Unless you are my dog Jackson, chances are that you have experienced sleep troubles at some point in your life. For some of you, poor sleep is a regular occurrence. and even poor balance. It can be incredibly difficult to reset your sleep cycle once it is out of whack. Below are my top four sleep hacks to reset your sleep cycle.
1. Wake Up Early
Circadian Rhythm is the natural process that regulates your sleep-wake cycle. This includes many biological processes that occur within a 24 hour period. It is very easy to positively or negatively influence this cycle. When my Circadian Rhythm starts to get thrown off, typically after staying up too late too many days in a row, sleeping in a little later than I should and missing a few morning workouts, I start to feel like crap and I suck at everything. When this happens, I start with what I call a hard reset. A hard reset for me is when I force myself to wake up early. When you wake up early your body naturally winds down a lot easier at night, thus helping to reset your Circadian Rhythm so that it is consistent with when you should be awake and functioning like a normal human. It’s very important to avoid heavy amounts of stimulants after 4:00 pm and excessive napping (over 30 minutes) because this will only make it harder to fall asleep at a good time that night which just keeps the cycle going.
2. Supplement With Melatonin
If you have a hard time staying asleep at night or getting quality sleep, you can start to supplement with Melatonin. Melatonin is a peptide hormone that is naturally produced when we are exposed to darkness. It basically tells our body to chill out and wind down. When we stare at computer screens and phones Melatonin is not produced in the levels that we need for quality sleep. Melatonin is available as an over the counter, well-researched, safe and non-addictive supplement to help you stay asleep. The most common side-effect is lucid dreaming. Melatonin has been studied in pretty high amounts but for most people 3mg a night works great. Even though it is not considered habit forming, I still would only recommend taking it 4-5 days per week.
3. Meditate Before Sleep
If you have a hard time shutting your brain down before going to bed, I would recommend spending about 5-10 minutes meditating or doing a relaxing breathing exercise. This will not only help you let go of the day's stresses but it will also stimulate your Parasympathetic Nervous System which is responsible for helping the body calm down. It does this by lowering your respiratory and heart rate while increasing digestion. As a side note, when you are highly stressed and your Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) is firing off constantly, your digestion can suffer dearly. Additionally, when your SNS is working overtime, you are constantly releasing Cortisol, a stress hormone that among other things can disrupt your Circadian Rhythm. Deep and controlled breathing helps to stimulate the Parasympathetics and counteract the SNS. This will start to bring your physiology back to a baseline. Doing this before bed, will not only make it easier to sleep but you will also get better sleep quality which is very underestimated.
4. Exercise Daily
Exercise is like a fountain of youth that few people want to bathe in. Studies have repeatedly shown that exercise helps with sleep quality. It’s true that exercise temporarily spikes your cortisol level, however it quickly drops back down to a normal level Personally, I recommend working out in the morning before work but you can also work out at night as long as it isn’t right before bed. Also, keep in mind that if you plan to work out at night make sure that your schedule is completely locked down. Oftentimes, things come up towards the end of the day and it is just all too easy to skip that workout.
There are about a million more things you can do to help with sleep, but these are my top 4. Try them out, let me know what you think or even send me your own sleep remedies.