0:00 today I'm going to tell you about the six habits that are wrecking your sleep highquality sleep has changed my life there is literally nothing I do in my life that changes my conscious experience more than sleep now I came from a place of really bad sleep three little babies being a full-time entrepreneur grinding at work having some challenges on the home front I know what it feels like to have really bad sleep for a very long time it's miserable so today I'm going to tell you the six habits that are in your sleep and what you can do about it number one is eating food too late now for example let's say your bed time is 10 p.m. and at 9:00 p.m. in the middle of your favorite episode you decide that eating a piece of pizza is a good idea and then
0:46 one piece of pizza turns into the whole pizza in that moment several bad things happen one is your body has to spin up all kinds of metabolic activity to address this food it must digest that's challenging you have a blood glucose Spike when that happens and then once you have that it drops so you have this blood glucose fluctuation you also have a disruption of melatonin production where your body says I want to get ready for bed and now that's off the rails so it disrupts the entire process the body is expecting as you ready yourself for sleep so don't do that I'll tell you from my experience I wanted to test I wanted to find what is the very best time to eat my final meal of the day so I did a few hundred experiments I would test 1 hour before bed and two and three
1:35 and four all the way back to 11:00 a.m. my bedtime is 8:30 and I also tested types of foods so i' would say what happens when you eat a salad you know 3 hours before bed or a piece of bread or some pasta so I was testing my metabolic response to these Foods at these times of day and I found that my best time of day was 11 11:30 a.m. of my final meal now you may see that crazy it probably is according to current standards also when I did that my body was able to complete digestion by the time I went to bed now there's a few markers that I looked at to see what was happening first my resting heart rate became my best predictor of how well I would sleep so when it was between 46 and 50 I was
2:21 almost guaranteed a perfect night sleep when I ate later in the day my resting heart rate would be increased to 55 56 57 and when I saw that it was guaranteed to about 30% less quality it is absolutely predictable so the takeaway here is the time you eat matters a lot now you are different you're unique your body type your metabolism your genetics so what I'm going to encourage you is not to do what I do at 11:00 a.m. but to Experiment 2 hours before bed and then three and then four expect momentary discomfort but your body absolutely adapts to it now number two is not having a wind down routine now this is something that is so important in my life I know if I work up until 5 minutes
3:09 before my head HS a pillow I'm going to have a wrecked night sleep just guaranteed because I will go to sleep thinking about the day like the conversations I had the things I should be doing the things I forgot to do the people I should have contacted all these thoughts like your brain's trying to keep track of all the things to make sure you're on top of it or other people may have ruminations of anxieties or things like that my bedtime is 8:30 p.m. when 7:30 arrives nighttime Brian is now in charge so when 7:31 happens and a thought comes into my brain you forgot to contact so and so today I can say thank you work Brian we have all day tomorrow to address this need and that really helps me call myself to say you know what I'm not in work mode I don't
3:55 own that responsibility if you want you can write it down so you don't forget about it but it's really important to say that you are now in sleep mode and you're doing the things to prepare yourself for that so you want to be mindful before you go to bed you want to avoid arousal activities so you want to avoid you know arguments you want to avoid any kind of like Hard Exercise anything that's really stimulating your nervous system I'm not sure I can recall an evening as stimulating so during the day our sympathetic nervous systems get us ready to take on the world and Tackle all the challenges but when we get to the evening your parasympathetic nervous system is going to calm you down and get you ready for bed so you want to do parasympathetic activating activities so
4:43 I'm going to give you a few examples one and this is my favorite is read a book before bed like in hand or if you have a Kindle I guess that's fine too but in hand and read a book so no screens no tablets no television screens no mobile phone but a book in hand it is my favorite and it calms me the very most you could also Journal you can meditate you can take a bath you can go for a walk these activities will calm your body down and get you ready for sleep you will find the things that you like but you definitely want to give yourself at least 60 minutes before bed to prepare yourself number three is having stimulants too late in the day so let's just say for example you have a cup of coffee at 400 p.m. and
