How to Sleep Better

Classification … LONGEVITY > #HEALTH, #HOWTO, #SLEEP, #ENERGY … (FULL SYSTEM) (REALITY SHIFT)
Overview … If you’re experiencing compromised sleep, you know the drill. It can include dozy during the day, wide awake at night, low energy, low drive, low progress. It can impair your day, your career, your love life. Bummer that. But … it can usually be improved …

And your body loves it, because you’re starting the day all relaxed, with plenty of energy, and it just feels good!

And—if that’s not the case each night for you—here are the things that science and poor sleepers have uncovered, which seems to help. In my case, when young, no problem. Drink coffee late at night, go to bed at any hour, sleep like a baby, and wake up kinda sluggish and groping for the coffeepot. But no problem with sleeping.

Older now, I find sleep needs a bit more intention. But these things worked for me, so maybe you’ll find some benefit. This is kind of a report, kind of an explaino about the different, and kind of a list. So you can try different items, and see what works for you.

Here’s the basic approach … Be tired and ready for sleep at end of day.
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1. Our bodies have BUILT-IN TRIGGERS. Our bodies are multi-generational clones of our ancestors. Many of our daily hormonal shifts we inherited. How their bodies reacted to events is how our bodies react.

2. LIGHT: The light our ancestors saw conditioned the onset of sleep—the reddish light of sunset then darkening. And the morning light they saw conditioned awakening and becoming alert—increasing light shifting from reddish to blue. These built-in triggers we can use: The light is something we can choose, and we can use it to fall asleep, and to wake up. It’s built in.

3. Our bodies LEARN. Just as you return home in the evening and reach for the light switch just beside your front door, your body reacts to events. So if you choose a fixed wake-up time each day, and a fixed sleep time each day, your body will learn it. And then both sleepiness and wakefulness begin to occur on the schedule you’ve chosen.

4. Things to AVOID:
   Eating food late in the day
   Consuming stimulating substances late in the day
   Exercising late in the day
   Taking naps late in the day
   Exciting, emotion-arousing activities late in the day
   Noisy, bright-lit, or harsh environment late in the day

5. Things to CHOOSE TO USE:
   Go to sleep at the same time every day; the body learns
   Have a regular evening “wind-down” routine; the body learns
   Eat sleep-inducing foods toward the end of your daily eating window
   Use relaxing substances (meds, supplements, teas) at bedtime
   Make your body cooler; it’s a sleep trigger
   Turn lights down and make them redder
   As needed, calm your mind

6. The simple key here: Make your body READY FOR SLEEP.
   

A good way to jumpstart sleep at the END of the day is INCREASE ACTIVITY DURING the day. Specifically, to (a) wake up briskly, and (b) get some exercise during the day. The brisk wake-up turns on hormonal triggers in addition to the morning’s bright light. The exercise during the day has many health and longevity benefits, but among them can be: triggering growth-hormone release the following night (used for repairing the body) and immune-system strengthening (used for immune-system functions) during the following night. Without a lot of explanation, as an example, here are the ones I’ve found useful …

• After a fixed wake-up time each day, my preferred routine is some cold-water splashes on face, neck, and head; then just a few brief taichi, stretching, and balance exercises to warm up muscles, lymph system, and joints; morning supplements and bulletproof, highly supplemented coffee; then feeding the crows and ravens outside, who raise a great clamor, showing me how to be enthusiastic. This also gives me some early-morning sunlight on my body, with a nice dose of blue light. All this jumpstarts the day’s “activity phase.”

• During the day, I have a few chores, cookery, or shopping, but most is sedentary at my desk. So I take brief, time-efficient, health-improving exercise of two kinds.
  (a) Heavy-duty stretchy bands (efficient and fast strength increase). These are called X3 Bands. I do 2-3 sessions of 5-10 minutes as breaks during my deskbound day. (In that brief exercise, I can hit muscle hypertrophy/fatigue and oxygen hypoxia/shortage, which are the triggers for strength increase, immune-system bolstering, and hormone upregulation).
  (b) Take a walk up the hill behind my house, or sometimes just around town, because it’s sunshine, fresh air, works the large leg muscles. Cardio is not the same longevity boost as resistance training, but it’s another super wake-up.

However, whatever wake-up routine you can install is good. Whatever exercise routine you can install is good. Regularity is the key, and you can always build it over time if you wish.

