Sleep

What is more important than sleep? It is the bedrock of good health. For many years I disliked sleep. I rarely slept and I will admit that approach was wrong. Not getting enough rest makes you eat more calories. It affects your mood and your concentration levels. It affects your physical energy and keeps you from exercising properly. Sleep always catches up with you. If you skip sleep during the week you will find yourself sleeping your weekend away. If you skip sleep over the weekend you will most likely have an unproductive beginning to your work week. Sleep is undeniably bedrock to your health maximization and aging strategy. I practice something called sleep hygiene.

Sleep hygiene means a few things. Hygiene is defined as the practices one undertakes to defend health and minimize disease. These are daily occurrences and intentional practices that one undertakes. Like brushing your teeth every morning and washing your hands with soap and water, sleep hygiene includes some simple practices to ensure a good night sleep. Here are my rules –

1. No caffeine after 11:00 AM. I cannot stress how important this is for sleep. People assume caffeine doesn’t affect them much because of how much they consume, but any amount of caffeine tolerance will not be enough to forgo affecting your sleep. In fact, good sleep will probably reduce your caffeine dependence considerably.
2. Skip alcohol and nicotine. Nicotine is a stimulant and can affect your sleep through withdrawal symptoms. You should quit nicotine altogether. Alcohol also affects sleep. If you drink, I would suggest doing so in a way that you can be totally sober before heading off to bed, whether that means drinking much less or drinking for fewer hours.
3. No big heavy meals after 7:00 PM. I will admit, I love my late night snack, but that is terrible for sleep. A full belly can keep you up as much as an empty belly can, so try to be careful when you eat. Heavy meals can also affect your blood sugar, and a drop can affect your sleep more than you realize as well. Better to have all of that taken care of before you go to bed.
4. Screens/phone banned from bed. Buy a cheap alarm clock from Amazon and put that on your bedside. I keep a Kindle next to my bed to read before I drift off, but that cell phone is away from my reach and on a dresser. There is just no getting around it, cell phones and tablets are designed to get your attention and keep it. That dopamine rush is killing your sleep. I suggest removing them from the equation.
5. See a sleep doctor. I will admit, I snore. I couldn’t figure out why I would wake up every two hours at night. My wife routinely wore ear plugs to bed. Clearly something was going on and my snoring was more problematic than I was willing to admit. Eventually, I took a sleep study and was prescribed a sleep machine. I struggled at first with it, but once I got used to it I noticed an almost immediate change in my sleep. The first thing I noticed were dreams. When you do not sleep well you never really get into REM. I was having vivid dreams every night. Now, when I do not wear it I can feel it the next day, it’s almost like being hungover. I cannot imagine living without my CPAP.
6. Commit to controlled thoughts in bed – keep the outside world out (very difficult). All of us wake up in the middle of the night with that thought in our head. I am no different than most. But, I often repeat to myself that I am entitled to sleep. My bed is my safe place. Yes, I wake up occasionally with those anxious thoughts but I work hard to alleviate myself from them. Overall this step will tie into your stress and anxiety management.

Now, a word on alcohol and nicotine…