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Sleep is the broadest of bases for our daily function. From increasing sugar cravings & consumption [1] to lowering memory formation [2], sleep deprivation is a health risk.
Over the past few months, I’ve been doing my best to dial in my sleep. Inspired by Vigorous Steve’s video series, I got a few part blog series about best lifestyle improvements, supplementation, and devices that you can use to improve your sleep. This is part one, as the title suggets, about the lifestyle optimizations you can make . A perk of this article is that almost everything here is free.
Daily Habits:
Quit caffeine around 10 hours before bed:
This point is pretty cliche advice. Caffeine antagonizes adenosine receptors. Adenosine is a hormone that produces feelings of tiredness. Caffeine’s half life is generally around 5 hours [3], but can vary depending on what medications, supplements and hormones someone is on. I’ll generally have my last cup of coffee around three or four in the afternoon although two would be better, given I plan to be asleep at midnight. It is worth noting
Remove blue light around dusk:
Evolutionarily light is a primary driver of circadian rhythm. While completely avoiding all light past sun down is impossible, eliminating blue light, the primary suppressor of melatonin production [4], is not. Removing blue light at sun down can be done a couple different ways. The cheapest way is to put your phone and computer down at dusk; though optimal, isn’t possible for everyone. You can reduce blue light exposure from your electronics with blue light filtering glasses or by using software or native settings. On Mac and iPhone there’s a sub section called “night shift” when you click on “display”/“display and brightness” inside the settings on each.
Turn the ac up:
Entering non-REM sleep is directly correlated with a drop in core body temperature. This could be for a variety of reasons. While originally thought to be due to energy conservation, the sited paper states that certain genes and proteins are expressed at the temperatures occurring during NREM sleep. There’s also a correlation between a drop in core temperature and circulating melatonin[5][6]. So turn your ac down before jumping into your nightly routine.
Nightly Routine:
About an hour before my head hits my pillow I put all of my work away, turn my AC down to 69, and do a combination of the following:
Yoga and/or Static Stretching:
Static stretching and Yoga area awesome to include in a nightly routing for a few reasons. Besides the general benefits of increased blood flow (both in the short and long term) [7][8], stretching has been shown to lower cortisol and overall stress levels as well as improve parasympathetic nervous activity [9]. On somewhat of a side note cortisol is not just a “stress hormone”, it’s a key player in our circadian rhythm and spikes slightly after waking. This is why I suggest taking an hour without work to specifically wind down.
Journalling
Rumination and worry about incomplete tasks are common sleep disturbers [10]. When I was in college, whether in person or online and on active duty, I’d often lay awake staring at my ceiling, thinking over the mental list of assignments, quizzes and other tasks I’d needed to accomplish during the day. Upon the realization I’d forgot something, I’d make a mental note or even pull out my phone and put it in a reminder for the following day. The notification that’d pop up the following mornings would often seem a bit cryptic given I’d written them while half asleep.
While journaling can take many forms, for someone that finds themselves in a similar position to myself, I’d recommend writing a reflection of the day and bulleting out a list of things that need to get done the following day.
Reading
Doing research for this point I only managed to find one paper on reading’s effect on sleep, so my reason for recommendation is almost purely anecdote. Towards the end of the day my mind is usually in more than one place. Getting engrossed in fiction seems to put my thoughts bac on “one track”, so to speak. It also seems to increase the amount I dream as well. For what it’s worth, a 2022 study conducted at the University of Padova, did find that reading at bed time decreased older adults time to fall asleep and increased their sleep duration and was a “sleep promoting factor” in both younger and older adults.
Sources:
[1] https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/107/1/43/4794751?login=false
[2] Raven F, Van der Zee EA, Meerlo P, Havekes R, The role of sleep in regulating structural plasticity and synaptic strength: Implications for memory and cognitive function, Sleep Medicine Reviews (2017), doi: 10.1016/j.smrv.2017.05.002.
[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7323637/
[6] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1365-2869.1996.t01-1-00006.x
[7] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32028461/
[8] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29623692/
[9] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7675619/
hey
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