healthy sleep habits

7 Strategies for Better Sleep

Who else feels their sleep routine goes a bit haywire when life gets busy? It’s hard to stick to good sleep habits when schedules shift between seasons, parties pop up, and work goes bonkers. But don’t lose hope for solid ZZZs just yet! With handy tools like aromatherapy, diet tweaks, and mindful napping, you can outsmart sleep struggles. 1. Sync With Natural Light Cycles With short days and long winter nights, our exposure to natural light decreases, impacting our sleep-wake cycle. A 2023 study suggests embracing natural light to maintain your circadian rhythm. Try starting your mornings with some sunlight, whether that means having your coffee by the windowsill, taking a brief walk outside, or using a light therapy lamp to mimic sunlight. 2. Aromatherapy for Sleep The power of scent can have a profound impact on sleep quality. Consider using seasonal essential oils like pine, cinnamon, or orange. These scents not only create a tranquil atmosphere but also promote relaxation, enhancing sleep quality. 3. Create a Custom Sleep Playlist Create a customized sleep playlist. Incorporate slow, soothing versions of your favorite songs. Music therapy has been recognized for its effectiveness in improving sleep quality, with a focus on calming melodies and rhythms. 4. Embrace the Temperature Just because the temperature is cooler during certain times of the year doesn’t mean you should overheat your bedroom. Studies have proven that increased body and bedroom temperature can decrease sleep quality and increase wakefulness. 5. Be Intentional About Napping Gatherings and late nights can disrupt sleep, so why not embrace napping? But here’s the twist: practice “mindful napping.” Set a 20-minutes timer, and before dozing off, engage in a brief mindfulness or gratitude exercise. This can enhance the quality of your nap and leave you feeling refreshed. 6. Manage Situational Stress Coming back to work after the holidays can be exhausting. It almost feels like you need a vacation from your vacation. If adulting has you feeling stressed, it can easily disrupt your sleep. Engage in activities to relieve situational stress strains, like crafting or decorating. These activities not only provide an outlet but also serve as therapeutic methods to calm the mind before bed. 7. Diet Tweaks for Better Sleep We all know to avoid caffeine and alcohol for better sleep but also try incorporating sleep-promoting foods into meals. Tart cherries, almonds, and foods containing tryptophan may aid in a better night’s rest, but the list of sleep-promoting foods goes on. When life speeds up and disrupts sleep cycles, small changes like light therapy and soothing music can realign your rhythms. Consistently using these tools balances the effects of shifting seasons, busy events, and work stress so you wake refreshed. Committing to healthy sleep habits pays off for your mind and body, no matter how hectic the daily grind. (Image: Unsplash)

