How to Sleep Better (Naturally) | My Top Sleep Tips

Welcome, soldiers. In this video, we are going to learn how to sleep well. What goes into good sleep? What does sleep affect? What makes your sleep worse? Everything about sleep, everything I know about sleep, and hopefully by the end of the video you can put it into practice into your life so you sleep like a baby, a healthy baby. Sleep is the quintessential linchpin that brings everything in your life together. Really everything in your life. There's your health, but sleep has an impact on your career, on your relationships, on the level of ability that you have to do life at every level, your muscle gain, fitness, everything. It's probably top 3 most important things to consider in your health journey. And unfortunately, people treat it as a afterthought. They don't prioritize it, and if you want to maximize your life, you have to prioritize your sleep. I'm so grateful for my sleep quality. Every night I'm out like a light. Sometimes I plan to do some reading, and I do read, but sometimes I plan to do reading and then before I know it, I'm asleep in bed. It takes me a couple of minutes max every night to sleep. I sleep throughout the night. Unless maybe I'll get up and have some milk or something if I get a little hungry. Other than that, I don't have any troubles going to sleep, and it's very consistent, and I wake up before sunrise without an alarm, ready for the day. That's how your sleep should be. Most people's sleep is not like that, so let's get into how to fix that. Most people don't have the energy or drive to commit to anything else because they have poor sleep. They're teed off at work, they're frustrated with their family. It's really an epidemic, and most people are just throwing a Band-Aid over the top by smashing coffee or energy drinks or other stimulants because they don't have the raw, natural recovery, recuperation that sleep gives us. So we want to make sure that we have that. Getting on top of your sleep is number one to creating a better life. Everything else is going to flow better. So everyone intuitively feels when they're getting good sleep or not. Maybe if you don't even have that reference point of good sleep, you just don't know what it can feel like. So what it can feel like is, as I mentioned, you wake up energized for the day and you're just ready to go. Everything's recovered. You're not like, oh, groggy, getting out of bed. You don't need to rush to go get coffee. You have good sleep and you wake up No alarm needed and you're ready to go and you're motivated. That is what good sleep can feel like. You don't necessarily need sleep trackers or your little armband to be beep beep beep. Oh, I got a bad night's sleep last night. Thanks. I feel that already. I don't need some little robot telling me also that. So I used to use one of those Ring tracker things, but again, having that source of EMF on you is unnecessary. And I know when my sleep is good, when I've recovered. I can just feel it intuitively myself, and it's good to get to know that rather than having a screen tell you how you feel. So why do we want to sleep well? Well, uh, hormone production, recovery from exercise, your focus, your memory. Adequate sleep is vital for memory consolidation and other brain functions. So if you want to remember things, you have to sleep on it. And a lack of sleep obviously impairs your focus. You're tired, you can't concentrate on things, your decision-making is worse. The brain uses strength and— sorry, the brain uses the sleep state to strengthen all those neural connections, get rid of unneeded ones, process memories, all that kinds of things. If we want to learn efficiently and get better, we need sleep. Recovery and detox during sleep, during deep sleep the brain's glymphatic system becomes much more efficient to get rid of toxins and buildup of brain activity throughout the day. Tissue repair, protein synthesis, muscle repair, as I mentioned, and there's also the growth hormone release. All of this occurs primarily during sleep. So if you're not getting sleep, you really are not going through the processes needed to have a healthy body. There's like this mental thing with people, "I'll sleep when I'm dead." Sleep— because you're unconscious during sleep, it's kind of relegated to this less important part of your life of health. And like, yeah, you'll be on top of going to the gym and you'll be on top of eating the right foods, but you won't be on top of going to bed at 9:30, 10:00 PM and being consistent with your sleep because you consider it as an afterthought. It's not really part of your waking conscious life, so it gets reduced in importance. But that is not the case. Everything else gets better, and I want you to prioritize your sleep. If you take anything away from this, this video, I've had to prioritize sleep at the cost of some other things, and you will have to do that. When your friends— you go out to dinner and you have a nice evening and it's 9:30, 10:00, and you say, I I wanna have a productive day tomorrow, I'm gonna go get some rest. They may go on to the bars or dick around for a while and you end up losing 2 hours and by then you're cutting into that kind of early sleep period where the majority of growth hormone repair is done. The next day you're slow, the next day you lose your momentum. That's what lack of sleep does. And I think if you have this, Once in a while, okay, you're not gonna