Episode 142. The Ultimate Guide to Improving Your Sleep
The Ultimate Guide to Improving Your Sleep
Episode 142. The Ultimate Guide to Improving Your Sleep
Download your free Sleep Checklist here.
This week on the podcast we talk all things sleep!
Getting a good night's sleep is essential for both physical and mental health. During sleep, our bodies repair and regenerate, and our minds process and consolidate memories. Inadequate sleep can lead to various adverse health consequences, including an increased risk of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Inadequate sleep can also make it harder for you to achieve your goals whether that is weight loss, weight management, muscle gain or optimal cognitive performance and focus.
Join us for this episode as we explore various methods to improve your sleep and ultimately your well-being.
As always thank you for your support and engagement, it means the world to us!
Enjoy.
Download your free Sleep Checklist here.
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Transcript
Speaker 1
What is up, everybody? Welcome back to yet another episode of the in situ Health and Fitness podcast. Sorry to interrupt everybody, but in the intro coming your way in a few seconds, I forgot to mention there is a free PDF with this episode. This episode is all about sleep and why it is so important for you to achieve your goals.
00:00:30:02 - 00:00:50:23
Speaker 1
Live a long, happy life and just wake up every morning ready to leave your best life. We go over a lot of info in this podcast. So to save you time, writing down notes, and Listening again, we've just made a super simple sleep checklist for you to download for free, 100% free. We just want you to get the best night's sleep possible so you can go out and achieve your goals.
00:00:51:00 - 00:01:27:05
Speaker 1
So make sure you download that checklist now. It will be in the show notes. And as always, thanks for your support. Let's get back to the episode real quick, everybody, before we get into today's episode, I just want to take a second and thank every single one of you for all your love and support of this show. We have been getting a lot of comments, questions and conversations coming out of all these podcasts and new people listening so that wouldn't be happening unless you guys weren't sharing, liking and commenting on every way you listen to the podcast, YouTube, all that sort of stuff.
00:01:27:05 - 00:01:47:10
Speaker 1
So again, thank you very much. Podcast do generally grow from word of mouth. So if you get something out of this, I know that you probably have a friend or family member that's going to get something out of it as well. So just copy the show link. Send it to them. It takes about 5 seconds and they're going to improve their health and wellness as well and they can.
00:01:47:10 - 00:01:53:04
Speaker 1
Thank you for doing that. Last week's episode, I spoke about how I was starting to give up caffeine.
00:01:54:08 - 00:01:54:20
Speaker 2
Give up.
00:01:55:04 - 00:02:10:03
Speaker 1
Give up or try to cut back. So I am. But today, or if you're watching on YouTube, you can see that I am actually drinking a coffee. I'm half way through and I'm buzzing, so we better get this done before I have a bit of a coffee crash.
00:02:10:05 - 00:02:20:01
Speaker 2
You're not going to have a coffee crash. Don't think about it like that. Okay? Clearly, I haven't even tried to give this pain so good.
00:02:20:10 - 00:02:28:12
Speaker 1
It is. But also, it's good to give up those sort of things. Anyway, caffeine does come into today's topic.
00:02:28:20 - 00:02:52:06
Speaker 2
It does. I have been wanting to talk about sleep for since we got to Melbourne because since we got to Melbourne, my sleep has been ruined. I just to put it in perspective I guess of why sleep is so important to me and why it's so important, but why I'm so sensitive. So my sister is coming to visit on the weekend.
00:02:52:06 - 00:03:11:19
Speaker 2
I think she's very unorganized. We are the opposite personality types, right? Do you agree? And I said to her, Just make sure that you pack your sleep mask and your earplugs so that you get a good night's sleep and you're not grumpy the next day because we're going to hang out and we fight a lot. And I don't want to be grumpy and I don't want to be grumpy, so we're going to have a good time.
00:03:12:02 - 00:03:12:23
Speaker 1
I'm busy that day.
00:03:14:06 - 00:03:27:22
Speaker 2
And she goes, Do you even know me? I sleep in the back of my ute in the middle of the bush, wherever it doesn't matter, I can go to sleep anywhere. And I was like, Oh, damn. Because me, I'm literally like the definition of the Princess and the pea.
00:03:28:07 - 00:03:32:19
Speaker 1
But I but there's a difference between sleeping in the bush and sleeping in the city.
00:03:33:12 - 00:03:57:10
Speaker 2
Yeah, there's obviously different noises, but like historically, she's been able to just sleep wherever, whereas me, any slight little change just really, really ruins things for me. Like, it really upsets me. So I thought that we would use today's episode to talk about how you can improve your sleep from starting in the morning, the evening, and the actual room and the night.
00:03:57:17 - 00:03:58:10
Speaker 2
Yeah, right.
00:03:59:13 - 00:04:33:08
Speaker 1
Let's touch on more first because even of noticed, I've been starting to work for a lot of different coaches and trainers and all that sort of stuff. And even they sacrifice sleep to work more. And yes, I think there's periods where, yes, it's beneficial to sacrifice sleep to work more if you're chasing goals, trying to accomplish something, But over the long term, you're actually causing so much damage to your body without you realizing that it's going to shorten your life by a lot.
00:04:33:15 - 00:05:00:05
Speaker 1
And that's what this whole podcast is about Improving the longevity. So how long you live, but not only how long you live, the quality of that life. So there's not much point living to 100. If you spend 20 years in a hospital bed. Yeah, or not be Now remember your friends and family. So the idea of this podcast is to teach everybody how to leave those later years but have a good quality life.
