If I told you that there is one important habit that if focused on, would automatically make all your other health and fitness disciplines work more easily, would you consider trying it? Of course there are no absolutes when it comes to nutrition and wellness science. But based on observation helping clients in nutrition and health coaching, sleep would be that one thing to focus on. There is a lot of old and emerging data on the impacts of sleep quality on our day to day lives. With that, a great place to start when considering what you can actually do within your control to improve sleep, is to begin the process of learning and mastering good sleep hygiene. So I thought I’d provide some information to help you assess your own sleep quality, sleep hygiene practices, and decide for yourself if and what you may want to do to embrace a better night’s sleep.
Good Sleep Hygiene Just Makes Sense
Sleep is a fundamental pillar of our overall well-being and plays a pivotal role in maintaining a healthy mind and body. Embracing the benefits of sleep and adopting healthy sleep hygiene practices can significantly enhance your quality of life. Beyond providing rest and rejuvenation, a good night’s sleep fosters improved cognitive function, memory consolidation, and emotional stability. It also bolsters our immune system, aids in weight management, and contributes to better cardiovascular health.
Sleep also plays a crucial role in promoting both muscle recovery and weight loss. During restorative sleep, the body undergoes a series of processes that aid in repairing and rebuilding muscles, especially after intense physical activity. Growth hormone secretion peaks during deep sleep, stimulating tissue repair and the synthesis of new proteins essential for muscle recovery. Additionally, sufficient sleep enhances insulin sensitivity, regulating blood sugar levels and promoting efficient metabolism. This is vital for weight loss as improved insulin sensitivity helps the body burn stored fat more effectively.
Moreover, a well-rested you is more likely to have the energy and motivation to engage in regular exercise, and the clarity of mind to make healthier food choices, further contributing to healthy weight management.
Do you ever experience unexplainable hunger and cravings? It may be your sleep quality! Poor sleep and recovery can be a primary cause of cravings and poor eating choices. So when you control your sleep, you have better control of your diet. How cool is that? By understanding the importance of sleep and optimizing a consistent healthy sleep habit, you’ll add a deeper layer of support for your body that will serve as a solid foundation for everything else that you do.
In other words, sleep is when all the magic happens!
Simplifying Sleep Hygiene to Make it Work Consistently
As with all your other health and wellness practices, it’s helpful to remember that sleep is a natural thing your body already knows how to do. You don’t really need to lose your mind or jump through hoops to optimize your sleep. Thinking about the concept of healthy living, by design, a good question to ask might be, “what sorts of personalized tweaks would I make to my schedule and environment in order to support my body’s sleep function?”
First, you’ll need to find your current baseline and do some self assessment in order to determine where (if anyplace) you might want to make changes to your sleep hygiene. Here are some signs and symptoms that might suggest you need to improve your sleep quality:
Signs That You Might Need to Up Your Sleep Hygiene Game
Brain Fog: The information we take in throughout the day gets programmed into memory while we sleep. Any interference or disruption to this process can cause reduced alertness, lack of ability to concentrate, confusion, impaired judgement (which makes it harder to be consistent with healthy behaviors), and forgetfullness.
Unhappy Feelings: Whereas it is okay to feel down sometimes as a natural part of being human, feeling this way too often can be problematic. While we sleep, we build neurotransmitters and regulate hormone production. Interference with this process can cause impaired regulation of hormones, impairment of body’s adaptive response which leads to heightened stress, low mood or unpleasant mood swings, and possible increased risk of depression.
Feeling Unwell & Getting Sick a Lot: When we don’t sleep enough, T-cells go down and inflammation goes up, resulting in increased vulnerability to pathogens, acute increase in risk of getting sick, increased risk of heart disease and other inflammation-related illnesses.
Struggling to Lose Weight and Maintain Healthy Body Composition: Poor sleep quality is linked to excess body fat retention because poor sleep can disrupt appetite regulation, cause you to feel hungrier (leading to increased calorie intake), and holding excess body fat can actually counter-jeopardize sleep by reducing overall sleep quality.
Workouts and Exercise Routine Feel Exhausting and Demotivating: Our body uses the sleep cycle as an opportunity to refresh neurotransmitters, rebuild muscle and repair cells, remove energy draining metabolites. When we don’t give our body that time and sleep, we experience decreased nervous system activity, slower reaction time, low energy and endurance, lack of motivation, depressed mood, and a general lack of desire to move and exercise.
What Good Sleep Might Look Like
When I assess a new client in my coaching practice, we do a sleep assessment to determine the overall quality of their sleep, by looking at 5 specific components of sleep that together constitute what we believe to be good quality sleep patterns. You can use this criteria to get a general idea of how effective your sleep hygiene practices are at actually producing high quality sleep. They are as follows:
Sleep Quantity: It is widely believed that 7-8 hours of good quality sleep is optimal, most days of the week. Shoot for more than 5 nights a week if possible.
