Why You re Always Tired

Today, I'm going to tell you about the six habits that are wrecking your sleep. High quality sleep has changed my life. There is literally nothing I do in my life that changes my conscious experience more than sleep. Now, I came from a place of really bad sleep. Three little babies, being a full-time entrepreneur, grinding at work, having some challenges in the home front. I know what it feels like to have really bad sleep for a very long time. It's miserable. So today I'm going to tell you the six habits that are wrecking your sleep and what you can do about it. Number one is eating food too late. Now, for example, let's say your bedtime is 10 p.m. And at 9 p.m., in the middle of your favorite episode, you decide that eating a piece of pizza is a good idea. And then one piece of pizza turns into the whole pizza. In that moment, several bad things happen. One is your body has to spin up all kinds of metabolic activity to address this food it must digest. That's challenging. You have a blood glucose spike when that happens. And then once you have that, it drops. So you have this blood glucose fluctuation. You also have a disruption of melatonin production where your body says, I want to get ready for bed. And now that's off the rails. So it disrupts the entire process the body's expecting as you ready yourself for sleep. So don't do that. I'll tell you from my experience, I wanted to test. I wanted to find what is the very best time to eat my final meal of the day. So I did a few hundred experiments. I would test one hour before bed, and two, and three, and four, all the way back to 11 a.m. My bedtime is 8.30. And I also tested types of foods. So I would say, what happens when you eat a salad, you know, three hours before bed, or a piece of bread, or some pasta. So I was testing my metabolic response to these foods at these times of day. And I found that my best time of day was 11.30 a.m. of my final meal. Now, you may say that's crazy. It probably is according to current standards. Also, when I did that, my body was able to complete digestion by the time I went to bed. Now, there's a few markers that I looked at to see what was happening. First, my resting heart rate became my best predictor of how well I would sleep. So when it was between 46 and 50, I was almost guaranteed a perfect night's sleep. When I ate later in the day, my resting heart rate would be increased to 55, 56, 57. And when I saw that, it was guaranteed to about 30% less quality. It is absolutely predictable. So the takeaway here is the time you eat matters a lot. Now, you are different, you're unique, your body type, your metabolism, your genetics. So what I'm going to encourage you is not to do what I do at 11 a.m., but to experiment two hours before bed, and then three, and then four. Expect momentary discomfort, but your body absolutely adapts to it. Number two is not having a wind down routine. Now, this is something that is so important in my life. I know if I work up until five minutes before my head hits a pillow, I'm going to have a wrecked night's sleep, just guaranteed, because I will go to sleep thinking about the day, like the conversations I had, the things I should be doing, these things I forgot to do, the people I should have contacted, all these thoughts, like your brain's trying to keep track of all the things to make sure you're on top of it. Or other people may have ruminations of anxieties or things like that. My bedtime is 8.30 p.m. When 7.30 arrives, nighttime Brian is now in charge. So when 7.31 happens and a thought comes into my brain, you forgot to contact so-and-so today. I can say, thank you, work Brian. We have all day tomorrow to address this need. And that really helps me calm myself to say, you know what? I'm not at work mode. I don't own that responsibility. If you want, you can write it down so you don't forget about it. But it's really important to say that you are now in sleep mode and you're doing the things to prepare yourself for that. So you want to be mindful before you go to bed. You want to avoid arousal activities. So you want to avoid arguments. You want to avoid any kind of hard exercise. Anything that's really stimulating your nervous system. I'm not sure I can recall an evening as stimulating. So during the day, our sympathetic nervous systems get us ready to take on the world and tackle all the challenges. But when we get to the evening, your parasympathetic nervous system is gonna calm you down and get you ready for bed. So you wanna do parasympathetic activating activities. So I'm gonna give you a few examples. One, and this is my favorite, is read a book before bed. Like in hand, or if you have a Kindle, I guess that's fine too. But in hand and read a book. So no screens, no tablets, no television screens, no mobile phone, but a book in hand. It is my favorite and it calms me the very most. You could also journal, you can meditate, you can take a bath, you can go for a walk. These activities will calm your body down and get you ready for sleep. You will find the things that you like, but you definitely wanna give yourself at least 60 minutes before bed to prepare yourself. Number three is having stimulants too late in the day. So let's just say, for example, you have a cup of coffee at 4 p.m. and your bedtime is 10 p.m. Caffeine has a half-life of six hours. So that means at 10 