Part V: Can't Fall Asleep?

You're Reading How To Sleep Less And have More Energy Than You Ever Had Before

Author: Kacper M. Postawski

Can't Fall Asleep?

Methods to Battle Insomnia, and What Else Could Be Preventing You From Getting Powerful Sleep

Have you ever had trouble falling asleep? Or perhaps you frequently wake up at night and can't fall back asleep? If you've ever suffered from Insomnia, you're about to get a crash course on what causes it and how to deal with it. You'll also be able to use this information to increase the quality of your sleep.

There are three types of Insomnia:

Type 1) Sleep Onset Insomnia

When you cannot go to sleep, and usually have to lie in bed from 30 minutes to 3-4 hours (or more) before you finally go to sleep, after much anxiety, stress, tossing and turning. You usually wake up with a massive headache, feeling drowsy, or with your whole body aching.

Type 2) Sleep Maintenance Insomnia

You go to sleep normally, but you wake up during the night, once or several times, and you can't go back to sleep, or it takes a long time for you to go back to sleep.

Type 3) Sleep Disturbance Insomnia

You go to sleep normally, you sleep for a normal amount of time (7-8 hours for adults, 5-6 hours for the elderly), but you wake up un-rested, with a headache, aching, feeling drowsy, dizzy, etc.

Most Insomniacs suffer from a combination of type 1 and 2, if you suffer from type 3, you are most likely suffering from Sleep Apnea, or PLM (period limb movement), or other underlying sleep disorders. Also, if you are pregnant it is very common to experience type 3 Insomnia, especially in the last tri-semester of pregnancy.

You've already learned about what makes sleep and qualitative sleep possible. You might already have an understanding as to why most people can't sleep, or sleep poorly. You've also learned some basics about the conscious and subconscious mind. What you'll learn here is that there's a very interesting mechanism that actually prevents people with insomnia from sleeping!

Types of Insomnia

Short Term Insomnia

There are two types of Insomnia, short-term insomnia and chronic Insomnia. Short term Insomnia IS quite common, everyone in their life suffers from Insomnia at some point or another, and it is in reflect to the natural occurrences in our lives, stress, family and relationship problems, finances. Depression, medical and health problems are also very common causes of short term Insomnia.

Here's where the real important thing you must understand comes into play. For most people, short term Insomnia lasts only a few days, afterwards their normal sleep patterns return.

For others, that period never ends, short term Insomnia becomes a part of their daily lives, perpetuated by the Insomnia Cycle Effect, which turns short term insomnia into:

Chronic Insomnia

If you have regular sleeping problems, then you have chronic Insomnia. Regular drowsiness, headaches, depression, and low energy is now a daily part of your life, falling asleep is pure torture. Don't worry, I've been there, and I know how it feels.

The Natural Sleep Response

What is the difference between someone with sleeping problems and someone who can fall asleep easily?

The answer lies in the natural sleep response.

As you recall, the first stage of sleep is Stage 1 Sleep. It's in this stage that our brain waves lower from beta waves to alpha and theta waves, and we enter an Alice in Wonderland day dream stage that takes us deeper and deeper into sleep. For most people this response is automatic after they lie in their bed for a few minutes, I call this response the natural sleep response.

Most of the time, when we lay our head on that pillow, when we feel the warmth of the blanket around us and close our eyes, our mind gets the signal and says: “Okay guys! This is it! Sleep time... lower the heart rate, lower brain waves, we're going for a riiiiiiiiideeee!.” By now, if we simply get out of the mind's way and let it go on its own, we will naturally enter Stage 1 sleep and proper sleep follows.

Chronic insomnia happens because of a diminished natural sleep response. It's possible for your natural sleep response to be completely erased by a process called “negative anchoring”, this is how chronic insomnia develops. Usually people with chronic insomnia also live a life-style that involves all the bad sleeping habits we've talked about before, which makes sleep even harder to obtain, and when they do sleep, the sleep is very unfulfilling.

We will not talk about chronic insomnia anymore in this book, however you can download a great free e-book I wrote on the topic right at:
http://www.wonderfulsleep.com/

If you're like most people, then you've most likely had a time in your life when you experienced short term insomnia. Something happened, and you couldn't sleep, perhaps this went on for a few days or weeks at a time. What prevents us from sleeping at these times? and how can we battle short term Insomnia?

Short term insomnia happens when our natural sleep response is interrupted, and we can't enter Stage 1 sleep. Despite the fact that we're in bed and our eyes are closed, our brain waves stay in the beta brain wave stage.

The Racing Mind

You're lying awake, and you can't sleep because your mind just won't stop thinking! Why can't your mind just shut up!?

Actually, as this is happening, your inability to sleep is NOT the result of your racing mind. It's actually the fact that you're lying awake that's making your mind race! That's a pretty interesting concept isn't it? Haha… Okay, allow me to explain.

Our thoughts work in the same way as a snowball that's rolling down a hill. The snow ball gradually gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Our thoughts work in a momentum like fashion, meaning that when you apply focus to one thought, you usually keep thinking about that thought, and that thought leads to other thoughts of that nature. Wow? Make sense? Probably not, let me make it a bit clearer.

Don't Do this.

Don't picture a bright blue mini van driving down a long road with two trees on the right side of it.

Did you picture what I just said? Naughty Naughty! Told you not to!

Ha! My point is, our mind works by continuously taking in data and processing it. This process is often outside of your control. You cannot NOT think about a bright blue mini van because whenever I mention it your mind has to picture a mini van to even think about it. Often times our mind has a “mind of its own” and it will move in directions without you being even aware of it. If what you're thinking about requires too much conscious thinking, this prevents you from entering Stage 1 Sleep.

The Rule is:

“Wherever focus goes, thought flows.”
Most of us are conditioned to just think about nothing when we go to sleep, our mind naturally just shuts off after a while and we go into Stage 1 sleep. However, during stressful times, our focus is entirely different, and our thoughts continue to flow in very un-sleepy directions. Let me give you an example, suppose you're trying to relax when you're a bit stressed...

Your thoughts:

Hmm.... It would be nice to just be in a big park right now.
With the birds,
and the bees.....
and all the happy little trees...
I'm walking in the park, lalala... Look, there's a bench in the park,
Lets sit on it....
Hey... I'm sitting.
You know... I sit like this all day in the office too...
I don't like my job, why on Earth did I choose to work there, what was I thinking?
You know, my boss is a real jerk.
I can't believe he assigned me that project.
Oh No! The deadline is in a few days!
What if I don't make it?
What will the people think of me in that conference room?
The Conference Room... There's a coffee machine in there.
I drink too much coffee.
I had all these goals for proper nutrition and I failed to keep up with them.
Why am I always a failure?
This is like that time in High School when I failed my exam.
High school - there was that girl in high school I really liked.
She didn't like me!
This feels so awful! Why didn't she like me!? Is something wrong with me?
WHY CANT I SLEEP?! There's got to be something wrong with me!

Our thoughts can easily turn from a walk in a park to re-living stressful situations over and over again, simply because of this momentum concept. So what's the solution?

It's simple: You must focus your attention on relaxing, and not trying to *FORCE* sleep to come.

Of course, relaxing is a challenge for most people too...

Okay, ahhhhhhh,... time to relax.
Wow! This feels good.
Mmmmmmm....
Okay, I'll just turn my head to one side there.
Yup... Relax.
Hold on, Gotta move my arm... There...
Okay you know what, I think I like the other side better.
You know, relaxing is a bit harder than I thought
Why Can't I just relax?
Okay... Just Relax...
RELAX DAMNIT!
WHY CANT YOU RELAX! AHHHHHHHHHH

Again, often the momentum concept takes over and a simple adjustment of position leads to hours of tossing and turning! We'll deal with how to combat tossing and turning soon.

