How to improve your sleep quality.

I'm going to walk you through some of the things I do to improve my sleep quality with the accompanying sleeping Sleep Cycle graph (I really recommend this app so you can figure out what helps or hinders your sleep quality!) I'm using Sleep Cycle in an attempt to quantify my sleep quality. For every change I made during the day I noted it and took a screenshot of the Sleep Cycle graph. There are absolutely confounding factors at work here but at least for me I am more certain about what affects my sleep. I hope this is useful to you. It does not escape me that the average sleep time in each screen shot says 7 hours but this is inaccurate. How long you actually stay asleep and your quality of sleep is not reflected in this number.

Below is my reference Sleep Cycle graph as it represents my usual crappy sleep.

As you can see I get about 5 hours sleep on average and I wake up feeling really unrested and cranky for the day. I'm writing this article because I know how lack of sleep can really affect your life and below are some of the things I've tried and have seemed to improve the situation for me. All in all if you're like me, there are several factors that you need to adjust and fine tune in order to catch your Z's.

The 5 things that increase my sleep quality are as follows:

Melatonin

Melatonin is a life saver for me. Although I wake up groggy I definitely feel more rested throughout the day. Unfortunately a side effect for some is terrible dreams. Friends have told me they tried melatonin but refuse to touch the stuff because of the insane dreams they experienced. Below is a Sleep Cycle graph of my sleep having taken melatonin when I got into bed.

A drastic improvement. I usually never stay asleep for more than 4-5 hours. I want to point out again that there are several factors at work. Taking Melatonin by itself may not be a fix for you.

Exercise

If I don't exercise during the day, I will not sleep well. Fact. Make sure you won't be sleeping for another 4 hours after you exercise. Exercising too close to bedtime usually keeps me up as I'm still amped from my work out & my body is generating a lot of heat which makes it harder to fall asleep. Below is a Sleep Cycle graph of my sleep having exercised during the day.

Again another drastic improvement in sleep.

Temperature

Sometimes you wake up and you are unsure why. It could be the temperature of your room. In my experience the room being too hot or too cold wakes me up. Unfortunately I don't have a Sleep Cycle graph to demonstrate this because I haven't recorded the temperature changes of my room. I'd suggest varying blankets of different thicknesses, maybe aiming a fan on you at night if you get too hot. This one is harder to get right.

Food

Most people tell you about not eating too close to bedtime but what they don't tell you is you need to eat enough during the day. Not eating enough during the day can wake you up at night or cause you to binge before bedtime which also compounds the problem. My sleep gets more restless when I eat right before bedtime as seen in the Sleep Cycle graph below!

Teeth Grinding

This is one I learn't recently. I lost my Invisalign years ago and stopped wearing them. Recently my teeth started to shift again so I bought a new pair. I was really surprised to see my sleep quality increase based on that. This is probably related to stress but by extension if you're stressed you may be grinding your teeth at night. Below is a graph of my sleep using Invisalign.

Sleep Hygiene

Basically, go to bed and wake up at the same time as much as possible. Your body will get accustomed to the cycle and expect to be falling asleep and waking up at certain times. If you have problems doing this, it is probably due to my next point.

No Electronics in Bed!

Stop using your laptop in bed. Stop binging on Netflix in your bed. This is training your body to associate a different activity with your bed outside of sleep. Not to mention the light from your laptop also keeps you up. You can try an app called Flux. There is emerging evidence that blue light may affect your sleep. Flux is worth a shot if you have to use your computer right before bed.

All in all these are the factors that affect my sleep and I hope they help you in your journey to get quality sleep!