00:05:00:13 - 00:05:22:21
Speaker 1
And sleep is the most important thing when it comes to that. The most, if nothing else, compares to having good sleep. Again, one bad night's sleep here and there or a period isn't going to stuff up your whole life. But we're talking about tried and content. It's Simon's health and fitness. Yeah. Eating properly, eating well, eating healthy foods for a long lot.
00:05:22:22 - 00:05:33:03
Speaker 1
Your whole life is going to be more beneficial than only doing it for one year of your life. So yeah, what you think is a good why people should sleep.
00:05:34:17 - 00:05:40:08
Speaker 2
Well, evolutionarily speaking, we can't not sleep. Otherwise we would have figured out how to sleep less by now, right?
00:05:40:08 - 00:05:44:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's it. Like humans have evolved so much, but one thing hasn't changed.
00:05:45:02 - 00:05:46:01
Speaker 2
It's like we still need to.
00:05:46:01 - 00:05:49:23
Speaker 1
If we didn't need sleep as much as we did, we would have evolved out of it.
00:05:50:04 - 00:06:22:18
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think for the why, I think that there's obviously, aside from longevity, feeling good every day because a lot of people probably feel like low energy every day and maybe sleep is one of the things that they choose to look at. Like they would drink coffee and it's work and stress, it's whatever else. But also, I think a lot of our listeners probably have a goal like weight loss or muscle gain in mind, and sleep directly affects both of those.
00:06:23:06 - 00:06:44:07
Speaker 2
If you are trying to lose weight and you have poor sleep, why would anybody want to do that? If you're not sleeping enough, then it's a lot easier for you to become stressed. And if you're stressed, then your body is not going to help you facilitate weight loss. Right. Because it's got it's trying to protect you from any danger that might come like a lion famine, being able to run away.
00:06:44:07 - 00:07:02:08
Speaker 2
And you need energy to do that. So sleep is a huge part in weight loss that I think is often overlooked. And then same from also games. Like if you're trying to build muscle, you need to get enough sleep so that your muscles can recover and repair, so you can train again the next day or the day after as hard.
00:07:02:18 - 00:07:03:09
Speaker 2
Yeah, right.
00:07:03:11 - 00:07:04:03
Speaker 1
Yeah, exactly.
00:07:05:16 - 00:07:16:00
Speaker 2
And the other thing that I think is a good what to consider sleep is like your hormone health, which I really talk about that much because why don't we talk about it.
00:07:16:05 - 00:07:32:00
Speaker 1
Which I feel like we do talk about it. It's just sometimes people hear the word testosterone or and get a bit lost or like, Oh, that's a bad word. So they start to tune out. But it's you need healthy levels of hormones to live a healthy life.
00:07:32:03 - 00:07:32:09
Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:07:34:06 - 00:07:47:05
Speaker 1
For guys and girls. Guys and girls both have testosterone and estrogen in their bodies. It's just different levels for females and males. But you need a high level of age just to be a functioning human and sleep directly affects it.
00:07:47:09 - 00:07:47:16
Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:07:48:01 - 00:07:59:02
Speaker 1
And like Max said, if you're trying to chase a muscle fat loss body record, whatever you're trying to do, even just trying to improve skills as well.
00:07:59:03 - 00:08:02:05
Speaker 2
Yeah, big piece of ability. Well, how did I forget that one?
00:08:02:18 - 00:08:04:06
Speaker 1
Sleep affects that.
00:08:04:13 - 00:08:04:21
Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:08:05:01 - 00:08:32:08
Speaker 1
So I remember back in the CrossFit days when I was heavily into it and handstand walking started coming into CrossFit a fair bit and then walking on your hands over obstacles. So gymnastics type stuff and a lot of CrossFit is would say there's a ten meter obstacle that you've got to walk through on your hands. They would do it a few times until they fatigued, then walk over to the corner of the gym and have a sleep.
00:08:33:06 - 00:08:34:06
Speaker 2
That's how you learn stuff.
00:08:34:09 - 00:08:58:12
Speaker 1
Yeah. So the body actually while you're sleeping, your body, your brain learns the new skill, it dumps everything else. It thinks about it in the background So you can wake up and you've actually learned the skill a lot faster. So then they'll go do it again. Yeah. So I thought that was quite interesting. As I saw the first time I realized that, you know, in a practical way you can use sleep to learn a new skill.
00:08:58:14 - 00:09:25:09
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's just very overlooked because if you're trying to learn a new skill or even learn something, a lot of the time people will sit up on their computer, reading, learning, trying to understand it, where if you just did a little bit to, you know, get mental fatigue, have a sleep, your body, your brain will absorb all the info, put it in the background, put it in the harddrive, and then you can wake up and go again.
00:09:25:20 - 00:09:50:23
Speaker 2
Yeah, but also something that I heard recently that's very interesting on this exact point is, you know how we always tell everybody to go to sleep at the exact same time every day. If you don't go to sleep within, I'm pretty sure it was an hour. It could have been less within your normal bedtime. Then once it's passed, I say you go to sleep at 9:00 and then you go to bed at 1030.
00:09:51:11 - 00:10:16:13
Speaker 2
If that day was a heavy learning day for you, then the chances of you consolidating any of the information you learned that day are almost non-existent just by pushing back your bedtime an hour later. Because that process of you consolidating the information at that time happens best when it happens at the same time every day. So if you change the time that it happens, then you're likely going to lose a lot of stuff that you want.
00:10:16:20 - 00:10:18:23
Speaker 2
When I heard that, I was like, Oh my God.
