14: Do THIS for better sleep

Michael Kummer:
Michael, how does your sleep routine look like? What do you do throughout the day and in the evening to sleep well, fall asleep quickly? That's a question I get asked a lot. And so in this episode of the Primer Shift podcast, I'll share with you exactly how my sleep routine looks like, what it looks like, starting in the morning already, and all the things that I do throughout the day and then in the evening to fall asleep quickly and to sleep well, get a lot of restorative sleep. And I'll also share with you some of the things don't do or at least try to avoid to. My sleep routine isn't perfect on most days but like our little one likes to say I try my best. So here we go starting really in the morning. So my everything that I do to sleep well starts the second I get up in reality because that's all part of the circadian rhythm. So I get up typically between 6 and 7 a.m. and it depends a little bit on the time of the year. So in summer I tend to sleep a little longer and in the winter I tend to sleep a little less or at least get up earlier. And so right now I usually get up between 6 and 6.30 sometimes and it's summer sometimes I'm pushing it to 7 and funny enough in the past I always considered myself an early riser I had actually trouble sleeping longer. And all of that has changed. And so now I can actually sleep in and by sleeping in, I mean, seven, which, you know, for many people is, you know, getting up earlier. So it's, you know, it depends a little bit on your point of view and your situation, but between six and seven, I get up and usually whenever the sun rises, that's when I or my wife and I do morning chores on the homestead, meaning, you know, feed the animals, we let them out. We move the rabbit tractors. We take care basically of all of our livestock. Make sure they are happy and fed and everyone is doing well. So that happens typically at sunrise and also that changes with the season. You know depending on when the sun rises, you know that's when we do it. What I drink in the morning is a cup or two of black coffee, sometimes with cream. And I try to do that before 10am. Very often I have my second cup of coffee before 9am and the reason for that is that caffeine has a very long half lifetime of about 8 to 9 hours or so. So whatever, however much caffeine you get, it takes 9 hours to remove half of it from your body. And so as you can imagine, if you have a coffee at 3 and you go to bed at 9, you know, by that time you still have more than half of that caffeine in your body and it disrupts your sleep, regardless of if you... notice it or if you think you notice it or not. Caffeine is a sleep disruptor so I try to have it as early as I possibly can. Right after, I usually exercise. So when in between I do emails and you know, respond to important messages and stuff, depending on when I get up. And then I go exercise and that either means crossfit, usually at around 8.30 or I walk the dog for 45 minutes. And after that, let's say somewhere between 10 to... 10 a.m. to noon I have breakfast. Typically we all have breakfast together and that means a lot of fat and a lot of protein for me somewhat in a one-to-one ratio for reasons I've already talked about in a nutrition episode but if I have carbs too early I can feel the energy fluctuations throughout the day. I don't like that. I want to have stable energy levels and it also from an exercise performance perspective fat and protein is better for growing lean muscle tissue. than carbohydrates, despite what everyone seems to be doing. Then any time throughout the day, depending on how much time I have, what's going on, I try to expose myself to sunlight. I take off my shirt. I take off my shoes. I don't wear sunglasses. I don't wear sunscreen, obviously. And I just go outside and try to get as much exposure, at least 15 to 20 minutes of sunlight. Because that's, I've noticed, has a dramatic impact on how well I sleep then at night. And so I try to do that every single day, even when it's cloudy, you know, I go outside throughout the day and even, you know, the sun is not as strong, obviously, if it's behind the clouds, but you still get that UV radiation that your retina and the cells in your skin respond to, and that can positively impact sleep at night. Dinner, we have somewhere between 5 and 7 p.m., and that's when I have carbs, you know, depending on... I don't count carbs or anything, but I have then maybe 50 to 100 grams of carbs or so, sometimes less depending on what we have at home. Now, I try to eat dinner as early as possible and that's not always easy because I only have two meals a day, you know, my breakfast and then dinner. And so depending on how hungry I am when I had my breakfast, you know, sometimes I'm not hungry at five. And so I have to push it a little bit more. then actually starts negatively impacting my sleep and we'll talk about that more in the do's and don'ts. But that's something that I try to push to as early as possible and have a dinner that's as light as possible, which is a second struggle that I have because I only eat twice. Now between eight and nine p.m., my wife and I, once the kids are in bed, we either watch TV, something funny, entertaining. We read a book, you know, using orange reading light. And then we check on the animals again. So that's like the, you know, the second part of our daily chores. We go down, we make