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How To Sleep Like A Baby
Want to get incredible sleep every night? This episode shares tactics and strategies to sleep like a baby tonight.
Poor sleep is a billion $ problem in the US alone due to lost productivity.
Transcript:
[00:02] There is no such thing as work life balance, everything worth fighting for unbalances your life. That's a quote from Alain de Botton. Welcome to the recharge podcast. I'm your host. My name is Mitchell Schwindt. The mission of this podcast is to provide you the tools, tactics, strategies, and resources to recharge your life. The episodes are geared to make an impact on your life in 15 minutes or less, along with more indepth special episodes interviewing experts across numerous disciplines. This show will guide you through getting the most from your body and mind to generate the maximum performance you want in your life. Let's jump into today's. Okay, [00:33] so welcome. Recharge Church [00:35] nation. One of the biggest issues pressing issues that we all face from time to time and unfortunately many of us deal with on a nightly basis, is sleep, getting quality sleep. Everybody talks about it. Everybody asks, how'd you sleep last night? You look tired today. Just take a look at your normal day. How often do you hear that phrase on your workplace? What I want to share on this episode is just a little bit of background about the issue and then to give you some actionable tips. This might sound simple, intuitive, but it's often overlooked. People skip steps or miss out on just very simple important adjustments in their day that really can significantly impact not only the quality but the quantity of sleep. This is a massive issue. It is estimated that it costs over a billion dollars each year alone in the US by itself because of poor performance at work, lost productivity, not to mention sleep deprivation and car accidents and rising costs of health issues such as obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes. [01:33] All those things that aren't so exciting or sexy to talk about, but they do have a significant impact on sleep. And so I'm just going to blow through some tips for better sleep and I hope that you're aware of most of these already and this will just serve as reinforcement. But if you are not aware of these, then my goal is to help give you some action steps and some tips and strategies to really step up your game. In terms of sleep, the first is consistency. It's tempting to burn the candle and then try to sleep in a little bit on the weekends. Try to build up a sleep bank. Well, there is no sleep bank. The best strategy is to try to go to bed about the same time and wake up the same time relatively consistently everyday, every weekend, just throughout the year on a consistent basis. [02:20] That sort of builds in a pattern in your body, triggering sleep, triggering you to wake up and you and you know many people can wake up without an alarm clock to get accustomed to the way their body feels and they wake up in the right phase of sleep as opposed to using an alarm clock and getting jarred awake, startled, getting woken up in the middle of a sleep cycle, and then feeling groggy and fatigue for hours or even the whole day afterwards. The next is the digital sunset and I encourage you to think about shutting off devices, minimizing or avoiding screentime altogether, at least an hour before bed, preferably even a couple of hours. The reason being is that the blue light from our devices actually interferes with Melatonin production, and this is a critical brain neurotransmitter that helps signal sleep. It's involved in a variety of other things including immune function, but for the purposes of this podcast, sleep, I have several pairs of blue blocking sunglasses. [03:19] You can get them on Amazon for cheap. There's no need to spend 100 bucks on them. There's tons of popups now on my instagram feed, but I have several pairs that I think the most expensive pairs, 19 bucks and they're in the bedroom there out by the TV. I use them on a regular basis to block out not only before bed, but also during the day when I'm going to be writing or doing a heavy consulting projects. I don't want to be staring at my screen incessantly. The data is starting to pile in on what this is doing to our eyes, particularly our children's eyes as we go through the technologic explosion, so to speak. Caffeine is a huge thing. I know it's tempting to have that afternoon cup of coffee at the office. A caffeine is ubiquitous, energy drinks, energy shots, all that, but caffeine takes awhile to metabolize and the average person cannot metabolize it quick enough unless you've done genetic testing and know for a fact that it's going to be lingering on. [04:14] So if you're drinking coffee, you know late afternoon before separate time, that's going to be hanging around at bedtime in not only affect your ability to fall asleep, but also maybe the depth or quality of your sleep. Sleeping in a cool dark room is key. Invest in some extra shades. If you've got some, you know, we've got fabric shades and one of the bedrooms in our house, and, uh, even with them close, there's still a fair amount of light, so just invest in some, some curtains or something to pull shut and block it out. The darker the better. And that also includes removing excessive or exaggerate this light sources. If you just look around your bedroom, you're probably going to find a variety of things, smoke detector lights, printer lights, charging lights, uh, you name, it can cover up those little power indicators that can give you even a more profound sense of darkness to allow the brain to really do what it's supposed to do in terms of shutting down and ramping up