The quality of your sleep affects every aspect of your physical, mental, and emotional performance.
In today’s hyperactive world, millions of people suffer from chronic sleep and suffer the setbacks of poor quality rest (to name a few: failing immune systems, risk of diabetes, cancer, obesity, depression , memory loss).
Conversely, those who sleep well only benefit in the long term.
They are in a good mood, in better health, better concentrated and therefore more able to take advantage of their days.
Shawn Stevenson wrote “Sleep Smarter”, a book in which he presents 21 tips to improve the quality of his sleep.
Some advice is common sense, while others may seem totally counter-intuitive as ignorance reigns in our understanding of sleep.
Also read: The different cycles of sleep
Know The Value Of Sleep
Generally, being awake is a state called catabolic (breaks you down) and sleep is anabolic (builds you up).
Sleep is known to be a high anabolic state, which increases the growth and rejuvenation of the immune, skeletal and muscular systems. Sleep rebuilds you and keeps you fit.
Sleep is not an obstacle or a “luxury”, but a real essential priority.
It is a natural state that your body needs to boost your hormonal function, heal your muscles, tissues and organs, and keep your mind functioning at its optimal level.
When you’re sleep deprived, you become slower, less creative, more stressed. Studies show that sleep-deprived people can take up to 14% longer to complete tasks and make 20% more errors when they do.
Sleep deprivation reduces the amount of glucose reaching the brain. That’s why you snack on sugar when you’re tired — it’s your body’s way of trying to get more sugar to fuel more thinking.
However, despite this, your sleep quality is lower and you literally become dumber. Have you ever made a bad decision and woke up the next day thinking, “How did I get to do this? »
Make sure you get at least 7:30 a.m. sleep.
Melatonin And The Circadian Rhythm
There is a photoreceptor in your eyes called melanopsin.
This receptor is sensitive to blue light, some exposure of which can suppress the production of melatonin — a hormone responsible for your sleep/wake cycles.
The level of melatonin increases as the light decreases in accordance with the circadian rhythm – our biological rhythm where many biological, physiological and behavioral changes take place in 24 hours.
Some researchers believe that melatonin is linked to aging because this hormone is also a powerful antioxidant that has other benefits:
- Improves immune system function
- Normalizes blood pressure
- Reduces cancer cell proliferation and tumor growth (including leukemia)
- Improves DNA protection and scavenging of free radicals (responsible for aging)
- Reduces the risk of osteoporosis
- Decreases the risk of plaques in the brain (like those seen with Alzheimer’s disease)
- Relieves migraines and other pains
- Improves thyroid function
- Improves insulin sensitivity and weight reduction
Young children have the highest level of nocturnal melatonin production, but this gradually decreases as we get older. Melatonin is associated with youth and vitality, but it decreases as the years pass.
It is therefore essential to take care not to disturb the balance of our circadian clock – inherited from our ancestors in response to their environment thousands of years ago – to sleep well and stay healthy.
Practical tip:
– Set limits. When you have a big project on schedule or an impending deadline, allow plenty of time to make sure you finish the job at hand. Don’t sacrifice sleep to meet deadlines.
Have More Sunlight During The Day
Too little light exposure during the day and too much light exposure in the evening may throw off your biological clock.
The light signals your hypothalamus (the grand master of the secretion of your hormones and the regulation of the major vital functions: hunger, thirst, temperature) and all the other organs and glands to be vigilant and to wake up.
Exposure to sunlight activates your body to produce optimal levels of daytime hormones and regulates your biological clock.
Light exposure has a significant impact on the production of melatonin, the hormone that gives your body the best conditions for sleep.
Basically, by getting more sunlight during the day and limiting light exposure at night, you’re on your way to a magic sleep formula that really works.
Practical advice :
- Make a habit of exposing yourself to sunlight early in the morning between 6 a.m. and 8:30 a.m.
- If you work in an office, go outside during the day to sunbathe for 10 or 15 minutes.
Avoid Screens Before Bed
This is probably the first thing you can do to improve your sleep quality immediately.
