3-Bullet Summary

You’ll benefit more from reading the article the whole way through. But, if you’re pressed for time, here’s a condensed version of The Ultimate Guide on How to Sleep Better:

• 60% of students sleep have poor sleep quality. During exam season, a mere 10% of students get the recommended 8 hours. How to sleep better is therefore very relevant for students.
• Sleep is comprised of 4 main phases that are cycled through 4–6 times each night. They’re part of the sleep-wake cycle, which is regulated by adenosine (the fatigue chemical) and melatonin (the hormone of darkness).
• By understanding what sleep is, there are 7 clear strategies we can employ to improve it: being consistent with our sleep-wake schedules, optimising temperature, getting enough light and dark exposure, moderating how much caffeine we drink and when we consume it, exercising during the day, leveraging the power of mental associations, and being careful of food and drink close to bedtime.

If this Is You, You’re Going to Struggle Tomorrow

You’re lying in bed. You toss and turn from side to side, exhausted from the day. “I’m super tired,” you say to yourself, “But why can’t I get to sleep?” you question.

Frustration intensifies because you understand the benefits of sleep for students but can’t drop off. One minute you’re too hot, the next minute you’re cold. You just can’t settle.

The worst part is that you know it’s a big day tomorrow. There’s a huge exam and you, so you just want some shuteye so you wake up with the energy and vigour needed to ace it tomorrow.

But you can’t sleep.

You check the bedside clock. “Surely it’s not late yet, right?” you mutter.

The interface displays 2am.

You haven’t had a wink of deep sleep yet you’ve been in bed for almost 4 hours. A dark cloud of shame rolls over you and you begin to fear for your performance tomorrow.

Introduction

Sleep is one of those things. It’s one of those things that we know we need to do but oftentimes struggle to do effectively.

During my last year of university, I had a few episodes of poor sleep. I was really stressed out during the build up to my A Levels, and I ended up sleeping for fewer hours. Although it didn’t hurt my academic performance, my physical and mental health fell into the gutter. For the first time in my life, I had episodes of depression. I gained weight and lost a tonne of energy.

Weirdly, I thought this was normal. Research has shown that up to 60% of all university/college students have poor sleep quality, with 7.7% meeting all criteria of an insomnia disorder¹. In the week before final exams, the statistics get even worse, as barely 10% of students get the recommended 8 minimum hours of sleep during this period².

I thought that sleep was a negotiable and that It had to suffer if I was to be successful.

Then, when I finished college, I read Why We Sleep.

My life changed in a matter of days. The author went on about the terrifying consequences of failing to sleep effectively, especially as a student. In fact, he went on to say that sleep is a performacne-enhancing drug for students. The fact that we neglect it so, often at the expense of studying, ironically leads us to perform worse than if we’d just slept more and studied less!

It lit a fire inside of me. I went on a thorough sleep journey. I dug into all the science in an attempt to master my sleep.

Boy did it work. Coupled with the resistance training I started doing, I lost bodyfat, dramatically improved my mood, and even saw a boost to my energy levels, which allowed me to do more high-quality work and surpass my sleepless peers!

In this practical guide, you’re going to uncover the steps I took to improve my sleep fast.

But, before we can reap the benefits of the sleep framework I developed, we must first understand one critical aspect of sleep that changed the game for me: what it actually is!

The Science Behind Sleep

Here’s a question for you: what is sleep?

If you know the answer, then you’ll really grasp the principles we’re going to run through in the next section.

If you, like past me, didn’t know how to respond, however, then pay close attention.

Sleep, which we spend a third of our lives undergoing, is essentially the period of the day that our bodies cleanse toxins, repair tissues and consolidate information. It’s a response to the signals produced by damage and fatigue that powers us for more damage and fatigue tomorrow.

