” isn’t good enough at all? Not by a long shot? How about we do a test on ourselves to find out. 30 days of well-executed sleep plans, then let’s compare our new normal to our previous.
Are you in?
If so, let me know and we can track together.
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