Higher-quality sleep can improve nearly every area of our lives. If you’re feeling drowsier as you get older, you’re not alone. Our sleep cycles get messed up as we age. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that more than one-third of American adults are frequently sleep deprived.
Muddled, foggy thinking may sound like just an inconvenience. But it’s more serious than that!
Routinely sleeping fewer than six hours is a health concern. Decades of research involving millions of people show that chronic sleep deprivation is associated with increased risks of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and dementia.
I’ve dedicated my career to helping people sleep better. For many people, the answer may involve combining tried-and-true sleep basics with new sleep technology.
Why you may not be sleeping as well as you once did
The slow wave sleep stage, also called Delta, is associated with deep, restorative sleep.
Delta sleep occurs mainly in the first half of the night, enabling you to sleep the rest of the night.
Here’s why delta sleep is more important than the other sleep stages of sleep when it comes to our physical health. Delta sleep enables the body and brain to recover from daytime activities, relieves stress, and can have a dramatic impact on overall health. It is when the body secretes the human growth hormone. It is also associated with performing better on memory tasks the next day.
Unfortunately, Delta sleep can become very elusive as we age. In our 20s, we spend about 20 to 25% of our sleep time in Delta sleep. By our mid- to late-40s, we’ve lost 60 to 70% of our Delta sleep. By the time we reach 70, we’ve lost 80 to 90%.
Until now, restoring Delta’s sleep has been easier said than done. The new technology called Soltec SES is finally making it possible.
Try these five better-sleep strategies.
You may have read articles on sleep hygiene. I pioneered the sleep technology used in sleep labs across the country. I can improve on the standard advice. Here are some proven tactics to help you really sleep better and help restore your Delta sleep:
1. Go to bed an hour earlier. People often think they’ve slept eight hours if they are in bed between 11 pm and 7 am. Most of us need about an hour to fall asleep. If you want to sleep 7-½ hours, plan to be in bed for 8-½ hours. Because your actual time will vary, it’s important to track it so you’ll know more precisely how much time you need to add to your bedtime routine.
2. Prepare properly for bedtime. Don’t do stressful things right before going to bed. And respect your body’s natural circadian rhythm by going to sleep when your body tells you it’s tired. Try to go to bed at the same time every night. Earlier is better to maximize Delta sleep.
Also, get into the habit of preparing for bed ahead of time. If you wait until you’re tired to go into the brightly lit bathroom to brush your teeth, you’ll be wide awake.
3. Focus on relaxing your muscles if you wake up in the middle of the night. If you get up or start thinking about things that cause you to stress, your odds of falling back asleep reduce dramatically. Instead, pay attention to how your body feels.
4. Instead of just tracking your sleep, use new smart technology to improve your sleep quality in real time. Soltec SES is the smartest sleep wearable ever invented because it works to substantially improve your sleep, rather than just telling you about it. It actively determines what sleep stage you’re moving into. Then it tells the second part of the closed-loop feedback system, which is placed under your bed, what protocol to use to facilitate that sleep stage. You’ll sleep longer and deeper the entire night. And if you wake up at 3 am, it will help you get back to sleep.
While this is a tremendous accomplishment, keep in mind that it’s taken decades for your sleep to diminish to this level. It will typically require about a two- to six-week gradual adaptation period to substantially change and restore your sleep quality.
5. Get up and move! Once you’re getting more Delta sleep and more sleep in general, use that extra
energy. Many of us get to a certain age and don’t exercise to improve our fitness and build muscle. But if we want to maintain our quality of life, we need to move. Besides, regular exercise is associated with better sleep.
