How I Get 2-3 Hours of Deep Sleep a Night

I've been getting over two hours of deep sleep and around two hours of REM sleep consistently. I've also done a polysomnography sleep study and it showed I got almost three hours of deep sleep. But my sleep wasn't always this good. Throughout my 20s, I usually slept six to seven hours. I felt fine, I could train and I didn't think that I had a problem. But when I started prioritizing sleep, I realized that just enough sleep isn't the same as optimal amount of sleep. So in this video, I'm going to talk about how did I increase my sleep quality and deep sleep specifically and what are some additional changes you can try to sleep better, sleep longer and feel more recovered. One of the biggest improvements came from having an earlier dinner. These days I often finish eating around four or five in the afternoon. That leaves several hours between my last meal and bedtime. I've also tried later dinners before, something like 8 p.m. and I do notice a difference. I sleep a lot better if I stop eating between 4 to 5 p.m. Now this doesn't apply to all people, but I do sleep better if I am slightly hungry. A random trial compared eating between 8 in the morning and 6 in the evening, with an eating schedule extending until midnight. After 12 weeks, the earlier eating group gained approximately 55 minutes of sleep relative to the comparison group. They also started sleeping earlier. Now, most people don't eat until midnight, but it might be that having an earlier dinner could increase your total sleep duration. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get more deep sleep. A study using overnight polysomnography in 20 healthy adults found that dinner one hour versus five hours before bed didn't significantly change the overall amounts of the different sleep stages. A lot of members in my community, Top 1% Health, do see better sleep by having an earlier dinner. Here's a recent example. However, some people sleep worse if they go to bed slightly hungry. If that's you, then don't force it. If you can't fall asleep without having anything, then have a small snack and see how that improves your sleep. The second change was including more carbohydrates with my dinner. Tryptophan is an amino acid your brain uses to make serotonin, which is involved in the pathway of making melatonin. But tryptophan competes with other amino acids to enter the brain. A carbohydrate-containing meal raises insulin, which promotes the uptake of some of those competing amino acids into other tissues. This could improve tryptophan's access to the brain, which then gets converted to serotonin and then melatonin. This is one of the proposed mechanisms why eating carbohydrates can make some people feel sleepier. So I have the carbohydrates for dinner to get that sleepy effect. And from my experience, it does help me with sleep. In a small randomized crossover study of 12 men, a high glycemic index rice meal eaten four hours before bedtime shortened the time to fall asleep compared to a lower glycemic index meal, about nine minutes versus 17 and a half minutes. However, interestingly, a 2021 meta-analysis of 11 studies found a low carb intake favors deep sleep, whereas high carb intake favors REM sleep. so the carbs for dinner don't necessarily drive my deep sleep but they might contribute to my REM sleep as well as sleep onset I fall asleep faster and I'll get more REM sleep you obviously don't want just deep sleep or just REM sleep you want to have sufficient amounts of both REM sleep and both deep sleep personally for me the carbohydrates for dinner work maybe it doesn't work for you there are some people who it might not work for and you don't need to have all your carbohydrates for dinner you can experiment them with at different times speaking of food then an important factor is caffeine intake. If you have coffee, then it's recommended to not have it after lunch. In a randomized crossover trial of 23 men, 400 mg 4 hours before bed reduced deep sleep by approximately 30 minutes compared to placebo. The 100 mg dose didn't significantly affect sleep at the tested timings. Caffeine metabolism is genetic, and some people metabolize caffeine very fast. They could drink coffee for dinner and then fall asleep just fine. I'm one of those people. I have fast caffeine metabolism, but I still usually don't drink any caffeine after lunch. The third major factor that influences my sleep quality, and specifically sleep duration, is exercise. On the days I train, I generally feel sleepier in the evening, I fall asleep faster, and I sleep longer. On the days I don't exercise, I usually sleep one hour less. One reason exercise can help is sleep pressure. Sleep pressure is the drive to