Who wouldn’t love more sleep?

We all know there are so many great benefits of healthy sleep.

Shakespeare once said, sleep is “nature’s soft nurse.”

Good quality sleep improves our learning, memory, mood, and enhances our motivation to make positive lifestyle changes!

What are somethings you can do today to improve your sleep hygiene?

Let’s think back to science. We’ve all learned that the hormone melatonin helps regulate our circadian system. More melatonin drives our sleep cycle and usually melatonin is higher at night and lower during the daytime.

I have news friends- unfortunately, our melatonin production reduces from adolescence to adulthood (Remember how easy it was to sleep 10-12 hours a day as a teen!?).

This explains why some of us might benefit from increasing our melatonin.

Some lifestyle medicine tips:

• Consider decreasing screen time (30 mins) before bed. Blue light emitted from digital devices suppresses our natural melatonin production. Less screen time will help keep your natural melatonin up to full production.
• Physical activity during the daytime uses adenosine triphosphate (ATP) resulting in more cleaved and available adenosine by bedtime which promotes sleep induction and deep sleep stages. So exercising helps increase available adenosine to help us get to sleep and stay asleep.
• Stress reduction. We would all love less stress. Stress increases our cortisol hormone which delays our sleep cycle. And then thinking about not sleeping can add to that stress cycle. Consider stress reduction techniques that work for you: mediation, exercise, a midday vitamin d boosting walk- these are all evidenced based and work, but you must find what works for you!
• Chamomile tea, my favorite linked here. 

#dosomethingdaily for yourself friends & happy sleep!

Stay tuned for more lifestyle medicine tips for busy young professionals.

In health,

Shani Esparaz M.D.

Double Board- Certified Ophthalmologist, Lifestyle Medicine Specialist, Health & Wellness Coach