There are 2 main types of sleep: rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM)

During REM sleep, our eyes swiftly dart from side to side. This phase of sleep is remarkable, as suggested by the National Institute for Health³:

• Brain activity, heart rate and blood pressure mirror levels experienced during wakefulness.
• We vividly dream.
• The body’s limbs become temporarily paralysed to stop us acting out our dreams.

Research has pointed to REM sleep’s role in memory consolidation, learning and brain development⁴, making it crucial for students harnessing skills and digesting new concepts.

REM sleep also possesses a deeply emotional element. Research has suggested that the dreams we experience during this stage are like replays of emotional situations that we are not yet effective at coping with⁵. During REM sleep, therefore, our brains seem to rehearse over emotions that we haven’t fully processed, better preparing us for when they crop up again in wakefulness.

NREM is a much calmer phase of sleep that consists of 3 stages⁶.

• Stage 1 — Our hearts, brains and muscles relax. This is essentially the transition from wakefulness to sleep.
• Stage 2 — Our body temperatures fall, breathing and heart rates become even slower, and muscles relax further. During this phase, sleep spindles occur. These are basically waves of brain activity that build resilience against external stimuli whilst we sleep, and promote neuroplasticity (i.e., learning and integrating new memories)⁷.
• Stage 3 — this is the deepest stage of sleep and once we’re in it our muscles are fully relaxed and brain waves at their steadiest. This stage is also when our bodies physically repair themselves: tissues and bones grow and develop, and the immune system is reinforced. Moreover, research has shown that procedural memories (skills and performing tasks effectively) and declarative memories (recalling facts and information) are forged in stage 3⁸, stressing its crucial role for students who train their brains daily and need to memorise lots of information.

The Sleep-Wake Cycle

REM and the 3 stages of NREM are cycled through every 90–110 minutes and about 4–6 times each night⁹.

Here’s a basic outline of what the sleep cycle looks like:

1. The body calms down and NREM stage 1 unfolds for 5–10 minutes. (5% of the sleep cycle.)
2. Sleep progressively gets deeper and NREM stage 2 is entered. (45% of the sleep cycle.)
3. We enter NREM stage 3 once our brains, hearts and muscles are at their most relaxed. (25% of the sleep cycle.)
4. After around 90 minutes of sleep, we enter the first REM phase. Our brain activity, blood pressure and breathing then skyrockets as we become physically paralysed. (25% of the sleep cycle.)
5. Once the first REM phase is over, the cycle then repeats itself every 90–110 minutes.

Once we complete this cycle 4–6 times and sleep for 8–10 hours, we awaken. Immediately, a compound called adenosine then starts building up. Adenosine has been associated with feelings of tiredness¹⁰ and as the day draws on it progressively accumulates. This means that the longer we are awake the more tired we feel, and this results from the signals produced by adenosine.

Adenosine isn’t the only thing that makes us feel tired, however. Melatonin, a hormone that’s been deemed the hormone of darkness, is, you guessed it, released as light fades. Melatonin, like adenosine, has been shown to regulate healthy sleep patterns and aid the transition to sleep¹¹.

Therefore, what we see is that nature has its own built-in mechanisms to drive us into a sleepy state: adenosine (feelings of fatigue) and melatonin (a hormone triggered by darkness darkness). Once both mechanisms have kicked into action and reach high enough levels, that’s our signal to begin the sleep cycle again.

This continuous loop — sleep -> wake -> adenosine + melatonin -> sleep — is regulated by the circadian rhythm, which is the body’s master clock that signals when different parts of the loop should happen.

How to Sleep Better: The Science-Based Tools

Hopefully you now grasp what sleep is. This information is important because it clarifies what you’re actually trying to improve. At the end of the day, what’s the point in trying to improve something if you don’t know what that thing is? It’s like going on a hike with no map.

Because the previous article explored the 6 key benefits of sleep for students, we’ve got one last mission: learning how to sleep better.

What is Good Sleep?

Quickly, let’s give ourselves some objective measures to strive for so we can track whether we’re sleeping well.