sleep that builds while you're awake. Adenosine is one of the signals involved in this process. Exercise can contribute to sleep pressure, and regular exercise has been shown to improve perceived sleep quality and symptoms of insomnia. The National Sleep Foundation 2013 poll found that people who categorize themselves as vigorous, moderate, or light exercisers report very good sleep quality, 83%, 77%, and 76% respectively, compared to non-exercisers at 56%. That's probably because exercise makes you more tired. I also try to get outside and ideally exercise outside. Daylight exposure, specifically from sunlight, it regulates your circadian clock and can also contribute to sleep pressure to a certain extent. So whenever it's possible, I try to work out outside to get the double benefits. Exercise can also improve your sleep by reducing your risk of sleep apnea. Repeated breathing interruptions fragment your sleep and you feel like you barely slept even if you were asleep for 8 hours. Studies measuring patients before and during CPAP treatment have shown a rebound of deep sleep by up to 40%, particularly in people whose untreated sleep was heavily disrupted. it. If you're low body fat and already lean then you can still have minor sleep apnea if you have a very thick neck. So if you build more muscle you have a thicker neck so you can still be at a higher risk of sleep apnea. I've taken two sleep apnea tests and they've shown negative results. If you snore or you feel super tired despite sleeping long it's worth investigating if you have sleep apnea or not. The next change had to do with waking up in the middle of the night. It's normal to wake up like once per night, you go to the bathroom or something and then you fall back asleep. That's perfectly normal. But sometimes you wake up not necessarily because you're not tired or because you need to go to the bathroom, but because your brain wakes you up. There is research showing that anticipating an early awakening can influence the hormonal preparation for waking. Your brain can prepare for an expected wake-up time. I'm pretty sure we've all experienced this. We set an alarm clock for 6 a.m. or something like that, and then we wake up five minutes before the alarm clock goes off. That's your internal alarm clock, anticipating the time that the alarm is going to wake you up and then you wake up. But the same problem can happen if you have sleep problems. If every night you wake up around 1 to 2 a.m., then every night you go to bed, you're anticipating waking up. So it's a vicious feedback loop. You have this internal alarm clock waking you up every night. It's actually a pretty powerful mechanism and it's mostly kind of like a placebo effect. Unfortunately, it can be quite difficult to treat because you need to be really good at controlling your mindset and you need to control your inner dialogue a lot. There are studies showing that people can see up to 81% more deep sleep during a nap if they respond to hypnosis. Unfortunately, some other people aren't going to respond, but you can learn how to regulate your internal alarm clock. The change I made was that if I wake up, I'm not going to kind of go into this inner dialogue that, you know, okay, I'm waking up now, it's morning, I'm not going to fall asleep or something like that. You need to stop this kind of dialogue immediately. You need to have the dialogue that, you know, I'll fall back asleep. And eventually over time, you can develop the dialogue that you're not going to wake up in the middle of the night. Of course, it's not going to solve all issues. Sometimes you wake up because of low blood sugar. Other times you wake up because of some noise, but you can learn to minimize waking up because of this internal alarm clock. The next change is about controlling my environment, specifically the light environment. Light entering your eyes sends signals to the brain and regulates the circadian rhythms. Bright light in the evening can suppress melatonin and delay the time of falling asleep. In a controlled study, reading from a light-emitting device before bed suppressed melatonin, delayed circadian timing, and made it harder to fall asleep compared to reading a printed book. So what I do is I dim down the lights, I have different filters on my screens and on my phone, and I also use blue blocking glasses to minimize the light exposure into my eyes. Way back then when I started first using blue blockers and I first started measuring my sleep, I did notice that I was getting about 15% more deep sleep by dimming down the lights and reducing my blue light exposure. The connection to deep sleep is that deep sleep is concentrated earlier in your sleep period. If you suppress melatonin production