00:10:19:20 - 00:10:20:20
Speaker 1
I need to get to bed now.
00:10:21:01 - 00:10:36:02
Speaker 2
Quickly because I spend so much time learning stuff at uni. And then if I do that, then I it's not that it's a waste because I can still revisit it, but the potential and the learning capacity obviously isn't there yet.
00:10:36:13 - 00:11:02:09
Speaker 1
And bringing it back to all these changes and everything that I was talking about before. So one guy I know closes the gym and then opens it, so it closes at nine. So he's out of there by 9:15, but then it opens at 545. So he's there, you know, 20 to 6. So by the time you get home, relax, go to sleep and then wake up again.
00:11:03:06 - 00:11:05:19
Speaker 2
Like you did that for like three days by when you had a.
00:11:05:19 - 00:11:32:10
Speaker 1
Gym, right? Yeah, Again, I did that when I had a gym, but that was again, there's periods of time where that is necessary. But it's also I'm just thinking about it like in a way of if you're a painter, you want to remember, understand, learn new things, communicate properly with your clients. If you're doing that. Looking back on what period of doing that now, like I could have accomplished a lot more in that period if I had of.
00:11:33:07 - 00:11:36:23
Speaker 2
Sacrificed one class like giving up night classes or something. Yeah.
00:11:36:23 - 00:12:03:13
Speaker 1
So I ran classes until 9:00. I think it was if I had have just random 2:08 a.m., I would have lost one class and a little bit of income. But the the benefit of getting that bit extra sleep would have improved my ability to run business properly. Yeah. So and in but it's only looking back on that that I can learn from that unfortunately in the time if somebody had said that I can't get it, I don't know, I've got to do that one extra class.
00:12:03:14 - 00:12:16:00
Speaker 1
Yeah. So but it's just like there's a lot of people caught up in that situation where, you know, they might what some people might be doing it for years on end.
00:12:16:03 - 00:12:17:19
Speaker 2
Yeah. And their whole life.
00:12:17:20 - 00:12:27:17
Speaker 1
And they get stuck in that rhythm of doing it. And the thing is, your body will adapt to anything, anything good to learn. You get.
00:12:27:20 - 00:12:29:16
Speaker 2
Going. There's no K in there.
00:12:29:17 - 00:12:46:10
Speaker 1
Give you body will adapt to anything that you throw at it. So if you're constantly fatigued, your body will adapt to that and use that as a new norm. So you don't actually realize you're fatigued because your body's just adapt to it.
00:12:46:12 - 00:12:46:18
Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:12:47:01 - 00:13:04:14
Speaker 1
So it will adapt to any stress that you throw at it. So unfortunately people that get in the cycle of not sleeping properly, yeah, they'll be fatigued for a couple of months, but after a couple of months and body's just running on whatever they sleep, they're given it. But you're not running an optimal level.
00:13:04:15 - 00:13:04:21
Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:13:06:00 - 00:13:26:17
Speaker 1
So again, it's very important to realize that sometimes it's very hard to realize it in the time. But do your best to use these tips that we're about to go over and just think about your life now and how you can improve it. Sometimes you might have to sacrifice some things you don't want to give up. Yeah, to improve your sleep.
00:13:27:01 - 00:13:29:11
Speaker 1
But by doing that, you're going to improve your life.
00:13:31:11 - 00:13:37:01
Speaker 2
Okay, Should we start in the morning? Because a good night's sleep starts in the morning, right?
00:13:37:07 - 00:13:38:11
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yep.
00:13:39:00 - 00:14:16:12
Speaker 2
Okay. My biggest thing and biggest thing, the biggest takeaway that I want you guys to take from today is that you should always, always, always try and go to sleep at the same time and wake up at the same time every single day. So that starts by getting up at the same time each morning. And every time we say this to anyone, we know that like I have at the weekend, like I've got times I'm going to sleep in on the weekend and I get it like we used to do that sometimes I still want to do that, but trust me when I say Monday morning, Tuesday morning, Wednesday morning is going to be a
00:14:16:12 - 00:14:34:20
Speaker 2
lot easier for you to get up. If you still get up early on Saturday and Sunday morning. It doesn't have to like you can let it like, I don't know, half an hour to an hour sleep, pain maybe, but anything more than an hour, you're doing yourself a massive disservice in trying to get up early on Monday. Right.
00:14:36:14 - 00:14:56:17
Speaker 2
And then the other thing for the morning that I think is the most important is getting sunlight, which we usually talk about all the time. But I don't know what happened. We stopped talking about it. You go through phases, I suppose, but as soon as you get up as close to getting up as you can, you want to get morning sunlight in your eyeballs, but look directly at the sun.
00:14:56:22 - 00:15:15:05
Speaker 2
Just go outside. You can do it through a window. It's not as effective. You need a lot more time in the light to get the same benefits as what you do as just going outside. But getting morning sun is going to help signal to your brain and your body that it's the morning the day is about to start.
00:15:15:06 - 00:15:28:19
Speaker 2
We need to be focused. We need to have enough energy for the next 12 hours. And it just sort of gets things going. It puts your circadian rhythm in a good flow so that you can sleep better.
00:15:29:03 - 00:15:29:10
Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:15:30:00 - 00:15:30:18
Speaker 2
What am I missing?
00:15:31:01 - 00:15:50:01
Speaker 1
No, I was going to say that it literally sets your circadian rhythm. Yeah. So getting out and getting sun into your eyes set as skating rhythm for the day, which is very important for the afternoon. And just one thing on the waking up time. So yes, wake up at the same time, roughly the same time on the weekends.