The answer lies in focusing all your attention on getting relaxed, and focusing your imagination on something very pleasant, that you can easily enjoy, without having to think about it. Your goal shouldn't be to fall asleep, but to simply relax. The reason for this is simple: The more you focus on trying to fall asleep, the more frustrated and stressed you will become about the concept of not falling asleep, this will push your thoughts into a very negative direction. When you completely relax your mind and body, your brain waves lower - this has been proven scientifically by doing studies on meditation. As you know, lower brain waves lead to Stage 1 Sleep.

Another reason why a lot of people tend to think forever when they go to bed is because they engage in very thought provoking activities during the evening, such as entering arguments with other people or working on the computer. You should always allow yourself to have a wind-down period before you go to bed.

There are many methods to relax your mind and body. In the bonus of this book you will find a body & mind relaxation section to guide you through this process in a few simple ways. For now, lets look at just a couple of methods to quiet your mind in times that you can't fall asleep.

The Science of Counting Sheep - Alternatives That Work

Why does counting sheep NOT work?

Well, if you were to think about it... a horde of hyper active sheep sporadically jumping over a fence isn't very calming to the mind! The whole concept is also ridiculous, when's the last time you saw sheep jumping high in the air over a fence? Sheep are naturally very lazy animals that spend most of their day eating and sleeping. If you're HELL BENT on counting sheep, count a bunch of sleeping sheep with a bunch of ZZzzs forming in bubbles around their heads, on a peaceful green meadow, this should work better :o)

Here are a few better techniques to slowing down your thoughts, when your mind just keeps racing.

Thheeee sllooowwwwwwwww mmeeeetthoooodddd

This technique works very well. What you do is hear your thoughts as if you were saying them out loud, or if you're a more visual person, you can visualize your thoughts as if they were being written on paper or on a screen right in front of you. Afterwards, begin to consciously hear/see your thoughts as if they were being played in slow motion.

So for example, if this was one of your thoughts:

My boss is such a jerk, I can't believe what he did last day at work, I can't believe I'm working at that company, what was I thinking!

Once you notice you're thinking this way, stop, and replay the thought in your head very slowly:

Mmyyyy boss, izzzz , suuuuch, aaaahhh, jeeeerrrkkk........ eeeeeyyeeeee, caaan't
beelliieeeve....

After you replay the slowed down thought, you can play it over and over again even
slower, making it shorter and shorter every time, until it fades completely. ie:

My boss is such a jerk...
My boss is such a...
My boss is...
My bo.....
M....
....
..
.
This method is very effective for two reasons:

1) It gives you something else to concentrate on rather than being frustrated.
2) It puts focus on relaxing your mind, which will drive your thoughts into a positive direction, and prevent your thoughts from sporadically racing around everywhere.

As you try to do this, you will notice a little resistance from your mind, from time to time thoughts will come racing into your mind. Simply apply the same technique to them over and over again, and you will find yourself relaxed and asleep in no time.

The Chalk Board Method

This technique works well if you're a highly visual person. If your mind is racing, you can visualize your thoughts as if they were being written on a black chalkboard at the same time. Whenever a new thought arrives, for example:

Oh no, what am I going to wear tomorrow?

Visualize your slowly wiping the thought off the chalk board, leaving it completely blank.

This method will have the same effect as the previous one.

Battling with Tossing and Turning

We've all had those nights that we just couldn't find the comfortable part of the bed and spent hours tossing and turning till the break of dawn. Why does this happen?

Well, your desire to “toss and turn”, really isn't the result of you not being comfortable, it's the result of you not feeling relaxed. On a deeper feeling our mind wants us to relax, but most of the times we interpret the message as “find a comfortable spot on the bed.” True relaxation comes from within you, and has to be triggered by your inner thought process.

For example: You could be in a hammock on a hot summer day in Hawaii, but if you're thinking about whether the stock market will rise or fall, and you've got a 100 million dollars on the line and it's REALLY bothering you, it won't matter what position you're in that hammock, you won't relax!

If you're lying in bed and you get the urge to toss or turn, wait it out, you'll be surprised how quickly it fades! When you get the urge to toss and turn, ask yourself “How can I focus on something else right now to feel more relaxed?” As you lie there for about 15 seconds, you'll be surprised at how the urge to toss and turn simply fades, and you ealize that all you really want to do is relax.

Understand that if you do start tossing and turning, it will not end with just ONE toss or turn, because of the momentum effect, you will just keep tossing and turning till the break of dawn!

Sometimes the urge to move is really intense, or maybe you really are in a very painful position on your bed. If you absolutely MUST move, do it in this way:

1) Move, but move very slowly. Remember what it feels like when you wake up in the morning and you're very sleepy, do you move very quickly then?

2) As you move very slowly, put a big bright smile on your face, and take a deep breath.

Another reason why tossing and turning keeps us awake is because we do it very quickly, and the more we do it, the more it agitates us! So do it very slowly, and make sure to smile and breath deeply, you will feel the difference :-)

Sleep Restriction

Sleep restriction is perhaps the most powerful technique to battle short term insomnia and chronic insomnia. The rule of sleep restriction is simple:

If you can't fall asleep and you lie awake in your bed for longer than 30 minutes, get out of bed! Stay out of bed until you feel a tired sensation coming over you, and then go back to bed.

This works because it interrupts your pattern of thinking. If you've been lying awake in bed for longer than 30 minutes, your mind is racing, and you can't relax. Chances are you're not going to suddenly get hit over the head and relax instantly. You've simply created too much negative momentum and it's keeping you awake! This is why getting up and out of bed is the best way to interrupt this. Getting out of bed is a great way to clear your mind, and get the feeling of drowsiness back in you.

Sleep Restriction will also help restore proper bed associations (see below)

Poor Bed Associations

Have you ever had this happen to you?

It’s the end of the day, and you feel tired... perhaps you're even yawning a little. You get into your pajamas, turn off the light, climb into the bed, and all of a sudden you're wide awake and you don't feel tired anymore?! This is a very common experience for anyone with sleeping problems. It's a result of poor bed associations.

As we're going through our day, our minds link certain experiences to emotions or states of mind, this happens without us even being aware of it. In hypnosis and NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) this is referred to as state anchoring.

An anchor is an experience, a taste, touch, smell, or sound that instantly recreates an emotional state in your body. For example, do you have a favorite song that makes you feel a certain way? As you're reading this, try to remember that song.

Doesn't it seem that whenever you hear the song those emotions just come flooding right into you? This happens because at some point in time you heard that song for the first time, at that point you were feeling that way, and those emotions became anchored to that song.

Often when people can't sleep they try reading a book or watching TV in bed to induce sleepiness, these actions actually make insomnia even worse. Not only does watching TV keep your conscious mind awake and racing, it anchors feelings of wakefulness to your bed. This gets your mind to associate that your bed is a place where you “think,” not sleep. This completely disturbs the natural sleep response.

Your bed should ONLY be used for sleeping and sexual activity, nothing else.

A lot of people use their bed and their bedroom for a variety of purposes. People also tend to have heated emotional arguments with our spouse/significant other in the bedroom, this is a huge no no, as you link major feelings of frustration to the bed! (this isn’t good in any way!)
Avoid using your bedroom as an office, a workout room, or a storage area. Stay off your bed during the day, don't lie on the bed when you're talking on the phone, use your bed only for sleeping or sex.

Taking a Warm Bath or Shower

Another reason why you may have trouble falling asleep at night is because your body temperature simply isn't dropping! If this is the case, it could either mean: You're not getting adequate sunlight or exercise during the day. Or... you simply need less sleep! Stay awake longer and this won't be a problem :-)

If this problem still persists, you taking a hot shower before going to sleep can help drop your body temperature, however, you must do this right. A lot of people have conflicting opinions whether taking a hot shower or bath before sleep actually helps you fall asleep.