sleep. I've been up all night, 6 AM, bender, whatever. That is once in a while, and that's not gonna have a significant impact across your life. I'm not one of those guys that says if you lose 45 minutes of sleep, you're cooked for a whole week and longer, and your heart disease goes up. And no, no, that's— I don't believe in that. What I do believe in is consistency with your routine and producing momentum via discipline in everything with your health habits and prioritizing your sleep because your sleep creates a better wakeful state for the entire next day and the next day. So prioritizing that over like, you've seen your friends, what's an extra 45 minutes, hour of messing around? Uh, I believe on cutting out things like that, that, that that aren't as necessary as long as you're still being social. Be social during the day. You don't need to be social at 2:00 AM. So prioritize your sleep. Have these, uh, these, these rules in place because everything else in your life is going to get better. What are some signs of good sleep? You fall asleep under 10 minutes. You're not sitting there tossing and turning. You, uh, you wake up naturally without an alarm and you're wide awake. As I said, you're not groggy. You wake up with a torqued boner, which is good as a man. You don't get tired throughout the day. It's possible for you to have good enough sleep that you have enough energy for the entire day. And of course, if you're working out, if you're intense with whatever physical activity, you will get tired again to the point of having a nap, but you're depleted physically. Your physical energy is depleted. It's not this weird tiredness where you just can't think straight. That is like, you're still with good sleep, you're clear throughout the whole day and you can focus even if you're physically tired from exercise, which is good. You get marked improvements in muscle pain and soreness or skin healing if you have a cut overnight. That is also a good sign of good sleep. So what makes good sleep? What can we focus on for good sleep? So I'll mention what makes good sleep and then I'll want— I'll mention what makes or affects your sleep negatively. And then at the end, some other kind of random tips which may be on both sides of the spectrum. Exercise and activity during the day. If you are not depleting your physical battery of energy, you're going to find it hard to rest at night. Okay, this one seems like a no-brainer, but a lot of people be like, "Oh, I have trouble sleeping." Well, how much physical activity did you do that day? Oh, I was kind of like, you know, I was at work, so I was sitting all day and then yeah, I didn't really move much. Maybe went for a 20-minute walk. Well, okay, you've got all of this physical energy that you need to build up. Sorry, you need to use because it is built up if you're a healthy person and deplete yourself so that your body needs to recharge. If you have trouble sleeping, go walk 20,000 steps up and down a nice forest hill and mountains, and then at the end of the day come back and try to fall asleep, and then tell me that you can't fall asleep after a day like that. It just doesn't happen. So on some level, if you're finding it hard to go to sleep, you probably need to exert more physical force, more even mental energy. If you're focusing on something, you're doing something where you're thinking a lot, and focusing. It's not necessarily that physical, and physical energy is more important to be depleted. But if, as long as you're doing things, like using up energy gives you energy overall, but it also creates a deficit that you then need to recover from, from sleep. And that's very important. So exercise, a heavy lift will always get you into a good place with your sleep, as long as you're not doing it right before bed, you know, jacking up your cortisol right before you sleep. I I don't recommend that, but I'll get to that later. So increase your exercise and activity. If you go out on the beach and you're jumping in the waves, you know, you're mountain biking all day, I guarantee you'll sleep well after that. So that's something to keep in mind. Nasal breathing and mouth taping. So the quality of our sleep is highly dictated by what kind of breathing we're doing throughout the night. If we are mouth breathing and snoring throughout the night, then the quality of sleep is not going to be as good. But why? Well, first of all, the nose is for breathing, the mouth is for eating. If we're nasal breathing, then we're filtering the oxygen, but the diaphragm is being used for nasal breathing. The movement of the diaphragm shifts the spine forward and back. When that spine is moving forward and back, we get a natural flow of cerebrospinal fluid that pumps up into the brain and then draws it out again. If we're not breathing through our nose, we're not getting that deep breath, we're getting this up here through the mouth and snoring, then we're reducing the amount of that spinal movement which promotes cerebrospinal fluid uptake And that is one of the reasons that your brain system is able to clear out throughout the night. So we want to nasal breathe. Ideally, you're a GigaChad, you didn't have any jaw issues growing up, and you just sleep at night like that. No mouth tape needed and you nasal breathe all the time. A lot of us, myself included, sometimes a mouth tape helps. So you just close your mouth. With some tape, and then it's shut, and your body has