5 Surprisingly Helpful Things to Do For BETTER Sleep 💤

Taylor Overton

Jun 18 in 🩺 Health

I remember the times...

Where I'd go to bed 🛌🏼, excited to go to sleep..

Expecting to fall asleep fairly QUICKLY...

5 HOURS LATER, I'm still WIDE AWAKE.

I had NO urge to fall asleep WHATSOEVER...

And THROUGHOUT the NIGHT and into the MORNING, I'm TOSSING and TURNING trying to fall back asleep. But NOTHING works out... 🌙

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I'm sure YOU can relate to this.

It's a horrible experience where you're SO TIRED you want to FALL asleep, but you're just TOO WIRED.

On AVERAGE, it used to always take me around HALF an HOUR to HOURS to fall asleep.

Now, after engaging in THESE helpful things before going to SLEEP, it takes me now about 5 MINUTES!

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

🤔 1. What ARE these 5 HELPFUL THINGS?
⚙️ 2. MECHANISMS
🚀 3. The 5 SURPRISINGLY Helpful THINGS!
✍ 4. Final Notes

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🤔 1. What ARE these 5 HELPFUL THINGS?

Well to understand that, we’re also going to have to understand the MECHANISMS that we want to BIAS when trying to go to sleep.

What are these mechanisms?

To BIAS sleep, we’re going to want multiple mechanisms to happen, such AS:

🥬 Increased Production of Melatonin
😌 Relaxation
🌡️ Decrease in Body Temperature
🧬 Decrease in Cortisol/Stress

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⚙️ 2. MECHANISMS:

🥬 Increased Production of Melatonin

What's MELATONIN?

Melatonin, is a hormone produced in the pineal gland of the brain, which helps control the sleep cycle.

It is STIMULATED when it’s DARK.

Melatonin essentially puts us into a state where you’ll be able to enter sleep easier.

We want MORE of this when it’s bedtime, so we need to DO things that will BOOST our melatonin levels!

😌 INCREASED RELAXATION:

We want to be in a RELAXED STATE when we go to bed.

We don’t want any tension, any stress on us ect.

Relaxation also lowers our blood pressure and heart rate, which is optimal for falling into sleep.

So, in summary, we want to be RELAXED when we go to bed.

🌡️ DECREASE IN BODY TEMPERATURE:

To understand why we need this decrease in body temperature, firstly we need to look at the 24 hour cycle of our body temperature first.

BODY TEMPERATURE CYCLE:

2 hours before you naturally wake up, your core body temperature is at its lowest, its “temperature minimum”.

Then your body temperature starts to INCREASE, and when your body temperature INCREASES, that biases ALERTNESS, WAKING UP.

2 hours later, you wake up, and this increase in body temperature goes on THROUGH the morning, and into the early-afternoon.

Around this point, your core body temperature reaches its peak, then starts its descent from there.

When your body temperature is DECREASING, when it gets lower, it biases RELAXATION, FALLING ASLEEP and STAYING asleep.

And it decreases all the way till that temperature minimum, 2 hours before waking up.

That’s how the cycle goes.

We’ll want to leverage the DECREASE in body temperature in the evening/night because it will BIAS us towards SLEEP.

🧬 DECREASE IN CORTISOL AND STRESS:

Cortisol is a steroid hormone produced in the body which activates when the body perceives STRESS/when you wake up.

Now, when we have cortisol naturally releasing at the CORRECT time (in the morning), then it will serve us really well.

However, we want cortisol to only be released at THAT time, and then decreased at night. Because remember, WE DON’T WANT TO BE STRESSED AT NIGHT.

We want to be RELAXED.

So, we’ll want to leverage the DECREASE in CORTISOL and STRESS in the evening/night because it will BIAS us towards relaxation, which biases us towards SLEEP.

All of these combined together have an amazing synergistic effect, so we need to take advantage of it.

No more B.S, let's get into the actionable steps

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🚀 3. The 5 SURPRISINGLY Helpful THINGS!

🍽️ Consuming Melatonin/Tryptophan/Serotonin rich FOODS:

What is tryptophan?

Tryptophan is an amino acid used in biosynthesis of proteins.
Tryptophan is a precursor, to SEROTONIN.

What is serotonin?

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter 🧠 which impacts mood, cognition, reward, learning, memory and other things.
However, it is a DIRECT precursor to MELATONIN.

FOODS:

So what we want to do, is that we will want to CONSUME foods that contain these. What foods contain these?

But first, when do we consume these?

Consume these in your final meal of the day, and make sure that your final meal is about 3 hours before bed.