for sleep. [05:10] Regular exercise is a key for so many reasons, but also it's important strategies to get sleep. Just remember not to exercise too late in the day and the reason being is it's going to do two things. It's going to increase your metabolism and also increase your core body temperature depending on what type of exercise that you participate in. A, I played on a hockey team, late night practices, late night game, sometimes as late as 11:00 at night for start time and found that most of my teammates complained to the same thing that we couldn't sleep when we got home. Part of the reason being is that the core temperature is elevated and it takes awhile for that to drop down and it's really difficult for a person to fall asleep quickly and sleep efficiently. One, their core body temperature is high, and so you know, take that in mind when you're planning your exercise routine. [05:59] You might also take a look at some natural sleep aids. There, a variety of things out there that aren't drugs, including lemon balm, Melatonin. I cover all these in a sleep course so you can find that on my youtube channel. It's completely free. I have all my lectures up there from you to me in other places, totally free for you. If you have some, some issue with a sleep or you're interested in learning more about a particular natural product or herbal supplement or a machine, some technology, whether it's white noise or a specific pillow or mattress or whatever, you can find a lot of that information right there. While it's tempting to have a night cap to unwind, to reward yourself from the perils of a busy stressful day. The sad reality is that it messes up with rem sleep, rem sleep is the dream part of sleep, and it's really critical for the body to restore itself, and while having some alcohol on board may help a person fall asleep, it really interferes not only with a heart rate, uh, some toxic metabolites in the brain, uh, but also just really, really wrecks havoc with the rem sleep, a part of things. [07:05] So I hope you found that helpful. I just wanted to share some tips to help you sleep like a baby, so to speak, and I'm going to be experimenting with some new technology here, uh, in the next six weeks or so, and I'll be excited to share that in video format on my youtube channel and as always, be safe, be well, have a fantastic week. I will talk to you soon. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today. If you found value in this episode and the show, please share a review in itunes. It really helps the show get discovered. Please share your biggest takeaway and as always, I want to help you answer the burning questions in your mind, so reach out to me at [inaudible] dot com or on social media wherever you hang out. Nick today incredible, and I'll see you on the next episode of the recharge podcasts. The.
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By Mitchel Schwindt, M.D. | author | online courses | coaching | consulting
5
55 ratings
Want to get incredible sleep every night? This episode shares tactics and strategies to sleep like a baby tonight.
Poor sleep is a billion $ problem in the US alone due to lost productivity.
Transcript:
[00:02] There is no such thing as work life balance, everything worth fighting for unbalances your life. That's a quote from Alain de Botton. Welcome to the recharge podcast. I'm your host. My name is Mitchell Schwindt. The mission of this podcast is to provide you the tools, tactics, strategies, and resources to recharge your life. The episodes are geared to make an impact on your life in 15 minutes or less, along with more indepth special episodes interviewing experts across numerous disciplines. This show will guide you through getting the most from your body and mind to generate the maximum performance you want in your life. Let's jump into today's. Okay, [00:33] so welcome. Recharge Church [00:35] nation. One of the biggest issues pressing issues that we all face from time to time and unfortunately many of us deal with on a nightly basis, is sleep, getting quality sleep. Everybody talks about it. Everybody asks, how'd you sleep last night? You look tired today. Just take a look at your normal day. How often do you hear that phrase on your workplace? What I want to share on this episode is just a little bit of background about the issue and then to give you some actionable tips. This might sound simple, intuitive, but it's often overlooked. People skip steps or miss out on just very simple important adjustments in their day that really can significantly impact not only the quality but the quantity of sleep. This is a massive issue. It is estimated that it costs over a billion dollars each year alone in the US by itself because of poor performance at work, lost productivity, not to mention sleep deprivation and car accidents and rising costs of health issues such as obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes. [01:33] All those things that aren't so exciting or sexy to talk about, but they do have a significant impact on sleep. And so I'm just going to blow through some tips for better sleep and I hope that you're aware of most of these already and this will just serve as reinforcement. But if you are not aware of these, then my goal is to help give you some action steps and some tips and strategies to really step up your game. In terms of sleep, the first is consistency. It's tempting to burn the candle and then try to sleep in a little bit on the weekends. Try to build up a sleep bank. Well, there is no sleep bank. The best strategy is to try to go to bed about the same time and wake up the same time relatively consistently everyday, every weekend, just throughout the year on a consistent basis. [02:20] That sort of builds in