mydoghasocd

mydoghasocd t1_isyxoa1 wrote

Well, there are some strategies to help with sleeping longer at night. You could read The Circadian Code, which covers a lot of these, although the most important things are 1) not napping during the day, 2) having a set wake up time, 3) don’t eat anything or drink alcohol for 2-3 hours before bed, 4) no caffeine after noon, and 5) increasing your physical activity. I will note that even though everyone consistently finds dramatic effects of sleep on overall health, that actually the most important thing you can possibly do for your health is regular physical activity, the next most important thing is eating a Mediterranean diet (or similar), and then sleep is after that, followed by other general health tweaking behaviors (e.g., fasting, meditation, reducing stress/anxiety). But the most important predictor of health is regular physical activity. So if you just can’t optimize your sleep even after trying everything, instead of stressing about sleep, you should just focus on exercising.   And if you exercise enough, it'll probably fix your sleep problem anyway.

1

mydoghasocd t1_isuopos wrote

your body engages in extensive cellular repair and cleansing while you sleep. If you deprive your body of sleep, you are not getting that regular maintenance on your body. Sleep quality certainly matters, but 4 hours of high quality sleep is not ever going to outperform 7 hours of medium quality sleep. The sleep research is very clear that <5 (and maybe less than 6) is incredibly detrimental for all aspects of health.

10

mydoghasocd t1_isuob5g wrote

you can try two things: regular exercise, and most importantly, don't eat anything or drink anything other than water (especially alcohol) for 3 hours before you go to bed. Metabolism interferes with sleep processes.

55