This is Dr. Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist and sleep specialist, and he wants you to get a good night’s sleep, every night.

First, let’s assume you know a lot of good advice about how to do that already in terms of environment and preparation, etc. If you want a recap before proceeding, then we recommend:

Get Better Sleep: Beyond The Basics

Now, what does he want to add?

Wake up refreshed

Of course, how obtainable this is will depend on the previous night’s sleep, but there is something important we can do here regardless, and it’s: beat sleep inertia.

Sleep inertia is what happens when we wake up groggy (for reasons other than being ill, drugged, etc) rather than refreshed. It’s not actually related to how much sleep we have, though!

Rather, it pertains to whether we woke up during a sleep cycle, or between cycles:

• If we wake up between sleep cycles, we’ll avoid sleep inertia.
• If we wake up during a sleep cycle, we’ll be groggy.

Deep sleep generally occurs in 90-minute blocks, albeit secretly that is generally 3× 20 minute blocks in a trenchcoat, with transition periods between, during which the brainwaves change frequency.

REM sleep generally occurs in 20 minute blocks, and will usually arrive in series towards the end of our natural sleep period, to fit neatly into the last 90-minute cycle.

Sometimes these will appear a little out of order, because we are complicated organic beings, but those are the general trends.

In any case, the take-away here is: interrupt them at your peril. You need to wake up between cycles. There are two ways you can do this:

1. Carefully calculate everything, and set a very precise alarm clock (this will work so long as you are correct in guessing how long it will take you to fall asleep)
2. Use a “sunrise” lamp alarm clock, that in the hour approaching your set alarm time, will gradually increase the light. Because the body will not naturally wake up during a cycle unless a threat is perceived (loud noise, physical rousing, etc), the sunrise lamp method means that you will wake up between sleep cycles at some point during that hour (towards the beginning or end, depending on what your sleep balance/debt is like).

Do not sleep in (even if you have a sleep debt); it will throw everything out.

Caffeine will not help much in the morning

Assuming you got a reasonable night’s sleep, your brain has been cleansed of adenosine (a sleepy chemical), and if you are suffering from sleep inertia, the grogginess is due to melatonin (a different sleepy chemical).

Caffeine is an adenosine receptor blocker, so that will do nothing to mitigate the effects of melatonin in your brain that doesn’t have any meaningful quantity of adenosine in it in the morning.

Adenosine gradually accumulates in the brain over the course of the day (and then gets washed out while we sleep), so if you’re sleepy in the afternoon (for reasons other than: you just had a nap and now have sleep inertia again), then caffeine can block that adenosine in the afternoon.

Of course, caffeine is also a stimulant (it increases adrenaline levels and promotes vasoconstriction), but its effects at healthily small doses are modest for most people, and you’d do better by splashing cold water on your face and/or listening to some upbeat music.

Learn more: The Two Sides Of Caffeine

Time your naps correctly (if you take naps)

Dr. Breus has a lot to say about this, based on a lot of clinical research, but as it’s entirely consistent with what we’ve written before (based on the exact same research), to save space we’ll link to that here:

How To Be An Expert Nap-Artist (With No “Sleep-Hangovers”)

Calculate your bedtime correctly

Remember what we said about sleep cycles? This means that that famous “7–9 hours sleep” is actually “either 7½ or 9 hours sleep”—because those are multiples of 90 minutes, whereas 8 hours (for example) is not.

So, consider the time you want to get up (ideally, this should be relatively early, and the same time every day), and then count backwards either 7½ or 9 hours sleep (you choose), add 20–30 minutes to fall asleep, and that’s your bedtime.

So for example: if you want to have 7½ hours sleep and get up at 6am, then your bedtime is anywhere between 10pm and 10:10pm.

Remember how we said not to sleep in, even if you have a sleep debt? Now is the time to pay it off, if you have one. If you normally sleep 7½ hours, then make tonight a 9-hour sleep (plus 20–30 minutes to fall asleep). This means you’ll still get up at 6am, but your bedtime is now anywhere between 8:30pm and 8:40pm.

