You know you need a minimum of 7 hours of sleep but how do you make sure you get them? I know staying off a screen will help me sleep better but I don’t always stay off or wear my blue blocking glasses once the sun goes down. We don’t have to be perfect, we just have to progress. Maybe you get 3 nights of better sleep and you notice how good it feels to be well rested and you decide to go for more good nights. Maybe you don’t care. That’s okay too but if you don’t care you probably are not listening to this.

Just know, the more and better sleep you get before your coach turns back into a pumpkin is that much more sleep that provides you with physical rejuvenation and that increase in growth hormone which happens until around 2 am.

First up- schedule your sleep- shoot for going to bed around the same time every night. My goal is to be ready and in bed by 9 am in the summer because daylight starts around 5:30am.

Next, we want to start to tune ourselves into the diurnal rhythm, the rhythm of night and day. It isn’t the same thing as the circadian rhythm which occurs within your body naturally. Diurnal rhythms need the rising and setting of the sun to do their job. So you have to expose your eyes to the light, both morning light and sunset and avoiding the blue light and artificial light in general.

Staying up past sunset messes up both circadian and diurnal rhythms telling the body that it still needs energy to survive. This will then affect your blood sugar levels, ghrelin will increase telling your body you are hungry resulting in over eating or eating way past dinner time.

Have you heard of sleep debt? It is when you spend too much time awake, not sleeping when you should be and creating a debt of sleep time. A couple nights here and there are not so harmful but long term lack of sleep will result in long term health effects. You are more susceptible to autoimmune disease, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and other chronic health problems when your sleep regularly suffers.

You can’t catch up on your sleep on the weekends either. You may feel rested after a weekend of sleeping better but your body has suffered the hormonal consequences that won’t right themselves after a couple of days of ‘being good’.  Your brain may feel better but your body on a metabolic level has not recovered.

You have to play the long game to fix this chronic damage. You can end up with an elevated HbA1c which is really a marker of inflammation and cardiovascular issues more than one of blood sugar dysregulation. If you don’t fix the chronic damage, you are at higher risk for high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, obesity, and depression.

If you regularly feel groggy in the morning, you likely have a disrupted circadian rhythm likely due to lower cortisol levels in the morning. If you generally get enough sleep, you will find the groggy feeling going away within 10-15 minutes of waking, if not, it can last for hours. The best and cheapest way to fix that is to get that morning light exposure and have a consistent bedtime and awakening time.

Quality of sleep also needs to be focused on. If you go to bed after midnight on a regular basis you are missing out on growth hormone secretion so you will feel less rested than someone who went to bed by 10pm or earlier. Many people get a second wind if they force themselves to stay up when they are tired. You then miss that healing time window that occurs between 11pm and 2am and likely it is more difficult for you to fall asleep.

We don’t need to be so strict with our bedtime that we just don’t enjoy life anymore and you might even stress out about it. That is not the point of me giving you this information. I truly believe that knowledge is power and when we know better we can do better. So you now know better about how to make sleep a priority. If it doesn’t happen every night, it isn’t the end of the world.

Do you have to completely avoid coffee or caffeine in order to sleep your best? No. We all process caffeine at a different rate so you may tolerate it more than someone else and you might be able to have a cup of coffee after 3pm and be able to fall asleep no problem. One time I ate too much dark chocolate after dinner and had a really issue falling asleep because of it. Learn how your body responds and then act accordingly.  It can take anywhere from 2 hours to 12 hours to metabolize caffeine - it just depends on how your body processes it.

If you get jittery or anxious from caffeine, or if you have trouble falling asleep at night you might process it more slowly than someone who doesn’t. If so, avoid caffeine in any form, including dark chocolate around 6 hours before you plan to go to bed.

What else affects sleep negatively?

Cannabis, alcohol, and nicotine are all depressant substances that are often used as sleep aids because they cause you to feel relaxed or drowsy. The real effect is a sedative effect and not a support of your internal clock. These substances disrupt the normal homeostatic sleep cycle and the hormonal shifts that should be occurring. This results in less sleep at a poor quality. Avoid these substances 3 or more hours before sleep.

Shift workers really get the shaft when it comes to quality sleep. It is well known that people who do shift work are more susceptible to cancers, diabetes and other health issues because that circadian and diurnal rhythm is effected when one must be awake all night long. One way to mitigate the potential health issues from shift work is to prioritize that sleep schedule to be as consistent as possible- trying not to flip flop your sleep when on a week of nights and just stick to a night work sleep schedule the whole week.

What kinds of things can you do to promote a healthy sleep cycle?

A good diet- nutrient dense with a balance of carbs, protein and fats. This will not only keep you healthy, keep your weight managed, allow for better stress management, better physicality, disease prevention, and help us sleep well.

Avoid large meals right before bed. Remember if the body has to digest a big meal before you sleep, it keeps your body temp from dropping like it should and will get in the way of all the things your body is supposed to be doing, like repairing tissues, while it sleeps.

Avoid going to bed hungry so your blood sugar doesn’t get disrupted. This can make it harder to fall asleep and stay asleep.

Find out if you are deficient in Magnesium. This mineral promotes good sleep. Foods with magnesium include banana, nuts, seeds, leafy green veggies and dark chocolate though I’d probably just go for cacao beans over dark chocolate to avoid the sugar and don’t eat them at night so they don’t keep you up. Tart cherry juice is often recommended for a food source of melatonin and it is also a gate keeper of inflammation so it is a win win.

That warm glass of milk your grandma might have told you to drink before bed is also good for supporting good sleep so if you can tolerate milk, casein in particular, then you can also try that. It is actually hydrolyzed casein in supplement form that is the optimal thing to consume here.

