8 Sleep Behavior Tactics for the Perfect Night of Sleep
“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?”
-Ernest Hemingway
We developed thumbs for climbing, hanging from branches, and making tools to kill predators. We learned to run long distances to hunt for food. We adapted to different environments by learning how to sweat and regulate our body temperature. These were all critical for humans to survive on a daily basis. Yet we spend a third of the day it in an extremely unsafe position, ready to be mauled without a fight.
Why did humans develop so many useful bodily adaptations to live another day, while still spending 8 hours a day in a vulnerable state? The answer is simply that sleep is very, very important. Natural selection is telling us that sleep is so important that humans shouldn’t sacrifice even a few less hours to ensure survival. The end justifies the means, of possibly dying.
There are plenty of ways to optimize our nights through behavioral sleep hygiene tactics, or simply sleep behavior. However, before we dive in let’s talk about why sleep is so important.
The Power Of Sleep
The effects of sleep are most prominent when we’re deprived of it. Insufficient sleep leads to weight gain, lower testosterone, worse heart health, and the likelihood of dying sooner. It’s linked to lower mood, worse memory, and poor cognition. In fact, being awake for 18 straight hours is like having a blood alcohol content (BAC) of .05. Further, 25 consecutive sleepless hours is equivalent to a BAC of .10. Less sleep leads to more work-related accidents, a higher likelihood of having a mental health disorder, and an increased risk of dying in a car accident.
I see patients across the lifespan with a variety of diagnoses with all types of backgrounds. The one thing that they all have in common is that they have poor sleep behaviors and report poor sleep. Sleep is basically a health insurance policy. As Matthew Walker, a neuroscientist and author of Why We Sleep, states,
“In terms of de-risking just about every disease that is killing us in the developed world, it’s very hard to look no further than sleep.”
It’s a no-brainer that you should be getting 7-9 hours of high-quality sleep per night, however, this is much easier said than done. Back in 1910, most people slept 9 hours each night. Now, about half of adults say they feel sleepy during the day at least 3 days a week and 32% of working adults sleep 6 or fewer hours a night. (source)
We know the benefits of sleep and we know we should probably be getting more of it but how exactly do we do that? Popping a melatonin and sleeping in on the weekends is often as “dialed in” of an approach as people take so let’s dive into some more effective and practical ways to get better sleep. Modifying your sleep behavior is the answer.
Get Bright Light Early In The Morning
Sunlight is a zeitgeber (a cue that impacts circadian rhythm) that signals the “master clock” of the body (the suprachiasmatic nucleus). Every cell, tissue, and organ in your body has a sleep-wake cycle so cueing this master clock has an important role in how your body functions.
Get direct sunlight to your eyes and skin first thing in the morning. It should be 10,000 lux (a measure of light intensity). On a sunny day, this could be as little as one minute of sun and on a cloudy day might take a half hour. I’ll occasionally check the lux on cloudy days using the Lux Meter app to make sure I’m getting enough light. If you can't get out first thing in the morning then do it before 10:00 a.m. And if you can’t get outside at all then use a light therapy lamp for 20 minutes. (And getting light through windows and sunglasses doesn’t count.)
See my article on lighting for a deeper dive into this topic.
2. Go Camping For A Sleep Reset
Researchers had people camp without artificial light (campfires were okay) and tracked their hormonal and sleep rhythms. In the first study, over a week-long period, they found that their body clocks (tracked by rising melatonin levels) moved up 2.5 hours earlier.
In the second study, they shortened the duration from a week to just a weekend of camping. They found that campers fell asleep 1.8 hours earlier than the non-camper control group and the camper’s melatonin levels started to rise 1.4 hours earlier than pre-camping levels.
Weekly camping trips might not be a realistic way to improve sleep hygeine but it’s a good reminder that blue light has a significant impact on our natural sleep-wake cycles.
3. Eat Biologically
Chrono-nutrition is the study of how nutrition affects the body’s circadian rhythm (a bit niche, eh?). There are three chronotypes: morning type, evening type, or neither. A 2019 study found that the night owls chronotype is “associated with lower intake of fruits and vegetables and higher intake of energy drinks, alcoholic, sugary, and caffeinated beverages, as well as higher energy intake from fat.”
The research on chrononutrition is still in its infancy (and seems to be in the data collection phase) but whether you’re a morning bird or a night owl, your body has a circadian rhythm that’s directly influenced by your food intake (another zeitgeber).
This article goes in-depth on the practical sleep behavior takeaways which include:
Avoid eating at “biological night.” Biological night is when the circadian clock promotes sleep which will vary depending on the chronotype. For early birds like me, eat only when the sun is up, regardless of the season.