Avoid food, caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, and stimulants for at least 3 hours before bed. Digestion demands metabolic energy, and when your body’s working, that activity tends to turn up your metabolism, which means turning up your wakefulness.

Caffeine—including coffee, tea, chocolate, and some supplements are hidden caffein sources. In addition, some supplements are secret cranker-uppers. Some folks have reported that methylene blue tends to increase their wakefulness, and some folks report that chondroitin-glucosamine tends to increase wakefulness. I was taking both of those at night, so I simply changed them to the morning.

Even if you’re not a smoker, a vaper, and you don’t chaw tobaccy, realize that nicotine is another vasoconstrictor and waker-upper. As is creatine, a supplement used by body builders, but which is even more useful at increasing your brain’s energy levels, and so it’s a waker-upper too. (On this substack, another article tells how the strange trio of microdose pharma-grade nicotine, plus creatine, and caffeine are actually well tested as providing life-extension benefits … but take them in the morning, not at night!)

On ketogenic or carnivore or paleo or low-carb diets, many people notice more shallow sleep. That’s because cortisol—often called the stress hormone—has an important job to do. At night.

And cortisol’s natural rise at night isn’t a stress response. It’s a survival mechanism built into your circadian biology. It does several protective jobs while you sleep, and without it, you’d wake up groggy, inflamed, and metabolically impaired.

1. It rises at night to prevent “hypoglycemia” (low blood sugar). While you sleep, you’re fasting, but your brain still wants a steady supply of glucose. Cortisol’s job is to trigger a process of making glucose from stored sources, keeping your blood sugar stable, and fueling your brain during the night. (Without it you’d awake shaky, ravenous, irritable, or even get the night sweats.)
   The brain’s REM sleep-cycles require higher energy, because you may be asleep but your brain is highly active during REM (rapid-eye-movement) sleep, when we are most actively dreaming. The assistance from cortisol also helps the brain accomplish memory consolidation.

2. It suppresses nighttime inflammation, while your immune system is working harder to repair tissues, clearing debris, and fighting infections. Cortisol prevents the immune response from getting too boisterous … thus preventing excess inflammation … and preventing tissues from swelling up too much during renovations.

3. Cortisol helps regulate the sleep cycle itself. It’s part of the nightly transition between sleep states. It’s slow rise through the night helps you transition from the deep sleep toward lighter states, preparing the brain for waking. And cortisol coordinates with melatonin. (Melatonin rises to take you into sleep, then falls off during the night as cortisol rises during the night.)

4. Cortisol mobilizes energy for the early-morning activity. Our ancestors woke up to move—to hunt, to gather, to defend, to travel. Your body wakes up the same way, and the nightly cortisol helps you go a-hunting by releasing stored fat, increasing alertness in case there be tigers, primes muscles for action, and raises blood pressure slightly to prevent fainting when standing up. Good deal, that.

And the reason we’ve gone into cortisol’s job so much is that: Cortisol has important jobs to do that keep you healthy and safe. And on keto or low-carb diets, when there’s less carb in the daily grub, cortisol has to work a bit more … and this incidentally causes you to sleep lighter.

So, if you’re on keto or low-carb, you may discover that you’ll sleep better if you’ll want to consume some carb, either at the end of your waking day, before the 3-hour rule, or even when you’re about to go into your winding-down time. Not a lot of carb, mind you, but some. How much and when? You’ll have to experiment.

My preference is to have fruit toward the end of my daily eating window. I’ll have a couple dates and an orange. Or maybe an apple with peanut butter. Or maybe grapefruit and some raisins. Or maybe dark chocolate with some almonds. Any fats slow any blood-sugar pop. But many fruits have low glycemic indices and so pop the blood sugar very little. (For example, berries, apple, peach, pear, citrus fruits.)

I know two metabolic experts who recommend a teaspoon of honey before bedtime. I tried it. It does seem to improve sleep.

So, if you’re on a longevity diet—like the Wild Diet, the Bulletproof Diet, a Mediterranean or Blue-Zone or Valter Longo type of diet, then you’ll be getting some slow-converting carbs each day—not a huge amount—but they’ll be enough to stop excess cortisol at night, and promote a better sleep. Just move the carbs toward the end of your eating window to get the best downregulation of cortisol.

Cool beans, eh?

For the hour before bed, think “sensory retreat.” You’re training the nervous system to slow down.

• Dim the lights. Use lamps, candles, or red lighting. Avoid blue light from TV, phones, or fluorescent fixtures.

