Sleep Better: Cover the Basics, Then Optimize

Sleep advice can be complicated... Track your sleep score, get morning sunlight, stop caffeine at exactly noon, keep your bedroom at the perfect temperature, take supplements, buy a new mattress, use red lights, optimize your REM sleep. Some of these strategies may be useful.

But before worrying about these sleep optimization tips, it's worth asking a much simpler question: Are you consistently getting enough good-quality sleep to function and recover well?

Sleep is essential for physical recovery, cognitive performance, emotional regulation, metabolic health, immune function, and cardiovascular health. But there isn't one single measure that defines "good sleep."

Researchers increasingly describe sleep health as “multidimensional,” including:

• Sleep duration

• Sleep regularity

• Sleep timing

• Sleep continuity or efficiency

• Daytime alertness and functioning

• Sleep architecture (brain wave patterns)

• Absence of sleep disorders

For September, we're going to focus on the factors that matter most… and try to figure out which one may be limiting your sleep.

Before changing anything, establish your baseline. For one week, pay attention to your sleep. Each morning, record:

Bedtime: ______
Wake time: ______
Estimated sleep duration & times that you woke up: ______
How rested do you feel? 1 2 3 4 5

You can use data from a watch or sleep tracker if you have one, or just recall your best guess. At the end of the week, look at the pattern rather than each individual night.

Ask yourself:

• Am I giving myself enough time to sleep?

• Does my schedule change dramatically from day to day or on weekends?

• Do I regularly have trouble falling or staying asleep?

• Do I wake feeling reasonably restored?

• Am I excessively sleepy during the day?

• Is something consistently interfering with my sleep?

Now you have something useful as a starting point.

Before trying to optimize sleep quality, make sure you're actually giving yourself enough opportunity to sleep. For healthy adults, regularly obtaining at least 7 hours of sleep is recommended, and many adults function best somewhere between 7–9 hours.

Sleep duration has some of the strongest evidence of any sleep variables. Experimental sleep-restriction studies show that insufficient sleep can impair attention, reaction time, mood, glucose regulation, appetite regulation, and physical and cognitive performance.

There's also an important distinction between time in bed and time asleep. If you need eight hours of actual sleep, getting into bed exactly eight hours before your alarm probably doesn't provide an eight-hour sleep opportunity. You still need time to fall asleep, and most people experience some wakefulness during the night. 

If your baseline shows that you aren't regularly getting enough sleep, increase your sleep opportunity. Try moving bedtime earlier by 15–30 minutes. Once that's established, add another 15 minutes if necessary. You don't need to suddenly spend ten hours in bed.

Once you're providing adequate sleep opportunity, look at when you're sleeping. Your body contains an internal circadian system that helps coordinate sleep and wakefulness, hormone secretion, body temperature, metabolism, alertness, and many other physiological processes across approximately 24 hours. Increasing evidence suggests that large day-to-day variations in sleep timing are associated with poorer health outcomes.

Interestingly, some large observational studies have found that sleep regularity predicts mortality and cardiovascular outcomes at least as strongly (sometimes more strongly) than sleep duration. That doesn't prove irregular sleep causes those outcomes. People with irregular sleep schedules can differ in many other ways, but the evidence increasingly suggests that regularity is an important component of healthy sleep.

How much do your bedtime and wake time move around? Try keeping your wake time and bedtime within roughly a one-hour window on most days. But don't turn this into another rigid health rule…a late dinner, vacation, celebration, sick child, or occasional night out isn't going to ruin your health.

Next, what is most likely interfering with your sleep? For some people it's caffeine late in the day, alcohol, stress, an uncomfortable bedroom, scrolling or reading emails in bed, inconsistent schedules, or delaying bedtime trying to squeeze too much into the day.

Here are some common sleep disruptors and experiments to try:

• Light - it’s one of the strongest signals regulating your circadian system. Getting outside during the morning and daytime helps reinforce daytime alertness and circadian timing. At night, reducing bright light and highly stimulating activities can help create a clearer transition toward sleep.

• Caffeine - it blocks adenosine receptors, interfering with one of the mechanisms that contributes to increasing sleep pressure throughout the day, and its effects can persist for hours. If falling asleep is difficult, try moving your last caffeine earlier and see what happens.

• Alcohol - it can make you feel sleepy, but sedation and healthy sleep aren't the same thing. Alcohol can disrupt sleep architecture and contribute to more fragmented sleep later in the night. Pay attention to the difference between nights when you drink and nights when you don't.

• Environment - You don't need a perfectly optimized sleep cave, but a bedroom that is dark, quiet, comfortable, and reasonably cool generally creates better conditions for sleep. You can start with obvious solutions before buying gadgets.

• Stress and Attention - If your brain is still solving the workday’s problems when you get into bed, consider creating a transition between your active day and sleep. That might mean reading, taking a shower, preparing tomorrow's schedule, writing down unfinished tasks, or giving yourself 20–30 minutes to unwind.

Don’t ignore a possible sleep disorder. Sometimes the answer isn't better sleep hygiene.

Consider talking with a healthcare professional if you experience persistent problems such as:

• Loud, habitual snoring

• Gasping during sleep

• Excessive daytime sleepiness despite adequate sleep opportunity

• Persistent difficulty falling or staying asleep

• Frequent unexplained awakenings

• Uncomfortable urges to move your legs at night

• Regularly waking with headaches

• Sleep problems that significantly interfere with daily life

Obstructive sleep apnea, chronic insomnia, restless legs syndrome, nutrient deficiencies, and other sleep disorders require more than a better nighttime routine.

Try This Challenge:

1. Get Enough: Give yourself adequate opportunity to sleep.

2. Get Regular: Keep your sleep and wake schedule reasonably consistent.

3. Remove Your Biggest Disruptor: Identify a behavior or environmental factor that most likely interferes with your sleep. Then, try to avoid or minimize it.

4. Pay Attention to How You Function: Do you wake feeling restored? Can you stay alert throughout the day? Are you recovering from training?

5. Investigate Recurring Problems: If you're doing the basics and still struggling, the answer may not be another sleep hack.