The Only Newsletter You Need to Improve Your Sleep Once and For All
Quality sleep is the best performance enhancing drug
Sleep is the most important pillar of your health.
Not nutrition, not fitness.
You’ve probably already experienced poor sleep cancelling your fitness and nutrition efforts.
Poor sleep has an impact on:
your immune system → you fall sick more often
your cognitive abilities → you make bad decisions and struggle with learning
your creativity and ability to solve problems → you feel stuck
your athletic performances → your workouts suck
your hunger hormones → you always feel hungry and don’t know when to stop eating
etc.
So, why should you care?
If you are like most people I know you are happy with your sleep and don’t feel concerned.
You wake up in the morning, sometimes feeling refreshed, sometimes not. You press the snooze button more often that you would like. But it’s fine. You just need a cup of coffee, and you are good to go.
You might feel a bit tired at some point during the day, but it’s not a big deal. Some days you might even take a nap.
In the evening, it takes you quite some time before you can fall asleep, but again, you don’t worry too much about it.
If you can relate with the picture painted in the paragraphs above, then your sleep is far from being optimal and you might not even realise it. Which means your immune system, cognitive abilities, creativity, athletic performances, appetite regulation and everything else impacted by sleep are far from being optimal.
Imagine a world where you:
never hit the snooze button and even often wake up before your alarm clock
wake up fully refreshed each morning, ready to jump out of your bed
don’t drink coffee because you need it, but because you want it
only feel tired around bedtime
fall asleep within minutes
Does it sound like a dream?
Well, this newsletter will show you how you can turn this vision into reality. You’ll learn:
why we sleep from one of the best sleep experts
the optimised sleep routine I developed after years of research and experimentations. It follows the Pareto principle and focuses on the highest impact items
Cheers,
Auguste
Why we sleep
Matthew Walker is British author, scientist and professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.
He became famous with his book Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams.
By many, it is considered to be the best book to understand what is sleep, how it works and why we need it.
Below is a podcast episode from the Joe Rogan Experience where Walker was invited.
His ability to explain the topic in a simple manner is quite outstanding.
I personally didn’t see time passing while listening to this podcast, and I often go back to it when I want a refresher on my understanding of sleep.
In my opinion, after this podcast you don’t need much more theoretical knowledge on the matter.
I believe it’s important to understand why optimising your sleep is important before even trying any of the hacks.
Besides, once you know the first principles of sleeping, you’ll have a much more intuitive understanding of what you should do or not do to sleep better.
My optimised sleep routine in 13 steps
After years of doing research on the topic, experimenting and measuring the outcomes of my experiments using the best sleep tracker on the market (Oura ring), I developed a Pareto principle-based sleep routine.
I am not saying you can’t sleep well without this routine. I am saying you will definitely have amazing sleep if you apply this routine regularly.
I wrote an article dedicated to it you can read by clicking on the link below.
📝 https://medium.com/@auguste.byiringiro/the-science-backed-routine-i-wish-i-knew-when-my-sleep-was-messed-up-afd1f64d0b36
A summary of the 13 steps:
Get direct exposure to morning light and sunset light
Stop caffeine
No alcohol 4 hours before bedtime
Do box breathing for stress management
Use blue light blocking glasses after sunset
No food 3 hours prior to bed
No screens 1 to 2 hours before bedtime
Take a warm shower or bath 1 to 2 hours before bedtime
1 hour prior to bedtime, just relax
Sleep in a cool environment (60 to 67 degrees Fahrenheit or 15.6 to 19.4 degrees Celsius)
Use ear plugs
Put a sleep mask on
Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day
Quote of the week
I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?