- Here are no frills,
scientifically backed Don't eat too close to bedtime. But if you do eat, focus on complex carbs. You wanna avoid high fat protein meals as they take a really long time to digest and they can actually
impact some of your hormones like orexin, which can keep you
alert and not really sleepy. Speaking of avoiding foods before sleep, you wanna avoid spicy foods. Not only can they make
you feel uncomfortable because they can trigger
symptoms of acid reflux, but they also raise your
core body temperature. It's the exact opposite thing of what your body's trying to
do in order to get to sleep. Avoid studying, TV,
phones, other activities. The only thing that should
happen in bed is sleep and sex. Avoid blame for not getting
a good night's sleep as this can only make the problem worse. Know that humans have
a distinct chronotype based on their genetic code that will select when sleep
comes to them naturally. So you may fall asleep at a completely different time than me. I'm a fan of naps, but I'm
talking about a short nap early in the day. When you start making them
longer than 30 minutes or having them close to bedtime, even around 5:00, 6:00 p.m., that's gonna affect
your sleepiness hormone and make it really hard to
wanna go to sleep at night. Be wary of caffeine, and I'm
not just talking about coffee. There's caffeine in tea, sodas,
energy drinks, pre-workouts so ideally you wanna be
consuming this caffeine before lunch. In fact, if you like having
a nap early in the day, consume the caffeine just before your nap to get the most out of it. But caffeine close to bedtime is gonna wanna make you pee
in the middle of the night, make you wake up. Caffeine actually also
impacts your ability to enter the deep stages of sleep, meaning that you might
get a full night's sleep but not a restorative night's sleep. Decrease blue light exposure. You can do this by getting the
devices out of your bedroom, putting them on night shift mode if you really need to use them, or perhaps using blue
light blocking glasses. Legit ones that actually work because blue light will actually decrease the production of melatonin, that sleepiness hormone
we talked about earlier. Help your body cool down
by lowering the thermostat. Normally when we start to get sleepy, our body temperature
drops by a degree or two. This is incredibly
important in the bedroom to facilitate your body to feel sleepy, but it's usually done by sweating and who wants to sleep in their own sweat? Just lower the thermostat. Increase light exposure
early and throughout the day. Open those curtains first
thing, even on a cloudy day because the eye sends signals to the suprachiasmatic nuclei which then sends signals to
the pineal gland in the brain and that helps optimize sleep hormones even later that night. Invest in your sleep gear. I'm specifically talking
about your mattress and this is individualized and will be different for everybody because depending on your sleep position, your medical conditions your body habitus, your size, your shape. You will have different preferences, so go to a store, try
out different mattresses, Don't use the first
few minutes upon waking as the signal of whether or not you got a good night's sleep. Sleep inertia is a real thing. In fact, if you sleep a
radically short amount of time, you might wake up even easier but that doesn't mean
you had quality sleep. In fact, after repaying some sleep debt, you may feel groggier after a night of proper sleep, signaling that you still need to make up more hours of sleep the next day. Sorry, Bear. Pets out of the bed. We've seen it time and time again in research article
after research article, pets interrupt our sleep. Allow them to hang out in your bedroom, just not directly in that bed. Pay attention to noise. While a silent room can be
great for a good night's sleep, you can have white noise in your room and still sleep great and you don't have to get an
expensive white noise machine. You can just turn on YouTube or maybe have a fan in the corner. All work through the same principle. Essentially, you wanna have a consistent same volume of noise because what happens then is your brain begins to tune out that noise just like it would as if it were silent. Make your bedroom pitch black. Get blackout curtains, put shades up. Do whatever it is you have to do to eliminate all light from
your sleeping environment. There's been studies that show even a candle flickering
in the corner of your room can impact the quality of your sleep. For safety reasons, I do say maybe have a
motion activated light somewhere in your room so that if you do get up
in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, you'll still be safe. Go to sleep when you're tired. It may sound simple, but at the same time, it's easy to push through
the sleepiness at 9:00 p.m. when you're binging your
favorite Netflix show. But if you miss that crucial window, you may get a second wind and find it hard to fall asleep
until really late at night. Modern day devices have
sleep modes on them to prevent your friends drunk texting you and waking you in the middle of the night. My recommendation here is
to customize those alerts to allow certain contacts in your phone to be able to contact
you any time of night. Also, it allows you to set
a specific number of calls that will bypass the sleep mode system so that if your father or your friend calls you two, three times, that might mean it's an emergency and it should still ring to wake you. Unless you wanna wake up with a sore back or sore neck in the morning, avoid having cold air
blown directly on you. This could mean turning the fan away, the air conditioner
away, or closing a window because direct cooling onto your skin can overcool an area, thereby decrease circulation to a muscle causing a spasm to occur. Keep your feet warm but not sweaty. It's easy to put on a really thick sock and then your feet are sweating and causing potential
fungal infections to form. Instead, what you wanna do is optimize it so that they're warm. The blood vessels
vasodilate, meaning open up and that will signal to your brain that it's comfortable to fall asleep. This one is gonna sound weird. If, after 15 minutes you can't
fall asleep, get out of bed because the last thing you
want to do is toss and turn building up that anxiety of
why you can't fall asleep. Instead, what you wanna
do is leave that bed, leave the bedroom, do something relaxing, wait until you get sleepy, then get into the bed. Because then you will
associate the bed with sleep as opposed to suffering
because you can't sleep. Get that exercise because physical exercise
improves the quality and duration of your sleep. In fact, it's that moderate
intensity aerobic exercise that improves your deep
sleep, your slow wave sleep where your brain and body
have a chance to rejuvenate. Some say don't exercise
too close to bedtime. I think you need to do what works for you. For me, I try and stay away from that high intensity
exercise close to bedtime. Avoid alcohol before bedtime. While it may help you fall asleep, it's actually gonna hurt
the quality of your sleep. Even just having a couple drinks can hurt your ability to
enter and stay in REM sleep. That's that restorative
sleep that you need in order to function
well throughout the day. No matter how tempting it is, be careful with long-term
use of sleep aid medications. Whether we're talking about prescription or over the counter, they
do have legitimate risks. Anxiety is one of the most
common complaints I hear from patients as to why
they can't get good sleep. I constantly suffer with insomnia because
I'm tired, but wired. In those cases, I do say it's
smart to talk to your doctor about potentially starting therapy or maybe even a medication, but for me, a little strategy that worked quite well is the three good things. Before getting into bed, writing down, old paper and pen three good things that
happened to you that day and the reasons as to why they happened. This allows your mind to take a break from thinking about the
negative nervousness that it constantly feels in order to keep you safe, and instead think about
the positive emotions and let that gratitude guide you into getting a proper night's sleep. In the evening, begin to dim your lights. Just as it's important to expose yourself to bright light in the morning, you need to dim the lights in the evening. This is strictly for
your circadian rhythm. If you have exposure to
bright light in the evening, your circadian rhythm gets thrown off, your melatonin production
starts to decrease, and your sleepiness begins to float away. As always, stay happy and healthy. (light melodic music)
