The 10 Sleep Rules That Protect Memory and Brain Health

Why Sleep Matters 0:00

Hey, today I'm talking about ten principles for optimal sleep when it comes to being healthy. We really take for granted how important sleep is, but sleep is really when your brain drains and detoxifies itself. It's when your body does the major healing, the major work to get rid of damaged proteins, to reset neurotransmitters, and to help optimize mitochondrial health. And so it's so critical that we're optimizing sleep on a regular basis. Here are ten key principles. Number one is it really starts when we wake up in the morning.

In fact, one of the worst things we can do is hit the snooze button. And I think we've all done that before. What happens is when your alarm goes off or, you know, whatever it is, your, your, your device that's trying to wake you up. When you end up going back to sleep, you suppress your cortisol release. Cortisol is your, your it's a catecholamines that helps

Morning Routine and Circadian Rhythm 1:01

you have wakefulness where you feel awake and active and ready to go. And so you want to teach your brain that a certain time of the day and ideally, your sleep, your sleep schedule is roughly around the same. In fact, a lot of people do do themselves an injustice by having dramatically different sleep schedules during the week than they do on the weekends. And so ideally, you want to keep your sleep schedule where you're going to bed within one hour, you know, and that kind of the same hour time frame, and then waking up roughly in the same hour.

So let's say you're waking up at 630 during the week. You wouldn't want to sleep in past 730 on the weekends, at least not on a regular basis. And if you're going to bed at 10:00 during the week, you wouldn't want to stay up much past 11:00 on the weekends, at least on a regular basis, keeping some sort of a set circadian rhythm. A set schedule really helps dial in optimal sleep. And so that's the first thing. And then when you get out of bed, you want to get morning light exposure. When you get light exposure going out and watching the sunrise, for example, that actually tells your circadian rhythm within all the cells of your body, your clock genes. Okay, it's morning time.

So roughly 14, 16 hours from now I'm going to sleep. I'm going to go, you know, get rest and I'm going to go to sleep. And so it starts to set the circadian rhythm, set the clock in your brain and in your body about when the optimal sleep time is for you going forward. Right. Going as as you advance throughout the day. Also, there's an ancient proverb that says, if you want to have great energy during the day and you want to sleep great at night, right? Watch the sunrise in the morning and watch the sunset at night.

And there's a lot of truth in that, because at sunrise you have really high levels of red and infrared light exposure. That red and infrared help to program those clock genes. They also help to activate mitochondrial melatonin levels. So all the melatonin, which helps protect your mitochondria within all the cells of your body, gets activated when it's exposed to the red and infrared light. And that's when it's at its highest, right, the red and infrared sunrise and sunset throughout the day. You're also getting UVA, UVB, which is great for your circadian rhythm as well.

It gives you more wakefulness throughout the day and also has other beneficial effects. Of course, vitamin D production being, you know, one of the key. So getting sun exposure throughout the day is great. But certainly for your circadian rhythm, getting it in the morning and then getting it in the evening can be really key.

Exercise, Caffeine, and Naps 3:34

Number two is getting exercise and movement throughout the day. Exercise and movement is great for your natural circadian rhythm, but you don't want to be getting a lot of exercise at night when you're supposed to be winding down and relaxing your body. I wouldn't want to exercise roughly within, let's say, 3 or 4 hours before going to bed, or it's it's going to affect overall sleep quality. So cut off your exercise at, let's say, 5 or 6:00 at night. It's kind of the ideal way to do it. Okay. In some cases you can't.

Maybe you're an athlete playing, you know, competitive sports in the evening. You know, everybody's got different schedules and whatnot. So do what you can there. But in general, for good sleep, obviously you want to make sure that we are exercising during the daytime cutting it down in the evening. Number three is cut off caffeine eight plus hours before bed. This is going to be different for everybody. So some people are very fast. Caffeine metabolism. They can drink coffee at 8:00 at night and be able to fall asleep and get good quality sleep, you know, even with that, because they metabolize the caffeine really quickly.

Other people, they drink caffeine at 1:00, you know, in or 12:00, they drink it at noon and they still can't fall asleep at 10:00. It hasn't fully worked its way through the system, so you got to kind of tailor it for you. But the average individual roughly does. Well, when they cut it off about eight hours before bed. So if you're going to bed at 11:00, you wouldn't want to consume caffeine after 3:00. If you're going to bed at ten, you wouldn't want to consume it after 2:00 for the average individual.

Okay. Number four here is nap timing. Many of us enjoy naps. I love naps, and the thing about naps is we shouldn't depend on them. They're they should be a nice luxury for some individuals. They're sleeping so poorly at night, and their body is under so much stress that they actually depend on the nap each and every day. Okay, for me, if I get one nap a week, you know, that's great like that. And I feel really good about that. You want to keep your naps? Here's the key with naps, I recommend keeping them under 30 minutes even if you don't fall asleep.

