An estimated 70 million American adults have a sleep disorder, the most common of which is insomnia1 — the inability to fall asleep, or waking up one or more times during the night. If you’re in this category, despair not, because the list of strategies to improve your sleep is long. While most sleep problems are tied to lifestyle choices such as spending too much time indoors during daylight hours, and/or excessive use of technology and chronic exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs), which will require you to make (perhaps significant) changes to your lifestyle, a number of tips and tricks can be useful in the short term. A method developed by the U.S. military, revealed in the 1981 book, “Relax and Win: Championship Performance,” claims to have a 96 percent success rate after six weeks of consistent implementation. Military Method Preps Your Body for SleepThe method centers around preparing your mind and body for sleep by deeply relaxing for about two minutes. The following summary of the process was recently published in the Evening Standard:2 1. Relax your whole face, including your tongue, jaw and the muscles around your eyes 2. Drop your shoulders and relax your arms 3. Relax your chest as you breathe out 4. Relax your legs, from your thighs to your feet 5. Relax and clear your mind, then picture yourself in one of the following scenarios: a. You’re lying in a canoe on a calm lake with nothing but blue sky above you b. You’re snuggled in a black velvet hammock in a pitch-black room c. Simply repeat “Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think” for 10 seconds 21 Additional Strategies to Help You Fall Asleep FasterI’ve written numerous articles over the years, detailing all sorts of tips and tricks to help you fall asleep faster and improve the quality of your sleep. For an extensive listing of suggestions, see “Sleep — Why You Need It and 50 Ways to Improve It.” Medical News Today also recently published a list of “21 Ways to Fall Asleep Naturally,” which included the following:3
Avoid Nighttime EMF to Improve Sleep QualityWhile avoiding cellphones and other devices with electronic screens (including e-readers) is important to protect your melatonin production, another factor that can have a significant impact on your sleep quality is EMFs emitted from your home wiring. There’s actually evidence showing EMF exposure reduces melatonin production5 just like blue light from cellphones, tablets and computers do, making it particularly important to eliminate EMFs in your bedroom. EMF exposure also triggers neuronal changes that affect memory and your ability to learn,6 and harms your body’s mitochondria by producing excessive oxidative damage, so “marinating” in EMFs all night, every night, can cause or contribute to virtually any chronic ailment, including premature aging. One of the easiest ways to avoid or radically limit your nighttime electric field exposure from the wiring in your room is to pull the circuit breaker to your bedroom before going to bed. Alternatively, have an electrician install a remote breaker for convenience, which is what I’ve done. This will virtually eliminate electric fields in your bedroom, unless you have adjacent rooms with wiring in them, in which case you will need to measure the electric fields with a meter after you shut off the power to see if it goes into the lowest range. Another really important step is to turn off your Wi-Fi at night. Ideally, hard wire your home so you have no Wi-Fi 24/7 in your home. Lack of Sleep Raises Your Risk for Heart Disease and MoreA review of hundreds of sleep studies concluded that, as a general rule, most adults need somewhere between seven and nine hours — or right around eight hours — of sleep per night to maintain good health. Regularly getting less than seven hours per night has been scientifically linked to a wide array of health problems, ranging from weight gain7 to an increased risk for cancer. Most recently, researchers again confirmed that lack of sleep can over time take a significant toll on your long-term heart health.8,9 As reported by Medical Xpress:10
Men who got only five hours or less per night were also more likely to smoke, be inactive and overweight, have high blood pressure and diabetes. Other studies have shown insufficient sleep and/or poor quality sleep can increase your risk for:
Sleep and Athletic PerformanceWhile being a sleep coach may sound like a strange career, indeed, they do exist, and are slowly starting to break their way into the world of professional sports. This makes sense, considering the impact sleep can have on your athletic performance, and the fact that many professional athletes travel and have to deal with jet lag to boot. As previously noted by The Atlantic:22
The largest performance drop-offs can be seen among endurance athletes, and sports requiring quick reaction times and reflexes. To determine whether an athlete might gain a competitive edge simply by sleeping more, Stanford researcher Cheri D. Mah reached out to the Stanford Cardinal men’s basketball team. For two weeks, the players’ athletic performance was assessed after getting their normal amount of sleep. They were fitted with motion-sensing wristbands to determine the actual length of their sleep, which averaged in at a mere 6.5 hours per night. Next, the players were asked to extend their sleep time as much as possible for five to seven weeks. The players increased their average sleep time by about two hours, to 8.5 hours nightly. By the end of this test, players had improved their free throws by more than 11 percent, and their three-point shots by nearly 14 percent. Sprint drill speeds also improved for every single player on the team. As noted by The Atlantic:
Sleep Coaching in the Big LeaguesA 2015 article in The Guardian23 discusses the impact sleep coach Nick Littlehales, a former golf pro and marketer of bedding, has had on the Manchester United Football Club:
Whether you’re a professional athlete or not, sleep is an important yet all too often overlooked factor in health and well-being. If you’re still skimping, thinking you’ve managed to get by OK so far, I urge you to reconsider and give sleep the attention it deserves. You can do everything else right, but if you’re not sleeping enough, or not sleeping well, many of the benefits of your healthy lifestyle will be lost. from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/11/29/military-method-for-falling-asleep.aspx
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