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Amazing Tips and Tricks To Help You Sleep

Below are some of my favorite articles on sleep from my most trusted sites on the web. If you struggle with sleep in any form, you owe it to yourself to check these out. I recommend you read each linked article in full. Then once you have a clear picture of where you might be lacking in your sleep regime, you can decide what will be your first implement.

11 Tricks for Perfect Sleep by Tim Ferris

1. 8-10 sleep was most dependent on the ratio of REM-to-total sleep, not total REM duration.
2. I could increase REM percent by extending total sleep time past 9 hours or waking for 5 minutes at approximately 4.5 hours after sleep onset.
3. 200mcg (micrograms) of huperzine-A 30 minutes pre-bed can increase total REM by 20-30 percent
4. More than two glasses of wine within four hours of sleep onset decreases deep wave sleep 20-50 percent.
5. Having two tablespoons of organic almond butter (or peanut butter) on celery sticks before bed eliminated at least 50 percent of “feel like shit” 1-3 awakenings.
6. 67-70-degree temperature
7. Large fat and protein-dominant meal within 3 hours of sleep
8. Philips goLITE
9. Cold bath one hour prior to bed
10. Nightwave
11. Half military crawl position

Full Article Here

“The Basics of Sleep That Don’t Cost Anything” by The Bulletproof Exec

Whether or not you currently have trouble sleeping, there are several key things you can easily do to improve your current sleep. These are the most basic yet most critical hacks that will help you upgrade both the quality and quantity of sleep so you can optimize your rest every night.

1. First, sleep in a pitch-black room. Make it as dark as you can possibly make it. Block all the light sources you can, whether it’s a curtain or just pinning up fabric as needed. Seriously, if you live in a city, you need blackout curtains that don’t allow in all the light pollution. Cover LEDs with black electrical tape.
2. Start winding down at least two hours before bed. This means less bright lighting at night, as well eliminating, or at least dimming, computer screens and TVs.
3. Third, though it may seem obvious, caffeine is not a sleep aid — stop drinking it by 2:00 p.m. each day, or at least 8 hours prior to bedtime (earlier if you’re sensitive to it).
4. Go to bed by 11:00 p.m. when possible because your body creates a cortisol surge after 11 p.m. to keep you awake.
5. Don’t exercise within 2 hours of bedtime, unless it’s relaxing yoga or something similar.

These are basics that are easy to implement immediately at zero cost, and they ensure you’re starting off on the right foot — or right side of the bed, rather…

Top Hacks for Better Sleep

Even if you read no further, you can implement just these 5 things to dramatically improve your sleep. This is because they prepare your body for sleep hours by lowering stress and activity levels in the hours prior to bedtime.

1. Consider Upgraded™ Coconut Charcoal when your sleep cycle is disturbed, such as in jet lag. When your circadian rhythm is off, your gut bacteria can make more endotoxins that will slow you down the next day. It makes sense to bind them.
2. Use Upgraded™ Glutathione Force as an antioxidant and to help your liver do its detox work at night.
3. Put your phone on airplane mode to avoid EMFs which can disturb sleep. This is surprisingly effective.
4. Use the HeartMath Inner Balance™ sensor or emWave2 exercises to turn off your fight-or-flight response, which lets you go to sleep faster and stay asleep longer
5. Only drink Bulletproof® Coffee in the morning up until 2 p.m. Test to see if your sleep is impacted by coffee at 1 p.m. or even noon. Different people clear it at different rates. Don’t drink it at all if a cup in the morning hurts your sleep.

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The Bulletproof® Sleep Induction Mat

You’re not alone if you’re looking for the easiest way to put yourself into deep sleep without resorting to drugs or counting sheep, and for fast, measurable relaxation for your body. I’ve been sleep hacking for a long time and discovered an effective technology based on ancient practices. I now use it often and travel with it.

Enter the Bulletproof® Sleep Induction Mat. It looks like a large pillowcase crossed with a porcupine, but it’s so much more — it can help you get to sleep and stay asleep, while reducing your muscular aches and pains.

This is an acupressure mat specifically designed to quickly induce sleep and stimulate muscle relaxation. It is bigger and longer than typical acupressure mats available, featuring more powerful acupressure points, organic and toxin-free materials, and a travel-friendly design. It has no toxic foam insert, making it toxin-free and easier to take on a trip.

Simply lying on it for a few minutes will cause a surge of endorphins, a wave of relaxation you can feel, and it helps to create very deep sleep that you can often see on the Sleep Cycle app, or one of the more advanced sleep monitoring devices I’ll write about soon!

