How To Stop Waking Up Feeling Tired: 7 Tips From a Harvard Researcher

only one in three Americans make healthy sufficient sleep a priority on a night toight basis anywhere between 20 and 50% of Americans struggle with one of two difficulties and that's either struggling to fall asleep or maintain sleep how do you create consistent sleep if something is interrupting your ability to do it here's the dirty secret even if you can't get enough sleep if you can get consistent sleep you're going to do much better than someone that's getting enough sleep but keeping different schedules wait what yes consistency is King wow what is the average amount of

time that it takes to fall asleep we think that we just should be able to crawl into bed and flip our brains off like a switch wrong many of us have bright blue light emitting devices all around us not only our light bulbs but also the devices that we carry around with us if you find that you're a little bit addicted to your phone it's hard to put it down commit to doing putting your phone down 5 minutes before you want to be falling asleep and ideally on airplane mode to say I'm off for the

night this is my time at night for me what is one of your favorite tips in order to get better sleep one of my favorite tips for a great night's sleep is hey it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robins podcast first of all it's just an honor to be able to spend some time with you today right now and I want to acknowledge you for choosing to listen to something that could help you create a better life I just think that's super cool that you're putting yourself first and I have a question

for you when was the last time you had a great night's sleep you know the kind where you wake up and you jump out of bed and you feel so energized and refreshed and focused wouldn't it be great if you woke up tomorrow and you're like oh I feel so great well I'm on a mission to help you feel that exact way because a renowned sleep scientist from Harvard is here in our Boston Studios to prove to you that sleep is your superpower and she has seven simple free and science back tips that will help

you and the people that you love get better sleep and wake up feeling refreshed energized focused and in control doesn't that sound great I thought so so let's do this please help me welcome Dr Rebecca Robbins to the Mel Robbins podcast thank you for having me well I would love just start by having you speak directly to the person listening if they take everything that you're about to share and teach us to Heart what could you expect to change about your life if you follow the advice you're about to give us about sleep today we're

going to cover some of my favorite tips and strategies that are evidence-based and start tonight to get a better night's sleep and if you can make a couple small changes and get a little bit more a little bit better quality sleep I'm biased I'm as sleep scientist but you will be amazed some of the findings include better productivity our relationships improve our mental health improves and then into the long term our research is uncovering that our our sleep every night plays an important role in the quality of our life as we age and also our

risk for neurocognitive decline so so many things can fall in line when we put sleep um really high up on our priority list wow you're here to tell us that there are small things that you can do to help you be a better sleeper and before we jump in and we just start to unpack all the cool things that we can do that are in our control I wondered if we could just zoom out a little bit because when you're feeling tired and overwhelmed and just kind of beaten down by your life can you just

explain as a sleep researcher how working on sleep is going to impact every area of your life you hear a lot now about brain fog about fatigue about low energy levels and people seeking answers online so it's almost like we're focusing on the symptoms instead of the cause and one of the driving forces of some of those symptoms that many people are experiencing is insufficient or poor quality sleep many of us are struggling two out of three Americans are not getting the sleep that they biologically need in a consistent manner um but in addition we

have a problem of poor quality sleep anywhere between 20 and 50% of Americans struggle with one of two difficulties and that's either struggling to fall asleep or maintain sleep so waking up at 2 3:00 in the morning and struggling to fall back asleep and so those struggles contribute to poor quality sleep and our research in our lab has shown that fewer than three in 10 Americans report waking up and reporting that their sleep is restorative and that's what it's all about because if we're spending time in bed and it's not restorative sleep that we're getting

what's the point um but of the behavioral tips and strategies that we'll get into are really how you unlock that restorative sleep that we're all after why do so many people wake up feeling so tired I think the um it kind of comes back to the conversations I've seen them on on social media um interpersonally just it's almost part of the our day-to-day narrative as a society how are you tired you know I hope one day we could flip that um but unfortunally when we do say you know I'm feeling great I'm feeling well rested

that's not often looked as very positively in our society so I I hope that one day that changes um I think we're moving away from the notion of you know I'll sleep when I'm dead we're finally finally kind of I think collectively waking up to the importance of sleep as a population that we still have so far to go um but there used to be this idea of I'll sleep when I'm dead I'll Rob from I'll take hours from my my sleep and magically add it back to my day but that comes at a price

and we could probably all attest to this but if you wake up and haven't gotten enough sleep your body is operating well below its potential not only from our physical health uh our emotional health our cognitive health so many decrements when we're not getting enough sleep um but I think that when we can put sleep at the really high on our PR priority list maybe even at the core of everything that we do and I'm not talking about you know crazy sweeping changes the what's so exciting about sleep is a lot of these are really

small things it's just cutting screens out a little bit earlier in your evening maybe having dinner a little bit earlier doing a couple of the relaxation exercises that we're going to be talking about can offer a number of benefits in terms of our ability to fall asleep and get into the deeper sleep that supports our waking success wow that's so interesting Dr Robbins why do all of these tips and evidence-backed interventions matter so much what's so powerful about sleep it's just this great equalizer um but what's also so interesting is we never receive formal training

about sleep really not in school even medical doctors receive only about 20 25 minutes in the average medical curricula about sleep which is a huge problem when you think about it because so many of us are struggling we talked about some of the numbers and so it creates this culture of you know well if I'm you know my primary care provider doesn't fully understand sleep what might happen is a lot of you know pharmacological interventions and there is a time and a place for that um but what's so interesting about sleep is even in clinical

trials that pit meds pharmacological intervention against Behavior what we find is that the behavioral change when we can successfully Implement some of these strategies that we've talked today that actually wins out in terms of insomnia symptoms with people who are really struggling then the the medications over time which is so amazing I want to make sure the person listening just heard that so in clinical studies when you put medication up against the behavioral changes that we're talking about today that the behavioral changes over time beat insomnia and the insomnia drugs over and over and over

again isn't that so powerful it's really powerful because it tells us that small changes add up over time and that yes you are designed to and you can learn to sleep and get the rest that you deserve and wake up energized and it begins with these small small changes wow how does sleep impact the memory and the Brain Dr Robbins sleep and the brain are really fascinating areas and it turns out that during sleep we not only kind of rinse and repeat and rehearse some of the memories that we took in from the day but

we also start to kind of put them into storage and figure out importantly where they should go in the brain which when you think about it is a fascinating exercise and so so important as we learn things we're exposed to new things and the world around us our brain does this amazing process at night during sleep of you know where should I file this away and importantly what memory should I hold on to and which can I let go because we're exposed to so much information we learn so much now more than ever with our

phones in our pockets the information that we're exposed to is enormous and our brains are amazing but they couldn't it couldn't possibly store all of that information and so there's this fascinating process called pruning that takes place during sleep where we try to figure out our brain what Memories can it let go of and which should it keep and where should those memories be stored and we really are starting to uncover and believe that dreaming is one of the ways that this happens so during during dreaming it's almost like the brain is throwing spaghetti against

a wall to see you okay the events from today where do they fit in our existing networks of the brain so when we put sleep at the center so many positive outcomes come in terms of our learning our memory and for students academic Excellence so if I can like extract what you just said and try to give it back to you to make sure that I'm tracking I always think of this example of like a giant Library so during the day the books are out and they've been given to people to read when you lay

