There was this time just over five years ago where I went from getting
about six hours of sleep a night to eight or nine hours. And a day after day
with these extra hours of sleep under my belt, I felt so tired. I couldn't focus
I was forgetful and really moody so I became slightly obsessed with sleep
research in a quest to figure out what I was doing wrong. So here's the BrainCraft
guide to better sleep. Whether you're struggling to fall asleep, stay asleep or
you just want to improve the quality of sleep that you are getting, here are five
ways to sleep smarter backed by science.
So keeping a regular sleep routine is
really important. This includes sending time to wind down before bed and then
going to bed and getting up at the same time every single day. This is because
your body's internal clock plays a key role in regulating your sleep-wake cycle
so it tells your body when you should start feeling sleepy at night and then
when you should wake up in the morning. And if you're going to bed and getting
up at a different time every single day you kind of mess that up and it's more
likely you're going to be feeling drowsy and sluggish. And you may experience
what's called social jetlag, the tiredness you feel when you get up at a
different time on your days off work or school.
What happened to me five years
ago is that I quit my job in science to be a full-time youtuber so I stopped
setting an alarm I stopped commuting and I started
working from home. So I didn't have a routine, I was going to bed and getting
up at a different time every single day and my body clock was messed up that is
why I felt so tired.
Too much light in the evening can also disrupt our
internal clock and make it difficult to fall asleep. So you have this brain
structure called the SCN which regulates your levels of the sleep
hormone melatonin. So during the day when it's light outside melatonin is
suppressed and you feel awake and then in the evening as the lights dim it
starts to rise and that contributes to you feeling sleepy. Because this process
is tied to light when you use devices in the evening or you're exposed to bright
light it interferes with your melatonin levels.
Once you have fallen asleep but light can disrupt you and cause you to wake up
during the night so controlling the light in your bedroom is really
important as well. Street lights or early sunrises can disrupt us so blackout
blinds or a sleeping mask a face mask can help.
Our brain is hardwired to
respond to our environment so if you hear noises while you were sleeping
you will probably wake up this can disrupt your sleep and also stop you
from transitioning into deeper sleep stages which are more restful and
restorative for your body. Noise can come from lots of places whether it's outside
your window or your partner snoring so it's a good idea to drown out everything
by using something like a white noise machine. I use a fan which acts pretty
similarly or you could go with good old-fashioned earplugs.
It's important to
be comfortable while you're sleeping (obviously) and research suggests the
ideal temperature for you to sleep in is 15 to 19 degrees Celsius which i think
is 60 to 67 degrees Fahrenheit which I will check and put here on the screen
for you. But an ideal sleeping temperature does vary between people so
the most important thing is making sure that you're comfortable and not waking
up overnight. Just being comfortable it might seem intuitive but there is more
to temperature, because your body temperature does rise and fall over the
evening and a trick to help you fall asleep is having a hot shower or a bath
before you go to bed. This will cause your body temperature to rise and then
the quick cool down it you experience after makes you feel sleepy.
And finally separate your spaces because your bed should only be for sleep. Get
computers, TVs and work stuff out of your bedroom so you can help strengthen your
mental association between bed and good sleep. Having workspace in your bedroom
or working in bed it can encourage you to work too close to bedtime, which can
lead to increase stress hormone production and alertness
which you don't want. This has been the hardest thing for me because I love
working in bed and watching YouTube videos in bed late at night and it's
taken years for me to finally set up some other workspaces and comfy spots
around my apartment.
You might be thinking that a lot of these tips seem
like common sense they seem easy but it's hard to take all of them into
consideration and to take them seriously and sometimes we need a reminder. I still
have a lot of trouble using my devices too close to bed, working too
close to bed at working in bed watching TV from bed and all of these things that
I've been trying it for years to break the habit. It can also be overwhelming to
try to overhaul your sleep all at once so pick one area
focus on one thing and when you have that sorted come back, look to another
area and you can keep going.
Most importantly remember that sleep is a
natural process, you have been doing it your whole life,
often it we do get more sleep than we've realise and sometimes it only takes a
few behavioral tweaks or tweaks to your environment to make a good night's sleep.
As always that thank you to my patrons for supporting braincraft and
allowing me to make these videos. I am very passionate about sleep and there is
a lot coming up on sleep on BrainCraft... so keep an eye out for that!