If you take a hot bath or shower, you must take it at least 60-90 minutes before going to sleep, not less. When you take a hot shower, your body temperature rises very quickly. This is why you feel so refreshed and awake after a hot shower in the morning. However, after this quick rise, the body temperature rhythm begins to fall quickly in esponse after about 60 minutes. This is why we usually feel tired and lethargic in the first hour in the morning (unless you exercise in the morning.) Most people choose to battle this drop of body temperature with caffeine...yuck!

A hot bath or shower can help put you to sleep, only if you take it 60-90 minutes
before you sleep. If you try to sleep right after a hot bath or shower, chances are the
body temperature rise will make it harder.

The drop in body temperature is a natural trigger for your mind to relax your muscles, lower your brain waves and enter Stage 1 Sleep.

Room Temperature

Your room temperature can also affect your sleep. It can affect your ability to fall asleep, as well as the quality of your sleep.

If you currently sleep in a very hot or humid room, you may experience trouble with sleeping deeply as your body will have difficulty lowering your body temperature. Naturally your body temperature will not fall as quickly either and your natural sleep response may be interrupted.

Studies show that falling asleep in a cool room with an easy atmosphere is much easier than falling asleep in a hot environment. You also sleep more deeply when you're in a cool environment.

Take this advice, but not to an extreme! Obviously, if turn your temperature down to the point where you're FREEZING, falling asleep might be difficult, as your body tries to raise your temperature in order to survive.

How Light Creates Insomnia

As you recall, melatonin is a hormone in your body which controls your sleep, and is regulated in reaction to the amount of light available to you. Melatonin is produced when you're exposed to darkness. The more melatonin in your body, the easier it is to fall asleep and to sleep deeply. If you have too much light in your room while you sleep, your melatonin levels will be affected!

Recent studies show that melatonin is even affected by light touching our skin, not just coming into our eyes. This is why it's so important to sleep in total darkness, and again, why you should GET MORE SUNLIGHT!

If you currently have a nightlight in your room, or sleep in a room with street light seeping in through the windows, light could be making your sleep worse. Try to change your environment so it's as dark as possible.

Sleeping Pills - The Death Rattle to the Sleep System

Sleeping pills are complete poison to your sleeping system. Sleeping pills often turn short term insomnia into chronic insomnia.

During the mid 19th century the only type of sleeping pills available were Barbiturates. These pills were very dangerous and only an over dose of about 10 was enough to kill you. Marilyn Monroe died of over-dosing on Barbiturates.

Currently there are about 4 different types of sleeping pills.

1) Benzodiazepines (commonly referred to as BZs)
2) Anti-Depressants
3) Over the Counter Drugs
4) Synthetic Melatonin

We will not go over the details of how these pills work, and the side effects of each one as it would go beyond the scope of the ebook.

Sleeping pills may put a person to sleep; however, they have many side effects and leave chemicals in your body which can stay in your blood for up to 6 days! The side effects of these chemicals are often day-time drowsiness, nausea, blurred vision, weakness, loss of appetite, and in some cases very frequent urination.

The National Institute of Health recommends that sleeping pills be prescribed to patients for a maximum of 4-6 weeks as the body does become habituated to sleeping pills after a few weeks, and they lose their effectiveness. However, most doctors prescribe them for months! or in some cases even YEARS! Sleeping pills perpetuate insomnia because they support the belief that insomnia is a ”disease” that has to be cured with pills. As you know by now, sleeping is an inner system that is very easily corrected if you know the mechanics of it! The main reason why doctors prescribe sleeping pills is because they simply don't want to deal with the patient's sleeping problem, as most doctors only receive about 1 hour of training on sleeping problems, prescribing pills seems like a very easy solution. Patients often become psychologically dependant on the drugs and end up taking them for years; enduring the side effects which make their lives more miserable than BEFORE they had sleeping problems.

Most sleeping pills work by depressing the activity of the brain, and forcing lower brain waves. Because of the nature of how sleeping pills work they deprive you of deep sleep. While you may get a full 7 or 8 hours of sleep, the sleep will be of very low quality, leaving you with side effects that can last for days.

Sleeping pills are completely detrimental to your sleep system, and your health! A recent study by Dr. Daniel F. Kripke (M.D) of the University of California shows that people who use sleeping pills regularly to induce sleep have a much higher mortality (death) rate than people who don't.

You may get full details on this study right here: Click Here for a Complete Study of Sleeping Pills.

In conclusion, if you're currently using sleeping pills, get rid of them! Not only are they depriving you of quality sleep, they are depriving you of your day-time energy! It's a myth that you can take a sleeping pill to get quality sleep and feel energized the next day.

One final note about pills: Never mix sleeping pills with alcohol, if you do, you are risking your life!

Insomnia is a “Symptom,” not a Problem

Insomnia is often mistakenly looked at as a “problem” that has to be solved, when in fact it is simply a symptom of a weak sleeping system. If your sleeping system is weak insomnia is very likely to occur, and the only way to cure it is by strengthening your sleep system through using the methods in this book! Inversely, insomniacs often have very unbalanced wakefulness systems as a result, which is why they wake up many times during the night and have trouble falling back asleep. These periods of nighttime awakenings usually happen at the end of a sleep cycle in Stage 2 Sleep. If someone has a weak sleep system it is very difficult for that person to sleep deeply, therefore they experience a lot more Stage 2 sleep, and awakenings are even more likely to happen. You can see how this results in an endless loop of poor sleep and day-time fatigue!

In the next section, we'll wrap up all the information you've learned so far to create your own Power Sleep plan, to increase the quality of your sleep, decrease your sleeping time, and get way more energy in your life!


Section Summary

Take this short quiz to better learn and remember what you've just read.

1. The natural sleep response is...

a. A channel that comes with a recent HBO package on TV

b. A natural response that lowers brain waves, relaxes the body, and prepares us for Stage 1 sleep.

c. A part of your subconscious mind.

d. A point in the day where your body temperature drops.

2. Short term Insomnia is...

a. A common effect of trauma in our lives.

b. A leading cause of death in America.

c. A great movie with Al Pecino.

d. A & C

3. Sleeping pills are detrimental to the sleep system because

a. They are expensive and the stress of having to spend money prevents deep sleep.

b. They work by limiting brain activity, thus depriving you of deep sleep.

c. They have long term negative side affects that make you drowsy and tired.

d. B & C

4. A sure way to battle insomnia is to

a. Watch TV or read a book in your bed.

b. Strengthen your sleep system and practice relaxation exercises instead of focusing on forcing sleep to come.

c. Count hordes of hyper-active sheep jumping over fences.

d. Sleep on your back.

5. To minimize the chance of insomnia, you should always use your bedroom...

a. As an entertainment room for guests

b. As your office.

c. For sleep and sex only.

d. For settling very important arguments with people over the phone.

End of Part V. When you're ready, move to Part VI.

Part IV: Optimizing Your Sleep Clock

You're reading How To Sleep Less And Have More Energy Than You Ever Had Before.

Author: Kacper M. Postawski

Optimizing Your Sleep Clock

Sleeping Less, and Increasing the Quality of Your Sleep

Okay, now that you know the basics of the mechanics of sleep. Let’s talk about how you can use this new knowledge to sleep less, have more powerful sleep, and have more energy in your life. I have given you the previous "scientific" information here because I wanted you to have a knowledge base with the "right" information. Too often in life we try to achieve something but with the wrong information! I have a belief in life that there are 3 fundamental steps to achieving anything, whether it is getting quality sleep, achieving a financial goal, a personal goal, or anything else, these 3 steps are...

