The Feel Good Way

I start off with this quote…

Now that we know that sleep is a mayor factor in staying and becoming healthy, (read my previous post on sleep), it might be interesting to highlight a few tools to improve that important sleep. For this I went to Andrew Huberman * and see what he has to say about this. I absolutely love his podcasts! Here I will limit myself to the what, if you want to know more about the whys, or the scientific explanation of these actions, please check out the podcast yourself! The tips consist of a series of behavioral changes, he also adds al list of supplements (of which I am no fan so I will not mention them here), and digital tools (I will write a post on those later on). Here it comes!

What to do in the morning

• Every morning, within the 30 to 60 minutes after waking up, you need to get exposure to bright sunlight. Direct sunlight means you need to go outside and look into the direction of the sunlight (without looking right into the sun as it might damage your eyes). You can wear glasses or contacts, but no sunglasses. If it is sunny, 5 to 10 minutes is long enough. If it is cloudy, you probably need 20 to 30 minutes outside. It’s a perfect time to walk your dog or go for a run/walk. Your goal is to increase your cortisol increase very early in the day. Looking at your phone or into artificial light just is not enough to trigger this increase, just like looking towards the sun through your window isn’t.
• When you wake up, you need to get your temperature up. The best way to do that is to get an ice bath or a cold shower. You will release adrenaline and dopamine and it will increase your core body temperature. ( I admit, that one is too much for me ;-))
• Excercise! Especially if you don’t like a cold shower, work out instead! Even if it is just a light exercise, like a walk.
• Drink a cup of Joe!! Caffeine limits sleepiness. The best time to have your coffee is 90 to 120 minutes after waking. If you manage to delay drinking your cup of coffee, you will avoid a possible ‘afternoon crash’. Avoid any caffeine after 4pm and drink less than 100ml a day.
• Have breakfast early in the day, your body temperature will go up. On the other hand, if you never have breakfast, that’s more than OK! The breakfast should be light, if it isn’t, all your energy will go to digestion which is not what you want.

What to do during the day

• Don’t drink too much coffee and avoid drinking it after 4 pm
• Naps are fine, as long as you don’t have them too late or too long as they will decrease your ability to fall asleep at night.
• if you don’t like naps but you are extremely tired during the day, try NSDR (non sleep deep rest) or yoga nidra or the self hypnose through the Reveri app. I will get into that later.
• If you exercise intensively, that will further increase your body temperature and will delay your circadian clock, it will make you fall asleep later that night.
• Getting late afternoon sunlight into your eyes is good thing. It is a signal for your brain and body that the evening is coming.

What to do during late afternoon (6pm) to night

• Avoid bright artificial light whatever the color.
• Note that in the morning the light must be very strong to wake up, but in the evening you only need a little bit of light to disrupt your rhythm. Use as little light you can, dim the light or put on candles 😉
• Avoid Alcohol. It might make you fall asleep faster, but you will wake up regularly and your sleep will be light.
• Eat a light meal, not too close to your bed time.
• Take a hot bath or shower, so your temperature goes down.
• Sleep in a cool room

These are all behavioural tools. If you can do all of these, the better, but we all know that often life just gets in the way. Whatever small change you may make will probably already help you improve your sleep.

*Andrew Huberman is an american neuroscientist and associate of neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine, who is particularly famous for bringing ‘science to the people’, through his popular podcasts.