Photo by Kate Stone Matheson on Unsplash
Insomnia has plagued humanity for generations, currently 1 in 3 adults worldwide are insomniacs.
In our modern world there are countless reasons that can lead us to sleepless nights. Many of these causes are reversible by simple lifestyle adjustments and herbal teas!
Here are four ways to sleep better at night
1) No Caffeine After 12pm Noon
We all love our caffeine; it helps us start the day and it picks us up when we hit the midday slump. However, caffeine stays in our body for about 10 hours.
This means that your lunch time coffee could be keeping you awake! An easy way to avoid this problem is to stop drinking any caffeinated beverages by 12pm noon. If you were to have caffeine right before noon, it would be mostly out of your system by 10pm that night, which is an excellent time to head to bed.
2) Get plenty of exercise
Our bodies have evolved to be our best tool. Our ancestors chased down gazelle on the African plains, walked for miles to gather the seasonal fruits and vegetables, and spent hours building shelters against the weather. Our modern lifestyle of sitting in a car to get to work, sitting for 8 hours at a computer, then sitting on our couch at home to watch TV to “unwind” from the day is not what our bodies have evolved to do!
There are easy ways to include exercise into the day.
When you wake up in the morning, take a walk around the block. Seeing the sunshine early in the day helps our brains know that the sun is up and to start counting down for bedtime.
Instead of driving to work, ride a bike! Wear a properly fitted helmet, grab some bike lights, and start pedaling. Biking is much more fun than sleepily driving to work, and it will get your joints moving and a bit of a sweat going. If you have coworkers that live close by, see if they are interested in a biking bus! Biking with friends is even more fun!
If you must sit at a desk all day for work, try to switch to a standing desk. Having the option to work while standing up will allow you to move around more and can help you feel more focused. Doing a little dance while you work will help burn more calories and make the day a little easier.
3) Eat A Light Dinner for Better Sleep
In TCM we talk about how the mind cannot fully rest while the stomach is digesting. The best way to eat for health is;
“Eat Breakfast like a King, Lunch like a Prince, Dinner like a Pauper”
This will set you up to be full and energized for the day but then pleasantly satiated before bed so that you can get more restful hours asleep.
A nice warm soup is a good dinner to have if sleep is a problem. A homemade soup that is full of delicious root vegetables, a nice tasty broth and maybe a bit of meat will help to relax your body and descend your spirit into sleep.
Soup is great because all the ingredients have been slowly cooked so that the nutrients are much easier to absorb and your stomach does not have to work so hard to break it down.
4) Bedtime Routine: No Screens and Drink Tea
Blue light (the light emitted by the screens in your computer or phone) has been shown to suppress melatonin in our brains for up to 3 hours. Melatonin is the hormone secreted by the pineal gland that controls our sleep-wake cycle.
**This article from the Harvard Medical School recommends people to stop looking at blue-light sources 3 hours before bedtime. **
Another evolution-related idea is to turn off all your electronics when the sun sets. Our ancestors only had fire as a light source, which emits helpful red and infrared light. If we turn off our electronics at sunset and read a book by candlelight, we will be ready for bed very quickly as our eyes will get tired faster than they would with blue light.
While you are having your pre-modern experience of reading by candlelight, have a nice hot cup of tea!
My go-to bed time tea is this:
A few dried Schisandra berries
Chrysanthemum or Chamomile flowers
A small amount of dried Reishi mushroom
In TCM all of these are calming herbals. The Schisandra berries are sour so we think of the sour flavor pulling in our spirit so that it can come to rest. The Chrysanthemum flower gently cools heat and relieves stress. The Reishi mushroom is in the “Nourish Heart, Calm Spirit” category so we can think of this as giving our sleepy time a much-needed vitamin boost.
Drink this tea about an hour before going to sleep so that you can use the bathroom before laying down.
There we have the four ways to sleep better at night! I hope it helps everybody who needs better rest.
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