Quality sleep is crucial for health and balance, and light intake plays a big role in your sleep cycle and your circadian rhythms. If you’re hoping to get more zzzzz at night and feel more refreshed when you wake up, here are 7 tips to optimize your sleep:
Get Active When You’re Awake
Our body’s activity level has its own circadian rhythm. When we’re awake, we’re designed to move. Exercise, especially in the morning or early afternoon, can help you sleep better at night. Regular exercise raises your body temperature, and the cooldown period has a relaxing effect that promotes better sleep. By contrast, exercising later in the evening can make it more difficult to sleep, because your body hasn’t fully recovered from activity mode.
Follow an Eating Routine and Don’t Eat Before Bed
What you eat is important, but when you eat is also vital, and often overlooked. Digestion and metabolism follow a circadian rhythm like the sleep/wake cycle.Your organs are hard at work while you sleep, processing fat and preparing your body for the next day. They work more efficiently when you eat at roughly the same time every day, helping to establish long-term rhythms.
Your body has a roughly 8-10 hour window, starting with your first bite or drink of the day when it can process food the best. Anything you eat will take hours to digest and lots of coordination amongst your cells and organs. It’s best to eat your last bite at a minimum of 2-3 hours before going to bed. This gives your body enough time to metabolize food and lets your digestive system switch from creating stored fat to burning it at night.
Avoid Alcohol and Caffeine at Night
Caffeine is a powerful stimulant that you should avoid beyond the early afternoon. Most people need hours to process caffeine, and overcome the jolt it gives you. Try to avoid caffeinated drinks after noon if you can, but definitely lay off the coffee and soda at night. Drinking alcohol at night can make it seem easier to fall asleep, but in reality, it’s closer to sedation. Try to have your last drink of the evening with dinner so your body has a few hours to process it before hitting the proverbial sack.
Prioritize Peace of Mind
The research is clear: high amounts of stress throughout the day make it more difficult for our brains to relax and sleep at night. If you have a stressful day, be mindful about claiming some relaxation in the evening with meditation, reading, a walk, or whatever works for you. Bottom line: prioritize your peace of mind before getting into bed.
Keep Your Bedroom Temperature Cool
The human body decreases in temperature while we sleep. Our heart rate and breathing slow down to help regulate this temperature drop. You can give your body a better environment for sleep if your bedroom is in the 60-72 degrees range. Hot and stuffy rooms make it harder to get to sleep—and stay asleep. Avoid waking up in a sweat by keeping your bedroom cooler. It’s better for your sleeping rhythm if you don’t wake up several times in the night because you’re hot. These small disruptions can build up and lead to larger sleep problems.
Silence Supports Sleep
This one is obvious: you sleep better when it’s quiet. Many people get in the habit of falling asleep to the TV or music, often waking in the night to turn off electronics and move to bed. This disrupts your circadian rhythm and makes it tougher for your body to process fat and recover properly at night.
Healthy Light Intake is Essential for Better Sleep
Don’t overlook the importance of light for your sleep quality. Your body and brain respond to the light you’re exposed to during the day, and some kinds of light are better than others when it comes to your sleep quality. You should absolutely try to get outside every day and take in natural sunlight. Blue light from screens, however, is extremely bright and can trick your brain and disrupt your sleep hormones, especially at night. Check out this post to learn the most common sources of harmful blue light exposure, plus tips on how to limit blue light and sleep better.
Limit blue light, especially at night: Blue light has been a big advancement for screen technology that’s made our phones and computers so powerful. But this bright, artificial light can have major negative effects on our sleep quality. Blue light is so bright that it can trick our brains and bodies into thinking it’s time to be alert and awake. Blue light from a screen has a very high color temperature. It’s even brighter than standing outside on a sunny day. If you look at your phone in bed, your brain is getting the message that it needs to be alert. Trying to sleep right after that can be difficult, even when you’re tired. To sleep better, limit the blue light, especially at night.
Red light is less intense, and helps enhance your sleep: Red light therapy from a ELVISHhas a much lower color temperature than blue light, and is designed to enhance sleep and cellular balance in a way blue light is not. Even if you can’t get enough sunlight every day, the soothing light from a ELVISHdevice can help you balance your cellular environment and make it easier to fall and stay asleep.
