Sleep is an underrated and forgotten element of everyday mental health. In this video,
I'm going to give you the top five strategies I give my patients to get better sleep at
night naturally. This is The Dr. K Show.
I'm Dr. Karthik Ramanan. I help ambitious individuals end self criticism with tools
and strategies to create optimal everyday mental health. If we're just meeting, and
you need to silence that critical voice in your head to get out of your own way to live
life on your terms, I‚Äôm here for you. I encourage you to subscribe right now.
It's Showtime.
Let's just jump right into the strategies.
Number one. Create sleep rituals. That means, create habits around time, place, actions
leading up to bed time. Time. Strive to get into bed at the same time each night. Place.
Make sure your bedroom is only used for sleep and sex. Not for TV. Not for work. We want
to create the psychological connection that this bed and this room equals sleep. And lastly
actions. Create a ritual for yourself at night that will, with practice, trigger the unconscious
habits that lead to sleep. In the next tips, I'll give you some ideas for night time action
rituals that you can implement.
Number two. Leave your phone outside your bedroom. For one, they emit blue light which
tricks your brain into thinking it's not night time. But even when you're using blue blocking
glasses or cut the blue light from your device's software, your brain is still highly engaged
with this dopamine-producing addiction machine.
But Dr. K, my phone is my alarm.
Get an alarm clock.
Number three. Use blackout curtains. You want to eliminate as much light from your room
as possible. Remember, we're animals. And before we had electric lights, nights were
pretty dark. We may have evolved technologically, but this biological system we call our bodies
are still built for nature.
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Number four. Take a contrast shower before bed. DISCLAIMER: if you're dealing with a
diagnosed medical condition, consult your physician first. Be smart. This is for educational
purposes only. Ok here's how it works. Start with nice and
warm or hot like you'd normally do it. Then quickly switch to cold water for 10, 15, 30
seconds, whatever you can tolerate. Then go back to hot for another minute. Then back
to cold. You can repeat it a few times. The key is ending on cold, again for as long as
you can comfortably tolerate. Dry yourself off, but don't do so vigorously enough to
warm yourself up with the towel. You've cooled down your body, and you want your hypothalamus
to kick in to raise your body temperature on its own. Go right to bed.
Bonus tip for the contrast showers. If you're already in bed and having a hard time falling
asleep, laying in bed and being frustrated is only going to keep you up longer. When
I'm up in the middle of the night, a quick 3-5 minute contrast shower is my go-to remedy.
I get back to bed and sleep like a baby.
And number five. Change your psychology around sleep. If you follow me, you're likely an
ambitious individual, and us ambitious types tend to neglect sleep. "Sleep is for the weak."
Or, "I can sleep when I'm dead." If you want great brain health and mental health, sleep
is non negotiable. I used to sleep four hours a night for years. Then I got a little older
and "had to" sleep five to six hours a night. Even more recently, due to some issues I've
been dealing with, I've had to prioritize sleep even further to the point that I don't
set an alarm anymore. I had to consciously shift my mindset around sleep. I stopped thinking
about it as time wasted and started thinking about how much more I would get done while
I was awake, how much more focused and action-oriented I'd be if I just felt good. And that's how
it has played out. For a while my body woke up at 7 AM, which for someone who used to
wake up between 4 and 5 AM, that's a lot of "wasted time". But as my health started to
improve, I now wake up like clockwork on my own at 5:30 AM, incredibly refreshed and ready
to take on the day. You can too.
Question of the Day: What's your best sleep strategy? If you feel like being awesome,
let us know in the comments below.
Today‚Äôs Progress Success is brought to you by my friend Ty. She's got two excellent
channels on YouTube, and she was in her head, going back and forth a bit about how to focus
her attention between her passions. Her progress success was simple. She says, "Being 100%
present in what I'm doing." That might seem simple on the surface, but think about how
distracted we are these days even from second to second, trying to multitask, dealing with
notifications on our phones. Focusing on one thing at a time in the micro leads to clarity
in the macro. Great job Ty!
Hey. You. Are you getting the absolute best sleep you can? Do you fall asleep quickly,
stay asleep, and feel thoroughly refreshed when you wake up in the morning? OK, then
listen up, because if you sleep with your phone, you're not going to like what I have
to say.
Put your phone away. Don't bring it into your bedroom. Don't even do it. Not even airplane
mode. The average adult spends 5 hours a day on our phones, constantly bombarded with tasks,
ideas, entertainment, news, notifications. Who could sleep through that? Every time we
hear a sound, tap a button, we get feedback from these devices that triggers dopamine
and keeps us alert. And you think you can just take this into bed with you and fall
asleep?
I still hear you kicking and screaming. All right, answer me this.
Have you ever checked your phone in the middle of the night?
What's the last thing you do before you go to bed?
What's the first thing you do when you wake up?
If your phone was involved in any of those answers, you need to put it in another room
at night. And look, I'm a tech addict too, ok. My office is an EMF disaster zone. I love
my gadgets too. But at some point we have to realize it's not just about wanting better
sleep, it's about being committed to better sleep. Commitment is to do it at all costs.
What would better health allow you to do? If your life were to continue at the current
trajectory, would you be happy with that? Look, I came to a head and I had to separate
myself from my phone at night. And if I can do it, so can you. Your health and your life
is worth it. I believe in your greatness.