In this post, we are discussing what is the art and science behind your sleep and how can you hack it.
Basics of Sleep Hacking
The easy stuff
These are some of the basic changes that you’re able to make that don’t take a lot of effort and are very easy things that you can translate into for the most part.
Sleep in darkness:
Sleep in a pitch black room. Try to make it as dark as you possibly can. Block out all possible light sources and you can cover various things up using black electrical tape.
Wind down a few hours before bed:
You really want to start whining down about two hours before you are getting ready to get into bed. So this means that you’re going to use less bright lighting during the night and you’re also going to eliminate or dim television and computer screens. So you don’t want to be on the devices watching TV stuff like that. You really want to put your body in a position where it can calm itself and it can really get into that wrestling mindset.
The tougher stuff
Caffeine is not a good sleep aid:
I know a lot of people are addicted to caffeine or just love caffeine. Coffee, Red Bull, monsters, whatever it is. But that does not help you and that’s something that you definitely want to be careful with. So stop drinking caffeine by 2:00 pm each day or at least eight hours before you’re going to bed.
Try getting in bed by 11:00 pm:
Try getting in bed by 11 o’clock. When you sleep later than that your body is forced to create something known as cortisol surges after 11 to keep you awake. So your body is basically exerting extra liquids and energies to basically keep you awake. But if you’re in bed by 11 which I know very few people are able to do. You’re going to get the highest quality of sleep and basically the best type of rest.
The big misconception
A lot of people feel like go exercising or doing physical activity right before going to bed helps them put that helps them go to bed quicker and gives them a really good night’s sleep. But that’s actually a huge misconception. Do not exercise within two hours of going to bed unless you’re doing something very relaxing like meditating, going on a short walk or yoga avoided at all costs. Any physical activity such as sports, lifting weights, whatever the case is you should not be doing a few hours before going to bed.
I know a lot of people think that it’s great to exercise right before bed but that’s a myth could because basically, the scientific idea of this is that exercise gets your heart rate up making it tougher for you to get good sleep because your body has to do more now to power down.
Zero cost
These are some of the things that you can do immediately to hack your sleep without spending any time money or effort. So these are some of the easiest things that you can really start putting into effect right away. And these are simple but effective things are immediately start eating and improving your sleep. So you can start doing these things.
Starting from tonight if you wanted to and I recommend trying these things right away so you can see how much more your sleep improves.
Food and sleep
Seafood
Eating seafood and low-mercury fish at dinner. if you don’t like these options you can also take something known as krill all just about two hours before going to bed. But seafood gives you omega 3s which are extremely helpful with your sleep. Krill specifically works inside of your brain because it’s bounded with omega 3s. It essentially helps you get really high-quality sleep. So more fat tends to keep your energy levels stable for longer and it takes a lot of energy to help you sleep efficiently. Foods like seafood and walnut end up working out, really well for this reason.
Brain Octane
This is actually a product that a lot of people know about. Some people do very well by just taking a tablespoon of this product known as an upgraded brain octane and upgraded CCT oil right before going to bed.
You can also blend these things into things such as herbal teas so that you get the fat necessary to give your brain some energy while you do sleep. With things like this, I highly recommend it. It’s not a mandatory thing but it’s something they should try and see if it works for you or not.
Raw honey
Taking a tablespoon of raw honey before going to bed is great on an empty stomach. Your brain tends to use something known as liver glycogen at night. And the raw honey is going to replenish your supply while creating some more stable glucose levels for a couple of hours. So you can take this with your brain octane if you want as well so that your brain can burn the glucose and the fat while you sleep it’s really up to you. But this is something that I highly recommend
Amino acids
If you’re short on amino acids you can take one to two tablespoons of collagen protein from the upgraded brand before sleeping as well. This is another kind of supplement that they offer because when you’re short on amino acids the protein doesn’t require digestion the same way that other proteins or some of the more normal ones do. So that’s why it’s kind of sometimes very helpful for you to take a look into this.
Important notes:
Try one thing at a time. So you know what really works best. I highly recommend isolating and experimenting and the only other thing I can give you guys an important reminder about only drinks any type of coffee before 2:00 p.m. or less than eight hours before you go into the bed.
