Upgrade Your Sleep
Better Sleep is a Cornerstone Habit for a Fitter, Healthier Life
When you upgrade your sleep, you get more motivation to work out and to avoid the foods and behaviours which damage your health.
Yet most people fail to consciously work on their sleep habits. They carry on with the same routine, without giving any thought to how or why it formed. You don’t necessarily have to sleep for longer to get the rewards. In fact, simply boosting the quality of your sleep is more than half of the battle.
This page lists the quick wins that will immediately boost your sleep quality.
How you enjoy the positive effects is entirely up to you.
Getting Light Right Will Upgrade Your Sleep
A great night of quality rest starts in the morning.
Our circadian rhythms are fine tuned to sunlight. Getting (safe) exposure to sunlight at the start of each day will reset your melatonin levels, letting your body know that it is time to be at peak alertness.
By the time you get to late evening, that same cycle will put you in the right biological state to sleep well.
Light in the evening will have the opposite effect. There is a lot of advice about avoiding screen time in the hours before you sleep. That blue light sends a signal to your brain that it is still daytime, inhibiting your natural production of melatonin.
Caffeine Directly Inhibits Sleep Neurotransmitters
Everyone knows that coffee provides an alertness boost.
Few people could tell you how it works on a neurochemical basis. Caffeine inhibits a neurotransmitter called adenosine. This substance accumulates during the day, gradually building up ‘sleep pressure’ until it is cleared during sleep.
By inhibiting adenosine, caffeine stops you getting tired, and can stop you falling asleep altogether.
Coffee, tea, and soft drinks like coke contain caffeine. To upgrade your sleep, avoid them in the afternoon and evening. These days, caffeine free versions taste just as good, and the improved sleep quality is more than worth it.
Exercising Affects Sleep Quality
Exercise effects sleep quality in positive ways and detrimentally.
Physical activity during the day is a huge boost. It creates a virtuous loop. That better rest from physical exhaustion leads to increased motivation to work out – which in turn improves sleep.
Exercising late into the evening will have the opposite results.
The cellular stresses will keep you from falling asleep, even though you will feel tired. The threshold time to stop working out varies between individuals. If you have sleeping problems, dial back your workout times – they may well resolve.
Upgrade Your Sleep: Eating and Drinking
Let’s start with the elephant in the room – booze.
While you might feel like you had a long, restful night of sleep after drinking, this is a mirage. You were sedated. The sleep you ‘enjoyed’ was light, and not decent quality. You are less alert, and less able to resist life’s temptations the next day.
Eating too late will also damage your sleep. Especially if you eat high GI carbs (for example, bread), which is turned into glucose. Don’t fight both digestion and an insulin spike when you want to get a quality night of rest.
Stress, Psychology and Quality Sleep
Stress damages your physical health.
Preventing quality sleep is one way that psychological factors affect your physical health. We can’t always avoid stress, though there are some tricks to dampening its influence on sleep. A popular method is to keep a pad and pen next to your bed. Writing down worries, to-dos, and nagging thoughts before you sleep is a wonderful way to avoid that ‘busy mind’ that stops you getting proper shut eye.
Final Thoughts: Upgrading Sleep is All About Habits
There are many other factors that affect sleep.
These are covered in depth elsewhere here at Fitness Review. They include getting a good temperature for your sleep environment, avoiding light through cracks in the curtains in the morning, getting to sleep at the same time every night and more.
When you get sleep right, staying fit, active, and healthy becomes easy.
More Popular Pages this Month: