Top 5 Tips To Get Amazing Sleep

Sleep sometimes feels like a taboo topic with our members here at GCP. They know they should be getting more sleep but honestly don’t want to do anything about it. So instead of trying to get people to sleep longer, we worry more about the quality of sleep our members get. Today we are going to walk through our top 5 tips to create a better sleep environment so you can get better quality sleep.

#1 ELIMINATE BLUE LIGHT IN THE ROOM

The skin has light receptors all over it. Even though your eyes are closed your skin is still feeling the light which causes it to not get into as deep a sleep as possible. Inside most bedrooms, there are small blue lights or lights in general all over. The plug from your cell phone charger, the blinking light on your cell phone, the alarm clock numbers, etc. These might seem like little lights that mean nothing, but during the darkest parts of the night, I bet your room isn’t extremely dark. These little lights in your seeping environment can, unfortunately, be affecting your deep sleep.

How to fix:

• Dim your alarm clock so the light is barely see-able. You don’t need to see the time in the middle of the night, you should be sleeping.

• Eliminate any chargers that are unneeded or replace them with ones that don’t have the light on the end.

• Put duct tape over any light that you have to keep in the room, I found that 2-3 pieces were needed to actually block the light out.

#2 WHITE NOISE

Did you know that your body has 4 stages of sleep? Awake, light, deep, and REM. Your body cycles through these throughout the night in roughly 3-hour cycles. You need to be in a certain amount of deep and REM sleep for your body to fully repair itself. The reason you have light sleep is a protective mechanism so that if anything happened in nature you could snap out of sleep really quick and protect yourself. In today’s world, we don’t really have this issue anymore. But there are a lot of outside noises that happen throughout the house or outside of the house. If these are consistent your body will struggle to stay in deep sleep as it believes it needs to protect itself. Using white noise puts enough of a barrier in the room that your brain can block out those noises and get deep into sleep.

How to fix:

• A fan is a great tool because it’s just loud enough to block out other noises. Even if you don’t like it blowing on you, just point it away from you.

• A white noise machine is also a simple tool to buy.

#3 USE DARK-OUT SHADES/CURTAINS

This comes back to the point from #1, our skin has light receptors. The darker we can make the room, the better chance we’ll stay in a deep sleep. Dark-out shades will keep the outside light completely out, making for a dark cave-like environment to sleep in. Even if you think your blinds are good, try a dark-out shade and it’ll be 10x’s darker and make a world of difference on how deep of sleep you’ll get.

How to fix:

• There are dark-out shades, curtains, and blinds. Pick whichever one is easiest in your house to put up. Most of these aren’t true blackouts, so research them and you’ll find some really good, not overly expensive ones.

#4 SLEEP AT A TEMPERATURE FROM 62°-67°

Our body drops to its lowest body temperature right before sleep, then rises temp as we come out of sleep. If the temperature of the room is cold, it helps us get into sleep quicker by helping lower body temp faster as well as keeps us in a deeper sleep longer as our temperature stays even. It also helps with melatonin production in the body.

How to fix:

• Set the thermostat to 62 for women, men can get away with a higher temperature, closer to 67.

• If someone in your household will not do this, then buy a sleep cooler system for your bed, I use Chilipad.

#5 PUT YOUR CELL PHONE IN AIRPLANE MODE

EMFs are somewhat of a new topic in the health world, but especially in sleep. EMFs are electrical magnetic frequencies. These are created by wireless and electrical technology. Sleeping with devices such as Wi-Fi routers, mobile phones, laptops, tablets, and other electronic gadgets placed close to the bed cause extreme sleep loss. Apart from insomnia, EMFs also cause low immunity, depression, hypertension, mood disturbances, etc. Constant exposure to EMF devices disrupts the production of melatonin. EMFs are a topic for a whole different podcast but put simply, putting your phone in airplane mode or turning it off turns off the EMFs coming from it. Knowing most people use their phone for an alarm clock, by turning it to airplane mode before bed will allow you to still use the alarm function without getting as much from EMFs.

If you have someone such as a high schooler that stays out later than the time you go to bed, or a kid off at college, this might not be possible. My main tip here is if your phone rings loud enough, you could keep it outside the bedroom. Some phones also have a “do not disturb” setting that allows only certain alerts which can also help avoid disturbed sleep, although this does not stop EMFs. But realistically if you are in this situation, you might not be able to do this tip for that 6-year time frame.

How to fix:

• Turn on airplane mode

• Turn the phone completely off

• Keep the phone out of the bedroom

MAIN TAKEAWAY

We aren’t asking you to get more time in bed. We really do know that’s not always the easiest thing to do, but if you put just a little effort into these environment hacks, you’ll be getting a deeper and more restful sleep.

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