00:15:50:01 - 00:15:58:04
Speaker 1
But we're not saying don't go out like night if we're not saying that you should never go out again. So you can get up at the same time, because I.
00:15:58:04 - 00:15:58:19
Speaker 2
Would happily do that.
00:15:59:21 - 00:16:09:12
Speaker 1
Yet you should still have a social life. You still go out and see friends do things, but even if you go to bed later than your normal bedtime, still try and wake up at the same time.
00:16:09:12 - 00:16:12:07
Speaker 2
Yeah, because you have a nap later on in the day, right? Yeah.
00:16:12:14 - 00:16:34:16
Speaker 1
So it's going to be hard or especially in those times when you've missed your bedtime by a couple of hours or whatever it is to still get up at that time. But do your best to get up at that time because it's going to like max it. It's going to help with the circadian rhythm. It sets everything. So make sure you get up, even if you're super groggy and all that sort of stuff.
00:16:34:16 - 00:16:39:14
Speaker 1
Get up still and then go for a walk, get a bit of sun, and then if you need to go, have not.
00:16:39:23 - 00:16:40:06
Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:16:41:10 - 00:16:41:23
Speaker 1
But get up.
00:16:43:08 - 00:17:04:12
Speaker 2
With the getting up thing. The best products that I think we have bought like now we've been getting up at the same time for so long we just wake up and if we don't wake up Rolo, the dog wakes us up from his breakfast because they're schedule is like tight, right? But the best thing that we've bought to help us get into the rhythm of waking up is a sunrise lamp so you can set it.
00:17:04:12 - 00:17:31:19
Speaker 2
So you want to wake up at 5:30 a.m., you can set the alarm for 530 and from about five 5:10, the lamp will gradually get lighter. It's like a soft boom light. So it's meant to imitate the sunrise. And then at 530, if you're not a white, get by the light, the alarm will go off. But I will say that being woken up by this sunrise lamp feels so much better than an alarm.
00:17:31:23 - 00:17:50:20
Speaker 2
Yeah, like you just because it's light, you just. You all of a sudden you're awake and you're like, Oh, okay, I'll get up. Whereas when it's an alarm, it's like, Yeah, crap, get up. And you're like, in a rush and you're stressed immediately. Yeah. Whereas the sunrise lamp, it just you wake up usually at the end of a cycle of a sleep cycle, I should say.
00:17:50:20 - 00:17:55:18
Speaker 2
So you're going to have a lot more energy. You're going to feel a lot more alert in the morning. It's going to be a lot easier to get out of bed.
00:17:56:19 - 00:18:20:01
Speaker 1
So I've been saying sleep alarms in on advertise me on social media a lot lately. I don't know if they've just come back around or did they ever come around or not. But we've yeah, we've had it for ages. Even when I was working in the gym and doing those short sleep hours and all that sort of stuff, I always set my phone alarm just as a back up, but I never needed to because that's one big thing.
00:18:20:01 - 00:18:39:19
Speaker 1
A lot of people say, Oh, it might not wake me up, but I had the back up alarm on my phone and it I don't think I ever used it. There might have been one or two, but I had of years of doing it. The long arm has always worked me out. It's really effective, really good. And like Max said, it just works better with your sleep cycle.
00:18:39:20 - 00:19:02:08
Speaker 1
So that's I think that's a very important thing for people. Understand that you have a 90 minute sleep cycle, so through that 90 minutes you go from REM in deep and then back up to RAM and into light and you keep going up and down into those sleep cycles over 90 minutes. And if you get woken up by alarm, just go that in a deep sleep.
00:19:02:16 - 00:19:31:13
Speaker 1
Then it really stops up you circadian rhythm, even if you do get sunlight and all that sort of stuff, it stops it all up for the rest of the day and you feel like shit. So by waking up at the end of a sleep cycle, it's just so much better for your health, energy, wellbeing. You wake up ready to go special day rather than just feeling groggy and struggling to get out of bed so that there is a very good thing to have and very effective just for energy and mood and all that sort of stuff throughout the day.
00:19:32:07 - 00:20:02:04
Speaker 2
Just to clarify, circadian rhythm is basically just your body clock. Yeah, just I don't know, I feel like we spoke about in the past, but everyone's new around here now. Okay. So the next probably the last morning thing is delaying your caffeine. Were you waiting for this one? Yep. So we this is probably our most recent tool to the tool kit, I would say, in regards to sleep, and that is to delay having our coffee by least an hour and a half of waking in the morning.
00:20:02:19 - 00:20:27:06
Speaker 2
So that gives you enough time to for your body to naturally raise your cortisol levels so you naturally become alert. Whereas if you wake up and have a coffee, then you artificially raising your cortisol levels and then you're more likely to have a massive energy drop mid-morning or like in the afternoon, which a lot of people I feel like experience that need for a third coffee at like around 2:00.
00:20:27:18 - 00:20:52:23
Speaker 2
And that's probably because you had your coffee too early in the morning and now your body's like, okay, like we peaked so early, it's time to go to bed so early now, right? So it is extremely hard if you're used to getting up and having a coffee immediately, like so hard. But if you get up and go for a walk in the sun easy, you can in daylight by at least half an hour, 40 minutes, and you don't have to delight by an hour and a half immediately.
00:20:53:09 - 00:20:58:15
Speaker 2
You can work up to it. So you can start with 20 minutes and 30 minutes. Something is better than nothing, right?