• Silence or soften noise. Try earplugs, a gentle fan, or white noise.

• Cool the body. Lower the temperature, wear fewer clothes, or open a window. Some people prefer a hot bath an hour before bed—when you step out and cool down, your body interprets that temperature drop as a cue for sleep.

• Comfort matters. A clean, quiet, dark room with good airflow sets the stage for success. Blackout curtains help remove any stray blue or white light from outside.

Your brain is essentially a vigilant animal; take away light, sound, and tactile input, and it stops hunting for threats—and finally rests.

Some supplements can enhance your natural sleep chemistry; others can sabotage it.

Helpful ones include …

• Melatonin: A direct signal of darkness, best taken in small doses (0.3–1 mg).

• 5-HTP or tryptophan: Precursors to serotonin and melatonin.

• Magnesium: Relaxing mineral; glycinate stirs your bowels less, and bisglycinate gives the best bang for the buck.

• GABA: A natural inhibitory neurotransmitter.

• Qualia Night and Monoia: Two brand-name blended formulas that combine sleep-focused herbs, minerals, and nootropics.

Supplements to avoid later in the day …

• Caffeine-containing formulas (including many “pre-workouts” and fat burners).

• High B-vitamin multivitamins or B12, which can be stimulatory.

• St. John’s wort, methylene blue, and possibly glucosamine/chondroitin, which for some can interfere with sleep.

Certain medications can also impair sleep—especially stimulants, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), beta-blockers, decongestants, and some asthma or blood-pressure drugs. Ask your doc. But he may not know. You may have to experiment.

Foods that may help sleep often contain melatonin, tryptophan, magnesium, potassium, or compounds like isoflavones and substances that build serotonin. These will work best for you if included late in your day’s eating window. (Or, if you are choosing to eat the not-recommended “bedtime snack,” then choose from these fine fellows.)

• Tart cherries or juice; pistachios, almonds, eggs, milk or yogurt, turkey, chicken, fish, edamame, pumpkin seeds, spinach, avocados, bananas, and sweet potatoes.

Foods that interfere with sleep contain things like caffeine, alcohol, tyramine (a trace amino acid), acidic foods, sugar, or heavy fats that can keep you alert. These are best avoided late in your day’s eating window. (Though it matters less if you’re avoiding foods within three hours of sleep to allow digestion-free sleep.)

• Coffee, tea, cocoa, dark chocolate, soda, alcohol, aged cheese, cured meats, spicy foods, citrus fruit, tomatoes, soy sauce, miso, sauerkraut, pizza, many sweets and refined carbs.
  

Intermittent-fasting days, compared to gobbling food all day long, will tend to bring on longer, deeper sleep. And if you do full-day fasts regularly, you’ll probably notice that, after acclimatizing, you’ll have good energy but you’ll probably experience cooler body temperature and fewer awakenings.

Hydration seems to be personal. My sweetheart avoids drinking water before bed, but not me. I keep a glass of water spiked with lemon juice and some Himalayan pink salt for el-cheapo electrolytes.

Try it both ways. See which way gives you the better sleep.

Several physical conditions can fragment sleep: high blood pressure, excess weight, sleep apnea, restless legs, or chronic pain. Addressing underlying causes—through diet, weight loss, or vibration-plate therapy for restless legs—can often help.

Environmental triggers deserve attention too. Mold exposure, electromagnetic fields, and chronic low light in daytime can all affect circadian biology. Getting morning sun and cleaning up your sleeping environment are inexpensive fixes.

Almost everyone wrestles at times with an overactive mind at bedtime. The solution isn’t to fight your thoughts but to redirect your focus. So let’s do a “reset.”

• Use the “Hold it at the Top” mind-calming exercise

• Use the “Twenty-Second Tune-Up” mind-calming exercise

• Use any self-hypnosis techniques, such as taught in Silva Mind Control or elsewhere. Or use any of the self-hypnosis “sequential relaxation” exercises

• Use the “Vagus Breathing” exercise

• Use the “Hu Awareness” mind-calming exercise

• If you have them, use brainwave-entrainment recordings, a flashing-light eyeshield device or cellphone-program, or an EMF device like the Schumman.

• And if you have a specific obsessive-thinking pattern (a worry-worry-worry) then —if you know the methods (described elsewhere on this website)—use the “Mental EFT” clearing method

• Or, for that specific worry-worry —if you know the methods (described elsewhere on this website)—then you can use the NLP “Timeline” problem-removing method, or the NLP “Throw Problem into the Sun” problem-removing method

• Or, for that specific worry-worry—if you know the method (described elsewhere on this website)— use the “Three-Step Sensation-EFT-EarlierSimilar” clearing method.

