Could this explain how moving from my less thick curtains has made me very tired? I used to just wake up at the rise of the sun and felt refreshed no matter what, but now it seems like I never get any good sleep.
Yes. When the sun doesn't hit the room your circadian cycle is affected.
I used to close down the blinds and some times I'd wake up at 11 or 13 AM thinking that it's 9 AM.
Now, out of pure lack I live in a house which has no blinds. So I wake up alone no matter what, at 8:00 AM. If I need more sleep, due to late night activity, I get another one-two hours in the evening.
My parents were telling me and they were right. We need to make sure the sun can enter the bedroom in the morning.
To enhance sleep are necessary a couple of other things:
* Clean oxygen in the room (usually opening the windows 5 minutes before waiting for sleep will do)
* Proper room temperature (you need to feel warm UNDER the blankets, but not sweat)
* Less possible rumors in the room
* Avoid any CNS stimulant (coffee, black tea, coca-cola, etc.). A glass of red wine (just one) is very good. It's the recommended daily dosage (tannins) and although contains sugars, can act as a natural CNS inhibitor.
* light dinner, possibly 4 hours before (say you go to 00:15 AM to bed, it's good to have a light, rich in fibers dinner at 8-9 AM: Yogurt, Vegetables etc. Avoid fruits, after 6 AM, only black bread and vegetables should be taken).
* Close the screens and get a book if you don't feel really sleepy. This habit helps the circadian cycle in my personal experience. Watching movies/tv-series while waiting for sleep is an oxymoron: Your adrenaline levels, instead of getting lowered they get get higher, enhancing the opposite effect (alertness).
Of course, the BEST sleep, comes after a physically intense day and if you don't have physically intense days it's good to do some exercise in order to make your body feel tired at the time you need it to be tired.
PS. Wish you (and me) all the best, because it's one thing knowing (I study pharmacy, so I get a lot of this stuff) and a different thing doing... So this comment was a form of self-advice basically :-)
How do you balance this need with getting higher quality sleep by totally blacking out your room before bed?
We live in a loft with angled ceiling windows/blinds* - if I don't close them then it's difficult to sleep with the general ambient city light. I was thinking of making an Arduino IR thingy to open them every morning at sunrise automatically, but tbh the noise of the blinds opening would probably wake us up anyway.
I could wear a sleep mask too, but that would obviously prevent me from waking up to the sun too.
On vacation in California this year I noticed myself waking up every morning with the sun and feeling amazing - wish it was as easy to replicate year-round in London :(
> (say you go to 00:15 AM to bed, it's good to have a light, rich in fibers dinner at 8-9 AM: Yogurt, Vegetables etc. Avoid fruits, after 6 AM, only black bread and vegetables should be taken).
I'd just like a clarification on this. Why rich in fiber? Doesn't fiber require more energy for digestion, which shouldn't be spent while sleeping?
Fibers are carbohydrates that are not decomposed thus lowering the secretion of insulin from pancreas (insulin spike). So the actual spike instead of having high peaks it is moderated now, making:
1) Your cells more sensitive to insulin (avoiding diabetes)
2) Your contains a more rational amount of energy so your body won't to have to store fat.
I don't quite understand how do you define energy since fibers are not technically digested. Well not the insoluble ones. The soluble are digested but, because of their slow digestion they regulate the insulin spike in a positive way: takes longer but spike (imagine this is a graph with peaks) is way lower (a graph with lower insulin peaks is easier for your pancreas to excrete and your body to handle).
Soluble fibers (e.g. oatmeal) helps with cholesterol, which performs a variety of functions in the human body (it's involved in cell wall functions, permeability, bile acids and so on).
> Doesn't fiber require more energy for digestion, which shouldn't be spent while sleeping?
Digestion requires energy and when you sleep there's much energy to be used elsewhere, so actually when you sleep the digestive process is working at full throttle... so I'm not sure what do you mean by shouldn't be spent while sleeping.
When you sleep having an empty stomach is bad, when you sleep having a load of food sitting in your stomach is equally bad, for the sleep quality but your digestion will work better than say if you were awake.
Sorry, poor English here. Some times, we tend to have devices inside the room which make subtle noises. Like a digital media player, for example, which tries to keep the HD spinning. It's a noise that you won't listen or pay attention to during the day, but at 2 A.M. your brain listens and process the noise.
The brain is an incredible machine. It tries to isolate all the known noises. So you have a phenomenon where people fall asleep while the usual noises can be captured by the ear, but when a new noise - as in unidentified - jumps in, you suddenly wake up.
If you can keep all these noises to a minimum, by switching off (not off mode, really off) such devices, will enhance your sleep quality. Keeps the brain less busy.
Also note that digital devices (especially routers and digital players) raise the room temperature by at least a couple of Celsius degrees, sometimes more[1]. Ideally, no working device should be on the bedroom while you're sleeping.
[1] I had a Dreambox-500 PVR in my bedroom. Apart from the incredible noise, when it was running during the day, the temperature was at least 6 Celsius higher, with no windows/doors open.
Oxygen reduces sympathetic activity, so for example in patients with heart failure or sleep disorders it is actually helpful.
I've heard that enhances cognitive awareness too, but from a quick look I didn't find any studies online to support the theory. Generally speaking, makes sense: we breath O2 and release CO2. When preparing to sleep the O2 quantity will be diminished considerably in the room. So it's better to allow as much, as possibly bigger % of O2 in the room.
But other than that, I know just know that patients with COPD and sleep deprivation disorders use oxygen therapy to get better. How exactly it works, I don't know though nor I can be 100% that enhances cognitive awareness.
ps. Air quality is usually associated with room temperature. Room temperature IMHO can have an even bigger negative effect on sleep quality. Another important thing not mentioned is bed/pillow quality.
EDIT: Changed H2O to O2 after being pointed out my stupid error.
I like rising with the Sun, but at 58.9 degrees North there is only a few weeks a year where this is possible without radically changing my daily schedule with the seasons (about now happily being in one of those periods).
Yeah, I'm in Iceland. There would be four months a year where I got 90 minutes of sleep a night, and another four where I'd have to convince my boss that a three hour workday was fine.
Nordic Countries have this problem which affects melatonin levels and human psychology. It's not a very good place. I think the best conditions are met in the Mediterranean.
It affects each person differently though. Personally, I don't notice it at all. It is a bit harder to get up in the morning if it's still pitch-dark outside, but otherwise, I have no SAD-type effects.
Others can barely function without those lamps that are white-balanced to match sunlight and programmed to gradually brighten up in the morning.
I'm inclined to think that the longer hours in summer more than make up for the shorter hours in winter. Doesn't help with sleep but for any kind of outdoor activity it can be glorious.
It's probably seasonal affective disorder, but I feel my mood is heavily predicated on my own perception of how much sunlight is streaming through my window right when I wake up. It sets the tone for the rest of the day.