down in bed and you fall asleep that's when the books come back to the library and they get put on the proper shelf and that's your brain learning how to file memories this pruning process is that what you call it yes I love that analogy and maybe figuring out o that book wasn't very well you know widely read so maybe we'll send it to a sister Library got it got so you also prioritize what's important which is so fascinating and then the other thing that you said that I think is really really important to understand

understand oh my God I just had literally like a menopause brain fog thing I must not have gotten a great night's sleep last night cuz I had such a good thing that was what were you just talking about learning memory oh that was it that was it okay see everybody you're not the only one with brain fog we're all here to learn how to sleep better but this is super important that you're basically saying that a critical part of learning and locking in a new skill or a habit happens during sleep and so if you're

having trouble making new habits stick or if you're studying for the series 7 or you're studying for a standardized test or some exam coming up or you've got a huge presentation that you have coming up for work sleep and putting sleep at the center of how you're taking care of yourself helps you lock in the learning helps you perform better that's what you're saying based on the research exactly but when you walk into any college campus any corporate environment you almost hear the opposite people saying oh I'm going to stay up late to crank through

this report I'm going to pull an all nighter to study more to give myself more time let me you know take more hours in my day away from my sleep and add it back to my productivity it really throws that notion on its head right that because all the research shows that when we prioritize sleep our learning improves our productivity improves so the next day you wake up and you're able to accomplish what you would have otherwise done in a fraction of the time terrific that's super clear so we are going to jump into these

seven strategies that you have that will help you become a better sleeper what what is one of your favorite tips in order to get better sleep one of my favorite tips for a great night's sleep is this idea that routine is absolutely Queen and we're really not meant to keep different sleep schedules as human beings um falling asleep at 2: a.m. one night 10: p.m. the next understand how vitally important consistency is in our sleep routines because then our brain and our body starts to understand when it should be tired and you know prepare for

sleep and when it should be awake and then it allows ourselves to better organize ourselves and get a lot out of our sleep episode the best sleep comes when we're getting cons keeping our our sleep times consistent so falling asleep at the same time and waking up as close to the same time as possible so is that takeaway number one that climbing into bed so you have a consistent time that you're signaling that you're going to start the process of falling asleep and having your alarm ring at roughly the same time is one of the

first things we want to do absolutely and I think we're slaves to our alarm clocks yes but we don't really talk about the wind down time it's kind of like a fuzzy idea fuzzy game plan it's not a okay 10:30 is when I'm going to start to power down I'm going to get off my phone I'm going to boil a cup of a small cup of tea herbal tea and then start my bedtime ritual and wind down routine which is an essential part of sleep we always think you know oh you know I now now's

time now now now feels pretty good for sleep but it really it takes time so you are a world-renowned sleep researcher and scientist what is your windown routine my windown routine is one thing that I am very diligent about and it's not complex but I'm very diligent about the time I do my best you know I try to get all my computer stuff done and then I put my boys to bed and then it's 8:30 and then I am switching my mindset and it's time for Mama to go to bed and and there are days

where I need to be working and plug back in but the best case scenario is my boys are down and then I do a couple maybe I clean up a tiny bit around the house I start to turn the lights off and then I go upstairs and I turn my phone off I wash my face I take a shower and then I do one breathing exercise I sit cross-legged on the ground in my bedroom I'm turning lights off as I kind of move into the bedroom and I do one breathing EX excise and I don't

set an alarm but I just kind of do it until I feel like I've gotten rid of that busy mind you know that has served me so well over the course of the day and sometimes that's five times on busier more stressful days sometimes that's seven rounds of this but it's the um the military breathing technique so I breathe in through my nose for a count of four I hold for seven and then I exhale purse my lips for eight and those times are longer than you think right the seven and the eight really like

you're kind of fighting for the breath at the end and that's the benefit of that technique it restricts and restrains the breath and can help calm the heart rate and calm your mind and now while I'm doing that thoughts are flying in because of course of what I forgot to do or I need to do and I come back to this idea of no not now now is my time I've done things for my students my partner my kids all day and now is my time to restore and relax and if anything any thoughts are

still fighting to the surface I write those down at my nightstand so I've done the 478 technique and then I mosy into my my bed I read a couple pages in a book I do um progressive muscle relaxation I clench and release every muscle group starting in the from the toes and I inhale clench and then exhale release and I really kind of add on to that something like something that I'm Letting Go heaviness or a thought that's not serving me and then I say a prayer and I go to sleep and it doesn't happen

every night but that's my ritual and I use the word ritual purposefully because you want to cultivate a ritual a ritual is something you do every time and so it's thoughtful it's you know one two three boom sleep is next um for you listening what are the three things that you can do tonight and tomorrow night and really Institute as your ritual that you you can ideally also take on the road when you travel and be diligent try to do those every single night because then what the brain starts to understand is what comes next

to sleep do you find that in your research that the people that are struggling the most with sleep don't have this windown routine they're not diligent about this ritual and the consistency of it and practicing these steps that help you fall asleep and asleep it's a great question I think it comes back to this idea that we're so used to getting you know what we wanted quick you know quickly you know whether it's our food or a coffee or you know getting a a Subway or an Uber we're used to things happening quickly when we

want them to and our brain is hardwired to Crave consistency to have you know to be able to expect what's to what's coming next m by keeping our schedules consistent by giving our brain that sense of normaly and then sleep you know falling asleep faster into deeper sleep is more within our reach quick question what is the average amount of time that it takes to fall asleep and how when should we get out of bed because it's not happening this is a great question and I think a big area to you know promote awareness about

because we think that we just should be able to crawl into bed and flip our brains off like a switch wrong sleep is a process and so falling asleep actually takes time and More Than A lot of people realize even a healthy sleeper with no problems should take about 15 or 20 minutes to fall asleep and that's countered so many people will say oh you know I I can fall asleep anywhere as soon as I get into the airplane at Logan I'm out you know I'm snoring before literally he hits the pillow and he's like

like God now I've got to like you know try to fall asleep while you're already snoring and so he just like drops in like it's his job and I he might be a little sleep deprived I'd love to talk to him and make sure he's getting enough sleep but if you're able to fall asleep right away it's generally a sign that you're not getting enough sleep same thing if you're starved for food and you sit down and you you know have a huge meal and keep eating and eating it's probably because you're starved for sleep

because it's not you know of course healthy to have enormous meals um and so same thing with sleep if you're starved for Sleep your brain is going to hopefully you're not in a place like driving a car um or anything that would be safety critical but if you're not getting enough sleep sleep will come because it's a biological necessity and so when we go without it our body works desperately to get it so 15 to 20 minutes and that's both for when you climb in at your bedtime when the Bedtime wind down routine happens and

that's also how long it might take you to drift back to sleep if you do wake up in the middle of the night these are such good questions we just wrote a paper on how to help a researchers kind of conceptualize these different steps because they there are a couple right so um the time that you want to be winding down at night maybe you're walking around your house your lights are low you're lighting candles ideally oh my God that's not going on in my house I'm like who didn't turn off the lights where are

the dogs did you lock the door like it's like the shutdown is happening I need to like play some music and light some candles like it is like through bed people I love and I mean you're not alone so many of us right especially with kids and you know other moving Parts um but you know Finding ways to draw a little inspiration from these things right look I'm not saying let's all you know spend two hours in a candlelit environment before but I think this is really what you're doing is you're taking a spotlight and

you're highlighting something that is within your reach to do and when you understand that it is coming from a world-renowned sleep scientist at Harvard that thinking about the way you turn yourself down so I I think about I turn down the house we turn off all the lights I love that you lock the doors the dogs run into their crates and get a little treat you say good night to the kids you make sure the cat's outside hold on this all sounds wonderful B well I don't have any candles you know what I'm saying but

but there is this signaling that happens exactly and look that's actually part of your wind down routine and maybe as you do those things you're consciously looking at it as that you're maybe slowing down your breath you know when the dogs are out you know you're consciously not on your phone you're starting to switch into a different mindset a one that's all about rest and recovery and it's different than the daytime right the day is you know do act execute you know thinking and maybe at night time you draw inspiration from some of the kind

of meditation um world of you know thoughts come into the mind and then come back to the breath say tomorrow and if those are festering those thoughts are festering a great addition to your bedtime routine is writing down anything that's on your mind so powerful because sometimes it's the stupidest little things that keep us awake oh the dry cleaning got to call Mom you know take out take the dogs to the vet and there are things that you can only do sometimes during you know work hours and so writing them down can then you know

