11 Tips To Sleep Better Tonight

I was in college when a video titled "How Bad Do You Want It?" went viral.

It featured an NFL prospect, Giavanni Ruffin, in training sessions soundtracked by an Eric Thomas speech.

It's a motivational piece of content. 

In the speech, Thomas says that when you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, that's when you'll be successful.

"I'm here to tell you that number one, most of you say you wanna be successful but you don't want it bad, you just kind of want it. You don't want it more than you wanna party. You don't want it as much as you want to be cool. Most of you don't want success as much as you want sleep."

Thomas continued to compete success with sleep.

"I'm here to tell you today, if your going to be successful you gotta be willing to give up sleep. You gotta be willing to work with 3 hours of sleep, 2 hours of sleep. If you really wanna be successful, some days you're gonna have to stay up 3 days in a row. Because, if you go to sleep you might miss the opportunity to be successful."

At the time, I was a Division 1 college athlete with hopes of making the NHL. I feared missing an opportunity to be successful. 

My life was 5 am wake-ups, two-a-days, and 8-hour bus rides followed by morning practices. I thought exhaustion was a requirement for success.

Sleep was sacrificed under the impression that it gave me an advantage. 

Today, I recognize how foolish I was to subscribe to the words of Mr. Thomas. Confusing his motivational message for proven peer-reviewed science.

If you want to be successful, you need to prioritize sleep. 

You need to want to sleep, more than you want to be successful.

11 ways to sleep better tonight

In the same way that you don't need a gym to exercise more, or an Instapot to cook healthier, you don't need to spend money to sleep better. 

What any individual needs is education. 

Thankfully professionals have dedicated their lives to this and distilled an actionable list of 11 ways to sleep better tonight, and for nights to come. 

Have a sleep schedule

Going to bed and waking up at the same time of day is perhaps the single most effective way of helping improve your sleep. Establish a regular bedtime and wake-up time, even on weekends. 

Move for 30 minutes

Try to exercise at least thirty minutes on most days but not within two to three hours before your bedtime.

Avoid caffeine

Adenosine is the chemical responsible for sleep pressure. Increasing in concentration with every waking minute that elapses, when adenosine concentrations peak, an irresistible urge for slumber will take hold. You can, however, artificially mute the sleep signal of adenosine by using a chemical that makes you feel more alert and awake: caffeine.

Caffeine is the most widely used and abused psychoactive stimulant in the world. Caffeine works by successfully battling with adenosine for the privilege of latching on to adenosine welcome sites - or receptors - in the brain. Once caffeine occupies these receptors, however, it does not stimulate them like adenosine, making you sleepy. Rather, caffeine blocks and effectively inactivates the receptors, acting as a masking agent. By hijacking and occupying these receptors, caffeine blocks the sleepiness signal normally communicated to the brain by adenosine. Caffeine tricks you into feeling alert and awake, despite the high levels of adenosine that would otherwise seduce you into sleep. And, it's not just coffee that has caffeine. Many teas and chocolate contain the stimulant caffeine. 

For the entire time that caffeine is in your system, the sleepiness chemical it blocks (adenosine) nevertheless continues to build up, so when the caffeine wears off, five to seven hours later due to caffeine's average half-life, a mighty crash follows.

Let's say that you have a cup of coffee after your evening dinner, around 7:30 p.m. This means that by 1:30 a.m., 50% of that caffeine may still be active and circulating throughout your brain tissue. This is why experts in the field warn of caffeine post 2 p.m.

Give booze a break (permanently)

The most misunderstood of all "sleep aids" is alcohol. Many individuals believe alcohol helps them to fall asleep more easily, or even offers sounder sleep throughout the night. 

Both are resolutely untrue.

Alcohol sedates you out of wakefulness, but it does not induce natural sleep. The electrical brainwave state you enter via alcohol is not that of natural sleep; rather, it is akin to a light form of anesthesia.

Alcohol fragments sleep, littering the night with brief awakenings. Alcohol-infused sleep is therefore not continuous and, as a result, not restorative. Unfortunately, most of these nighttime awakenings go unnoticed by the sleeper since they don't remember them. Individuals, therefore, fail to link alcohol consumption the night before with feelings of next-day exhaustion caused by the undetected sleep disruption sandwiched in between.