See the Other Resources notes at the end, or this site’s TABLE OF CONTENTS to find detailed instructions for these “Calm Your Mind” methods.

And if you awake during the night, and it’s clear that you’re definitely sleeping, and you can’t focus adequately on these mind-calming approaches—if they don’t gain traction—then give up for now, turn on the light, don your deep-red glasses, and then, for a time: read, listen to something restful, or journal your dreams. Usually this melatonin-trigger and the diversion from the worry-worry does the trick, and you grow sleep again.

Few habits influence long-term health more than consistent, high-quality sleep. When you align light exposure, food timing, and evening calm, you strengthen the hormonal rhythm that governs growth, repair, and emotional resilience.

Shift workers, unfortunately, face extra challenges. For those on rotating or night schedules, tools like modafinil taken strategically and light exposure control can help. Eating moderate carbs before sleeping aligns body chemistry toward rest, even if it’s daylight outside. In short: when you can’t follow the sun, you mimic its signals.

• Wake up and go to bed at the same times every day.

• Get a dose of real sunlight early each morning (30 minutes if you can)

• Limit caffeine to before midafternoon.

• Move regularly, but avoid hard exercise within three hours of bedtime.

• Eat the last meal early and go light on stimulants or alcohol.

• Create a dim, cool, quiet, and comfortable sleeping environment (doh!)

• Manage stress and mental activity before bed using calm routines or breathing.

• Experiment with supplements like melatonin, magnesium, or 5-HTP, but avoid energizing compounds late in the day.

• Sometimes it will fail. Persist and stay consistent. Sleep rewards rhythm more than perfection.

• Wake and sleep at the same time every day — even weekends.

• Get morning sunlight on your eyes as early as possible.

• Cut caffeine by midafternoon; avoid food and alcohol three hours before bed.

• Dim lights and reduce blue light in the evening.

• Cool your body, quiet your mind, and keep your bedtime routine stable.

Don’t be overwhelmed. Just overview it, see if it makes sense to you. Then decide on ONE thing to tweak. Then, another. Then, another.

Next thing you know, you be snoozing like a superhero!

Recommended Reading:
“Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams” — by Matthew Walker
“The Divine Matrix” — by Gregg Braden (superb brief night reading, related to Hu!)
“The Switch” — by James W. Clement (superb brief night reading; enhancing your metabolism with intermittent fasting, protein cycling, and keto)
“Weightlifting is a Waste of Time” — by John Jaquish (about efficient, quick exercise)

Other Articles: «NOTE: these articles are not yet online. Coming soon!»
» “Hold it at the Top” mind-calming exercise
» “Twenty-Second Tune-Up” mind-calming exercise
» “Vagus Breathing” exercise
» ““Hu Awareness” mind-calming exercise
» ““Mental EFT” clearing method
» “NLP Timeline” problem-removing method
» “NLP Throw Problem into the Sun” problem-removing method
» “Three-Step Sensation-EFT-EarlierSimilar” clearing method

Other Resources:
» “Silva Method Life & Intuition Course (Core Program)” (audio course)
» “Silva Method Complete Course (combo pack)” (audio course: the whole thing)
(Note: Silva has other courses (audio, video, and live instructor), but these two are inexpensive and work well for nighttime learning; Doing the exercises as you learn each step is a very calming process, and a nice set-up for falling asleep after. This is not an affiliate link. Just offered because it’s a solid way to learn what they call “meditation,” but I would call a form of self-hypnosis to gain better access to your subconscious, pragmatic, easy to learn, and effective at reprogramming your mind.)
» “The Schumann (EMF frequency devices)”
» Dave Asprey’s “TrueDark” glasses

Citations for further study:

1. Czeisler, C. A. (2013). Circadian rhythms and human health. The New England Journal of Medicine.

2. Walker, M. (2017). Why We Sleep. Scribner.

3. Huberman, A. (2022). The Huberman Lab Podcast: Sleep Toolkit.

4. Leproult, R., & Van Cauter, E. (2010). Effect of sleep loss on glucose metabolism and hormones. The Lancet.

5. Medic, G. et al. (2017). Short- and long-term health consequences of sleep disruption. Nature and Science of Sleep.

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