At HEST, we truly nerd out about sleep on the daily. We strive to keep up with upcoming trends and newly released studies about all things sleep. If you are starting your own sleep journey or you already understand the importance of sleep, we wanted to share with you our top 6 tips and favorite techniques we use to help us sleep better at night.
We recommend starting off with Dr. Matt Walker’s 12 tips to sleep better aka sleep hygiene, author of Why We Sleep. This is a great way to start off strong and with a solid foundation for your new sleep journey.
Start tracking your sleep data. At HEST, all of our team members track their sleep habits with an Oura ring. Mostly all new smart watches or fitbits tracking sleeping behaviors. This is the simplest way to see what techniques are working for you. Waking up in the morning and understanding your sleep performance gives you direct feedback on what worked and what didn’t work.
To expand further on the gadget free bedroom tip by Dr. Walker, we want to emphasize that this also includes listening to music or podcasts. Even when your eyes close and you fall asleep while listening to your favorite podcast, your brain doesn’t stop processing. It’s important to let your mind also turn off during your deep ‘NREM’ sleep so it itself can rebound and recover.
When winding down your day and night time is approaching, a simple 10 minute stretch routine helps with your blood flow and to loosen up your muscles before sleep. Here is a great video example of a 10 minute evening stretch routine to help you start off.
You might be stealing from certain sleep benefits early in the morning if you are using an alarm clock to wake up. Typically during your nightly sleep cycle, the early hours in the morning are typically your primary REM stage and if you use an alarm clock you might be waking up too early and cutting out this important part of your recovery. If you rely on an alarm clock you might be going to bed too late and it might be as simple as going to bed earlier to avoid this issue. In a perfect sleep cycle, you should let your mind and body naturally wake up when it’s ready after an 8 hour sleep.
This is on the more extreme side of sleep tips. Mouth taping or sleep taping refers to the practice of taping your mouth closed at night before you fall asleep. The science is not fully out yet, but so far initial research has demonstrated that this technique helps with tiredness in people with obstructive sleep apnea. Other claims that have not been scientifically studied yet, include helping with snoring, fatigue, concentration issues, bad breath, and excessive thirst at night. To clarify, no one at HEST has attempted to mouth tape yet. Have you?