Research has underlined how 7 hours of sleep is the absolute minimum for healthy adults¹². However, for teenagers and young adults (most students), 8 hours is a safer minimum.

I recommend students get 8 hours minimum because they’re (often) still physically developing and have to do a lot of mental work each day, which are both supported by sleep.

As well as sleep quantity, we need sleep quality. This integrates a few different factors, but here are the ones we’re going to focus on as per the Sleep Foundation:

• High sleep efficiency — Spending no less than 85% of time in bed sleeping.
• Few sleep awakenings — Waking up no more than once per night.
• Low sleep latency — Getting to sleep in under 30 minutes.
• Feeling subjectively fresh and alert the next morning.
• Getting enough deep (NREM stage 3) sleep and REM sleep — 40%–50% of time spent sleeping should be NREM stage 3 and REM.

Each of the strategies we’re about to cover have been proven to improve sleep quantity and quality. Moreover, they’re all actionable: you can implement them today and get immediate results.

So, without further ado, let’s uncover the 7 things science has to say regarding how to sleep better.

Tool 1) Consistency

The number one most important thing you can do for enhanced sleep is to get into a consistent sleep-wake routine.

Evidence suggests that sleep consistency is a strong predictor of health because it is such a potent force in dictating sleep quantity and quality¹³. In simple terms, to get the performance boost from sleep and start feeling sharp, you need consistency.

How does consistency influence quantity and quality, though?

Well, having a set bedtime and wake time every day does something remarkable: it anchors your circadian rhythm. You may recall from earlier that the circadian rhythm is the body’s clock. It is on a 24-hour cycle and wants you to stick to the same pattern so that the cycle doesn’t become distorted and have to readjust.

If you go to bed each night and wake up each morning at the same time (give or take 30 minutes either side of your target), you regulate your circadian rhythm and don’t leave it guessing every day.

This also means something that will hurt a lot of ears: we shouldn’t lie in on the weekends.

By ‘lie in’, I mean spending an extra hour or two in bed to repay the sleep debt accumulated throughout the week. Sleep debt refers to the lost hours of sleep that the body essentially keeps a tally of and wants us to repay due to the myriad health benefits sleep possesses. Most people attempt to repay their sleep debt (which they often accumulate on weekdays due to not sticking to a consistent sleep-wake cycle) by adding extra catch-up sleep to their weekend routines.

The reason you don’t want to do this is linked to the circadian rhythm’s favourite thing: consistency!

Those extra catch-up hours over the weekend throw your circadian rhythm off kilter, meaning that when you need to wake up to work the next week, your circadian rhythm will temporarily be stuck in weekend mode, making Monday feel a whole lot heavier than it needs to.

Instead, repay your sleep debt by gradually increasing the amount of sleep in your daily routine. For example, if you usually go to bed at 10:00pm and wake up at 7:00am but feel tired during the week (i.e., as though you have a debt that needs repaying), start going to bed at 9:45pm every day. Research has pointed to this being a much more effective alternative to large chunks of catch-up sleep on the weekends, which don’t seem to contribute to repaying sleep debts effectively¹⁴.

It’s so obvious yet a lot of people are simply unwilling to add more sleep to their daily routines. If you’re reluctant, just remember that sleep is the battery that powers life. If you don’t focus on how to sleep better you will not function like a high performer.

Tool 2) Temperature Optimisation

Ever wondered why it’s so hard to sleep well on a scorching summer day yet so easy on a frosty winter night?

Part of the reason is related to temperature. The body’s optimal core temperature during the day is about 37°C (99°F) but this temperature must drop ever so slightly before bed if we are to sleep comfortably¹⁵.

On hot days, when the environment is way warmer than normal, your body works hard to cool down. If you get into bed, chances are you’re still too hot even in a mere sheet, often leading you crank open the windows and hang your hands and feet out of the bed to cool down.

