Hi guys, Kris from Custom Fitness here, your Amarillo personal trainer. Today we’re going to be wrapping up the two part series on 4 ways to improve your sleep. Now be sure to read part one if you haven’t already at the link here: And as always, if you have any questions about today’s blog then please give us a call at (806)-322-3188
So last time we were talking about some of the reasons why you might not be getting the best sleep and how to improve on that. Now, let’s pick it back up with point number three: cut off all electronics 30 minutes to an hour before bed.
So if you are, later tonight, scrolling through this, right before bed, then that is probably causing a problem. Why? Well, if you are looking at electronic, if you have an electronic on in the background, any of those things are stirring up your brain.
They’re causing different synopsis to happen within your brain. And the neurons are firing, trying to figure out what’s going on. So even if you’re just vegging out and you’re not even paying attention to what’s on TV, it’s still there. Your brain’s still trying to perceive what’s going on. When it gets revved up like that, it takes longer for you to go to sleep.
So if you miss that opportune sleep window, if you will, a lot of times you might not get to sleep at all really throughout the night. You might kind of take little short naps every now and then, waking up all the time and just not feel very good. So if you can shut off those electronics, do something non-electronic.
Now, I know that a lot of people read on their phones and all that kind of stuff, but an actual book is an awesome thing. Writing on paper is great. Getting up, going for a walk or doing some of the next step, which kind of doing those kinds of things will help your body to start to know that it’s ready for its time for bed. Okay?
The other thing about electronics is that it actually does mess with your production of cortisol and melatonin, so those are things that are produced within your body, and cortisol helps us to be awake and melatonin and helps us to be asleep. But whenever you have the light coming in at your eyes, even if your eyes are closed, so that’s where they say to get all the electronics out of the bedroom and stuff.
Even if your eyelids are closed, if that light is shining in on your eyes, it can cause you to increase cortisol production, therefore making you more awake, more energetic, and decrease your melatonin production, therefore not helping you to be sleepy.
So kind of crazy how the body works together whenever you start to really think about it, that just, that little change can do a lot.
Now, if you’ve ever spent a few days in Vegas, you probably know what I’m talking about where you just don’t feel sleepy, right? It may be two or three in the morning, but all the lights are on. Everybody’s active. If you’re moving around, you don’t even feel like it’s two or three in the morning, you feel like it’s noon. So it’s because of how our bodies perceive that light and what it happens to it. Alright?
So number four is to do some stretching, do some breathing. Something light and easy. You’re not trying to get in a heavy workout. If you do work out heavily, you want to make sure and get to sleep within about 30 minutes or less after the workout to make sure that you don’t hit that moment of endorphin rush where everything comes back and you get all your energy back.
But stretching, yoga, breathing, all those good things will be a great thing to do right before bed. Some meditation, just kind of whatever you’re comfortable with, what you know to do, those are some great things to get the mind kind of in that pattern.
So as a mom, I know that whenever my girls were little, we had to work on patterns. We had to work on bedtime routines and bath routines and things so that they would get it. They would understand, okay, this is what we do and this helps me to calm down and this is what I do before bed, so that that way they would sleep better. Luckily for me, it worked, but I think a lot of times, as adults, we kind of think the routines out the window. We’re just fly by the seat of our pants most of the time and what we don’t realize is that our bodies still need routine. We still need structure. So if we start to teach our bodies that this is what happens leading up to bed, you’re more likely to sleep better, deeper and longer.
So I hope that gets you a better night’s sleep tonight. Feel free to give us a call if we could be of any help to you. Remember that we work on exercise, nutrition and lifestyle, so there’s a lot of pieces in there that you may not have ever realized that we can help you with. But those are things that we try really hard to integrate into everything that we do because we know that the body is all working together as one piece rather than individually. So exercise is great, but alone, it doesn’t give you everything you need. Same thing with nutrition. Same thing with mindset, so we’ve put them all together and we start to change our habits where these are all working together.
Your body can do amazing things. It can transform, it can become stronger, it can become more lean, you can lose inches, you can do all these great things and feel great, but most of all, you start to change your health from the inside out, which is the biggest thing because that is what’s going to keep you around long enough to enjoy the body that you have.
To get your consultation set up, give us a call at 806-322-3188 or email us at info@customfitness.biz At Custom Fitness, we are YOUR personal trainers in Amarillo, Texas. Have a great day.