Tips To Optimize Your Sleep Patterns

You’ve heard it before, adequate quality sleep is one of the most important things for overall health. During sleep your body repairs and regenerates itself both physically and mentally. This is crucial for:

• Workout And Injury Recovery And Prevention
• Memory
• Honing Visual And Perceptual Skills
• Replenishing Neurotransmitters And The Sodium Potassium Pump
• Brain Function
• Decreasing Cortisol And Stress
• Regulating Hunger And Satiation Hormones (And Thus Weight Maintenance)
• Immunity (White Blood Cell Activity Increases During Sleep)
• Disease Prevention
• And More!

Optimal sleep is not as simple as just getting 8 hours each night. While that’s a great place to start, your sleep needs vary based on your training, stress levels, age, and the season (we need more sleep when we train harder, are more stressed, are younger, and in the winter).

Therefore it’s important to listen to your body to make sure you are getting enough. The quality of sleep is another important factor to make sure you wake up fully rested and regenerated.

The biggest factor here is understanding and adhering to your circadian rhythm. Our circadian rhythm responds to environmental cues (like light and temperature) to regulate our hormones to make us feel either alert or sleepy.

If uninterrupted by artificial light, our circadian rhythm naturally syncs up with the cycles of the sun and moon. Waking us around sunrise and making us tired a little after sunset. Syncing with nature like this is ideal because our bodies are already designed to function this way.

Here’s some tips to better sync your circadian rhythm with nature and optimize your sleep:

1. Avoid blue light after sunset, especially in the hour before bed! That means avoiding screens and artificial light.

2. Use night shift mode or blue light blocking glasses anytime you do use screens after sunset.

3. Get up and go to bed around the same time every day.

4. Have a dark room for sleeping (any amount of light will inhibit melatonin production).

5. Sleep in a cool room (this mimics the temperature drop at night).

6. Spend time outside in the sun without sunglasses or sunscreen, the more time the better.

7. Go outside first thing in the morning to start your circadian clock.

8. Watch the sunset (this gives off a natural surge of blue light which is an important signal for your circadian rhythm).

9. Be active during the day.

10. Avoid caffeine and stimulants after noon.

11.  Use a water filter that filters out fluoride and don’t use fluoride toothpaste (fluoride calcifies your pineal gland which is responsible for making melatonin, therefore fluoride can inhibit melatonin production). (You can find more info on fluoride here)

12. Relax and avoid stressful things before bed.

13. Make your home as safe as possible to avoid stressing at night.

14. Take short naps during the day if needed (but keep it under 45 minutes and not too late).

I recommend implementing a few of these at a time and adding more once you have those down. If your sleep is really out of wack, be patient as getting back on track may take a little time. However with time and dedication you are sure to get into a good sleep routine!