By contrast, on cold days you just get into bed, wrap up warm and gradually reach the optimal temperature needed for sleep, adjusting the number of blankets as you go.

Therefore, when it’s cooler, the two main types of temperature are optimised for sleep: internal and external.

Internal Temperature Optimisation

Internal temperature is your core body temperature. We want to drop this down to slightly above 36°C (97°F) if we are to sleep effectively¹⁶.

The most effective way to cool down internally is to increase vasodilation. This is scientific jargon for diverting heat away from the core to the surface (skin) and outer extremities, particularly the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. When we vasodilate, our blood vessels expand as our muscular walls relax, shuttling blood, nutrients and oxygen around the body and away from the core. During this process, a ‘heat dump’ occurs as excess warmth is transmitted from our bodies to the environment.

It is unsurprising, therefore, that because vasodilation promotes internal cooling, research has demonstrated a connection between it and good sleep¹⁷.

The most practical way to increase vasodilation for sleep benefits is to get hot 1–2 hours before bed.

Exercising would indeed warm you up, but it would also spike steroid hormones like cortisol that make you feel stressed. It would perhaps be wiser to save exercise for earlier in the sleep-wake cycle for this very reason.

A much better alternative is a warm shower or bath. In fact, a recent meta-analysis (a study that looks at lots of other studies) compiled the results of 13 other papers and concluded that sleep quality is significantly improved by a warm shower or bath 1–2 hours before bed and can lead to sleep latency falling by up to 10 minutes¹⁸.

External Temperature Optimisation

However, even if you cool down effectively with a warm shower or bath, if the external temperature is too hot or cold, then you’re not going to sleep well.

External temperature simply underpins the temperature of the room you’re sleeping in. It plays a core role in moderating internal temperature, as if it’s too hot, for example, you’re also going to warm up within it, which, as we’ve established, isn’t good for improving sleep.

Although everyone has a temperature preference, a few degrees either side of 18°C (65°F) appears to be ideal for sleep¹⁹. For people like me that don’t have a thermostat, aim to get the room feeling like there’s a gentle breeze on a spring morning.

There are several ways to keep the room at this degree of coolness, even during the summer:

• Leave your window open until you’re in bed. This ventilates the room and fills it with pure air.
• Utilise a fan or air conditioning. If you can’t afford air conditioning, place an ice pack in front of a standard tower fan for an extra cool breeze.
• Extractor fans can additionally be used to dehumidify your bedroom.
• Make sure the paint colours in your room are lighter to lower the amount of heat absorbed.
• Keep things that emit excess heat energy out of the bedroom. Common culprits include hot meals, incandescent light bulbs, screens and devices (especially PCs and laptops), and other people. If the things emitting heat are technological, just unplug them when you’re finished.
• Consider switching to LED light bulbs (which are super cheap).
• Keep your blinds closed to deflect incoming sunlight.

Tool 3) Light Exposure

You may recall that we discussed melatonin — the hormone of darkness — a little while ago. Melatonin is called the hormone of darkness because it is suppressed by light. This means that during the day when there’s natural light from the sun, melatonin and its role in signalling the onset of sleep is essentially shut down. Therefore, to stay awake and feel energised, get as much light as possible.

However, if you want to give your body the message that it’s time to start feeling sleepy, then you want to do the opposite: experience darkness.

Imagine this: a commander in an aeroplane who’s patting soldiers on the back before they commence their skydiving mission. The commander is darkness, the soldiers are melatonin and the skydiving mission is sleep. Without a commander, the soldiers don’t know when to start their mission and jump out the plane (i.e., melatonin won’t know when to start regulating your body clock and signal for sleep).

Because melatonin naturally wants to start rising 1–2 hours before sleep²⁰, that’s when we need to kick the commander into action and start preparing melatonin for the mission.

How to sleep better? Start exposing yourself to darker conditions 1–2 hours before bed.

