How To Engineer The Perfect Day For A Good Night Sleep
A good night of sleep starts as soon as you wake up. What we eat, what we do, and the light in our environment are all forms of zeitgebers–cues used to adjust your circadian clock. Our brain and body are sensitive to these cues so become aware of them and use them to your advantage.
Use this protocol to take advantage of the cues your body needs to optimize your brain and body to have a good night sleep.
The Perfect Day To Have A Good Night Sleep
The Morning
6:00am — Wake up.
It can be 4am, or 9am but whatever time it is, get up at the same time every day. On the weekends shoot for a wake-up time within an hour of your weekday time, but no later. Opt for a nap or an early bedtime over sleeping in. This provides predictability to the dance of your sleep-wake hormones running through your body.
Note: the remainder of the times are based on a 6am wake-up so adjust the time based on your wake up time.
6:15 — Get sun.
Get sunlight to your eyes and as much of your skin as you can within an hour of waking. Light is the strongest zeitgeber your body has. The “master clock” of the body (the suprachiasmatic nucleus) is like the conductor of the cells and hormones of the body. When you get exposure to early sun, the conductor tells cortisol to rise and melatonin to decrease. In addition to regulating our circadian rhythm, sunlight also improves our alertness and mood, decreases inflammation, and regulates our stress response. If you can’t get outside within an hour just make sure it is before 10am. If you can’t get outside at all then use a light therapy lamp for 20 minutes.
6:40 — Hydrate.
Drink at least 8oz of filtered water in the morning. This is (or should be) the most dehydrated you are throughout the day. Replenish fluids and pair them with electrolytes like lemon juice and sea salt or a powder mix like LMNT. Read more about the importance of electrolytes here.
6:45 — Get cold.
Take a cold shower, go for an ice plunge, or just be outside in cold weather (in minimal clothes). This hormetic stressor increases your adrenaline and dopamine and triggers your body to warm itself up over a longer period throughout the morning.
7:00 — Move.
This could be an intense workout or a stroll around the neighborhood. Whatever it is, make sure your heart rate gets a little elevated (doing things like housework doesn’t count). This improves the flow of your lymphatic system, your cardiovascular system, and it activates brain-derived neurotropic factors (BDNF), a peptides and growth factor improving brain health, which ultimately improves sleep quality.
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7:30 — Caffeinate.
If you drink coffee or tea in the morning then shoot your first sip 1-2 hours after waking. This allows your body to naturally increase cortisol levels and decreases a risk of an afternoon crash when the caffeine loses its effect. Peak energy from coffee is within an hour of drinking a cup but it has a half-life of about 5.7 hours meaning that if you drank 200mg of coffee by 10am then 53mg would still be in your system by 8pm. Because this is the case, and caffeine can wreak havoc on the quality of your sleep (yes, even if you can fall asleep immediately after an espresso shot), stop caffeine intake by noon. Read more about making the healthiest cup of coffee here.
7:45 — Eat breakfast (if you eat breakfast).
Avoid the standard American diet (SAD) classics like muffins, bagels, and orange juice, and go for the protein-rich foods like bacon and eggs. A high-carb breakfast sets you up for a glycemic roller coaster the rest of the day which means you’re likely snacking on carbs to get out of the hypoglycemic slump. Having erratic eating patterns throws off the body’s routine and because food is another one of those zeitgebers, it throws off your sleep.
8:30 — Work.
Go into deep work mode. See here for ways to optimize productivity and the lighting in your house which all have an effect on your sleep.
10:00 — Move again.
In lieu of writing this throughout the day, just have a goal of consistently moving throughout the day–at least every 90 minutes. One of the reasons that people slept less during COVID was due to working from home, getting outside (and less sun) less, and moving less. The patients who I work with who move the least have the worst sleep. Aim for 8,000-12,000 steps a day. Frequency (steps spread throughout the day) is better than intensity (getting the bulk at once).
The Afternoon
12:00pm — Eat lunch.
If you eat lunch then eat it around this time. It’s important to be aware of the volume of your food intake (which goes for all meals). The more you eat, the more blood has to go to your gut and away from your brain and muscles. This also triggers the parasympathetic (rest, digest, and repair) nervous system which is associated with sleep and relaxation. If you eat a high-carb meal then you’re also more at risk of the rollercoaster rise and fall after eating.
12:30 — Get outside.