a pattern in your body, triggering sleep, triggering you to wake up and you and you know many people can wake up without an alarm clock to get accustomed to the way their body feels and they wake up in the right phase of sleep as opposed to using an alarm clock and getting jarred awake, startled, getting woken up in the middle of a sleep cycle, and then feeling groggy and fatigue for hours or even the whole day afterwards. The next is the digital sunset and I encourage you to think about shutting off devices, minimizing or avoiding screentime altogether, at least an hour before bed, preferably even a couple of hours. The reason being is that the blue light from our devices actually interferes with Melatonin production, and this is a critical brain neurotransmitter that helps signal sleep. It's involved in a variety of other things including immune function, but for the purposes of this podcast, sleep, I have several pairs of blue blocking sunglasses. [03:19] You can get them on Amazon for cheap. There's no need to spend 100 bucks on them. There's tons of popups now on my instagram feed, but I have several pairs that I think the most expensive pairs, 19 bucks and they're in the bedroom there out by the TV. I use them on a regular basis to block out not only before bed, but also during the day when I'm going to be writing or doing a heavy consulting projects. I don't want to be staring at my screen incessantly. The data is starting to pile in on what this is doing to our eyes, particularly our children's eyes as we go through the technologic explosion, so to speak. Caffeine is a huge thing. I know it's tempting to have that afternoon cup of coffee at the office. A caffeine is ubiquitous, energy drinks, energy shots, all that, but caffeine takes awhile to metabolize and the average person cannot metabolize it quick enough unless you've done genetic testing and know for a fact that it's going to be lingering on. [04:14] So if you're drinking coffee, you know late afternoon before separate time, that's going to be hanging around at bedtime in not only affect your ability to fall asleep, but also maybe the depth or quality of your sleep. Sleeping in a cool dark room is key. Invest in some extra shades. If you've got some, you know, we've got fabric shades and one of the bedrooms in our house, and, uh, even with them close, there's still a fair amount of light, so just invest in some, some curtains or something to pull shut and block it out. The darker the better. And that also includes removing excessive or exaggerate this light sources. If you just look around your bedroom, you're probably going to find a variety of things, smoke detector lights, printer lights, charging lights, uh, you name, it can cover up those little power indicators that can give you even a more profound sense of darkness to allow the brain to really do what it's supposed to do in terms of shutting down and ramping up for sleep. [05:10] Regular exercise is a key for so many reasons, but also it's important strategies to get sleep. Just remember not to exercise too late in the day and the reason being is it's going to do two things. It's going to increase your metabolism and also increase your core body temperature depending on what type of exercise that you participate in. A, I played on a hockey team, late night practices, late night game, sometimes as late as 11:00 at night for start time and found that most of my teammates complained to the same thing that we couldn't sleep when we got home. Part of the reason being is that the core temperature is elevated and it takes awhile for that to drop down and it's really difficult for a person to fall asleep quickly and sleep efficiently. One, their core body temperature is high, and so you know, take that in mind when you're planning your exercise routine. [05:59] You might also take a look at some natural sleep aids. There, a variety of things out there that aren't drugs, including lemon balm, Melatonin. I cover all these in a sleep course so you can find that on my youtube channel. It's completely free. I have all my lectures up there from you to me in other places, totally free for you. If you have some, some issue with a sleep or you're interested in learning more about a particular natural product or herbal supplement or a machine, some technology, whether it's white noise or a specific pillow or mattress or whatever, you can find a lot of that information right there. While it's tempting to have a night cap to unwind, to reward yourself from the perils of a busy stressful day. The sad reality is that it messes up with rem sleep, rem sleep is the dream part of sleep, and it's really critical for the body to restore itself, and while having some alcohol on board may help a person fall asleep, it really interferes not only with a heart rate, uh, some toxic metabolites in the brain, uh, but also just really, really wrecks havoc with the rem sleep, a part of things. [07:05] So I hope you found that helpful. I just wanted to share some tips to help you sleep like a baby, so to speak, and I'm going to be experimenting with some new technology here, uh, in the next six weeks or so, and I'll be excited to share that in video format on my youtube channel and as always, be safe, be well, have a fantastic week. I will talk to you soon. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today. If you found value in this episode and the show, please share a review in itunes. It really helps the show get discovered. Please share your biggest takeaway and as always, I want to help you answer the burning questions in your mind, so reach out to me at [inaudible] dot com or on social media wherever you hang out. Nick today incredible, and I'll see you on the next episode of the recharge podcasts. The.