How Do I Improve My Sleep?
In This Article:
The Sleep Cycle
What are the benefits of getting 7-8 hours of quality sleep?
What can you do before bed to fall asleep?
Tips to getting better sleep.
The days of pulling an all-nighter and still having enough energy and mental focus to have a successful day are over and running on very little sleep is no longer a badge of honor.
Some people have trouble falling asleep, some people have trouble staying asleep.
Shoot, some people struggle with both!
I used to be someone who struggled with both but now I finally have my sleep dialed in and it helps with my mood, recovery, performance, and more.
I went from struggling to fall asleep and stay asleep for five hours to easily sleeping for eight or nine hours per night.
Improving my sleep duration and quality has significantly improved my life.
Let me help you.
The Sleep Cycle
Your sleep cycle can be looked at in 4 stages, 3 of them are non-REM, and one of them is REM.
Stage 1 - This is the time that you are falling asleep, it usually last from one to seven minutes. Your body is not fully relaxed during this time but the body and brain activities start to slow.
Stage 2 - This is when your body starts to enter a more subdued state which includes a drop in temperature, relaxed muscles, and slowed breathing and heart rate. Brain activity slows but there are short bursts of activity that help resist being woken up by external stimuli. This stage lasts from 10 to 25 minutes.
Stage 3 - This stage is known as deep sleep, it’s also known as Slow Wave Sleep or SWS. Muscle tone, pulse, and breathing decrease in this stage as the body relaxes even further. It’s harder to wake someone up during this stage and it usually lasts for about 20 to 40 minutes.
Stage 4 - This stage is known as REM sleep. During REM sleep, brain activity picks up, nearing levels that are seen when you are awake. At the same time, your body experiences atonia, which is a temporary paralysis of the muscles, with two exceptions, the eyes and muscles that control your breathing. Your eyes can be seen moving quickly in REM sleep, which is how this stage gets its name. Under normal circumstances, you don’t enter the REM sleep stage until you’ve been asleep for about 90 minutes. As it gets later in the night, your REM stage gets longer.
Benefits of Sleep
It’s no secret that you can function better after a good night's sleep.
But a full night’s sleep can improve your immune system, strengthen your heart, improve your mood, increase productivity, improve your performance, and even help with weight loss.
It helps you feel more alert and gives you more energy.
Sleep is also important for memory. Both slow-wave sleep and REM sleep are important for memory formation. Without sleep, memories are effectively kept “front of mind” and not stored contextually. This means that while fresh memories are the clearest, they can also be completely forgotten and poorly recalled.
Slow wave sleep, which occurs in the first half of a normal 6-8 hour night of sleep, is more responsible for storing declarative/explicit memories, or recall of experiences, facts, and events. REM sleep plays a greater role in storing implicit memories, or more unconscious/automatic memories and movements.
If you have a shorter sleep schedule you may find that you are deprived of REM sleep and it may impair learning and skill retention.
Some studies show that sleep also plays a critical role in emotional processing, specifically, behavioral and neurophysiological evidence suggesting that REM sleep plays an important role in emotional processing.
Sleep loss deteriorates both the encoding of emotional information and the emotional memory consolidation processes. Research is also progressively providing new insights into the protective role of sleep in human emotional homeostasis and regulation, promoting adaptive next-day emotional reactivity.
If you are an athlete or someone who works out regularly you will be able to recover better if you get quality sleep. This is when your body repairs itself. Specifically, slow-wave sleep plays a key role in making sleep refreshing.
Hormonal shifts during slow-wave sleep help the body heal and grow muscle and bone. The release of growth hormone reaches its peak during slow-wave sleep.
Just as getting enough quality sleep is important, not getting enough sleep can have negative impacts.
Sleep debt is real so the more days you compound with little to no sleep the worse off you are.
Sleep deprivation can destroy many of the cells responsible for nutrient absorption and processing in the GI tract.
Hunger increases with sleep deprivation and decreased absorption efficiency may result in odd cravings and poor nutrient status.
Sleep is a free tool that you can use to make yourself feel better and healthier.
People with shorter sleep schedules who don’t put more care into maximizing the time that they sleep may find that task memory, skill, and even nutrient absorption suffer.
These things will suffer even if nutrition is under control.
Getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night is important because it increases your chances of getting into REM sleep. REM sleep is where the magic happens.
Do This Before Bed to Fall Asleep
No one ever talks about the importance of a nightly routine.
Everyone has a morning routine to get their day started on the right track, but what about a nightly routine to end your day positively and gratefully?
Make it a point to go to sleep at the same time every night and set an alarm one hour before your bedtime.
Every night when that alarm goes off you know it’s time to wind down.
Get off social media, turn on the night light on your phone, don’t eat or drink anything, and make sure you aren’t watching a TV show or movie that is going to make you anxious.
Another thing that you can do to end your night with positivity is to say or write down the things you are grateful for that happened in your day.
A lot of people who struggle to fall asleep mention that they are thinking about the things that went wrong in their day or the things that worry them. Flip the switch and end the day in a positive frame of mind.
Once you are in bed, do some box breathing or listen to a guided meditation.
This is the box breathing sequence. Repeat this for four to five minutes to get the full effect.
Tips for Better Sleep
Get blackout curtains because darkness helps stimulate the production of melatonin. You can also get nightlights for your bathroom in case you wake up in the middle of the night to go pee you don’t have to turn on a bright light. I have a lumi bowl light which lights up the toilet bowl in the dark and it’s changed my life.
Set your thermostat to 65 so you can sleep in a cool environment. If your house or room is too warm then your body will have a hard time regulating its core temperature throughout the night.
Use blue light blockers or the nightlight setting on your phone if you are using technology a couple of hours before bed. Blue light suppresses the body’s ability to produce melatonin.
Avoid a big meal and avoid drinking a bunch of fluids before bed. The digestion process could disrupt your sleep and waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom will also disrupt your sleep.
Wrapping Up
Now that you know how crucial sleep is for a healthy mind and body and you have the tools to improve your sleep it’s time to put it all into practice.
I know getting enough quality sleep for new parents is easier said than done so if that’s you, you get a pass. But everyone else should be putting sleep at the top of their priority list.
It doesn’t matter if you are an athlete, recreational fitness practitioner, or if you don’t work out at all. You need sleep.
I think I’ve made my case for the importance of sleep so take the above tips and use them to your advantage.
Make sure you have a good mattress and a pillow that you like.
Good night!
PS: If you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments and if you want first dibs on more information like this from me make sure to sign up for my newsletter below.
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