Exposure to blue light before falling asleep can distort your circadian rhythm and cause an inability to fall asleep.
Two hours of using the iPad at maximum brightness is enough to suppress normal melatonin production.
Practical advice :
- Turn off all screens at least 90 minutes before bedtime. If you ignore this and keep having trouble sleeping, I promise Netflix won’t pay your hospital bills. Read a book instead.
- When the sun goes down, use a blue light filter to soften the effect of your screens (Computers: f.lux; Android: Twilight).
Avoid Caffeine
Here’s what happens when you have caffeine: All the time you’re awake, neurons in your brain are firing and producing a neurotransmitter byproduct called adenosine.
Your nervous system is constantly searching for adenosine in your body, because once these levels reach a certain point in your brain and spinal cord, your body begins to push you to fall asleep.
Caffeine is so structurally similar to adenosine that it fits into the receptor sites in your body where the adenosine is trying to enter and as a result your body is tired but you don’t even know it.
A study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine found that caffeine—even when consumed at different times—has significant and measurable disruptions while they sleep.
All participants who had consumed coffee (morning, afternoon, before bed) had physiologically lost at least an hour of sleep due to caffeine – something they did not consciously recognize at first!
The vicious cycle of caffeine begins: you are tired, you consume more of it to be stimulated and alert, then you are even more tired, so you consume even more of it… until you develop an addiction that is totally hostile to your sleep.
Practical advice :
- Ideally, you stop all caffeine consumption.
- Otherwise, you create a curfew to consume very little and only in the morning (before 9 am) so that the exciting effects do not affect your sleep.
Be Cool
Thermoregulation heavily influences your body’s sleep cycles. When it’s time for your body to go to rest, there’s an automatic drop in your body temperature to help you sleep.
If the temperature in your environment stays too high, it can be difficult for your body to get into the ideal state for restful sleep.
Practical advice :
- Make sure your bedroom temperature stays close to the recommendations: 16–20 degrees overnight.
- If you have trouble falling asleep, try taking a hot bath an hour or two before you sleep. The body temperature of the ear will drop and make you cooler.
- Blood flow is the primary method of distributing heat throughout the body. If your hands and feet are too cold, it could be a sign of poor circulation. The solution: wear a pair of warm socks to bed (if you can stand it).
Go To Bed At The Right Time
You can have a higher quality of sleep by falling asleep at the right time.
Human beings get the most beneficial hormonal secretions and the highest recovery by sleeping between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m
Around 10 p.m., your body goes through a transformation, in response to the natural onset of melatonin, which involves increasing internal metabolic energy to repair, strengthen, and rejuvenate your body.
An increase in antioxidant hormone production occurs at this time to help protect your DNA from damage, improve your brain function and more.
In other words, the more your sleep is aligned with your circadian cycle, the more you regenerate.
Practical advice :
- If you go to bed early, you will get up earlier. The opportunity to embark on a morning ritual: write, meditate, do some sport, read an inspiring page, etc.
- To help reset your sleep cycle, get in the habit of having sunlight as soon as possible when you wake up. This will help boost natural cortisol levels and fully wake up your system.
Apply Magnesium, The Anti-Stress Mineral
Magnesium is an authentic anti-stress mineral. It helps balance blood sugar, optimize blood circulation and blood pressure, relax tense muscles, reduce pain and calm the nervous system.
Magnesium has so many functions that it depletes quickly and as a result, around 80% of people are magnesium deficient. By reducing the stress on your body, you will naturally get a better night’s sleep.
Magnesium bath salts and oils are a great way to get extra magnesium into your body. Since many of the benefits of magnesium are lost during digestion, supplements are not as effective.
Practical tip:
– Keep the magnesium tea next to your bed and apply it to sore, stressed areas on your chest, neck and shoulders.
Have A Quality Mattress And Pillow
Are your bedding and pillow suitable for your body shape and sleeping position?
The mattress plays an essential role in maintaining the body and our back. It supports more than 2/3 of the sleeper’s weight for years.
