Sleep is the Most Important Factor to Consider

Sleep, or lack of it is associated with almost every mental health condition in the DSM. When evaluating your health and wellness (mental health or otherwise), sleep is the most important factor to consider. The advice I give to my clients is as follows, and is based on science from Dr. Andrew Huberman at The Huberman Lab.

Sleep and wake are connected. 

What we do in the waking state determines how we sleep, what time we fall asleep, how quickly we fall asleep, how long we stay asleep, and how we feel the next day.

Sleep is tremendously important and can be likened to nutrition. Just like nutrition is not one food, sleep quality is not based on one variable. 

Humans need 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night to wake feeling fully rested and to perform at our best the next day. 7 to 9 hours of sleep resets our ability to be focused, alert, and emotionally stable the next day. 

The most powerful influence to sleep is light. 

Light is the primary biological influence to sleep. Humans naturally wake within 3 hours of sunrise, light triggers the release of cortisol and other hormones which signal your system to “wake up” (i.e. increase heart rate and breathing). It is important these “wake up” hormones are released in the morning because they also start a “timer” as to when your body will release the hormone melatonin, the hormone to make you sleepy.

When light of a particular color, blue and yellow to be specific, comes into the eye a signal is sent to a part of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. The suprachiasmatic nucleus has a connection to virtually every cell of the body and is responsible for timing cortisol and melatonin rhythms. Because the SCN has a connection to virtually every cell of the body; when/if someone’s sleep schedule is off it can have broadly sweeping, detrimental effects on virtually every part of the body; cardiovascular health, dementia, metabolic effects, learning, and depression just to name a few.

Get more light for better sleep.

When looking to improve quantity and quality of sleep your first stop should be yellow and blue light. Inside light works, but outside light is best. Why? The light outside is scattered everywhere. It’s reflected throughout the environment, which means more light is absorbed into your eyes. 

How much light do you need to improve the quantity and quality of your sleep? It depends on your location. In a bright sunny environment you may need as little as 60 seconds. If you live in darker places, or there is cloud cover, you would need to stay out longer; twenty minutes or more.

What's the deal with blue light from computer screens? 

Science indicates blue light is great earlier in the day. If you remember blue and yellow lights, send the signal to wake. However, blue light later on in the day is a problem as it suppresses melatonin and affects sleep.

For the body, timing is important!

Light and the timing of light is the primary influence on an individual’s circadian rhythm. Second to that is exercise and the timing of exercise. Third is temperature. Try pairing and adjusting these factors to influence your quality of sleep. For instance, blending light and exercise early in the morning would reset your circadian rhythm to become an early riser.

Do you want to absorb light anytime? No. Our retinas become more sensitive as the day goes on. For quality sleep you want to have as little light as possible after 8 PM and no light from 11 PM to 4 AM. 

Ingesting light between 11 PM to 4 AM can suppress dopamine, increase anxiety, inhibit learning, derail focus, and a slew of other detrimental effects like being less happy and experiencing increased levels of disappointment. Plus, light exposure at night will influence your body to delay it’s sleep-clock, making it harder to wake the next day.

Use the body to control the mind.

It’s very hard to control the mind with the mind. Use the body to control the mind. For many, it’s difficult to calm the mind to get to sleep. Bypass an uncooperative mind by using biological hacks. Biological hacks will always work; our bodies are simply designed that way. 

A biological hack we already covered is light exposure. Another biological hack is breathing exercises. Breathing exercises strengthen and train the “calm center” of the brain, and our body and mind think…it must be time to get calm.

For individuals having difficulty turning their mind off to sleep, calming exercises such as yoga nidra, meditation, and hypnosis are advised. Calming exercises work by training your mind to be less in the “action center” part of the brain, i.e. the sympathetic nervous system, and more in the  “calm” center of the brain, i.e. the parasympathetic nervous system. 

Just like you would target and train a muscle group at the gym. You can train your mind to bring your calm center online, bringing balance to the action and calm centers of your body.

To learn Yoga Nidra or meditation try the free app, insight timer. Insight timer provides free meditations to millions around the world. There is even a section for children and families.

There is an abundance of literature that supports using hypnosis for increased health and wellness, including sleep.  Reverihealth.com is a self-hypnosis app created by Dr. David Spiegel, associate chair of psychiatry at Stanford University. Dr. Spiegel created reverihealth because he believes hypnosis, although supported by a wide variety of scientific literature, is generally misunderstood. He promotes hypnosis as simply a state of highly focused attention that allows humans the ability to alter the relationship between mind and body.

Nutrition. 

After getting light viewing behavior and activity on point, limit caffeine and energy drinks. If you need additional support, talk to your doctor about the possibility of using supplements. According to Dr. Huberman there is scientific evidence that the supplements theanine or magnesium 30 to 60 minutes before sleep have been found to be beneficial. 

What about melatonin?

If you remember from above our body makes melatonin naturally when the sun goes down. Some scientists believe taking a non-organic form of the hormone (melatonin) may be detrimental in the long run. 

At the moment science does not agree about the risks versus rewards of using melatonin. However the majority of science indicates taking melatonin is not advised if you are younger. Younger people have an expression of melatonin throughout the day as part of the process of puberty. Additional melatonin can alter and interfere with the process of puberty and suppress the onset of puberty.