How to Sleep Fast
Learn how Lights, Temperature, and Relaxation all impact your sleep quality
A good night’s rest resist on two pillars; There’s the amount of sleep( 7 to 9 hours for the average adult) and the sleep quality.
Unfortunately, many are aware of the former. But don’t pay much attention to the latter. It’s a good benchmark to start with the amount. But we should realize sleep quality is equally important.
The reason being is that you can still sleep for 8 hours but if you wake up every night. You won’t feel well-rested.
I know from experience how difficult sleep can be. A situation that’s very known to me is, waking up for no reason and thinking: “I can’t believe it’s 2 am, and I’m still awake!” while I stare at my alarm clock. Hoping I would catch my sleep again. But oftentimes that doesn’t happen. What ended up happing instead was getting more stressed out.
That’s why in this article, I want to put sleep quality more into the spotlights. Tell you more about why it matters. And beyond that, give you the tools you need to improve your sleep quality. So you don’t come to work like a zombie
What is sleep quality, and why it matters?
There are two take-home messages when it comes to your sleep quality:
1. A consistent bedtime and wake up time( Unfortunately, that also means in the weekends. There’s no such thing as sleep debt)
Our body loves rhythms. Underneath our human physiology, the cells in our brain, liver, heart, and other organs know perfectly well how to track time. But unlike a swiss watch, your body possesses several of biological clocks. These clocks work together and influence your internal master clock called your circadian rhythm, which repeats itself after approximately every 24 hours.
Your circadian rhythm( sleep-wake regulation) is essential. Without it, many systems in physiology would go haywire; To name only a few, think of hormone regulation and metabolic processes
You can experience this if you travel a lot. Jet lag is nothing more than your circadian rhythm being out of balance. After you adapt to the new time zone your body is back on track.
Taking care of a consistent wake-sleep schedule is undeniable important.
2. Continuous sleep during the night
You may think that less sleep isn’t that serious. But the data shows otherwise. Even though let’s say you sleep 6 hours (instead of 8), that would mean a 25% of sleep loss. Which doesn’t sound bad? Well, not so fast. As in turns out, you could be losing up to 70% of all REM sleep. That’s because most of your quality rem sleep occurs in the second phase of the night.
To make sure you get a night of consistent sleep. I have put together some tips on how to this. So that by the time you go to bed. You will fall sleep fast and stay asleep.
Lighting
“Light is probably one of the most underappreciated factors that is contributing to poor sleep.”
When you use devices such as Ipad. You may feel a wide awake. That’s because these devices send out light in the blue spectrum. Blue light tells your hypothalamus to release certain daytime hormones. Instead of preparing yourself for sleep. You tell your brain it’s still day.
This study acknowledges that. The researches saw a 50% drop in melatonin in patients (aka you lose 50% signal of sleep timing), and your peak melatonin will arrive 3. Typically melatonin rises naturally between 10 pm, and 2 am when it gets darker. At the same time, Cortisol goes down.
At 10 pm, your body goes through a transformation following the rise in melatonin production. This transformational phase of sleep is associated with an increase in the “internal” metabolic activity that is responsible for the repair and restoration of your body. A reduction of your mental and physical activity is necessary for this 10 pm shift to occur. If you are still awake, the “second wind” phenomenon occurs at 10 pm because there is a rise in mental activity and energy at this time. However, the real value of the “second wind” can only be experienced if you are asleep by 10 pm.
The cycle of melatonin. Image credit: Why We Sleep
If you think you can go around a blue light by directly buying blue-blocking glasses. You would be right. However, It’s not that simple
Devices such as Ipad, iPhone can cause sleep procrastination. The dependency on technology causes an alertness spike: Surveys suggest many kids wake up during the night to check phones or social media. It triggers Anticipatory anxiety
What most people do, first thing after they wake up(including me), is to check their phones. They unlock this world of stress that comes flooding in through their phone(Emails, texts, social media, etc.)You essentially are training your brain to anticipate that wave of fear every morning. That anticipatory expectation in the morning lessens the amount of deep sleep that you get.
You end up sleeping in a shallow state, and you don’t get the same amount of deep sleep. And the higher the anxiety that there is coming in the next morning, the higher the reduction in deep sleep that you have the night before
We are mostly living in a “dark-deprived society,” and our lighting is fooling our brain into thinking that it’s still daytime
Dusk would usually tell our brain to release melatonin to get us prepared for a healthy sleep cycle
Quick Tips:
- Simply switch off most of the lights starting 90 min before bed
- Avoid blue light (e.g., iPhone/iPad screens and LED bulbs)
- Longer wavelength light (“blue light”) puts the breaks on melatonin release more so than the warmer colored lights
- Why? ⇒ One theory is because we evolved in the ocean and the view that we used to help regulate our circadian rhythm to bring us awake was the sun shining through the water (“blue light”)
- Some people will go to the extreme of installing red bulbs to eliminate all blue light in the evenings…
- But for most people, just dropping down half of the lights in the last hour or so before bed will help greatly
Temperature
Most people will exercise very late. Simply because they don’t have the time to do it otherwise. Little do they know what it actually does. Don’t get me wrong! Exercise is good. There’s no doubt about that. Exercise and sleep are more like a two-way street: Not only can exercise give you better sleep. If you have good quality sleep. You will exercise much better.
