Sleep

For good health and optimized biochemistry, optimal sleep is essential. Sleep significantly impacts regeneration, detoxification, mental well-being, and hormonal balance, which, in turn, regulates other important body functions.

Understanding our Circadian Rhythm

Over our long preindustrial history, our metabolism, including regeneration, digestion, and detoxification, has evolved in sync with our planet's day- and night cycle. Various stimuli like light, food consumption or activity, rest, and sleep trigger the activity of these processes. As long as our life follows the natural rhythm, things happen in a natural given order. However, in modern times, the stimuli our body uses to trigger named processes can (and often do) happen entirely out of order. This results in poor synchronization of the processes, in other words, 'sub-optimal health.'

An off-beat internal rhythm and inadequate or insufficient sleep can cause numerous health issues, such as weight gain, stalled weight loss, delayed muscle build-up, suboptimal detoxification and digestion, loss of energy, grogginess, or headaches, to name only a few.

Going to Bed as Early as Possible

To balance our day-night cycle for optimum health, we try to go to bed before midnight, if possible even before 23:00. Our body starts some of its major detox and regenerative processes around that time. Being still awake by then disrupts these processes and renders them sub-optimal.

Getting Enough Sleep

Research places the optimum amount of sleep somewhere between 7 and 9 hours. It's probably a matter of genetic variance and personal preference as well. Sleeping 6 hours or less or sleeping more than 9 hours increases long-term disease risk. We try to get 8 hours of sleep on average.

Having a Cool Down Period Before Sleep

Research shows that how we spend time directly before going to sleep carries over into our sleep and influences its quality. It is best to have no negative or aggressive activity (like watching an action movie or the news) 30 minutes before bedtime. Listening to relaxing music or meditating instead paves the way for superior sleep.

Limit Exposure to Bright Artificial Light Before Sleep

Being exposed to light with a high blue spectrum (like the screen of a computer, laptop, phone, or tablet) in the evening before sleep can disrupt our melatonin production and thus disturb our sleep pattern. 'f.lux' is a very helpful, free tool that adjusts the color temperature of our monitor according to the time of day, specifically to reduce the blue components in the evening. (Serves as a good reminder not to work that late, too :-) )

Sleeping in Absolute Darkness

While we sleep, we are extremely sensitive to light. Research has shown that's enough to get a perfect bed. We want to wake up relaxed and fresh. A lousy bed will make us feel stiff and groggy, making it worthwhile investing here. The innovative Tempur mattresses give us an excellent night's sleep.

Optimum Wake up

When we sleep, we cycle multiple times between deep and light sleep phases. When waking up in a deep sleep phase, people feel groggy even if they have slept for 7 or 8 hours. When waking up during light sleep, people feel much fresher. Several alarm clocks try to take this fact into account. Most of them use body sensors, like wrists or headbands, which are pretty inconvenient. An exquisite solution has emerged recently, which uses the built-in sensors of an iPhone. When placed on the mattress, it tracks movements and thus sleep phases, so it sounds the alarm only during light sleep.

Tracking our Sleep Quality

We monitor and optimize our sleep patterns daily, including time to bed, duration, sleep quality, air temperature, and CO2 levels during the night using SleepCycle and the air sensors in our Withings scale.