Sleep Latency: It should take the average healthy adult about 10-20 minutes to fall asleep. If it takes you longer than that, you may want to look at ways to improve your sleep latency.
Sleep Quality: High quality sleep can be characterized as uninterrupted, calm, continuous, deep sleep with good REM. If you feel you slept through the night, had vivid dreams, and woke up refreshed, you can probably chalk that up to a good night’s rest. Furthermore, you should aim to accomplish this 5 or more nights per week.
Sleep Continuity: Whenever you wake up, you risk disrupting a deeper sleep pattern. Good sleep continuity would be indicated by waking up 1 or fewer times during the night. With that, waking up 3 or more times during the night could be problematic and negatively impacting your overall sleep quality.
Sleep Mood: If your poor sleep experience is carrying over into your day like a continuous blur, you’re in a bad sleep mood. Some signs of symptoms of a bad sleep mood are: general grouchiness, brain fog, unhealthy cravings, and lack of motivation. A bad sleep mood is a sure sign that your sleep needs some optimizing
Are you starting to see where and how your sleep might be holding you back?
There are many reasons we sleep the way we do. But like anything that comes with the role of taking care of your body, taking consistent, achievable steps will set you on a productive, worthwhile trajectory of doing something about it.
Here is a superstar list of some of the best sleep hygiene practices that are within reach. Check it out!
Sleep Hygiene Best Practices
If you aren’t currently good at sleep hygiene, trying to get your head wrapped around this entire list may feel overwhelming. In the coaching process with clients, we recommend choosing 1-3 things that you feel you can try out and do successfully for at least a couple weeks. Think of it as an experiment. Be consistent with just enough to gather some data and see whether or not it makes a difference in your sleep quality. Be open to discarding practices that don’t work, and trying new things until you get into a perfect, individualized sleep groove that works for you.
✅ Keep a regular schedule. Our bodies like regularity. Try to go to bed and wake up at the same times. With a regular schedule, your body will know when to release calming hormones before bed, and stimulating hormones to wake up.
✅ Keep alcohol and caffeine moderate. Both will interfere with sleep. Try to avoid caffeine within 8-9 hours of your bedtime.
✅ Eat and drink appropriately. A regular to smallish-sized meal about 2-3 hours before bed, one that is balanced in nutrients that can help facilitate sleep. Try not to drink too much liquid in the hours before bed, which will help you avoid waking up for bathroom breaks.
✅ Do a brain dump. Take a few minutes to write out a list of whatever is bugging you. Whatever is in your brain, get it out and on to paper.
✅ Turn off electronics. Digital devices stimulate our brain. We recommend unplugging from all screens at least 30 minutes before bed. This includes television, computers, and smartphones. The screens release a blue light that prevents our brain from preparing for sleep.
✅ Stretch / read / de-stress before bed. Consider trying some yoga poses, reading, or meditation.
✅ Go to bed before midnight. This is better aligned with natural light cycles.
✅ Set an alarm to go to bed. Work backwards and add buffer time: If you need to wake up at 6 AM and want to be in bed for 7 hours, start moving towards bed around 10:30 PM with lights out by 11.
✅ Exercise regularly. Physical movement (especially outdoors) can promote restful sleep at night.
✅ Take a bath or shower. A warm bath with epsom salts or even a cool shower (depending on personal preference) can promote restful sleep.
✅ Keep the room dark. This means curtains, shades, and / or a sleep mask.
✅ Have a stress-free / clutter-free bedroom. Get rid of stacks of mail, boxes, clothes strewn about, etc. Keep it cool. Anywhere from 60-68 F (15-20 C) appears to work best at night.
✅ Use white noise. For instance, turn on a fan, humidifier or HEPA filter. Get outside in the sunlight and fresh air during the day. Or, if you work night shift, try to get lots of bright light and movement when you should normally be awake.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this article about sleep hygiene and the benefits of getting plenty of high quality sleep. If anything in this article has resonated with you, and you’d like to explore how coaching can help you optimize sleep, eat healthier, move better, and move toward a healthier, happier version of yourself, you are welcome to reach out to me. You can do that by scheduling a complimentary coaching call. We’ll discuss where you are with your health and fitness goals, where you want to be, and how I can help you get there. I look forward to speaking with you soon.
To read more about me and how I’ve helped hundreds of people truly take control of their health and wellness process, check out my homepage.
Thanks for reading!
Additional Sources:
http://www.precisionnutrition.com/hacking-sleep