I suggest a stack of note cards because then that can also be your to-do list those things that were bothering you that you need to do they're now on a piece of paper and you can cross those off when you wake up oh that's great so you have a stack of like little 5x7 not cards and as you've got all those things that you'd normally ruminate about as you're laying in bed and you can't fall asleep dump them in their little home and then you don't have to hold space in your brain exactly and it's

so powerful and then you start to condition your brain to think not now now's now's my time for Sleep one of the other levers that you say helps us sleep better is a consistent schedule what if you've got young kids kids or you got a puppy that's waking you up or your work is inconsistent like how do you create consistent sleep if something is interrupting your ability to do it this is such a great question and there are so many of these right young kids you know dogs work um I would encourage you to look

at your weekly schedule and find the time that you can protect for sleep and that's going to be the time that your biological clock gets used to and if you can get a little bit more time in in the morning and extra hour go to bed a little bit earlier an extra hour wonderful but if you can protect say it's 12:00 to 6 if you can protect you know 11 to5 be diligent about that and then think about either end of that being kind of things that you could move but have maybe a time you

know if you're a young mother listening for instance and you're like look I'm working I have kids how do I follow this nine hours here's the thing that is the the goal if you can get there wonderful but if you can't give me seven take that first time that you have to be up you've hit your target wakeup time that should be your your alarm for every ideally every day of the week but again life happens we'll talk about how to catch up in a moment but that's your target wake up time and then count

back maybe again if it's only six that you can give me count back six and even if you can't get enough sleep if you can get consistent sleep here's the dirty secret you're going to do much better than someone that's getting enough sleep but keeping different schedules wait what so hold on a second if I can get less sleep but consistently so I'm consistently getting five or six hours of sleep I am going to do better than somebody who's getting eight or nine hours of sleep but an inconsistent schedule and we are talking about situations

where the person is really fundamentally not able to get enough sleep it's not what I recommend but if you're a shift worker if you're a single mom with kids working two jobs and you can't get eight hours of consistent sleep if you can get five consist consistently l or six consistently I really want to move you towards six or seven for your health your well-being your ability to be around for those kids you know if it's um caregiving that that's one of your challenges um and really putting and being diligent you know how many hours

can I give myself because the closer to seven the closer to eight the longer you're going to be around the better the quality of your heart your brain your your productivity your relationship so many positive things when we can put sleep first but if you're looking at you know at a schedule that is tough then yes um consistency is King why is consistency more important than the amount of time you're sleeping it comes back to our circadian rhythm our body and our brain we not built as humans to keep different schedules it didn't serve us

from the standpoint of evolution it served our ancestors from the standpoint of evolution to know when it would be alert so then it could say okay these animals are up at this time and I can hunt for these animals and Forge for these you know berries at this time and then I prepare my meal In the Heat of the day you know these it's kind of you know so silly to compare you know but kind of helps you understand just how important it is and how we're really built and takes a lot of time to

to change our physiology as a species and our technology has really outpaced our you know kind of biological rhythms which are all about consistency and keeping our sleep times the same powering down you know these are things that we don't have for well and what I love is there things that you can do and basically it makes sense because if you are a young mom or a shift worker or something's going on with your parents and so you're in the middle of a period of your life where things are really inconsistent that creates its own

level of stress totally and so being worried about how much sleep you're going to get or this that and the other thing if you can focus on the five or six hours that you can pretty much guarantee that lowers a little bit of stress because now you're focused on what you can control so it makes a lot of sense um what if your partner has a different schedule or snores like crazy or like is just a human furnace and keeping you awake do you recommend that you sleep in a different room this is such a

good question and if you have a partner sleep is a social behavior it's kind of funny to think of it that way but it really is what do you mean by that um you co-sleep largely if you're in a relationship um so it's a social it's a social phenomenon and so if you're partner snores it's going to probably interrupt the quality of your sleep and so I would encourage you to think about you know again kind of putting sleep at the center granted I am biased this is what I do for a living but when

we can do that and really say critically how can we optimize for sleep that will improve your relationship improve your productivity at work how you care for your children so many positive things and then you have to ask yourself am I creating lasting Memories by you know sleeping together with my partner um this term is actually um this is termed a sleep divorce um what I'm about to talk about sleeping separately terrible so negative totally with a better name I couldn't agree more I I have some friends who are like look it's a sleep marriage

it literally is how I'm I'm able to stay in this marriage and a sex bed and then a sleep bed like we need we need to make this sexier in terms of the name of it that's what people did in the Victorian era right and you know even earlier than that and um very wealthy individuals do that Mistresses but I thought that's why they were not sleeping together but um that might have been so you recommend that like just so and ask yourself as a couple like how can we be the best possible couple you

know that we can be how can we be the best parents you know succeed in our careers love each other and you can do that with good sleep and if your sleep is interrupting each others uh maybe one's snoring maybe one keeps a different schedule one's a shift worker if you're able to sleep separately why not and again doing away with this term sleep sleep divorce I think we should coin sleep marriage instead um because again you're just not creating lasting memories when you're sleeping you know sometimes it's nice to cuddle but you could do

that and then slip into your separate bedroom where you're going to get the sleep that will support your personal waking success and again allow you to thrive in that relationship now there are some people for whom that will be challenging maybe you don't have a guest room that you could you know OU your husband or your partner to go to so if that's the situation for you think about the ways that you could buffer against that disruption that your partner imposes on your sleep like a pillow wall and earplugs pillow wall earplugs and um earplugs

that block against 60 DBS or higher so it's just a specific type of ear plug and they have them at the drugstore you know every every drugstore um White Noise they're um you know widely available look into one of these it creates kind of a background level of noise that then can dampen the impact of intermittent noise which is often the challenge right it's someone getting up to an alarm clock or someone snoring I'm try that that's so simple and hearing it from you makes me know that it's actually going to work what is a

circadian rhythm Dr Robins circadian rhythm refers to systems in the brain and in the body that operate and oscillate in an approximate 24-hour cycle and that's because we on earth have a pattern of light and darkness that is 24 hours in duration and so over hundreds of thousands of years we've adapted our internal biological mechanisms to that 24-hour day sleep is one such Rhythm so there's times during the day where we're awake and then times where we're asleep now the reason this is beneficial is largely evolutionary in nature so when it's dark out we can

