- Here are no frills, scientifically backed
Don't eat too close to bedtime.
But if you do eat, focus on complex carbs.
You wanna avoid high fat protein meals
as they take a really long time to digest
and they can actually impact some of your hormones
like orexin, which can keep you alert and not really sleepy.
Speaking of avoiding foods before sleep,
you wanna avoid spicy foods.
Not only can they make you feel uncomfortable
because they can trigger symptoms of acid reflux,
but they also raise your core body temperature.
It's the exact opposite thing
of what your body's trying to do in order to get to sleep.
Avoid studying, TV, phones, other activities.
The only thing that should happen in bed is sleep and sex.
Avoid blame for not getting a good night's sleep
as this can only make the problem worse.
Know that humans have a distinct chronotype
based on their genetic code
that will select when sleep comes to them naturally.
So you may fall asleep
at a completely different time than me.
I'm a fan of naps, but I'm talking about a short nap
early in the day.
When you start making them longer than 30 minutes
or having them close to bedtime,
even around 5:00, 6:00 p.m.,
that's gonna affect your sleepiness hormone
and make it really hard to wanna go to sleep at night.
Be wary of caffeine, and I'm not just talking about coffee.
There's caffeine in tea, sodas, energy drinks, pre-workouts
so ideally you wanna be consuming this caffeine
before lunch.
In fact, if you like having a nap early in the day,
consume the caffeine just before your nap
to get the most out of it.
But caffeine close to bedtime
is gonna wanna make you pee in the middle of the night,
make you wake up.
Caffeine actually also impacts your ability
to enter the deep stages of sleep,
meaning that you might get a full night's sleep
but not a restorative night's sleep.
Decrease blue light exposure.
You can do this by getting the devices out of your bedroom,
putting them on night shift mode
if you really need to use them,
or perhaps using blue light blocking glasses.
Legit ones that actually work
because blue light will actually decrease
the production of melatonin,
that sleepiness hormone we talked about earlier.
Help your body cool down by lowering the thermostat.
Normally when we start to get sleepy,
our body temperature drops by a degree or two.
This is incredibly important in the bedroom
to facilitate your body to feel sleepy,
but it's usually done by sweating
and who wants to sleep in their own sweat?
Just lower the thermostat.
Increase light exposure early and throughout the day.
Open those curtains first thing, even on a cloudy day
because the eye sends signals
to the suprachiasmatic nuclei
which then sends signals to the pineal gland in the brain
and that helps optimize sleep hormones
even later that night.
Invest in your sleep gear.
I'm specifically talking about your mattress
and this is individualized
and will be different for everybody
because depending on your sleep position,
your medical conditions
your body habitus, your size, your shape.
You will have different preferences,
so go to a store, try out different mattresses,
Don't use the first few minutes upon waking
as the signal of whether or not
you got a good night's sleep.
Sleep inertia is a real thing.
In fact, if you sleep a radically short amount of time,
you might wake up even easier
but that doesn't mean you had quality sleep.
In fact, after repaying some sleep debt,
you may feel groggier
after a night of proper sleep,
signaling that you still need to make up
more hours of sleep the next day.
Sorry, Bear.
Pets out of the bed.
We've seen it time and time again
in research article after research article,
pets interrupt our sleep.
Allow them to hang out in your bedroom,
just not directly in that bed.
Pay attention to noise.
While a silent room can be great for a good night's sleep,
you can have white noise in your room
and still sleep great
and you don't have to get an expensive white noise machine.
You can just turn on YouTube
or maybe have a fan in the corner.
All work through the same principle.
Essentially, you wanna have
a consistent same volume of noise
because what happens then is your brain
begins to tune out that noise
just like it would as if it were silent.
Make your bedroom pitch black.
Get blackout curtains, put shades up.
Do whatever it is you have to do
to eliminate all light from your sleeping environment.
There's been studies that show
even a candle flickering in the corner of your room
can impact the quality of your sleep.
For safety reasons,
I do say maybe have a motion activated light
somewhere in your room
so that if you do get up in the middle of the night
to use the bathroom, you'll still be safe.
Go to sleep when you're tired.
It may sound simple, but at the same time,
it's easy to push through the sleepiness at 9:00 p.m.
when you're binging your favorite Netflix show.
But if you miss that crucial window,
you may get a second wind
and find it hard to fall asleep until really late at night.
Modern day devices have sleep modes on them
to prevent your friends drunk texting you
and waking you in the middle of the night.
My recommendation here is to customize those alerts
to allow certain contacts in your phone
to be able to contact you any time of night.
Also, it allows you to set a specific number of calls
that will bypass the sleep mode system
so that if your father
or your friend calls you two, three times,
that might mean it's an emergency
and it should still ring to wake you.
Unless you wanna wake up with a sore back
or sore neck in the morning,
avoid having cold air blown directly on you.
This could mean turning the fan away,
the air conditioner away, or closing a window
because direct cooling onto your skin
can overcool an area,
thereby decrease circulation to a muscle
causing a spasm to occur.
Keep your feet warm but not sweaty.
It's easy to put on a really thick sock
and then your feet are sweating
and causing potential fungal infections to form.
Instead, what you wanna do is optimize it
so that they're warm.
The blood vessels vasodilate, meaning open up
and that will signal to your brain
that it's comfortable to fall asleep.
This one is gonna sound weird.
If, after 15 minutes you can't fall asleep, get out of bed
because the last thing you want to do is toss and turn
building up that anxiety of why you can't fall asleep.
Instead, what you wanna do is leave that bed,
leave the bedroom, do something relaxing,
wait until you get sleepy,
then get into the bed.
Because then you will associate the bed with sleep
as opposed to suffering because you can't sleep.
Get that exercise
because physical exercise improves the quality
and duration of your sleep.
In fact, it's that moderate intensity aerobic exercise
that improves your deep sleep, your slow wave sleep
where your brain and body have a chance to rejuvenate.
Some say don't exercise too close to bedtime.
I think you need to do what works for you.
For me, I try and stay away
from that high intensity exercise close to bedtime.
Avoid alcohol before bedtime.
While it may help you fall asleep,
it's actually gonna hurt the quality of your sleep.
Even just having a couple drinks
can hurt your ability to enter and stay in REM sleep.
That's that restorative sleep that you need
in order to function well throughout the day.
No matter how tempting it is,
be careful with long-term use of sleep aid medications.
Whether we're talking about prescription
or over the counter, they do have legitimate risks.
Anxiety is one of the most common complaints I hear
from patients as to why they can't get good sleep.
I constantly suffer
with insomnia because I'm tired, but wired.
In those cases, I do say it's smart to talk to your doctor
about potentially starting therapy
or maybe even a medication, but for me,
a little strategy that worked quite well
is the three good things.
Before getting into bed,
writing down, old paper and pen
three good things that happened to you that day
and the reasons as to why they happened.
This allows your mind to take a break
from thinking about the negative nervousness
that it constantly feels
in order to keep you safe,
and instead think about the positive emotions
and let that gratitude guide you
into getting a proper night's sleep.
In the evening, begin to dim your lights.
Just as it's important to expose yourself
to bright light in the morning,
you need to dim the lights in the evening.
This is strictly for your circadian rhythm.
If you have exposure to bright light in the evening,
your circadian rhythm gets thrown off,
your melatonin production starts to decrease,
and your sleepiness begins to float away.
As always, stay happy and healthy.
(light melodic music)