Including a surefire way to get up early
Welcome to the second week of our sleep-improvement plan set up by Dr. Roy Raymann, a chief expert of SleepScore Labs, Endel’s scientific partner. We hope you are already enjoying the benefits of better sleep with last week's tips. These new set of recommendations will take you further.
Check back soon, as we’ll be posting one part of the plan every week.
Fine-tune your chronotype
Your internal clock tries to stay aligned with the day-night rhythm, making you feel the need to go to bed and wake up. If your body clock runs a bit early, you tend to wake up and go to bed earlier. And with a late body clock, you’ll prefer to stay up later and sleep in.
Still, there is some flexibility. To adjust to being more of an early bird, get some bright light each morning. This will gradually shift your clock, so it runs a little earlier, allowing you to wake up earlier as well.
Enjoy the exhale
Your breathing can do wonders for your mind and body. Go ahead right now and take some slow, deep breaths. The key is to take plenty of time when you exhale. Breathe in slowly through your nose; breathe out slowly from either your nose or your mouth. This can help you to relax and de-stress, giving you that peaceful moment in the day.
By changing your breathing pattern, you change your body from being in a more sympathetic driven state (active and alert) to a more parasympathetic driven state (relaxed and restful). And the latter is a gateway to sleep. During the night, focus on gradually slowing your breath’s pace and practice slightly longer exhales to wind down and fall asleep faster.
Use your smartphone smartly
The bright light of the screen before bed can make your brain think it is daytime. To reduce the screen light’s impact on your Zzzs, take advantage of blue light screen filters or dark mode options. You should then enable Do Not Disturb mode to help keep life’s distractions to a minimum at night. Lastly, try to use the device before bed only to divert your thoughts and to relax and wind-down. Endel soundscapes can be your go-to tool for this.
Invest in your dreams
We spend a third of our lives in the bedroom, so why don’t we spend more on making it the most comfortable? For instance, a $2,000 mattress that you will use at least seven hours per night, will cost you about 10 cents an hour over the course of its lifespan, about seven years. Compare that to the cost of a car, which is, on average, used for a single hour each day on average, over the same time frame — $14 an hour. That mattress is suddenly looking like a great value — especially if it means waking up refreshed and ready to tackle the day ahead.
Visit our 'Weekly News and Tips' page next week for the third part of Dr. Roy Raymann's sleep-improvement plan.
Read the first part here.