3 Keys to Your Best Night Sleep

Sleep is probably one of the most important things when it comes to overall health and longevity. I do think that, you know, it doesn't matter what kind of attire you have, what exercise you do, what supplements you take, if your sleep is bad. That's why short sleep or chronic sleep deprivation or sleeping sub-optimally all the time, that's going to have like a massive impact on your overall health and vitality. Hey, my name is CM Lund and in this video I'm going to give you the three most important keys for having good night's sleep. Make sure you click like and subscribe as well for future videos about optimizing your health and performance. Alright, so we'll begin with probably the sleep architecture of how do you facilitate being able to fall asleep better. Obviously humans, we are diurnal creatures, we're supposed to be awake at daytime and we're supposed to sleep at night. Of course there are some like sleep chronotypes that differ a little bit but generally speaking all humans are diurnal, there is no nocturnal human directly. So probably the first key then is to optimize your sleep architecture and circadian rhythms because the circadian rhythms, they are directly driving all the processes that occur during sleep and they also regulate sleep drive and the ability to fall asleep. The natural human circadian rhythm includes high cortisol production in the morning and a bright light exposure throughout the day and high melatonin production in the evening and avoidance of all bright lights and artificial lights at night and before bed. When you look at the natural sun circadian rhythm then you can see that yeah in the morning you get access to this brighter lights, it peaks at noon and then it starts to decrease, you're gonna get exposed to more red and amber lights during the evening and at night it's completely dark. That's the original and the most ancestral human circadian rhythm that you ought to follow and that is where you will find the most optimal health from the circadian rhythm entrainment side. Do it! My favorite ways to optimize this is to use blue blocking glasses to filter out the blue light but I also like to use the red light bulbs that basically create this melatonin friendly environment. You can see, you can walk around, you're not gonna bump into chairs and whatnot but you're still able to produce melatonin because the red and amber lights they don't suppress melatonin whereas blue and artificial and green light they suppress melatonin up to like 99%. If you want to get access to these kind of tools then check out Bonn Charge, they have my favorite and they've tested their products as well to actually filter out the necessary wavelengths. Number two, we're gonna look at actually nutrition. So this is important for also helping with the production of melatonin and other key neurotransmitters at the right time. It will also, you know, regulate your circadian rhythms to a certain extent. The peripheral glocks inside the gut and the liver and the other organs, they do have an impact on the master clock, the circadian clock inside the brain as well and if you are, you know, eating immediately before bed then that inevitably will have like some negative effect on your sleep quality to a certain extent. Some people are fine with it, I don't really notice any huge difference myself but I do think that basically stopping your food consumption at least a few hours before bed will still improve your sleep qualities to a certain extent and even if you don't complain about that kind of thing. When it comes to nutrients then the production of melatonin requires a tryptophan, so tryptophan gets converted into serotonin which kind of makes you calm and relaxed and then it gets converted into melatonin. However, there is the danger that if you have a lot of amino acids circulating in your bloodstream at the same time then the tryptophan may not get into the brain because it's being basically blocked by the other amino acids. So what you can do is actually consume some carbohydrates that raise your insulin levels and that insulin will help to shuttle the tryptophan into the brain and by also shuttling the other amino acids into the cells and enabling the tryptophan to get into the brain. And when you think about it then, you know, usually when you do eat carbs then you feel like some of this food coma a little bit or you get this maybe a bit small high but then it, you know, crashes a little bit, makes you calm and relaxed. So that's the perfect recipe for a meal at dinner time to help you fall asleep. Some protein and carbohydrates that has tryptophan, the amino acid, as well as some carbohydrates. The last key is going to be movement. So physical activity is also linked to the circadian rhythms, it regulates circadian rhythms and exercise has also been found to have a positive impact on your sleep duration and sleep quality. So people who do exercise more then they do report better sleep quality and the reason has to do with the increase of sleep drive. So sleep drive describes the desire or the need to fall asleep. The more you exercise, the higher your sleep drive. The longer you stay up, the higher your sleep drive is also going to get and the only way to drop it down is to sleep. If you don't feel tired nor sleepy before bed then the reason may have to do with just not having enough sleep drive and things that also block that can be caffeine. Caffeine masks the feeling of tiredness by blocking adenosine and that also reduces the perception of sleep drive. Whereas in reality you're still tired but you don't feel like it. Likewise if you haven't exercised at all then it's natural that your body doesn't have that big of a necessity to sleep. So exercise more to build, to make yourself tired, to build a sleep drive and the exposure to bright lights in the especially and during the daytime. That is the best way to also increase the sleep drive. So this optimal circadian rhythm would then look like that you get exposed to bright sunlight, bright daylight in the morning. Then throughout the day you are also supposed to be physically active. That increases the sleep drive you know further. In the afternoon and evening you start to wind down a little bit. Maybe don't exercise that much. Don't do a bunch of crazy exercise. Have a dinner that has carbohydrates and proteins and block out the blue light in the bedroom. That is essentially the most natural and most optimal human circadian rhythm that will help you to sleep better, recover better and perform better in everything else you do. Because sleep is the most powerful performance enhancing drug essentially if you do it right. But other than that thanks for watching this video. Make sure you click the like, subscribe, notification bell as well. My name is Siim. Stay optimized, stay empowered.