June 16, 2020

7 scientifically proven ways to sleep better than ever before

7 wissenschaftlich belegte Wege für einen besseren Schlaf als je zuvor

If you want to know a handful of simple lifestyle changes that can dramatically improve your sleep, then this is the article for you.

Imagine if you could fall asleep easily and quickly. Imagine that you could sleep more deeply and not wake up several times a night. Imagine waking up in the morning refreshed, regenerated and full of energy.

None of this has to be a fantasy. In fact, this is the way your body is programmed to function. Unfortunately, we can completely mess up this programming by making simple and seemingly innocent mistakes. Many people make these mistakes and then turn to tranquilizers and sleeping pills to combat their sleep problems.

This opens the door to a number of quite serious side effects, which include the following:

Depression (1)
Delirium (2)
Nightmares (3)
Hallucinations (4
An increased risk of infections, cancer and an increased overall risk of death (5, 6, 7)

Not to mention problems associated with a habituation effect to these drugs, resulting in ever-increasing dosages.

The good news is that many people who suffer from sleep problems do not need medication to achieve healthy sleep. Instead, they simply need to change some of their daily habits and routines. And that's exactly what this article will show you: 7 science-based strategies for better sleep.

How much sleep do you need?

In 2014, the US Center for Disease Control declared insufficient sleep a health epidemic (8). According to a survey conducted by the National Sleep Foundation in the US, 43% of all Americans between 13 and 64 said they rarely or never get a good and adequate night's sleep during the week (9). 60% said they suffer from sleep problems every night or almost every night. Similar studies from other Western countries show similar results.

The most common sleep problems are trouble falling asleep, snoring, waking up at night, waking up too early and not feeling refreshed after getting up in the morning.

And the impact of these sleep problems on health is greater and worse than many will think. Lack of sleep has been linked to traffic accidents, industrial disasters, medical malpractice and workplace accidents. A lack of sleep increases mortality and the risk of chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, obesity and cancer, while reducing quality of life and productivity.

Scientific research shows that inadequate sleep can slow weight loss, lead to weight gain and muscle loss, and lower testosterone levels (11, 12, 13).

The bottom line is that your sleep hygiene is similar to your diet - it either works for you or against you, whether you realize it or not. Sleep poorly for too long and the consequences - which are inevitable - can be severe. Sleep well and the benefits can be surprising and far-reaching.

If you give your body enough sleep, you can reap the following benefits:

Your memory performance will improve (14)
You will have lower levels of systemic inflammation (15)
You will learn better and solve problems better (16, 17)
You will find it easier to follow a healthy diet (18)
Your immune system will function better (19)
Your general mood will improve (20)
Your athletic performance will improve (21)
You will probably live longer (22)

Good sleep hygiene is like a good exercise program: it will improve your life in virtually every way.

Before we talk about more habits for good sleep, let's first talk about how much sleep you should get. It's important to note that sleep needs vary from person to person. According to the American National Sleep Foundation, adults need between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night to avoid the negative effects of sleep deprivation (23).

Since many things such as diet, physical activity, genetics and age ultimately determine how much sleep your body needs, an easy way to find out what is optimal for you is to choose a two-week phase like a vacation and go to bed at the same time every night without setting an alarm clock.

There is a good chance that you will sleep longer than usual at the beginning if you are sleep deprived and need to compensate for this at first, but by the end of the second week your body will have developed a sleep pattern that involves roughly the same amount of sleep per night. When this happens, your body is trying to tell you something: this is the amount of sleep it needs each night.

How to get better sleep

When we talk about sleep, quantity is not all that matters. We shouldn't forget about quality either. In fact, sleep quality may be more important than quantity, as a smaller amount of quality sleep beats a larger amount of poor sleep.

For example, if you fall asleep at midnight and get up at 8am, but wake up several times during the night and can't get back to sleep straight away, then you will be significantly less rested than someone who falls asleep at midnight and sleeps through to 7am or maybe even 6am.

Let's look at a selection of scientifically proven ways to improve both the quality and quantity of your sleep.

1. avoid chemicals that affect your sleep

We all know that caffeine and nicotine are stimulants, but alcohol can also disrupt sleep (24). While alcohol can help you fall asleep, it acts as a stimulant and wakes you up more often each night.

