5 ways to the get the best sleep of your life 😴

Natural Alternatives For a Good Nights Sleep

Thank you for joining The Holistic Alternative, a holistic health community geared towards providing you with applicable tools for your health and well-being 💪. This bi-weekly newsletter will provide you with resources and information that you can use to positively impact your overall health 🙌

Have you ever experienced challenges with the quality of your sleep? 🤔 Worry not! You’re not alone and we’re here to assist you 🤗.

Sleep Hygiene: Circadian Rhythm

We’ve all heard of dental hygiene or skin hygiene, but what about sleep hygiene 😴?

About one-third of Americans are not regularly getting enough sleep, which can lead to symptoms like decreased performance, mental fog, decreased alertness, and extreme fatigue. Moreover, as highlighted in this peer-reviewed study, chronic health conditions like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are all linked to unhealthy circadian rhythm patterns 🤯.

To get better sleep, we must first understand how our natural circadian rhythm (sleep/wake cycle) works. Our circadian rhythm helps us to respond to changes in our environment, and it’s our job to optimize the regulation of our hormones and build a strong foundation for good health 💪!

Throughout millions of years, life on Earth has been shaped by the rhythmic shifts of night and day. Every 24 hours, there are predictable shifts in light and temperature. Our bodies have adapted to this rhythm via internal biological clocks. Changes in our modern society, such as daily work routines and heightened screen exposure, can disrupt our internal “clock” and adversely affect our circadian rhythm 😳.

Check Out Our Five Holistic Alternative Tools To Reset Our Circadian Rhythm and Improve The Quality of Your Sleep 💤

 You can start doing these tonight to try to improve your sleep 🙌:

1. Regularity is essential: 💡Try your best to go to sleep and wake up at the same time. When you consistently expose your brain to signals promoting regular sleep patterns, they gradually condition your brain 🧠. This process establishes a reliable circadian rhythm that your body adjusts to over time, and regularity in our sleep/wake cycles is crucial to establish this connection. Strive to maintain this consistency as much as possible. Ideally, we aim to synchronize our sleep patterns with the natural cycles of the sun and moon, as our ancestors did. However, we are aware that modern-day challenges such as work schedules, deadlines, and artificial lighting often make this difficult. Nevertheless, prioritizing regularity becomes highly important. Many sleep scientists, like Dr. Mathew Walker, state that maintaining regularity is more important than the actual hour at which you fall asleep 🥱.

2. Lighting: Both light and darkness play crucial roles in regulating our sleep 🌓. Managing our lighting is the most vital tool for establishing optimal sleep hygiene. Darkness prompts our bodies to release essential sleep hormones like melatonin 🥱. We recommend sleeping in a room that is completely dark, using blackout curtains to ensure there is no light coming in from the outside. An eye mask can do the trick as well if you are unable to block out the surrounding light. Dimming the lights in your home by 50% in the evening hours(1-2 hours before bedtime) leading to sleep can have surprisingly positive effects on how you feel and your ability to sleep well. Consider the abundance of artificial lights we typically have turned on in the evening in our homes 😳. When we expose ourselves to the bright blue light from screens, such as our phones, before bedtime, it signals to our brains to remain awake and hinders the production of melatonin 🫠. Check out this article on the physiological, psychological and health consequences of circadian disruption (warning: this article will make you want to improve your sleep hygiene 🤭). Ideally, it’s best to avoid screen time for 1-2 hours before sleep because it triggers alertness and physiological arousal in the brain. However, if you must check your phone or any bright screens, consider using some nighttime blue light blockers 😎. Brands like Block Blue Light and RA Optics offer high quality products that efficiently filter out the blue light spectrum. For most smartphones, you can also turn on night shift mode, which will ease the amount of blue lights you will be exposed to and turn your screen slightly orange to the spectrum of your choice. Give it a try!

3. Temperature: Keep it “Chill”: Maintaining the right temperature is one of the most important factors to ensure a restful night’s sleep. To facilitate the body’s natural sleep process, it’s essential to lower our core temperature by 2-3 degrees Fahrenheit. According to scientific research, the ideal target temperature for sleep is an ambiance of around 67 degrees Fahrenheit. Not only do these changes in temperature help you fall asleep, but they also influence how well you sleep. According to this Journal article, higher body temperatures during sleep are linked to lower amounts of deep sleep, both NREM and REM, which are the stages of sleep that play an essential part of learning, memory and emotional regulation. We highly recommend investing in a sleepme system (previously known as Chilipad) to regulate your sleep temperature effectively. It is a temperature regulated mattress topper, and 95% of customers have reported deeper sleep when using this system 👀.