The pillow helps support our cervical vertebrae and allows for optimal alignment of our spine. To keep the spine straight, the pillow must act as a counterweight.
Whether you sleep on your back or on your side.
A bad mattress can explain your torticollis and lower back pain. A bad pillow can interfere with the curvature of your neck and poor support can wake you up in the middle of the night. It is time for this to stop.
Practical tip:
- Choose a quality pillow. Don’t skimp on quality! Choosing a rectangular format saves space, reduces packing displacement and provides a larger contact surface. The life of a pillow is usually three years.
- Choose a quality mattress. Unlike a pillow, this investment is much more expensive. The best way to get an idea of the quality of a mattress is to test it directly in the store. Lying on the mattress, try to put your hand between your loins and the mattress. If we succeed, it’s a bad sign; it’s too firm. Then we change positions. If it is laborious, it is either too soft or its shape memory layer is too intense. Lay on your side. If the shoulder is correctly placed in the mattress without any discomfort, the firmness is satisfactory. Finally, push the elbow into the mattress. If the hollow remains marked, eliminate the model; it is too soft. The choice is then a question of feeling or even price.
Getting Off
Having an orgasm can be like a complete sedative for most people.
Research shows that during orgasm both women and men release a cocktail of relaxing hormones including norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin and the pituitary hormone prolactin.
I won’t go into details, but the more sexually satisfied you are with your partner, the more prolactin you will produce — a hormone linked to sexual satisfaction and also strongly linked to sleep.
Sex and orgasm have many benefits that go far beyond sleep like boosting the immune system, fighting depression, and helping you live longer.
Our ability to have and give orgasms is closely linked to our health and well-being.
Practical advice :
- Everyone is different, and what satisfies one person might not have the same effect for another. Find out what your partner likes and find out what you like. I promise you that this data will be valuable to you.
- Vary the positions and be physical. One aspect of sex’s impact on sleep also depends on the effort involved, so don’t spare your generosity.
Turn Everything Off
Did you know that your skin has receptors capable of capturing light? These photoreceptors are similar to those found in your retina, so your skin can literally see.
If there is light in your bedroom, your body senses it and sends messages to your brain and organs that can interfere with your sleep.
Sleeping in total darkness is something our genes expect us to do. Today, it is not uncommon to have lights of certain types in your bedroom all night.
It is because you cannot control the world outside (light pollution) that you must take control of the environment of your home.
Practical advice :
- Blackout curtains are a good way to cut out light pollution. Your bedroom should be completely dark when you turn off all light sources. If you can’t see your hands when you wave them over your open eyes, that’s fine.
- Hide the digital dial of your alarm clock.
Train Hard (But Smart)
When you exercise, you literally tear your body apart and damage muscle tissue. When you sleep, your body goes through a restorative stage and repairs damaged tissue.
By exercising, you force your body to secrete more beneficial hormones to build you better than before. Morning workout.
Evening workouts don’t allow enough time for your body temperature to drop before sleep. The best hormonal response comes from lifting weights, not cardio.
It releases more anabolic hormones that make you look, feel, and sleep better.
Practical advice :
– Lift weights at least two days a week. Focus on short but intense sessions. Avoid exercising before sleeping, it will increase your body temperature. If you are too hot, you will have trouble sleeping.
Be Safe From Magnetic Waves
Our electronic devices (wireless telecommunications, microwaves, radio, television) emit both electric and magnetic fields called EMF.
Walls and other objects can easily block electric fields, but magnetic fields can easily pass through objects like walls, buildings, and the human body.
EMFs have been found to cause disruption of communication between cells in our body (leukemia, brain tumors, breast cancer, and many more).
The World Health Organization has now classified cell phone radiation as a Class 2B carcinogen, one of five levels of the classification that defines products as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.”
Especially since couples who keep a television in their bedroom have much less sexual intercourse than those who don’t (this is the moment in the article when some will hit each other on the head, and decide to remove their television).
Practical advice :
- Stop using your cell phone as an alarm clock.
- Take the TV out of your bedroom to save your couple’s sex life.