Want to know more from Dr. Breus?

You might like this excellent book of his that we reviewed a while back:

The Power of When – by Dr. Michael Breus

Enjoy!

Who nose what benefits you will gain today?

This is James Nestor, a science journalist and author. He’s written for many publications, including Scientific American, and written a number of books, most notably Breath: The New Science Of A Lost Art.

Today we’ll be looking at what he has to share about what has gone wrong with our breathing, what problems this causes, and how to fix it.

What has gone wrong?

When it comes to breathing, we humans are the pugs of the primate world. In a way, we have the opposite problem to the squashed-faced dogs, though. But, how and why?

When our ancestors learned first tenderize food, and later to cook it, this had two big effects:

1. We could now get much more nutrition for much less hunting/gathering
2. We now did not need to chew our food nearly so much

Getting much more nutrition for much less hunting/gathering is what allowed us to grow our brains so large—as a species, we have a singularly large brain-to-body size ratio.

Not needing to chew our food nearly so much, meanwhile, had even more effects… And these effects have become only more pronounced in recent decades with the rise of processed food making our food softer and softer.

It changed the shape of our jaw and cheekbones, just as the size of our brains taking up more space in our skull moved our breathing apparatus around. As a result, our nasal cavities are anatomically ridiculous, our sinuses are a crime against nature (not least of all because they drain backwards and get easily clogged), and our windpipes are very easily blocked and damaged due to the unique placement of our larynx; we’re the only species that has it there. It allowed us to develop speech, but at the cost of choking much more easily.

What problems does this cause?

Our (normal, to us) species-wide breathing problems have resulted in behavioral adaptations such as partial (or in some people’s cases, total or near-total) mouth-breathing. This in turn exacerbates the problems with our jaws and cheekbones, which in turn exacerbates the problems with our sinuses and nasal cavities in general.

Results include such very human-centric conditions as sleep apnea, as well as a tendency towards asthma, allergies, and autoimmune diseases. Improper breathing also brings about a rather sluggish metabolism for how many calories we consume.

How are we supposed to fix all that?!

First, close your mouth if you haven’t already, and breathe through your nose.

In and out.

Both are important, and unless you are engaging in peak exercise, both should be through your nose. If you’re not used to this, it may feel odd at first, but practice, and build up your breathing ability.

Six seconds in and six seconds out is a very good pace.

If you’re sitting doing a breathing exercise, also good is four seconds in, four seconds hold, four seconds out, four seconds hold, repeat.

But those frequent holds aren’t practical in general life, so: six seconds in, six seconds out.

Through your nose only.

This has benefits immediately, but there are other more long-term benefits from doing not just that, but also what has been called (by Nestor, amongst many others), “Mewing”, per the orthodontist, Dr. John Mew, who pioneered it.

How (and why) to “mew”:

Place your tongue against the roof of your mouth. It should be flat against the palate; you’re not touching it with the tip here; you’re creating a flat seal.

Note: if you were mouth-breathing, you will now be unable to breathe. So, important to make sure you can breathe adequately through your nose first.

This does two things:

1. It obliges nose-breathing rather than mouth-breathing
2. It creates a change in how the muscles of your face interact with the bones of your face

In a battle between muscle and bone, muscle will always win.

Aim to keep your tongue there as much as possible; make it your new best habit. If you’re not eating, talking, or otherwise using your tongue to do something, it should be flat against the roof of your mouth.

You don’t have to exert pressure; this isn’t an exercise regime. Think of it more as a postural exercise, just, inside your mouth.

Quick note: read the above line again, because it’s important. Doing it too hard could cause the opposite problems, and you don’t want that. You cannot rush this by doing it harder; it takes time and gentleness.

Why would we want to do that?

The result, over time, will tend to be much healthier breathing, better sinus health, freer airways, reduced or eliminated sleep apnea, and, as a bonus, what is generally considered a more attractive face in terms of bone structure. We’re talking more defined cheekbones, straighter teeth, and a better mouth position.

Want to learn more?

This is the “Mewing” technique that Nestor encourages us to try: