New health science is claiming that sleep is more valuable than diet and exercise combined. That’s quite a bold statement. Although I don’t believe that its entirely true, it should also be noted that sleep quality plays a huge role on the quality of your health, recovery and rejuvenation of the body as a whole. This is a topic that I’ve really dove deep in over the years because at the young age of 21 I had such trouble sleeping that I would lay in bed until the sun came up, without any sleep. It became so difficult that I consulted my mom (a naturopath) and she helped me get back on track.
Sleep is so important for so many bodily functions, and recovery as a whole.
Your entire body is ‘resetting’ and healing while you’re sleeping. It’s far more in your control to improve sleep quality than you’d think. There are specific environmental measures that can be made to improve sleep quality substantially. If your sleep quality is bad, the body isn’t properly recovering like it should.
3 Signs Of Poor Sleep Quality:
- Not Able To Fall Asleep in 30 Minutes: If you lay down at night and do not fall asleep within under 30 minutes, your sleep quality may be affected. Your nervous system may be hardwired into the sympathetic state (the fight or flight, stressed state) and your body in an unrelaxed state will not get deeper sleep.
- Waking Up Multiple Times At Night: Your body has a very dialed in circadian rhythm (internal biological clock) along with a sleep cycle that runs a sort of program through light sleep, deep sleep and REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. If you’re waking up during the night you’re disrupting these key sleep cycles that bring your battery back to 100% for the next day. You then have to deduct the 10, 20 or 30 minutes you spent that night tossing and turning to get back to sleep. It is important to note that waking up during specific times routinely also reflects specific organs having challenges within the body as there are recovery times for the liver, colon, adrenal glands etc. The clock chart below gives a perfect example of organ health and sleep timing that will correlate with it. If you wake up at 4 am continuously for example, there’s some physical or emotional blockage in the lungs.
- Waking Up Sore, Groggy and Unenergized: If you wake up in the morning groggy or unenergized, or both, your sleep quality was affected somewhere. If your body is physically sore and you don’t recover and feel less sore in the AM, your quality of sleep is low. The best sign of high quality sleep is to wake up feeling rejuvenated, clear minded and ready to start your day.
3 Factors That Harm High Quality Sleep
1. Negative Electrical Energy in Any Form: Whether it’s non-native EMF’s (Electro-magnetic frequencies), radiation or dirty electricity. These all forms of energy (either from wired or wireless) that have an effect on our nervous system, the electrical wiring in our body, which can effect the quality of your sleep. Ever feel wired? Maybe there’s too many wires around!
2. Wavelengths Of Blue & Green Light: When the sun sets, the orange amber glow is the last natural form of light that we see in the sky, besides the moon and stars. This natural form of lighting is warm, calming and notifies the body that it is time for rest. Light photons enter the eyes and notify the brain whether it’s day, night, high sun, low sun. Specific wavelengths of blue & green light notify the body that it’s daytime. This moves your sleep hormone melatonin to be produced later, which means that you’re not as tired and will not fall asleep as soon. Lights such as LED, CFL and the like that have a bright white color are high in blue and green wavelengths. You’ll want to avoid these.
3. The Gut is Awake, When It Needs To Sleep! Another common mistake is to eat food or drink things before sleep that stimulate the body. It is better to eat earlier in the evening, ideally before 5 o’clock PM even. The goal is to have your body relaxed and your metabolism not in a digestive state. Other common mistakes include having chocolate, coffee or tea late at night. Chocolate contains theobromine which is a stimulant. Coffee has caffeine, and certain teas are stimulating as well. The best way to end the day is simply a glass of water.
What we must remember is that the quality of your sleep directly affects the quality of your energy, health and life.
3 Techniques To Optimize Higher Quality Sleep:
- Reduce Negative Energy:
The easiest way to do this is to turn your WIFI router off at night. I started doing this several years ago and found that my sleep quality was higher. In fact, there were some mornings that I woke up groggy and feeling unrested only to find that my router lights were still on. I thought to myself “that’s why!” My body wasn’t as relaxed as it could be because the EMF’s, radiation and positive ions emitted by my wifi router were interfering with my nervous system (once again, remember it’s your electrical system) and this was making it harder for me to fall asleep and stay asleep.
WIFI Health Hack: Get a $10 electric timer on amazon here and set it to turn your WIFI off at 12PM and to turn back on at 8AM (or whatever time works for you) – that way it turns off every night automatically. A one time $10 hack from amazon will increase your sleep quality forever!
Cell Phone Health Hack: At the very least turn your cell phone on airplane mode. If you need to use your phone alarm, this is understandable. If you wake up when your body tells you to wake up however, turn your cell phone completely OFF. The phone still emits radiation on airplane mode. Ever gotten an amber alert with your phone on airplane mode? I have. That means there’s still a signal sending and receiving. Don’t let airplane mode fool you into thinking radiation isn’t there anymore because you aren’t able to make calls. It still is.
Plug Outlets Health Hack: Ideally you’ll want your bed to be furthest from the plug outlets in your room. Having plug outlets, or cords plugged into plug outlets that are close to your brain, or heart will negatively influence your sleep cycles. Stay as far away from plug outlets (that emit dirty electricity) while sleeping as possible. - Introduce Calming Lighting & Elements:
Lighting Health Hack: Instead of having bright white lights that emit blue and green wavelengths of light, switch to simple salt lamps! Most people have salt lamps now. Just use these lights at night. Or switch to circadian friendly light bulbs. You can also get circadian friendly light bulbs from a company called True Dark which you can visit by clicking here. Or, simply use candles more often. The downside with candles is wax can get everywhere and many candles emit toxic chemicals into your breathing environment.
Get a Pair Of Blue Blocker Glasses: Another solution that takes lighting protection (which is ultimately melatonin hormone protection) to another level is to get a pair of blue blocker glasses. The company true dark creates glasses that block both blue and green wavelengths of light. Both of these wavelengths contribute to the body not being able to produce melatonin at night. They also have prescription blue blocker glasses available. You can visit True Dark and look for glasses that suit your needs by clicking here. These also come in very valuable if you look at any screens at night. I am on my phone or computer at night at times, and I wear blue blockers from true dark while looking at the screen because it’s polluted with blue and green wavelengths of light.
Calm Your Nervous System: The hormonal system needs to adjust and transition into sleep with the production of melatonin around 9PM. If the body isn’t producing melatonin at this time it could be for various reasons, but lighting is the most evident reason that melatonin isn’t produced in the body at the proper time. Beyond melatonin, the nervous system needs to calm and relax. You can calm the nervous system by taking a hot bath with some added magnesium and essential oils, a hot shower. By making a cup of a non-stimulating, calming tea such as chamomile, rose, or lavender tea. Additionally, the most valuable mineral to take later at night is magnesium. Magnesium will calm and relax the nervous system quickly. - Find A Relaxation and Sleep Routine That Works For YOU:
Each of us are unique individuals and some things that may relax me may get you amped! We all are unique in our bio-individuality. I personally like to play calming music, have a nice conversation with a friend or family member. A calming tea. Dim the lighting, have it be in the orange/red hue. Breathe calmly and avoid the news at all costs! The news is one stressful source of PROGRAMMING anyway.
Sleep is so important to me. I love my sleep. I love getting high quality sleep. This morning I woke up feeling very rested and that makes me so happy because I used to have so many sleep issues. I used to have extreme insomnia to the point where I read, listened, watched and studied so much about sleep that at one point I was seriously considering writing a book on sleep.
Last year, in 2020 I had a terribly tough time sleeping. I was WWOOF’ing (worldwide opportunity for organic farmers) on a farm in the city of Detroit, in the inner city. I was having difficulty both falling and staying asleep as it was a louder and less comfortable environment than I was accustomed to. At that time I discovered a product called “Qualia Night” which was touted the ultimate sleep formula. I had been watching this brand for a while and liked their other products, so figured I’d give it a shot. Here’s my review of that experience and how it REALLY saved my sleep and got it back on track:
I highly recommend Qualia Night. In a stressful and uncomfortable sleep environment it truly helped me relax, recharge and restore my sleep back to a healthy state. You can visit Qualia by clicking here. Enter the code “HEALTHYWILDANDFREE” for 15% off your order.