sure everyone is in and tucked in. The geese are locked up. We, you know, remove the feet, et cetera. So the raccoon doesn't eat it. And then between nine and 9.30, again, depending on the time of the year. In winter, it's usually a little bit earlier, between 8.30 and nine. In summer, it's usually between 9.30 and nine and 9.30, sometimes even pushing 10. We have magnesium. lights out and we go to bed. And so that's what I do throughout the day to then have somewhat decent sleep or optimal sleep in many cases, not every day. And with that, let's talk a little bit about some of the do's, some of the things that I try to do as part of that routine that I've shared with you. One is I try to align my circadian rhythm, meaning specifically my wake and my sleep time. with the sunrise and the sunset. So in other words I don't get up after sunrise and I don't go to bed before sunset. You know that's uh... just a you know basic kind of foundational approach that I have. Doesn't make sense to go to bed when the sun is still out and it doesn't make sense to be still sleeping while the sun is already out. So that's you know my rough boundaries and within that there is obviously some flexibility. But I do try to keep a somewhat consistent bed and wake time again that changes with the season, but it changes gradually. So I don't do like, oh, it's daylight savings time. So we, from one day to the other, we switch by an hour. In fact, when the last time that happened, we just stayed on the old time and just adjusted everything around that because we didn't wanna just make that hour change and mess with our circadian rhythm and mess with our sleep and deal with the consequences in terms of being less productive and less mentally. Capable for a couple of days because you feel that impact if you're in tune with your body I try to have as I mentioned already all coffee or any caffeine really before 10 in the morning the earlier the better And I you know obviously I cut it off at two cups of coffee I don't I don't use caffeine as a source of energy because it's really not it just Blocks the receptors that tell you when you are getting tired So it doesn't give you anything, it just makes you feel like you have energy even though you don't and your body has to steal it from somewhere else and you pay the consequences for that after. The only reason why I drink coffee is because I really like the taste and I don't like the taste of decaf. That's really it. It doesn't... caffeine does nothing to me in terms of, you know, energy. Early dinner. Again, you know, that's one of the... not a huge struggle because the timing of my dinner is usually... I can usually handle well. but the amount that I eat because the more I eat, the fuller my stomach is, the less good I sleep, depending on, of course, the timing. The closer, you know, a big meal to my sleep time, the more trouble I have than sleeping well and resting well. Because my body has, you know, is very active still trying to digest, you know, that food that usually consists of, you know, fat and protein and carbohydrates as well. But still, so early dinner, as early as possible and... And I try not to, you know, I really like to eat, you know, and I need a lot of calories. You know, since I only eat twice a day, that means two fairly large meals. And so I try to make the meal in the morning as big as I can without overeating. But then usually at night, you know, especially when I'm active throughout the day, you know, I still need another big meal. And managing that with the timing has been, I think, is like my major... Struggle because I also want to don't want to eat too early in the morning mostly because I'm not hungry You know early in the morning and when I go work out That suppresses my hunger, you know for a little longers It pushes my breakfast back even more and that means you know then eating again at five There might only be six hours in between my meals and you and very often that's not enough You know, I'm not hungry yet. So that's kind of a little struggle that I that I have and then try to figure out if I, sometimes I just cut my fasting short and eat early, even though I'm not super hungry yet, with the benefit of having an earlier dinner, being hungry early in the afternoon, and then having more time between my last meal and bedtime. Limit alcohol intake to one beverage, or none at all, really. I mean, I like the occasional glass of wine. I actually stopped having, drinking regularly. I used to have a glass of wine. most nights because I really like the taste and I like, you know, the feeling of, you know, getting chill and stuff. But I can tell if that glass of wine happens after five, past five, it impacts my sleep. There is just no way, I mean, maybe now that, you know, we've been doing so many things right, I've become hypersensitive to it, but I can tell, you know, if I have a glass, one glass of wine at seven and I go to bed at nine or nine thirty, I can, I can feel it. I, my sleep is not the same. And I can see it in my data as well. So just what I feel, I can see it, my HRV, my resting heart rate, the amount of deep and REM sleep I get, all of that is impacted by alcohol. So definitely no more than two glasses, and again, as early as possible, if or on days where I consume alcohol. Now, sometimes we're friends over and that rule doesn't apply. I might have three glasses over the course of a four, five hour get