Step 1) Get the right information
Step 2) Make the right plan
Step 3) Take ACTION!

To give you a personal example of how step #1 is so important:

I go to the gym about 3 days per week, and every single time I'm there, I see the same people relentlessly working out their abs on the ab cruncher machines. And these people are doing about 10 - 20 sets of 100 to 200 repetitions of ab crunches and sit ups, for up to 3 hours! Every time I go past them I laugh a little, and I also feel a bit sorry for them, because they're wasting their time.

The reason why they're doing all the sit ups is because they're desperately trying to get a 6 pack of abs on their stomach.

I have a 6 pack myself, but is it because I trained hard for 2 years to get it? No, actually it took me only about 7 weeks. I learned that the only way for your abs to become visible is to decrease your body fat percentage below a certain point, about 7% for men and 12% for women. This is only achieved by following a specific diet and working out ALL the muscles of your body, not just one. This way you're working out every single muscle, and your body fat decreases all over your body, instead of following the "spot reducing" method, where you work out only one part of your body and expect the muscles to become visible through all your fat. This is the only way to get a 6 pack of abs.

That information took me 3 minutes to learn! 3 Minutes of powerful information prevented me from wasting my time for months, or perhaps years without getting the result I wanted.

So this is what I meant by "getting the right information" in life. Often people have the right MOTIVATION to do something, but they have the wrong INFORMATION. A lot of people want to have more time and energy in their lives, but they don't have the right information on how to go about getting that result! This is why I have chosen to write this book for you, and teach you about the mechanics of sleep first.

In this section we'll talk about all the methods and understandings you must have to optimize your sleep clock for optimum sleep performance. Afterwards we'll talk about sleeping problems and finally how to tie all this information together to create your own sleep optimization plan and reduce your sleeping time. After finishing this book and filling out your Personal Evaluation Plan, you may feel compelled to explore a more fun part of sleep: Dreams, in the other book that came in the downloadable package.

Remember, your main goals are to:

1) Increase the quality of your sleep.
2) Increase the level of energy you have every day.
3) Decrease your sleeping time by as much as you can. (We'll explore this in detail in
a later section.)

Getting enough Sunshine

I cannot over emphasize how important this is! As explained earlier, the amount of natural sunlight that enters your eyes has a drastic effect on your temperature body rhythm.

• When we're exposed to high intensity light, our body temperature increases, and melatonin levels rapidly decrease.

• Exposure to natural sunlight also delays the temperature drop. This allows you to stay awake and alert for longer periods of time.

• Lack of sunlight results in higher melatonin levels, this leads to lower body temperature levels, feeling very sleepy, and tired through out the day.

Lack of sunlight will create a flat-line effect in your body temperature, because it will not get a chance to rise high enough, your body temperature won't fall low enough during the night either. If your body temperature is flat-lined, this could cause major sleeping problems, and it will be very difficult for you to sleep deeply for long periods of time. A lot of people who complain about "poor sleep" usually don't get enough sunlight.

Consider how for the most part of our evolution we were always outside during the day, it seemed that nature intended us to be this way, then suddenly over the past 100 years we drastically changed our exposure to natural sunlight. Most of us hardly get any sun today at all! We drive to work in a car, we wear sunglasses, we work in offices, what kind of effect do you think this has on our sleep clock?

How Much Light Should You Be Getting?

The intensity of light is measured in a unit called a lux. 1 lux is approximately the light that your eyes receive when you're locked in a dark room with a single candle.

• In an office lit by fluorescent light bulbs, the light intensity is about 200 - 500 luxes.

• At sun-rise, the light intensity is about 10,000 luxes.

• At noon, on a bright sunny day, the light intensity is about 100,000 luxes!

Consider how for most of our evolution we spent most of our time outside, in these high intensity light environments, and how now we spend so much time in low light intensity environments. Spending the day indoors is the equivalent for our eyes as spending the day in complete darkness!

Because our eyes rarely get exposed to "real light", our eyes can't really tell the difference between night and day. Also, consider the fact that most of us aren't even exposed to real "darkness" anymore as most of us are exposed to other sources of light during the night (street lamps, TV screens, Computers). The result is, our eyes can't tell the difference between night and day, and our body temperature rhythm flat-lines. As a result, we get poorer sleep, and can't stay awake and alert for very long.

There are many miscalculations about how much light actually enters our eyes. A recent study by Doctor Daniel F. Kripke, of the University of California, shows that most of the time when people measure light intensity in certain areas, they take the measurements wrong, by pointing the measurement devices straight at the source!

For instance, during a sunny day at noon, the sun provides us with 100,000 luxes of light. However, most of us don't look DIRECTLY at the sun! Obviously, this wouldn't be a "bright" idea. The Sun can be damaging to our eyes in high intensity amounts.

However, Dr. Kripke states that the light that enters our eyes really depends in the direction that we're looking at. By measuring light intensity in the directions that most people look at during the day Dr. Kripke says that most of us get an average of 5,000 to 10,000 luxes of light during the day.

He also says that the same misconceptions come into play when measuring light intensity indoors. Many people think we get an average of 200 to 500 luxes indoors, however, these light intensity measurements are often taken by pointing the measurement instruments right at the light source! And obviously, most of us don't walk through a super market looking straight at the ceiling. Dr. Kripke says that most of us experience only about 1 to 5 luxes of light when we're indoors!

So what's the solution? Well, I could hammer this further into your mind by providing you with more information about light, and the effects of light deprivation, but I think the best solution to this is just to GET MORE SUNLIGHT! Go out there, and get as much of it as possible.

If you're working at home and you're doing some thinking, go outside into your yard and think there instead.

If you work in an office, move your desk near a window.

Plan more activities outdoors

Open the drapes or shades immediately upon awakening.

Avoid sunglasses in the morning and evening. (More on sunglasses below) Now, let's discuss other strategies for increasing your light exposure...

The Effects of Sunglasses

Sunglasses can block from 20% to 90% of sunlight entering our eyes! Many people who I've consulted have received a huge boost of better sleep and energy throughout the day simply from wearing their sunglasses less often, or eliminating the use of sunglasses completely.

Naturally, sunlight can be damaging to our eyes in certain circumstances. Natural sunlight is composed of many different types of light, including UV (Ultra Violet) light which can be very harmful. Over exposure to UV light is a leading cause of skin cancer and cataract (break down of the lenses in our eyes).

However, most people who wear sunglasses wear them when they don't even need to. UV radiation depends on the time of day; it's highest in the noon hours. Usually, the higher the sun is in the sky, the higher the UV radiation. UV radiation is lowest during sunrise and sunset. Also, the closer you live to the equator, the higher the UV radiation you're exposed to on a daily level.

Try to minimize your use of sunglasses, and use your common sense as to when they may be appropriate. If you currently wear sunglasses all day, you are minimizing the amount of sunlight entering your eyes, which is affecting your body temperature rhythm.

Artificial Bright Light

If you currently work in an office where light is limited, getting light during the day may be challenging for you. If you feel really drowsy and tired during the first hours of work in the office, chances are your body temperature isn't rising fast enough, most likely because you haven't been exposed to enough light, or haven't had enough activity!

If you work in an office, or at home, a good idea is to get a "bright light box." Bright ight boxes are machines that artificially produce light at high intensities, from 5,000 luxes to up to 10,000 luxes. They're a bit pricy, but a great investment if you or your employer values your energy level while you're at work. If you work in a place where your employer depends on your ability to function properly and with full energy, you could give them this book and convince them to invest in a few of them.

They range from $150 to $300 in price, here's a company I would personally recommend to order these from. Click here to learn more now. (They even offer a mini hand-held bright-light generator that you can take with you virtually anywhere.)

