Fixing your sleep - notes from Huberman podcast #1

One of the most consistent things my parents have is their routine. What they do everyday, at what time they do those; Eating, taking a walk, watching TV, or sleeping. For as long as I have known them, they go to bed at same time almost every day and irrespective when they go to bed, they are up by 5:45 am in the morning. Breakfast at 9am, lunch at 1pm as the hour strikes and supper at 8:45pm.

Though I do not like the late supper, I admire them just being consistent with this routine every single day.

That is one thing I have been struggling all my life - to have a consistent daily routine. Most worrying part of that is not having a consistent sleep routine. it's very erratic, to say the least. One day I go to bed by 10pm and up by 5am. One day I sleep at 1am and wake up by 8:30am.

So, when I saw the book title "Why we sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams" by Mathew Walker, I got intrigued. I started reading it. It's a great book and I think everyone who sleeps and wants to sleep must read it.

As my curiosity with sleep continued, I stumbled upon Andrew Humberman's podcast on YouTube. In this no-nonsense podcast, he gives some of the tools anyone can use to develop a good sleeping habit.

I am trying to summarize them here for my future self, in case he will not have learnt to develop a good sleep routine yet.

Critical Parts of the day

He divides each day into 3 parts. What you do within each part has an effect on amount and quality of the sleep

  • Early morning hours (hours soon after you wake up)
  • Throughout the day and afternoons -
  • 7:00 pm to throughout the night (including sleeping time)

Next question is what do to during these three parts of the day

Hour after waking up

  • Go out and get good bright sunlight (not through the window, not wearing sunglasses)

  • Focus on increasing the core body temperature

    • Taking a cold water shower
    • Some exercise - joging, skipping etc.

  • If you are into drinking coffee, better to drink it during this period. Especially before 3 - 4pm in the afternoon

  • Eat a light a breakfast. Eating too much cuases one to become lazy as body has to specnd more energy to digest the food

Throughout the day and afternoon

  • Not good to take too much of bright sunlight at these hours
  • Eating an exercising (full blown) would be good during this time than duing evening

Evening and throughout the night

  • Watching sunset signals the brain "it's time to go to bed". We can see why. For most part of human evelution, there was not much artifical bright lights available to us after sunset. Fire and moonlight do not have any same brightness an effect as artifical light or sunlight
  • Taking a hot/warm water shower. Thsi will hepl the body to dissipate heat and reduce core body temperature. This is essential to fall asleep
  • As far as possible, do not use overhead/ceiling lights. Lights below the eye level are fine (for reason, watch the podcast ;-) )

From my personal experience, below activities also help one fall asleep sooner

  • not eating too late in teh evening, keeping a gap of 2 to 3 hours from last meal and sleep time
  • not using digital gadgets (even with all the blue light masking etc.) during evening
  • reading books (dull ones especially)
  • meditation, praaaNaayaama etc.
  • a relaxed walk helps me some times

Conclusion

I might have missed some points from podcast intentioanlly or unintentionally. I would rather watch the podcast for more details on why some of these tools actually work, what's the science behind them etc.

With these tools in my bag now, I am going off to bed and get some good night's sleep! Hope you do too.

When you wakeup, let me know in the comments what you think about this, and if you have some tools in your toolkit that helps to fall and stay asleep easily