The Key To A Great Night’s Sleep? This Naturopathic Doctor Says It Begins The Moment You Wake Up

Pop quiz time: What’s the single most underrated nutrient we all need right now? Turns out, the answer may actually revolve around sleep—the “nutrients” you need most are the ones that help you get those elusive 8 hours every night. 

And while we’re all chasing those sacred moments of zen like never before, sometimes the stress of winding down is what keeps us from… being able to wind down (ugh). 

At the end of the day (get it?!), having a sound pre-bed relaxation ritual can go a long way. “Stress comes from either replaying everything that’s happened in your day, or projecting anything that’s about to happen,” says Dr. Erin. So as we lie in bed at night, it’s imperative that our minds are in the here and now.

We’ve all been there: It’s 9 PM, you’ve been on back-to-back “conference calls that could have been emails” since you woke up, and suddenly it dawns on you, “All I’ve eaten today was that bowl of cereal at 10 AM”. So you scarf down a heaping plate of the first thing you see when you open the fridge and go to bed with a stomach ache. Not ideal, says Dr. Erin: “When our blood sugar goes really low—and especially when we don’t have protein at dinner—we have a mechanism that will trigger a cortisol spike in the middle of the night.” This can severely disrupt your sleep by making you restless, irritable, or just physically uncomfortable. 

Sunlight is a crucially overlooked factor in optimizing our sleep, especially as we move into the cooler fall and winter months. “Even on a gloomy day, you’re still getting plenty of ambient light,” says Dr. Erin, “and that’s really important for our sleep cycle and for our circadian rhythm”. And before you think you need to move your desktop to the roof and bask in the sunlight all day, studies have shown that you can reap these sleep-promoting benefits with as little as 5 minutes of natural light per day.

When the sun goes down, our body prepares for sleep by lowering our levels of the stress hormone cortisol (along with many others, like epinephrine and norepinephrine). But even though this pandemic lifestyle has thrown everyone’s routine for a loop (i.e., waking up later and going to bed later), nobody told the sun and the earth to adjust their schedules accordingly. Dr. Erin says this major shift in our sleep-wake cycle might be reeking havoc on our ability to catch some Zs: “Our bodies, and our nervous system especially, respond to routine. I’m a big advocate for going to bed at the same time every night.” So this dissonance—by no virtue of our own doing (sigh)—is actually one of the biggest contributors to this lack of quality sleep that seems to be affecting many of us at the moment. 

A few easy ways to combat this disruption are to control the factors that we can (see above for how Dr. Erin does it), stick to a consistent bedtime, and supplement with melatonin, which mimics the effects of a dark environment to prepare your body for sleep. And if you’re not a fan of tablets before bed MegaFood Melatonin Berry Good Sleep* Gummies make this last step easier (and more delicious) than ever. 

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.