Bright light therapy also has a connection with our emotions and daytime mood; it has known to cure depression and other mental disorders. Lack of light in the winter is one of the main causes of winter depression, and why people generally sleep longer in the winter.

Again! I could go on forever about how important light is in our lives, but let’s move on.

How Exercise Affects Your Body Temperature Rhythm

If you want to instantly increase the quality of your sleep, then start an exercise program if you don't exercise already. Exercise helps you sleep better in a number of ways, I'm not even going to mention all the other health benefits! :

• Exercise will raise your body temperature rhythm, and make your body temperature "peak" at a higher level. This will increase your energy levels throughout the day, you'll feel more awake, alive, and motivated.

• As your body temperature levels will max out at a higher level, your body emperature will also drop more easily and deeper. This will allow you to sleep deeply, without interruptions.

• Regular exercise will prevent your body temperature rhythm from "flat-lining", which will allow you to sleep deeply even if you've had a stressful day, or couldn't exercise on one particular day.

• Exercise delays the body temperature "drop" in the evening, allowing you to stay awake and alert longer without feeling tired and drowsy.

• Exercise is also a great relief of tension and stress, which as you'll later find out, is a major cause of sleeping disorders.

If you don't exercise yet, GET A MOVE ON IT! and start now. The best time to exercise is in the morning, as this will promote a quick temperature rise. However, avoid exercise 3 hours prior to going to sleep, as your body temperature will probably still be on the rise, and you may find falling asleep / sleeping deeply more difficult.

If you don't exercise, I'm not suggesting you get up off your butt right now, get a membership at your local gym and begin a full scale work out program. You can do that only if you really want to. However, recent study shows that just moderate exercise during the day has many health benefits. If you can't motivate yourself to start exercising regularly, you could find a less intensive physical activity that you still enjoy, like walking briskly, biking, rollerblading, these will still have a substantial
effect at raising your body temperature.

My final point about this would be: What's the Point of Trying to Rejuvenate your Body, and Increasing the Quality of Your Sleep, if You're Not Going to USE YOUR BODY?

Power Naps - The Secret to Energy With Little Sleep

If done correctly, taking regular day-time naps will give you a huge boost of energy throughout the day.
As you may recall, there is a natural "slump" in body temperature during the mid afternoon. This slump is what makes a lot of people sleepy during the day, and why so many people feel the need to take an afternoon nap! However, is taking a nap good for strengthening your sleep system? The answer is yes, and no.

In many siesta countries, taking a regular nap is a normal part of the culture, i.e.: Spain, Mexico. This has several effects:

As you remember, we sleep through certain sleep stages, and sleep cycles. During the first sleep cycle, our body enters deep sleep for the longest period of time, it's at this point that our body temperature begins to drop really low, our respiration, heart rate and blood pressure decreases.

If you've ever been woken up out of "deep sleep", you know that it’s almost impossible to get up. Waking up during or after a major deep sleep phase makes you feel lethargic, slow, and disoriented i.e.: when you wake up during the night to go to the bathroom, you stroll in there like a Zombie, and don't even remember it the next morning.

It takes about 45 minutes to enter the first deep sleep phase. If you limit your nap to 45 minutes, you will sleep mainly in Stage 2 sleep. Stage 2 sleep also plays a major role in restoring physical energy, as you look at the previous chart, 50% of sleep is spent in Stage 2 sleep. This is why you may have heard before that a simple 10 minute nap can totally re-charge you. If you limit a nap to 45 minutes, you will wake up feeling re-charged, and ready to go.

However, if you take a nap for longer than 1-2 hours, you will most likely enter deep sleep. Your temperature will begin to drop, and you'll wake up feeling very sleepy and disoriented. Also, when you enter deep sleep during the day, you put your body temperature rhythm out of whack, it may be difficult for you to go to sleep later on in the night. You'll have difficulty sleeping deeply at night, which will have negative consequences for the day ahead, such as poor energy, headaches and nausea.Most likely resulting in more naps.

As you see, taking long naps is not the way to go as you can enter a cycle of behavior resulting in poor energy levels and poor quality sleeps. This would affect your health and your life in big ways. Taking irregular naps is one way that sleeping disorders develop.

The correct way to take naps is to keep them ultra short. This will prevent deep sleep and re-charge you physically. Some studies even show that taking short naps can reduce the incidence of coronary heart disease by as much as 30%.

As part of this book, I would personally recommend that you do take a short nap during the day, you'll be surprised at how energized you feel for the rest of the day when you do take one! Limit the nap to 45 minutes, if you still feel tired after the nap, then shorten the nap time. The amount of time required to enter deep sleep varies from person to person.

Because everyone experiences the afternoon body temperature slump, we can assume that nature intended us to have an afternoon nap. Perhaps to keep our ancestors from the mid-day sun and dangerous predators out for the hunt?

Waking Up At the End of a Cycle

This is the true secret to "waking up energized."

I'm curious, have you ever had an experience where you woke up in the morning and ou felt ABSOLUTELY GREAT?! With no aching muscles, no lethargic feeling, or that usual slow and moody state of mind that most of us wake up with? The state of mind that tells you "grab some coffee or you'll die..."

Before actually learning this information, I had this experience a few times, and it made me wonder how on Earth it happened. I woke up with a sense that I've already been awake, and I felt completely ready to go.

As you recall, we sleep through sleep stages in sleep cycles. Each Cycle ends with a period of REM sleep. During REM sleep our physiology and brain waves are the closest to the ones when we're awake. The longest period of REM sleep is towards the end of sleep, during which we usually wake up for the final time.

The challenge is, most of us use alarm clocks to "bolt" ourselves out of sleep. Often, our alarm clocks wake us up in the wrong sleep stage, making it very hard to wake up. For instance, if a person is in their last sleep cycle towards the end of a night, and they're in Stage 3 sleep, if your alarm clock goes blaring off at this point, it mightbe very difficult to get up, and feel rested. However, if only the alarm clock went off 30 minutes later, in REM sleep, getting up would be much easier.

Obviously, most of us are limited and don't really have a choice as to when we have to set that alarm clock to. We have busy schedules, work places to get to, and traffic to beat which unfortunately will not adjust to our schedule.

So the only way to wake up at the end of a cycle is to do some trial and error testing with the time we go to sleep at. If you currently wake up feeling horrible, try going to sleep 20 minutes earlier, or 20 minutes later, 40 minutes earlier, or 40 minutes later than you usually do. By doing this, you'll eventually find a "hot spot" for waking up at the end of your cycle.

Remember though, your sleep cycle never depends on when your alarm clock wakes you up, only on your body temperature levels. As you apply the other information in this book, your sleep cycles will change as well, so you may want to try experimenting with this technique when you get a solid sleep cycle pattern happening.

The Weekend - Your Sleep System's Worst Nightmare

Ahhh, it's the weekend... I'm curious, have you ever heard... SOMEONE say these lines? (Yeah, I know you'd never say them...)

"It's the weekend! I can finally get some sleep!"

"It's the weekend. I can finally sleep in bed and veg out all day!" or my personal favorite

"It's the weekend. I can finally CATCH up on some sleep!"

Sleeping in late on weekends is detrimental to the sleep system for the following reasons.

• Limits your exposure to sunlight on these two days which results in your body temperature rising and falling slower.

• As a result, it's harder to fall asleep on Sunday, which results in the usual "Sunday night insomnia".

• Limits your prior wakefulness before you go to bed again. This weakens the pressure to go to sleep at night, alters your body temperature rhythm, and further promotes insomnia.

• Reduces the ability for your body to sleep deeply.

You should keep your weekend sleeping schedule the same as it is during the week. This will set your body rhythm in place, and you won't have to "sleep in" to "catch up" on sleep, as your body will learn to adapt to one sleeping schedule. If you continuously mix up your sleeping pattern, your body temperature rhythm will be out of whack, and it will be difficult for you to sleep deeply.