One way to do this is to take a 15–30-minute evening walk. Not only will this highlight to your brain that the sun is setting, thereby triggering the onset of melatonin, but an evening walk will also assist in digesting your evening meal²¹, preventing gastrointestinal stress from impacting your sleep.

Moreover, in the same way we should try to eliminate excess heat energy from our bedrooms to aid sleep, we should also eliminate additional light energy from our homes in general.

Think about it this way. Before humans made artificial lighting, the main light source available was the sun. This meant that our melatonin production was purely regulated by nature, setting a steady circadian rhythm. However, once humans created artificial lighting, we were exposed to another source, dysregulating natural melatonin secretion and causing sleep problems.

The solution is simple: cut out as many artificial light sources 1–2 hours before bed as possible for better sleep.

• Turn off your phone, tablet, laptop or computer screen. Modern technology emits blue light, which has been shown to prevent melatonin from being secreted and regulate the circadian rhythm similarly to the sun ²².
• If you don’t want to completely turn off your devices, either switch on their blue-light filters or purchase blue-light-blocking glasses that you can wear 1–2 hours before bed, which have been shown to contribute to a regular sleep-wake cycle if used consistently²³.
• Dim or turn off the lights in your house 1–2 hours before your desired bedtime. Optimally, you’d turn off all the lights at this point and fall asleep with the onset of darkness. However, not everyone has night vision and wants to walk around a pitch-black house. Alternatives include only using candlelight, wearing blue-light-blocking glasses to shield your eyes from unnatural light sources, and switching to lamps and lights emitting warmer colours, like LEDs.
• Avoid junk light in your home 1–2 hours before bed. Junk light is essentially artificial light with blue and green hues that messes with your circadian rhythm. It’s everywhere: microwave lights, digital alarm clocks, fluorescent light bulbs, etc. Although it will be very tricky to completely abolish it, a good place to start would be switching your bulbs to LEDs that emit warmer colours and covering any junk light sources in your bedroom with tape (or blocking your view of them with a blanket).

Before moving onto the fourth tip, we must recognise that darkness isn’t the only regulator of sleep.

Recall that the circadian rhythm is basically a timer on repeat. It’s constantly telling us to either be awake or go to sleep. We’ve established that darkness is the sleep trigger, but we must equally recognise the following: light starts the circadian rhythm and is the wakefulness trigger. A paper published in 2019 puts it elegantly: ‘light advances the clock’²⁴.

“If how to sleep better is my question, why is this important?” you may ask. Put simply, without light, the circadian clock doesn’t receive the signal to start ticking, and if it doesn’t receive the signal to start ticking, then it has to make its own judgements as to when you should start feeling sleepy again, which are never fully in-tune with nature.

Biologically, melatonin production kicks into gear after approximately 13–14 hours of wakefulness so you start feeling sleepy 1–2 hours before bed²⁵. When you first wake up and expose yourself to light, you start the 13–14-hour timer. Conversely, if you don’t get morning light after waking, then you delay the start of the countdown.

So, if you want to really stay on top of your circadian rhythm, get into a consistent sleep-wake cycle and start improving your sleep, make a beeline for 10–15 minutes of bright light exposure 5–10 minutes after waking up. Preferably, this would be natural daylight directly into your eyes, although blue light from screens and general household light sources can work, especially on overcast days.

Tool 4) Moderate Your Caffeine Consumption

Remember adenosine — the compound that makes us feel tired and progressively builds up the longer we’re awake?

Well, adenosine and caffeine are fierce competitors. For adenosine to have its tiring effects on the body, it binds to a receptor. A receptor is like a docking station made of protein that receives signals from chemicals that bind to them. It then transforms these signals into the actions encoded within them. An adenosine molecule that binds to an adenosine receptor possesses the signal of tiredness; the receptor hears this loud and clear and makes us feel more tired.