Supplements and sleep
Gaba
It’s great for its natural common relaxation effects. So if you need to calm down to relax your body in order to fall asleep.
This product is great because it really helps you calm yourself before you go to sleep.
It is a vegetarian. So if your anyone out there is vegetarian you can take this product.
Valerian
This is a very powerful herb for sleep, anxiety, and insomnia. It can help you quite a bit with all these things that you’re suffering from these things and this is causing you not to be able to sleep as well. It’s a great product to take.
It smells really bad and it can be rather groggy in the morning.
So I highly suggest that you do not use this every single night and that would be my top suggestion.
Passionflower
This is very similar to the Valerian. The only difference in this is that it’s much less intense than Valerian and it’s a great starter supplement.
The great thing about passionflower is that it’s 100 percent and completely herbal which is extremely good.
Kava stress relief tea
This is one of my favorites and this is something that I take till this day and it works very well and it’s extremely easy to take in.
It’s very similar to another product called chamomile which is a very popular product on the market. But think of this is on steroids. I feel like chamomile doesn’t have a lot of stuff on it.
This is great for relieving stress and tension. If you’re feeling very tense or stressed out before a big day this is a great product to take to help you fall asleep at night.
Natural calm magnesium
I highly against this product. I am not a fan of it. The biggest thing that you have to brush your teeth after taking it because it is acidic.
I don’t know how comfortable a lot of you are going to be with taking a product like this. So as I said I really don’t recommend trying this unless you really like the effects of it. I would start by taking maybe a trial and then from there you can really figure it out.
5-HTP
This basically stimulates that’s going to create a lot more melatonin production. So this is going to make you sleepier, which is really good if you are an insomniac.
Make sure that you take it as soon as you’re ready to go to bed. So if you have to drive somewhere you have to do something beforehand. I highly against it because it is very strong. So you really want to take it as soon as you’re getting ready to get into bed.
Tracking Your Sleep
Application for tracking
One of my favorite apps on IOS phone is known as “sleep cycle.” So basically what you have to do with this is you put your phone under your sheets or on your mattress and it all set and you set an alarm of what time you want to wake up and it starts to track the quality of your sleep.
This thing can actually analyze and figure out where in your sleep pattern you’re at and what the best time to wake you up is. And it gives you a lot of data about how you’ve been sleeping and monitoring your sleep and movements and stuff like that. So it’s extremely useful.
Notes about this application:
This app only 99 cents. My recommendation for you is to use this for a week not just basing your results off of just one night. And that’s the reason for that is one night isn’t enough data to really see to get a good idea of what the OP is analyzing. You really need a week of data so that you can understand your baseline sleep quality.
And it’s very important that you put your phone on airplane mode. So that you aren’t cooking your brain with RF. And I know there’s a lot of different theories and scientific research that’s been put out there about how the phone next to you can be very dangerous.
After tracking your sleep
You’ll have the data necessary to track your sleep and this will ensure that the effort that you’re putting in is actually working.
So along the way you can make various adjustments and tweets based on how you feel when waking up and you can analyze and read the data to see what it tells you.
So once you have the baseline you can begin experimenting with tons of other things.
More ways to experiment
You can experiment with your sleep hygiene, different routines and different things that you do before after you get into bed. You can experiment with some of the supplements. Some of the food hacks that you can try to fit into your meal plan. The lighting for sure.
Things like sheets, you might want to change the sheets. A sleeping position, if you feel like it’s easier for you to fall asleep on your back or you get better sleep on a specific side whatever the case is. You can also start the experiment with those types of things.
Some other sleep upgrades
So something known as plug-in lights or that you can just install yourself. If you turn these on about an hour before going to bed. It will actually prepare you for sleep. While also making your house seem like it’s actually lit by candles. It’s a very cool thing and it really helps you kind of get your brain to dim down and kind of shut down before you go to bed.
Another thing you guys can use is something known as electromagnetic field filters that will actually cut down on fields that might interrupt your deep sleep. You can experiment and then decide what to do.
You can also use various acupuncture points for helping with your deep sleep.