That’s because when you are underslept, you are less likely to be motivated to be physically active. If you do exercise, you have less force pressure you can generate. Beyond that, you have there’s a reduction in the time it takes you to reach physical exhaustion up to 30%
With enough sleep…
- you will make better food choices
- lower your caloric intake
- increase calories expended
- more motivated to be active
- and work out more intensely
It’s only “when” you exercise that’s more important. If you exercise 2 hours before bed. You increase your body temperature and release endorphins such as Cortisol. It takes a certain amount of time for the body to get your body temperature back to normal. The best time to exercise is morning or afternoon. If you don’t have any other choice. Try to limit the exercise with low-intensity exercise.
Contrary to popular belief, our body temperature isn’t fixed at 37 degrees Celsius. That is merely an average. It varies throughout the day. It rises during the day and goes back down when it gets a night.
Studies have shown that while we sleep, our body temperature can be 1 to 2 degrees lower than the daytime. This makes sense. I remember sleepless nights during ridiculously hot summers.
For you to catch sleep, your bedroom should be ideally 65–68 degrees Fahrenheit. This isn’t an absolute rule.it varies from person to person
But what if this feels too cold??
The problem is that your extremities get too cold in those temperatures. Hack the system by wearing socks or putting a hot water bottle on your feet. You have to warm up your feet and your hands to essentially then evacuate the heat. Use them as massive radiators, and that charms the blood from the core of the body out to the surface, and later it is released. Warming your feet and your hands before bed with socks and hot water bottles means that those feet start to get more blood supply that draws the blood and temperature away from your core. Our core body temperature drops, and that’s great, and when you’re fast asleep and your body is now being cooled by the temperature that you’ve set at night
A hot shower before bed
- A hot shower (or sauna) before bed will bring the blood to the surface
- When your surface is warm, it dumps all of the heat from the core of your body
Our ancestors get better quality sleep during certain times of the year, and in certain climates?
- Best data that we have right now is looking at these hunter-gatherer tribes
- Take tribes that live in warm climates (e.g., close to the equator)
- In winter, they sleep longer at night
- In summer, they sleep less at night
- However, they tend to take naps in summer afternoons to make up for that
“The data favors coldness for longer sleep.”
What should you do?
- Warm yourself up with a hot shower to radiate that heat out and get you to sleep quicker
- Keep the room fresh to keep your body cold throughout that middle section and later section of sleep.
- Then, set your thermostat to rise in the last 15 minutes of your sleep so you will wake up more relaxed and feel less tired.
Relaxation
When you wake up, you want to be a man on a mission; robust, focused, and full of energy. To achieve this, I would recommend two habits: explosive workouts(Tabata or HITT) or Cold showers. You want to shock yourself into wakefulness.
That way your Central Nervous System fires up; releasing Cortisol and Adrenaline to put you into a mode of action
When evening comes around, however, the roles should be reversed. Instead of taking/doing activities to promote engagement. You want to give your mind and body a break. You want your parasympathetic nervous system to be on.
In the last hour before bed, try to find a wind-down routine that involves at least one of the two following:
Meditation
I practice meditation consistently now. It’s particularly helpful for people who struggle with falling asleep due to their mind racing when they get in bed and close their eyes. Not only that. Data shows meditation is very strong with insomnia patients
Journaling
Most people find writing in a journal lame. It’s often considered a waste of time. However, journaling can be powerful. It’s mainly thought crystallized on a piece of paper that can be reviewed later. You can look for patterns in your thinking, and find out what’s underneath your subconscious. Much like what Arthur Fleck did in the joker
Writing/journaling before bed can also decrease the time it takes to fall asleep. Here’s a quick to-do item before you go to bed tonight
Try an hour before bed to take out some paper and just write down all the concerns you’re having and finish with three things you are grateful for
It sounds “hokey,” but “science is pretty impressive.”It has been shown to decreases the time it takes for insomniacs to fall asleep by about 50%.
Studies about mood show when a person is in a negative mood state:
- It takes them longer to fall asleep
- Sleep is worse
If you put them in a positive mood set
- Fall asleep faster
- Sleep is better
*This is why ending your journaling with positivity is important
The point is this: Things that cause stress and anxiety (e.g., emails, social media) not only make it harder to fall asleep even when you’re tired because you are ruminating over negative thoughts (“wired and tired”), but it also releases Cortisol which is a stress hormone that promotes wakefulness (insomnia patients get a spike in Cortisol right after getting in bed)
