Sleep for Recovery Part 3: Waking Up
Who the heck writes an article on waking up? Me I guess. If you have no issues getting up and going then just skip this, but if you’d like some science-backed suggestions on how to make your mornings a little bit smoother than read on.
The Worst Invention Ever
Alarm clocks are probably right up there in terms of most hated inventions of all time and the snooze button is a worthy runner-up. But there is an inconvenient truth that should partially exonerate them. The amount of hate you feel towards your alarm is proportional to how well you’re sleeping. That is to say that if you are constantly sleep deprived or sleeping poorly than your alarm clock is going to rudely interrupt what your body considers an essential act of restoration, but if you are sleeping soundly and routinely going to bed early enough to give yourself enough than your alarm is probably rarely heard.
In part one I preached the importance of sticking to a consistent sleep schedule. One cool benefit of doing that is really not needing an alarm clock anymore (but probably still keeping one as a backup just in case). If everything is operating as it should be than your brain will wake you at roughly the same time with remarkable accuracy each and every day. Besides the obvious benefit of not having to start your day with a jarring alarm, waking up naturally allows your body to wake when it’s finished with a sleep cycle. This unsurprisingly leaves you feeling much more refreshed than if you had woken during the middle of a cycle.
Morning Ritual
There are SO many books on morning rituals. Bookstore shelves sag with volumes like “The 5AM Club” and “The Miracle Morning.” These are probably fine ways to start the day, but I think you’re better off just crafting your own morning ritual rather than following whatever entrepreneurs or your favourite celebrity is doing…
This being said, there are some science-backed guiding principles that you can incorporate into your morning to make them a little easier:
- Expose your skin and eyeballs to bright light (such as sunlight if it’s up).
- Hydrate with more than coffee. You just spent the last 8-ish hours drying out on a mattress (you lose moisture throughout the night with your breath, sweat, and occasional bathroom trip), recover some of that lost hydration to prevent morning headaches and grogginess.
- Get moving. Some light physical activity will raise your body temperature and signal to the temperature-sensitive hypothalamus of the brain that your day has begun.
- Eat some carbs. Again, you just spent the last 8-ish hours living off of whatever was in your stomach from before you went to bed. Your brain needs glucose to work so give it some!
Notice I didn’t say anything like “give thanks to the sun” or “spend 15 minutes writing in your gratitude journal?” Those are the types of morning ritual activities that are probably well and fine to do, but don’t really have anything to do with sleep and therefore aren’t really a focus for this article.
A good evening = a good morning
You can do the most advanced and impressive morning ritual ever conceived and still feel like shit in the morning if you didn’t sleep well or suffer from sleep deprivation. Good mornings begin with good restful evenings, so take care of your sleep hygiene and avoid running any large sleep debts to wake up feeling refreshed and ready for your day.