Caffeine battles with adenosine for the same receptors²⁶. This means that when you consume caffeine, you’re basically reducing the chances that adenosine binds to a receptor and makes you feel tired by introducing molecules that want the same territory. Moreover, because caffeine is a stimulant, when it binds to an adenosine receptor, it transmits the signal of wakefulness.

For this reason, caffeine is a bittersweet tool in your student arsenal.

On the one hand, 400mg of caffeine per day (preferably split across two or three doses) has been shown to majorly improve cognitive performance²⁷ and endurance²⁸. Take 200mg 30–60 minutes before an exam, when caffeine reaches peak concentration in your bloodstream²⁹, and you’ll fuel yourself for success.

On the other hand, because caffeine has a half-life of 5–6 hours³⁰, meaning it takes 5–6 hours for half of it to leave your system, if you consume the same 200mg at noon and usually go to bed at 10:00pm, then by the time you’re heading off for sleep, you’ll still have around 50mg circulating in your system. In other words, it’ll be as though you’ve just chugged a 330ml can of Mountain Dew!

Therefore, the best time to take your maximum dose of 400mg of caffeine (2–3 regular-size cups of coffee) to minimise potentially negative impacts on sleep is about 1–2 hours after waking. Not only will this reduce the amount circulating in your system before bed, but also mitigate feelings of overstimulation, as 30–45 minutes after waking, your cortisol (stress hormone) levels are at their highest³¹ — piling the stimulating effects of caffeine atop that spike will just make you super anxious and disrupt your hormonal balance.

Tool 5) Exercise During the Day

Exercise is one of the best things we can do for all facets of health and mental performance. Nonetheless, we don’t tend to associate exercise with sleep.

Think about it, surely the last thing you’d want to do to improve your sleep would be to flood your body with steroid hormones, raise your core temperature and become fiercely competitive?

Yet, science suggests otherwise. Studies have shown that sleep and exercise are bidirectional: as sleep improves, we become more inclined to exercise; as we become more inclined to exercise, we sleep better³².

One of the reasons good sleep is so closely correlated with exercise is because of adenosine. When we exercise adenosine activity in the brain increases³³. Because adenosine is key to fostering homeostatic sleep drive (i.e., the urge to sleep), physically training our bodies and getting a healthy dose of it can subsequently improve our sleep.

Exercise can also be performed in environments where there is natural light. Walking and calisthenics, for instance, can be done outside and remove us from our indoor environments. This then causes us to get the dual benefit of adenosine from the exercise and the regulation of our circadian rhythms from light exposure. Therefore, incorporating a bout of exercise, like a walk around the block or 5 minutes of skipping rope, whilst we get our morning sunshine is a totally free, time-efficient way to tackle the dilemma of how to sleep better.

Like with caffeine, however, timing determines the impact on sleep.

Intense exercise that significantly raises heart rate and core body temperature less than 1–2 hours before bedtime has been shown to increase sleep latency by up to 20 minutes and lower sleep efficiency³⁴. This effect has not been observed for low-intensity exercise, like walking, and is entirely reversed when exercise is performed at any other point during the day.

Simply put, there’s no excuse to not exercise if you want to feel better, sleep better and, as a result, perform better in your exams and everyday life.

Tool 6) Leverage the Power of Mental Associations

Have you ever attempted to train a dog? If you have, then you’ll understand the importance of rewarding the dog when it does something desirable, such as sitting down on command.

When the dog receives the reward, it builds a psychological association between obtaining tasty treats and behaving well. Therefore, the dog is more likely to behave well in the future because it knows there’s potentially a reward awaiting them.

The human brain, albeit more complex, works in the same way.

For instance, when we see our favourite snack on the table, dopamine floods our systems and urges us to go and eat it. This is because we have associated the snack with positive sensations, like delicious taste and satisfaction. (If your favourite treat is cheesecake, extreme guilt also comes soon after.)

There are two strategies you can use to leverage this system for improved sleep.

