A simple guide to a better nights sleep. Part 1 of 3

Hello everyone, I'm Papa Bear!

Before I dwell on how to get a better night sleep I’ll give you some background information about myself. I am 4th-year psychology student who will be starting a thesis relating to sleep and cognition in two months. I also do sleep counselling as my side hustle to fund my studies. Probably like many of you reading, I have a love-hate relationship with sleep. I love dreaming mainly because it involves me catching salmon out of a river and mating with Mama Bear. I also hate sleep because time is wasted being absent rather than productive. Sleeping is one of the most crucial aspects of our lives and I could literally write a fucking thesis about how important it is but that is far beyond the scope of this post. My goal here is to teach you all how you can have a better night sleep which will improve your health in a variety of ways.

Tip 1:
Only sleep enough to feel refreshed
This is a mistake that I make all the time, especially when winter comes around. This tip is a difficult one to give a black and white suggestion on the amount of time you should sleep, rather it should be up to you to know your body well enough to distinguish between inadequate vs adequate rest. For the typical adult, it will be between 6-8 hours however, I have found it is largely dependent on when you go to bed.

Tip 2:
Get up at the same time every day
This is straightforward. For me, this is getting up at the dreaded time of 5:30 am, regardless of what time I go to bed. Although simple, you should be strict with your approach to this tip. Countless times I've gone to bed at midnight and forced myself to get up 5:30 am. I was tired af throughout the day but this is a good thing as it gives you an opportunity to easily fall asleep at your desired time, for me that is 9:30 pm.

Tip 3:
Exercise regularly but not two hours before bed
I love lifting and there is nothing better than passing out in bed after a heavy deadlift session however, this is arguably an example of poor sleep hygiene. Some major reasons why this should be avoided is because it can influence your body temperature during sleep and it has the potential to increase your autonomic, metabolic and endocrine activity. Additionally, exercise closer to bedtime has some support in the scientific literature to suggest that it reduces the amount of rapid eye movement (REM) and promotes more non-rapid eye movement (NREM). The distinction between these two stages is that you dream in REM sleep and I like dreaming, especially about Mama Bear. In no way am I going into enough depth on these concepts and this is for a good reason, it's beyond the scope of this series but I will revisit them one day soon and I will teach you how to manipulate these phases to your advantage.

Tip 4:
The bedroom should be sound and light free
This is probably the most important tip. Sound should be kept to a minimum, for those who want a more precise measurement, 40-50dB is a typical range but if you can get it lower then you're doing quite well. The reason why sound should be minimised is because it creates cognitive arousal and given that we're trying to initiate and maintain sleep we need to keep our cognitive arousal relatively low. I personally believe light is a more important factor than sound, it could genuinely right a thesis on this and I very well might. Light is by far the strongest indicator of what wakes us up and puts us to sleep. Humans are diurnal creatures, this means that were active during the daytime when the sun is up and we rest when the sun sets. Without going into too much detail excessive light delays the production of melatonin which is a vital neurotransmitter that we produce. Melatonin has a variety of functions but it is synonymous with regulating our wakefulness and when hindered it delays our sleep onset.

Getting a bit nerdy now

Light also impacts the functioning of our photoreceptors which are basically specialised cells that convert light into electrical signals, pretty awesome! The problem with photoreceptors is that they don’t have a simple on/off function, this means that once stimulated they remain active for a period of time. This is why checking your phone in the middle of the night is a horrible idea! Once the receptors have been activated by your phone it stimulates the visual centres in the brain and promotes general wakefulness which is something you want to avoid when trying to sleep.

Tip 5:
Comfortable room temperature
For many people this shouldn't be an issue but if you're like me and live in a small room in Australia it is a fucking nightmare. How can you sleep when its 35c at 10:00 pm and you don’t have an air conditioner.... Like most sleep hygiene tips this one is also quite simple but there is a bunch of complicated biological processes involved in regulating your body temperature. If you want to have a good night sleep you must be comfortable and this involves trial and error and knowing your own body. A comfortable temperature for you might not be comfortable for others, personally, I like the room to be incredibly cold whereas Mama Bear likes a warm room, this leads to a ferocious battle which I always lose. The general range for optimal temperature should be around 22-23c, if your temperature deviates from this then it might disturb your NREM sleep and reduce your time spent in REM. Some ways you can deal with hot temperatures is to make use of a cold towel or use different bedding, or no bedding, or go nude! You can also deal with cold temperatures by adding extra blankets and snuggling up with your favourite bear. I've also found wearing socks to be effective but who wants to wear socks in bed....

This concludes pat one of the series, I hope you all enjoyed reading it and took something away from it and if you discovered something new please upvote, comment and follow me, I’ll be posting a lot more sleep/psych related stuff over the following weeks. I am a nerd for psychology and I want to spread my knowledge with you all and this makes me adopt an interactive approach to Steemit which really means if you want to know more about something, let me know and I’ll make a post about it 😊.

Genuine selfie

In part two I will be discussing common substances and how food influences your sleep hygiene.

If you really enjoyed my content feel free to donate to my UK study fund for my Doctorate in Clinical Psychology.

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