Intentional Stress Challenge: Optimize Your Sleep

Progressive challenge series to improve sleep habits and overall routine. Sleep hygiene refers to a set of practices anyone can consider and often control to enhance sleep.

Sleep Habits

There is nothing more important for recovery than sleep. Proper nutrition is a close second followed by active recovery during waking hours. Everything else is significantly less important. 

Mental and physical health are best managed first, and foremost, with adequate sleep.

I recently made an intentional stress challenge post focused on sleep timing. While knowledge on your unique, optimal time windows for sleeping is empowering, overall sleep quality can still be compromised by many other factors such as illness, injury, children, work, or emergencies.

Sleep hygiene is a newer term that encompasses habits and routines around sleep. Even when timing is compromised, there are still many variables under our control.

Dr. Matthew Walker has become the primary public-facing scientist on all things sleep hygiene and for good reason. He’s incredibly knowledgeable and well-spoken on research, tools, and strategies to optimize sleep. On his podcast or in his book, Why We Sleep, he refers to Quantity, Quality, Regularity, and Timing (QQRT) as the primary set of factors one should consider when wanting to improve sleep hygiene.

Quantity refers to the ideal amount of time we need to sleep. General guidance suggests the majority of adults need somewhere between six and ten hours of sleep. Dr. Walker’s favorite answer to the question of how much sleep do most people need is, “about ninety minutes more…” Most people are under-slept.

Quantity of sleep, however, doesn’t really matter without quality. 

Quality refers to our ability to progress through and spend adequate time in the different phases of sleep, particularly deep sleep and rapid eye movement (REM). Many habits and substances negatively impact sleep quality. One best practice is to stop consuming anything other than water ninety minutes before bedtime. 

An important aspect of sleep quality efficiency. Fragmented sleep where one is intermittently waking up throughout the night significantly compromises quality regardless of hours spent in bed. Trips to the bathroom, mouth breathing, poor ergonomics, and distractions from our nearby devices are all detrimental to sleep quality. Another best practice is discontinuing use of technology at least 30-60 minutes before bedtime and keep devices away from your bed.

A fantastic place to practice nasal breathing is at rest! Slow, controlled breaths in and out of the nose, with focus particularly on extended exhales, promotes parasympathetic nervous system activation and helps the body enter into sleep. 

Regularity refers to consistency in the time we go to bed and wake up. Ideally, we fall asleep and awaken without an alarm within 30 minutes of a particular time every night and morning. This is arguably the most important aspect of a sleep routine. Finding a stable bed and wake time, maybe with the initial use of an alarm, influences our natural circadian rhythms to optimize quality of sleep during established time periods. 

Plasticity for sleep.

Timing is what my previous post was all about. While we all have a specific sleep chronotype or sleeping time window that is optimal for our genetics, regularity in any time period is a way to influence our predisposition. 

Get the best possible recovery during sleep that your current life allows by considering controllable aspects within the QQRT framework.

Tools for optimizing sleep:

• Regularity is paramount: Consistently going to bed and waking up at the same time will influence sleep quality and quantity.

• Darkness: At least an hour before bed begin to dim lights or decrease exposure to bright light. Exposure to sunlight or bright lighting in the morning helps you wake up naturally.

• Temperature: Keep it cool. Preference may vary but temperatures at or below 68 degrees Fahrenheit are ideal. Warm showers in the evening can also help encourage thermoregulation and naturally cool your body down as you fall asleep.

• Move: If unable to fall asleep within twenty minutes, get out of bed. Don’t start consuming food, beverages, or technology, but find a distraction like reading until you become sleepy. Condition your mind to associate your bed with sleep.

• Mindfulness regarding consumption: Alcohol, caffeine, and cannabis have detrimental aspects to sleep quality. Cut caffeine ten hours prior to sleep. Alcohol and cannabis consumption inevitably impact sleep quality. Consider tradeoff and prevent habitual consumption whenever possible if optimal recovery during sleep is your goal.

• Stress reduction: Practice strategies to decrease rumination and lying in bed thinking about anything in past, future, or current difficulty sleeping. Remove visibility of clocks and phones to prevent unnecessary stress. Visualization of a walk or calm experience has been supported by the research of Allison Harvey. Progressive muscle relaxation is another effective method. My personal strategy is counting long nasal exhales. If I can count to 100, I get up until I’m more tired.

The stress in the following challenges will come from habit modification around sleep, particularly the breaking of detrimental habits.

Sleep optimization be the most impactful change in your life relating to your energy, focus, stress levels, performance, and health.

Delaying gratification eventually adds life satisfaction even in relation to the habits you’re modifying. 

Create objective and subjective benefit by challenging yourself now.

---