Full Article Here

Getting Some Good Primal Sleep |MarksDailyApple.com

From “Getting Some Good Primal Sleep“:

In Grok’s world, of course, there were no alarms, no clocks, no trains to catch or appointments to make. Likewise, there were no lamps or computers, T.V.s, smart phones and all the other technological gadgetry that tests our circadian rhythm and tempts us to stay up instead of hit the sheets. Although Grok and his tribe didn’t turn in the second the sun fell below the horizon, they undoubtedly slid into a hunkered down, lower key mode. On a typical night, the darkness — even with a central fire or bright moon — would’ve been enough to impose a quieter sense of consciousness. The stars, the flames would’ve been enough to inspire calm, maybe meditative stillness if not sleep. What would our experience of night be — how rested and composed might we feel — if we spent ten to twelve hours in relative darkness?

Although I suspect most of us have at least several hours to trudge through before we can call it a night, maybe some of you are already planning a clandestine nap this afternoon. (There’s always our Primally approved plan for selling your boss on the siesta idea….) Looking forward to sleep is the first step to taking back bedtime, I’d say. Not only is it an essential investment for your health, it’s one of life’s best luxuries. You wake up looking better and feeling like a million bucks. How much better can it get? Now take the money you’ll save on extra coffee and buy yourself a nice set of sheets or the pillow you’ve always wanted.

In the meantime, be sure to check out our past tips for a great night’s rest!

How to Manufacture the Best Night of Sleep in Your Life | MarksDailyApple.com

From “How to Manufacture the Best Night of Sleep in Your Life“:

Early Morning

Use a dawn simulator alarm clock. These are alarms with lamps that slowly and gradually brighten as your wake time approaches. It’s not the same as having the majestic sunrise beam into your room and very soul, but these contraptions have been shown to improve sleep quality. Another advantage: waking up won’t be so jarring.

When you wake up, get up. Do not hit snooze, sleep for five minutes, hit it again, sleep for five more, and keep doing that until you can will yourself to rise and stumble off to begin your day. You may think you’re effectively chipping away at sleep debt with those little bits and pieces of “sleep,” but you’re really just fragmenting your sleep (PDF), which leads to “sleepiness-related daytime impairment,” compulsory afternoon caffeine infusions, and less productivity. If you hit snooze today, you’ll probably end up sleeping badly enough to have to hit it again tomorrow.

Upon getting up, you expose yourself to bright light. Ideally, this is the sun. If it’s still dark out, you can use the brightest artificial light you have. 10,000 lux lamps are best (and in fact are used to effectively treat Seasonal Affective Disorder), but anything is better than no light at all. Our bodies, brains, and biological clocks expect bright light during the day, and meeting those expectations has been shown to improve sleep (as well as alertness and productivity during the day), even if the light is artificial.

Read the rest of the Early Morning recommendations here

Early Evening

“If you plan on drinking, do so around this time. Alcohol too close to bed — even just a couple glasses of wine — can impact sleep. You’ll sleep, but it’ll be poor quality sleep fraught with frequent disturbances. This validates both happy hours and day drinking, in a way.

Eat most of your carbs at dinner. A recent study showed that eating carbs, even high-glycemic ones, at the last meal shortened the sleep onset. In other words, packing your carbs into dinner can help you fall asleep faster.

Eat animal fat and/or olive oil at dinner (and lunch, and breakfast). Both animal fat like lard or beef fat and olive oil (or macadamia nuts, for that matter) are excellent sources of oleic acid, a precursor to the sleep-inducing oleamide.”

Read the rest of the early evening recommendations here

Bedtime

Drink some bone broth, eat some gelatin, or take glycine. All of those things either contain or are glycine, an amino acid with sleep promoting effects.

Clear your mind. Meditation can work here, again, or you could make a to-do list for the following day so that you don’t lie awake obsessing over everything.

Rub your body down with magnesium oil or lotion. I go for the softest areas, like under my arms or along my rib cage. If it stings, you know it’s working. Bonus: it gives you (or me, at least) really cool, really vivid dreams. Some people are paradoxical responders who actually sleep worse on this stuff, just so you’re aware.

Read some dense fiction in bed, in actual physical book form (nothing against ebooks at any other time, but they represent a light source that can disrupt sleep). Don’t read easily digestible stuff like an old John le Carre spy novel. Instead, go for something like Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian that has you parsing paragraph-long sentences. Great book, but you’ll be asleep in no time.

Read the rest of the Bedtime recommendations here

Middle of the Night

Improve your aim and reduce your reliance on lights. If you get up in the night to urinate, don’t flip on every light as you pass them. Most people can adjust to the darkness if they let themselves.

Don’t check your email just because you woke up. It’s not that important (if it were, they’d call), and whatever you read is only going to keep you up. Also, blue light!

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