p.m. when your head hits a pillow, it's equal to having a half a cup of coffee. So you wanna be mindful. Now, some people metabolize coffee in a way where they can drink caffeine at any time and they're fine, but others are much more sensitive, including myself. So I personally, I stopped caffeine and alcohol entirely, because one, because they disrupted my mood. They would take me up and then push me down and I'd have this problem on my hands. Now with no caffeine and no alcohol, I'm very stable throughout the entire day. If you're going to drink caffeine, try to have it earlier in the day. But again, experiment on the right time. It's not going to disrupt your sleep. Number four is not properly regulating evening light. Now, in the morning, light is great. Getting sunlight in the eyes for the first 15 to 30 minutes of the day, it sets the circadian rhythm, it improves mood. There's all kinds of health benefits. That's great. When the evening comes, or two hours before bedtime, you want to start slowly dimming your lights. You wanna hang out in the warm spectra colors. That's between 2,700 and 3,500 Kelvin. So you want to be mindful of lessening light. If you want, have red light. You also want to eliminate blue light. So you can do a few things on this front. You can use Flux F.LUX on your screens. It washes out blue light. You can also use blue light blocking glasses. And then this is a big one, is if you can eliminate screens entirely. So you could say one hour before bed, no screens, books, or your walk only. So that is the rule in my house, is I really try to stay off screens entirely. Number five is your bedroom being too hot or too cold. Now we all know what it's like. You're laying in bed, you're sweating, you're tossing and turning. Your body needs to cool down for you to be in the right place to go to sleep. And if you're too hot, you're not going to be able to fall asleep. And so there are some basic things you can do, like open a window and let air come in. You can also have blinds that block the light during the day so your room doesn't get as hot. You can also do more advanced things like have a temperature controlled mattress. Now I use Eight Sleep. I think it's a fantastic product. It definitely dramatically improved my sleep when doing it. My settings are, I go to bed at 73 degrees Fahrenheit. When I fall asleep and I dip down into my first stage of deep sleep, it's 69 Fahrenheit. When I come back up into REM, it's around 71, 72. And then when I wake up, it's 73. And so the body's going to follow a rhythm where you have a certain temp when you go to bed, your body's decreasing in temperature. You drop down even further in deep sleep and come back up for REM. And then a little warmer when you wake up. Now Eight Sleep has a cool feature where it's their autopilot, where they automatically regulate the temperature on the mattress. I find that really cool. Now, just note here, once you get accustomed to a temperature controlled mattress, when you travel, it's a little unwelcome where it's challenging. So I'll go to a hotel room and I'll cool the room as much as possible, down to 64 degrees is usually how low they go. But just be mindful, when you create systems in your life, they're wonderful to create the effects at home. When you travel, it can be challenging, which is okay. It's okay to experience these difficulties when we're out and about. We're trying to build systems at home and about, and we can be adaptive wherever we go. Number six is regulating noise. Now we all know how annoying it is when our neighbors are arguing, the dogs barking, cars are honking, it's painful. You want it to stop and you have no control over it. Now I have a personal experience with this. My neighbor's dogs were barking when I moved into this house. And I said, hey, my bedtime is at 8.30. And when I go to bed and the dogs bark, I wake up and it's hard for me to go back to sleep. Would you be okay if you did the dog's nighttime routine and got them in their kettles before 8.30? She said, sure, no problem. I've not had a problem since. Now, not all neighbors are as nice. I would encourage you to talk to them, even though sometimes that feels scary, and just nicely ask, would you please turn your music down or I can hear you walk around. I know those are uncomfortable conversations. Also, they're really important. And maybe you can do something nice for them as well to show a good face gesture. You can also, if there's a lot of noise in your environment, you can use a noise machine, brown, white, or pink. Good evidence to show that it actually is helpful to lessen the number of disruptions. You're trying to lessen the number of times where noise wakes you up and disrupts your sleep. Sometimes you're aware of it, sometimes you're not, but just be mindful of the environment in its entirety. Friends, I know it's culturally fashionable to not get high quality sleep, that people talk about their bravery and staying up all night. They somehow think they're falling behind, they're missing out, that people are going to think less of them because they don't work hard enough if they get sleep. And I'm here to tell you that getting eight hours of sleep, you're being a hero to yourself, to your family, to your friends, your loved ones. Get a great night's sleep. I promise you, you will feel better and have a better life if you do so. I believe in you.