rest and recover and when it's light out we can be you know operating at our Peak you know working commuting Etc and so our our physiology has adapted to life on Earth and our internal systems are governed by this tiny little region of the brain called the supermatic nucle we call it the kind of central pacemaker of the Circadian rhythm that almost made me want to go super califragilistic right superal or nucleus okay if you ever want to impress someone at a cocktail party that sciency term is the way to do it how do we

say it again supermatic nucleus like say that 10 times FAS supermatic nucleus yes Bravo nailed it so that's the central pacemaker of this this biological clock that we have inside us and what's so interesting is virtually every part of the body operates in a circadian like fashion firing at sometimes and then relaxing and unwinding at other times even down to the cellular level believe it or not so this system this internal circuitry is not meant to make quick changes hundreds of years ago we weren't flying on airplanes all around the world um so understanding that

that internal system really it's like I kind of like to liken it to a big piece of Machinery from World War I that just moves slow like slowly and really that when light changes in our environment it's maybe a couple seconds a day not much more but we fly in airplanes you know we hop in airplanes and fly to New time zones and wonder why we just struggle with brain fog with sleep and it's because there's a mismatch between our internal biological rhythms and the new pattern of light and darkness and social time so the

clock on the wall when you land in London is of course going to be different than your internal biological clock so understanding these principles can better set us up for Success when it comes to our sleep so I have a couple questions this is fascinating first of all so thank you for breaking this down one of the things that you also recommend is getting light in the morning why does this matter when it comes to your circadian rhythm and being a better sleeper so that tiny brain region that we talked about where the Circadian rhythm

is housed is located right behind the eyeball in the brain so the brain takes in information about the presence or absence of light through the eye and then that travels along the optic kaym to the supermatic nucle names here optic kaym super whatever it is very sexy field of study Dr Robins so um so light comes in through the eyes and triggers the supermatic nucleus or the kind of uh cognitive home for our circadian rhythm and then that triggering allows for the secretion of melatonin when we're in the absence of light so we've all heard

that term and it's all over the shelves of every grocery store offering you the promise of good night's sleep but it also is a hormone that's secreted in the brain in this home of our circadian rhythm the supermatic nucleus and that hormone is secreted when we go out into a dark environment and we see the sunet and then meel the process of melatonin secretion begins and that allows us to then sleep then conversely when we wake up that internal circuitry gets a signal Through The Eyes that travels to that brain region that says oh all

right melatonin you're done it's time to become alert and awake and going outside to get some natural sunlight in the morning is really vitally important because that's stops the floodgates of melatonin and triggers the brain to say ah all right we're in the awake phase of our circadian rhythm so what happens if you step outside and it's a cloudy or rainy day no problem does still work no problem because it's amazing the power of sunlight in our environment and so even if it's a cloudy day getting outside will get you the sunlight exposure that you

need into your eyes to stop the floodgates of melatonin and begin your day it's a myth that even on that a cloudy day might hamper that or dampen that ability and how long do I need to be outside so I've rolled out of bed I've opened up the curtains being inside and looking out the windows not enough I got to step outside I got to get the UVS and my eyeballs but how long am I standing out there Dr Robinson great question now I I think it's so important this is so aligned with your work

but meeting people where they are I'm not saying you know we all need to be out you know walking for an hour before we get to work but find a way to fit it into your schedule and think you know carefully where could I get a little bit more sunlight and if that's okay I get up I make my coffee I have to drive 45 minutes and maybe you park your your car farther away from your office building you walk for three minutes four F give me five minutes amazing or if you're commuting on the

subway try to extend another stop walk one more stop before you go underground walk to your coffee or you know park your car instead of doing the drive-thru I think these little micro habits can go so far well I also think if you know that the reason why you're doing this is because you are using UV rays to manually reset the Circadian rhythm in your body to go okay we're starting to practice the thing I'm doing right now when I wake up is helping my body do what it's designed to do which is sleep um

what about for somebody that's listening who wakes up before the sun is even out so are going to work or to school or you live in a part of the world where it's really dark out when you wake up what can you do such a great question and there are more than 25 million Americans who work on shift schedules so work going to work and coming back from work at times that are mismatched with the patterns of light and darkness in our environment and for all of those re the reasons that we just talked about

the importance of sunlight exposure um those individuals can really struggle the good news is there are a lot of technologies that you can buy um and essentially if you're an office employee outside the traditional kind of 9 to5 get one of these lights they that ideally is blue daylight spectrum and you can sit in front of that light turn it on high when you get to the office because what you want to do is you want to trick your body into thinking that that's Sunrise if that's your work schedule you know an early start or

conversely if you're starting your day at you know 9 or 10 p.m. when it's dark uh we'll talk because you're working an overnight shift I've done that and you feel like a zombie is this something though just to make sure because I know people are going to be okay wa is this something you can literally buy at a retailer go on Amazon and just Google blue daylight spectrum light and you can purchase one you don't need a prescription from a sleep researcher um essentially these Technologies are widely available um and if you look for the

um the lights that say specifically they're blue daylight spectrum because we really want that light being strong enough to emulate the Sun and so it can be strong enough that it's actually a treatment for Seasonal effective disorder because it's um some of them are that potent and you sit in front of them and don't stare at it anymore than you would the sun uh but that can be a helpful part of adapting to a shift schedule so let's say the person listening is thinking oh man my I I don't have a consistent bedtime I'm not

looking at the UV I'm all over the place I got to get my circadian rhythm back in place how do you shift or reset your circadian rhythm to a healthy kind of 24-hour cycle really good question I think um one of the key questions to ask yourself is where can I find some normaly in my personal schedule and if you're keeping what we call a yo-yo schedule falling asleep at one time one night another time the next night another time the next night is that in your control is it maybe that just the hours fly

and you're kind of leaning in maybe you're watching another episode on you know streaming and then you know you got an Instagram you know alert and then suddenly you know it's way past your bedtime and you're looking at you know a short sleep window so really ask yourself are you doing this and is it in your control and if you're willing to to try this out what you could do if you you do have control over your schedule look at your typical week what is the earliest time that you have to wake up is it

say 7:00 for an 88 a.m. meeting and that allows you time to get ready and do your commute and get your light exposure and get yes so let's make it 6:45 Sun might not be up then unless it's summertime but um so pick that time and that's your wake time and ideally that's your alarm clock seven days of the week because if we can if we sleep in we really recommend no more than an hour much more than that throws that internal circuitry out of whack wait a minute so if I sleep in on the

weekend more than an hour I'm throwing my circadian rhythm system much more than an hour and we all know this we just went through daylight saving time and that one hour is enough to throw all of us out of sink right so much more than an hour is not recommended um so if you look at your typical week and say you know what is my earliest wakeup time and then you've hit your target wakeup time for the week again sleeping in an hour absolutely fine but much more than that try try to avoid um but

then count back give yourself a full nine hours because our biological need for sleep is individual some people do very well on seven and some people do much better on nine and it's in part genetically kind of hardwired and so if you had two parents that were longer sleepers you're truly sleeping eight or nine hours a night you might be a longer sleeper and then if you had two short sleeping parents you might be lucky and really truly only need closer to seven but if you count back nine that could maybe add a little bit

of time for your wind down routine okay and so those nine hours count down and that's your target fall asleep time or I should say get ready for bed time got it I want to make sure that you hear this because this is the kind of advice that as you're listening or watching us somebody's going be like okay but this is critical because if you you got to stop and think about what is the wakeup time that sets me up to be able to do some of the things that Dr Robbins is going to tell