00:20:59:18 - 00:21:19:00
Speaker 1
And a lot of people wake up and say, oh, I need that coffee straight away. And if you need that coffee, then you're addicted and you need to learn the difference between a need and a want, because that's going to affect you quite a lot because you don't need a coffee as soon as you wake up and no human does.
00:21:19:11 - 00:21:39:07
Speaker 1
So it's a wants and you just need to break that cycle and break that habit with getting up and going for a walk. If you really want to go extreme jumping the cow in a cold shower. I do. I did that this morning and it just feels like ten coffees at once. It's a very extreme way to do it.
00:21:39:07 - 00:21:53:14
Speaker 1
But, you know, there's again, there's no downside to having a cold shower. It's just very uncomfortable. But it it's ten times better than coffee in the morning. Yeah. And it helps you just light that process a little bit further. So, yeah.
00:21:54:05 - 00:22:15:01
Speaker 2
Before we move on, I think if you can exercise, we should bring exercise into it at some point. But if you can exercise in the morning, that's the best time to do it, because it also has a similar effect to like coffee and a cold shower in the way that it makes you more alert, gives you more energy for the day, and is a signal to your brain that we're doing stuff right.
00:22:15:17 - 00:22:38:13
Speaker 2
But obviously not everyone has that luxury of exercising in the morning. So I think also exercising at night or in the evening, if you can make it as early in the evening as possible. Right. Because exercising really close to your bedtime is going to make it very, very hard for you to fall asleep, because I forget one.
00:22:40:15 - 00:22:43:15
Speaker 1
Basically, just because you've just woken yourself up.
00:22:43:23 - 00:22:44:21
Speaker 2
By doing work at.
00:22:47:04 - 00:22:56:06
Speaker 1
Again, I don't really care as long as you get your work out in. It's sort of one of those trade offs. Again, like.
00:22:57:07 - 00:23:11:04
Speaker 2
It depends where you are in your sleep journey. Like if you've done a bunch of the stuff that we're talking about and you're just looking for like fine little details that you can change, maybe that's something to consider, but it's not one of the necessities like getting up at the same time every day.
00:23:11:07 - 00:23:28:14
Speaker 1
Yeah, if your goal is weight loss and you're a ten out of ten and you are 100% committed to that weight loss journey and you haven't had a chance to get your workout in for the day, no matter what the workout is, whether it's just a stretch or yes, you can stretch and do my ability to lose weight.
00:23:30:05 - 00:23:50:16
Speaker 1
But even if it's that, I'd rather you get that workout in because you're 100% committed to that goal. And again, it's only going to be for a short period of time. Yeah. So yeah, ideally in the morning. So we've actually got this on the topic of things to talk about. But for guys, there's a lot of research around it.
00:23:50:16 - 00:24:12:23
Speaker 1
For women, unfortunately there's not. And that's a topic we can talk about in the future, why there isn't studies for women and why women are never studied for performance type stuff. But that's light a topic. But I can assume it's the same for women. But this applies. Yes, a lot of the research is based around men, but I'm sure plus women as well.
00:24:13:06 - 00:24:30:19
Speaker 1
But whatever you want to achieve first, do it in the morning. So whatever your goal is, if your goal is weight loss, muscle gain, whatever it is working out or it could be some sort of work thing or whatever it is, there's a lot of research showed that doing it in the morning, you have more energy, especially for guys.
00:24:30:19 - 00:24:47:11
Speaker 1
The testosterone ends higher. Even if you're doing some sort of thinking. You want high testosterone. So doing all that sort of stuff in the morning is going to be more beneficial. You're going to have more energy. Your body just is built for performance in the morning. If you wake up properly.
00:24:47:18 - 00:24:51:06
Speaker 2
Yes, that's okay. Do you think that's all for the morning?
00:24:51:06 - 00:24:53:17
Speaker 1
BLOCK Yeah, I think I've carried on. I'm not in the morning.
00:24:54:16 - 00:25:07:08
Speaker 2
Okay. I'm going to say like midday. There's not much here. But the one thing I think to consider midday, if you want to have a good night's sleep, is not having coffee or any caffeine. That includes.
00:25:07:11 - 00:25:08:11
Speaker 1
Caffeine, green.
00:25:08:11 - 00:25:29:15
Speaker 2
Tea, English breakfast, tea, energy drinks, energy drinks. What else? I don't know. There's a bunch of stuff. Caffeine within 10 to 8 hours of going to bed. I don't roll your eyes. I can hear it. I can feel you guys rolling your eyes like whatever. I can have a coffee at 4:00 and sleep fine. You can't. I mean, you can.
00:25:29:20 - 00:25:30:13
Speaker 1
It's a lot.
00:25:30:13 - 00:25:33:15
Speaker 2
Of it's not a good quality night's sleep. Yeah, A lot.
00:25:33:15 - 00:25:37:19
Speaker 1
Of people say I can have a coffee and fall asleep. You can, but you're not actually sleeping.
00:25:37:19 - 00:25:47:16
Speaker 2
You're not sleeping. You're sleeping. But it's not. It's not a deep sleep. You're probably missing a lot of the REM in the deep sleep, which is what you want for a healthy brain and memory and longevity and all the things.
00:25:47:16 - 00:26:10:16
Speaker 1
And that every single study done on this proves that you're not special. Like you just don't sleep properly. Yes, you can fall asleep, but you're not sleeping properly. Everything. Like you go and look at the study yourself. You'll see that caffeine does affect your sleep no matter what. Like the study is there and it's very clear that that does affect your sleep.
