How to Improve Sleep Quality with Ben Greenfield’s Favorite Hacks

There are four elements of sleep, light, temperature, sound and stress. My name is Ben Greenfield. I'm a biohacker, celebrity trainer, nutritionist, New York Times best selling author and world renowned speaker. I'm on a constant quest to uncover powerful and practical health hacks to awaken, unlock and unleash the full potential of the human body, mind and spirit.

Ample amounts of light in the daytime and then you want to begin to block blue light and bright light as the day progresses using technologies or tools such as blue light blocking glasses. I have a red pair. Sexy, huh? That I wear in the evenings. I've actually replaced my bedside lights with what is called red incandescent lighting which is about as close to torch light or firelight or a sunset as you can get. I've got light blocking curtains. I've invested in curtains that do a really great job blocking all light. Sleep mask Invest in a really great sleep mask. You can block a ton of light with an eye mask. I will use a red light headlamp and or a red reading lamp to be able to see in the evening without disrupting my melatonin production. The ideal sleeping temperature is one that allows your muscles to cool and for blood not to have to be shunted to the extremities. And so I'm able to easily just open my windows at night and keep the bedroom nice and cool while sleeping with a minimal amount of clothing. Another cheap hack is that if you wear socks like smart wool socks while you're asleep, paradoxically because of something called ava vessels in your feet, it cools the rest of your body when you warm your feet. And so this is a cheap hack. Open the windows, pull on wool socks, sleep in your skivvies or sleep in your birthday suit and that will allow you to stay cool during a night of sleep. The next thing to think about for sleep is sound. Sleep stream is playing right now what is called pink noise. You may have heard of all these different forms of noise. White noise, brown noise, purple noise, pink noise. Turns out that in sleep studies, a form of background noise that drowns out ambient sounds called pink noise is the one that best supports deep sleep. O I've always got some kind of earplugs that I can use if it's noisy that I combine with the ambient sound from my phone that I use to drown out noise. If I'm in a really loud area or if I'm on an airplane or a bus or a train or somewhere where I want even better noise blocking, I simply fire up my itouch and I have the sleep stream and the nucalm app installed on this itouch. It's all that's on there. And I'll play sounds through these sleepphones. And then finally we have stress. The very best way to do this, the lowest hanging fruit, would be best illustrated by a quick story. When I used to check into a hotel room, one of the very first things I do is I slap my laptop on the bed, get down on my belly, open up the laptop and bang out all those emails that I didn't get to when the plane was flying in the air. Well, it turns out that's a very good way. As is a desk next to your bed. As is a TV mounted in the bedroom. Or to send your body a message that the bed is designed for something other than sleep. In my opinion, for people who really want to optimize sleep, the bed should be saved for sleep and for sex. And that's it. It should not be something that your body associates with other activities. Don't work in bed. I'm often asked what supplements I use before a night of sleep. I like to use something that will increase the amount of inhibitory neurotransmitters that my body produces. For example, there's one called gaba, stands for gamma aminobutyric acid. It's what you get from a glass of wine. Unfortunately, the GABA you get from a glass of wine tends to wear off around 1 or 2am and the rest of your night of sleep is crappy. This is kion sleep. This has GABA in it, it has 5 HTP in it, it has theanine in it. And I'll use one scoop of this and I'll combine that with a form of cbd. Now CBD is something that is a non thc, non, non psychedelic form of the cannabis plant that is an anti inflammatory and relaxant. And then finally there are natural herbs that will also increase your inhibitory neurotransmitter production. Two very popular ones that agree with a lot of people. One is ashwagandha and one is holy basil. So those are examples of sleep supplements that are tried and true and proven. Your skin, you may have heard, is a mouth. This is why you should be careful with your selection of shampoos and conditioners and topicals and lotions. But you can also use use this as an advantage as a sleep hack because there are certain things that can get absorbed through your skin that will relax you and help you get to sleep at night or help you get back to sleep. If you Wake up. One is magnesium. Magnesium is absorbed topically, what's called transdermally. And I'll often take a few squirts of magnesium like this, and I'll rub it into the neck, the head area right below the skull areas that tend to be kind of tight. For a night of sleep, you can use topical gaba. This is a product called somnium. And I'm not going to put this on right now because I don't want to get super tired while I'm shooting a video. But I will take a little bit of this somnium and I'll put it right on the temples or right behind the vagus nerve area. And this is an absorbable form of GABA that especially in people who don't respond well to oral gaba, can really use to get back to sleep or to fall asleep faster. And there are certain oils, essential oils, that can help with relaxation. A few of the main ones that are really beneficial are rose, lavender and bergamot. And before I go to bed at night, I will either put a little bit of this on my upper lip or I'll put a few drops in the bed and it results in a scent that lulls your body to sleep. This is an acupressure pillow. And this is an acupressure mat. Lay on this acupressure mat wearing as few clothes as possible, and it's almost like a fancy way to have your own relaxation points through your skin triggered to cause you to relax. And if you're really pumped up, hyped up, looked at an email that got you super anxious before bed, you lay on an acupressure mat and within a couple minutes you just feel your body go into this super relaxed state. So acupressure is kind of like this little known trick, but it actually works really well if you have an acupressure mat and an acupressure pillow. If you have sleep issues or you like to play with cool toys, or you want to optimize sleep like nothing else, you can throw in a few of these additional strategies as the icing on the cake. First thing is red light, also known as photo biomodulation. This is a red light helmet. If I am reading at night, I I can literally put this helmet on and select from the program the sleep or the relaxation function and press play. If you look at the helmet, it's producing a light that shifts my brain very quickly into a relaxed phase of sleep. But the cool thing is that red light also increases blood flow. It increases Neural health. It increases mitochondrial production. It decreases risk of dementia and Alzheimer's. There's all sorts of crimes, cool things that happen when you use red light therapy. This is a red light therapy device made by a company called Vielight. I flip it on and it is specifically designed to trigger either one in the front of the neck or the back of the neck, the vagus nerve, which snakes right down the side of the neck. Another way that you can stimulate the vagus nerve is via an electrical sensation. This is a very cool device. It's called a pulsetto. It ties to your phone. You put a little bit of this electrode gel on each of the electrodes that you can see here. You wear the pulse settle exactly where I showed you the vagus nerve is. This stays on for anywhere from two to 10 minutes, delivering a mild electrical stimulation to the vagus nerve. This is called an Apollo. I can wear it on my ankle or I can wear it on my wrist. And it delivers a mild vibratory sensation that can be programmed via my phone for sleep, for relaxation, for focus, for energy, for calm, for recovery, even for social functions and parties. This is called a sensate. This you wear over your neck. I love this thing for sleeping on planes, by the way. For some reason, it just knocks you right out on a plane. You wear it like this and it delivers a mild vibratory sensation over your collarbone. That ties to a phone app that plays sounds and tracks and music. And a new track comes out every month. So it's a ton of fun. That then makes this thing vibrate and it correlates the vibration to the music or the sounds that you're listening to. There are devices that are called neurofeedback devices. Neurofeedback devices train your brain to shift into brainwave states that in the case of sleep, allow for better sleep, less relaxation, less racing thoughts, etc. This is called a Muse headband. It will play sounds and cues that give your subconscious a mild slap on the wrist when your brain strays into the brainwave sessions that are more excitatory. And then it will reward you when your brain goes into a state that's a little bit more relaxed. Neurofeedback is fantastic because once you've done it, you've trained your brain and your brain is set for life to be more relaxed. Now, I've saved the very best for last because frankly, it's the sexiest. Mouth tape and nasal tape. If you struggle with sleep apnea, if you wake up at night gasping for breath, if you have poor teeth or mouth or jaw formation. Nasal tape and mouth tape is an absolute game changer. And I spread the nasal tape over my nostrils and my airway. This allows me to stay hyper oxygenated with a lower resting heart rate while I sleep, activates the parasympathetic nervous system. And there's an increasing number of studies coming out now that show that mouth taping can be a game changer for sleep and also teach you how to breathe properly during sleep. And then finally, the icing on the cake. Purse lips.

Voila. Off to 90 nighttime. Thanks for watching.