us based on the research makes us a better sleeper because we are learning that better sleep begins with what you do once you wake up so she's saying once you know your wake up time and I'm going to do some math here because I think it's really important let's say it's just 6: a. that's what you need 6: a. she says count back nine hours and so that means where are we 9 p.m. right and that is the time that you now need to start the wind down routine based on Research that will help you

start to get the sleep that you need so that when you wake up you feel refreshed you aren't so tired you got the benefit of sleep you know I I I I love what you're teaching us because this is within all of our power if we choose to follow it and we choose to try it and so we've talked about circadian rhythm and consistency was a huge takeaway and we've talked also about how one of the big things that we need to do is get this light first thing in the morning or that blue spectrum

light if you need to get it from a different Source if you're not getting outside but can we talk more about light the rest of the day it's a really great question morning light exposure is is helpful and good um but actually getting exposure all o um all across the typical day is vitally important actually in the afternoon it's just as important as the morning so I didn't mean to privilege the morning over the afternoon but instead getting exposure to Fresh FR air and natural light over the course of the day is extremely important to

help our body get information okay we're still in in the Wake phas it's not quite sleep yet and then going into darkness is equally as important as exposure to light during the day because that absence of light does the converse it allows for the secretion of melatonin for the brain to say ah we're approaching bedtime let's start to to power down and so unfortunately um many of us have bright blue light emitting devices all around us not only our light bulbs but also the devices that we carry around with us you know our smartphones our

tablets our computer screens now in a perfect world we would be able to unplug even give me 15 minutes before bed time and you know start small if you find that you're a little bit addicted to your phone it's hard to put it down start with maybe five minutes if you could swipe swipe to airplane mode amazing and I think there's something also powerful about that to say I'm off for the night I might be receiving messages but they can wait until the morning and think about all day long we do things for other people

in our careers and our personal lives we care for children we care for older adults we spouses you know we help and support people in the workplace and that another mindset is you know this is my time at night for me and really consciously purposefully turning your phone off so if you find yourself a little bit addicted to your phone start small try just five minutes before you want to be falling asleep switch your phone off try to give yourself at least a little bit of a buffer and then maybe work up to 15 maybe

work up to 30 minutes now if you're telling me look I'm a student I have work to do I'm a busy professional I have stuff I need to be doing up until the minute I fall asleep I would implore you just to ask yourself is there anything off screens that I can do at night do all your screen work in the during the day and if it's reading a couple emails even and you can print them out or reading a book or you know any anything that you can shift from your work day into nonscreen

time and do that at night so I think there's even to meet a way to meet even the busiest of people where they are Dr Robins you're nice I'm not going to be nice like I think that's a bunch of garbage that you have to be on your phone or on your laptop until you collapse into bed as if you're just going to collapse or fall asleep in bed with your laptop open because you don't have time between the stopping of work and the falling sleep complet compl and utter garbage I really agree with you

I think for all of us even the most busy person honestly if you can't if you can't put your phone on airplane or stick it in the other room and give yourself five measly minutes then don't be coming here and complaining about how tired you are like that that's the thing that you have to understand is that the research is very clear and it's and it's going to be it's going to be very simple I didn't say easy it's going to be simple to put into your life but you've got to want to get a

good night's sleep you've got to want to stop waking up tired and exhausted and so really stop and think if this is you that you're that addicted to work or that addicted to your phone that you cannot carve out 5 minutes you're never going to change this and so I also am going to come back to the math because this is why it becomes really important to get very specific with yourself if you're going to wake up at 600 and you're going to back up the 9 hours like Dr Robbins is telling you to do

and she's also saying you got to have a buffer you got to have a buffer from the last screen time to when you're going to start falling asleep then maybe you need to put an alarm in your phone at 8:45 because that's the time you got to stop looking at the darn thing MH and so anyway you're nice I am not I'm just like you can't complain about something totally and expect it to change you got to do something totally and it comes back to this idea that good sleep actually does take a little bit

of work and it's not going to come easy but we get so frust ated when we're like I'm here I'm trying I'm doing everything but being really critical I love your points about you know what really be honest with yourself right are do you really need to be on social media for 20 minutes before bedtime you don't totally and so that like and and that's the thing like I know we're all tired and we and there's there's periods of your life where there are very real things going on that are beating you up but I

think for most of us most of us need to have a moment of honesty with ourselves that we are making ourselves exhausted we are giving our attention and our brain power over to the phone and social media and to all of these screens and we are not taking the windown routine seriously and so if you are serious about wanting to feel more energized if you're serious about getting better sleep you got to try what Dr Robins is telling you and you're not going to like it because you're used to just kind of going through the

thing it's not sexy you know like I can't I'm not here to say drink a couple glasses of wine online and then you know spend some time on social media um but what really works when it comes to sleep is old school stuff it's getting off of our screens it's powering down you know making a cup of tea I love the Swedish tradition of of Huga this idea of you know warm cozy time before bed the Swedish culture has a word for this and I think as Americans we think you know I'm just GNA write

reports I'm going to send emails until the moment that I want to be falling asleep right and then so many of us wonder why we struggle but even just a couple minutes and then maybe build up to 10 minutes and then maybe 15 and maybe 30 off of your phone or your screens or your laptop before bedtime can do a world of good because that's all those devices are engaging the prefrontal cortex the planning the thinking part of the brain and in many times giving you exposure that mimics the sun right when you want to

be falling asleep so it's this cocktail of sleep Inhibitors really when you think about it so should we be watching TV before we go to bed well some people swear by an episode of Seinfeld or friends or um some people listen to podcasts also and you know that's part of their ritual and I will say if it's not broken don't fix it if that works for you and you don't find that really being honest with yourself it doesn't wake you up because some people uh will maybe fall asleep to that but they maybe they don't

have a timer on and then when you know there's a a louder part of the show it'll wake them up and then they'll go back to sleep and people say oh no no it's fine it's it's what I do every night uh but what we really want to work towards is a night of uninterrupted sleep what happens if you get up in the middle of the night like I used to all the time 214 was my number 214 Mel Robbins up got to go to the bathroom what happens if you're up in the middle of

the night and I know I'm not supposed to look at my phone but I would pick it up and I'd use it as a flashlight and then I'd get to the toilet Dr robins and I'd flip that sucker over and next thing you know I'm surfing social media or checking out text messages while I'm going in the bathroom in the middle of the night what does that blue light exposure do when you look at your phone once you wake up really common and also kind of the the rote procedure of waking up whether it's in

the middle of the night whether it's in the morning and reaching right for your phone it's kind of like an automatic response right that we've conditioned ourselves to do um a couple suggestions for that um try and again this kind of comes back to the idea of these old school tricks but um a nightlight in your hallway uh sensor activated night lights not only for your hallway but maybe also they have them for the rim of your toilet which like a little bit gross but um that allows you to if you have to go to

the bathroom in the middle of the night you know get there well does it make it harder to fall asleep if you look at your phone when you wake up in the middle of the night so the reason I bring up lights is that can guide you and and reduce your Reliance on your smartphone to get to where you need to go yes when it comes to picking up the phone though maybe not for you know the flashlight fun function but just to maybe see if you got any messages you're like I'm up I might

as well be productive or I'm bored or I can't fall asleep so I'm just going to look at my phone done all of these things coming back to that idea of working towards Consolidated sleep so when you get up the next time if this is you know anyone listening the next time take it and stride that's the first thing don't kick yourself because it's so easy to say oh I'm up again and then your cortisol spikes and then it's harder for us to fall asleep take it in stride get up and say oh did I

