Sleep 101
FYI: Preparing to have a good night’s sleep, starts in the morning
10 Steps For Improving Your Sleep
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1. Get direct Sunlight Upon waking within 1 hour of rising
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2. If you are a coffee drinker, limit your caffeine intake to the morning (the half time it take for caffeine to move out of your system is 8 hours)
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3. Workout in the morning or before 3 pm as it is stimulating and raises stress hormones that may interfere with production of sleep hormones
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4. Make lunch your largest meal and dinner your lightest with less protein and fats as they take longer to fully digest
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5. Discontinue eating after 6:30 pm and discontinue drinking 1 hour before bed as eating later in the night raises insulin which prevents your body from producing enough of the sleep hormone melatonin needed to get you into deep restorative sleep and will prevent your body from shutting off urine production*.
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6. Reduce light exposure after 7 pm. Dim lights, and put your screens on a night / blue blocking setting. Blue light blocking glasses are useful to prevent blue light exposure that is stimulating and prevents proper production of the sleep hormone melatonin
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7. Wind down before bed. 2 hours before bed be sure to turn off all screens and all stimulating activity should be discontinued for the rest of the night
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8. Implement a relaxing wind down regime to prepare your body and mind for sleep. Talk with your family, read, write in a journal, listen to music etc.
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9. Take a warm bath (close to body temperature). Use epsom salts. This is a therapy that helps bring your body’s core temperature down which will help when you are sleeping to get into deep sleep. Epsom salt provides magnesium to relax the nerves which makes it easier for your body to move into sleep.
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10. Sleep in darkness. (absolutely any light even from electronic devices, should be covered ) and cool room as sensory nerves on your skin are designed to pick up your environmental cues such as light and temperature to determine how much melatonin to produce, if there is still small amounts of light and your environment is warm, the message is “the sun is out so it must be day time not sleep time”, and thus the production of your sleep hormone will not be halted.
Try this if you have a hard time falling asleep:
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- If you find yourself thinking and worrying about things while in your bed, when you should be sleeping then, you must do something to remind your mind that your bed is for sleeping
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Get out of your bed and do something relaxing like listen to music or read or do something boring like fold the laundry or groom your toenails until you feel sleepy enough to go back into your bed and sleep.
If worrying is impacting your sleep you can allow yourself to have a period of time in the day that is designated for worry, however a few guidelines must be followed.
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Your designated “worry time” should be no longer than 30 minutes
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Your designated “worry time” is only for worrying, absolutely nothing else, if you wander off from worry, such as thinking of solutions or reassure yourself, stop note them then bring yourself back to the worrying. Allow yourself to think of all the bad and negative outcomes along with all of the negative feelings that would follow as a result, you can even write it out.
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Be sure to use up the entire allotted time. If you feel you are done start back at the beginning and make sure you got every aspect of the negative outcomes and consequences
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Your designated “worry time” will not be done in your bed (your bed is for sleep not for worrying)
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Do not ruminate over past events, only think about future based worries
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If worries come up outside of your designated worry time, remind yourself that you have a time slot for that
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intentionally bringing to mind distressing thoughts for an allotted period of time can cause worrying to decrease in frequency and make them less distressing over time. It works because it teaches you to delay when and where you worry as well as reduce the amount of worries you have. In the end you have a reduction in stress hormones and better sleep!
If you wake up during the night to pee
*You may have a food intolerance or sensitivity, increase water intake early on in the day, if you are consuming table salt switch to Mediterranean sea salt and eat more celery and celery juice, as well as cranberry juice. This will cleanse your urinary tract.