together, and the last one might be... you know, later than maybe at eight and then we go to bed at 10 or whatever. All of that happens occasionally, but I, on a daily basis, I try to either cut it out completely and I do that or limit it to one as early as possible. Putting the phone away around dinner time is another thing. And obviously, you know, just having your phone nearby is not going to just by default, negatively impact your sleep. But what you do on the phone, especially if you check them, you know, comments on social media and something that might upset you. or make you angry or might want to make you respond immediately to a stupid comment that I receive. All of those things are counterintuitive or not counterintuitive, they are counterproductive to optimal sleep because it keeps my head spinning thinking about it and that then delays my sleep onset which disrupts my circadian rhythm which means I might get less deep and REM sleep and it's like a vicious circle. So putting the phone away around dinner time has helped dramatically to... not invite any of those stressors that come from using your phone before bedtime. And very often, unfortunately, it means if you text me in a past 6 p.m., I'm not going to see it and I respond the next day. But that's a consequence that I'm very much willing to accept for the benefit of sleeping better. I charge the phone in my office overnight, so I don't have it in the bedroom. That also means that I don't have access to it first thing in the morning, because that's another thing. If, you know, whatever you do first thing in the morning usually sets the tone for the rest of the day. And if you, you know, got on your phone and you see either news you don't like, comments you don't like, you know, whatever it might be, an email you don't like, you know, then your day starts already on the wrong foot. And so I try to avoid that by not having my phone nearby. That also means fewer exposure or less exposure to EMFs. So it's a win-win. We sleep with white noise. That's one thing that we do and it really helps to mask, like noises of, even if it's just your partner turning around or getting up at night because, well, it's usually more me than my wife getting up to pee or the dog, blopping down after walking around, I don't know, checking the perimeter, whatever he does at night. But all of those little noises that can wake you up, especially if you're in light sleep at the time, they get masked out and drowned out by white noise. So we always sleep with white noise and we really like it. I also use an eye mask, especially if my wife likes to read to fall asleep, it helps her sort her thoughts or whatever, calm down. And so she usually reads for a few minutes while I am already trying to sleep. And so I use a sleep mask or an eye mask so I don't get any of that orange light exposure from her reading light. Sun exposure in the morning, you know, I mentioned it before in my routine. I try to either, you know, get that as part of walking the dog or is doing the chores, depending on the time of the season when the sun rises, but get that early light onto my retina, you know, unfiltered, no sunglasses, nothing, just I stare into the sun when it's just above the horizon where it doesn't hurt obviously in your eyes. Getting those frequencies onto your retina has a very powerful impact on your circadian rhythm and how well you sleep then at night. And so that's... what I try to do. I also, with both my wife and I take magnesium before going to bed. Magnesium is a great way to help you relax. It's important for stress management. And it's also obviously one of the electrolytes. You know, if you might be short on magnesium that has a negative impact, not only on muscle function and many other things, but also on your sleep. So we have noticed that by consuming magnesium, it's like 360 milligrams we use, you know, I can link the brand. down into the show notes what we use. We get it on Amazon and we take that every night. It tastes good, it hydrates you a little bit more if you're short maybe and it has helped us with sleeping well. And then the last thing that we do, that we have been doing for a long time, we leverage a mattress or bed cooling solution. That's been an absolute game changer. I have reviews of the solutions we use on my blog. So I'm gonna link it down below, but. cooling down your mattress, preventing your body from overheating under the sheets and by providing the proper temperatures. Because you know I mentioned it in the in the sleep episode already, our core temperature changes throughout the night you know and if you're in the way of those temperature changes because you may be too hot you know and hot air gets stuck under the sheets then it makes it more difficult for your body to cycle through those sleep stages and you or it might also be in the way of falling asleep quickly because you have your core temperature drops before you can fall asleep. And anything you can do to support the temperature change is beneficial. And we have noticed, I mean, we cannot imagine in reality not having a mattress cooling solution. We don't have to worry about what the AC is set to. We don't have to worry about wasting energy to cool the entire house, and which still wouldn't change the temperature under the sheets. We don't have to worry about leaving the fan on which dries out your skin, you know, and it's not conducive to optimal skin