Here’s How to Sleep Great and Stay Energized–According to The Sleep Doctor

NOTE: This post was written by our friend Michael J. Breus, Ph.D., a double board-certified Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Sleep Specialist also known as The Sleep Doctor. He’s the author of four books, including his most recent, “Energize! Go From Dragging Ass to Kicking It in 30 Days.” We asked him to share a post about his new book, which was released last month. The holidays can bring substantial changes to our routines. Amid all the festivities, the routine-busting nature of the holiday season can disrupt our sleep and drain our energy—even well after they’re over. Busy schedules translate into late bedtimes and crowd out time for physical activity. Parties present us with sugary foods and lots of alcohol. Time with friends and family brings up complicated emotions and sometimes puts us in close quarters with people who are toxic to our emotional health. The cram-it-all-in pressure of the holidays can leave us stressed, drained, and dragging—physically and emotionally—and way short on the sleep we need to stay healthy and feeling our best. Even with the holidays in our rearview mirror, we need strategies for keeping our batteries charged and our nightly rest protected. A Recipe For Keeping Your Batteries Charged Maximizing your body’s natural energy stores and elevating your sleep is the subject of my new book, “Energize!: Go From Dragging Ass to Kicking It in 30 Days.” I wrote Energize with Stacey Griffith, a founding instructor of SoulCycle. Stacey and I have known each other for years. Bringing together my expertise in sleep and chronotype and Stacey’s expertise in metabolism and movement was a fascinating journey for both of us and resulted in a book I’m excited to share with you. Energize! brings together the latest scientific understanding of chronotype and metabolic type (aka body type). Our chronotype and our metabolic type are both determined by our genes. And just as every chronotype has an optimal routine for the “when” of daily life—the timing of sleeping, eating, exercising, working hard, taking it easy—our individual metabolic types have different genetically-driven needs for movement, rest, and recovery. This is all in order to build strength, stamina, flexibility, and maximize physical and mental energy. Establishing daily routines and habits based on chronotype and body type is the remedy for the stress, fatigue, weight gain, low mood and restless sleep that affect so many of us. Don’t know your chronotype? Take this quiz: www.chronoquiz.com. “Energize! is a step-by-step guide to creating individualized routines and habits that help you shed fatigue, stress, sleeplessness, and low mood, and reclaim abundant energy and vitality in your daily life, using your body’s unique circadian and metabolic biology as a roadmap.” Together, Stacey and I dug deep into the scientific research (and conducted research of our own) to develop personalized daily protocols for sleeping, eating and activity for every chronotype and metabolic type. Energize! is a step-by-step guide to creating individualized routines and habits that help you shed fatigue, stress, sleeplessness, and low mood, and reclaim abundant energy and vitality in your daily life, using your body’s unique circadian and metabolic biology as a roadmap. Let’s talk about how you can navigate these times without depleting your energy and losing sleep. Protect Your Resting Energy Protect Your Resting Energy: Get ahead of jet lag to minimize its impact (and stick to your regular sleep routine if you’re staying at home). A lot of us are traveling for the first time in a couple of years. Remember jet lag? Jet lag can drain the fun right out of a journey. It leaves you feeling fatigued, irritable, foggy-headed, sleepless and out of sync with your circadian rhythms. Jet lag gets more severe the farther we travel from our home time zone. A guideline is that it takes a full day to recover from every time zone you cross. And traveling eastbound will have a bigger impact on your sleep and circadian rhythms than traveling west. For all chronotypes and body types, the best way to minimize the impact of jet lag is to adjust your schedule to your destination time as soon as possible. You can start this process before you leave home. The week before your departure, adjust your sleep times, wake times, and meal times closer to the times you’ll be sleeping, eating, and active at your destination. If you’re traveling through a single time zone, you can adjust over a couple of nights to be fully on your destination schedule before you set out. For two or more time zones, adjust your schedule incrementally over a few days, to get closer to your destination time. If you can, sleep during the trip so that you’re less tempted to take a nap before your destination bedtime. Do your best to nap during the times you’d otherwise be asleep according to your destination time zone. When you arrive at your final destination, be sure to follow your new schedule accordingly and don’t turn in for the night until it is bedtime in the current time zone. Don’t go to bed early! Here’s a pro tip that can make adjusting your schedule during travel so much easier: I travel constantly, and I use the Timeshifter app (www.timeshifter.com) to help shift my routine when I’m traveling long distances. Timeshifter takes information about your chronotype, your home base and destination locations, and your flight times and does the work for you to create a personalized schedule for when to eat, when to get light exposure, when to sleep (and nap), when to consume caffeine, and when to take melatonin. What else can you do to minimize the effects of jet lag while you’re on the road this season? Limit alcohol and caffeine. Both alcohol and caffeine will dehydrate you, which intensifies fatigue, exacerbates concentration issues, and can lead to overeating and/or eating at the wrong times for your new schedule. Dehydration also interferes with sleep. To help your body maintain energy, keep alcohol and caffeine consumption to a minimum, and

7 Items You Need for Better Sleep

How do you sleep? If you’re one of the rare unicorns that can sleep soundly every night, we applaud you. However, you’re definitely the exception, not the rule. Studies have found that 70 percent of adults report struggling to sleep at least one night a month, and 11 percent report insufficient sleep every night. Sleep issues affect 50 to 70 million Americans. No wonder those late night infomercials do so well…we’re all awake! A study published by the app Sleep Cycle showed that February is the worst month for getting quality sleep. “This may be because the hormone melatonin is important for sleep and you need sun exposure to produce melatonin,” says Seema Sarin, MD, Director of Lifestyle Medicine, EHE Health. “So, you have less melatonin during the dark winter months and this affects your sleep.” And, we all know how important sleep is to our physical and mental wellbeing. The good news is that there are tools to help you not only fall asleep faster, but stay asleep. We spoke to sleep experts to share their favorite items that we can all try. A Proper Mattress “A good mattress is probably one of the most important tools in a good night’s sleep. You need a mattress that is both firm, for maximum spinal alignment and soft, for optimal pressure relief on your hips and shoulders. The problem is that every choice you have out there requires you to compromise. You have to choose either a firm mattress or a soft one. Intellibed uses the Gel Matrix technology that gives you both firm and soft at the same time. It is an engineering phenomenon and truly does provide you with both. While a mattress supports your body, technology like Sleep Genius prepares your mind for optimal sleep.” —Collin House, sleep expert for Intellibed Try: Birch Natural Mattress, starting at $1,299; and Sleep Genius Smart Base, $2,400 Upgrade Your Linens “I recommend getting allergy covers for your mattress and pillows even if you don’t have allergies just to keep dust and other particles out of your bedding. If that’s not in your budget, at least aim to wash your sheets once a week! Is there anything better than getting into a freshly made bed with clean sheets?” —Lauri Leadley of Valley Sleep Center TRY: Luxome Bamboo Sheets, $129 Diffuser, Air Purifier and White Noise Machine “Ideally, your bedroom should be comfortable and be reserved for sleep and intimacy so that you associate the space with sleep. The temperature should not be too hot or cold. Make sure that the room is dark and there aren’t any shining or flashing lights. I recommend you invest in a great white noise machine, air purifier and diffuser.” —Seema Sarin, MD, Director of Lifestyle Medicine, EHE Health TRY: CHI Egyptian Aromatherapy Ultrasonic Essential Oil Diffuser, $25; Guru Nanda Essential Oil Diffuser and Humidifier, $80; and Pure Enrichment Wave Sleep Therapy sound machine, $30 Blackout Shades & Orange Light Bulbs “Get the lighting right. I use a combination of black out shades and a bedside lamp with orange tinted light bulbs. I love this combination because I get a warm candlelight glow in my room at bedtime but can open the blinds first thing in the morning to bring in the daylight.” —Lauri Leadley of Valley Sleep Center TRY: Redi Paper Shade, $45 and Amber Lightbulb, $20