Make the Bedroom Sacred

One strategy is reserving your bed only for sleep (and, if you’re old enough, sex). Research has shown that this is a highly effective way to improve sleep because it builds a mental association between your bed and restfulness³⁵. On the other hand, you should avoid doing things unrelated to sleep (and potentially sex) in your bed, like scrolling on your phone, reading and eating. This doesn’t mean that you need to stop these behaviours altogether — just do them somewhere else so the association becomes super strong between your bed and sleep.

Build a Pre-Bed Routine

Studies have illustrated how a bedtime routine can contribute to inducing tiredness and better sleep³⁶. Like with a consistent sleep-wake schedule, this is because you anchor your circadian rhythm and give it a prompt to promote tiredness.

You can construct your ritual however you want to. It could be a string of behaviours and lasting an hour, or a couple of things you do for 5 minutes.

Nonetheless, because melatonin secretion commences 1–2 hours before we get into bed and start sleeping, it would be wise to do it during the build up to sleep to complement the feelings of tiredness.

When constructing your routine, try to incorporate some of the tips already outlined in this guide, like taking a warm shower or bath, cutting out blue and junk light, and going on a short walk 1–2 hours before bed, as they will further contribute to promoting tiredness. Here are some additional sleep-promoting tools you could add to your routine:

• Read a book that isn’t emotionally stimulating. This could be a physical book or from a screen that’s blue light is blocked, like a Kindle (which provides eBooks that are cheaper than real books, by the way). Research has shown that reading before bed induces better sleep compared to not reading at all³⁷.
• Stretch your body, as stretching has been shown to improve sleep to the same degree as exercise³⁸. The reason we want to focus on stretching the spine in particular is because a natural, healthy spine allows cerebrospinal fluid to more easily be transported to the brain³⁹. This fluid bathes the brain and flushes out toxic chemicals during sleep, promoting long-term cognitive health.
• Journal your thoughts and ideas and/or write a to-do list for tomorrow. Such a small habit can lead you to fall asleep by up to 10 minutes faster⁴⁰, due to the fact you won’t feel as though you need to remember anything before bed.
• Perform a mindfulness practice, like meditation. This will enable you to control your breathing and slow down your heart rate, as well as mull over the thoughts that you would’ve otherwise engaged with when your head hit the pillow.

Your routine does not need to be complex. In fact, the less complex, the better, because you’ll be more likely to stick with it long-term and engrave the association between the habits and restfulness into your brain.

This video by Med School Insiders is a good starting point for developing a night-time routine and learning how to sleep better. However, if you want to keep it super simple and avoid paralysis by analysis, list three things you could do every night before bed for the rest of your life, and implement them tonight. Here’s a sample routine that I follow:

1. Stretch for 15–30 minutes.
2. Read for 30–45 minutes whilst listening to a relaxing playlist.
3. Brush teeth and say goodnight to family.

Tool 7) Be Cautious of Food and Water Consumption Before Bed

There’s no worse feeling than being interrupted from sleep by the need to go to the bathroom. Surprisingly, though, almost 20% of young men and women suffer from nocturia — waking up multiple times per night to urinate⁴¹. This doesn’t factor in the people that wake up once per night to go to urinate, although this is considered normal.

How can we prevent this from happening?

Eat at the Right Times

Firstly, we shouldn’t consume any big meals in the 2 hours leading to bedtime. Major meals are often comprised of a balance of macronutrients, meaning they include protein, fat and carbohydrates and take a long time to digest. When we’re digesting, our bodies are more fixated on processing than sending us into the deeper stages of sleep. Hence, research has demonstrated a link between meal timing and sleep⁴². The more and the closer you eat to your regular bedtime, the worse your sleep is.

