097: Improve Your Sleep

Ep 097: Improve Your Sleep

One of the most underrated and important strategies for optimal health and disease prevention is SLEEP.

We have all heard the phrase “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” Well there is more and more research to suggest that will be a lot sooner if you neglect your sleep!

“I think that sleep may be one of the most significant lifestyle factors that determines your risk ratio for Alzheimer’s disease.” – Matthew Walker, PhD

When we sleep, we assimilate all of the data and stimuli from throughout the day. We organize that information into different areas of the brain and discard the stuff we don’t need. Our brain also has a glymphatic system similar to the lymphatic system in the rest of the body that clears our metabolic debris and waste products. Sleep also reduces the amyloid plaque and tau proteins that are found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.

According to Dr. Walker, there are 4 pillars of sleep – regularity, continuity, quantity, and quality.

• Regularity consists of going to bed and waking up at the same time every day.
• Continuity consists of whether we stay asleep for long periods or have periods of wakefulness.
• Quantity is in regards to the amount of sleep we are getting – 4 hours or 8 hours.
• Quality refers how solid and deep the sleep is.

Everything we do in regards to sleep should be on maximizing the integrity of these four fundamental characteristics of sleep.

And the thing we have to be careful about is confusing sleep with being unconscious. They are VERY different things. If someone were to get knocked out by a baseball bat. We would never say that person is sleeping. When you or someone you know is taking sleeping pills like Ambien, that is the equivalent to taking a chemical baseball bat to the head. We are unconscious but we certainly are not benefitting from the healing processes that deep sleep has to offer.

Humans have 2 stages of sleep – non-REM and REM.

Non-REM has 2 parts consisting of light sleep and deep restorative sleep.

REM sleep or Rapid Eye Movement sleep occurs in 90 minute stages.

Deep non-REM sleep is essentially for protecting new learning from the day before.

“You need to sleep after learning to essentially hit the save button on new memories so you don’t forget.” – Matthew Walker, PhD.

REM sleep is valuable for optimizing mental health and emotions.

Poor sleep has shown to not only be a huge risk factor for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease, but it is also a major contributor to cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and reproductive function.

One of the studies Dr. Matthew Walker talked about was with premature babies in the NICU.  When the hospital went from fluorescent lights at night to darkness, the babies had 50% better oxygen saturation and left the NICU 2-2.5 weeks early! 

Some of the biggest factors that affect sleep are light, sound, drugs like caffeine and alcohol, and food.

Top tips for getting better sleep:

• Get on a regular schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every night.
• Keep the room cool. We sleep much better when I core body temperature is lower rather than higher.
• Keep the room dark and quiet. Get black out shades. Sleep with an eye mask. Sleep with ear plugs. If you are in a loud area, get a sound machine to give a constant ambient noise.
• Do not drink alcohol right before bed. Alcohol has been shown to significantly impair our normal sleep cycles.
• Keep caffeine confined to the morning. Caffeine has a half life of 6 hours and a quarter life of 12 hours. This means that even 12 hours after you have consumed caffeine, you still have some in your system.
• Stay away from blue light in the evening. Blue light is found in fluorescent and LED bulbs, TV screens, computer screens, and phone screens. Replace your bulbs with softer yellow or red bulbs. Install an app on your phone and computer that turns the screen yellow at night and removes the blue light, and look into wearing a pair of blue light blocking glasses in the evening time.
• Read before bed instead of scrolling through your phone or watching something so you slow your brain down and prepare it for sleep.
• Practice nasal breathing and even look into getting special mouth tape to reinforce breathing through your nose while you sleep.

I know this seems like a lot but every step makes a big difference so slowly start to implement these strategies over time and definitely utilize these strategies for your kids. It will have a profound on their growth and development.