Sleep

This weeks habit has got everybody talking about sleep.
 
For years I really struggled with sleep for a long period of time. It was horrible. It affected my work, my training and caffeine was the only thing that kept me going.
 
However in the last 12 months I feel like I have started to get things under control (touch wood), and I feel so much better for it.
These are the things that have helped me get in better control of my sleep.
 

• Eye Mask – In summer I would wake up before the sun even knew it was rising, it was ridiculous. I tried black out blinds, but that bastarding ball of fire would always find a crack to sneak though and wake me up.  It only took a few days to get used to sleeping in an eye mask and it is one of the best purchases I have ever made.
• Meditation – I’m not talking about incense, yoga pants and whale music. My meditation was simply taking 5 minutes out before I went to bed to sit in the dark, close my eyes and just try to clear my mind and focus on my breathing. It took a bit of practice but it helped me feel a lot more relaxed before I went to bed.
• Don’t look at the clock – I used to wake up in the night, look at the time, get pissed off because I was awake at that time, then not be able to get to sleep because I was pissed off. Eventually I stopped looking the time, because it doesn’t really matter and it was preventing me from getting back to sleep.
• If you really cant sleep, get up – Laying in bed from 3am to 7am being angry I wasn’t asleep was quite a common routine for me. Now if I struggle to get back to sleep I get up, go downstairs and either do the meditation we spoke about earlier or sometimes I do some light mobility (I will do a video on this next week).
• Alcohol – If I drink alcohol right up to going to bed then my sleep is affected. However if I stop at least an hour before, I sleep better.
• Stop working – I enjoy my job and the people I work with, so I’m more than happy to talk and work outside of “office hours”, but sometimes you need to switch off and not feel bad if you don’t reply to messages straight away.  
• Supplements – There are very few supplements that I would recommend but magnesium is one of them. We don’t get as much magnesium as we used to because we don’t eat dirt and our water is too clean. Back in the day when we were living off the land and wrestling dinosaurs, soil and water was full of it, but these days our watered is purified and intensive farming has left very few nutrients in the soil. I can sense that I’m about to go off on tangent, so I will keep it brief:
  • Not enough magnesium = Low GABA levels
  • GABA regulates the stress-response system
  • Low magnesium = restless sleep.
    
  • Put Epsom salts in your bath before bed or take ZMA.    
• How’s your father? – Boom! Out like a light.

Hopefully you may find some of these useful.

Sweet dreams x