4. Central Nervous system Calming Techniques: Wind Down Routines: Sleep is a physiological process, and it takes time to gradually wind down into a sleep state. When we get into our bed, we want to send signals to our brain that it is a place of rest. By staying awake for long periods in bed, your brain makes associations that this is not a place of rest. While in bed, we recommend doing activities that will aid in relaxation such as breathing exercises, reading a book, listening to a relaxing noise (white noise) or meditating. An evening/nighttime routine can be extremely important in shifting your body into a parasympathetic state, especially after a long stressful day. While this nighttime routine may look different for everyone, we highly recommend finding out what works for YOU, doing anything that puts you in a state of relaxation. This can include taking a warm bath/shower 🛀, doing some light stretching/yoga 🙆, meditating/praying, reading or listening to an audiobook 📚.

5. Caffeine and Alcohol Intake:

   ☕️ Caffeine: Matthew Walker, in his book "Why We Sleep", highlights the impact of caffeine on sleep. He emphasizes that caffeine's half-life of 5-7 hours means it can linger in the body hours after consumption, disrupting the ability to fall asleep and reducing the quality of sleep by interfering with deep, restorative stages. Caffeine can delay sleep onset, increase wakefulness during the night, and lead to fragmented sleep 😣. Dr. Walker suggests limiting caffeine intake, particularly in the afternoon and evening, to promote better sleep quality and overall well-being, recognizing individual variations in caffeine sensitivity.  Some experts even suggest the effects of caffeine to be longer than 5-7 hours and closer to 8-12 hours. As a simple rule of thumb, we recommend limiting your caffeine consumption after noon, but of course, this will be dependent on your wake and sleep times.

   🍻 Alcohol: Matthew Walker explains in "Why We Sleep" that alcohol, despite its initial sedative effect, disrupts sleep by fragmenting the sleep cycle, reducing REM sleep, and exacerbating sleep disorders like sleep apnea and insomnia. While it may help individuals fall asleep faster, it compromises sleep quality, leading to feelings of fatigue, sensitivity to light and sound, irritability, decreased metabolic activity, and impaired cognitive function the next day 😖. Walker advises limiting alcohol consumption, especially before bedtime, to improve overall sleep quality and well-being.

The Holistic Alternative Pro Health Tip

• 🌿 Herbal supplements/teas can serve as excellent tools to calm the nervous system before bedtime. There is a wide variety of supplements tailored for this specific purpose in the market. We recommend testing what works for you, but as always, strive to find something that is clean and of the highest quality possible. Some of the evening/night time supplements that we enjoy are Organifi Gold, Magnesium Breakthrough and NED sleep blend 😴.

• 🕯Early in the day, get bright light exposure, preferably from the sun 🌞. Later in the evening, switch to lights lower on the light scale, you can use candles or red light desk lamps like this one here. This will help regulate your circadian rhythm, allowing your body to relax and naturally release sleep hormones.

• To summarize the major tips mentioned above: Regularity is essential for getting quality sleep. Lighting and temperature play major roles in triggering our circadian rhythm, so it’s important to align them for optimal sleep: maintain darkness and coolness in the evening 🌒, and lightness and warmth in the morning ☀️! Establish a calming nighttime routine that includes activities like reading, meditating, praying, a warm shower/bath, and light stretching. Prioritize your rest and give yourself the gift of a peaceful night's sleep 🥰.

Support Local Business and Resources

• Restore Hyper Wellness - Restore hyper wellness offers a variety of different wellness services, one of our favorite being Red light therapy. This Cohort study of female basketball players showed a positive effect on red light therapy and sleep performance by improving sleep quality and preventing sleep disorders post training compared to a placebo group. If you’re interested in trying out a red light therapy session, email us directly to get a discounted price!

DISCLAIMER: The Holistic Alternative Newsletter is for general educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of giving medical advice, and no nurse/patient relationship is formed. The content of this newsletter is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions.