Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes walks through how to actually sleep better. Adults need seven to nine hours. The concrete moves: a consistent pre-bed routine of two to four activities, no caffeine after noon, no alcohol before bed, keep the room cool and dark, and fix your pillow.
Questions this video answers
Seven to nine hours of good quality sleep.
Approximately six hours (stated to affect sleep for 8–12 hours after consumption).
Approximately two hours.
0.0 when you go to bed.
Chapters
Hey there, everybody. Today we are talking about one of my favorite topics. That's sleep. I AM your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. What we're going to go over today are really just some basic tools to help you improve your sleep. When our sleep is out of whack, when we're not getting good quality sleep every night. And for adults, that is seven to nine hours of good quality sleep. It doesn't go down once you aren't a teenager anymore. Seven to nine hours of good quality sleep is important to regulate your sex hormones, to regulate your thyroid hormones, to regulate your appetite, and to regulate your energy levels as well as just to help you feel energetic. First thing you need to do is create a routine. What do we do with children when they come home from school? Generally, they have playtime, then they eat dinner, then they take a bath because they got dirty at dinner. And then we read them a story or play with them a little bit or watch a video with them, and then we tuck them into bed. That is a routine. And that triggers the child's brain to know, okay, it's starting to be time to get ready to go to bed. So the brain says, time to start producing melatonin. Melatonin helps us drift off to sleep. So by the time Junior's getting into bed, he is in full on melatonin and ready to go to sleep and not just lay there and toss and turn. Create a routine for yourself as an adult, we can still have reasonable routines. You eat dinner, then what do you do after dinner? Maybe you read a book. Okay, you read a book. That's what you do. And then you take a bath and then you go to bed. Maybe that's what you do or whatever your routine is. Identify three things, Ish, two to four things. So three is the middle that you do every night. That will help your brain recognize it's time for me to start winding down and get ready to go to sleep. For me, after dinner, I go downstairs, I turn on the TV just because I like watching TV too, or having the TV on when I'm relaxing. And then I play Words with Friends. And as soon as I start playing Words with Friends, I start feeling sleepy. In about 20 to 30 minutes. My brain has learned that if I'm playing that, that it's probably about time to go to bed. Eliminate stimulants, including caffeine and nicotine. After noon, if possible. You may be thinking, noon, really? And yes, it will take some time to gradually wean yourself off of some of the stimulants but caffeine has a problem. Approximately a six hour half life, which means it stays in your body for 8 to 12 hours after you consume it. So what you're drinking at noon may still be affecting your sleep at midnight when you can, you know, start trying to wean down. If you can start trying to wean down off of caffeine, nicotine has a much shorter half life. It'll its half life is only about two hours. So four hours after you smoke or dip or however you get your nicotine, then it should be pretty much out of your system. But that is four hours. I know there are a lot of people who smoke right up until the time they go to bed, which means the first four hours of their sleep is probably disrupted because of the stimulants that are in their system. Have a blood alcohol level of 0.0 when you go to bed. And some people drink right before bed to help them relax. And yes, studies have shown alcohol can help you drift off to sleep more quickly, but when it starts to exit your body, you actually have much, much worse sleep and may have higher levels of anxiety. So the quality of sleep through the night is much worse if you have alcohol in your system when you go to sleep. Additionally, if you have sleep apnea or are right on the verge of having sleep apnea, alcohol in your blood system or in your system has been shown to make your sleep apnea worse. If you have a CPAP machine, you know that's doubly another double reason not to drink alcohol. Not to have alcohol in your system before you go to sleep. Keep the room cool. A lot of us think we want to get warm in order to relax. But surprisingly enough, or maybe not surprising to you, when your room is cooler, your body has to cool down in order for you to go to sleep. When you relax, everything in your body slows down and you start getting cooler. Your body needs to be cool, so try to keep the room as cool as possible and try not to do things right before bed that are going to get you super heated up. Address Bedroom ergonomics Look at your bed. Make sure you have a comfortable bed. This is one of the best things that you can do for your health and your mood is to make sure that you're getting a good quality night's sleep. Check your pillow. Make sure that you've got a pillow that is ergonomically sound and you can go online and search for sleep ergonomics or sleep positions and find pillows and recommendations for how to have the most comfortable night's sleep super important. Address pain if it is keeping you up. If you have some sort of chronic pain. I have this pain in my side and back that has been persistent for about two years and I know there are certain things that I do that make it worse and certain things I do that can make it go away. But if that pain in my side is bothering me before I go to sleep, I am not able to get to sleep as quickly and it often wakes me up. It's important that you address pain so you can get a good quality night's sleep. Eliminate or block noise and Light Light tells your body it's time to wake up, so you want to minimize light as much as possible. Use blue blockers two hours before bed, so even if you are watching tv, you're not stimulating your brain to think it's daytime. You can get a blue blocker that you plug into the back of your TV so you have the benefit of that. And you can download apps on your mobile device to block the blue light from your mobile devices with noise Most of us think of noise as the television or the radio, and we don't factor in the fact that our partner may be the greatest source of noise. If your partner sounds like a chainsaw throughout the night, then he or she may be keeping you up. It's important to be able to get a good night's sleep, which means you've got to block out that noise either through noise canceling, headphones, earplugs, whatever it is that works for you. But it is important to be able to get into a place where your body, where your brain is not being stimulated by constant sound, and finally, minimize allergens. And part of this also means if you've got allergies to animals, get them out of the bed. I say that I don't do it. I will tell you I'm bad about this one. But if allergens bother you and make you wake up stuffy or coughing again, they are interrupting your sleep. You may not notice waking up, but you're probably waking up throughout the night and they're impairing the quality of your sleep, which is going to make you feel more fatigued and have more difficulty concentrating the next day, and may contribute to depression and irritability when you're not getting adequate sleep. Pick one, two or all of these suggestions in order to start improving your sleep for better health and better mental health.
