How To Get Better Sleep: Sleep Tips Guide

Sleep is such an essential part of our daily lives. Learning how to get better sleep will see your quality of life improve. In this post, you’ll learn exactly how you can get better sleep.

Here’s what you’ll be learning:

• What sleep is
• The importance of sleep
• Practical sleep tips

A Bit About Sleep

Sleep consists of several roughly-90-minute sleep cycles. During these sleep cycles each night, we go through two phases of sleep. These are NREM (Non-Rapid Eye Movement) and REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep.

To stay healthy, we need 5 or 6 complete sleep cycles each night. That’s 7 and a half to 9 hours of sleep.

NREM Sleep

NREM sleep is for the body. During NREM, the body repairs itself, regenerating tissue and building bones and muscles. The immune system is also strengthened during this time.

REM Sleep

REM sleep is important for the brain. We dream during REM sleep. Each REM cycle gets longer throughout the night. This makes our dreams seem longer throughout the night.

REM sleep helps to maintain our mental health and regulate our emotions. It keeps us happy!

The Importance Of Sleep

On average, we spend one-third of our lives asleep. Or, we’re supposed to at least.

There are many good reasons why we need sleep. Without it, there can be some pretty catastrophic consequences. These include serious health issues and an increased chance of dying.

Sleep and Learning

Sleep is essential for effective learning. Sleep before learning prepares your brain. Sleep after learning is for helping you to remember the things that you’ve learnt.

Sleeping helps to transfer information from your short to long-term memory. Through this process, sleep helps you to remember what you’ve learned.

Matthew Walker, author of ‘Why We Sleep’, did a study where he split participants into two groups. One group got a full 8 hours of sleep. The other had to pull an all-nighter.

The participants were then placed in an MRI machine the following morning. Their brains were scanned while being presented with new facts for learning. They were then tested on how effective that learning had been.

The study found that there was a 40% deficit in the sleep-deprived group to form new memories. This shows the importance of sleep for learning.

Sleep For Health and Mortality

We underestimate the importance of sleep for our health and mortality. Sleep is an important factor that outright determines how healthy we are. It also determines our likelihood of dying at any point.

Without enough sleep – 7 to 9 hours per night for adults – our immune systems tank. During sleep, our body repairs itself; the less time available to do this, the less efficient the body will be.

Sleep boosts our immune system and minimises illness. This is particularly important right now for fighting off Coronavirus.

There is a considerable relation between dying of natural causes and how much sleep we get. People who get 5 hours sleep a night have a 65% increased likelihood of dying, at any given time.

A slew of poor health conditions arises as a result of insufficient sleep, including:

• Increases risk of diabetes
• Higher blood pressure
• Unstable mood
• Memory issues
• Less efficient cognitive functioning, leading to an increased likelihood of accidents
• Increased stress
• Increased weight gain
• Weakened immune system
• Reduced ability to balance
• Lower sex drive
• Increased risk of heart disease
• Impaired judgement
• Increases risk of stroke

And more…

The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life. Short sleep predicts all-cause mortality.

Matthew Walker

Sleep Tips

You should now know the importance of sleep. From here, you’ll learn some tips to help you get better sleep. For the best rest each night, include as many of these tips as you can.

Understanding Sleep

For the best results, aim to get at least 7 hours of sleep per night. If you don’t, you’ll experience negative consequences such as the ones mentioned before. Try to aim for 7 and a half or 9 hours of sleep each night.

Sleep cycles are roughly 90 minutes long and it’s much easier to wake up towards the end of a sleep cycle. For 5 complete sleep cycles, that’s 7 and a half hours of sleep. This is a great place to start and will make it easier to wake up.

Sleeping for 6 full sleep cycles takes roughly 9 hours. 8 hours is also a good target to aim for, as it leaves a bit of wiggle room on each side.

Sleep debt

Understand that sleep isn’t like a bank.

Part of our culture is accumulating a ‘sleep debt’ through social activities late at night. This includes going out drinking, having evening meals, and late-night films. We then ‘repay’ this debt at a later date. This results in a cycle of bingeing and purging.

This is also known as ‘social jetlag’.

Nobody is able to ‘catch up’ in full on their sleep, on top of the sleep for the current night. It’s impossible. Understanding this, try to avoid sleep deprivation.

Your mattress

Know that your mattress is very important. Consider investing in a new, high-quality mattress. Particularly if you’ve had your current mattress for a few years. You’re supposed to change it every 5-8 years, anyway.