00:26:10:16 - 00:26:16:04
Speaker 1
So it's not like it's a thousand or important or I can still fall asleep. It affects your sleep. Yeah.
00:26:16:15 - 00:26:17:01
Speaker 2
That's it.
00:26:17:07 - 00:26:42:01
Speaker 1
I yeah. The fact it's a very misunderstood thing and a lot of people think again, your body will adapt to anything you throw at it. So it's still going to sleep no matter how much caffeine is in your body, but it's just not very good sleep. And it's sort of a waste because you can do other things like eat properly, make sure you're hydrated, all that sort of stuff in the afternoon rather than going for that coffee to pick you up.
00:26:42:05 - 00:26:45:03
Speaker 1
Yet if you have the opportunity to jump in the couch again.
00:26:47:04 - 00:27:00:17
Speaker 2
Okay. The evening? Yeah. What time should what time would you say that you sleep? Routine starts in the evening. What's the first activity that you do? It's going to benefit your sleep.
00:27:01:04 - 00:27:03:22
Speaker 1
I try to get dinner sorted earlier.
00:27:03:22 - 00:27:35:14
Speaker 2
Yeah. I'm glad we were thinking the same thing. I mean, get cooked, but I'm there for moral support. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Obviously you want to obviously know what it's like to go to bed on a full stomach, right? Like eating a lot of food Makes you sleepy. Sure, But like going to bed when your body is trying to digest food just delays the your ability to actually fall asleep because there's a lot of stuff happening and you feel full and it might be slightly uncomfortable.
00:27:35:14 - 00:27:54:18
Speaker 2
And there's probably a lot of tossing and turning and stuff like that. So I'm pretty sure the recommended portion is 90 minutes to 2 hours before you go to bed. You should try and have your last big meal. So the next thing that you want to consider is minimizing the amount of light you are exposing yourself to. That means overhead light.
00:27:54:18 - 00:28:12:11
Speaker 2
That means screens, phones, any kind of light in your house. You want to try and minimize it as much as you can. So ideally you want to do your overhead lights or turn them off. If you can have like a lamp that's lower than eye level. So that's sort of the lower than eye level things signal to the brain that the sun set.
00:28:12:11 - 00:28:14:10
Speaker 2
Oh no, we forgot.
00:28:14:12 - 00:28:14:20
Speaker 1
What.
00:28:15:03 - 00:28:37:13
Speaker 2
Saying afternoon sunlight because same thing is the morning, afternoon sunlight is a different kind of yellow. So it signals to your brain that the sun's going down and we're going to start getting sleepy within a few hours anyway. That's that. That's enough of that. So then you've had dinner and now you want to get rid of as much light as you can, which is basically impossible.
00:28:37:17 - 00:28:41:19
Speaker 2
Yeah, right. You probably like Corbett. Yeah, I'm not going to do that. I don't want to be on my phone and watch Netflix.
00:28:41:19 - 00:29:04:00
Speaker 1
Yeah, I was just going to say like if you're watching on YouTube, you can see the pendant light here. It's because there's a lot above us. It sends light down obviously into your eyes, and that just signals to your body that it's the sun still up. So like Max said, if you can bring all the lights down, lights are lamps, all that sort of stuff on the benches or side tiles, all that sort of stuff, that's better.
00:29:05:19 - 00:29:27:10
Speaker 1
But yet, like you said, it's very impossible because you still want to sit there, relax, watch TV. You know, you might have to work or be on your screens, be on phones, whatever. So blue light blockers, we've been using them for five years. Yeah, at least. And they just blue light blockers. So all sorts of light, blue light.
00:29:27:13 - 00:29:46:12
Speaker 1
And that's the actual light that tells your body that the sun's up and, you know, get out there and chase some day where if you put the blue light blockers on, it does minimize how much blue light is coming into your body, whether you look at the screens or not. So it just sort of helps your body get into sleep mode.
00:29:46:16 - 00:29:51:23
Speaker 2
Okay. Glasses, by the way, you need to look. So they are glasses, I'm.
00:29:51:23 - 00:29:58:04
Speaker 1
Sure have to jump on our social media or somewhere to see a photo of us wearing blue light blockers somewhere along the.
00:29:58:04 - 00:30:14:09
Speaker 2
Line. Yeah, there are a lot on the market now because like we're so heavily on screens and things like that and you can get ones that have clear lenses, I don't know. I can't advocate for any good brands that have Cleland's ones that are as effective as the Orange Lens one.
00:30:14:10 - 00:30:23:03
Speaker 1
There's only one brand that has effective clear lenses, and I can't remember the name Felix Great. Felix Great. But I don't think we can get them in Australia.
00:30:23:05 - 00:30:27:06
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's right. Thanks, Mark. So you're going to look like a dork, but who cares?
00:30:27:12 - 00:30:56:16
Speaker 1
Yeah, I'm worth it 100%. Worth it. Sometimes your screen TV screens look a bit different because Blue makes up a lot of the colors that come out of his TV screen. So it does change the color of your screens a bit. But again, definitely worth it. I notice it like your eyes. It feels like your eyes. Just relax a little bit more when you put them on and they're not as squinty or they're not as they don't work as much because there are muscles in your eyes.
00:30:56:16 - 00:31:00:05
Speaker 1
So it's just gives them a chance to just relax before you go to sleep.
00:31:00:07 - 00:31:07:07
Speaker 2
And honestly, usually within half an hour or 40 minutes of me putting mine on, I feel like I could go to sleep.
