Hacking Sleep (Part 2)
Or, three tips to improving your sleep.
In my last post I focused on how I went from mediocre sleep to solid sleep by simply adding ZMA to the equation. And all things being equal, ZMA improves the quality and depth of sleep.
There are two further changes I’ve made in the past few months that have made an additional impact to my sleep that are worth sharing — one is an easy win, one is much more of a challenge. Both have improved the quality of my sleep, but incrementally, not by leaps and bounds like ZMA.
First, the easy win is adding a mattress topper. While reading one of my favorite self improvement hero’s book, Gorilla Mindset, Mike Cernovich (good book, and his podcasts are fantastic), where he talks about sleep- he mentions how much a memory foam topper can improve sleep. So I ordered one from a UK company called Eve since it seemed to offer a good balance of price vs quality.
I already use (and love) my Tempur memory foam pillow, so adding a memory foam topper seemed like a good idea. And it was. For £199, I wake up feeling even better than I used to (which was pretty good)
Second, the hard one — kicking the coffee habit. I quit coffee cold turkey a few years ago in an effort to improve my sleep. It was possibly the worst 5 days of my life — foggy brain, low energy, irritable…squeaking by on decaffeinated coffee to get a tiny bit of caffeine in my system… awful. But after about day seven — I slept like I hadn’t slept in decades. I think there’s still an imprint of my body in that mattress — I slept so deeply. But travel and life conspired to get me drinking coffee again — and I love coffee.
But then life and travel conspired again to make me kick the coffee habit again (3 months now and counting). I spent three weeks in Japan at the end of last year and started drinking matcha lattes in Kyoto (the home of matcha). No, matcha lattes aren’t authentic, but they are very yummy. And matcha does still have caffeine (25mg vs 150mg+ for filter coffee). Since I was there, matcha was local, I made a point of only having matcha or hojicha (roasted green tea).
Since I had already kicked my decades old coffee addiction, making this transition wasn’t very difficult. I also noticed after 4–5 days that I was clearer in the mornings, with no “gotta have that first cup” craving/fogginess that comes with coffee. Matcha is well known for it’s mental clarity qualities (and health benefits) which I won’t go into here. After 2 weeks I ordered some brewed coffee, and after half a cup I was sweating, felt jittery and my stomach ached — I realized in that moment that coffee and I don’t mix, and that was that. I haven’t looked back.
Dropping coffee appears to be permanent this time, because I made a lifestyle change by substituting it with matcha. I still have a cup of warm liquid in the mornings, but it only has 25mg of caffeine, and I only have one, sometimes a second one on weekends. This is still only 50mg of caffeine before noon vs 2–3 cups of coffee with 150mg of caffeine each.
I wake up feeling clear headed, with no craving for a cup of coffee (or matcha in this case). If I don’t have anything, it’s ok. Not having coffee a few years back was catastrophic — instant headache and irritability.
Quitting coffee is hard. But if you really want to improve your sleep and mood, you should do it.
There you have it — three key tips to improving your sleep: ZMA, mattress topper and quitting coffee. Good luck.
Originally published at http://jasonball.com on March 26, 2017.
