15 Tips to Fall Asleep Faster & Sleep Better

sleep is critical to our health sleep is the foundation of mental health physical health and performance of all kinds it also controls things like our immune system our skin health and our appearance basically everything in life gets better when we're sleeping well so you may ask what are the things that you can do that are really going to set you up for the best possible sleep later that night this is a practical toolkit that anyone indeed all people I believe should use in order to optimize their [Music] sleep first of all be careful about ingesting too much caffeine throughout the middle of the day that's kind of an obvious one certainly avoid drinking more than 100 milligram of caffeine after 4: p. m. and probably even better to limit your last caffeine intake to 3:00 p.

m. or even 2: p. m.

and I say this knowing that many people including myself can drink a double espresso with 200 milligrams of caffeine or more at 5:00 p. m. or even 600 p.

m. or after dinner and still quote unquote fall asleep fine or still sleep fine however there are terrific data Matt Walker and I talked about this and there more and more papers all the time that point to the fact that caffeine intake late in the day after 4 p. m.

that is can really disrupt the architecture of your sleep so you might think you're sleeping well but you're not sleeping nearly as well as you could if you avoided caffeine in those afternoon hours second of all if you are a napper and I raise my hand now for those of you listening I'm raising my right hand because I love naps I've always love naps should you nap should you not nap that's a question that I get asked a lot and that I asked DrMatthew Walker when he was was a guest on this podcast here was his answer and here's what the data support it is fine to nap in the afternoon but don't nap so late in the day or for so long that it disrupts your ability to fall and stay asleep at night for your major sleep bout for those of you that exercise in the afternoon understand that if you exercise very intensely so this might be weight training or running or some other very intense exercise typically that's going to further increase your body temperature and it's going to so-called delay your circadian clock it's going to make it such that you want to fall asleep a little bit later maybe even a lot later so if you're exercising in the afternoon or evening and that's the only time you can exercise or that's the time that you prefer to exercise great but be careful about ingesting too much caffeine in order to get the energy to do that exercise CU that caffeine will disrupt your sleep and just know that you are delaying your circadian clock you are making it such that you will naturally want to go to sleep later and wake up later contrast that with if you exercise early in the day immediately after waking up or in the first 4 hours after waking in most cases that's not going to shift your circadian clock much so should you be looking at sunlight or bright artificial lights throughout the day now on the face of it you might just think yes you know sunlight's great provided we're not getting a sunburn we're not staring at the sun and damaging our eyes we should get as much sunlight as we possibly can so sunlight to the eyes sunlight in the late afternoon and evening hours so again depends on time of year depends on location that you happen to be in but getting some sunlight in your eyes for again maybe 5 or 10 maybe 30 minutes depending on how much cloud cover there is doing that in the afternoon serves an additional beneficial purpose which is you protect or you inoculate your nervous system against some of the negative effects of bright artificial light or even dim artificial light in the nighttime hours between 10:00 p. m. and 4:00 a.

m. you're going to want to avoid bright artificial lights of any color in the evening hours and nighttime hours it takes very little light very few photons in order to wake up your brain and body and to disrupt your circadian clock and disrupt your sleep so what that means is that once the sun goes down which of course is going to happen at different times of year in different places on Earth but once the sun goes down you would be wise to try and dim the lights in your indoor environment most days right I realize some nights you're going to throw a party and have people over you might not want to dim the light Some Nights you're going to go out you might view a lot of bright lights but most nights of your life you're going to want to dim the lights in your internal environment and ideally the lights that you do use you would Place low in that physical environment so you would try and not use overhead lights but rather rely on desk lamps or lights even placed low to the floor even on the floor the absolute worst lights are going to be overhead fluorescent lights of the sort that you would have in the supermarket or uh that you would see at a gas station or something of that sort and I confess there are times in which I'm you know driving home and it's late at night and I want to be able to get to sleep and I'll need to stop at the grocery store or a gas station or something like that I've actually put on sunglasses at night in order to avoid getting that bright light exposure at night although that's a little bit extreme uh I have done that from time to time because that bright light exposure will absolutely quash it will eliminate any melatonin that happens to be circulating in your brain and body now melatonin a lot of people think of as a supplement but melatonin is naturally released as the evening comes about and into the nighttime hours it's a hormone that makes you feel sleepy and allows you to fall asleep so viewing bright light in the late evening hours and nighttime hours is really not good for your sleep quality and your ability to fall and stay asleep so for most people a simple rule of thumb is going to be avoid bright artificial lights of all colors and in particular overhead bright artificial lights between the hours of 10: p. m.

and 4:00 a. m. you should try and make your sleeping environment pretty cool if not cold now that doesn't mean you need to be cold while you're asleep you can get under as many blankets as you need but it's a good idea to make your sleeping environment cool in fact drop the temperature in that sleeping environment by at least 3° and you'll be happy that you did because of the relationship between temperature and sleep that is dropping your core body temperature 1 to 3° gets you into sleep and helps you stay asleep I would be remiss if I didn't touch on alcohol and CBD and THC because the sleep that one gets after drinking alcohol is greatly disrupted sleep hate to break it to you but that's the truth and when DrMatt Walker came on this podcast he said exactly the same thing while THC and alcohol do help some people fall asleep and maybe even stay asleep the architecture of that sleep is suboptimal compared to the sleep they would get without alcohol or THC in their system now very briefly I just want to touch on some tools that are very commonly used by many people out there and believe it or not there is peer-reviewed science on things like eye masks do eye masks improve your ability to stay asleep and indeed they do provided they are not too tight and provided that the room is cool enough why well eye mask cover the upper half of your face which is where glabrous skin is localized remember Palms of the hands bottoms of the feet glabber skin on the face so a lot of people who wear eye masks will wake up because they're too warm if the room is too warm so if you're going to use an ey mask to keep light out definitely make sure the room and your sleeping environment your bed are cool enough in order for you to stay asleep other tools that I'll just mentioned that have peer-reviewed research to support them elevating your feet either with a pillow or by elevating the end of your bed by about 3 to 5 degrees can be really beneficial for increasing the depth of sleep because of the so-called lymphatic wash out this is the movement of and circulation of fluids in your brain at night that lead to bore wakefulness and actually can improve cognitive function and a number of other things related to brain health there's one caveat to that for people that suffer from acid reflux having your ankles elevated above your chest or above your heart in the middle of the night can actually exacerbate that acid reflux you want to do the opposite you want to actually elevate your the head side of your bed by about 3 to 5° I do want to mention a couple of broad Contour tools that will impact your ability to sleep really well on a consistent basis and the one that impacts the most number of people is weekends turns out that most everybody feels the impulse to sleep in on the weekend especially if they've been out late the night before however the data show that keeping relatively consistent sleep and wake times is really going to enhance the quality and depth of your sleep so if you stay out late one night sure you might allow yourself to sleep in an extra hour or so but you should really try to avoid sleeping in longer than an hour beyond your normal wakeup time that's right if you normally get 8 hours of sleep and you wake up at 7:00 a.

m. probably okay to wake up at 8:00 a. m.

a. m.