Quality sleep is one of the most important variables to improve your brain function, longevity, and performance in all aspects of life. We all know this but so many people have trouble learning to sleep better. If you’re struggling with getting enough rest, I’ve come up with 9 ways for you to measure and hack your sleep for the best performance.
1. Sleep Better With The Sleep Cycle App
As we sleep, we go through different cycles. When you wake up at the top of your sleep cycle, you’ll feel great, whereas when you wake up in the middle of a deep sleep, you’ll feel groggy for hours. SleepCycle can also solve this problem. It will act as an alarm clock and wake you at the top of a sleep cycle instead of letting your alarm jerk you awake when you’re in a deep sleep. This will leave you feeling more refreshed and awake all day.
2. Fill Up With Fat At Dinner
Fat is a long-burning fuel for your mind and body. Grass-fed butter, animal fat, and coconut oil are all good choices, but extra concentrated MCT oil is my personal favorite. The shorter fats of MCT oil are converted into ketones that are immediately used as fuel for your brain, and MCT oil also helps you burn body fat while you sleep. I’ve noticed that I think more clearly the next morning if I have 1-2 tablespoons of MCT oil the night before, with dinner or even right before bed.
3. Prime With Protein
Our bodies use protein for muscle repair and immune function. The muscle repair happens at night during deep sleep, so you want to make sure your body has all the raw materials it needs at night to heal and grow new tissue. The problem is that most forms of protein are not well digested before bed. A lot of protein powders and even most sources of animal protein take a lot of work to digest and can leave you with a heavy feeling during the night.
Too much protein also raises an alertness chemical in the brain called orexin, which can disrupt your sleep. The solution I recommend is taking 1-2 tablespoons of hydrolyzed grass-fed collagen peptide before bed. Hydrolyzing the proteins makes them more digestible so they don’t cause the problems listed above.
4. Turn Down The Lights
For at least a half-hour before going to bed, try to avoid bright lights. Dim your office lights if you absolutely must be working this close to bedtime and kill the unhealthy fluorescent ones. Don’t stare at your TV, phone, or tablet until you’ve dimmed it all the way, either. Even five minutes of white light from a screen shuts off your melatonin production for four hours and can wreck the quality of your sleep, so it’s best to avoid screens in the evening entirely.
For the final five critical sleep enhancing tips and to watch a video explaining sleep hacking, read on.