As a general rule, you should not consume any sleep-disrupting chemicals during the last four to six hours before going to sleep.

2. switch off your electrical appliances

Your body has an internal clock that tells it when to go to bed and when to wake up. The hormone that most directly affects this clock is melatonin, which is produced by a small gland in your brain.

At the end of the day, melatonin levels rise, giving your body the signal to go to sleep. At night, when it's time to go to sleep, melatonin levels are at their highest and they drop in the early morning when it's time to wake up.

Your body uses light as the primary regulator of melatonin production. When you are exposed to bright light, melatonin production is suppressed (25). In contrast, a dark environment that signals to the body that it is nighttime is conducive to melatonin production.

This simple system worked fantastically for thousands of years...until we developed screens to stare at. Devices such as TVs, computers, tablets and smartphones emit a type of light called blue light, which studies show effectively suppresses melatonin production (26).

This effect is so strong that studies show that reading on an iPad several hours before going to bed is enough to make it harder to fall asleep and reduce REM sleep and alertness the next morning (27).

There is convincing evidence that avoiding blue light (and possibly all electronic light) from sunset onwards may be optimal, but this would be a major challenge for most of us.

So what's the next best solution? Avoid the TV, computer, tablet or smartphone for at least an hour before going to bed. The longer you can manage without a screen before bed, the better, but most people find that an hour is enough to help them fall asleep noticeably better.

You can also download apps like Flux (https://justgetflux.com/) that adjust the color of the light released on computers, tablets and smartphones to the time of day. At night, the light is switched to a warm light instead of the harsh blue light and research shows that this is significantly better for a good night's sleep.

3. exercise regularly

Name something in your life that you want to improve and there's a good chance that exercise can help. Sleep hygiene is one of these many things. Scientific research shows that regular exercise can improve sleep quality in people with and without sleep problems (28, 29).

It is worth noting that although some people may quickly benefit from the positive effects of exercise on training, this is not the case for others. Scientific research shows that it can take several months of exercise before there are noticeable improvements in sleep (30).

Research also shows that people respond differently to exercise performed at different times of the day. In one study, subjects who exercised in the afternoon reported better sleep than those who exercised in the morning (31).

In another study conducted with subjects suffering from insomnia, no significant difference was observed between morning and late afternoon exercise - all subjects benefited in a similar way (32).

Finding out what works best for you is a matter of trial and error. Exercise at different times and see how this affects your sleep.

4. don't be overweight

If exercise can improve pretty much every aspect of life, then obesity is the antithesis of this. An overwhelming number of physiological and psychological guidance values are undermined by existing obesity (33), including sleep hygiene (34).

Obesity and sleep have a particularly strong relationship. Obesity impairs sleep and impaired sleep disrupts hormones related to appetite, which promotes overeating (35).

Avoid this vicious cycle. Maintaining a healthy body composition and better sleep will be two of the many rewards of this.

5. create a relaxing routine before bedtime

How many times have you lain in bed with your eyes open and thousands of thoughts running through your head? And how often has this followed stressful or stimulating conversations or activities?

Well, that's the reason why you should help your body relax before going to bed instead. Many successful bedtime routines include taking a relaxing bath, reading a book, listening to calming music and stretching or breathing exercises.

Personally, reading and soothing music help me.

6. pay attention to "dark, quiet and cool"

These are all effective environmental stimuli for your brain to get your body to fall asleep.

By "dark" I mean pitch black, as even small amounts of artificial light can disrupt sleep.
By "quiet" I mean as quiet as possible.

When you sleep, your brain continues to process sounds at a basic level and even if you don't wake up from them, they can cause sleep phase shifts as well as increased blood pressure and heart rate.

By cool, I mean a temperature between 15 and 19 degrees.

Research shows that this is the ideal temperature range to help your body lower its core temperature for sleep. There are also metabolic benefits to sleeping in a colder environment. Studies show that this can increase brown fat stores, which increase the metabolic rate at rest (36, 37).

7 Use the right supplements

If you want to improve your sleep, you should first address your lifestyle before turning to supplements. However, if you have done this and want to improve your sleep further, then it may make sense to consider using supplements.