health. Just having the mattress cooled to comfortable levels has been an absolute game changer and that's one of the things that we do and believe in and can't really think of not having that. So those are the things that we do or try to do again, you know, not perfect. We don't get it right every single day, but we try to be as consistent as possible. support optimal sleep. Now in terms of the things that I don't do and in reality we both my wife and I do the same thing and things and many of the things also apply to the kids you know so it's really a family kind of approach but the things we don't do is we don't cut our sleep short for other priorities so I would never and again I don't want to use the word never because anything can happen but I absolutely try to avoid cutting my sleep short for work for to go exercise or to do anything else. Sleep is, we are very protective of our sleep. It has the highest priority. There are some exceptions. You know, obviously when, I don't know, family flies in and they land at 10 p.m. You know, obviously we pick them up, one of us. Only one of us has to sacrifice their sleep, while the other one, you know, can stick to the sleep routine. There are some exceptions, but generally speaking, for regular things like exercise, like work, like anything else, We don't cut our sleep short. We make it a priority. We don't have a TV in the bedroom. So we don't binge watch until we fall asleep. Very counterintuitive. I used to think that watching TV while trying to fall asleep it helps me fall asleep. It's BS, it's not conducive to optimal sleep. Maybe it's the same as with alcohol. You're drinking alcohol until you're drowsy might help you fall asleep, but it absolutely hammers. the quality of your sleep. You're not gonna get the same deep and REM sleep as you would without doing that. We don't try to stay inside all day. Fortunately, I work from home, my wife is home, we're all home, we can pretty much do whatever we want to, within certain guidelines, of course, I have to earn money, record podcasts for that matter. But we try to avoid staying inside all day. We go out as much as we can, expose ourselves to sunlight because that's crucial to maintaining an optimal circadian rhythm and maintaining optimal sleep. Caffeine in the afternoon. Again, it's not that I've never done it, but I absolutely try to avoid it if possible at all. Because I know it's gonna disrupt my sleep later on. Late and large meals. I already said that's maybe the biggest struggle, quote unquote, that I have. Not that I have, you know, dinner at 10 p.m. and you know I eat an entire turkey. I don't do that but sometimes you know having dinner at seven and eating the amount of food that I eat has an impact on how well I sleep. Every single time I can tell you know how when I ate based on how I wake up in the morning. Alcohol after seven again happens occasionally but usually it does not and I try to keep it that way. Social media you know before bedtime and first thing in the morning. Those are two things that I absolutely encourage you to avoid. And it's a very simple fix. I know it's simple in terms of all it takes is, you know, move your phone to a different room. You know, that's really the best approach. If the phone is not close by, you're less likely to pick it up. If it's close by, it's very difficult to abstain from, you know, that urge of, oh, I'm just going to check. Keep it away. Put it away, you know, in a different room. Put it into airplane mode. That's what I do. and that has a dramatic impact on I think your mental health mostly and that again impacts how well you sleep how quickly you can fall asleep. I also don't recommend chronic use of sleep aids even something as God and God benign as melatonin. You know melatonin is a hormone and with every hormone in the body there is a feedback loop meaning that whatever you consume or put into your body exogenous hormones impacts the production of the same hormone in your body. So in other words if you consume melatonin then your body stops making melatonin because it doesn't need it, right? And so the more chronically you use those helpers the less your body makes those and you know that obviously is not conducive to good sleep, natural sleep that should not rely on any helpers. We use melatonin occasionally you know when we travel when there might be some other occasions where we have a very late workout, maybe there is a once a year competition and we don't come back until seven and we're all riled up and absolutely cannot sleep whatsoever. We might pop a melatonin, one milligram or so, maybe two tops. And that's pretty much it. But the chronic use of those things is something that I absolutely do not encourage. And it doesn't help in the long run. It's a bandaid at the end of the day. Some of the tips that I can share with you that you can use to, especially if you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. Those are really the two things I've seen, I see a lot that people cannot fall asleep because of head suspending, racing thoughts, whatever, or they wake up in the middle of the night and are absolutely not sleepy at all anymore. I've had this in the past and I kind of figured out what the reasons are. And so a couple of tips here. One is if you have trouble falling asleep, brain dumping. Meaning that whatever is in your head, whatever is in your thoughts, write it down on a piece of