Heather Aardema breaks down four sleep chronotypes: bear, dolphin, lion, and wolf. She explains what each type is and how to figure out yours, then shares sleep hygiene basics like avoiding food three hours before bed and ditching screens an hour before sleep.
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Hi, everybody. Welcome to today's Boost. Are you ever sleep deprived? I ask because most of us are in a constant state of sleep deprivation. How much sleep do you get a night? 6 hours, 7 hours? The Institute for Functional Medicine recommends we get 7 to 9 hours of sleep every night. If you have health conditions, autoimmune issues, they recommend you get closer to nine hours of sleep and. But if you're feeling fine, if you're great, you might be okay with seven hours of sleep. How's the quality of your sleep when you go to bed? Do you fall asleep right away, right when your head hits the pillow and then wake up right when the sun comes up? If so, you might be a bear. Have you heard of sleep chronotypes? Sleep chronotypes are spirit animals that sleep sleep in the same way that you sleep in. So bear you might be that bear. That sleep chronotype, you might be a dolphin. A dolphin will go to sleep using only half of its brain at a time. So half the brain will be asleep, the other half will be awake and then it will do a flip in the middle of the night. So a person who's a dolphin will go to bed, toss and turn, ruminate half the night and wake up tired. The other two spirit animals are lions, which are early birds, early risers, and wolves, which wake up late, but really, really get going in the afternoon. So the goal is to understand your sleep chronotype and take the quiz that I've linked out to. And once you understand your sleep chronotype, make it work for you, make your wiring work for you. So if you are a wolf, you don't schedule early morning meetings. And if you're a lion, don't go out to dinner at like 8 o' clock at night. That's not going to work well for you. Would you like some sleep tips? Here are a few of my favorite sleep tips. Stop eating three hours before you go to bed. I know everybody says it. It really does work. You will get better sleep if you're not busy processing foods and trying to sleep at the same time. Another recommendation is to stop looking at screens a full hour before you go to sleep. That might feel impossible, so if it is impossible, buy a pair of these. These are called true darks. They are kind of funky, but they will block the blue light, which suppresses melatonin. So you want to wear these if you are going to be looking at screens at night. And then my third recommendation is to turn off your WI fi at night. We're inundated by wi fi all day long. So experiment with this. Turn it off at night. It's super easy. Pull the plug. See if you sleep better throughout the night with the WI fi off. For more recommendations, you can click the link that I've included in the email and check those out.