00:31:07:08 - 00:31:08:02
Speaker 1
Yeah, definitely.
00:31:08:02 - 00:31:09:19
Speaker 2
It's almost like taking a medication.
00:31:09:19 - 00:31:14:17
Speaker 1
Yeah, right. So we'll do it about an hour before we go to bed. Yeah, Not like as.
00:31:14:17 - 00:31:15:01
Speaker 2
Soon as.
00:31:15:18 - 00:31:28:00
Speaker 1
There was a period where we were doing it as soon as the sun went down. But life gets very difficult when there's no blue light. Yeah, so we just do it about an hour before we go to bed now. And that seems to be just as effective for us anyway. Yeah.
00:31:29:00 - 00:31:44:17
Speaker 2
Okay. The only other things that I can think of for the nighttime routine is a hot shower, which signals which, just like, warms your body up and gets you ready for sleeping and gets you ready for, like, resting and recovering and digesting.
00:31:45:05 - 00:32:08:10
Speaker 1
So you go to think of it the opposite way. So by warming your body up, your core body temperature actually starts to cool down, to cool your body down because you've raised your body temperature. So by cooling your body, it gets it ready for sleep because you want to sleep in a cool environment. So that a lot of people get that mixed up and go like ice, bath or shower.
00:32:08:16 - 00:32:31:08
Speaker 1
But by cooling your body, it raises your body temperature, which by raising your body temperature wakes you up. Yeah. So again, it's a little bit opposite, but yeah, having like that's why you want to maybe sworn in the afternoon or ice bath in the morning for those people that do that sort of stuff. Try not to ice bath in the evening because it does wake you up.
00:32:33:20 - 00:33:15:21
Speaker 2
Okay. Before we get to the actual sleep tools in the bedroom, the one thing that I would say that I think everyone will benefit from, including you maybe, I don't know, but my brain's like, yeah, high energy when I go to lay down at night is just getting a journal and just writing down anything. So I've got a journal that I call my second brain and then I have a section for night time brain and anything that I think about that I have to do the next day, like messaging a client, paying a bill, checking in with this, replying to that email, anything at all, buying dishwashing tablets, anything that's on my brain.
00:33:15:21 - 00:33:33:03
Speaker 2
I'm like, Oh, I'll have to remember that for tomorrow. Write it down, because I know that, you know, when you go to bed, you think about all the things you didn't do that day and all the things you have to do tomorrow, and it just makes you agitated and restless. And it's just once you write it down, you know, Okay, something else has got it.
00:33:33:07 - 00:33:47:17
Speaker 2
I don't have to worry about it now because it's written down. I'm not going to forget it. It's going to be a reminder in the morning. I think that can help people fall asleep a lot. Yeah, because there's so much stress and so much to remember and so much to do when you're an adult.
00:33:48:01 - 00:34:12:02
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's probably one thing I struggle with the most. But I have recently watched the YouTube video that uses notes from the iPhone to organize your life. So organizing the notes. So it's very effective. So I'm going to try and start using that and just dump things that you need to do because yeah, it's again, life is very stressful and you don't want to take that to bed because it'll keep you up.
00:34:12:04 - 00:34:22:21
Speaker 1
Yes, it is. Sometimes you think you got it all out, but then you lay down and it's just like your brain. Just like, okay, this, this, this, this, this. So by journaling a little bit and just writing things out, well.
00:34:23:19 - 00:34:40:23
Speaker 2
I will say maybe you think you don't have anything to write down, but try turning the TV off 10 minutes before you go to bed and just sitting there. Because when you're bored, like when you're in the shower, you notice that you remember things that you need to do. And when you're about to go to sleep, you remember things that you need to do.
00:34:40:23 - 00:34:59:18
Speaker 2
Because really realistically think about that. The only two times in the day where you are not engaged in some sort of input, like you're not watching TV, you're not on social media, you're not talking, so you're bored. And that's when you think of all the things that you have to do. Like when I'm in a lecture sometimes and it's boring, I'm like, Oh shit, I got to do this.
00:34:59:18 - 00:35:17:01
Speaker 2
I got to go there, I got to do that. So just try and be bored 10 minutes before you go to bed and it'll help you get a lot of stuff out that is actually on your mind that you might not notice. Oh, okay. Tools for sleeping, Sleep mask. The best one I've found is mantra. I cannot sleep without it.
00:35:17:14 - 00:35:21:04
Speaker 2
It is literally attached to me. Jack doesn't have a sleep loss.
00:35:21:11 - 00:35:36:22
Speaker 1
But I'm saving up for good one because I can't. I sweat a lot. I is sweating, is just my superpower. And as soon as I put something on my face, I sweat even more. So I'm saving up for a mantra.
00:35:36:22 - 00:35:37:18
Speaker 2
So I may try.
00:35:37:18 - 00:35:38:16
Speaker 1
That as a cool.
00:35:38:16 - 00:35:45:22
Speaker 2
One. Yes. So you can get warm ones, cool ones, silk ones. If you're worried about pimples and like that mantra is we can probably link it below.
00:35:46:01 - 00:35:47:13
Speaker 1
This link in the.
00:35:47:13 - 00:36:10:20
Speaker 2
Notes. They're just the greatest. And then the other thing that I recently got because we moved to the city and it's we we now hear traffic and sirens and street races rather than the ocean, which is taking me a long time to adapt to. But earplugs. So I just got these loop plugs is the brand that they're pretty new company and they are amazing.
