5 Hacks to Help You Get Your Best Sleep Ever

Quality sleep is a vital part of a healthy lifestyle. After just one night of tossing and turning, you soon realize how the lack of quality sleep can affect just about every area of your life—including your mood, job performance, relationships, and even success in weight loss or weight maintenance goals.  

Developing a healthy relationship with sleep is one of the best things you can do for your physical, emotional, and mental health , but it’s not always easy. Here are five of the most effective, science-backed strategies for you to get the best sleep every night.  

Sticking to a routine that’s reasonably consistent from day to day is an important factor when it comes to quality of sleep (1-3). Regular exercise, the timing of your meals, and social activities can all be perceived as time cues for your body that help regulate your biological clock. Most importantly, going to bed and waking up at about the same time every day of the week, including on the weekend, will help to keep your sleep habits aligned with your body’s internal clock, which in turn, leads to quality restorative sleep at night.

Bright light in the evening delays the release of melatonin, one of the hormones in the brain that regulates your sleep cycle. Low melatonin levels can make it harder for you to fall asleep and can have a negative impact on sleep quality, too. Research suggests that the blue wavelengths of light emitted from the screens of electronics is the most detrimental to melatonin release (4).

Shut off any light-emitting electronics like tablets or smartphones at bedtime to not interfere with your body’s natural release of melatonin. An app or filter that blocks blue light on your devices is also an effective strategy, but it‘s best to shut off screens and dim the lights as part of your bedtime routine.

Even if you don’t necessarily have a problem falling asleep with a little caffeine in your system or after a cocktail or glass of wine, consuming these drinks too close to bedtime can affect the quality of your sleep, even interfering with your body’s ability to engage in deeper sleep necessary for processes like post-workout recovery and maintaining brain health (5-7).

Plan to stop consuming caffeine at least four hours before sleep. In the evening, enjoy your glass of wine or cocktail a few hours before bed instead of just before. Making these small adjustments will allow your body enough time to metabolize any caffeine or alcohol in your system in advance so that they won’t interfere as much with your rest.

Magnesium is an essential mineral that is needed for quality sleep, among its many other functions. Studies have found that the majority of adults fail to meet the recommended daily allowance for magnesium (8-9). One study on older adults suffering from poor sleep found that magnesium supplementation led to significant improvements across a range of measures , including sleep time and efficiency (10). Another study found that the nutrient helps the body to better adapt to the rhythms of night and day (11).

Enjoy plenty of magnesium-rich foods like dark leafy greens, nuts, and dark chocolate. If you aren’t eating enough magnesium-rich foods, consider adding a supplement, like IsaFlush® , to help meet recommendations.

While our bodies make melatonin, natural production declines with age. Unfortunately, tart cherries are one of the only foods in a normal diet to have enough to have an effect on the body (12). But studies have found that melatonin supplementation around bedtime can reduce the length of time it takes to fall asleep, as well as improve sleep time and efficiency (13).

References  

Moss TG, Carney CE, Haynes P, Harris AL. Is daily routine important for sleep? An investigation of social rhythms in a clinical insomnia population. Chronobiol Int . 2015 Feb;32(1):92-102. doi: 10.3109/07420528.2014.956361.   
Carney CE, Edinger JD, Meyer B, Lindman L, Istre T. Daily activities and sleep quality in college students. Chronobiol Int . 2006;23(3):623-37.  
Monk TH, Reynolds CF 3rd, Buysse DJ, DeGrazia JM, Kupfer DJ. The relationship between lifestyle regularity and subjective sleep quality. Chronobiol Int . 2003 Jan;20(1):97-107.  
Chellappa SL, Steiner R, Oelhafen P, Lang D, Götz T, Krebs J, Cajochen C. Acute exposure to evening blue-enriched light impacts on human sleep. J Sleep Res . 2013 Oct;22(5):573-80. doi: 10.1111/jsr.12050.   
Drake C, Roehrs T, Shambroom J, Roth T. Caffeine effects on sleep taken 0, 3, or 6 hours before going to bed. J Clin Sleep Med . 2013 Nov 15;9(11):1195-200. doi: 10.5664/jcsm.3170.  
Clark I, Landolt HP. Coffee, caffeine, and sleep: A systematic review of epidemiological studies and randomized controlled trials. Sleep Med Rev . 2016 Jan 30. pii: S1087-0792(16)00015-0. doi: 10.1016/j.smrv.2016.01.006.   
Ebrahim IO, Shapiro CM, Williams AJ, Fenwick PB. Alcohol and sleep I: effects on normal sleep. Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2013 Apr;37(4):539-49. doi: 10.1111/acer.12006. Epub 2013 Jan 24.  
Rude RK. Magnesium. In: Coates PM, Betz JM, Blackman MR, Cragg GM, Levine M, Moss J, White JD, eds. Encyclopedia of Dietary Supplements. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Informa Healthcare; 2010:527-37.  
Ford ES, Mokdad AH. Dietary magnesium intake in a national sample of US adults. J Nutr. 2003 Sep;133(9):2879-82.  
Abbasi B, Kimiagar M, Sadeghniiat K, Shirazi MM, Hedayati M, Rashidkhani B.The effect of magnesium supplementation on primary insomnia in elderly: A double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial . J Res Med Sci . 2012 Dec;17(12):1161-9.  
Kevin A. Feeney, Louise L. Hansen, Marrit Putker, Consuelo Olivares-Yañez, Jason Day, Lorna J. Eades, Luis F. Larrondo, Nathaniel P. Hoyle, John S. O’Neill, Gerben van Ooijen. Daily magnesium fluxes regulate cellular timekeeping and energy balance. Nature , 2016; DOI: 10.1038/nature17407  
Howatson G, Bell PG, Tallent J, Middleton B, McHugh MP, Ellis J. Effect of tart cherry juice (Prunus cerasus) on melatonin levels and enhanced sleep quality. Eur J Nutr. 2012 Dec;51(8):909-16. doi: 10.1007/s00394-011-0263-7. Epub 2011 Oct 30.  
Monti JM, Cardinali DP. A critical assessment of the melatonin effect on sleep in humans. Biol Signals Recept. 2000 Nov-Dec;9(6):328-39.  

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