no option other than to nasal breathe. And it really, really makes a difference. Try it out for yourself. If you try it out and you feel no different, you're likely a really good nasal breather throughout the night anyway without it. But if you wake up with a, like, a massive difference in your sleep quality, you've probably been mouth breathing and snoring. Or if you're, you know, your girl has complained about snoring, or you've been at a sleepover with your buddies and they said, "Oh mate, you snore," then look into mouth taping. It'll really make a difference with the quality of your sleep. And also, you don't wake up with like dry mouth is a sign that you've been mouth breathing throughout the night. So you want to avoid that in order to have optimal sleep quality. Kind of related to the glymphatic flow is having your bed inclined. Okay, not too much, you know, we don't want to be completely like this. But if you get your bed or whatever you sleep on and you, you put some bricks or books even underneath the topside thing so you get a slight angle, maybe 10 degrees or so, this means your body's gonna be in a slightly inclined position with your head being up a little bit, not the other way around. That is very, very beneficial to allow gravity to move that lymphatic flow naturally around. It's also easier to breathe because there's less gravity pressure on the lungs themselves. So if you are a very— if you're a weak breather or you've been through something like pneumonia, then I highly recommend— or you're going through pneumonia, I highly recommend pneumonia. It's like, okay, you want to, you want to get really up so there's less pressure, especially for older people. But in general, for normal sleeping, if you incline your bed a little bit, you're gonna get a nice boost to all those things, which is gonna improve sleep quality. So, sounds a bit strange, but try it out. Fresh air. Fresh air. The number one blood toxin that we produce— I don't want to call it a toxin, but if it gets to a high level, it can be. Carbonic acid, which is produced when we go through cellular respiration. Oxygen goes in, carbonic acid gets produced just as a natural process of energy and everything else in the blood. If we have— if we don't have fresh air, then we cannot purify the blood as much. And this goes for when you're waking as well. You want as much fresh air as possible all the time. It is kind of like the base level of everything that goes into health. Your breath is like, what's the thing that you can do the least amount of time without? The breath, because we need oxygen. So fresh air is super, super important the entire day, but sleeping as well. You want to maximize your windows being open. You want to get an air purifier if you're in a high-traffic area like a city. So, you want fresh air, fresh air, maybe even consider a fan blowing the fresh air in, and yeah, as much fresh air as possible during the night is very important. Sunlight exposure. Viewing sunrise has an impact on your sleep. You may think, oh, it's— well, it's in the morning, doesn't necessarily affect what's going on in the night. But your body has this circadian rhythm, this, this understanding of time with itself where it times all of these biological processes according to the light signals. Thank you, Sun. The light signals that it's being given by its eyes. And this is why using artificial blue light is negative, but I will go into that later. Getting sunlight throughout the day will make you more sleepy at night. And as I said, viewing the sunrise— so your body has a real intimate knowledge of, okay, this is the infrared light which signals the start of the day. If you're getting that input each morning as close to sunrise as you can view, then the better, because then that's going to mean your body has this understanding to time its circadian rhythm, and it's going to be easier to wake up at that time. And it's also going to be easier to fall asleep at that time. Same with viewing the sunset. It's another very innate biological timer that your body can then use to enhance its circadian rhythm, which means everything else is going to flow. And this, this goes beyond just sleep. It goes on, you know, memory, energy, mood, hormones, everything else. But for sleep especially, if you can, just as long as you can try to get outside. You don't have to directly see the sun. Ideally you do, but being outside during sunrise and sunset in particular will go a long way to encoding that light information through the eyes so that your circadian rhythm is good. And also sunlight during higher UV times of the day is always going to improve your sleep as well. As well as many other things. So blue light— no blue light emitting screens or artificial lights once the sun goes down. If you really want to get on top of your sleep, then you will implement these rules in your home. Once the sun has gone down, there's no— none of these big overhead bright fluorescent lights. Ah, no, no. You're only allowed to have floor-level lighting or small lamps that are, that are low, because when lights are high, our body interprets that as daylight. But if they're low, they're coming into the bottom half of the eye. There's less of that wakeful perception from these overhead lights. Okay, so you want low lighting, you want red lights, you want infrared lights, and You want beeswax candles, even better if you can walk around like an old candlestick holder