Foods that you’ll want to consume for your final meal:

Should contain TRYPTOPHAN 🍖, SEROTONIN, MELATONIN or all THREE.

Starchy carbohydrates, especially low-glycemic ones, should be the primary food in your last meal.
They contain lots of tryptophan and serotonin.
So this includes foods like brown rice, quinoa, oats, barley, buckwheat, fruits and sweet potatoes.

Other foods that also contain lots of tryptophan, serotonin and/or melatonin includes kiwifruit, tart cherries, chamomile tea, or grapes. Include some of these in your final meal!

ACTIONABLE STEP: Include at least one of these foods in your final meal tonight. And overtime, start adding more of these foods in your final meals.

Let’s move onto the second tip:

🧘 2. Meditation

Meditating in the morning is awesome, but I HIGHLY recommend doing it before bed.

Meditation SIGNIFICANTLY calms you. Even if you’re not doing it for that specific benefit

Now, meditation also reduces CORTISOL🤯 , which is EXACTLY what you want in the evening.

AND, it also relaxes you! AND it boosts melatonin, especially if you meditate at night and in a dark place.

So, already, the meditation leverages THREE of those MECHANISMS.

If you don’t know how to meditate, I’ll give you a really simple practice. Sit down, focus on the breath, when you realize you lose thought, return to focusing on the breath.

Really simple, but it’s a great way to get started.

ACTIONABLE STEP: Meditate for 5 - 10 mins each night.

Now, the third tip:

🚶‍♀️ 3. Evening Walk

I’ll have my final meal, then immediately afterwards I’ll have a nice, evening walk around the block.

I’ll also try time this around when the sun is setting, so I can have a nice gaze of the sunset as I walk.

With the evening walk, it will SIGNIFICANTLY relax you, and it will also DECREASE CORTISOL and STRESS.

So TWO mechanisms already activated just through this practice!

SUNSET + EVENING WALK

And if you also time this around the time when the sun is setting, then that’s going to be even BETTER!

Because, the wavelengths and sunlight from the sunset, the neurons communicate to your brain that it’s evening/night time and that it’s ready to GO TO BED!

This also FURTHER stimulates the production of MELATONIN in the brain.

So if you combine the evening walk AND viewing the sunset, you’re going to get an AWESOME synergistic effect.

ACTIONABLE STEP: Do a nice evening walk after your final meal each day for about 10 - 20 minutes or so. And if you want, you can go view the sunset while doing this walk as well.

Now, the FOURTH tip:

4. RED LIGHT

RED LIGHT MIMICS the exact COLORS, WAVELENGHTS and HUES that is in the SUNSET.

Red light also BOOSTS your MELATONIN in your brain.

You don’t need tens of thousands to invest in some high-tech, fancy red light therapy device.

But, what you CAN do, is that you can either invest in some cheap device which shows red light (which is perfectly fine), OR:
Set the blue light filter on your COMPUTER to as RED as possible.

This will mimic those red light therapy devices, AND will give you the red light benefits, FOR FREE!

ACTIONABLE STEP: On all of your devices, activate the “night light” or “blue light” filters or whatever, and turn it to the highest setting, where it’s as red as possible.

Now, the FIFTH and FINAL TIP:

🤸🏻 5. Stretching

I remember the days where I did ZERO stretching at all before bed.

Hell, ZERO stretching at all!

I would be all tight and stiff in my muscles, try to fall asleep but I just couldn’t.

However, I’d get tons of cramps during the night and it would wake me up multiple times.

I remember once I got 4 CRAMPS in ONE NIGHT!

It was a horrible experience, and because of it, it just made my sleep so much worse.

I started to try stretching before bed. And it WORKED!

Now, you’ll know this, but stretching increases flexibility, range of motion in muscles ect. Which is great. HOWEVER, it is GREAT for CALMING your body, for DESTRESSING your body and it also DECREASES CORTISOL! And it generally just helps you to unwind.

ACTIONABLE STEP: Stretch for about 5 - 10 minutes before bed.

You will find all of these have an AWESOME synergistic effect, and ultimately prepare your body for sleep.

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✍ 4. Final Notes

What's the point of reading this if you don't take action?

So, here's your ACTIONABLE STEP:

ACTIONABLE STEP: Implement at least ONE of these actionable steps TONIGHT!

You'll find that you'll be able to start FALLING ASLEEP easier, you'll be able to have BETTER DREAMS 💭, and wake up feeling SIGNIFICANTLY more REFRESHED!

I hope I could help you bro! 👍

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