3 Key Strategies to Help You Fix Your Sleep
When was the last time you woke feeling refreshed? Sleep is evading us right now because we are anxious about our jobs, income, futures and health of our loved ones.
Prioritising your sleep is one of the best things you can do for your health. So let’s get to work on fixing your sleep.
Most of us sleep an hour less a night than we need, with 7-9 hours being optimal. One night of less than 7 hours sleep raises our stress hormone Cortisol. Cortisol when elevated can suppress our immune cells, so it’s really important that the first health measure we take is to fix our sleep – yes, even before diet.
Human sleep is carefully structured and we’re more or less the same. We first claim our deep sleep and then from 2am cortisol – our wake up hormone – starts rising in the body.
The blue light of dawn resets our circadian body clock every day, and fires up our biology – our digestion starts to work, hormones and neurotransmitters are released. It’s biological magic.
When we stay up late into the evening on our phones and i-pads, the blue light emitted from these devices signals our body to wake up – which deletes our deep sleep.
As you put more pressure on your deep sleep and get less of it, we get more anxious, less certain and less resilient, leading to worse sleep.
This disrupts our hormones, creates hunger and drains our energy. We even consume 300-450 additional calories the next day!
3 key strategies for getting the sleep you deserve
- Be consistent with your sleep/wake cycle. Go to bed at the same time so you wake at the same time.
- Use the 90 minutes before bed to cool down and prepare for sleep. Dim the lights, avoid the blue light from computers and phones (switch your i-phone to the orange setting).
- Cool the body down. Try a cool shower, or an Magnesium salt bath prior to bed to cool the body down, and soak up relaxing magnesium. Our brain likes to be cool at night, the perfect temperature setting being about 17ºC.
Do you have a niggling health issue you’d like to resolve, or a wellness goal you’d like to achieve? I offer free 15-minute Discovery calls, drop me a line and we can get you booked in.
Deborah McTaggart is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist working with diet, sleep, movement, stress and genetics to help you achieve the best outcome for your health. She specializes in helping the frequent flyer arrive in better shape.
“The programme filled the brief of supporting my particular nutrition needs but did so much more. I am sleeping better, have more energy and have healthier hair and skin.” Susan, London
07557 990 229/020 8878 7887