Try This One Sleep Hack To Fall Asleep At Night

Have Trouble Winding Down at Night? Try This One Sleep Hack

You come home from a long day of work, make and eat dinner, clean up and then you notice it’s already 9pm and you haven’t even taken off your work clothes. I get it. Been there, done that.

While it might seem like a good idea to down a glass of wine or two with dinner or turn on a movie, STOP! This may seem like a good wind down procedure but it’ll backfire. Alcohol will jolt you awake at 2 am when your liver decides it’s time to wake up and process the alcohol. The blue light from the TV will screw up your melatonin production throwing your circadian rhythm out of wack. I know this first hand because this used to be my go-to wind down procedure years ago.

My current habit is to read a book. Usually after 15 or 30 minutes I’m ready to fall asleep. But sometimes that isn’t enough, too much excitement in the day or too much Lilly’s Dark Chocolate in the afternoon.

After reading so much about the affect of artificial light on our circadian rhythm, I ordered up a pair of True Dark Twilights Sleep Hacking glasses. Here’s what happened:

After about 15 to 30 minutes on any given day, I just couldn’t stay awake to finish the chapter of the book I’m reading. I actually felt heavy and wanted nothing more than to close my eyes. Note you can also use these glasses with a computer or tablet.
I fell asleep much faster after turning out the lights – no lying awake thinking of all the things I wanted to, but didn’t, finish during the day.
Generally I slept a bit better each night. I’ve always had some trouble staying asleep so any improvement is fantastic for me.

I’m definitely going to keep using these at night to help fall asleep – at least until I can create the perfect nighttime artificial lighting plan for my home.

Why am I so obsessed with sleep? One big reason is that sleep kicks in detox for our brain. That is, while we’re in a state of deep sleep, our glymphatic system is doing it’s job of flushing out toxins that crossed our blood brain barrier. Without this flush, our brain suffers and when that happens we start to make bad decisions. I for one want to be as sharp as possible and make good decisions. I know you do to.