Create a Bedtime Routine for Better Sleep

Ask Keri: Lately I’ve been really overwhelmed and stressed, and it’s been affecting my sleep. What is your bedtime routine? Do you have any tips to sleep better? Keri says: Getting quality shut-eye is essential and impacts every aspect of your life. If you sleep more, you’ll make smarter food choices, have the energy for all the things you need to do at home, and it will likely boost your mood. Sounds great, but it’s not always that easy, right? I hear you. I’m not a good sleeper. I have to work on this pillar to be just average at it. Like most of us, there are a lot of things causing me stress right now, which I know doesn’t help my sleep cause. The pandemic has changed everything for us all. I am constantly thinking about my business, my children most of all, and the overall state of the world. Am I doing enough? Listening enough? How am I being supportive to my children, my family, my colleagues? There never seems to be enough time in the day to tackle all the tasks, so each night my mind goes over my ever-growing to-do list. Did I make that doctor’s appointment? Did I double book morning meetings? Did I lose my patience too quickly with the kids? So, with life being busy and unpredictable, being able to get seven to eight hours of sleep every night isn’t easy. There are a number of studies showing a consistent bedtime routine can increase sleep duration and sleep quality. My day is non-stop (which many of you can relate to, I’m sure), so a solid evening routine is really important for me to wind down. Sleep is something I make sure to prioritize. I am going to walk you though my evening to hopefully inspire you to set up a routine of your own. Keri Glassman’s Bedtime Routine and Tips Do Something You Enjoy I am go-go-go through dinner. Then it’s dishes, wrap up a little work or help the kids with anything they may need, and finally take a breather. I might take a little time to watch a show (I never used to watch TV, but have recently gotten into a couple series, and it’s a joy) or read a book. I enjoy having chamomile tea while I do this. On many nights, I’ll also take a supplement that aids in sleep. Have a ‘Get Ready for Bed’ Ritual Each night I have a set routine for washing up and getting my room in order for sleep. I wash my face (I switch up a bunch of clean cleansers. Right now I’m using a Barbara Strum one), moisturize and then use an oil (I’m oil obsessed!). If I have time or I”m not too tired, I’ll do some foam rolling (I use my friend Lauren Roxburgh’s Lo Rox Aligned Rollers) or my Higher Dose infrared sauna wrap. Then, since I go to bed before my kids these days, I’ll go in and talk to each of them and say goodnight. Prepare Your Room The setting of your room can set the tone for a good night’s rest. Try and minimize external noise (white noise helps), keep the room dark and turn off your phone. Better yet, move it away from your bed to limit distractions (I’m still working on this one). Ideally, my room is super organized (which helps me sleep). I also use lavender in my diffuser and have the temperature set to 68 degrees. A recent study found that bedroom temperature affects sleep quality more than external noise. Clear Your Mind I write lists when wrapping up my day and then again before bed. This helps take things off my mind before trying to relax. Writing to-dos and organizing is always helpful for me. And that includes writing down what is causing me stress, too. I like to think of it as putting my thoughts to bed. And, of course a bedtime meditation is the perfect way to induce slumber. There are so many benefits to a daily meditation practice. I like to do it in the morning and, if there’s time, in the afternoon as well. Here are five meditations that can help you tonight!