Last month’s CGP (#24 Sleep is a Fundamental Branch) was all about sleep and how important it is for your body’s recovery for the next day of practice, work or whatever is necessary to just function.
Here are 8 tips that can help you get the most of your sleep/wake cycles:
1. Get to sleep by 10:30pm.
And this doesn’t mean in your bed and reading at 10:30pm, this means lights out and already minutes away from sweet dreams.
2. Minimize all the bright lights at least two hours before bed time.
Try candles or low watt light bulbs. Remember bright lights cause a type of stress making your brain think its morning time.
3. Make sure the room is completely dark.
Remember lightness = stress = cortisol release.
4. Avoid the stimulants after or around lunch time- caffeine, sugar, nicotine.
All stimulants do is excite your sympathetic nervous system and trigger the release of cortisol, which tells your brain it’s morning and time to get up. Caffeine especially has a half-life of about 6 hours, so when you have a cup at 2:00pm, by 8;00pm there is still about half of the stimulant still in your blood stream.
5. Eat correctly throughout the day, especially at dinner time.
Desserts… that counts as sugar of course, remember that.
6. Water water water.
If you let the body dehydrate if puts stress on the body keeping it awake. So drink plenty of water.
7. Exercise of course!
Careful of the time and intensity of your training though. Too late and it could make it hard to fall asleep. But early enough in the day and it will help you fall asleep come night time.
8. Unplug all the eletronical appliances in your bedroom.
Or you can rearranging the room so all the devices are a good distance from the bed if unplugging is not an option. You are already exposed to enough low frequency electromagnetic energies…power lines, ciruits in the walls, ceilings and floors, TVs and so on, and this can disrupt your sleep/wake cycles.
9. Eight hours of sleep.
You’ve heard it a billion times before that you need 8 hours of sleep, well it isn’t any different this time.
Take small steps towards new change. Your body can be trained to a new schedule in as little as 7-21 days. For those who constantly go to bed after midnight for a couple weeks, may find it hard to fall asleep at 10:30pm. Your body’s internal clock has become trained to start reducing cortisol and increasing melatonin around midnight. But your natural rhythms have already started the physical repairs, thus robbing your body two hours of repair.
But following these 9 steps will help you be well on your way to feeling fully energized and ready to begin a new day.
