Sleep is extremely important for optimizing your health. If you are trying to recover from an injury, or if you are just trying to be the best athlete you can be, you absolutely need a good nights sleep to grow your muscles, recharge your nervous system, and essentially feel alive. I know when I don’t get a good nights sleep I feel like I’ve aged 5 years that day, so I always now do my best to get a full nights sleep every single night.
Now sleep is very complex. There are many psychological factors that play an important role in sleep, nutritional components, lifestyle, etc. In this article, however, I simply want to dive into 3 environmental factors that can help you get a better nights sleep.
1) Light
It should come as no surprise but it’s much easier to sleep when it’s dark than when it’s light. Lights activate your cortisol, whereas darkness activates your melatonin in the pituitary gland. Beyond the science, it’s just obvious that your body wants to sleep in a dark environment, and there’s almost nothing that will wake you up quicker than bright lights shining in through the window.
So I would highly recommend if you truly want to optimize your sleep, to have your room be in complete darkness. Even if you are someone who wakes up at the crack of dawn, there will be street lights or headlights from cars coming in through your window, and being able to completely black out your windows will help tremendously you staying in a deep sleep.
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Also recommended to unplug off any devices in your room that light up such as televisions, some phone chargers, etc.
2) Noise
This a huge one. Noise essentially is stimulus for your brain and when you sleep you want your brain to have as little stimulus as possible to process so it can fully rest and relax.
The worst noises of course are loud sudden noises – car horns, dogs barking, etc. And many people resort to consistent noises such as fans to drown out the impact of those sudden changes in noise. However I believe that true silence is the best thing for the brain when sleeping. As little noise as possible.
Obviously this is easier said then done, especially if you are living in an apartment complex. However I would suggest doing what you can to reduce noise at night when you sleep. You could get soundproofing equipment, cover up windows, whatever you need to do to reduce noise will help you sleep better.
3) Temperature
Many of you have experienced this feeling of it being too hot to sleep. When it’s hot your body becomes inflamed and overexcited and you are unable to get into deep sleep. Similarly when it’s too cold, you’re body is not able to relax and you have too much adrenaline to sleep. So you need to find the right balance of temperatures to have a great sleep.
I’ve found around 60 degrees for me is good sleeping, sometimes even colder depending on how I’m feeling. You will have to find the right balance for you, it depends on how hot/cold your body runs.
All in all sleep is a very complex topic. However these three simple factors – blacking out your room from light, trying to sleep in as silent an environment as possible, and sleeping in a cool room – will help tremendously with your sleep.