Sleep for Recovery Part 1 - Going to Bed

This three part series is a quick and dirty primer on best sleep practices from the perspective of rest and recovery for an active lifestyle. Though it’s geared towards personal training clients the principles are universal to everyone. Let’s get started. 

Picking a Bedtime 

For some people choosing when to actually go to sleep presents a nightly logistical challenge. You may be tempted to run some mental math to determine how to squeeze in exactly 7-8 hours between the time when your head hits the pillow and when your alarm goes off, but this is only setting yourself up disappointment and insomnia. Disappointment because you are unlikely to sleep for exactly the time you want and insomnia because the act of fretting over your bedtime is probably the number one thing that keeps most people up. 

Let me propose a different method. Determine the average time you go to bed (or when you’d like to go to bed) and the average time you wake up (or when you’d like to wake up). Then get these two times and move them around until there is at least 8 (but preferably 9) hours between them. Accept some wiggle room of 30 minutes on either side of these times and boom, you have your bedtime and wake time. Then going forward every day (including weekends) try to hit these two times. These times are non-negotiable, meaning no matter what happens your bedtime is your bedtime and your wake time is your wake time. If you end up staying up a couple hours past your bedtime, no big deal, try to still wake up at your wake time and then try to hit your bedtime the next night. 

This might sound unnecessarily rigid, but on the contrary it’s actually a much less stressful way to manage your sleep. By having these times set in stone there’s no more mental sleep math and it actually fits the way your brain and body prefer to function. Your nervous system is hardwired to function at extremely precise intervals of 24 hours and ~11 minutes (don’t ask me where the 11 minutes comes from). During this cycle there are many (many!) processes that automatically happen in your body to both prepare you for sleep and to optimize sleep. But guess what? These automatic processes to prepare you for sleep only work best when the time your head hits the pillow is roughly the same every night. Think of it this way. Your body is going to prepare for sleep whether you like it or not when it thinks you are about to lie down to sleep. Your body’s expected sleep time is learned (also known as entrainment) from a few different factors including but not limited to: recent sleep/wake times, ambient light (especially blue light), physical activity, food consumption, and stress. If you lie down to sleep when your body is expecting you to then your actions (going to bed) will line up with what your body is preparing for internally and that harmony results in optimal sleep. 

Winding Down - Lights

Once you’ve determined when you’re going to bed it’s time to get ready for bed. This process should start a minimum of 30 minutes before you lie down, but don’t worry, it’s nothing crazy (unless you want it to be). You’ve probably heard a lot of this before so I’ll be brief. 

For starters, limit exposure to bright light as much as possible within an hour or two before bed. Be especially conscious of blue light (such as that emitted by the sun, digital screens, and extra bright lights like LEDs and fluorescents). In this day and age it’s not realistic for me to advise you to not look at a screen before bed so I’ll just say this: reduce the brightness as much as you can (you’ll be surprised by how your eyes can adjust to your screen brightness turned down all the way) and utilize any screen warming function that your device might have (night shift on Apple products and night light on Windows products). 

It’s also worth considering the lights in your home. Something as simple as dimming them right down can work, but you can also get creative and make the ultimate cozy nighttime ambience with colour changing lights (which are now pretty common and inexpensive). Many of these lights can be controlled with your robot overlord of choice (e.g. Siri, Alexa, or Cortana) and a simple command like “hey Siri, goodnight!” can command all the lights in your house to switch to soothing sunset shades of orange and red. There’s something primally satisfying with spending your nights in orange glow, perhaps from the days where humanity’s only nighttime light was from campfires/lanterns/candles… As a final note on lights, consider your bathroom. A lot of people do a great job reducing all the lights in their living areas and then blitz their eyeballs with bright fluorescents or vanity lights in their bathroom while they brush their teeth.

Hitting the Hay

In the final 30-60 minutes before your bedtime you have a few decisions to make. Chief among them is deciding what to do with that time. Some choices are better than others, but I won’t harp on that too much because quite honestly what works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for the next and you shouldn’t force yourself to do something you don’t want to before bed. But here are some sleep-friendly suggestions: read (anything but the news); journal; draw/paint/knit; tidy up your home; meditate; talk to loved ones; stretch/light yoga; prepare for the morning (prepare those morning oats, fill the coffee machine etc.). 

In terms of what to avoid, well that’s anything bright and/or stressful. For example, checking your emails before bed is a terrible idea. It’s also good to avoid strenuous exercise or big meals in the hour before sleep. Otherwise figure out what works best for you and set up the perfect evening ritual to send you off.