Also, "catching up on sleep" is a myth. As you know by now, It's only during the first 3-4 hours that we experience most of our deep sleep, the rest is comprised mostly of Stage 2 and REM sleep. If you sleep for 10 hours, this will primarily increase your REM sleep, which will not be of great benefit to your body.

If you feel the need to re-energize during the weekend, take a 45 minute nap, as described before! You'll save tons of time by sleeping less, feel more energized, and your sleep system will be strengthened by this new behavior - making it easier for you to sleep deeply.

Having a Regular Rising Time & Sleeping Time

This combines with what we talked about above with weekend sleep. If you currently have a schedule that doesn't require you to wake up at the same time every day during the week, and you have chosen to get up at different times each day, you're weakening your sleep system.

Remember, your body temperature begins to rise the moment you get out of bed, start moving, and allow sunlight to enter your eyes. If you get up at different times every single day, this is the equivalent of putting your body through jet lag every morning. If your body temperature rises 2 hours later one day, then it will drop 2 hours later as well, making it harder for you to fall asleep and sleep deeper the next day if you decide to get up at a different time.

Secondly, I'm sure you've probably heard someone say this before: "I have to wake up early tomorrow, so I'm getting to bed early."

A lot of people try to compensate for waking up early by going to bed early the night efore, sometimes lying in bed for an hour or two before actually going to bed, this is also detrimental to the sleep system, as it reduces your prior wakefulness, which lowers the pressure of sleep, and makes it harder to sleep deeply.

Although having a regular rising and sleeping time may take some "discipline", as ou read and reflect on this concept, you may feel compelled to add this simple strategy into your lifestyle, the benefits of sleeping less, getting better sleep, and having more energy far outweigh the few extra hours you could spend in bed wasting your life away in that cozy cocoon of slumber.

How Nicotine, Caffeine, and Alcohol Affect Sleep.

Mmmmmmm Coffee...

Ironically, the substance that most of us chose to consume to help "wake us up", eeps us from experiencing proper restful sleep. If everyone simply learned the secrets to sleeping properly in this book, there wouldn't be a need for coffee!

Coffee contains caffeine, which is also present in a wide variety of junk our bodies on't need: Cola, Pop, Candy Bars...

Caffeine increases heart rate and blood pressure, it promotes alertness and reduces fatigue. These effects can last for a few minutes or can last for up to seven hours! If you're currently drinking caffeine, you're putting unnecessary pressure on your awake system, which is weakening your sleep system.

Different people have different tolerance levels to caffeine, so caffeine doesn't affect everyone's sleep in the same way. Also, if you drink one or two cups of coffee in the morning, it’s unlikely your sleep will be affected. However, seeing how caffeine can stay in the blood stream for hours at a time, if you drink caffeine at least 6 hours prior to sleeping, it will affect the quality of your sleep, it will be difficult for your body to enter deep sleep or spend a lot of time in deep sleep because of the stimulative effects. You might also experience frequent night time awakenings out of Stage 2
sleep.

Interesting Facts:

Caffeine

People who drink caffeine tend to frequently get up in the middle of the night to urinate. This is the result of the body trying to detoxify itself.

The energizing effect that caffeine gives you in the morning is only temporary. Getting just 10 minutes of high intensity light would be 10x more energizing for the rest of your day, more beneficial to your sleep system, and your health.

Nicotine

If you currently smoke, you might want to strongly consider the following. Nicotine harms sleep in many ways, like caffeine, nicotine produces faster brain waves, heart rate, and breathing rate, and an increased amount of stress hormones in your blood.

Generally, if you smoke you can't expect to get quality sleep, the stimulant effects of nicotine will prevent you from sleeping deeply, as nicotine is a poison to your whole body. Nicotine puts your whole system, including your body temperature rhythm, totally out of balance.

If you want to improve your sleep, your best choice would be to quit smoking. While n this book I won't give specific methods and information on that, I would like to point out that I can provide you with some extremely powerful information to help you quit. If you want to make the decision to quit smoking, contact at Questions@WonderfulSleep.com

Alcohol

Some people think that a "night cap" of alcohol will help you sleep; this couldn't be further from the truth.

While alcohol may temporarily relax some muscles in your body, it's extremely detrimental to your sleeping system.

Alcohol Suppresses Deep Sleep, and REM sleep!

Alcohol will suppress the 3rd, 4th, and 5th stage of sleep, which will result in a very light, un-restful sleep. Reduced REM sleep usually leads to a REM sleep rebound, in the form of intense dreaming or nightmares, which weaken your sleep for days afterwards.

Considering that most people combine alcohol with coffee to fight hang-over, this is a deadly combination for your sleep system!

Alcohol also dehydrates your body, so even small doses of it will produce un-restful sleep. As you remember, your blood vessels dilate during deep sleep to allow more blood flow to the muscles. If your body is dehydrated this process is much more difficult because dehydrated blood doesn't flow as well through your blood vessels as fully hydrated blood.

Note: Never Combine Alcohol With Sleeping Pills! If You Do, You're Risking Your life! (More on sleeping pills in later section)

Prior Wakefulness

As you learned earlier, there are two systems which really control your sleep. These systems work together:

1) Your awake system and

2) Your sleep system

Your awake system keeps you awake and your brain waves high during the day, and naturally loses strength as you get less light exposure, and your temperature level drops towards the end of the day. When your sleep system takes over, it works to give you the most refreshing sleep possible. When you get quality sleep, your awake system benefits from this the next day!

This dual team works in the negative sense as well. If you're doing things in your life to weaken your sleep system, your awake system will suffer from poor sleep, which will most likely result in you feeling tired, lethargic, and lead to an even weaker sleep system. Most people avoid exercise and outdoor activity because they didn't sleep too well. They're actually depriving themselves of the life force that feeds their sleep system!

The more demand you put on your awake system, in the proper ways (as we've talked about so far) the stronger your sleep system will get.

The challenge is, most people try to cope with feeling tired during the day by taking long naps, or going to sleep early. These actions weaken the sleep system by lowering natural sunlight exposure, and decreasing physical activity. The body temperature rhythm adjusts to this behavior by falling earlier, and rising very slowly, which makes it difficult to sleep deeply, and to stay awake and energized during the day.

By increasing your prior wakefulness you will increase the pressure to sleep later on, and increase the strength of the sleep system. While this may seem difficult at first, in the long run your sleep system will get much stronger, you'll get better sleep in a shorter amount of time. We'll explore this in detail later on when you design your own specific plan in the next section.

Hydration and Sleep - We're Dying of Thirst in Our Sleep!

I can read your thoughts right now:

"Oh no... Another guy that's going to talk about drinking 8 glasses of water a day..."

"Yup!"

If you're not drinking at least 8 cups of water a day, chances are you are creating a water deficit in your body. Here's a break down of how much water your body uses every day:

• Your Intestines: about 1/2 cups of water

• Breathing: about 1 and 1/3 cups of water

• Your Lungs: about 2 cups

• Your Skin: about 2 cups of water

• Your Kidneys: about 5 and 1/2 cups of water!

Under normal conditions, the body loses approximately 12 cups of water every day!

The main effect of dehydration is seen in your blood, your blood clumps together and can't carry oxygen to all the parts of your body. As an effect, you'll feel tired, low on energy, and your immune system will be lowered.

Studies show that most people are so dehydrated, they mistake the body's natural call for water for hunger! Most people find it difficult to start drinking 8 cups of water a day, and see it as too much of a "chore". However, this is usually only because your body has adapted to chronic dehydration. Once you start drinking more water and give your body the message that "Hey, we have water! We can have all we want!" it will get the point, and you will actually get thirsty more often!

