Nick Littlehales: Sleep
I had never considered the importance of a regular eating schedule on your circadian rhythm.
Interesting: apply chronotypes to your relationship. Understand if you two have the same tendencies or different, and you can alter your schedules together for a more favorable outcome.
If you have control over your schedule, consider allocating decisions to different times depending on your alertness (influenced by your chronotype)
90-minute cycles: aim for 5 per night, 35 per week. It’s best to move to 4 if you can’t have 5. After you’re at this point, you can test 4 per night and 6 per night to see if either work better for you.
If I arrived home some time around 11 p.m. – my ideal sleep time to get five cycles in before my constant wake time of 6.30 a.m.. I would wait for the next slot, at 12.30 a.m., and I would be in for a four-cycle night.
What you do immediately before you go to bed has a direct consequence on the quality and duration of your sleep, while what you do after waking has significant consequences for the rest of your day (and the coming night).
Ideally you have a 90 minute period for presleep and a 90 minute period after waking up.
It’s more about toning down what you are doing, setting aside the unhelpful factors that will inhibit the hours you’re about to spend either sleeping or dealing with the challenges of your waking day, and introducing aspects better fitting of your circadian rhythms and chronotype.
Pre-sleep - Get yourself prepared to enter your sleep cycles
Don’t eat late, have that snack or meal at the beginning of your 90-minute period. Drink water at the beginning, these will be your fluids for the night. Pee. Restrict your exposure to artificial light.
Try to de-stress.
Your body expects temperature to drop in the evening as you prepare for sleep, so try not to interfere with it with central heating or hot drinks.
Your body expects a shift from light to dark so it can start producing melatonin. Dim lights around you or use a candle during the presleep period. Have a dark or blackout sleeping environment. Enter the darkness of your room before you sleep - light to dark is important. The author mentions if you are reading in bed, and turn off the light, leave the room and come back to the darkness before sleeping.
Do simple, non stimulating tasks to prepare for tomorrow, such as preparing your lunch, ironing clothes, cleaning,
Download your day - if you are having trouble thinking too much, file away everything that’s on your mind. Meditate; write down “what’s on my mind…” on a piece of paper
Make sure you are breathing through your nose (you should have a wet mouth upon waking). There are products to help with this, like nasal strips if necessary.
90 Minutes After Waking (Can include your journey to work) - Be more efficient during your day
Try not to check your notifications after waking.
Get sunlight. Through your window or outside.
Eat breakfast. Drink water to get hydrated.
Exercise is recommended
Sleep on your side - your non-dominant side. If you’re ambidextrous, think about which side you would use to instinctively protect yourself.
The fetal position should involve a gentle bend at the knees and your arms out in front of you, gently folded. You should have a smooth, straight postural line through the neck, spine and bottom. You want to remain in this position for as long as possible during the night.
Bed
For ectomorph (skinny mos)
Assume the fetal position on the mattress you are trying out. If there is a clear gap of six centimeters – about the width of two hands flat on top of one another – or more between your head and the mattress when your head, neck and vertebrae are in alignment, with your head needing to drop towards the surface, as it did on the floor, then the mattress is too firm. It will offer you little in the way of comfort and postural alignment. If your hip is dropping into the mattress and out of alignment, and your head is being raised up by the mattress, then it is too soft.
Pillows fill the gap between our head and the surface when our mattress is too firm. If the mattress is too soft, they push our head even further out of alignment and cause postural problems.
Despite what their labelling claims, bed retailers only sell one genuine double bed. It’s called a super king – so branded to make it sound a suitably decadent purchase – and it measures in at six feet wide (180cm), exactly double the width of a single bed. If you’re serious about sleep, serious about your relationship and you have the room for it, this is the minimum-sized mattress you should be considering. A super king is two single-sized sleeping spaces side by side; a ‘double’ is a bed for one person.
If you do have space for a super king but it means your bedside cabinets would have to go, set them free. If you are low on budget, don’t buy a bed frame and put your mattress on the floor, the bed frame is largely a decorative choice.
Your bedding should be hypoallergenic, regardless of whether you suffer from allergies or not (because allergens can affect your breathing at night).
Consider getting a dawn-wake simulator to slowly wake you up with light.
You want to make sure you are sleeping in a safe environment. Small tips, like having a photo of your family or a favorite blanket, helps you be more comfortable.