Advanced Sleep Improvement

Welcome to Advanced Sleep Improvement. I’ll be your host, call me Professor Sandmann 😎

 

I can only imagine your clients keep complaining about their sleep quality and you are sick of it!

Or you genuinely want to help improve your clients’ well being.

 

Maybe both?

 

Anyways, let’s get into it!

 

We have a handful of ways we can improve sleep.

We can use methods of…

1. Physical Alterations
2. Nutritional Alterations
3. Environmental Alterations

 

 

Sleep Improvement: Physical Alterations

We have two physical alterations to implement.

1. Increasing need for sleep
2. Preparing the body to be able to sleep

 

Increasing Need For Sleep:

Our body has mechanisms that signal when we need sleep.

If you know anything about how our bodies use energy then you have probably heard of ATP (Adenosine Tri-Phosphate).

 

In the process of using energy we build up Adenosine.

Lucky for us, our brain has Adenosine-Receptors that tell our brain we have used a lot of energy, are tired, and need to sleep.

 

Unlucky for us, most people aren’t active enough and wind up in a vicious cycle that goes something like this.

• Wakes up
• Drinks coffee
• Commutes to work
• Works on a computer
• Commutes home
• Watches TV until bed time
• Built up approximately zero Adenosine
• Sleeps poorly
• Wakes up
• Drinks coffee throughout the day
• Repeats the process

 

The issue is that they never built up a need to sleep. Then when they try to sleep and they aren’t physically tired, they don’t sleep well.

Since they didn’t sleep well they drink coffee.

Coffee isn’t bad, but caffeine blocks adenosine receptors, that’s why it makes you feel less tired.

Caffeine has a half life of 5-8 hours. That means if you drink 200mg of caffeine, 10-16 hours later you still have 100mg in your system.

 

Now this won’t be an issue if you build up plenty of Adenosine, but most people simply don’t.

So, the physical alteration to make is to be physical more often!

 

Walk more, exercise, dance, do more stuff that requires energy!

 

 

Preparing The Body To Be Able To Sleep:

What the heck does this mean?

 

So you probably know that there are two states for us to be in.

• Parasympathetic
• Sympathetic

The two halves of our autonomic nervous system.

The parasympathetic state is what we want.

 

Here is a video all about regulating the nervous system!

 

 

Sleep Improvement: Nutritional Alterations

I already talked about coffee and caffeine. That is an important topic to bring up with your clients.

I will never say give up coffee, it can actually be very helpful with regulating circadian rhythms.

 

For a general recommendation, don’t have caffeine within 8 hours of bed time, different people will tolerate different levels of caffeine FYI.

 

We know that there are certain micronutrients that are helpful for sleep.

• Magnesium: Good for calming down the nervous system.
• Potassium: Also good for calming down the nervous system.
• Zinc: Proven to help with falling and staying asleep.

And some macronutrients too!

• L-Tryptophan: An amino acid that will turn into serotonin which is very important for sleep.

Especially powerful in combination with…

• Carbohydrates: Like oats. This will d

And Ashwaganda is also proven to help with sleep.

 

Now, do I think you should go crazy trying to get your clients to track their micronutrients? No.

However you can help them create meals that can increase these nutrients.

 

I think the most important nutritional alteration is not eating too close to bed time.

Eating close to bed time will take away from sleep quality as your body works to digest and absorb versus rest and recover.

 

It’s easier said than done but eating 3 or more hours before bed time is probably ideal. Remember what I said about Ideal vs Practical though.

 

 

Sleep Improvement: Environmental Alterations

There is a term called Circadian Levers.

A Circadian Lever is something that you use to nudge your circadian rhythm in the direction you want.

 

Your environment has some of the most powerful levers you can pull to affect sleep.

 

For a ludicrous example, do you think you’re more likely to fall asleep in a shopping mall, with bright lights and lots of noise, or a library with dim lights and no noise?

 

Obviously those aren’t environments your clients will be trying to sleep in, at least I hope they aren’t.

But you can imagine how the shopping mall environment would nudge our circadian rhythms towards the more wakeful side.

 

Now how can we nudge it towards the sleepy side?