Tips to improve your sleep
If you find yourself struggling to fall and/or stay asleep at night, some of these tips may help.
-Fix your Sleeping environment
Make your room as dark as possible. You essentially want to make your room a cold dark cave. I recently installed blackout curtains in my bedroom and they have helped tremendously in blocking out the little bits of light pollution coming in from my neighbor’s outside lights and the streetlights. I’m not saying you need to go as far as installing special curtains, this is just to emphasize the idea I am trying to get across. Go the extra mile to get it as dark as you can. Set the temperature in your house or sleeping room to between 65 and 70 degrees F. Research has shown anything hotter than this will impair sleep quality for most people. You can always turn the heat up later in the morning. I set my thermostat to get cooler at night and warm back up after I wake.
-Exercise, diet, and an overall healthy lifestyle
Being overweight can make you more susceptible to developing sleep apnea. Excessive weight, type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance, and high blood pressure have all been linked to poor sleep quality. It's safe to say fixing your diet, lifestyle and establishing an exercise routine will help with losing weight, fixing any metabolic health issues, and therefore improve sleep. Exercising also just helps with literally making you tired. The only caveat here is to not exercise too late in the evening (2-3 hours before bed) as it can disrupt sleep. It can take a few hours for your nervous system to wind down after a bout of exercise, so it's best to do those activities earlier in the day.
-Establish a consistent sleep schedule
Go to bed and get up at roughly the same time every day (30 min window for each), even on weekends. Our bodies like routine. The more you lean into this, the easier time you will find you can fall asleep on schedule. I personally have a go to sleep alarm as well as a morning alarm. This routine should also stay consistent even if you didn’t sleep well. You will build up more sleep pressure during the day you didn’t sleep and will have an easier time getting to sleep the next night. Try to resist the urge to go to bed earlier. Going to bed earlier is basically trading short term gain for long term struggle. It’s more important to stay on schedule.
-Avoid blue light 2 hours before bed
This means avoiding all forms of artificial light if possible. This form of light tells our brain that the sun is out and therefore we should be awake. This doesn’t mean you need to stumble around in the dark, but only use as little light as necessary. Try to stay off the phone or computer, from which light can oscillate at a frequency that can be particularly stimulating to the nervous system (surely the makers of these devices did this by accident). There are actually settings you can set on your devices to filter blue light. This may be a good idea to use if you really need to be on your phone or computer late at night. If you want to go the extra mile, invest in some blue light blocking glasses. I personally wear these for the last two hours I plan to be awake. Here’s a link to the ones I use
If you do wake up in the middle of the night, do NOT check your phone. This will make it almost impossible to fall asleep in any reasonable amount of time.
-Avoid afternoon caffeine
Caffeine can have a 6-12 hour half-life. Meaning depending on how much you consume and how quickly you metabolize it, you could potentially still have a significant amount of caffeine in your system even if you have it with lunch. And the further out in the day you have coffee, the more caffeine will still be in your system. I recommend at the very least not having coffee in the afternoon. I personally have it with breakfast and none after that. Some people claim they can consume caffeine late and fall asleep just fine, but their sleep quality is still affected. They will be getting significantly less REM and deep sleep, which are where our brain and body heal.
-Alcohol/cannabis/other sedatives
Alcohol, cannabis, and some other sedatives such as benadryl can make you sleepy. However, the way they are doing this is counter to natural sleep. They act on the central nervous system to induce a form of sedation that is not the same as quality sleep. Imagine you went in for surgery and spent 8 hours sedated. This is not a replacement for a quality night’s sleep. The sedatives mentioned in this section have a similar effect on your body. They may induce unconsciousness, but it's not the same as real sleep. These drugs have other side effects as well, so I would caution their long term use to induce sleep.
Long term use of benadryl has been linked with Alzheimer's, dementia, and other degenerative neurological diseases. Benadryl can also be habit forming, meaning your body comes to depend on it. I would strongly advise against using it for more than a few days and really only turn to it as a last resort.
Research on alcohol has been mixed over the years, but more recent studies have shown that NO amount of alcohol is beneficial. We thought a small amount of alcohol was beneficial, but this was actually due to poor study design. More recent studies with better methodology have shown alcohol is basically just poison. It messes up everything in your body, from increasing inflammation, to affecting blood sugar control, to brain function, and yes, to sleep architective the following night after consuming it. I personally have chosen to abstain from it completely after seeing this research. You don’t necessarily need to do this, but just know that it will mess up your sleep when you do. Sometimes that’s an acceptable consequence in a social situation, that’s for you to decide.
Cannabis is a bit of a mixed bag, if you can excuse my pun. Some compounds in cannabis have been shown to help with natural sleep onset and relaxation. Other compounds seem to have a similar sedative effect to alcohol. Cannabis is probably less impactful as the other drugs mentioned above, but I would still not rely on it for sleep long term.
-Morning sunlight
Getting sun in your eyes helps to set your circadian rhythm for the day. On bright days 5-10 minutes is usually enough, but more can never hurt. On cloudier days you will likely need to double that if not more. The morning light tells your body it is morning and it is time to be awake. This will not only help you wake up in the morning and have proper energy throughout the day, but will also tell your body when it is time to get sleepy later on that evening. I personally have a daily routine of going for a short 10 minute walk after breakfast before starting my work day. This not only gets me the sunlight but also gets me up and moving.
-Eat last heavy meal 2-3 hours before bed
Sometimes the reason you can’t fall asleep is you just have too much food in your stomach. It can be hard to fall asleep if your body is busy trying to digest food. Simply shifting dinner time a little earlier can make a big difference. It’s also better for your blood sugar control to eat the majority of your calories earlier in the day. Dinner should be your smallest meal.
