BEDTIME SCIENCE
How To Improve Your Sleep Naturally
Do you lay awake at night wondering how can I fall asleep quickly? Do you often wake up after 8 hours and still feel fatigued? We have all been there and it can become frustrating when it becomes a recurring problem. We have explored the most significant, simple techniques that you can apply to your nightly routine that will not only help you fall asleep faster, but also improve our sleep quality. Combining these techniques with our bottle of Night Support will give your body the best support to achieve your greatest night sleep.
1. Improve your sleeping environment
Lighting: You must expose yourself to bright light in the morning and reduce light exposure (especially blue light) in the hours leading up to sleep. Doing so will allow for a person’s circadian rhythm (a natural internal process that regulates a humans sleep-wake cycle)and the sleep hormone melatonin to stabilize. This will ensure you will feel tired at the appropriate times in the evening, allowing you to drift off quickly. At Revitalife, we use Red or Orange LED lights that have little effect in disturbing your circadian rhythm or melatonin production, opposed to Blue LED lights which interrupt your circadian rhythm.
Temperature: Keeping your bedroom at a temperature near 18.3 degrees centigrade before bed is an ideal temperature for your body to drift off to. A cooler room when sleeping is important because your body’s temperature decreases during sleep and a cool, but not cold room, will help you settle into and maintain a deep sleep throughout the night. Opening our window for 2 hours before bed can help achieve this as well as ventilate our room with fresh air.

2. Create a Sleep Schedule
Going to sleep and waking up at a similar time each day will help you maintain your body’s internal body clock as well as help you fall asleep and wake up with more ease. When creating your sleep schedule, it is important to understand the following:
On sleep cycle is made up of 4 phases, with a typical person having 4-6 cycles each night.
- Stage 1: The dozing off phase, where your body and brain activity start to slow down (duration 5 minutes)
- Stage 2: The body enters a more subdued state including a drop in temperature, relaxed muscles and slowed breathing and heart rate (duration 10-25 minutes)
- Stage 3: The deep sleep phase where your bod is in restorative state, allowing itself to recover through growth and repair (duration 20-40 minutes)
- Stage 4: Rapid Eye Movement (REM phase). At this stage brain activity picks up, nearing levels seen when you’re awake. This stage is important as it stimulates the areas of the brain that are essential in learning and making/ retaining memories. This stage varies in length since the first period of REM typically lasts 10 minutes and each REM period getting longer and longer with the final REM lasting up to an hour.
Therefore a whole sleep wake cycle lasts around 90 minutes. A person should be aiming to fit in either 5 or 6 sleep cycles a night, with the goal of waking up at the end of a sleep cycle in order to avoid feeling groggy and tired.
So, how can you use this information to improve your sleep? Finding a sleep schedule that aligns with our sleep cycles will take some trial and error to avoid those groggy mornings as everyone’s sleep cycles are different. We at Revitalife find that when we go to sleep at 11:30pm, our best wake up times are either 6:15am or 8:00am.

3. Avoid Food Before Bed
Avoid eating at least 2-3 hours before bed. This is because when you sleep, your body’s parasympathetic nervous system is activated, allowing our body to recharge. However, when you eat just before bed, your body will be working to break down food instead of going into this restful state, which will reduce the quality of your sleep. Eating sugary carbohydrates can also cause you to get energy spikes before bed, leaving you scrolling on your phone into the early hours of the morning and salt foods leaving you dehydrated throughout the night.

4. Caffeine & Alcohol
- Caffeine can have a disruptive effect on your sleep. The most obvious effect of the stimulant is that it can make it hard for you to fall asleep. Although the half life of coffee is 3-5 hours, we at Revitalife recommend not drinking caffeine 8-10 hours before bed.
- Alcohol might help you fall asleep, but even a couple of drinks can affect the quality of your sleep. This is because you will spend less time in the REM stage of sleep, not giving your body sufficient time to repair itself.
5. Exercise
Exercise has a magnitude of health benefits mentally and physically. Exercise is always associated with the gym, but if this is not possible for you, then long walks, runs, riding a bike or playing sport will also suffice (anything that gets your heart pumping!). Exerting ourself throughout the day through any of these activities will act as a natural stress reliever, boosting your feel good hormones and endorphins. This will consequently reduce the time it takes you to fall asleep and help you sleep longer overall. To optimise the results, it is recommended that a consistent exercise programme is followed, with most sleep experts recommending to do workouts in the morning.
The Sleep America Poll 2013 Survey
“The 2013 Sleep in America poll, surveyed adults between the ages of 23 and 60 and focused on “Exercise and Sleep,” . Roughly 76-83% of respondents who engage in light, moderate, or vigorous exercise reported very good or fairly good sleep quality. For those who did not exercise, this figure dropped to 56%. People who exercised were also more likely to get more sleep than needed during the work week.”
6. Diet
Data shows that eating less fibre, more saturated fat and more sugar throughout the day is linked with lighter, less restorative sleep. Therefore, to be getting the best sleep quality possible, it is recommended to have healthy fats (found in foods such as avocado, fish oils, nuts and olive oils), lean protein meats (found in fish and chicken), whole-grains and slow releasing carbohydrates (found in brown rice or quinoa), vegetables and especially fruits with skin on to increase your fibre intake, such as apples and blueberries. Drinking 2-3 litres of water a day can also maximise your physical health and brain functions. Follow us on social media to be alerted when we release our personalised diets plans for sleep.
