Keystone Habit Series: Sleep

Proper sleep hygiene dramatically improves your executive functioning, mental health, and performance in every aspect of your life. If you want to create conditions conducive to personal growth and high achievement, this Keystone habit is a must. Sleep is more important than anything else you can do to improve your health, happiness, and productivity.  This includes diet, exercise, supplementation, and medication (except of course in extreme cases).

The Practical Cut: Actionables Only

1. Light
   Get 5 minutes of low solar-angle light 30-60 minutes after waking

Get low solar-angle light in the evening (sunrise/sunset light)

Avoid artificial light from 10 PM to 4 AM, especially bright overhead lights
Keep your room completely dark when you sleep

1. Temperature
   Increase your core temperature after waking by using 1-3 minutes of cold exposure like an ice bath or cold shower. Exercising will also help raise core temperature. 

Decrease your core temperature before sleep with no more than 20-30 minutes in a hot tub, sauna, etc.
Provide yourself a cool sleep environment with blankets added as needed.

1. Food

Eating a meal in the early part of the day contributes to having a food entrained circadian clock. Eat foods higher in fats and proteins to support executive functioning/motivated states, over foods that are high in sugar/carbohydrates. Don’t get too full or you’ll sequester energy to the gut to process it.
In the evening, a more carbohydrate heavy meal will promote a calm state conducive to sleep.

1. Caffeine
   Delay consuming caffeine until 90-120 minutes after you wake up.

1. Supplements
   You might consider using the following to improve your sleep:
   Nightly:
   Reishi mushroom 1000mg
   Magnesium Threonate 145mg
   L-Theanine 100-400mg
   Apigenin 50mg
   3-4 Nights a week:
   Glycine 2g
   GABA 100mg
   
   
2. Meditation
   Mindfulness (Vipassana) meditation has been shown to improve sleep quality if not done directly before bed.
   A “body scan,” or body awareness practice can elicit the relaxation response to promote sleepiness.
   
   
3. Miscellaneous
   Wake up at the same time everyday.
   Alcohol and most sleep medications diminish your sleep quality.
   Avoid using melatonin supplementation to sleep, except in certain scenarios such as in case of significant jet-lag.
   Elevating your feet with a pillow or the end of bed by 3-5 degrees can be beneficial to deepen sleep because of so-called glymphatic washout, this movement/circulation of fluids in the brain at night can improve cognitive function.
   Exercise late at night will delay your sleep cycle for usually about an hour.
   Avoid mouth-breathing during the day and promote nose-breathing at night by taping your mouth shut. This is especially important if you have sleep apnea.(Skeptical? Read “Breath” by James Nestor)

Extended Edition: The Why

Your circadian system regulates multiple monoaminergic brain regions that control mood, anxiety and motivated behaviors. We have fundamental biological patterns that determine wakefulness and sleep, and operating out of sync with these patterns severely diminishes our effectiveness. 

Your circadian clock manages your system to promote wakefulness and productivity during the day, and enables deep rest, regeneration, and processing at night. 

1. Light
   Get 5 minutes of low solar-angle light 30-60 minutes after waking

Get low solar-angle light in the evening

Avoid artificial light from 10 PM to 4 AM, especially bright overhead lights
Keep your room completely dark when you sleep.

Light exposure is the most significant factor in setting circadian rhythm. Getting the right kind of light, at the right times, for the right duration, at the right intensity is vital to cue your system into proper entrainment. The particular frequency of light you get at the low solar angles you find during the first part of the day and evening act as circadian oscillators or “bookends” to outline daytime for your nervous system. 5 minutes of morning light is ideal. On cloudy days you should likely get around 10 mins. On really cloudy/rainy days 20-30 mins would be ideal. The kind of light you get outside may not seem that much brighter than artificial lights, but if you measure the lux from the brightest light in your house and compare it to the ambient lux you find outside, you’ll find the difference is astronomical. We need that higher intensity of sunlight in our eyes and on our skin, and LEDs are no sufficient substitute. 

If you expose your eyes to bright artificial light at night, you inhibit your own production of melatonin. Overhead lights, especially, simulate the kind of directional lighting you have during the middle of the day, and it’s better to use lamps or lights closer to the floor. Fire and moonlight do not inhibit melatonin production, so moonlight and candles are the optimal light sources between 10 PM and 4 AM if you can manage it. If your room isn’t completely dark, whether its city lights, lights from inside the house, or even a night light, your body will notice. All artificial lights, regardless of color, will likely impede effective rest to some degree.

1. Temperature
   Increase your core temperature after waking by using 1-3 minutes of cold exposure like an ice bath or cold shower. Exercising will also help raise core temperature. 

Decrease your core temperature before sleep with no more than 20-30 minutes in a hot tub, sauna, etc.
Provide yourself a cool sleep environment with blankets added as needed.