Speaking from my personal experience, when I decided to quit drinking all the crap I was taking in every day (Pop, Coffee, Juice), and drink nothing but water, I saw the effects immediately. I had dandruff and all kinds of skin problems for years which disappeared in less than 3 days after I started drinking water! I had more energy, and decreased my sleeping time by 2 hours.

Interestingly enough, after about 6 months of drinking nothing but water, I accidentally picked up a cup with Pepsi in it and took a sip. IT FELT LIKE I WAS SWOLLOWING 20 scoops of sugar! It was absolutely disgusting and I almost gagged!

The challenge for our bodies that we're constantly presenting is drinking fluids that aren't part of what our bodies were meant to take in naturally. Our bodies cope with it and "adapt". The moment you start giving your body what it really needs and deserves, it will thank you for it, and it won't want to go back to the other crap!

So how does water affect your sleep?

During deep sleep our blood vessels dilate, and most of the blood which is usually tored in our inner organs throughout the day travels into our muscles to repair them. If your body is dehydrated, your blood clumps together and doesn't get to all the places it needs to, it doesn't carry enough oxygen to all your muscles.

During REM sleep, respiration and blood pressure escalate dramatically, blood flow to the brain and muscles also increases.

Most people wake up in the morning extremely thirsty. Sleeping without water in your system is the equivalent of running an 8 hour marathon without a water break!

Also, a large portion of our energy during the night goes into our digestive system, which also relies heavily on water! If your system is more hydrated, your body will spend less energy digesting food during the night, and put more focus into giving you better sleep. As a result, you'll sleep less, and feel much more ENERGIZED and REFRESHED in the morning.

Proper hydration also plays a major role in helping your body temperature rhythm adjust. The more hydrated you are the easier it is for your body to control your body temperature. Your body temperature is the main underlying clock which controls when and how you sleep! Proper hydration in your body will help this system operate at its optimum level, just as motor oil does in a car engine.

It would go beyond the scope of this short e-book to talk about how beneficial water is to your health, not just your sleep. If you take this message to heart, and decide to totally hydrate yourself once and for all, here's a quick method:

Buy a 2.0 Liter Bottle of Pop of your choice (Coca Cola, Pepsi, Sprite...), take the bottle to the bathroom and pour the contents down the toilet, as you do this, say to yourself "I'm not drinking this crap anymore!"

Clean out the bottle, and fill it with drinking water. This is approximately how much water you should be drinking every day! Carry this bottle with you around the house, and whenever you feel like drinking/eating some junk, take a sip of the water. Your goal should be to finish at least half the bottle in a day.

Also, keep a glass of water by your bed when you go to sleep. When you wake up, drink the whole glass before you set off on your day.

How Food Affects Your Sleep

There are a small changes you can make to your diet to sleep shorter and more deeply. While I am not a professional nutritionist, and I do not want to get into talking about dieting in this book too deeply, here are the facts:

Your digestive system slows down at night, and it becomes harder to digest food. During deep sleep, a lot of energy is required by our body to pump blood through our muscles and replenish physical energy. Most of the energy during sleep is sucked up by our digestive system, therefore, the more demand you put on your digestive system during the night, the poorer the quality of your sleep will be.

If you currently have any heavy food in your diet, especially food that’s high in saturated fat, it's most likely diminishing the quality of your sleep.

Other foods that could diminish the quality of your sleep are:

• Foods high in sugar and simple carbohydrates, which raise blood-sugar levels and can cause bursts of energy (obviously disturbing the sleep system).

• Food that cause gas, heartburn, or indigestion. E.g. Spicy, Fatty foods.

Some research also has brought to attention that the lack of vitamin B and folic acid can impair sleep. Lack of calcium and magnesium can also decrease the quality of sleep. The brain uses calcium and magnesium to produce a calming chemical in the brain, lack of these will make it harder to sleep deeply.

Your Sleeping Posture

Your sleeping posture can also have a very significant effect on how deep you sleep. If you sleep on your back or on your side, you should be fine. However, if you sleep on your front, or need to lie on your front to fall asleep; this could have some serious repercussions on your sleep and your back!

Sleeping on your front puts unnecessary pressure on some of your vital organs, like your stomach, liver, and intestines. You'll also put a lot of strain on your neck and your back, which makes your sleep very un-restful, and often is a major cause of back problems. Whenever you're sleeping in a position that puts unnecessary pressure on your body, it makes it harder for you to sleep deeply.

How Does Stress Affect Your Sleep?

Stress is entirely triggered by our mind when we're faced in a situation that could mean possible pain. In the cave man age stress was very useful at keeping us from harm and alerting us to danger, it helped us survive through very intense conditions. In today's society, stress is often a very annoying habit which has major effects on our health and keeps us from achieving the things we really want in life.

Firstly, what happens in your body when you're "stressed"?

• When we're stressed, our adrenalin hormone levels instantly increase. This gives our nervous system a huge bolt, our level of alertness and muscle tension instantly increases.

• Our heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, and blood sugar levels increase drastically.

• Our brain waves increase for a higher level of alertness and sensory acuity. Right off the bat you can probably already see how stress can prevent us from experiencing quality sleep, or even falling asleep! One huge drawback of stress is a constant high level of brain waves that keep our minds racing all the time. As you will learn in a later section, this can be very detrimental to your sleep system and can cause insomnia.

The other reason why stress prevents us from sleeping deeply is because of all the heightened "stress" hormones. These hormones make our sleep lighter and less restful. In the cave man ages this would actually be very beneficial, in times of stress you would be able to awaken quickly and be ready for battle with predators who are likely out to kill you. However, this isn't the daily situation for us today.

Stress creates a similar sleep pattern as those of mothers with babies, who also have a higher wakefulness system, allowing them to wake up during the night to the slightest stir of their kids. However, this isn't always linked to stress.

If we were to go into methods of reducing stress in this book, it would obviously become a very big book - so we won't explore that much. However, there are a few simple relaxation methods you can employ on a daily basis that will have a huge effect on these hormone levels.

It's been proven that practicing daily relaxation can have a very beneficial effect on the levels of your stress hormones, consequently improving your sleep and your health. We'll explore mental relaxation in a later part of this book. You can find a special section on relaxation in the appendix of this book.

Section Summary

Take this short quiz to better learn and remember what you've just read.

1. Getting enough sunlight is important because...

a. We melt if we don't get enough sunlight.

b. Getting a nice tan is good and will attract beautiful people into your life.

c. Helps our body temperature become more balanced, and promotes deeper sleep.

d. It increases our REM sleep.

2. Regular exercise helps the sleep system because

a. Helps our body temperature rise quicker and peak at a higher point and delays the body temperature drop in the evening.

b. Dehydrates us, and this is good because water is bad for sleep.

c. Relaxes all our muscles which helps you sleep deeper.

d. Deprives you of donuts, allowing you to sleep better as you dream of donuts and other junk food.

3. What best describes the effects of Sunglasses on your Sleep?

a. Sunglasses help you look more suave and attractive, therefore increasing the quality of your sleep.

b. Sunglasses prevent light from entering your eyes, which helps sleep because light is bad for you.

c. Sun-glasses prevent quality sleep because they limit your exposure to sunlight by 20% to 90%.

d. None of the above.

