1. Maintain a consistent sleep/wake schedule, allowing your body to regulate the necessary hormones that help you fall asleep and wake up efficiently.
2. Use light to your advantage. Think about it simply: We are evolutionarily designed to fire up as the sun comes up, and wind down as it sets. Replicate these conditions by seeing sunlight as soon as you wake up, and in the evening switch to low lights/lamps, use blue light glasses, and avoid screens in the hour before you sleep.
3. Don't eat 2-3 hours before you sleep. Aside from supporting a restful nights sleep, your gut microbiome also has a circadian rhythm. Plus, it's much harder for digestion to take place whilst you're lying sideways (gravity and movement can't do their thing).
4. Use an app like Sleep Cycle that monitors your sleep quality through sound and wakes you up in your lightest period of sleep in a half hour window. This featured in last week's issue as one of the "Top 5 Tools I Can't Live Without".
5. No caffeine past 3 pm unless before a workout - keeping your exercise regular throughout the week.
6. Use the hours before you sleep to set yourself up for the following day, or as an opportunity to decompress through reading, stretching, meditation, or a simple breathwork practice that may only take a matter of seconds.
7. Supplement with magnesium in the evening. My most recommended supplement (also a common deficiency) that happens to be a relaxant; so is best taken in the evening to improve sleep quality.
8. Keep the room cool. Again, we are a product of evolution, and it wasn't a distant memory ago that heated blankets and consistent heating wasn't available. (Each to their own here! Whatever you find works best)
Reminder: The number of hours you spend in bed does not = the number of hours you are actually sleep. For example, in my case it typically takes 8 hrs 30 mins in bed to achieve my average sleep time (over the last 3 years) 7 hrs 21.
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