Your body drops 1-3 degrees at night when you sleep. Your core temperature rises throughout the day until about 3 usually, then it begins to drop. It needs to cool down before you can sleep.

Your palms, the bottoms of your feet, and upper half of your face are especially helpful for changing your core temperature. These areas have what’s called glabrous skin, which acts as a thermal gate. Cold immersion in the morning and hot immersion at night trigger compensatory thermoregulation, and your core temperature shifts accordingly. 

1. Food

Eating a meal in the early part of the day contributes to having a food entrained circadian clock. Eat foods higher in fats and proteins to support executive functioning/motivated states, over foods that are high in sugar/carbohydrates. Don’t get too full or you’ll sequester energy to the gut to process it.
In the evening, a more carbohydrate heavy meal will promote a calm state conducive to sleep.

Foods higher in fat and protein support dopaminergic function, i.e. motivated states and executive function. Foods higher in carbohydrates or refined sugars increase serotonergic function, which can lend to a sense of calm, but also diminishes executive function/motivated states in a sort of oppositional relationship with dopamine along specific circuits.

1. Caffeine
   Delay consuming caffeine until 90-120 minutes after you wake up.

Caffeine works by blocking adenosine. By waiting until 90-120 minutes after you wake up, you clear out what residual adenosine is in your system and avoid the afternoon crash most people experience.  Additionally, your circadian rhythm uses cortisol to wake you up once you exit sleep.  If you introduce an additional cortisol spike (from caffeine) too close to this naturally occurring one, it will throw your body off balance and increase stress.

1. Supplements
   You might consider using the following to improve your sleep:
   Nightly:
   Reishi mushroom 1000mg + the stress delete mushroom shot blend
   Magnesium Threonate 145mg
   L-Theanine 100-400mg
   Apigenin 50mg
   3-4 Nights a week:
   Glycine 2g
   GABA 100mg
   
   
2. Meditation
   Mindfulness (Vipassana) meditation has been shown to improve sleep quality if done in the earlier part of the day.
   Single-point awareness practices such as repeatedly bringing your attention back to the breath actually diminish sleep quality if done directly before bedtime.
   A “body scan,” or body awareness practice can elicit the relaxation response to promote sleepiness. 

Elevated stress prevents people from being able to fall and stay asleep. Body awareness practices trigger the relaxation response. Stress management is another Keystone habit with powerful positive effects, including improving the quality of your sleep. We’ll expound on this Keystone in a future blog post. 

1. Miscellaneous
   Wake up at the same time everyday.
   Alcohol and most sleep medications diminish your sleep quality.
   Perhaps avoid using melatonin supplementation to sleep, except in certain scenarios such as in case of significant jet-lag.
   Elevating your feet with a pillow or the end of bed by 3-5 degrees can be beneficial to deepen sleep because of so-called glymphatic washout, this movement/circulation of fluids in the brain at night can improve cognitive function.

Exercise late at night will delay your sleep cycle for usually about an hour.
Avoid mouth-breathing during the day and promote nose-breathing at night by taping your mouth shut. This is especially important if you have sleep apnea.(Skeptical? Read “Breath” by James Nestor)

While alcohol and many sleep medications may help you fall asleep, they generally impede deep and sustained sleep.
Melatonin is an endogenous hormone. Most melatonin supplements dose at supraphysiological levels, well beyond normal ranges. Melatonin interacts with other hormone systems, like testosterone and estrogen systems, even acting as a puberty blocker in kids. Every once in a while likely won’t do too much harm, but chronic use may be something to avoid. 

At the end of the day, all of this information about what's going on in your body based on your sleep hygiene habits is only meant to serve as a compelling reason why.  It's not important to remember any of it, as long as you are able to improve the quality and consistency of your sleep.  There is a unanimous agreement across all fields of health and wellness that there is nothing more impactful to your health, wellness, happiness, recovery, and performance, than sleep.

Try choosing three of the suggestions we've gone over here for just three days and let's find out what a difference it can make.

-Jason Gottfredson, Mental Cartographer

Eat. Excel. Evolve.

References

Articles: 

Early evening light mitigates sleep compromising physiological and alerting responses to subsequent late evening light: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-52352-w

Recommendations for daytime, evening, and nighttime indoor light exposure to best support physiology, sleep, and wakefulness in healthy adults: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001571

Meal Timing Regulates the Human Circadian System: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)30504-3

Books:

“Why We Sleep” Matthew Walker, PhD

“Breath, the Hidden Science of a Lost Art” by James Nestor

Podcasts:

The Huberman Lab Podcast: Sleep Toolkit https://open.spotify.com/episode/3TxjF2mZy9S9I9GL5eZ8sq?si=14gEZOH9Q1W8iCNl1Fafaw