- Turn off your phone at night and put it somewhere other than your bedroom.
Do Not Overeat At Night
One of the most overlooked issues with ideal sleep is having too much body fat in your body.
Being overweight causes severe stress to your internal organs, your nervous system and disrupts your endocrine system.
Overweight people are more sensitive to the secretion of cortisol (anti-sleep hormone) after eating a meal, which decreases insulin sensitivity and increases blood pressure and inflammation.
Practical advice :
– One of the worst things you can do is eat before you sleep. Eat your dinner at least 3 hours before bed to avoid digestive issues that may occur at night and wake you up.
Avoid Alcohol
Did you know that you get smarter when you sleep? One of the most valuable and overlooked aspects of sleep is an operation called memory processing. This is where short-term memories and experiences turn into long-term memories.
Different REM sleep stages are primarily responsible for affecting memory processing.
Alcohol in your system significantly disrupts REM sleep, preventing you from entering the deepest stages of sleep.
Consequence: your brain and your body will not be able to regenerate completely.
Alcohol is also a diuretic, which means your body will expel more fluids and increase your likelihood of dehydration and nausea.
In other words, you wake up to go to the bathroom, which is even more disturbing.
Practical advice :
- To recover more easily and keep your body hydrated, you can take a 23 cl glass of water after each alcoholic drink consumed.
- This will reduce the effects of alcohol more quickly and facilitate the elimination of metabolic waste products left in the blood.
Play Your Position
It may come as a surprise, but sleeping position can affect the quality of your sleep.
It impacts blood flow to the brain, spinal stability, hormone production, oxygen delivery, and respiration. You need to sleep in a position that will aid recovery.
One of the most important facets of your sleeping position is maintaining the integrity of your spine.
whose brain stem running through it is directly connected to every major organ in your body.
If your spine is compromised and there is a breakdown in information between your brain and your body, chronic and catastrophic problems can take place.
Some of these issues may be rooted in the way you sleep.
Practical advice :
For side sleepers: Instead of sleeping with your shoulder directly under you, move it slightly forward to avoid constricting your shoulder and arm muscles. Make sure your head is not too high on the cushions.
Lift one knee up to open your hips and take some of the pressure off your spine against the leg on the bed.
For those who sleep on their stomach: you don’t need a pillow. Place a small, firm pillow under your stomach and hips to reduce stress on your lower back and neck.
Just place a pillow somewhere comfortable on the same side you lifted your leg and you’re in a much healthier position for stomach sleeping.
For Back Pain Sufferers: Experts recommend sleeping on your side with a soft pillow between your knees if you have a history of back problems. This helps stabilize your spine and take pressure off your hips and lower back.
Calming Your Inner Voice Through Meditation
Sometimes the environment in which you can sleep can be subject to outside noises that prevent you from relaxing.
A dog barking outside, drunk people screaming, a biker riding his Harley, the neighborhood that’s decided to breed, or your thoughts (over 50,000 thoughts cross our minds every day).
You cannot control everything outside of you, but you can control your inner environment by adopting new strategies.
The solution can help your sleep as well as transform your entire life — meditation. You can benefit from it after just 10 minutes a day.
it improves the release of “feel-good” hormones and endorphins, reduces stress and inflammation in the body.
Meditation can help improve your concentration, creativity, memory, imagination, productivity, performance, and attention.
Meditation literally changes the shape of your brain and increases the size of your alpha waves when you focus.
These are the brain waves where imagination, visualization, memory, learning and concentration are increased.
Practical advice :
Listen to guided meditations: your attention will be directed in listening to the instructions. Positive affirmations can have an effect that you don’t know if you’re serious about it. There is also The Honest Guys channel which offers quality productions.
Test ASMR: If you are receptive to these YouTube relaxation videos that seek to activate a relaxation reaction in response to a visual or auditory stimulus (whispers, taps, soft voice, etc.),
Use Noisli: to mix ambient sounds that will allow you to create a relaxing environment. This is particularly useful for reducing outside noise and helping you concentrate better.
