Sleep better

“Sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day – it’s mother nature's best effort yet at contra-death.” – Matthew Walker

Quality sleep in an integral part of physical and mental restoration, assisting better performance the next day.

Publishing over 100 scientific papers on sleep, Dr. Matthew Walker is a professor who examines the impact of sleep on human brain function in healthy and disease populations. Most damning, Dr. Walker's research has found that routinely sleeping less than 6 hours a night can increase your risk of cancer by 50%. Additionally, after just one night of less than 5 hours of sleep, natural killer cells (which fight cancer cells) drop by 70%. Amazing what a good night’s sleep really does and also helps prevent.

We often jump up to our alarm lunging at the kettle for that morning coffee, before zooming through our daily tasks without a moment to think twice. We don't want to be late we think as our mood, energy, memory and judgement is delegated to the power of our next coffee rather than the restoration sleep innately provides us. However, it's not all doom and gloom. It’s likely you’ve had all-nighter or been a new parent where your sleep became so broken you barely had a good sleep cycle in a night; an average person will usually have 4 or 5. The opportunity for us is to place key practices in our daily habits to ensure that whatever sleep time you have, it's of high quality and as consistent as possible.

Ideally, our bodies would awake with a spike of cortisol upon sunrise and relax and wind down around sunset in sync with the circadian rhythm. However, the sleep we get usually represents 30% of our day and has been trending downwards in total quantity and quality as a society. Even those who seek to be their best and fit 'more' in their day would typically allow sleep to be one of the first elements of wellbeing they compromise (that was me too). Late bedtime, earlier alarm, you get this gist. What about if more sleep, with more effective days is the answer? Maybe you wouldn't need that second, third or fourth coffee too.

Based on research and accessibility, below are the key tips anyone can implement when it comes to having the best natural sleep you can:

1. Routine! Go to bed at the same time every day. Set the time around other daily activities so there is less variance. Interestingly, like another habit; choosing a sleep time makes it far more likely you will actually do it.

2. Eliminate any noise or sounds. Is your room dark and quiet? If not, block all the light and consider earbuds or more sophisticated sleeping tools.

3. Set your room temperature to cool. Ever wondered why it's harder to sleep when exposed to hot summer nights? It turns out that your process of sleeping only occurs when your body temperature drops a couple of degrees. A hot shower in the evening can help with this process as your body works cooling you down and into an ideal state for harmonious rest.

Ever since beginning my life in the corporate world, I was personally proud of my 4:20am alarm clock, which would allow me to execute a debilitating workout before my workday, every day. This would often compromise my energy and efforts of other parts of my day, regardless of my other habits to support energy production.

By consciously adopting the key behaviours above, I have been to have higher quality sleep, while extending my alarm clock slightly later gave me more rest to execute a more effective workout in less time. This longer rest almost immediately showed better deep sleep on my tracking devices, allowing me to create more energy which importantly didn't compromise any key goals for activity for my day. This should remind us all to serve our bodies so they can serve us.