Are you struggling to get a good night's sleep? Well today I'm gonna share with you seven tips to
help you get a good night's sleep, I'm Dr. Rena Malik, urologist and pelvic surgeon,
and if you're new here I make content on urologic health, bladder health, sexual health,
and so much more make sure if you like this video subscribe and share this channel with your friends
if you haven't seen my last video on why sleep is important make sure you check that
out before you watch this video because a lot of the things i'm going to talk about
are taken exactly from the information that i shared with you in that video and so if you
want to understand exactly the science behind why these tips work and why they're important
make sure you watch that video first so tip number one is get sunlight early in the morning
so in my last video i mentioned how our bodies follow a circadian rhythm in order to set that
circadian rhythm it's important for our bodies to be exposed to sunlight as you all probably know
many of us can go a whole day with getting very little exposure to outside especially with kovid
many people are working from home and have no reason to go outside even to just walk to their
car and so it's important to actually take a few minutes each and every day to get some sunlight
ideally before 10 in the morning go outside for as little as two minutes but up to 30 minutes if you
can and get sunlight exposure that helps your body know that it's daytime and this is the time for
you to be awake and alert tip number two is avoid caffeine afternoon you might be saying well doc
i've been drinking caffeine my whole life i can drink a caffeine a caffeinated beverage like an
espresso at 10 pm and fall asleep super easy but we do know that even having caffeine late at night
even if you fall asleep early that will still disrupt or ruin the quality of your sleep at night
and that's because caffeine has a half-life of six hours so if you have a coffee at noon
at midnight you'll still have one-fourth of the amount of caffeine that you drank in that coffee
in your system and caffeine as i've also mentioned that video blocks adenosine which is a molecule
in our bodies that tells us when it's time to go to sleep or be sleepy and so you can also have a
crash when it wears off you'll get this wave of adenosine that finally shows up in your system
giving you a huge crash number three is develop a wind-down routine i know this sounds
simple but really it helps trick our brains into telling us hey it's time to go to sleep so that
you're not sitting there doom scrolling on your phone on social media watching youtube videos
one after the other you're actually telling your brain hey it's time to go to sleep right now so
let's do these couple things it doesn't have to be a long routine it can be simple as reading
a couple pages at night and then writing in your journal or taking a hot bath and then
reading a couple pages and going to sleep so just having that standard routine will help you and
improve your quality of sleep in the same vein number four is avoid blue light at night what is
blue light well blue light is the color of light that we're exposed to when we see things like led
lights from our computer screens from our cell phones there's tons of blue light and this blue
light tricks our brains into thinking that it's daytime so it makes it much harder to fall asleep
and i will say this is one of the hardest things to do because we're all linked to our phones we're
using finally winding down many of us are using our phones to look at social media or do other
things but this can make it really hard to fall asleep i don't know about you guys but i'll find
myself often it's been 30 minutes and i haven't even noticed because i've been scrolling on my
social media a couple things you can do is install some blue light blockers on your computer and your
cell phone often has bullet blockers already installed in it so make sure you use those at
night time try to keep your bedroom very very dark so have blackout shades sometimes people will even
use red light bulbs to kind of trick your brains into thinking it's very dark or dusk like it is
outside and the other thing that's really helped me personally is keeping my phone away from my
bed nightstand so i keep it far enough away that i actually have to get up out of bed to go use it
that avoids me using my phone right before bedtime you can also install blockers on your phone to
help block access to certain apps like social media apps or youtube if you find yourself really
scrolling on there for a long time number five is to minimize alcohol and this doesn't mean you have
to stop drinking alcohol whatsoever but do realize that drinking alcohol before bedtime will ruin
the quality of your sleep what that means is that you'll wake up more often at night and not really
know it because you've drank alcohol and so trying to minimize how much alcohol you drink at night
notice try it for a few days you'll actually sleep better and you'll wake up more refreshed
number six is manage the temperature in your bedroom so at night time our core body temperature
actually falls a couple degrees and we actually sleep better at a colder temperature in fact the
ideal temperature is about 65 degrees fahrenheit a couple easy ways to do this for free at home
are trying to warm either your hands your feet or your head so the easiest thing is to actually wear
socks at bedtime so warming those particular areas will actually draw heat out of your core so it'll
actually let you sleep at a cooler temperature other things you can do are buy cooling mattress
pads or things like that to keep on your bed in fact i this is not sponsored by this but i've
personally purchased eight sleep which is a mattress pad that you can put on your mattress
that regulates temperature and has dramatically changed my sleeping and the last tip number
seven is avoiding nighttime falls this is one of the big things that i worry about in many of my
patients especially if you're waking up to pee at night if you fall not only are going to ruin your
sleep but you can end up in the hospital with a fracture or you can get a head injury and it can
be very dramatic i know it doesn't sound that bad but i've seen countless patients who've had
really bad sequelae or bad complications after falling at night so how do you do this one easy
thing is keep a lamp at your bedside i think most people do have a lamp at their bedside so that's
obviously helpful when you wake up turn the light on other things you can do is make sure that the
pathway between you and the bathroom is clear so that you're not going to fall on your way to the
bathroom you can also install motion sensored lights in the walkway to the bathroom if it's a
little bit further away and you need to make sure you don't fall on the way there lastly make sure
you have emergency phone numbers programmed in your phone and if you can actually keep your phone
within reach when you're going to the bathroom so that if you do happen to fall and no one's home
or no one's awake that you can call for help and get emergency help right away all right i hope you
guys enjoyed this video as always remember to take care of yourself because you're worth it