like this. Oh, Jimmy! That's what I do sometimes, walking around with a candle. But you will be absolutely— if you never tried this before, you will be gobsmacked how much this makes a difference to only have candles. I find myself at 8 o'clock, I'm like, all right, I'm done because the sun goes down like 6:30 or something, it starts to get dark, my lights are off, I have my very low dim red light or candles and you're sleepy by 8 o'clock. Like you don't realize how much the artificial lights are really doing because you're just like, oh, it's normal, I'm cooking dinner, put the kitchen light on and then I go into the bathroom and have a shower and it's like quite bright, and bathroom lighting. You don't realize how much that is impacting you until you go without it. So absolute game changer in terms of sleep. Yeah, some people might think it's a bit weird, but like, no, look at all the other animals outside in nature. Do they have these weird devices that they're turning on and like looking into to do stuff? You don't need it. Your eyes will adjust to the lower light conditions, and as I said, you're gonna get more tired a lot sooner. And, you know, it goes without saying, okay, don't hold your phone and like watch your TikToks or massive flat screen for your evening TV show because that's going to promote a whole bunch of the wrong circadian rhythm as well as improve, uh, increased cortisol and other things which can make you stay awake. So we don't want to do that. If you are going to use technology, sometimes you have to reply to an email or whatever else, then I recommend using blue light blocking glasses. I have some which I'll drop in the link below. Which are the coolest in my opinion, and they work really, really well. They're also useful if you need to go to the store where they have artificial lighting and it's like evening and you can't tell them to turn the lights off, but you need to go to the store, so you put your glasses on and then you have, you know, at least some level of protection from these incredibly bright lights when they shouldn't be on at that time in nature. So a dark bedroom, that's the kind of, you know, it's about light as well. Your bedroom should be as dark as possible. I know that some people have roommates or windows to the outside, streetlights. That, that tees me off in the times that I've had that in my life, or Airbnbs where there's no curtains and then it's just like very, very bright, but an eye mask. You can get a silk eye mask, which just obviously goes like this, covers your eyes. And then that really helps if you're in an environment where you can't necessarily black out all of the light sources for your sleep. And it also is great for if you're on a plane or something, you can just put the eye mask on and you cut out that light source, which can impact your sleep negatively. It is, yeah, ideally you're not living in a place or living in a bedroom where you have to use an eye mask. As dark as possible. You should also make sure that you're— you can go around and tape any electrical devices. Any electrical devices should be turned off at night, but let's say you have a fan which has like— some of them have an annoying power light or something, you want to keep that on. Just put a bit of tape over the lights. And that's a good way to kind of get rid of all those things. Air conditioners, the same. You can just tape the light and then you get a nice dark room. It's going to be better for your rest. Earplugs is the same. Obviously, we're going to try to have a quiet environment for our sleep. We want to minimize any sensory inputs that disturb us from being the— just the utmost peace unconscious state. This is about maximizing our sleep, okay? So earplugs. I believe you can get natural ones, like natural rubber or natural latex, or maybe just earmuffs or something like that. That again, if you've got noisy neighbours or roommates or just dogs barking on the street, I've had sometimes, earplugs will help a lot. And again, if you're travelling, you travel a lot, then on a plane you just put your earplugs in, put your eye mask on, and then you're good. For the most part. Using your bedroom for sleep and making love only. This is about intentionally curating an environment that triggers your brain to associate with certain activities. If you're only using your bed for sleep, then when you get into bed, your body is— and brain is used to having sleep there or sex. So if you're lying in bed working at your laptop doing work or watching things or just hanging out in your bedroom throughout the day, it becomes less of a relaxing sleep sanctuary and your brain begins to associate with other things. If you can be in bed and then if you were working on a work problem earlier that day, then you could be triggered to think about that work problem. And so on and so forth. So we want to curate our bedroom as to be this cozy, peaceful thing that we use for sleep, and that's it. And that's going to improve your association with that area, with sleep, increasing the ability to go to sleep. So sleeping earlier and rising earlier is, is best. You can be sleeping the same amount of hours as someone else, But the hours of sleep that you can get before midnight are more important than after midnight. So someone's like, yeah, I sleep 8 hours. Well, when you going to sleep? 