Depending on the cloud cover, get 5-30 minutes of light exposure around midday. Research has shown that this early exposure to light makes you more resilient to potential blue light exposure at nighttime.
1:00 — Nap.
If you’re a napper then get it in. Be sure not to nap longer than 90 minutes and make sure it is both far enough away from your natural bedtime and short enough that it doesn’t interfere with this nighttime sleep.
The Evening
6:00 — Eat a small dinner early.
One of the biggest reasons people have difficulty falling asleep at night is because of dinner. We use up to 15% of the calories we consume just for energy to digest food. If you eat a big, late dinner then instead of decreasing the amount of energy before bed you’re increasing it. The body doesn’t turn off when it goes to sleep. If there is something it needs to do (digest, heal an injury, be anxious about something) then it’s going to do it. Make sure your dinner is early and light.
7:00 — Watch the sunset.
When the sun is high around midday it’s bright white and yellow and when it’s at a lower solar angle around morning and evening time it turns different hues of red and orange (the “golden hour”). These red and orange wavelengths signal to the body that nighttime is coming. Depending on where you live and the time of year, try to see the sunset.
8:00 — Respect The Sleep Window.
The 2-3 hours before you go to bed are some of the most important because your body is preparing for sleep and is very sensitive to anything that gets in the way of this. In this time frame, avoid eating, exercising, alcohol, blue light, and stress-perceiving situations.
Avoiding blue light tends to be the most difficult of these so consider blue light-blocking glasses. Clear blue light blockers block out a maximum of 50% of blue light while amber ones block up to 99.8% of all blue light. For tinted ones, I recommend Essential Living or Spectra479 and Felix Grey for clear ones.
8:30 — Ingest electrolytes before bed.
We tend to dehydrate throughout the night but drinking water immediately before bed can just push water to the bloodstream (causing the urge to pee) whereas electrolytes help shuttle water into cells. The science backs this up as electrolytes have been shown to help decrease the risk of sleep problems. Some of the best natural sources are coconut water, sea salt, and lemons. Squeeze a lemon with some sea salt into your evening cup of tea or water. Or you can add in a powder mix like LMNT.
9:00 (a half hour before bedtime).
Wind Down. Have a wind-down routine where you activate your parasympathetic (rest, digest, and repair) nervous system, decrease cortisol levels, and naturally increase melatonin levels. Have a cup of tea, read, meditate, stretch, do breathwork, or do yoga, or take a bath.
Consider a supplement. I stack L-theanine and magnesium glycinate (most nights) before bed. See this article for other supplements that can help with sleep.
Do grounding before bed (or in bed). Grounding (a.k.a. earthing) has plenty of benefits including shifting your nervous system from a sympathetic (fight, flight, freeze) to the parasympathetic (rest, digest, repair) nervous system. People using grounding mats for sleep reported significantly improved sleep latency (how quickly it takes you to fall asleep), quality of sleep, and waking up feeling rested. It has also been shown to decrease pain, inflammation, and cortisol levels. The easiest way to ground is to walk barefoot outside. If you can’t get outside then consider a grounding mat that plugs directly into the grounding circuit of an electrical outlet. There are also grounding mats made for the bed which you can use throughout the night.
To read more about the health benefits of grounding, read this.
9:30 — Go to bed. You can probably tell me the exact time you wake up in the morning but what about the exact time you go to bed?
The deepest sleep you will get (stage 3 and 4; REM and deep sleep) occurs in the first 2 cycles of the night and then sleep phases into lighter, non-REM stages (stage 1 and 2). Getting to bed early and consistently allows you to hit these important early stages. Just like you set an alarm to wake up, set an alarm to go to bed or wind down.
The Sleep Sanctuary. Make sure your bedroom is optimized for sleep. If you go to bed with a phone next to your head, a street light coming in through your windows, and the temperature in the 70’s, then all of the stuff you did earlier in the day has much less of an impact.
A note about jet lag
If you were doing a short trip across time zones then keep these zeitgebers in place. If you want to adapt quickly to the new time zone then shift these to the local time zone. Even if you're not hungry or feel like working out or feel like waking up in the morning, push through these for the first day in order to ensure a quick adjustment to the new time zone. You can also use the Jet Lag Rooster by Sleepopolis to help manage jet lag when you’re traveling across timezones.
What do you do to get a good night sleep? What impacts your sleep the most? Which strategy is your non-negotiable for optimal sleep?
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