5:31 your bedtime is 10: p.m. caffeine has a halflife of 6 hours so that means at 10 p.m. when your head HS a pillow it's equal to having a half a cup of coffee so you want to be mindful now some people metabolize coffee in a way where they can drink caffeine at any time and they're fine but others are much more sensitive including myself so I personally I stopped caffeine and alcohol entirely one because they disrupted my mood they would take me up up and then push me down and I'd have this problem on my hands now with no caffeine and no alcohol I'm very stable throughout the entire day uh if you're going to drink caffeine try to have it earlier in the day but again experiment on the right time that's not going to disrupt your sleep number four is not properly regulating evening light now in
6:18 the morning light is great getting sunlight in the eyes for the first 15 to 30 minutes the day it sets the Circadian rhythm it improves mood there's all kinds of health benefits that's great when the evening comes for two hours before bedtime you want to start slowly dimming your lights you want to hang out in the warm Spectra colors that's between 2700 and 3500 Kelvin so you want to be mindful of uh lessening light if you want have red light you also want to eliminate blue light so you can do a few things on this front you can use flux f.lux on your screens it washes out blue light you can also use blue light blocking glasses and then this is a big one is if you can eliminate screens entirely so you can say 1 hour before bed no screens books or your walk only
7:08 so that is the rule of my house is I really try to stay off screens entirely number five is your bedroom being too hot or too cold now we all know what it's like you're laying in bed you're sweating you're tossing and turning your body needs to cool down for you to be in the right place to go to sleep and if you're too hot you're not going to be able to fall asleep and so there are some basic things you can do like open a window and let air come in you can also have blinds that block the light during the day so your room doesn't get as hot you can also do more advanced things like have a temperature controlled mattress now I use eight sleep I think it's a fantastic product it definitely dramatically improve my sleep when doing it my settings are I go to bed at 73° F when I fall asleep and I dip out into my first uh stage of deep sleep it's 69 fah
7:58 when I come back up into REM it's around 71 72 and then when I wake up it's 73 and so the body is going to follow a rhythm where you have a certain temp when you go to bed your body's decreasing in temperature you drop down even further and deep sleep and come back up for REM and then a little warmer when you wake up now eight sleep has a cool feature where it's their autopilot where they automatically regulate the temperature on the mattress I find that really cool now just note here once you get accustomed to a sleep to a to a temperature control mattress when you travel it's a little unwelcome uh where it's challenging so I I'll go to a hotel room and I'll cool the room as much as possible down to 64° is usually how low they go but just be mindful when you
8:44 create systems in your life they're wonderful to create the effects at home when you travel it can be challenging which is okay uh it's okay to experience these difficulties when we're out and about we're trying to build systems at home and about and we can be adaptive wherever we go number six is regulating noise now we all know how annoying it is when our neighbors are arguing the dogs barking your cars are honking it's painful you want it to stop and you have no control over it now I have a personal experience with this my neighbors dogs were barking when I moved into this house and I said hey my bedtime is at 8:30 and when I go to bed and the dogs bark I wake up and it's hard for me to go back to sleep would you be okay if you you know did the dogs nighttime routine and got them in their kettle before 8:30 she said sure no problem
9:32 I've not had a problem since now not all neighbors are as nice I would encourage you to talk to them even though sometimes that feels scary and just nicely ask would you please turn your music down or I can hear you walk around I know those are uncomfortable conversations also they're really important and maybe you can do something nice for them as well to show a good faith gesture you can also if there's a lot of noise in your environment you can use a noise machine Brown white or pink good evidence to show that it actually is helpful to lessen the number of disruptions you're trying to lessen the number of times where noise wakes you up and disrupts your sleep sometimes you're aware of it sometimes you're not but just be mindful of the environment its entirety friends I know it's culturally fashionable to not get highquality sleep
10:21 that people talk about their bravery and staying up all night they somehow think they're falling behind they're missing out that people are going to think less of them because they don't work hard enough if they get sleep and I'm here to tell you that getting 8 hours of sleep you're being a hero to yourself to your family to your friends your loved ones get a great night's sleep I promise you you will you will feel better and have a better life if you do so I believe in you [Music]