2 AM to 10 AM? Because that circadian rhythm is misaligned, and I bet they're on technology till 2 AM anyway. That's the only reason you're really up at that time. What else you can do? Just, I mean, look at the stars, but you'll fall asleep. So like circadian rhythm-wise, we are meant to go to sleep earlier and rise earlier. So there are timed biological processes like cleansing of the liver or a whole bunch of other things that occur at certain times of the night. If you're awake during those times instead of, as you should be, being asleep, you're kind of missing out on the quality of the sleep that you could be getting. So even if you're sleeping 8 hours, if it's not at this 9, 10 PM bedtime in general, then it's not as good comparatively. Early bedtime, yeah, I go to sleep 9 o'clock, 9:30 on like a good day. Sometimes I'm up a bit later if I'm editing or need to get some work done, then it'll be, yeah, 11 at the latest. If it gets to 11 and I'm still working, then I just go to sleep because any later than that, it's just gonna mess up the next day a bit too much. So 9:30 is best. And then as I said, I'm waking up just before sunrise, which is about 5:30, so I'm getting— yeah, 8 hours. Um, yeah, no alarm. If you need an alarm to wake you up then that is a signal that you're not getting enough sleep. You're either not getting enough quality sleep or you're going to bed too late. And I understand on the off occasion that you need an alarm to wake you up for something important like an early flight or an interview or a phone call or something. That, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about if you need an alarm to wake up for work every single day, then you need to look at what you're doing because Ideally, you're waking up before, well before the, the time that you need to get up and get ready for work, so you have enough time to do your healthful morning routine, get a bit of movement in before you head to work. You're not alarm, wake up, ah, gotta get to work, rush, boom, whatever. That's not a nice state to be in, and your, your sleep should be good enough that you're just 'Okay, the sleep is done and now I'm awake and I have enough time to do my things before I get—' And that works for even if you need to wake up early to work out before you have to take care of the kids or something like that, these other responsibilities that happen. You can actually tell your brain, 'Okay, wake me up at 5:30.' Try it, try it. Set an alarm for backup like 15 minutes later, but there's something within your brain that knows what time it is, and you can actually tell your brain— if you consciously say, "Wake me up at this time," you can do it. I've tried it and it works. A lot of people have told me that it works for them as well. Whatever is happening in the brain, it understands time. It understands when you tell it to wake you up at a certain time, as long as you're not like going to bed at 4 AM and then you're like, "Wake me up at 6," without an alarm. Just in normal life. What do you want to sleep in? You want to sleep in linen bedsheets? You want wool, wool pillows, cotton bedsheets? These are the only materials that I would use because, okay, so natural materials only, of course, but the vibe of being in natural materials and the coziness of linen and wool and also the electrostatic frequency of when wool moves. If you've heard me talk about that, it creates a little grounding cloud of ions. All of that is going to improve the quality of your sleep. Also, temperature regulation, thermoregulation. If you are using natural materials, your skin can breathe properly. It can not get too hot, because getting too hot obviously impacts your sleep negatively. So wrapping yourself in polyester, you get all sweaty, you can't remove the heat properly, your sleep is going to be interrupted. Sleeping attire. So what do you wear to bed? I'm usually naked personally. It's quite hot where I live. I also just run hot as a person, so I can sleep naked and that's what I feel the most comfortable doing. Definitely don't wear any tight clothes. Don't restrict your lymphatic, don't restrict your blood flow by wearing like tight pajama pants or anything else. If you're gonna wear something, again, loose, baggy wool cotton. I've heard that some people, if you're in a colder environment, it's good to wear wool layers. So in cold environments, I usually wear nice baggy wool socks that don't constrict the feet at all. Sometimes wool beanie. I know that there's, you know, have you seen those night caps that that they used to wear in the olden days. I believe there's something valid about keeping your head warm, your feet warm, and then the covers can kind of keep the rest of your body warm. But again, it, it comes down to personal preference. You feel better wearing a loose baggy cotton tee and some sort of wool pant on and socks, and that makes you sleep better, then go for it and check it out and experiment with things. It's just my personal preference to sleep nude. So nutrition before bed. You will sleep the best if you have a nice large cup of raw milk with added raw cream and raw honey. Right before bed or close to bed, because sleep is actually an energy-intensive process. If you want to have good sleep, you need to be eating a decent amount. You need to be providing your body with nutrition. Again, what is happening during sleep? You're rebuilding, you're repairing, you're flushing out, detoxing. All of these things require energy, require nutrients. So having a little boost of raw fats for the