If you're just kind of resting, that's actually really good. You actually get your brainwaves into, delta delta, brainwaves, which is actually very, very relaxing, calming. It actually can help stimulate more creativity later. So just being in a relaxed state is super key. You don't have to fall asleep if you do. That's fine as well, right? But keep it under 30 minutes. And also I recommend keeping it to eight hours before bed. Okay. So if you're going to bed at 11, you want to finish your nap before 3:00.

That would be an example of that. And that way, again, your body can build up the adenosine. Right. And adenosine is actually what stimulates that. The calming and and kind of breaks on the brain to, to allow you to sleep. And so napping helps release that. So does caffeine. Number five watch the sunset. We talked about how, you know, the ancient proverb about watching the sunset allows you to have a really good sleep. And there's actually research about that red and infrared light helping improve sleep quality.

And so going out watching the sunset, it's not going to be the blue light. It's the red and infrared that you're being exposed to that's really calming on your body, anti-inflammatory on your body and stimulates. That starts the stimulation of the melatonin to help you sleep well. Now, after sunset, you want to make sure you dim the lights in your house, right? Damn everything. You don't want bright lights on. You don't want to be in areas where there's a lot of bright light that's telling your brain it's daytime and we want something.

We want to tell our brain it's nighttime so we can start producing melatonin.

Sunset, Light, and Evening Wind-Down 7:03

So dim all the lights. You can also get orange colored light bulbs, which are, you know, putting out more of that reddish hue, the orange reddish you which is similar to fire. Right. And so our ancestors would have been exposed to fire at night. They weren't exposed to all the blue light that we are from a tree and, you know, full spectrum lighting and things like that. They were exposed to fire. And that has less of a melatonin blunting effect. Right? So allows us to continue to produce melatonin even though we're exposed to that light.

So if we need to use our device or we want to do other things, read stuff like that, we have that we have a light source. But it's not blunting and inhibiting melatonin, our major sleep hormone. It's not blunting it's production. So that's key. I also a huge advocate of blue light blocking glasses. I wear these every single night. When I travel, I take them with me. I swear by these because they have really dramatically improved my overall sleep quality, and I've seen it for so many other individuals.

So at night I put my kit, you know, my wife and I, we put our kids to bed, read that we are usually done with that by, let's say 845 9:00. We immediately put on our blue light blocking glasses. So any other ambient light, you know, that's coming from different devices and different things, doesn't block our melatonin production. And then we relax. Maybe we'll be on electronics for a little bit, but you should have electronic curfew and I try to make mine some. Some are around nine 3945 is usually like my cutoff time for electronics.

And then I shift to reading. Right. Or or garage or light conversation with my wife reading before bed. Is actually one of the best things you can do to help support. Good sleep. Now, I don't recommend reading in your bed. I recommend reading in a in a different place. I think once you go in your bed, your whole goal should be falling asleep and getting sleep. But reading, let's say, out in your living room, on your couch or whatever it is with your blue light blocking glasses on with all the lights dimmed and you're just reading something that's, uplifting, encouraging, restorative.

Okay, by entertaining, informative. But it shouldn't be stressful. It shouldn't be something, obviously, that you're reading that's stressful. You want to keep stress under control, you know, like conversations with your spouse, praying with your spouse. All those things are good. Doing breathwork, meditation, things like that can be all very, very helpful for stimulating the right brainwaves for really good quality sleep. So that's good sleep timing. Again, I recommend trying to get to bed roughly within an hour time frame on a on a nightly basis.

So for me, I try to be in bed by 1030. Sometimes it's 11 okay, sometimes if I'm real tired, I go to bed earlier at ten. But roughly in that 10 to 11 frame, that's when I want to be in bed. That's going to set me up for the best possible sleep. In fact, research has shown that we produce the most anti-aging hormones, like human growth hormone between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., and we produce the most amount of those when we're sleeping, right when we're in bed. Relaxed state sleeping. That's what we're going to produce.

The most human growth hormone, which is great for helping us burn fat, build muscle tissue, heal and regenerate our skin. So it's great for good collagen elasticity in our skin. And it's very anti-aging in general. So we want to make sure we're prioritizing that, getting as much HGH release, natural endogenous HGH release, at night, you know, people pay a lot of money for human growth hormone, injections, right? In order to slow down the aging process and to look younger. Well, you can get an amazing human growth hormone release

Sleep Timing and Growth Hormone 10:50

by really optimizing your sleep quality at night. Of course, all this, you know, we want to make sure our blood sugars balance, we're keeping stress under control throughout the day. That's all critical for good sleep. And then finally the sleep environment. So research has shown that having your temperature in your room somewhere between 65 to 68 degrees is when people tend to sleep the best, right? So turning on the air conditioning, overhead fan, whatever it is to get that sleep environment or to create a sleep sanctuary, right?