you know do I need to use the bathroom go to the bathroom and then crawl back into bed resist looking at the phone okay crawl back into bed and try again um and we'll go through a great bedtime routine but every good routine will culminate with a couple final things and if it's prayer for you if it's progressive muscle relaxation clenching and releas releasing different muscle groups if it's closing your eyes when you crawl into the sheets and focusing on one good thing from our day I think that could be one small thing that we

could all do you know and um really benefit from um but focus on one small thing whatever it is that those final steps of the routine that get you to sleep come back to those when you're awake in the middle of the night crawl back into bed do that last progressive muscle relaxation or um kind of gratitude exercise and then try again close the eyes and you know slip off and if that voice again rears its ugly head of you know oh not again not again I'm up that is when you get out of bed

what do get out of bed and this sounds antithetic you're like you're a sleep researcher shouldn't I sit I'm in bed shouldn't I stay here but wrong if we stay in bed and we're tossing and turning either at the beginning of our our sleep episode or if we wake up and struggle to fall back asleep we're starting to associate our bed with stress it's one of the biggest myths people often will tell us on our surveys oh you know if I can if I stay in bed I'll get some sleep it's better right than if

I got out of bed wrong because we start to toss and turn we start to increase the temperature of our bedroom environment which is not good and then we start to identify our bed is a place where we experience insomnia we wake up at 2:14 right and we start to tell ourselves these stories and then they become a reality because now you're training yourself that this is what I do at exactly you're classically conditioning yourself to look at your bed as a stressful place so you want to break that cycle as soon as that voice

comes on and says oh not again I'm up that is when you want to condition yourself instead to get out of bed keep the lights low and go sit in a crisscross applesauce and do a meditation exercise a breathing exercise on the floor or on an armchair read a couple pages of a book ideally with a a lamp that has a kind of a sleep friendly light bulb these are also widely available and not expensive install all sleep friendly bulbs in your room get all of the fluoresence out of there and if you you know

you're really struggling maybe read a couple pages in a book or you know really do anything that's boring it's going to put you back to sleep fold socks I love to say your your spouse will love you do all the boring you know house chores that you find to be soporific save that for when you have some insomnia like symptoms and come back to those so what would you say to somebody who thinks you're a bad sleeper I think first changing the narrative to yourself is the first step to say I got this you know

I'm not a bad sleeper no big deal struggling a little bit it'll come back and we're going to talk about the tools to come to and really have you know in your toolkit when problems rear their ugly head because they do for all of us people always come to me and they're like isn't your sleep perfect I'm like no of course not I'm a mom of two I have a busy career you know a relationship so many things going on for all of us that can hinder our ability to get good quality sleep so number

one changing the The Narrative that you tell yourself and then pulling on some of the levers of change that we're going to talk about try them all let me cut out caffeine and see if that helps let me cut out alcohol let me see if that helps let me move my dinner 3 hours earlier let me out a meditation technique or routine uh to my power down ritual um but trying all of these kind of the sweet and the constellation of healthy sleep strategies that's the second step now if you've done all of that and

really done it because some people are like oh you know I've tried that I've tried that sure um you know oh it didn't work um but really giving it a shot you know thought about a week and really gone Ham on all of these strategies and if you're really still struggling chronically struggling to fall asleep I'm talking 20 or more minutes every single night 30 40 minutes to fall asleep or if you're up every single night can't fall back asleep wired uh or if you're practicing all the dictates of the healthy sleep strategies that we're

going to talk about and you're still like I think I'm waking up those are Sleep disorders and that's where the Sleep strategies will not work and you do need to seek medical attention before you can start to reap the benefits of some of these behavioral tips and strategies terrific that's super clear you know one of the levers that you're teaching us that you can pull based on the research is also temperature temperature is something that can help you fall asleep and how is temperature related to getting better sleep temperature is a really important consideration that's

often overlooked I think a lot of think um you know you want a warm and cozy environment for sleep right you want lots of blankets and you want to be warm and cozy um but if you find that you're waking up maybe in a sweat or with the chills that could be a sign that you personally are not in the right range for you and if you're in the Met menopausal period you might need to be on the cooler side even below the cooler side you know range um 65 or below or maybe look into

some products or things that you could have in your bedroom environment to purposefully cool you further because of some of the the challenges there and air flow is another great strategy in that life stage what does air flow mean generally during sleep at night we want to have mattresses pillows things in our environment that are promoting air flow and temperature regulation anything that's going to be kind of blocking air flow or you know not be breathable would then of course increase temperature I thought breathable meant you pick up the comforter and flap it like a

wing to try to Fan yourself but I know exactly what you're talking about that if it's a fabric that's blocking your ability to regulate your temperature lower core body temperature is associated with sleep onset so that is ideal especially to help us fall asleep but over the course of our sleep at night there are stages where we're not able to here's another fun science term thermal regulate in other words shiver if we're cold or sweat if we're hot and so because of we'll be the fact that we'll be going in and out of different s

stages and in some of those stages we're not able to regulate our temperature you want to be in a Range that's called thermal neutral so about 65 to 68 is generally that range where if you know you're in that stage where you're not able to engage in those you know shivering or sweating you you w you'll be fine because you you're in the the range where you can maintain a an appropriate body temperature so if you were to say we're going to set the temperature in the bedroom to a certain temperature what temperature do you

want the person listening to set their bedroom temperature to tonight for optimal sleep well if you're able to I also think about what temperature it is outside and so right now in Boston it's perfect to have your windows open if you're able to because not everyone is in an environment that they're able to open their window maybe it's Lo loud maybe there are noises outside their window um but if you are able to open the window what an amazing thing right you got fresh air you know regulating um your bedroom environment so be mindful of

the temperature outside but if you're setting you you have um central air think about that range 65 to 68 it's not that wide so maybe start at 65 and if you find yourself too cold then maybe go up to 66 or 67 or 68 so there is a lot of individual preference in that range and also the bedroom environment um and what you have on the bed specifically will matter so if you have a very light blanket then you could maybe get by on um the higher end of the spectrum or if you really like

you know cozy blanket then you might want to go down to 65 can you describe the perfect bedroom to get a better night sleep I love talking about the bedroom because I think it's one place where we could all make small changes and you want to set yourself up for success in your bedroom and I want you really to walk in and feel instantly soothed ask yourself tonight when you walk into your bedroom what in here is stressing me out and remove it if it's an alarm clock that you hate if it's a pillow that

you hate get it out and I think sometimes upgrading theill pillows the mattress are really important sometimes people can't even tell me when they bought their mattress or their pillows and these things do not last forever so like you were saying I loved your comments you know you look forward you snuggle into your sheets and it's this amazing feeling I want you you listening to want that you know so that moment of slipping in and just loving your bed and feeling instantly relaxed and like ready you know ready for sleep and looking forward to it

um but the and the the design of a great bedroom has a couple other things again we talked about temperature hopefully you're in the 65 to 68 degree range dark is also vital our eyelids are some of the the thinnest pieces of skin on our bodies and even light from a cable box or coming through a curtain from light outside your your bedroom environment can be enough to disrupt your sleep believe it or not so I want your bed pitch black walk in tonight after Sunset and you can put tape um masking tape or duct

