My Beauty Sleep Routine
Welcome to Issue 83 of Yath’s Blogletter, a newsletter where we explore mindful self-growth. I hope you’re having an awesome day!
Hi friends,
As we all know sleep is vital to life. Without sleep, all of us would suffer massively pretty quickly. But even with sleep, if it’s of poor quality, we still suffer every day in school, at work, and at home. The people around us notice it too whether friends, colleagues, or family.
This week, I want to share 5 sleep habits I practice for a higher quality sleep each night. I've also noticed that improving my sleep has made me a happier, calmer, and more productive person all around. I'm currently editing an in-depth YouTube video on this topic, so watch out for that on the ol' channel.
Caffeine
Put simply, I aim to stop drinking caffeine (oat flat white, yes I'm that guy) around mid-afternoon. I don't always succeed but I try my best. The earlier in the day we stop drinking caffeine, the more sleep benefits we reap.
Caffeine is a chemical that binds to neuroreceptors (a1 receptors) in our brains and blocks them. This stops an important sleep chemical (adenosine) that our body generates increasingly throughout the day from binding to those same a1 receptors. Thus, caffeine is a cock-block to sleep. The way we individually deal with caffeine is variable and some of us will be more tolerant than others. Thus, it's good to experiment and work out when during the day you should stop drinking copious amounts of caffeine (whatever the medium; coffee, tea, coke, etc).
Blue Light Filters
I’ve recently started using anti-blue light glasses in the evenings a few hours before I’d normally go to bed. This is because light can impact another sleep hormone called melatonin.
Typically melatonin levels build up throughout the day and peak around night time and this makes us fall asleep naturally. However, blue light within the light spectrum has a way of impacting melatonin levels. It does this in a manner that is worst compared to other colours in the light spectrum. Blocking out light completely at night is most ideal, but this is immensely difficult in the world we live in. So, naturally, we base our focus on blue light. Blocking out blue light, particularly at night, by means of blue light settings on devices (the thing that makes the screen go all mad yellow) and anti-blue light glasses can really help preserve those melatonin levels that help us fall asleep.
Skin and Oral Routine
Something about a splash of water on the face and minty mint teeth that makes me feel ready for bed. It goes without saying that having a routine helps us perform any task regularly in life and this is true also when it comes to sleep. Performing this daily routine puts an end to my "day" and allows my body to enter "sleep mode".
Side note - if you don't regularly brush your teeth at night, you might want to visit your dentist with urgency. Lol.
Meditation
This might be the single best thing I've started doing in recent years. The only way I can describe it is as freezing time. When I meditate, all other matters become non-urgent or non-existent. The one million and one thoughts in my head pause and I can truly focus on my breathing, posture, and body. It's like the vortex/turbine/propellor in my head is finally tamed and I can "chill out" for once in my day.
For me, meditating is a very neat method of getting into sleep mode. I use the balance app and follow a daily guided meditation programme. Once I've meditated for 5-10 minutes there are very few things in my mental head space and thus it's easier for me to fall asleep without ruminating so much about non-urgent things. It also calms and relaxes my body.
Meditating before bed has been a game-changer!
Environment
I write about this last but it should easily come above all else. Your sleeping environment will have an immediate impact on your sleep. Too hot or too cold, we struggle to sleep. Too firm or too soft a pillow, we struggle to sleep. So many factors like these impact our ability to get a good night's sleep and so easily one of the highest yield tasks should be to redesign our sleeping environment. That is to ensure your bedroom is perfect for your sleeping needs. I've personally focussed on temperature, pillow firmness, noises, and light.
Tieing into this idea of the environment is the old saying, "don't sh*t where you eat". All this really means is we should try our best not to work from our beds or watch Netflix in bed. Two activities I've commonly done in the past and two activities that have actively prevented me from sleeping. The lines become blurred when we start doing non-sleep activities in bed and this doesn't help in building an ideal sleeping environment.
So there are the five things I do for my beauty sleep routine. I'm always trying to improve my sleep after reading Why We Sleep by Mathew Walker. Sleep is often undervalued but the science and research stands to show the immense power of good regular sleep. Not only does it make us happier, more productive humans but it also benefits longevity and health in old age.
Quote of the week:
Perfection is not important, just keeping going is all that matters.
(Happy - Derren Brown)
Question of the week:
What techniques have you found beneficial in improving your sleep?
That’s all for this week - be safe, be happy!
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