A room as dark as possible, you want it quiet. Or for some people that do really well with, with, noisemakers. Right. Kind of like, just a white noise in the background that works really well for them. Some people need to put in earplugs. Right. And that that helps them sleep well, making sure your room is as dark as possible. And I recommend a sleep mask. Okay. Most people are very light sensitive. I know I am, so I wear a black sleep mask that feels very comfortable over my eyes, and it blocks out any sort of ambient light that might get in the room that would disrupt melatonin production.

So I recommend using a sleep mask. Okay, keeping your room, like I said, as cool as possible. And then with your sleep posture, you don't want to sleep on your stomach. That's actually really bad for your spine, really bad for your breathing. And that's going to cause more distorted sleep. Sleep patterns. So you want to sleep either on your back or on your side, okay? And when you're sleeping on your side, you want to make sure your pillow supports your head properly so your head's not flopping too far to one side or the other.

And same thing in your pelvis. You want to make sure with your knees you've got a good supportive pillow right in between your knees, so your knees are lined up with your hips. So kind of like you're standing. It's kind of how you want your knees. You don't want them right next to each other or talking over each other. That's going to set you up for lower back problems and different issues like that. So you want a pillow in there to support your knees. And so for me, I sleep on my side and I just what I'll turn from time to time from one side to the other.

And I just kind of keep the pillow locked in there between my knees as I'm rolling and shifting positions. And so that's super critical. That's going to set you up for the best possible sleep. In fact, sleeping on your side side posture has been shown to dramatically improve your lymphatic drainage as opposed to sleeping in any other position. So it's actually the best position at fetal position for detoxifying

Sleep Environment and Position 13:11

your brain, getting rid of wastes, and improving overall healing and repair. So those are things that I think are really helpful. One advance bonus would be, you know, maybe getting red light infrared exposure. So you can you, for example, an infrared sauna. Although I wouldn't do it too late in the evening. Because it heats you up so much, it might be hard to sleep, but, you know, finishing your infrared sauna at least an hour before you go to bed, that way your body temperature can cool back down.

I think that's key. You can also use red and infrared light boxes, right where you're getting the red and infrared exposure. That can be really helpful. Okay. Again, I wouldn't do it. You know, I would do that more around sunset ideally with that red light. Okay. And then, you know, it would in a sense mimic sunset, if that makes sense, rather than doing it right before bed. You can do it to mimic it. You can also do that earlier in the day, right? Especially if you didn't get a chance to see the sunrise.

Red. An infrared exposure from a red, an infrared box. Really, really helpful there. And then last but not least, you can get a PMF mat that also has infrared. Now, this is something my wife and I use on a regular basis. This isn't necessary, but this is an advanced strategy. And this has a pulse electromagnetic frequency that is similar to nature. Right. And it's very calming in the body. Stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system. And you can set it for you can set it at a frequency where it stimulates your delta waves, which are associated with really good sleep.

Right. And so you set it at a setting that's associated with real good sleep, and it helps you sleep. And it also has infrared. So it has a heating, component to it. And that infrared will help stimulate cell detoxification, will help activate melatonin production within the mitochondria, which helps protect the mitochondria, helps the body get rid of senescent and damaged cells. So a lot of great benefits there. So that's something that I do. And now that does cost some money. It's roughly a you know, $1,000 or so for a good or maybe a little bit more for a good PMF infrared mat.

Okay. But these things are powerful and they really help, enhance sleep quality and they help enhance overall cellular health. So that's really key. You can also get something like an aura ring like I actually don't have on right now, but I wear an aura ring at night, which I can actually, it's matched up with my phone and I can actually check my sleep score. I can see how much REM sleep, how much deep sleep that I got, that night. That's key. And that actually reminds me, make sure that, you know, you can actually turn off your Wi-Fi at night. So in our house,

Advanced Sleep Optimization Tips 15:48

we actually have our Wi-Fi on a switch, and it's automatic timer. So at 11:00 every single night, our Wi-Fi goes off in our house, and then it turns back on, I think at like 6 a.m.. Right. And so, we know that's we need to be sleeping by 11:00, and we and we, we're sleeping. We usually wake up, you know, somewhere between 6 and 730 on a daily basis. And so, we don't need the Wi-Fi on during that period of time. And that actually reduces stress on our body, which fosters better overall sleep quality.

So Wi-Fi turning it off at night can be key sometimes. You know, if you're in a hotel, you can't turn the Wi-Fi off, but you can turn it off to your phone or your devices. And so I recommend doing that, making sure that you know your phone's on airplane mode, not plugged in near you, is key. Make sure your computer is not near you near your bed while you're sleeping. You don't want any sort of artificial electromagnetic frequency around you when you're trying to get really good quality sleep. That is, going to disrupt your overall sleep quality.

So anyways, guys, we went through these ten principles. I also give you a couple extra bonus tips. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this and we'll see you on a future video training. Be blessed.