nervous system to calm the brain, which is really good for sleep, it's gonna make you fall asleep. Carbohydrates and honey, and then also in milk sugars in general, you have energy. Fats are the most important one, I would say, and then carbohydrates are in milk anyway. It's good for the brain, good for everything, nice like sweet treat. Protein, I would say less important than fats and carbohydrates for the particular sleep session, but you have a bit of extra protein. I mean, there's proteins in milk, right? I'm not even gonna say that there's like one thing is better than not. If I had to pick one, it would be raw fats, but the others are also good because as I said, you're repairing and everything else during sleep. So having an excess of all these nutrients is never ever going to be a bad thing. Now what you want to avoid is having like a big fat cooked meal that's harder to digest before bed. That's why milk is so good. It's liquid, your body can utilize it super quickly. And then raw milk of course is, you know, superior in every way because of the avoidance of pasteurization, which can change the molecules of the fats. It can decrease the beneficial bacteria and also just change the vitamin and mineral content. But I've talked about that before. So raw dairy— this is why people love ice cream before bed. What is ice cream? Well, cream, fats, sugar. It's nice. I think this is kind of why this dessert thing has come into our cultural context, is like having ice cream before bed really helps you sleep. So think about that in terms of your nutrition before bed. You don't want to go to bed hungry. It's not gonna contribute to the best sleep. I don't know— I do know that a lot of people will talk about, okay, don't eat anything 3 hours before bed. If I did that, I'd be hungry. I'd be too hungry to go to sleep. You know, I require a lot of mass and nutrients personally, but I think everyone would benefit from a nice yummy treat of healthy food before bed to make sure that your body has quality nutrition throughout the night. Because as I said, sleep is not this— you restore your energy during sleep, but it is also a process that requires energy. You can't just run on empty and expect to get the best sleep out of it. 3 hours before bed, maybe. I mean, this kind of goes to if you're eating cooked food, if you're eating cooked processed foods, yeah, don't eat 3 hours before bed. Don't eat that stuff. Ever personally. But you have a nice cup of raw milk or raw meat or whatever lightly cooked thing that you prefer, you're gonna be okay to eat before bed. Don't like massively overfill your stomach and usually take a little walk to process things before you actually go to sleep sleep. But yeah, a nice little bedtime meal is, is is exquisite and really helps your sleep, in my opinion. So that's a lot you can do to boost your sleep quality. What prevents good sleep? Sort of mentioned some of these things in here, but avoid these if you want to have good sleep. Artificial lights, phone screens, loud noises, reading headlines, any of these tech inputs that are anti-night because they're not dark and they're all these beep beep beep notifications, bright flashing colors, everything like that. Do we see that in nature at night? No, that's daytime stuff. What's not even natural at all, but it's daytime. So avoid that. If you're scrolling on things before bed, you're not going to have the best sleep. Stressful exercise in the evening. So I know that people's routines sometimes call for the only exercise they can do is gymming after work, usually in the evening. You know, I've done it a lot in my life. However, if we're looking at optimal practices that you can try to aim towards in your life, then going to the gym Once the sun has gone down, you're indoors under the usually bright fluorescent lights, and lifting intensely really kind of, you know, you stress your nervous system when you're, when you're lifting heavy and training hard, as you should. So is it the best idea to go into the gym at 7 PM and do your workout and everything? And look, if that's your only option to do that it's your only option for exercise in the current work system that you have, and you feel better sleeping and better living doing that versus some other version of that, then go for it. That's the, the trade-off that we have to make in today's modern world until we put in the effort to change our situation and circumstances. However, if we're optimizing, you're doing your workout in the morning before work or on your lunch break— I've done that as well— So you take your lunch, you just eat it at your desk, and then during your actual lunch break, you go get a lift in and come back to work. That's also a nice reset for the day, and you kind of— your exercise is done that way. You don't have an extra commute. And ideally, there's somewhere near your work you can work out at, even if it's just a run during the day, some sort of thing like that. That is also an option, and that way you avoid the kind of intense spike in hormones and stress that can happen from lifting in artificial lights at night, you know, in the later times before bed. We want to be winding down from the day and kind of relaxing in order to get into a good sleep. Caffeine, nicotine, other stimulants— ideally reduce your caffeine intake If you are having caffeine, only have it in the morning. If you do have it, have days off it entirely. Because yeah, please