00:36:11:06 - 00:36:34:15
Speaker 2
We were using foamy like foam earplugs, like this construction once before. Oh yeah, it's so bad. And full out. Luna would eat them. That's really bad. I know. They just. They didn't even block that much sand. But these ones, it really nicely in your ear. You can even wear them like I've worn them just in the common area upstairs to drown everyone else out because they're annoying.
00:36:35:16 - 00:36:36:04
Speaker 2
But.
00:36:36:12 - 00:36:41:20
Speaker 1
But mantra do all in one. So a mask and sand.
00:36:41:22 - 00:36:43:00
Speaker 2
Yeah, but we haven't tried it.
00:36:43:00 - 00:36:49:12
Speaker 1
We haven't tried it. So once we do let you know. Yeah. So it's like a big mask. It goes over your head and.
00:36:49:22 - 00:36:50:20
Speaker 2
Cup of tea. It's.
00:36:51:07 - 00:36:52:01
Speaker 1
It's a Bluetooth.
00:36:53:00 - 00:36:53:13
Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:36:53:13 - 00:37:04:08
Speaker 1
It does have its own white noise. I don't know. Anyway, so pumped in what noise. So drowns out everything else. Excuse me. And blocks out all the lights.
00:37:04:08 - 00:37:04:14
Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:37:05:00 - 00:37:07:04
Speaker 1
We'll give those again. Let us know.
00:37:07:07 - 00:37:13:10
Speaker 2
And then just try and keep your room as cool and dark as possible. Yeah, I think that's it. Do you think we've missed anything?
00:37:13:10 - 00:37:25:15
Speaker 1
There's one thing that everybody does that's is probably the most simple thing you can do to get better sleep. And let's get the TV out of your bedroom. Oh.
00:37:26:02 - 00:37:30:15
Speaker 2
Right. And the fire in any device, anything electrical apart from the sunrise lamp.
00:37:30:15 - 00:37:43:03
Speaker 1
Yep. Get it out. Yeah. Put your phone out of the room. I know a lot of people. Look, I need to have the phone on me just in case of emergency. When was the last time somebody called you? During the night for an emergency that you could actually help with?
00:37:45:03 - 00:37:46:03
Speaker 2
Never in my life. Yeah.
00:37:46:08 - 00:38:00:11
Speaker 1
So get your phone out of the bedroom. You don't need it in there. If you need that alarm on your phone, it's even better because you can put the alarm outside the room. So you actually have to get out of here, walk to your phone and turn the alarm off so you're up ready to rock and roll for the day.
00:38:00:11 - 00:38:16:18
Speaker 1
So get your phone out of the room. Turn it, not turn your TV off. Get rid of the TV out of your room. I know there's one guy out there that listens to this and we have this conversation every time it comes up. I don't you don't need your TV to fall asleep if you need you to very full sleep, you're doing sleep all wrong.
00:38:16:23 - 00:38:33:05
Speaker 1
Get the TV every room just by having it playing in the background. And as you fall asleep, it is affecting your sleep more than you actually know. It might take you a couple of nights to get used to not having the TV in your bedroom, but get get it out. It will be better for you in the long run.
00:38:33:09 - 00:38:41:07
Speaker 2
You could try replacing the TV noise with like white noise on a speaker or something. If you want to like try and supplement it for a little while.
00:38:41:07 - 00:38:44:19
Speaker 1
Yeah, some of that even just playing our podcast in the background.
00:38:45:18 - 00:38:48:18
Speaker 2
No stone solving information.
00:38:48:20 - 00:39:03:03
Speaker 1
Just something in the background. Just add a speaker, not your phone, get the TV out of the room. I think that's TV out of the room. For those that have it in the room, get rid of your phone. I think that's probably the best place for people. Start.
00:39:04:16 - 00:39:07:10
Speaker 2
I mean, there's a lot of places people have been started getting so many tips.
00:39:08:16 - 00:39:26:02
Speaker 1
Yeah, we did. That's it. That's it. So I hope we did give a lot of tips. So make sure you go back and listen to this episode again, because we did ramble on about a few things. And as always, don't go and try and change everything at once because you're going to fail. So just do one tip until it becomes.
00:39:26:07 - 00:39:28:00
Speaker 2
Second nature to you. Yeah, it's.
00:39:28:00 - 00:39:46:19
Speaker 1
Just happening and then add in the next tip. So start off the easiest thing you can think of out of all those tips. Add that in and then just build from there. It's pointless just trying to add everything in because you're going to be stressed and that stress is going to stop you from sleeping and it's going to stop you from reaching your goals no matter what they are.
00:39:48:11 - 00:40:03:08
Speaker 1
And obviously you've made it this far, you've enjoyed it, you've got something out of it. So like I said at the start, share of some family member, friend, whoever, and they're going to get something out of as well and they're going to go, Oh, thanks for sharing that podcast. I'm sleeping so much better. My life. So much better.
00:40:03:18 - 00:40:04:06
Speaker 1
You're the best.
00:40:04:06 - 00:40:04:18
Speaker 2
Friendly now.
00:40:04:21 - 00:40:10:08
Speaker 1
He's a present. So could you share this podcast? Get a present for me, friend?
00:40:11:12 - 00:40:12:17
Speaker 2
No guarantees from us.
00:40:13:22 - 00:40:35:08
Speaker 1
Not come from us. But again, thank you all for sharing, giving us all the love comments, conversations out of these podcasts. We love chatting about these podcasts outside of them with you guys. So we're always here if you want to reach out. There's links below in the show notes. If you do want to reach out, have a moment and we'll see you all make.
