14 Tips to Fall Asleep Faster & Sleep Better.

Setting yourself up for a great night's sleep actually starts from the moment you wake up. So let's talk about what you should be doing throughout the day to make sure that you can set yourself up for a great night's sleep tonight. Step number one is a consistent wake-up time. So the first thing I want you to do is to make sure you have a consistent wake-up time even on the weekends. I know, I know, everybody's like rolling their eyes. Trust me on this one, it's important. This helps dictate the consistency Let me explain to you the biology. So when you wake up, your brain slowly turns off melatonin. Your body starts its own internal clock for when you need to go to sleep. It's about 14 hours later, or rather after you wake up. So if you're waking up at inconsistent times during the week, that means that you're producing melatonin at night inconsistently. That's gonna contribute to your sleeplessness and probably your insomnia. Number two, sunshine. So do me a favor, walk outside and get 15 minutes of sunshine. Believe it or not, 15 minutes is the exact amount of time that you need for your body to actually start producing vitamin D. Remember, vitamin D is also a circadian pacemaker, so this is actually gonna be beneficial to strengthen that whole sleep cycle. This gets your body in sync with the sun, which is an important cue for melatonin production, both starting and stopping. Hydration is another biggie. The first thing that should cross your lips in the morning is not coffee, but water. I tell people all the time, you want to hydrate, not caffeinate. Most people don't know it, but sleep in and of itself is a dehydrative event. You lose about a half to one full liter of water every single night while you sleep. So what I tell people to do is keep a glass of water next to your bed and do me a favor, wait after you wake up in the morning a full 90 minutes before you have that first cup of coffee. Here's why that's important. When you wake up in the morning, in order to exit a state of unconsciousness, you need two hormones, both cortisol and adrenaline, and they both wake you up. When your brain has got cortisol and adrenaline going on all over it, guess what? Adding caffeine to it isn't gonna do you a whole lot of good, but adding water to it will. Waiting 90 minutes, then we see your adrenaline and your cortisol naturally start to drop. If you have your cup of coffee, then it actually boosts the cortisol and the adrenaline. You get a little bit more bang for your buck. You've woken up, you've gotten your dose of sunshine, you've hydrated yourself, what should you eat? It's important to start your day with a high-protein, low-carbohydrate breakfast. So you make yourself an omelet with cheese, maybe a little bacon if you don't eat pork, maybe some beef or some chicken, or Greek yogurt and granola. Make it a light breakfast though, something healthy to get your body moving. Your biggest meal of the day, especially with respect to the amount of carbs you eat, should probably be at lunch. Carbs are really gonna slow you down, so try to avoid having pastries, doughnuts, bagels, things like that in the morning time. This gives your body a chance to burn those carbs for the rest of the day if you have it at lunch, as opposed to anything else. After lunch, here's what I want you to do. First, if you can, stop caffeine by 2 p.m. Remember, caffeine has a half-life of between six and eight hours. So if we measure it out, if you stop at two, eight hours later is 10, which is kind of when most people are at least thinking about going to bed, when 50% of the caffeine will be out of your system. If you can cut it off earlier than 2 p.m., it's only gonna be better, but I would say 2 p.m. is kind of the lower level limit for you in terms of caffeine. Next, don't nap. I know what you're thinking. You didn't sleep well the other night. You're hitting that post-lunch 2 p.m. kind of woozy feeling. You just need a short nap to keep going, but by skipping a nap, you're actually building up your sleep drive, right? And that's important. Here's what your drive does and why you need to build it up. When a cell eats a piece of glucose, something comes out the back end. One of those things is called adenosine. The adenosine works its way through your system, goes through a very specific receptor area, and then as it accumulates, you get sleepier and sleepier and sleepier. If you take that nap at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, you reduce that adenosine, and that can make it much more difficult to fall asleep. During the daytime, maybe after you've avoided the nap, I would say another important thing you could do is exercise. Doesn't need to be vigorous or even that long. You don't have to run a marathon here, but some movement of your body every day is incredibly important. Start with maybe 10, 15 minutes of cardio. And when I'm talking about cardio, I'm saying walking. You don't have to go run, all right? I want you to work up to a heart rate that hits about 60 to 70% of what your maximum heart rate should be. If you don't know what that