-Stop drinking fluids 2 hours before bed
Waking up to pee multiple times during the night can really wreck your sleep. This was a really bad habit of mine for a long time. I enjoy working out first thing in the morning, so I got it in my head that I needed to hydrate the night before. It wasn’t until years later when I started tracking my sleep that I figured out how much this was hurting my sleep quality. Limiting fluid intake during those last 2 hours can minimize the midnight bathroom trips. You can always rehydrate when you wake up.
-Your bed is for sleep or sex (and nothing else)
You need to teach your body what the bed is for and more importantly, what it is NOT for. It is not a place to stay up and watch netflix. It is not a place to eat. It is not a place to do homework. If your body starts to associate the bed with waking activities, it will be that much harder to sleep when you want to. Use the bed for what it’s for and nothing else. Borderline activities include reading a book, which can help you wind down to fall asleep. I like to sit in bed and read for the last 30-45 min I am awake to help me wind down.
Avoid long naps
This goes a little bit with the earlier section about having a consistent sleep schedule. Napping can be ok if you do it right, but it’s risky. You need to make sure to keep them relatively short or you risk robbing yourself of your ability to fall asleep later that night. Nothing longer than 20 or 30 min. The problem with napping is they are decreasing your sleep pressure, which naturally builds up during the day. You could almost think of it like a balloon. AIr is being added throughout the day contributing to your sleep pressure and overall tiredness. Taking a nap releases some of the pressure from that balloon. Unless you are really slogging, my advice is to stick it out until your natural bed time.
-Have a wind down routine
This sort of pulls a lot of the topic we already covered together. But this basically just means having a plan. Don’t eat too late. Don’t use screens too late. Turn the lights down. Maybe take a long walk after dinner. Maybe take a hot shower before bed which can help your body dump heat, lowering your body temperature, priming you for sleep. Try not to do anything too stimulating late in the evening. Read a book or do some sort of other relaxing activity such as meditation or stretching to help you calm down.
-Magnesium
Magnesium deficiency can affect the body’s ability to deal with stress and calm down at night. I would advise investing in a high quality Magnesium glycinate, Malate, or threonate supplement. I would stay away from Magnesium oxide (the cheapest kind) because it has very low absorption quality making it pretty much a waste of money. Magnesium Citrate is another option but has the side effect of being a great laxative. This could be an upside or a downside depending on who you ask. Take at your own discretion. Magnesium deficiency is shockingly common and affects more than just sleep. It can cause constipation, headaches (has been linked to migraines as well), muscle weakness, among other problems.
-Fix your breathing
Nasal breathing, breathing through your nose, should be your default state, especially when you are sleeping. It activates the calming part of the central nervous system, lowering your heart rate, improving circulating, and lowering stress. Mouth breathing should only be resorted to during periods of high physical exertion when more oxygen is required. Many people have a habit of over breathing through the mouth, putting themselves in an excessively stressed state. Their heart rate will be chronically elevated. This may be due to nasal physiology issues (deviated septum, chronic sinus infection, etc.) or simply a learned behavior relying on mouth breathing. Learning to breathe properly through your nose is critical for being able to properly relax for sleep.
A simple test you can perform is to tape your mouth shut. Are you comfortable breathing without using your mouth, or are you struggling? If you don’t have some sort of nasal physiology issue (which I would recommend getting treated if you do), then you simply need to train yourself out of this bad habit. Consciously nasal breathe throughout the day until it becomes automatic. If you want to mouth tape you can, but maybe save that for the rainy day at home. Nobody wants to be the weird guy buying groceries with their mouth taped shut. You can also tape your mouth shut at night. I have been doing this for months now and it has really helped my sleep quality. There are a few companies that make special tape made specifically to sleep with. I personally like a brand called Hostage Tape. I want to caveat this by saying that if you are sick or have a stuffy nose for whatever reason and need to mouth breathe during sleep, do what you need to do. I don’t want anyone suffocating.
-Get tracking
If you are someone that likes data and real time feedback, you could invest in one of the variety of sleep tracking tech devices that are available today. Whoop and Oura ring are some of the best. I personally wear an oura ring every night when I sleep. When I wake up, it syncs to an app on my phone and gives me a full read out on how many hours I slept, in what stages (deep, REM, light), what my resting heart rate and heart rate variability look like (measures of recovery), and much more. Whoop and Oura (which cost a few hundred dollars) in particular have solid clinical evidence behind them showing they have around 80-90% comparability to a real sleep lab, which requires about $50,000 worth of equipment. The technology is only going to improve over time.
-Intrusive thoughts
Intrusive thoughts in the middle of the night are something I struggle with from time to time, despite some of the strategies I will outline. I think everyone will struggle with this at some point in their lives. I have found some useful tactics to battle them. The most helpful strategy for me was to start keeping a pad of sticky notes and a pen on my nightstand. I could write down whatever was troubling me and it was comforting at the very least to know that I had made a note to myself to address it in the morning. Learning to meditate was also helpful. This can teach you to address a wandering subconscious and calm the mind. There are some simple deep breathing techniques designed to help you relax if you wake up in a stressful state. I won’t go into detail here but a quick google search could point you in the right direction. You can look up the physiologic sigh or box breathing. There are also some cognitive behavioral strategies around psychologically reframing problems and anxiety that you could look into. This one I would recommend getting the help of a therapist for. Unfortunately I am not one, so I cannot advise on this but I have put to practice some of these techniques and have found them helpful.
-Consult a professional
If none of this helps, you may want to seek professional help. Sleep apnea is critically under-diagnosed and can lead to an early grave. If you suspect you may have a problem, it can’t hurt to at least get it checked out. It can end up saving years of life in the long run. Even if you find out you do not have sleep apnea specifically, they may be able to diagnose some other problem that is leading to poor sleep.
