Improve Your Sleep - Part 4
This week we discuss how to prepare your body and your environment for a good nights rest.
We’ve created a Cliff’s notes version of the Huberman Lab podcast The Sleep Toolkit; saving you time while delivering you evidence-based tools to perfect your sleep.
Thanks for reading!
Kira
SLEEP TOOLKIT:
The critical hours to avoid artificial lights.
How long before bed to stop looking at screens.
How to leverage heat to help you sleep.
How to keep your sleeping environment cold and dark.
Avoid bright artificial lights and screen time between 10pm and 4am.
Viewing bright lights in the evening (even with blue-blocking glasses) will disrupt your circadian rhythm and “wake up” your brain and body. While we want to feel this “wake up” effect during the daytime, it can really mess with our sleep if done too late in the evening.
The research shows that it takes very little light to disrupt our circadian rhythm. It is recommended that you use only as much artificial light as needed to move about safely during the hour or two before bedtime, but especially between 10pm and 4am. Ideally, you want to avoid bright overhead lights and instead opt for dim lamp lights, nightlights, and candlelight (cozy and romantic!).
Stop using electronics with screens (TV, phone, computer, etc.) at least 30 minutes before bed.
It is also recommended that AT LEAST 30 minutes before bed you shut off or avoid looking at all screens. Yes, this means your phone, TV, and computer. If you must look at your phone screen, say to set your alarm, do so with the screen brightness turned down as low as you can to still view it. And make sure you resist scrolling through your social media.
HOW do bright lights and screens mess with our circadian rhythm?
It has to do with melatonin. Bright light exposure will eliminate any melatonin that naturally happens to be circulating in your brain and body. While melatonin is often thought of as a sleep supplement, it is actually a hormone that is naturally released in our bodies as the evening rolls around and into the nighttime hours. The melatonin hormone makes you feel sleepy and allows you to fall and stay asleep.
Maintaining our naturally occurring melatonin levels in the evening is far superior to taking a melatonin supplement when it comes down to optimizing our sleep. The research also shows that you may want to rethink using supplemental melatonin because the commercially available dosages are much higher than we need and can mess with other hormones such as estrogen and testosterone.
Take a hot bath, shower, or use a sauna in the evening before bed.
Taking a nice hot bath, shower or sauna (should you be so lucky) will temporarily raise your body temperature while you are in it. However, after you exit, there is a cooling off effect that happens and your body temperature will drop by 1-3 degrees. This drop in body temperature will prepare your body for sleep.
Keep the room you sleep in cool and dark.
One reason that we often wake up in the middle of the night is due to an increase in body temperature. In order to fall and stay asleep, your body needs a drop in temperature by 1-3 degrees.
The easiest, most cost effective way to do this is to keep your room cool and sleep with layers of blankets, that way you can remove blankets as needed throughout the night. You may also want to reconsider wearing your socks to sleep at night. Socks will block the skin surface (soles of the feet) that facilitate heat loss, keeping your body temperature higher than is optimal for deep sleep.
Additionally, keeping a temperature gauge in your room is an easy way to know the temperature of your room. You can use fans, open windows or run air conditioners to keep your room cool.
Another option is to purchase a controllable cooling mattress pad system. We highly recommend the Chilisleep Sleep Systems (yes, we have an affiliate link for 25% off). It’s an investment, but this sleep system has been a game-changer to our quality of sleep. We sleep with our pups in the bed and that’s a non-negotiable for us. But they are like fiery, hot little furnaces, so this cooling pad helps us keep our body temp down while still getting all the puppy snuggles.
And finally, don’t forget to keep your room dark. You really want to get a good idea of where light is entering your room. So once it’s dark out, turn out all of the lights and take inventory on which electronics, outlets, digital clocks, doors or windows are letting in light. You can use blackout curtains, dimmable clocks, and eye-masks (yes there is even research on the effectiveness of eye-masks). You may also want to cover, tape over the light, or store electronics that let off light.