Use Smart Supplementation
Ideally, you address your lifestyle issues first, but there are also supplements that can help with sleep:
Chamomile: This herb helps calm the nervous system, relaxes muscles, and prepares you for a good night’s sleep. Have a cup of chamomile tea before bed.
Kava kava: This national drink of Fiji contains a natural sedative and is great for treating insomnia and reducing the time it takes to fall asleep.
Valerian: This herb is also a sedative, although a little stronger. Having valerian tea before bed contributes to uninterrupted sleep and reduces the time needed to fall asleep.
It is advised not to take melatonin supplements, as it can decrease your body’s natural production of the hormone. If you are going to take it, use it only for the short term.
Practical advice :
– Before you get to consuming these substances that can disrupt the circadian rhythm, be sure to follow all the other tactics I presented to you above to help you sleep.
Get Up Earlier
Getting up early is a great way to get a natural sunburn in the morning, but it’s also great for getting ready for the day.
As we’ve figured out, going to bed early and waking up early synchronizes the body’s clock with Earth’s natural circadian rhythms, which is more restorative than trying to sleep while the sun is rising.
Waking up early with a sense of purpose, like wanting to sleep, is a great way to start the day in a more motivated state.
Morning people tend to show character traits like optimism, contentment, and conscientiousness. Starting to hit your goals before 8 a.m. gives you an extra sense of optimism.
Practical advice :
- The night before, think of one thing you would like to do in the morning that excites you. In the morning, when you wake up, do not forget this exciting thing, because it will help you get up.
- Jump out of bed. With enthusiasm! Smile and stretch out your arms as if you’re battling procrastination. Seriously, it works.
- Put your alarm on the other side of the room. To make the effort to get up to turn it off. Then, get into the habit of going straight to the bathroom to relieve yourself once you’ve turned it off. It keeps you awake enough not to go back to bed.
- Drink a large glass of water when you get up: to replenish your hydration levels that have dipped during sleep, help your body eliminate metabolic waste, and give you sensory stimulation to help you wake up.
- Make sure the bedroom is airy. The air stales as ions lose their negative charge. Free electrons from negative ions oxidize smells, mold, bugs, and hazardous chemical vapors, energizing them. Plants in your bedroom or home recycle stagnant air.
Dress For The Occasion
Wearing tight, restrictive clothing to bed is a huge sleep mistake that you need to avoid.
Clothing that’s too tight can literally cut off the flow of your lymphatic system — your body’s cellular “waste management” system.
It is through the lymphatic system that toxic substances can leave the body. If it is cut in any way, it is like bending a water pipe and blocking its ability to flow.
Water pressure will swell, causing internal damage.
Practical advice :
- Men: Underpants, loose pajamas, basketball shorts, a t-shirt or be naked. Avoid tight underwear so as not to compress and overheat your family jewels.
- Women: Shorts, a loose t-shirt, light lingerie, yoga pants or “tights” that don’t twist your legs and hips, loose pajama bottoms, or be naked. You can also leave the bra behind to let your chest naturally maintain it.
Ritualize Your Night
A ritual is a small step-by-step sequence of actions that puts you in a certain mood, state, or state of mind to do something.
Whether or not you have a history of sleep issues, a regular sleep ritual will help you relax and prepare your body for the best sleep possible.
To make sure your evening ritual becomes a habit, start small. Take steps to follow it with as little effort as possible for at least 30 days.
You’ve read a lot of practical tips, it’s up to you to find out what works best for you by experimenting.
I highly recommend that you start your nighttime ritual by turning off all screens around 9 p.m., it’s a good start to reconcile with your sleep.
Practical advice :
- Read fiction or biography to release your analytical left brain and disconnect from your stresses, worries, and tensions.
- Journaling: This is a powerful practice for capturing stray thoughts and clearing mental space. You can also use the diary to measure your progress and confirm next steps.
- Express gratitude in writing: by capturing three to five things you were grateful for today. It will make you more receptive to all the good things that happen that we end up taking for granted.
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