paper. Because for the brain that means, okay, I don't have to think about it because it's there, so I can pick it up from here tomorrow. You're basically just, or literally moving it, offloading it from your brain on a piece of paper and you can stop thinking about it. It's very easy to stop thinking about things that are written down somewhere because you know they are there. You're not going to forget, there is no need to think more about it. It's, you know, parked. All good. And I do that a lot whenever I have, you know, racing thoughts or, you know, to do's that are like, oh, tomorrow I have to whatever, write it down, you know, and I'm done with it. Tactile stimulation is also super helpful. Both my wife and I have figured that out, you know, and we use a device called Apollo. There are different devices out there. There are touch points. There is Apollo. We have both of those really, and they both work well, but our favorite by far is Apollo. It's tactile stimulation that down regulates your nervous system, specifically the sympathetic nervous system, which is the one responsible for your fight and flight response. So by getting more into the resting and digesting mode, meaning a parasympathetic mode, you can fall asleep quicker and you sleep better. And in fact, Apollo, I've been testing it in the last few weeks, has a feature now that detects based on its motion sensor when you're waking up. and it automatically turns on a mode that helps you fall asleep again very quickly. And looking at the statistics of how often it turned on at night, I don't even remember any of that. I don't remember waking up that often, but apparently I was moving. I was kind of awake or in sort of a wake phase. Apollo turned on and I continued sleeping. So it's incredible. You just have to use it consistently. It's not like you know, use it once and everything is good. Now you use it throughout the day already whenever you feel anxious, whenever you feel like you're not in control of your stress response. And it's a game changer as far as sleep is concerned. Heat exposure in the evening. I mean there's a reason why people say take a hot shower before going to sleep. And while it might sound counterintuitive because I mentioned in this episode just before that your core temperature needs to drop before you can fall asleep. But by exposing yourself to heat either via you know a hot shower or sauna bathing or a hot bath. your body starts cooling down more aggressively and so you actually lower your core temperature below baseline because of that heat exposure and then helps you fall asleep. So a hot shower or sauna right before bedtime is a great way to not only feel exhausted and fatigued a little bit, but also to fall asleep quicker. Mattress cooling, I mentioned it already. Check out my blog post about the best mattress cooling solutions. Absolute game changer for us. If you are exposed to a lot of artificial junk light, especially blue light in the evening, I highly recommend blue light blocking glasses. Now, we have them at home, all of us have. We rarely fortunately need them because we try to reduce our exposure in the evening just naturally. And whatever residual blue light we have left doesn't seem to impact our sleep well, our circadian rhythm. But if you have trouble falling asleep at a certain time, you know, blue light blocking glasses can absolutely help to... adjust your circadian rhythm basically to reset it and if you combine that and with early sunlight exposure the next morning You can fix your circadian rhythm in just a few days and sleep better and fall asleep quicker as a result You can also if you like, you know the feeling of having a drink in the evening like to wind down and stuff There are actually non-ethanol alcohols. There is one that one product that I really like It's called hard ketones and it's a non-ethanol, it's butanedyl, it's an alcohol, but it's not ethanol. And butanedyl converts into ketones, which is the preferred fuel source of the brain, the heart, and some of the other organs. So by drinking that, you kind of have the feeling of, you're drinking alcohol because it tastes, it has the same kind of harshish taste as alcohol, but you actually... fuel your brain with ketones which can improve recovery and help you fall asleep. Well, not help you fall asleep quicker, but prevent you from not falling asleep, which is what alcohol does. I actually cut that. Let's cut it. Let's do it again. So with butendyl, butendyl converts into ketones and those ketones are... good for the brain, good for the heart, good for the body generally. It's like, you know, being in ketosis without following a keto diet. And so the advantage of doing that is you feel like you're drinking an alcohol because it is butanol is an alcohol, but it doesn't convert into toxins like ethanol does in the liver. So that means it doesn't disrupt your sleep, but you still have the feeling of consuming alcohol. So it's a win-win at the end of the day. You know, hard ketones is the product that I really like. I'm going to link it down below in the description. Check that out. I actually want to link the review that I have of the product. You should check that out and maybe give it a try. I really like it. And with that, we're going to wrap it up. That was my sleep routine. If you like it, follow, subscribe, share, please. I appreciate it. And I hope I'll see you and hear you in the next episode.