definitely don't have caffeine even lunchtime's a little bit late because the half-life of the actual caffeine is still in your body. It's, I believe it's like 8 hours the half-life, so half of it is still in your body after 8 hours. Which means that on some level the caffeine is still stimulating your nervous system and body even though you've stopped feeling the conscious effects. And if you're having a lot of caffeine consistently late in the day, that's going to be impacting your sleep. Even if you're still falling asleep fine, the nervous system is still a little bit stimulated from these things. And some people have nicotine late at night and they think, oh, it's nicotine, it's, it's not caffeine, I can have it later on the evening. It's still stimulating. It's a stimulant. It's still some sort of intoxicant that your body then has to process and deal with rather than just being pure, clean, calm, sober in order to get the maximized level of sleep. Alcohol is the same. Alcohol, weed, they are going to impact the quality of your sleep if you're having them and the the compounds are in your body before you rest. So you could be going to bed early, you could be doing everything right, but if you're having a drink before bed or you're smoking in the afternoon consistently, then the sleep quality is not going to be as good as it could be. Now again, we're adults, there's a trade-off. You want to go out for a few beers— not beers, let's say wine or mead, because we're Viking Chads that want to stick to our, you know, the proper fermented ancient drinks. But so let's say you're having some meads once in a while, okay, your sleep probably isn't going to be 100% maxed out. But again, we're not these biohacking intense neurotic people that we think that that's going to affect us if we do that once in a while. You still have to realize the fact that if it's consistent, then it is going to have an effect just due to the nature of the compounds. So caffeine, nicotine, stimulants, weed, alcohol, other drugs— you have to make the decision: what is the trade-off between your sleep quality and how often am I having these compounds? Because ideally, perfect world, sober is the best state to get the highest quality sleep. That's just the truth. Having an irregular schedule. So going to bed and rising at the same time enables your body to get into that real nice circadian rhythm where everything works like clockwork. If you have an irregular schedule like shift work, changes, your work shift is always changing, or sometimes you're working night shift. I used to work night shift as a security guard at a casino. And so my night shifts would vary from— the best one was 6 PM until 4 AM. The next one, they would move in hour increments, right? So sometimes you get put on 7 PM to 5 AM, 8 o'clock to 6 AM, and then the worst was 9 o'clock till 7 AM. So you don't want to be doing these ideally. You don't want to be working throughout the night, especially you're in a casino, there's these bright lights, stressful situations. That I did for, um, you know, several months. And yeah, the sleep quality was not ideal. Uh, and yeah, if you have a job, ideally you're not doing one where you're working literally like throughout the entire night. If you're getting to bed a little late, then that's okay, but ideally you want to get to bed early. So if you want to improve your sleep, then go for something that enables you to have a regular schedule, because an irregular schedule makes it harder to sleep. As I said before, large, heavy cooked meals in the evenings before bed is not ideal because your body's going to be digesting and cooked meals is harder to digest, so the energy required for that digestion is gonna be diverted and blood flow shifts, and it's just— it's gonna be sitting heavy in your stomach while you're trying to sleep. It's not the best, best thing for that. Stressing about your problems. This is more of an overall life thing. But if you find yourself rushing throughout your day, never having a conscious moment to yourself, and a lot of people will end up in bed, and this is at the end of the day, and this is the first time they've had a moment to just like, "Okay, like, what's happened? What's happening in my life?" And then they'll ruminate on things, or they'll process things, or things will come up that they should have dealt with throughout the day, but they were unconscious about it. But because now they're in bed and there's nothing else to do or distract themselves with, they can, yeah, that there's the swept up in that, and that can keep the mind going, preventing you from falling asleep. Now, this is why I recommend journaling and writing down before you go to sleep sleep, have a time of 5-10 minutes where you allow yourself to just breathe for a moment. And this can be earlier on the evening as well as part of your kind of evening wind-down routine if you are someone that has has these ruminating thoughts that come up while— before they're about to sleep. One, that can be an issue of like not being physically intensive enough during the day, low minerals, low fats, whatever else. But outside of that, sometimes it can help just to write down these things and these thoughts onto paper so that they can be kind of released from your mind into the paper. And get out of your head so you can sleep. And journaling helps with that. So I recommend doing that instead of kind of just like sitting there, lying