For millions of years, our ancestors lived a lifestyle governed by the immutable law of the sun. Once the sunset, their world descended into darkness, and once it returned, the world as bathed in light. Modern adults who claim an average bedtime of a quarter to 12 and an average awakening at 8 can have these numbers revert drastically to match the rise and fall of the sun if you take them camping. We understand that disease prevention, memory retention, muscle recovery, mood regulation, and so much more, all depend on the quality of your sleep.
Here are 6 natural tricks to improve your sleep.
1. Don’t Take in Caffeine after 12PM:
Caffeine has a half-life of six hours and a quarter-life of 12. That means if you drink 350 mg of caffeine at noon, 175 mg are still going to be circulating in your blood and organs at 6 pm, the time of day when the sun begins to hang low on the horizon, the shadows lengthen, and melatonin production begins in the brain. Six hours after that and you’re in the middle of the solar night, but there will still be 87-88 mg of caffeine in your system – as much as a small cup of coffee, and enough to disturb your sleep.
2. Sync the Light in Your House with the Light of the Day:
When it’s morning, get up, open all the curtains and turn on the lights in your house to replicate the rising sun. A dark and dull house will result in slower attenuation to your morning. Also, an hour before the sun goes down, turn off half the lights in your house, followed by the other half when it is fully dark. Use candles for light and put blue-light filters on all your screens. Computers often have a blue light filter built-in, while you can often find filter apps for your devices. You would not believe how effective this is at making you fully ready for bed.
3. Temperature:
Have you ever noticed how much harder it is to fall asleep when your room’s too hot? That’s because the temperature is almost just as important as a trigger for sleep as light. If you have good central air conditioning, set the temperature in your house for 65-66 degrees Fahrenheit an hour before bedtime, and get into the long fuzzy pajamas. Get a little cold, and you’ll fall straight to sleep. Use the Gearbest coupon code to get a good air conditioner at an economical rate.
3. Control Every Aspect of Indoor Lighting With Philips Hue
Philips Hue Smart Lighting allows you to create the perfect atmosphere for slumber, wakefulness, or entertainment with their Wi-Fi lighting system. Choose from over 50,000 tones between cool blue-spectrum white light to energize you in the morning and switch to golden-orange hues after the sun goes down to get you ready in bed.
Take the ambiance in your home to the next level with over 12,000 shades of colored light, transforming your TV room into a theater, your bedroom into a romantic retreat, or your deck and patio as a happening place for entertaining.
Set your Philips Hue Smart Lighting system to gradually turn on in the morning to mimic sunrise, and dim in the evening to mimic sunset, and live as close as you can to your ancestral lifestyle as possible.
4. Understand your Chronotype:
Everyone is predisposed to lead a more productive day if they follow a sleep pattern that matches their genetic chronotype. Commonly speaking, you’re an owl, a lark, or somewhere in between. If you’ve ever had your genome sequenced, you can find out which gene you possess and can begin adopting a sleep schedule to satisfy it. Owls stay up for a period after the sun goes down, while larks may be in bed by dusk; waking at twilight. Living a schedule that goes against your chronotype is a losing battle.
5. Sleep in a Room with Plenty of Windows:
If you’re out camping, as the individuals were in the study previously mentioned, you don’t have a method of escaping the light of the sun. As it rises, so do you. And it’s no surprise; it’s a giant ball of fire that illuminates everything on the surface of the planet. With a roof over your head and curtains drawn, modern humans have escaped the natural cues corresponding to the light-dark cycle. Part of waking up feeling refreshed involves a strong dose of light into our eyes – about 10,000 lux, the equivalent of several moments of clear sun exposure. Once received, your brain will begin to switch on hundreds of genes that are active during the day and dormant at night. The quicker you can switch those on, the more awake you’ll feel. Conversely, the slower the required light enters your eyes, the groggier and more reluctant to wake up you’ll be.
6. Knowing You’ll Be More Creative in the Morning:
One of the many reasons people stay awake past the dropping of the sun is to get more done. Day time is filled with errands, work, meals, and other engagements, while from 9 pm-12 am most Americans have some time available to pursue their own activities. 9-12 is the time when the brain desires deep, slow-wave sleep for the process of memory processing, while the hours before morning, say 1-5, is when the brain hunger for Rapid Eye Movement sleep, or REM sleep. REM sleep is characterized by dreams and unassociated images smashing together and are also responsible for stimulating spontaneous and integrative creative associations to produce problem-solving. To have a comfortable sleep it’s important to have a well-structured mattress or bed, you can easily get one via NestBedding. As a result, you’ll often do your best creative thinking in the early morning hours. Consider going to sleep earlier to simultaneously satisfy your slow-wave sleep demands and slot those 3 hours of personal time in the morning – a time when you’re more creative.