With one-third of our lives asleep, it makes sense to spend the money on a better mattress. Doing so will help reduce back pain, shoulder pain, and stiffness. It will also increase the quality of your sleep. It also makes sleep more comfortable and enjoyable.

Regularity

This is the most important tip that you can follow. Sleep regularity will improve the quality of your sleep more than other tips. That means going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time every day.

Your circadian rhythm is the reason this is so powerful. You can make your circadian rhythm more efficient by following a sleep schedule. The closer this matches the day/night cycle, the better.

Further, to help regulate your circadian rhythm, try and get out in the sun for at least 30 minutes every day.

One way to help with sleep regularity is having an evening routine. Follow this before bed each night to make it easier to fall asleep. You’ll be training your brain to prepare for bed and sleep, through association. This will help you to maintain a sleep schedule.

Additionally, you can follow a morning routine upon waking up. Habits such as getting out of bed immediately can provide motivation to start each day. You’ll begin the day with a win which will help you to be more productive.

Make sure you only use your bed for two things – sleeping and sex. Otherwise, your brain will associate your bed with alertness rather than sleep.

To be more specific here, I find this only applies to being under the covers. Often, I’ll read or chill atop my covers, as it’s a place to sit. But, I won’t go under the covers unless for the two previous reasons.

No Screens Before Bed

Almost all devices with screens use LED displays. These project light that’s on the blue end of the light spectrum. This is also known as ‘blue light’, a wavelength of light that our eyes can detect with ease.

On the light spectrum, blue tones trigger alertness within us. Red and yellow tones trigger calmness. During the day, we are exposed to natural blue light through the sun, keeping us alert and awake. It’s a survival mechanism.

As we transition to evening, natural blue light decreases. This signals the production of melatonin, the sleep hormone. Melatonin’s role in the body is to tell the body that it’s time to sleep.

There is a danger with sleep, blue light, and our digital society. We continue to use many of our screens after the sun has set, emulating the ‘alertness’ we have during the day.

Blue light suppresses the secretion of melatonin, preventing us from feeling tired. It makes it difficult to get to sleep.

To help with this, there are a few measures we can put in place.

The first is to avoid screens for at least one hour before bed. Two or three hours is ideal. This allows our bodies to begin to feel tired and increases our ability to drift off with ease.

The second is to use nightshift or similar features on our phones and devices. Most phones have an in-built feature which will switch the screens to more orange tones. Enable this for the hours before your bedtime.

Computers and laptops, though, usually do not have this feature in-built. Instead, you’ll need to install external software. Flux does exactly that and is available for both Windows and macOS.

Another alternative is to get some blue light blocking glasses or orange-tinted glasses. I find this a bit excessive and prefer to use the measures mentioned before, but this is an option. If interested, here’s a cheap, relatively stylish pair on Amazon.

Avoid ‘stimulants’ – caffeine, nicotine, sugar, etc.

Stimulants, as the name suggests, stimulate your body. This makes it difficult to fall asleep – and also makes it difficult to stay asleep.

Most stimulants take 8 hours to wear out of your system, so avoid taking any stimulants late in the day. This includes smoking cigarettes, and eating or drinking refined sugars.

Caffeine

Caffeine, in particular, is well-known for its power to reduce tiredness. Why is this?
The way that caffeine works is by latching on to certain receptors in your brain. Your brain uses these adenosine receptors to signal tiredness.

Adenosine builds up throughout the day, making you feel more tired as the day goes on. Eventually, you’ll feel so tired that sleep is the only option.

Caffeine latches on to these adenosine receptors, preventing you from feeling tired. This only works while caffeine is present. During this time, adenosine continues to build up. But, you can’t feel its effect since caffeine is present.

Once the caffeine has worn off, you’ll feel the full effect of the built-up adenosine all at once. This is what people refer to as a caffeine ‘crash’. If you’ve ever pulled an all-nighter with caffeine to keep you going, you’ll know this too well.

To help you fall asleep, it’s useful to feel the tiredness of built-up adenosine. So, avoid caffeine for at least 6 hours before bed.

6 hours is the ‘half-life’ of caffeine. At this point, 50% of the caffeine has worn off. Try not to have caffeine in the afternoon at all.

If you sleep while a lot of caffeine is still in your system (more than 50%), you won’t fall into a deep and restorative rest. This means you won’t feel as refreshed when you wake up in the morning.

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Thanks for reading so far. If you’d like to learn more, continue to part 2 of this post.

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Further Recommended Reading:

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• The Ultimate Guide To Creating A Morning Routine
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