there at night and banging about all these problems. Now, if you have problems in your life that you are avoiding confronting because you're scared, then none of these kind of tricks may help because they're actually problems you need to be honest with yourself about change, work towards changing, whatever it is. So just make sure that you're not covering up those because they will haunt your dreams until you do something about it, if it's actually legit. A lot of problems are not legit and not worth worrying about though, so you have to figure out what that is for you. Polyester, I mentioned before, don't wear polyester, don't sleep in polyester. Most mattresses are synthetic as well. You can get a wool mattress or natural latex mattress, but I think a wool mattress is the best. So other tips about sleep in general. Taking naps. Napping is pretty good to do as long as you're, again, so Going back to that physical energy point, if you're depleting your physical energy because you're doing well, you're exercising, you're out all morning, you can come back early afternoon and you put your feet up. Kicking the feet up is important. When your feet are up, it's easier for your body to kind of move blood out of the legs into the body again, and there's something about that which gives your body a little reset. So you don't have to like get into bed, sleep for an entire hour, for the nap to be helpful, but just putting the feet up and closing your eyes for 20 minutes or so, even if you're not falling asleep asleep, is very helpful. It's like a second non-sleep, but you're deep resting period, which, you know, lions do it, most animals do it early afternoon when the sun is at its highest or peak, peak UV. They'll just chill and nap under the, under the trees because they've been out and doing stuff all morning. So especially if you're a lifter, you want to put on muscle as well, having a nice little nap period can be very beneficial. So magnesium oil spray on your neck, chest, and feet. So neck, so it gets into the brainstem. Chest, so it kind of soaks into here and the heart. And then your feet as well. 'Cause your feet absorb a lot of things and it hits the lower part of the body as well. So what's magnesium oil spray? So it's magnesium chloride flakes mixed with water, ideally spring water. You can make your own, just order high-quality magnesium chloride flakes, shake it up with spring water in a glass spray bottle, and then dissolve as many flakes as you can into that. Then spray it on your body and rub it in. I mean, it's good for all of your skin. It's not necessarily one particular areas. The best. But yeah, make sure that you soak those areas liberally because on the brainstem it's going into the brain and neck and just relaxing everything there. The feet, it seems to relax you before bed really well. Same with the chest as well, kind of relaxes all your nervous system by getting that direct transdermal, through the skin, mineral boost of magnesium, which is the highest, you know, the anti-stress mineral. Hot baths, kind of related. I like to have a hot bath in the evening. It opens all your skin up, your blood is flowing, you really feel like deeply cleansed. There's also a spiritual side of like being bathed in water can kind of clear any energy of the day so that you're clean and pure for your sleep period and getting into your bed, your sanctuary. And you can also put magnesium in into the bath. They're just very relaxing in general, and I do that before bed. Stretching before bed, acupressure. If you have any, you know, a bed of nails or any kind of like a lacrosse ball, you can also stand on them, or even just going for a walk outside on some rocks with bare feet. The acupressure on the soles of the feet have many, many nervous system relaxing, muscle relaxing benefits. Same as stretching, of course. Jaw massage, getting into your jaw, your temples here as well, like sinking in your knuckles into there will relax the jaw, relax the temple, relax the neck and shoulders. Yoga before bed, all of that, all of those activities putting— excuse me— 10 minutes aside for you to do that can relax your nervous system really meaningfully before bed and give yourself just a more relaxed state to get into bed rather than like being all uptight, like having all this tight fascia and like stuff just from the day, uh, tension, uh, work, driving, blah blah blah. But you can, oh yeah, and release it, and that way you're gonna have a better sleep. I like to have a nice tea of chamomile, valerian root, sometimes lavender, passionflower. There's a few natural relaxing sedatives that you can make tea from, which is just like a nice beautiful— I'll put my Aurum liquid magnesium in as well into that tea. And sipping that before bed, you'll be, you know, you'll be snoozing before you know it. You know, we don't need sleeping pills. We have natural herbs and flowers and plants that have been used historically, thousands of years, for these purposes, to relax and to soothe. And they work, and they don't have these side effects of the nasty chemical medications and things. So that's what I like to do. Well, I hope you have learned something about sleep, and I hope you can get snoozy and cozy and prioritize sleep because it is one of the largest pieces of the health puzzle that we have to work on in our lives. If you have any other sleep tips, let me know in the comments below. I appreciate you watching. Farewell.