before bed with the bright lights, it'll take you a bit longer time to fall asleep and to start going through these sleep stages. In addition to light, too much noise can also reduce your sleep quality, specifically deep sleep. An ICU trial tested earplugs and an eye mask. The overall difference in deep sleep percentage wasn't statistically significant, but the participants who tolerated the equipment had more deep sleep minutes. Speaking of melatonin then, I've also experimented a lot with melatonin supplementation. People often take melatonin about 30 minutes before bed, but that not might be the most optimal time to take melatonin. A 2024 meta-analysis found that the benefits for falling asleep and total sleep time peaked around 4 mg of melatonin, and the optimal time was 3 hours before bedtime, compared to 30 minutes before bed. The idea is that if you take melatonin earlier before bed, you'll already have elevated melatonin before you fall asleep, whereas if you take melatonin close to bedtime, it's not going to kick in until you're already asleep. Melatonin levels do decline with age, which is one of the reasons older people sleep shorter, so the older you get, the more melatonin you could consider supplementing to fill the gap. For me, I've experimented with different melatonin dosages. Usually a smaller dose is better for me, something like 0.3 mg or 1 mg compared to 5 mg. Another supplement that works is glycine. I take around 3-5 grams of glycine before bed, usually mixed with chamomile tea because glycine tastes a little bit sweet. Human trials have found that 3 grams of glycine before bed can improve subjective sleep quality. Another sleep lab study found that glycine shortened the time to fall asleep and enter deep sleep. One proposed mechanism by which glycine helps with sleep is by lowering your body temperature. A drop in body temperature signals your body that it's nighttime and it helps with melatonin production. Interestingly, you could also lower your body temperature with a warm bath or a warm shower. One crossover study on nine women aged 60 to 72 with insomnia saw more deep sleep as a result of bathing in lukewarm water about 90 minutes before bedtime. Now, unfortunately, glycine can have a dual role in relaxation and anxiety. For some people, glycine makes them more anxious. For other people, glycine makes them more relaxed. So you need to be just careful and see how do you respond to glycine. If you're looking for more supplements that help with sleep, especially deep sleep, then check out magnesium. A 2002 study found that magnesium supplementation improved deep sleep. In this study, they took 729 mg of elemental magnesium per day as magnesium oxide, but you could also try better types of magnesium like threonate, bisglycinate, or taurate. But how much deep sleep and REM sleep should you be getting? You don't need to necessarily measure your sleep, and not all sleep trackers are equally accurate, but here's a rough guideline. REM often accounts for around 20-25% of sleep time. Deep sleep is usually slightly less. During eight hours of sleep, around 1.5 to 2.5 hours of deep sleep is a good amount. But these contributions depend a lot on your total sleep time. If you sleep six hours, then of course you're going to get less deep sleep. So try to sleep at least seven to eight hours. Alright, here's a final summary of the changes that have improved my sleep the most. First, protect the pre-bed window, dim your environment and give yourself time to wind down. Second, build a consistent daytime routine with exercise, movement and outdoor light. Third, experiment with carbohydrates at dinner. They work work well for me, but you may respond better to a different distribution. Fourth, eat your main meal earlier instead of going to bed overly full. And fifth, change how you respond to waking up. It's all about controlling your inner dialogue. Now, sleep can be simple. You just go to bed and fall asleep. But it can also be quite difficult because you just can't push a button and fall asleep, right? Your body needs the required conditions and a good environment to be able to fall asleep. Here are some results from people in the top 1% community regarding improvements in sleep. They also see improvements in HRV and other recovery metrics at the same time. That's exactly what we're working on inside Top1Percent Health. In addition to sleep optimization, you also get programs for training, nutrition, supplementation, and much more. Start by taking the Health Percent Assessment. It looks at your biomarkers, fitness, body composition, and lifestyle, gives you your Health Percentile Score, and identifies your biggest health bottlenecks. Click the link below to start now.