However, this doesn’t mean go to bed hungry. If you decide to sleep on an empty stomach and eat your last meal 4–6 hours before bed, you may experience sleep problems, especially if you don’t eat much. From personal experience, because I eat dinner at 5:30pm and go to bed at 9:30pm, if I don’t have a snack 2 hours before bed or eat too little at dinner, I wake up with major morning fatigue and brain fog. This is because my blood glucose levels get too low.

So, I consume a bowl containing the following sleep-supporting foods 2 hours before bed:

• Low-fat Greek yoghurt, which contains the amino acid tryptophan. This amino acid is the building block of melatonin (the hormone of darkness that promotes tiredness), justifying why it has been connected with better sleep⁴³.
• Nuts, usually almonds and Brazil nuts, which contain melatonin and the sleep-promoting micronutrient magnesium.
• Low-glycaemic index fruits (i.e., ones that don’t rapidly spike blood glucose) like pears and berries that are rich in the antioxidant Vitamin C. Antioxidants have been linked with better sleep⁴⁴, suggesting that fruit may also have a connection with it. (To be honest, though, the fruit is mainly there for taste.)

Be Careful of How Much and How You Drink

Food is only one side of the consumption coin; we also need to monitor our water consumption if we want to sleep better.

Because water is an essential nutrient, we can’t skimp out on it. For sleep, though, common wisdom has it that water before bed is bad.

Indeed, research has shown that consuming the majority of your daily water in the 3-hour window before bed has a negative effect on sleep by driving nocturia⁴⁵. However, research has also shown that dehydration is connected with poor sleep⁴⁶.

So, we need to strike a balance.

To stop yourself from needing to drink a lot in the 3 hours leading to sleep, frontload your water consumption by consuming 80% of your daily fluids before in the period preceding the 3 hours before bed. When you first wake up, make it a habit to consume 1–2 full glasses of water so you start the hydration process earlier rather than later.

If you’re the type of person who forgets to drink, then get yourself a 1-litre, stainless steel water bottle, fill it up with water, and bring it with you wherever you go. Then, set yourself a challenge: consume the whole water bottle over the course of 2–4 hours (1–2 if you’re exercising), ensuring to refill and repeat as you go about your day. This way, you gamify water consumption and hold yourself accountable.

Save the last 20% of the water you need to consume for the 3 hours before bed so you don’t end up getting thirsty.

It is crucial that you sip this last 20% as opposed to gulping it. When you gulp water, you dilute your blood, causing the gut to send a signal to the bladder to excrete fluid. Taking a few sips throughout the evening is therefore a better tool to quench your thirst if you have one before bed or are prone to getting dehydrated during sleep.

Final Thoughts: The Ultimate Guide on How to Sleep Better

Too many students fail to sleep well.

This adds to many tendencies in our self-destructive arsenal. We load up on caffeine all day, spend too long indoors studying, neglect natural light and exercise, and our sleep schedules are about as consistent as the average guy’s weight-loss diet: perfect one day; Taco Bell Tuesday the next.

Fortunately, this guide on how to sleep better has shown that making small changes in your lifestyle yields huge returns. By implementing just one of the seven key strategies outlined, you’ll feel a difference. Integrate three or more and you’ll be well on your way to performing at your best.

It may seem overwhelming because there’s just so much to improve on. So, instead of fretting, focus on progressively integrating just one or two things each week and gradually bettering your sleep hygiene over time.

Think back to earlier and construct a pre-bed routine consisting of just 3 behaviours. Make it your mission to stick to it religiously. Couple that with some natural daylight when you wake and I promise you’ll no longer be sleeping like a baby: waking up every two hours in tears.

If you enjoyed this guide, share it with a friend. Too many people fail to prioritise sleep, so spreading the message about how easy it is to improve would do a world of good.

In addition, if you’ve made it this far, you’re clearly a high performer. If you want to unlock more hidden hacks to become a Strong Student and get the grades of your dreams, download your free copy of The 10 Secrets of Strong Students.

Stay Strong,

Sam.

Founder, Strong Students.