Apples and nut butter, a sweet potato with butter and cinnamon or a banana with some honey or cheese and nuts are good combos of a complex carbohydrate eaten with a protein and/or fat food that can help keep blood sugar balanced before bed so you sleep better and longer.

Do you eat anything in particular at lunch time that helps you avoid that afternoon crash? Think about that and try it in the evening to prevent blood sugar crashes in the middle of the night. As long as it isn’t coffee!

I already mentioned to stop eating 2-3 hours before bedtime which will begin our fast overnight that we break with breakfast. We are not fasting into the late morning or afternoon, just overnight which should be 12 or so hours. No intermittent fasting- it isn’t the best type of thing for women and most definitely not women over 50.

Alcohol feels sedative at first but it increases glutamate which is stimulating so we might end up tossing and turning all night long keeping us from getting to REM sleep. No REM sleep means our brain isn’t securing those memories, repairing tissue or removing waste from our cells. This is why we feel the way we do the next morning when we drink.

You can drink mineral water between drinks and then have some kind of tea that will support your liver such as dandelion root or milk thistle or even nettle tea. This can help reduce the effects of too much alcohol.

Practicing good sleep hygiene will help you get better sleep.

If you can’t get morning light, try a light therapy box. I use the Bright Minds Therapy Lamp by BrainMD which you can get on Fullscript using the account you have set up through my link and you will get a discount on it. These light boxes expose your skin and eyes to light that mimics the effects of natural light. Try using it at the same time every day for a bit longer than you would normally be exposed to light outside. It is a really nice thing to have in the winter when the sun doesn’t shine much.

You can sign up for a fullscript account at https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/hfh

Next up- work on a routine at night where you can wind down and can really be anything you want that helps you relax. I’m not a bath person but if you like baths, try a bath with epsom salts and lavender oil, maybe restorative yoga, reading something that is not stimulating or anything that will anger you. I bought the book by RFK Jr. called The Real Anthony Fauci which I cannot bring myself to read because I have heard it has some really disturbing things in it about science experiments done on foster kids in New York and so it isn’t something I’d want to read at night which is what I do to wind down. Side note- didn’t bring that up to be polarizing in any way. If the stuff in that book was not true, RFK Jr. would have been sued. He has not.

You can try meditation which will put you into para sympathetic mode or rest and digest mode as long as you don’t stress out about whether or not you are doing it right. Just breath and notice your thoughts but let them pass by.

Exercising in the morning hours can help regulate your cortisol better but don’t sacrifice your sleep to get it in if you don’t have to. That kind of defeats the purpose.

The one we all know to do is to manage stress. Not always that easy but it is important to work on that so you get better sleep.

What is your bed like? What position do you sleep in? These things can impact flow of blood and oxygen, stability of your spine, and even your digestion.

While sleeping on your side may not be good for wrinkles it is better for your body. If you need pillow supports between your knees or for your lower back, give that a try.

Keep your room at around 65 degrees if you can. Warmer temps make it hard to fall and stay asleep because your body can’t cool down. You can get black out curtains or wear and eye mask. For years I had to wear ear plugs to quiet the snoring going on next to me. Now I sleep in a different room because it became life changing for me. I got great sleep and my thyroid labs improved that year and they have been great ever since. I can’t wear ear plugs anymore because the ringing in my ears has gotten so much louder that I have to do a white noise machine to drown out the tinnitus.

If you can’t fall asleep or stay asleep and you are laying in bed for hours, wide awake- get out of bed and change rooms. Avoid watching tv to distract you- write out what is on your mind keeping you awake, do something relaxing.

During the lockdowns, my daughter was doing school work and everything else in her bedroom and she got depressed. Dont’ do your work and sleep in the same place if you can help it.

Some supplements can be stimulating too so they should be avoided after 1 or 2 pm. B vitamins for sure should not be taken before bed, vitamin C and some of the adaptogens like ashwagandha, ginseng, rhodiola, and mushrooms like cordyceps can be stimulating so be mindful of these.

You can take some supplements to help sleep too. The sleepytime teas are good options. I will make a concentrated shot of the sleepytime tea if I am too stimulated to fall asleep. That way I’m not drinking a cup of tea and having to go to the bathroom 3 hours later. Try passionflower, lemon balm, chamomile, lavender and essential oils of ylang ylang, bergamot, sandalwood, vetiver, and copaiba for help in relaxing and promoting sleep.

Magnesium in the form of magnesium glycinate would be my first recommendation. Many people are in need of it though you can have a blood test to know for sure. It is needed for so many processes in the body that most people need it. It won’t hurt you to take it.

Chamomile helps relax the central nervous system by helping GABA. You can grow it in a pot or garden and eat the flowers or make tea from them. Or you can just buy tea.

L-theanine is a common sleep aid that is found in tea leaves and helps calm the CNS.

Vitamin B 6 also calms the CNS but avoid the B vitamins later in the day so take this one in the morning or by noon or 1pm.

Tart Cherry Juice was mentioned already as a way to boost melatonin. Try this before taking a melatonin supplement.  Melatonin is a hormone so you want to avoid taking it regularly unless doing so for other purposes. It has been found to be helpful in covid and in improving heartburn due to sphincter issues between esophagus and stomach.

Phosphatidylserine helps improve cortisol or right its secretion so it isn’t too high at night. You can also get it from fish, eggs, and organ meats.

Skullcap is an herb that you can take but it takes time for it to work.

Valerian root is more powerful than skullcap as a sedative but it can stimulate some people.

5HTP is made from tryptophan and is a precursor to serotonin and can have a sedative effect and can increase REM sleep. This is not one you should take without working with a practitioner. Long term side effects are not well known.

GABA is likely a waste of money as it is thought the supplement does not cross the blood brain barrier where it would have the best effect.