tape over um any light sources sometimes cable boxes have little lights on them chargers anything that's a a light emitting Source get that out of the bedroom because then a pitch black environment will do you so much good and really set you up for Success from the standpoint of melatonin secreting and all the things that are so necessary to help you fall asleep I love this so tonight when you walk into your bedroom or after you're done listening to this walk into your bedroom what is in there that's stressing you out and I can think

about periods of my life where there were piles of laundry in my bedroom and you know things that I needed to do and all of that stuff that wasn't finished would stress me out MH and so clear anything yeah it's a reminder of your to-do list so declutter your room you want the temperature between 65 and 68 you want to have a pitch black environment and to the extent it's within your reach get get a mattress that you love invest in coziness in your sheets and in your bedding and you know don't be embarrassed if

you've had the same thing for a long time Chris and I just replaced our mattress we've been sleeping on it for 22 years the same mattress everybody so if you are in that camp H your friend Mel Robbins uh just got a new mattress so the key thing is you know if you're telling me of neck pain you know your mattress just isn't supporting you then that's a great time to and if your mattress last 20 years amazing wonderful right keep it so good for the environment by the way these things are not you know

they're full of material that sometimes aren't um you know disposable or um aren't what's the word not disposable recyclable yeah they're full of materials that aren't necessarily recyclable and so um the key thing is just you know is it not a play is it not you know promoting air flow is it not supporting you you're waking up with neck pain those can be signs that it might be time for a new mattress let's talk about alcohol how does alcohol impact your ability to sleep at night my students love to tell me this they're like you're

wrong I'll drink and I'll put myself right to sleep yes alcohol there's some truth in that statement though what our um our young people will tell us that alcohol will put you to sleep um it's great at in reducing the term that we refer to sleep latency which is falling us the time it takes us to fall asleep but what alcohol does is it starts to destroy the quality of our sleep the IDE aidea that this is a a good thing for sleep is completely wrong it's one of our biggest myths about sleep that alcohol

and night cap is a good thing depending on your body mass and your tolerance one dose might be okay but much more than that will start to virtually destroy the quality of your sleep you've probably all been there I I mean I I wake when I drink I I always wake up in the middle of the night I fall asleep quickly but I do not stay asleep it's not restorative you wake up even if you spent eight or nine or 10 hours sleeping you often feel like you haven't slept a wink because the structure of

our sleep starts to change and it simply disrupts that architecture so it's not is it's very different than the structure of a natural sleep without alcohol so it's very common for someone to wake up after a night of even just you know maybe one or two glasses and not feeling restored well I think universally speaking when somebody does either dry January or they stop drinking or they go for periods of time they don't drink better sleep is 100% what people talk about absolutely and it's amazing right when we think about um taking someone who drinks

every night and then they are like wow you know they do dry January and it's this light bulb and so think finding ways to extend those benefits into you know our calendar year and even if it's Monday through Wednesday you're going to be dry I think sometimes those very clear boundaries are so helpful because after a long long day it is so easy to say you know oh I earned it you know I had a long night with the kids a long day with the kids or you know this colleague at work or this deadline

is stressing me out I earned it um but if you have you know structures in place to say oh no and make it fun you know substitute you know a fun you know cup of tea ritual with your partner I think what you're what you're here teaching us is what you've earned is a great night sleep and giving yourself the gift of better sleep is going to be a better reward than the glass of wine that sort of numbs you out speaking of drinking let's talk about the impact of caffeine on sleep and specifically coffee

but I'm also thinking about all of these energy drinks that people drink and the kind of pre-workout stuff that's just pumped full of caffeine how does caffeine impact Sleep Quality caffeine like a drug can stay in our system and it has what we call a half-life for six up to 9 hours depending on your metabolism and how you metabolize personally caffeine and there are some genetic differences but by and large caffeine is a significant disruptor of our sleep as a society it's the number one most widely consumed drug in the world um and look I

love coffee I love the smell and so I find this to be such a struggle to to cut off but um really you know ask yourself and and is one of your struggles a busy mind heart racing before bed can't you know calm down then you might might be you know a good candidate to to maybe have one less glass um one fewer cup a day and so if you go for a walk and get a coffee in the afternoon try for herbal tea instead make one substitute and see how you feel or maybe some

people swear buy no coffee after lunch so maybe you have one nice you know medium or you know try not for try not to have the you know huge cups at some of the um the fast food chains that are just enormous and I think much more than even the FDA recommends which is about 200 Mig of caffeine and that's in really a size small at most coffee coffee places so just be mindful of not only the timing but how much you're consuming because each additional dose can extend that halflife even further so say you

have a you know a mediumsized you know Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts in the morning and you drink that and then you go for one more in the afternoon so then you've doubled the halflife so it's not only the 6 hours from the first cup but then that caffeine might be lingering in your system comes 7 8 9:00 oh so what time should you stop drinking caffeine let's say that your windown routine is going to begin at 9:00 p.m. what time should you stop drinking caffeine so it's out of your system and not impacting your sleep

well be mindful of you know if you're drinking coffee and it's not too much and you don't really have you don't have a problem with this not really a problem but if you find your heart racing you're mind racing you're really struggling to fall asleep caffeine is often one of the culprits and so I'd say take a day where you maybe cut it out or or maybe try decaf and try that for a day see if you know you can last because I think sometimes we get so devoted to our coffee but try that um

and then see how your sleep is that next night and then maybe add one more coffee back in in the morning and see how you do and if you have no issues when bedtime rolls around the next night keep that up and then you know maybe you just keep that one cup a day or maybe you add one more and see if it has any negative impacts on your your sleep but again I'm a big fan of very clear C offs no coffee after lunch coffee after lunch and it's hard cuz I personally love coffee

but that's a big one for me because if it were up to I'd be drinking it all day I just love the smell but we you know really I think Behavior can become so mindless and so really having these cut offs that we you know can adhere to instead of like an abstract oh you know I'll stop in the afternoon and suddenly it's 3 4:00 in the afternoon and any coffee at that time will likely be in your system around bedtime another uh factor in sleep is food so at what what time should we stop

eating like before we go to bed so if we're going to again start the wine down we're just going to say 9:00 to make the math easy when should you stop eating well the um old adage from the nutrition literature of a breakfast of Kings a lunch of princes and a dinner of poppers is actually really good for our sleep the research shows in diets that are um they control for the amount of calories that you're eating you actually lose weight if you're doing this breakfast of of Kings lunch of Prince say dinner of poppers

so it's good for your weight management ability but it's also good for your sleep so we don't have the run the risk of our body digesting food as we go to bed if we keep dinner on the Lighter Side there's also the intermittent fasting literature and it it really came out of a circadian rhythms laboratory which is so interesting but the whole idea there and some Studies have shown different findings but basically listen to your body if you're open to this you might try it if you find that dinner just keeps nudging later and suddenly

it's 9: 10 p.m. you haven't eaten your bedtime is in another hour you might be a good candidate for this again just a clear cut off of like is it 8:00 p.m. I want to be done eating so then that means I'm eating dinner at 700 whether that's at the office whether that's with my spouse and so many people tell me you know but my meal with my spouse is the only time that we have to be together and I always respond to that it you don't have to be together over food and so you

know looking forward to your date on Friday or Saturday night or your weekends where you have a little bit more flexibility to really make a meal together really enjoy it really be present with each other but then maybe during the work week when you have a later time that you're getting home and then maybe your spouse is getting home late too and then suddenly it's you know way into the the evening hours and you're trying to you know desperately do something together but maybe find another ritual maybe it's making a I know it's kind of

lame but maybe you make a cup of tea together and you're playing a card game right or thinking about your day my husband and I play cribbage and we also crazy into we're really radical puzzles like we have a we have jigsaw puzzle on the dining room table and we sit around and but but if there were a rule of thumb because I've noticed one thing that's made a difference for Chris and our son who's in high school is we were getting out of the habit of eating early and all of a sudden dinner's at