If you look at the scientific literature on the subject, you'll quickly find that there aren't many natural, safe and non-addictive natural compounds that have been scientifically proven to improve sleep quality.

Valerian root, for example, is a popular sleep aid, but a large meta-analysis published recently concluded that valerian is generally ineffective (38). Kava is another commonly recommended sleep supplement and although scientific research shows that it can improve sleep quality, other studies have shown that it can be toxic to the liver (39, 40).

However, there are some supplements to improve sleep quality that are both effective and safe.

Glycine

Glycine is an amino acid that acts as a neurotransmitter and is mainly found in foods such as meat and various seafood that contain gelatin.

Studies have shown that supplementing with glycine before going to sleep can have the following benefits:

A reduction in the time it takes to fall asleep (41).
Improved sleep quality (42).
Reduced feelings of fatigue caused by impaired sleep (43).
Improved cognitive performance with impaired sleep (44).

The clinically effective dosage is 3 grams of glycine.

Melatonin

Melatonin is a hormone produced by the brain that regulates sleep. It is also found in some foods such as tomatoes, walnuts, strawberries and olive oil. However, while melatonin is a good supplement for improving sleep quality and can actually help in this regard, maintaining proper sleep cycles is more important. No amount of melatonin can compensate for what is lost due to poor sleep hygiene.

Scientific research shows that supplementing with melatonin can have the following benefits:

A reduction in the time it takes to fall asleep (45)
Improved sleep quality in people who suffer from insomnia (46).
Reduced symptoms of jet lag (47).
An improvement in memory processing (48).

The clinically effective dosage of melatonin ranges from 500 mcg to 5 mg. It is important to note that the benefits of melatonin are not dose-dependent, meaning that higher doses will not help you fall asleep faster (49). Furthermore, this means that if your body doesn't respond to the lower end of the clinically effective dosage range, a higher dosage probably won't help either (while increasing the risk of unwanted side effects such as morning fatigue).

Lemon balm extract

Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) is a plant that has been used by the ancient Greeks to relieve anxiety and agitation, as well as to promote sleep.

Scientific studies show that supplementation with lemon balm can have the following benefits:

An improved quality of sleep (50).
Reduced feelings of anxiety and stress and a sense of calm (51, 52).
An improvement in memory performance (53).
Reduced symptoms of insomnia associated with anxiety (54).

The clinically effective dosage is between 300 and 1,200 mg lemon balm.

Rutaecarpine

Rutaecarpine is found in the Evodia rutaecarpa plant, which is used in traditional Chinese medicine to increase body temperature and reduce pain and indigestion.

The rutaecarpine molecule is able to significantly reduce caffeine levels in the body (55, 56, 57, 58). This active ingredient can address a common problem among athletes: the consumption of caffeine before training sessions in the evening can disrupt sleep.

Although pre-workout caffeine consumption can provide a number of benefits such as increased strength, increased muscle endurance and increased anaerobic exercise capacity (59, 60, 61), caffeine consumed late in the day often interferes with sleep more than most people realize.

Studies have shown that 400 mg of caffeine - slightly more than is found in a serving of most pre-workout boosters - taken 6 hours before bedtime can reduce sleep by more than an hour (62). This means that people who train later in the day should not consume caffeine before training, which can be detrimental to maximizing training performance.

Rutaecarpine may help to eliminate this disadvantage by eliminating caffeine from the body, allowing both pre-workout caffeine consumption and restful sleep.

Conclusion

Your quality of life depends heavily on how well you sleep. This includes the function of your immune system, your mood, your physical and mental performance and your appetite.

Not only does sleep deprivation result in cumulative biological costs, but its effects are not always immediately obvious. In one study, for example, three groups of subjects slept 8, 6 and 4 hours per night for two weeks (63). The 4 and 6 hour groups experienced a steady decline in cognitive and motor skills throughout the duration of the study, but the subjects felt that they were only affected for a few days and then adjusted to the reduced amount of sleep. In other words, we are not good at judging how much sleep deprivation affects us.

While you may be able to get away with less than optimal sleep, the question is why you shouldn't strive for something better. Use the strategies outlined in this article and you'll be surprised at how much you'll benefit.

References:

Source: https://www.muscleforlife.com/how-to-sleep-better/

By Michael Matthews

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