Hey, it's Dr day and today I'm going to teach you about sleep hygiene, which is sometimes called sleep rituals, which is sometimes just called How to go to bed every night and help you get more sleep. Our body likes routines and rhythms. You've learned that from one of the previous videos, but now we're going to talk about sleep hygiene. So sleep hygiene we actually learned when we were little kids, when our parents would say, Go put on your pajamas, brush your teeth and get ready to go to bed. So that signals to our mind into our bodies, that we were doing a particular ritual to get ourselves ready to go to sleep. adults need to have fleet rituals in sleep hygiene as well.

And so I'm just going to talk to you about some of the things that you want to do before you get ready to go to bed and the best ways to use your bedroom to get sleep the first time thing that I'm going to say, which may be a little bit shocking to you is the best use of the bedroom is for sleep. And for sex. It shouldn't be used for anything else. You shouldn't have your desk in your bedroom where you do work, and then you go to sleep. And you don't actually even want to really read in the bedroom all the time. Even though you might have just a book on your nightstand.

If it's part of your sleep ritual to go to sleep, you actually don't even want to have a TV in your bedroom and a lot of people are like, Dr. Day, I'm gonna have the TV and we'll talk a little bit how you can use if you are not removing in television, what you can do to minimize the light so you can actually get to sleep and stay asleep it becomes a place where your body when you walk into it should be comforted and it should be relaxing so that you can feel really good about going to sleep. So take all the piles of the stuff that you never use in the bedroom anyway and put it in another room so that you bed room becomes a really relaxing place. That takes us into the second thing you want your bedroom to be as dark as possible.

And the reason why you want to do that is because when you have light and the light is in your eyes and it goes to the to signals into your brain, through the cones and rods, you see light that shuts off the melatonin production. And Melatonin is the hormone that we use to get good quality sleep. So if you have lots of windows and other things in your bedroom, that's fine. Just make sure that you have shades or other things that you can pull down so that when it's time to go to bed, it's really dark in the room, which is why I recommend no electronics in the bedroom. Now some people are not going to turn off their electronics. So if you have a television one of the things you can do is before you go to sleep, set a timer on the television If you fall asleep, you're usually just listening to it anyway to help you fall asleep.

When it shuts off, the light is not in there. So if you happen to wake up, it'll be easier for you to go back to sleep. Even though I still think TV out. Next thing, your actual electronics like things that you actually engage with, like your cell phone or your iPad where you're literally, you know, looking at Facebook posts or you're typing or playing games, all those things should stop an hour before you go to bed. And the reason why again, is the light that is on the electronics actually sends a signal to the cones and rods that are in your eyes to keep you up and to produce cortisol. When you turn those things off.

Melatonin can start its job, okay, so that's another thing that you want to think about. And other things that you want to think about related to sleep are What types of activities help you calm down so that 15 to 20 minutes before you want to go to sleep, your body is being signaled to go to sleep. These are the things that you're going to do every single night, first being go to sleep at the same time, as much as possible. So pick a window of a half an hour and go to bed at that time, every single night. That includes the weekends, because again, our body likes the rhythms wake up at the same time, even on the weekends. So when you do that your body knows that it's going to get sleep.

It likes the rhythm behind that. So that's really important as well. Finally, what are the activities that you're going to do that are going to be calling for you? So you're going to turn off your electronics an hour before you go to sleep? Maybe you're still watching TV, but you're not doing anything active. You're doing things that are starting to relax your body that might include relaxation exercises.

That doesn't mean that you're going to do aerobics, but maybe yoga positions where you're breathing or that you're actually relaxing your body to help you get ready to go to sleep. A lot of people like guided imagery, where you're doing breathing techniques before you go to sleep and is telling you to relax different parts of your body. Perhaps those can be very powerful to help you relax and go to sleep. One of my all time favorites is to take a bath. Yes, I said it, take a hot bath. And you can make it fancy with candles and all of that.

Or you can just have a hot bath with Epsom salts that you sit in for 15 minutes to relax your body and your mind before you go to sleep. When I was in medical school, I had to take a bath every single night for years because that was the way that I calmed myself down and I could actually get to sleep If I didn't take a bath, I couldn't get to sleep. So consider a bower. Some people like showers, I think bows are more powerful. But again, the hot water helps to relax you. Perhaps you will bring a book into your bedroom and you will read for 10 or 15 minutes that might relax you and help you to go to sleep.

These are all things that you can consider as part of your sleep ritual. Now, the dentist will always say make sure that brushing your teeth is part of your sleep ritual, which you may already have that. So just think about activities that you like that will help you get to sleep. This is simply what sleep hygiene is. And so now you're going to go to the handout, you're going to review it and you're actually going to write down things that you're going to do that are going to help you relax that you can get to sleep because you really should be able to sleep between 15 and 20 minutes after laying in the bed. If you fall asleep, the minute that you hit the bed, then you're actually really exhausted and a little bit sleep deprived.

If it takes you more than 15 2030 minutes to go to sleep, then again, you probably aren't getting enough sleep and you're feeling sleep deprived as well. So start with these simple habits that may improve your sleep so much more than you would ever expect.