What's the Best Way to Get Good Quality Sleep Without Waking up in the Middle of the Night?

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What's the best way to get good quality sleep without waking up in the middle of the night?

This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times best selling author, celebrity nutrition expert, expert and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert.

Patricia Rosa Roach asks, what is the best way to get good quality sleep without waking up in the middle of the night? A and by the way, that came from Facebook from my community page. Hey, it's J.J. and I'll be right back to answer that question.

Hey JJ Virgin here.

Okay, real talk.

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All right, so the big question here is why the heck are you waking up in the middle of the night? Ideally, we are tracking sleep either with a Fitbit, an Oura ring, something where we can really start to tune into the quality of our sleep and also importantly, to look at what might be getting in the way of you having a good night's sleep. The first thing I always want to check is to make sure that we are practicing good sleep hygiene. And what does that mean? That means about three or four hours before bed, you eat a very balanced meal. I either say eat from the virgin diet plate or the sugar impact diet plate. They're both about the same and it's good, clean protein, healthy fats, slow, low impact carbs, and that includes lots of non starchy vegetables. That's going to give you a nice little trifecta of protein, fat and fiber that keeps your blood sugar balanced. Quite often what happens when you're waking up in the middle of the night is that you are getting a blood sugar crash that then gets a little rebound hyperglycemia. And so that's what we got to watch out for. One of the biggest things that can do that is either going to bed too hungry or going to bed having a couple glasses of wine or some other kind of alcohol. Track that to see if that's impacting you. And I'm going to do a shout out to our buddies over at Dry Farm Wines for having wine that doesn't tend to crash you out like that because it's low sugar and doesn't have all the harmful additives. So the first thing we're going to do is make sure that you ate something good three to four hours before bed. Ideally, you're working out earlier in the day, not doing something overly stimulating at night that can get in the way of your sleep or raise stress hormones that can cause that middle of the evening, middle of the night crash. And about an hour before bed, you start what Dr. Michael Bruce calls as the power down hour. Super important. During that time, dimming the lights, getting the air down to about 68 degrees. Take a hot bath with Epsom salts. I take magnesium and my product sleep candy with L theanine 5 HTP melatonin inositol B6 helps you fall asleep and stay asleep. And if you are a little hungry, have a glass of water but don't have too much so that you'd have to get up in the middle of the night pee. Don't want to do that either. So that's the first thing. And the other big hack there that I got from my buddy Dave Asprey from Bulletproof is to wear the red glasses that block out the blue lights. But ideally that hour before too. You're not looking at screens. It's a power down hour. Get rid of the tech. So those are all the things that we want to do. Track those in your journal and then start looking at your sleep with your Fitbit or Oura Ring. One of the things I found is I know exactly what things get in the way of me having a good night's sleep and what things really help. And one of the things you might find is if you're going through menopause or a very stressful time, like what's going on right now, you might have higher stress hormones and that is what's waking you up too. And sometimes doing a little vitamin C or a little tapping at night can also help there.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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