How to Support Your Chiropractic Care With a Great Night’s Sleep
When you sleep, your body enters recovery mode. Muscle tissues repair, the digestive system cleans and resets itself, your immune system produces more infection fighting cells and your brain flushes away toxins and stitches together neurons to reinforce memory and learning. This is just a glimpse of some of the functions sleep performs. It may feel like not much is happening but there’s a miracle of healing and regeneration going on while you’re lying in bed.
Everyone’s individual sleep needs are slightly different but there are some fundamentals that almost all of us require to get the best quality sleep possible.
The following are the basics so if you only read these and take action you’ll be on your way to better energy, heightened creativity, better mood, enhanced immunity and improved focus among many other benefits.
The Fundamentals of Quality Sleep
Aim for seven to eight hours per night
Have the same or similar wake and sleep times every day - even at weekends
Avoid bright lights and LCD screens at least one hour before sleeping - ideally two hours
Limit or stop caffeine consumption after 2pm
Try not to eat a large meal close to bedtime. Even better, no calories in the two to three hours before sleeping
Exposure to daylight before 10am - five to fifteen minutes on a clear day, thirty minutes or more on a cloudy day
If you’re not getting a good night’s sleep regularly or are lacking energy then following the above will help.
There are lots of hacks or supplements that claim to improve how well you sleep but the truth is if you’re not doing these basics then they’re going to have very little impact, if any at all. Read on to find out why.
Seven to eight of hours sleep per night
This has been conventional wisdom for a long time and may seem redundant to mention. However, 71% of British people get less than seven hours per night. And one in seven people get less than five hours. Study after study shows that some aspect of physical, mental and emotional wellbeing or performance is diminished if we consistently get less than we need. It’s true that there’s a minority of people who are exempt from this rule. However, the likelihood that’s you or someone you know is very slim. Less than one in twelve thousand people can get by with under seven hours per night. In fact, you’re more likely to be struck by lightning than be one of these people. So aim for seven hours or more every night to optimise your wellbeing and performance.
Have the same or similar wake and sleep times every day
This has been a game changer for many people with chronic sleep problems. Your body’s functions are designed around a twenty-four hour cycle. This is known as your circadian rhythm. Hormones that influence how alert or drowsy you feel are released at specific times of the day. For example, cortisol, the hormone that releases energy and keeps you alert, is at its highest in your body in the morning, particularly around 10am. Melatonin on the other hand, which makes you feel sleepy, starts to be released around two hours before your regular sleep time. It’s level in your body is highest around 3-4am, which coincides with the deepest period of sleep.
Why does this matter? If you’re finding it difficult to get to sleep at night, it could be because your body hasn’t got used to producing the right hormone to make you feel sleepy at the right time. If you want to sleep at 11pm, but have been getting to sleep at 1am and then waking later in the morning, your body will not be in the habit of producing the melatonin you need to drop off at the time you want. Having the same wake-up time really helps this process as waking up resets your twenty-four hour bodily rhythms. The later you wake up, the later in the evening you will start producing melatonin and therefore the later you will feel the need to sleep. Having consistent sleep and wake times primes your body to feel alert and drowsy at the times you want to be.
Avoid bright lights and LCD screens at least one hour before sleeping - ideally two hours before
Again, this is due again to the way our bodies have evolved to respond to the twenty-four hour cycle of the sun. We have pretty much the same bodies and brains as our hunter-gatherer ancestors and very similar biology to our predecessors going back millions of years. Low-light after the sun goes down triggers the release of melatonin. Bright light during the day triggers the release of cortisol. We’re sleepy in low-light and alert in bright-light.
Artificial light has massively interfered with our natural sleep cycles. Edison invented the lightbulb in 1879 but it wasn’t commonly used in British homes until the 1930s. Bright, household lights have been in use for less than one-hundred years, a tiny fraction of the time we’ve been used to spending our evenings lit by low-light form sources like the moon, campfires or candles. Technology has compounded this effect because the light from LCD screens is rich in frequencies that mimic daylight. Stare at a TV screen or mobile phone an hour before your ideal bed-time and you’re blasting your brain with the type of light that makes it think the sun’s out and that you should be alert rather than winding down.
The remedy is dim lighting and no screens at least one hour before sleeping. Aiming for two hours before or more is even better. Switch off the main lights to mood lighting, light some candles instead and put away the technology. You’ll be recreating the same environment that put your evolutionary ancestors to sleep.
Limit or stop caffeine consumption after 2pm
This one’s pretty straightforward. Caffeine makes us feel more alert by blocking the receptors that make you feel drowsy,. This is great for when you need to have that boost of energy to get through an action packed morning but terrible for when you want to start slowing down and slipping into rest mode. It takes around five hours for your body to breakdown caffeine in your bloodstream to half its original amount. So If you have a cup of coffee at 7am you will have the equivalent of half a cup still buzzing around your body at 12pm. It’s important to give yourself enough time to reduce the caffeine in your body so that it’s not still keeping you hyped in the evening. Most experts suggest not drinking coffee after 2pm if you’re having sleep issues. Remember, caffeine is also found in black and green tea as well as chocolate (especially dark chocolate) so limiting these to earlier in the day will also help you get to sleep later on.
Try not to eat a large meal close to bedtime. Even better, no calories two to three hours before going to sleep
When you sleep, your body diverts the energy that normally goes into moving your body and uses it to restore and recharge. It actually takes a lot of energy to digest food, it’s one of the reasons we can feel so sleepy after eating a heavy meal. However, if you eat too close to bedtime, then your body is using some of the energy that would normally be helping to rebuild and repair, to digest your food instead.
In fact, after around three to four hours of no calorie consumption, your digestive system starts to shut down and clean itself. In the evening, this can prompt your body to start to prepare for sleep. So try not to consume anything that contains calories in a two to three hour window before going to bed. This includes alcohol and snacks. Water, herbal teas without sugar or milk are fine to consume during this window.
Get outside in daylight before 10am - five to fifteen minutes on a clear day, thirty minutes or more on a cloudy day
This works along the same lines as dimming the lights in the evening. Bright light in the morning signals your brain to produce the hormones that make you feel alert and stimulated. Think about how you feel on a sunny day compared to a dark, overcast one. The earlier you get exposed to daylight, the earlier your ‘awake cycle’ starts. This means that it ends earlier too so your ‘drowsy cycle’ begins to take over earlier as well. In other words, you crave sleep earlier if you get exposed to daylight earlier in the day. The quality of light is really important. Natural light is by far the best option. Aim for five to fifteen minutes in your eyes (not directly looking at the sun) on clear days and thirty minutes or more on cloudy days. Substituting with specialist lights that aim to replicate some of the frequencies of sunlight are fine to use when it’s not possible to get outside at all. Be aware that any type of glass filters out the specific wavelengths of light that create alertness so being behind a window, or wearing any type of glasses will not work unfortunately.
Conclusion
If you incorporate the above into your daily routine you really are giving yourself the best possible chance of getting the type of rest you and your body deserve. There is no replacement for sleep and it’s been shown over and over to support every function in your body. Dr Andrew Huberman, a Professor of Neurobiology at Stamford University heralds sleep as the number one remedy for stress relief, boosting the immune system, regulating hormones, stabilising emotions, augmenting brain function and releasing trauma.
Prioritising quality sleep truly is one of the greatest gift you can give your self. Check out more here if you want to go even deeper into how and why sleep is your greatest ally.