7:00 then it's at 8:00 and it's creeping right up on bedtime which for me is winding down around 9:00 and I push dinner to 5:30 because otherwise our son was coming home from Sports practices and eating half the refrigerator and by the time dinner was cooked he's already fed himself dinner but I've noticed it's made a big difference with my sleep and my bedtime routine to be done eating several hours before I am going to bed and so if it helps knowing that you should stop eating two hours before you go to bed I love

that routine so you're it sounds like doing maybe intermittent fasting without even knowing it because you've buffered you've added about 3 or 4 hours before you're falling asleep and you're done eating and so that's time that you're just you're fasting actually you're extending the fast that we naturally do over the course of our sleep and there's so many benefits to fasting just giving our digestive system a break it's really the whole idea behind dment and fasting so if you can find a time if it's 5:30 if it's 6 and really try to be ENT if

your son is on a bus to sports practice or you know driving he has a meal that he that you C you made for him or he cooked and he's eating it at the sports field before he goes on or a smoothie I'm a big fan of smoothies actually for dinner I know everyone drinks them for breakfast but if you're busy getting some good calories in it's light it's likely to not disrupt your sleep at night can be amazing for someone who's busy strapped for time Etc but it you know it kind comes back to

this idea of good sleep takes planning I'm curious Dr Robbins can you just walk us through the day in terms of you wake up when the alarm rings and then what are all the little things that you want us to do at what time that help you stack up these habits that lead to a great night's sleep it's a great question um and think about you listening um how you can fit these into your life because of course there's the best case scenario and then there's real life right but I think that there's a lot

of opportunity to meet of us where we are with some of these recommendations so the question for you becomes how can I Implement these things but one thing we know is good blue light as much as you can over the course of the day so whether that's walking an extra subway stop or walking to your office building a little bit parking your car a little bit further away getting as much light exposure as you can in the morning getting a healthy hearty breakfast the research shows that a a heavy hearty breakfast is great because we're

getting the calories that we'll need to fuel our waking sucess ESS and then keeping dinner on the lighter side and then over the course of the day a hearty lunch and then limiting caffeine um consumption over the course of the day and then a little bit more light exposure would be wonderful I'm always getting questions you know what's the cure for the afternoon slump and truly we all have it it's just a time where we've maybe been up for a long period of time at that point we have a little dip in our core body

temperature in the afternoon all of us and then coupled with maybe a heavy lunch then you can really it's kind of The Perfect Storm sometimes for for sleep if people like how do I you know what's the drink what's the what do I do and I I always laugh that the one best evidencebased cure is for sleepiness is sleep so if you're exhausted take a nap and so if you're a healthy sleeper that can be part of a healthy sleep routine the one exception if you are struggling with your sleep insomnia symptoms that we talked

about you're really struggling you know the selft talk of I'm a bad sleeper coupled with with you know a lot of anxiety about sleep do not nap because we want to build your sleep pressure so that you can really set yourself up for Sleep come bedtime but if you're feeling sleepy in the afternoon why not maybe you're home you work from home wonderful you know crawl into your bed and and close your eyes for maybe 5 10 minutes is actually you know we don't need a lot of time uh when it comes to napping to

to actually get a lot of benefits and then in the afternoon um you know again getting some natural light exposure and then slipping into the evening mode and being thoughtful about you know different mindset slowing down our breath as we approach bedtime and ideally dinner has been on the earlier side a later dinner isn't ideal for sleep so if it's two hours of a buffer before between the last time that you're eating and your bedtime perfect if you could give me three I'd love it and then maybe you know a little evening work if you

need to because you know look some of us that's a reality um there is one suggestion there's a computer program called flux flux is a software you can download to your computer and it changes the color temperature of your screen to be warmer and so if you have to be working on your computer as you approach bedtime look into that tool it'll change automatically it's wonderful um but then you know then you switch into your bedtime routine and your ritual that helps you fall asleep and then you crawl into the sheets and um you slip

off yes but realize it's not going to happen every night and so the hope is after you've heard all of our conversation today that you have the tools if you're motivated if you have the time in your life and not everyone does cuz we go through Peaks and valleys of you know career careers exploding and lots of deadlines or personal obligations caring for a loved one caring for children older adults and realizing that maybe you're in a life stage where you can't Implement these things and that's okay but when you're able to give them a

shot what do you have to lose well you can Implement some absolutely no matter what's going on in your lifee you can create a buffer with your phone you can stop the alcohol you can quit drinking caffeine at lunchtime you can get your butt outside and get natural light in your eyeballs in the morning and throughout the day and you can create a small ritual the consistency may be something that is a little difficult to create based on your schedule but I actually don't think that these things are Out Of Reach I think we've gotten

used to complaining about being tired and what you're offering are research back solutions that are within everybody's reach and so it is my hope that as you've been listening today to Dr Robbins that you're going well I could try that I could try that my sleep is important and you know one thing that I keep thinking about is I love how you have changed the story of what's happening at night from okay I got to get to sleep I got to get to bed I need to put down my phone to no I'm taking the

time back this is my time I gave my day to everybody else I gave my attention to the phone and social media this is where I get to reclaim my time and I get to do a little something for myself so Dr Robbins if you could speak directly to the person listening if there is one action that you hope that the person listening takes what's the most important important thing to walk away from this conversation and do I think the single thing is routines and rituals and we've applied that to a lot of different aspects

of our days of the time leading up to sleep um the wind down ritual before bedtime trying to work towards a bedtime routine um finding some normaly uh in terms of your um or building some routine around your fall Target fall asleep time being more mindful of that time and then your wakeup time um cuz we're really meant as human beings to operate that way and so building them in and starting small with maybe a bedtime routine a couple windown rituals turning off the phone thinking about some of these breathing exercises and then maybe adding

in the consistency of of bedtimes and wake times and really being diligent about that and also realizing how you feel and realizing that it doesn't have to be a struggle if you're ready and motivated these things you you uh hit the nail on the head M it's they're free and they're available tonight if you're willing I love that free and available tonight Dr Robins thank you so much for being here thank you for having me it's been a pleasure and in case no one else tells you I want to tell you that I love you

and I believe in you and because I love you I'm going to tell you something I want you to do what Dr Robbins is telling you to do I don't want to hear the excuses I want you to try it because your sleep matters your energy matters your health matters your focus matters and these are all things that you can try and Implement try it for 7 Days let me know how much better you're feeling make sure you share this with somebody that you love because you heard it 2third of adults are not getting the

sleep and the rest that they need and now you know based on the clinical studies and the re the research that we discussed today there are simple things that you can do that you need to start doing so take it seriously all right I'll talk to you in a few days thank you so much for watching this episode for sharing this with your friends that are tired and for hitting subscribe so I can continue to bring you amazing experts and I know you probably loved everything that Dr Robins just taught you so how about another

expert from Harvard let's talk to Dr Sarah Wakeman who is here to dig deep into the science of alcohol and everything that you need to know