How to sleep like a champ [Full guide].

Published in

Hapi Wellness

5 min readDec 13, 2016

Sleep is one of those things we all know we need more of, yet continue to neglect. Optimising one’s sleep is the single-most effective performance enhancer known to mankind. Sleep gives you more energy during the daytime, improves your mood, helps you recover from physical activities, improves your immune system and just makes your body run smoothly.

Below are some simple tips that will help you get better sleep and wake up feeling on top of the world.

1. Circadian Rhythm

We all have a built in clock called a circadian rhythm. It’s a 24-hour biological system that regulates our lives from a high-level, and governs certain highs and lows during each day. Overall, it gives people a baseline for the best time to wake-up, the best time to concentrate, and the best time to go to sleep.

Tips:

Go to bed around the same time every night.
Have a protein rich meal for breakfast, and aim to consume most of your daily carbohydrates in the morning too.
Avoid eating too much immediately before bed.
Expose your body and face to the sun early in the morning, and don’t expose your body to any light before bed.
Do not workout less than three hours before bed-time.

2. Sleep Cycles

Next up and directly related to circadian rhythm’s are sleep-cycles. Sleep cycles are a specific area of the circadian rhythm process (the part when we’re sleeping).

Tips:

Track and optimise your sleep using an app like Sleep Cycle.
Use the app Reporter to track daily activities by filling out a quick 60 second survey every day. In addition you can use Mood Notes to track how you’re feeling. Knowing all of these factors is important, as it helps you to understand what’s impacting your sleep.
Stop setting alarms! This will be the best thing you can do for your body. Try and let yourself wake up naturally, as your body knows when it’s the right time to wake-up. Using an alarm disrupts your natural sleep cycles in a very harmful way.
If your job does not give you the flexibility to come in at varying times each morning then you can use the previously mentioned Sleep Cycle app, which will track your sleep pattern and wake you up when you’re in a light sleep, instead of interrupting a deep sleep. However if you have a little money to spend, we suggest using a light-based alarm instead of Sleep Cycle, as emulating the light exposure of the sun is a very effective way to wake your body up more naturally. A great way to do this is by purchasing a LIFX light bulb, and scheduling it to slowly get brighter each morning to wake you up.

3. Environment

A very well studied side of environmental factors when it comes to sleep is light. Our bodies respond to light in very predictable ways, on a chemical level.

Tips:

Grab some blue light blocking sunglasses and wear them after the sun sets (or from around 6–8pm), and leave them on until you wish to fall asleep.
Though blue light blocking sunglasses are a good start, they only block blue light from your eyes. It’s important to block blue light from your entire body, otherwise you won’t get the full effect. Use a free app like Flux that gives your screen an orange undertone, and set it to activate a good 4–6 hours leading up to bed.
Turn on night shift mode on your iPhone or Android, so that the screen is dimmed and turns to an orange undertone at night.
Fully block out any light in your room before bed. This includes any L.E.D lights from chargers and electronic devices. If you were to put your hand in front of your face, you should not be able to see it.
Reduce noise to prevent being interrupted or woken up during the night. A great way to achieve this is by grabbing the sound reducing HiberMate sleep mask.

4. Supplements

In addition to all of the habitual practices mentioned above, you can take several supplements that will help ease you into a calm and sleepy state before bedtime. Note that we only recommend people use supplements after they have incorporated all of the above, as supplements are not a shortcut to make up for poor habits. Rather they are more of a bonus.

Tips:

Lemon Balm: Consume this about an hour before your desired sleep time. This will help to de-stress you. It will have a small sedative effect too.
L-Theanine: This can be ingested one hour before bedtime. This will reduce stress, increase relaxation and help you drift off to sleep.
Melatonin: Melatonin is produced naturally in your body to make you feel sleepy, and can be bought as a supplement. Though many products are sold in a 5–10mg dosage, we recommend a safe dosage of 0.3–1mg per night, depending on how you respond.