Alcohol also often suppresses REM sleep, especially during the first half or two-thirds of the night. You don't have to be using alcohol to levels of abuse, however, to suffer its deleterious REM-sleep-disrupting consequences. People consuming even moderate amounts of alcohol in the afternoon and/or evening can inadvertently deprive themselves of dream sleep.

A message to all those considering keeping some booze in the social schedule from Matthew Walker is this:

"It is hard not to sound puritanical, but the evidence is so strong regarding alcohol's harmful effects on sleep that to do otherwise would be doing you, and the science, a disservice. Many people enjoy a glass of wine with dinner. But it takes your liver and kidneys many hours to degrade and excrete that alcohol, even if you are an individual with fast-acting enzymes for ethanol decomposition. Nightly alcohol will likely disrupt your sleep, and the annoying advice of abstinence is the best, and most honest, I can offer."

Perhaps swap in a nightly non-alcoholic beverage instead, they've gotten pretty delicious!

Avoid large meals

Avoid large meals and beverages late at night. A light snack is okay, but a large meal can cause indigestion, which interferes with sleep. Drinking too many fluids at night can cause frequent awakenings to urinate as well. 

Avoid medicines

No past or current sleeping medications on the legal (or illegal) market induce natural sleep. If possible, avoid medicines that delay or disrupt your sleep. Some commonly prescribed heart, blood pressure, or asthma medications, as well as some over-the-counter and herbal remedies for coughs, colds, or allergies, can disrupt sleep patterns. For those having trouble sleeping, it's recommended to talk to your health care provider or pharmacist to see whether any drugs you're taking might be contributing to your insomnia and ask whether they can be taken at other times during the day or early in the evening.

No naps after 3 pm

In The Blue Zones Solution, Dan Buettner lays out a proven plan to maximize your health based on the practices of the world's healthiest people. One of the habits of the world's longest-living people is napping.

These short-mid afternoon naps common in many of the Blue Zones regions represent biphasic sleep: one longer bout of continuous sleep at night, followed by a shorter midafternoon nap.

All humans, irrespective of culture or geographical location, have a genetically hardwired dip in alertness that occurs in the midafternoon hours. These naps are encouraged by Walker, "when we are cleaved from the innate practice of biphasic sleep, our lives are shortened, from a prescription written long ago in our ancestral genetic code, the practice of natural biphasic sleep, and a healthy diet, appear to be the keys to a long-sustained life."

Just not after 3 pm. Late afternoon naps can make it harder to fall asleep at night.

Don't lie awake in bed

If you find yourself having a particularly difficult time getting to sleep, don't lie awake in bed. If you find yourself still awake after staying in bed for more than twenty minutes or if you are starting to feel anxious or worried, get out of bed and do something quiet and relaxing until the urge to sleep returns. 

The anxiety of not being able to sleep can make it harder to fall asleep.

Walker also suggests removing visible clockfaces from view in the bedroom, preventing clock-watching anxiety at night.

Relax before bed

Don't overschedule your day so that no time is left for unwinding. A relaxing activity, such as reading or listening to music, should be part of your bedtime ritual. It's important to remove screen technology from the bedroom. A TV, cell phone, or computer in the bedroom can be a distraction and deprive you of needed sleep. Though short vertical videos can be enjoyable, they aren't relaxing for your sleep. 

Meditation is also a proven method of mental deceleration that reduces anxiety-provoking thoughts and worries, which can be practiced before bed. 

Temperature control

Take a hot bath before bed. The drop in body temperature after getting out of the bath may help you feel sleepy, and the bath can help you relax and slow down so you're more ready to sleep. 

Have a cool bedroom, you sleep better if the temperature in the room is kept on the cool side.

Sunlight exposure

Have the right sunlight exposure. Daylight is key to regulating daily sleep patterns. Try to get outside in natural sunlight for at least thirty minutes each day. If possible, wake up with the sun or use very bright lights in the morning. Sleep experts recommend that, if you have problems falling asleep, you should get an hour of exposure to morning sunlight and turn down the lights before bedtime.

Sleep is the single greatest investment an individual can make during their lifetime. These 11 tips are proven to help you get a better night of sleep tonight, and for many nights to come. 

_____________

Sources

• Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
• NIH Medicine Plus The Magazine

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