How to Enhance Your Sleep Through Regulating Your Circadian Rhythms
Our bodies run on 24 hour cycles called circadian rhythms. While you may be familiar with how our circadian rhythms affect the sleep-wake cycle, they impact much more than sleep, including mood, energy and hormones, such as melatonin, cortisol, insulin and testosterone. Today we’ll be touching on ways we can begin optimizing sleep through regulating our circadian rhythms with light, nutrition, meal timing, gut health and more!
Get Morning Sun
Exposing your bare eyes to natural light within 1-2 hours upon waking helps regulate your circadian rhythms. Cortisol spikes in the morning, which helps us feel awake and alert, and getting morning sun aids this peak. This is essential for the natural rhythm of cortisol and melatonin to be triggered at the proper times, allowing us to feel energized during the day and sleep well at night.
Balance Your Blood Sugar
We talk a lot about balancing blood sugar here and it’s just as important for sleep! Reducing sugar and refined carbohydrate intake, getting adequate protein and balancing meals will help to balance blood sugar levels, encouraging a good night’s sleep. If you find yourself waking at night, this is likely due to blood sugar levels dipping which results in a cortisol spike. Often this occurs because of poor nutrition during the day, as well as high stress.
Optimize Your Microbiome
Melatonin is produced in the pineal gland, but it’s also produced via the conversion of serotonin in the gut. Having healthy levels of good bacteria are necessary for this conversion to occur. Additionally, melatonin may also support microbiome health by reducing inflammation and oxidative stress in the gut and supporting gut motility. Instead of relying on melatonin supplements, consider working with a practitioner who can properly assess your digestive system and work on rebalancing the microbes in your gut.
Avoid Eating 3 Hours Before Bed
Eating later into the evening, especially if you’re snacking on sugar, chips and other unhealthy foods, interferes with good sleep. Even if you’re making healthy choices, eating in general still stimulates insulin and cortisol and activates digestion, which will all interfere with sleep. It’s best to avoid eating 2-3 hours before bed whenever possible. If you do need something before bed, try a small snack with protein, which aids hormone production, raw honey in chamomile tea or tart cherry juice, as these foods contain some natural melatonin.
Create A Sleep Routine
Our bodies love routine, and creating a sleep routine 1 hour before bed will trigger your brain to start preparing for sleep. Work towards going to sleep every night at the same time, ideally by 10pm. Spend time doing things that are calming, such as gentle stretching, drinking herbal tea, taking a bath, lighting a candle, reading a book, meditating or even doing a brain dump. The key is to avoid a lot of stimulation before bed, so shut off work, dim the lights, turn off the screens, avoid difficult conversations and enjoy a calming evening as you wind down.
Bonus Tip: Make your room cool. Our bodies need a 1-3% drop in temperature for optimal sleep.
Sleep In Complete Darkness
The key to trigger and keep melatonin active is getting absolutely no artificial light, even from an alarm clock or street lights, before and during sleep. You don’t need to go out and hack your whole bedroom, just buy a good sleep mask that blocks out all light and use blue blocking glasses if you need to get up for whatever reason.
Additionally, there are a number of natural supplements that can assist with sleep. Find my favourite sleep products linked in FullScript here, or consider reaching out to work with us on your sleep!
Asher Kleiber
Registered Holistic Nutritionist
Sources:
https://drjockers.com/melatonin/