Eat more of your calories earlier in the day.
Avoid meals (especially those high in fat and carbs) within 2-3 hours of sleep.
Be consistent with both your meal times and meal frequency on a daily basis (this includes snacking).
4. Nap (but only if it doesn’t impact your night of sleep)
Naps can be a great way to get not just more sleep, but quality sleep. Professional sports teams have been catching up with the science and using “nap rooms” more and more frequently. LSU even has a “sleep pod” for every locker. I’m still working on getting this at my work.
There are a few rules to quality napping though. Pick a time that’s shorter than one standard sleep cycle which is 90 minutes (my natural naps are 80 minutes long). Also, make sure to take the nap early enough in the day that it doesn’t interfere with your night of sleep which trumps the nap benefits.
5. Stop Caffeine Intake By Noon
Most recommendations are to stop drinking after 3 pm but while the peak effect of coffee is an hour after the sip, the half-life of coffee is 5.7 hours.
The average coffee drinker has about 24 ounces of coffee a day which contains about 270mg of caffeine. That means that if you finished this cup of coffee at noon then half of that caffeine amount (135mg) would still be in your system at 5:30 pm. At 11 pm there would still be 67mg of caffeine in your body. This is like drinking two-thirds of a cup of coffee an hour before midnight. While 5.7 hours is the average half-life, a slow caffeine metabolizer can have a 10-hour half-life and a fast metabolizer can be just a few hours.
You might be the type of person who can pound espressos after dinner and fall asleep in seconds but the caffeine might be playing with you. Just as alcohol allows you to fall asleep more quickly but smothers your ability to achieve deep sleep, caffeine has the same effect. Your quantity of sleep is much different than your quality of sleep.
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6. Track Your Sleep
What gets measured gets managed. Sleep apps are largely unreliable and beds that track sleep are promising but prohibitively expensive. If you’re looking to improve your sleep, the best bang for your buck for tracking your sleep quality and quantity are wearables. Their accuracy is definitely not perfect but they are generally consistent and when you’re comparing yourself to yourself that may be most important. Plus they’re a great proxy for the big factors such as time-to-sleep, total sleep time, REM and deep sleep numbers, and nighttime heart rate.
The main numbers I look for on my sleep tracking watch are deep sleep and total sleep time. After plenty of experimentation, I’ve learned that these have the biggest impact on my mood, recovery, and energy level. The best quality trackers include the Oura Ring and the Whoop band. A budget-friendly option is the Fitbit Inspire 2.
7. Grounding
Grounding (a.k.a. earthing) is when your body is physically connected to the earth’s surface electrons. Through this connection, the earth’s negative ions neutralize the body’s inflammation-inducing free radicals.
This might sound a bit woo-woo but the science backs it up. A blinded study had 60 people with sleep issues and joint or muscle pain sleep on earthing mats (ground to the earth with a copper wire) or sham mats for one month. In the experimental group that grounded:
74% had improvements in pain (0% for the control group)
78% reported improved general well-being (13% for the control)
82% had less muscle stiffness and pain (0% for the control)
85% improved their time to fall asleep (13% for the control)
93% had improved quality of sleep (13% for the control)
100% woke up feeling rested (13% for the control)
The benefits of grounding go well beyond sleep. It’s a fascinating and underappreciated topic so I’ll save the deep dive for another time. Fortunately, however, it’s becoming more mainstream which means more research, application, and products to help.
Shoot for 20 minutes of outdoor grounding a day (time this with your sun exposure; 2 birds 1 stone). If you can’t get your bare feet outside then use an affordable grounding mat under your desk or on the bed. I use these Earth Runner sandals (when it’s less socially appropriate to be barefoot).
8. Get Enough Movement During The Day
One of the most effective tools to manage sleep is movement. The general rule of thumb is that the more you move the better you’ll sleep. There is an asterisk next to this claim though. If you’re exercising too much then this can disrupt your sleep in which case you most likely need to cut back on the exercise and incorporate more rest days. This happens to 2-5% of the population.
Not getting enough movement, on the other hand, is a much more common reason that people don’t sleep well. This insufficient exercise accounts for 80% of the population. Most people that fall into this camp have a sedentary job or lifestyle in general, however, forced immobilization like an injury or hospitalization can also have acute effects on sleep.
The best type of exercise for sleep is cardiovascular-based workouts compared to strength training. The more important factor, however, is getting frequent movement and bouts of walking throughout the day. More movement = more Z’s.
What are your best tips for better sleep behaviors?
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