is, then you take the number 220 and subtract your age, and that will give you a good guesstimate of what your maximum heart rate should be. Then take about 60 to 70% of that. So regardless of what kind of physical activity you're gonna choose, do something. Exercise has been shown to improve sleep quality and sleep regularity. Avoid working out right before bedtime. Couple of things can happen. Number one, elevated heart rate might be incompatible with sleep, but you might increase that core body temperature, making it more difficult to sleep. Do me a favor, eat a sleep-friendly dinner. This should be low in sugar, low or no alcohol, and high in omega-3s. Think fish, veggies, nuts, seeds, stuff like that. By the way, I put together a full set of videos about all the best vitamins and minerals that you need for healthy sleep, so check those out over on my YouTube channel. And while you're there, be sure to subscribe to We Publish two videos a week about all types of things in sleep. Okay, we're still in our evening. A few hours before bed, I want you to be intentional about taking steps to reduce stress or anxiety that you're feeling about the day or maybe about your night of sleep. For me, I like to do something called a worry journal. So it's actually pretty easy. You can take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. I write on the left-hand side all the things that are kind of clogging up my brain, and then on the right-hand side, I put one thing that's gonna start fixing that process. I didn't solve the problem, but I know I've made one step towards the problem that helps lower my anxiety, and I move on to the next one. And before I know it, I've kind of got almost a to-do list created for tomorrow, because by the way, when I'm lying in bed, what do you think the things are that I can't stop thinking about? What did I do today, and what do I need to do tomorrow? You can also do some light stretching or yoga to help center your breath and slow your mind. So again, all kinds of things that you can do to lower your stress, but to be intentional about it. Now, I'm not the originator of this idea, but I really like it. I call it the three, two, one rule. And so how it works is three hours before bed, stop all alcohol. Two hours before bed, stop eating. And one hour before bed, stop fluids. Now, the last one I wanna be careful about, because if your doctor wants you drinking things, or you need fluids to take medication, or you have constant thirst, diabetic, all those types of things, it's okay. You don't have to have that one hour. But if you're somebody that ends up waking up to go to the bathroom a whole lot, being able to stop your fluids, again, with your doctor's permission, one hour before bed might be pretty helpful for you. Let's be fair. The last hour before bed, usually people are rushing around, or they look down at their watch, and they're like, holy cow, I didn't realize how late it was. What I want you to do is actually have a plan for that hour before bed. So what I want you to do is set an alarm on your watch, phone, or in the bedroom that actually physically goes off one hour before lights out. So as an example, if 11 o'clock is your lights out, 10 o'clock the alarm sounds, you turn it off and you get up, and then now you start to break this hour up into three 20-minute segments. So 20 minutes for just stuff that has to get done. This is not watching the last 10 minutes of your favorite show. This is doing things that can reduce your stress in the morning time. In our house, it's getting backpacks together, getting the dogs leashes, finding shoes, all of those kind of fun things. That's what you do for that first 20 minutes. The second 20 minutes is all about hygiene. Brush your teeth, wash your face, maybe take a hot shower or bath. Whatever it is that you need to do to kind of get you there. And then the final 20 minutes is what I call runway to land the plane. So what I mean by that is you want some form of relaxation, meditation. You can read if you want, but it needs to be something that's kind of slow-paced, kind of relaxing, not something that's gonna start a big emotional discussion or make you have big emotions before bed. But again, runway to land the plane. You should be turning out the light based on your chronotype. If you don't know what your chronotype is, it's your internal biological rhythm. Each of us has a time when it's best prepared to go to sleep and when we're most productive throughout the day. And the sleep quiz that I've mentioned a couple of times before can give you some really helpful insights into your chronotype. For example, some people go to bed too early when actually a night owl, it's not a good recipe for getting a good night's sleep. Look, I know suffering from sleepless and restless nights has a major impact on the quality of your life. If you're someone who suffers from chronic insomnia, there are some really great drug-free solutions that are science-backed and can solve your insomnia for good. You can learn more about those in my video right here. This is Dr. Michael Bruce, The Sleep Doctor, wishing you sweet dreams.