Healthy Habits for Better Sleep

Sleeping is not simply the opposite of waking! Prioritising quality sleep is key to your body’s ability to repair and restore. The bottom line: the more in sync you are with natural circadian rhythms the more likely it is you will experience better quality sleep.  Professor Matt Walker, author of the book ‘Why We Sleep’, says

We need between 7 to 9 hours of quality sleep per night.

If you want to figure out how much sleep you need, you should spend about a week letting yourself fall asleep when you are tired and then waking up naturally, without an alarm. Growth hormone is secreted from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m., making this an ideal sleep period.

To try and improve your sleep quality, try some, or all, of these tips, but remember that consistency is key, can you commit to just 7 days of a new habit to see if it works for you?

Light

• Get enough blue spectrum light in the morning (it has a shorter wavelength and more energy), and as soon as possible after waking to normalise cortisol and melatonin levels. The best way to do this is with natural daylight (sunny or cloudy) on the naked eye, open a window, have your cuppa outside or take the dog for a walk. Watching the sunrise or set is the ultimate in circadian rhythm setting given the wavelengths of light at these times.
• Block out fake blue light (from fluorescent lights, LEDs, TVs, computer and mobile phone screens) once the sun goes down and when indoors. The shorter wavelength makes blue light waves flicker more easily which can cause digital eye strain. Try blue light blocking glasses, switching off devices in the afternoon/evening, and changing the colour of light bulbs in the rooms you use at night to yellow, orange or red hue instead of violet, blue or green.

Routine

• Your body craves routine and thrives on it. Wake up and go to bed the same time every day (~1-hour variability on bedtime).
• Create an evening routine and stick to it e.g. dinner 6pm, cup of herbal tea 7pm, reading 8pm, brush teeth 9pm, in bed 9:30pm (allowing half an hour to fall asleep)
• Create a morning routine and stick to it too! e.g wake at 6am, walk the dog to get natural light in your eyes, eat breakfast at 7:30am, wait for coffee until 11am. Satchin Panda is a circadian biologist who talks about daily timetables in line with circadian rhythm in this Ted Talk.
• Your body will also learn to recognize your environment so save your bedroom for only sleep. This means that if you find yourself lying awake in the night you should get up and leave the room and only return when you are sleepy again.

The best natural sleep aid is having a schedule.   Dr Peter Matone.

Food, Caffeine & Alcohol

• We do know that eating too late can simply make lying down uncomfortable, but did you know that we produce less insulin after sunset which makes it harder for our body to digest food or alcohol and balance our blood-sugar. You don’t want your body to be focusing on digestion or processing alcohol instead of rest and repair. Eat 3-4 hours before bed and reduce/eliminate alcohol and after-dinner treats to improve sleep.
• On the other hand, if you are consistently waking between the hours of 1-3am, this is considered liver time in Traditional Chinese Medicine, and you may wake up if your liver needs more energy because you’re asking it to work hard! Try taking 1 tsp of honey before bed to see if this helps your liver work through the night.
• Eating tryptophan rich foods (pumpkin seeds, cashews, liver, turkey, chicken, herring). Tryptophan is a precursor to the production of serotonin and melatonin.
• Eating zinc rich foods, zinc is also required for the production of melatonin (eggs, beef, oysters, cashew and brazil nuts, and pumpkin seeds).
• We have to mention caffeine! Caffeine is quickly absorbed, hitting the bloodstream within 30 minutes of consumption but can hang around in your body for anywhere from 2 – 10 hours. Caffeine impacts sleep quality because it affects the production of melatonin. Enjoy your caffeine before midday.
• We discuss some natural sleep remedies and supplements in our blog: Natural Remedies for Relaxation and Sleep Support.

Grounding

• Walk barefoot on the grass/sand daily (for 15 – 60 minutes) to counter the effects of harmful electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and free radicals that you may experience both at work and at home (e.g. technological devices, stress, alcohol, environmental toxins etc). Alternatively, you can now buy grounded earthing sheets and mats to sleep or work on.

Temperature & Air

• Ensure your bedroom is well ventilated and cool, leave a window open during the night to get fresh air. You can also use an air filter or grow a variety of house plants shown to release oxygen.
• The best temperature for sleep is approximately 15 – 19°C. If your body temperature is too high at bedtime this may interfere with your sleep, finishing off your evening shower or bath with a cold blast can help you cool down.

Exercise & Relaxation

• Regular daily exercise (20–30 minutes per day) has been shown to balance circadian rhythm and significantly improve sleep quality. Just don’t do it 1-2 hours before bed (preferably before 4pm) or your core temperature and cortisol production will still be too high.
• Humans evolved in and around nature hearing sounds like rain, waves, birds and wind, so these sounds can calm the nervous system and help us to relax, especially useful for wind-down at bedtime.
• Forms of meditation, including breathwork (for example, long, slow-paced nasal breathing or alternate nostril breathing) and yoga can reduce cortisol (the stress hormone) and promote melatonin for sleep.

Remembering

• If you are struggling to sleep because you are thinking about too many things and you want to regain some ‘control’ over your thoughts, try the technique of ‘remembering’. Visualize yourself at some point in your day, e.g. sat in a seat in a lecture, at your desk, during a conversation or with friends at lunch and remember in detail what was around you or what was discussed. Don’t think yourself to sleep, remember yourself to sleep!

Position

The position of your bed or room in the house may be as important as the position your body sleeps in.

• Finding the most comfortable position and will depend on your body. One of the optimal positions to support the natural curve of your spine and therefore boost communication and lymphatic drainage from the brain during sleep, is to lay on your back with your neck supported (a rolled-up towel in a pillowcase is a good option). This distributes your body weight over the greatest amount of space, takes pressure off your lumbar spine and helps to prevent a ‘scoliosis’ or curve in your spine forming, something that can happen if you’re a common side-sleeper.
• Alternatively, stay on your back and place some pillows under your mattress for a gentle incline. This may be helpful for those with sleep apnoea.
• If you find sleeping on your back difficult, try your left-hand side which is has been shown to be better to support digestion given the position of your organs, and may help if you suffer from reflux or heartburn (you may need a pillow between your knees).
• Move wifi routers and devices away from your place of sleep or better still install a kill switch or turn them off when you’re not using them (at night). Some people are more sensitive than others to electrical and magnetic fields (EMFs).
• Consider moving your bed away from external walls if you suffer from cold or damp conditions, or if you become dehydrated