4. Having a regular rising time on weekdays AND weekends is good because...

a. Allows your body temperature rhythm to become more balanced and set in place.

b. It's not good. Kacper is a psychopath who just wants to deprive me of sleep during the weekend.

c. Allows your eyes to get a normal pattern of light exposure which helps stabilize your body temperature rhythm.

d. A & C

5. How long should you take your day-time naps for?

a. As long as it takes to feel good

b. 3 hours or more

c. 1-2 hours

d. 10 - 45 minutes

6. Proper hydration is good for your sleeping system because:

a. It makes you go to the bathroom more often and this helps you sleep.

b. Your brain waves make a swimming pool out of the water in your body and have a fun and relaxing time drinking tequila and pina-coladas all day by the pool.

c. Allows your blood to oxygenate your body better for your deep sleep to be more physically recharging.

d. Allows your body temperature to adjust easier because of proper hydration in your body.

e. C & D

7. Alcohol is bad for the sleep system because

a. It dehydrates your body.

b. Deprives you of deep sleep and REM sleep.

c. Creates a REM sleep rebound which results in un-restful and often disturbing sleep.

d. It's poison to your whole body.

e. ALL OF THE ABOVE.

8. Staying Awake Longer...

a. Makes it harder to fall asleep.

b. Puts more demand on your sleep system and promotes deeper sleep.

c. Gives you a dangerous dose of oxygen during the day which can cause death.

d. Gives you a greater chance to expose yourself to light during the day, and to increase activity levels during the day; which helps balance the body temperature rhythm.

e. B & D

This is the end of part IV. Go to Part V.

Part III: The Inner Sleep Clock

You're reading How To Sleep Less And Have More Energy Than You Ever Had Before.

Author: Kacper M. Postawski

The Inner Sleep Clock

The Underlying System that Governs Our Sleep and Energy

Have you ever wondered? How some people can wake up at precisely the same time every morning without an alarm clock? Perhaps you've had this happen to yourself a number of times, or maybe it happens already.

Also, why is it that we have alarm clocks to tell us when to wake up, but very few people have alarm clocks to tell them when to go to sleep? I know, it's kind of a stupid question, but there's actually a reason behind it, and you're about to find out why.

There is an underlying mechanism, called the sleep clock, which consists of a number of variables in your body that tell it when to feel tired, and when to feel awake. It also controls how deep you sleep, and how long you sleep.

Refer to the chart below:

Neat eh? But what does it mean? Ha...

Circadian rhythm

The first, and most important part of your sleep clock is your body temperature rhythm. It’s also known as a circadian rhythm.

Contrary to what most of us are taught in grade 5 science class, our body temperature doesn't stay at a constant 98.6º Fahrenheit (37º Celsius). Our body temperature actually has a specific rhythm to it. It rises and drops as the hours of the day progress. The difference in body temperature is about 3º Fahrenheit (2º Celsius)

This periodic rise and drop in body temperature tells our mind when to feel tired and when to feel more awake. As body temperature rises, we tend to feel more awake and our brain waves are usually higher. As body temperature drops, we tend to feel more lethargic, tired, and lazy - this is a big cue for our minds to lower brain waves and enter Stage 1 sleep.

As you look at the graph again, you might notice that there is a slight "drop" of body temperature during the mid afternoon. This is a usual mid-afternoon body temperature slump. You may have noticed, at some point in your life, that you usually feel an urge to sleep or take a nap during the afternoon. This is completely natural, and sometimes the pressure to sleep during the afternoon is as strong as the pressure at night! (Although most of us chose a drug of choice, such as caffeine,
to combat this body slump).

Because of the demands our society puts on us, such as work, children, and social life, most of us can't sleep at this time. As we'll explore later on, nature actually intended for us to have a nap at this time - we'll talk about the science of naps in detail.

Generally, body temperature begins to rise in the early morning hours, drops sometime during the afternoon, then begins to rise until the early hours of the evening. It's at this time that we have "peak performance" body temperature, most people are most active during the early evening hours, this is where body temperature is the highest. Afterwards, body temperature drops and reaches its lowest point at around 4 am.

If your body temperature rhythm is too flat (doesn't rise or drop low enough), or if it's messed up in any other way, chances are you will experience sleep difficulties. It will be difficult for you to sleep deeply. We'll explore all the causes of that later on in this e-book.

It's because of the body temperature rhythm that most of us feel sleepy, at precisely the same time every night. It's also why some people can wake up without an alarm clock at precisely the same time every morning.

Usually, your body temperature rhythm will follow the same pattern regardless of when you fall asleep. For instance if you've been waking up at 7 AM all your life, this means your body temperature begins to rise at this time. It won't matter if you fall asleep at 11 PM, 12 AM, or 1 AM, your body temperature will rise at 7 AM, and you will feel sleepy at the same time you always did the next day. Unless you take the proper actions to optimize your body temperature, it will usually return to the same pattern. This is the main focus of this book.

This is the primary reason why jet lag happens. When you travel really quickly across several time zones, your body may be in a different time zone, but your temperature rhythm is still following the pattern it did before! So if you normally live in Florida, and you take a flight to California; if it's 8 PM in California, your body will still think it's 11 PM, based on your temperature rhythm. As you see, your temperature rhythm really acts as an internal "clock". Your body temperature rhythm can adjust to a new time zone, or a new sleeping pattern, and this may take from a few days to up to several weeks! This is why trans-continental jet lag is so severe for some people.

Your body temperature rhythm is perhaps the most important concept to grasp about your inner sleep clock. It has a huge impact on how you sleep, and how you function during the day. So what affects your body temperature rhythm? And how could someone possibly "damage" their body temperature rhythm?

The second important element of your sleep clock is your melatonin hormone level, and your exposure to natural sunlight.

Melatonin and Sunlight

Have you ever wondered why human beings sleep at night? Did someone just make the decision one day: "Okay Guys! From now on we're all going to go to sleep when the big light in the sky turns off!"

That could possibly be it! But there's actually a system inside of us that uses light and darkness to control certain sleep hormone levels.

Melatonin is a hormone synthesized in the pineal gland and, to a lesser extent, in the retina. Melatonin is responsible for putting you to sleep and restoring physical energy while we sleep. If your melatonin levels are high, you will experience feelings of drowsiness, loss of energy, etc.

Melatonin is released when we're exposed to darkness. The instant sunlight stops entering our eyes, our melatonin hormone level begins to rise. Your melatonin levels are EXTREMELY dependant on the amount of natural sunlight that enters your eyes during the day!

Higher exposure to sunlight delays the body temperature drop, and lets you stay awake and alert longer. Poor exposure to sunlight will promote a quick temperature drop and make you feel sleepy, tired, and out of balance. You will most likely experience the pressure to sleep very early in the day, or the pressure to sleep will be very minimal which might cause insomnia and poor quality sleep.

Because melatonin is released when we're exposed to darkness, it is also sometimes called the vampire hormone.

We'll explore exactly how important sunlight is in a later part of this book. However t's important to understand that getting proper sunlight isn't an "optional" part of this program, it's a MUST, as it is the main way our body adjusts our body temperature rhythm.

Activity Level

The amount of movement and cardiovascular exercise you get during the night has a huge impact on your body temperature rhythm. Any movement or exercise promotes a quick rise in temperature which can be very beneficial to the sleep system. Exercise creates a higher "peak" point of body temperature during the day, which will increase your energy levels far beyond anything else. Exercise delays the body temperature drop at the end of the day, allowing you to stay awake and alert longer.

Finally, exercise will make the drop of body temperature at the end of the day more drastic and allow your body temperature to stay lower for a longer amount of time; this will promote much deeper sleep.

Prior Wakefulness

Obviously the amount of time you're awake has a direct effect on all three factors above. Your activity levels contribute a lot to your temperature variations. Also, the longer you're awake obviously means you get more potential for sunlight entry into your eyes, which has a direct effect on your melatonin level.

If you're currently sleeping 8 or 9 hours and you feel tired during the day this could actually be a sign that you need LESS sleep. You're sleeping too much and you need to increase your prior wakefulness to create deeper sleep and a more balanced body temperature rhythm.

The four factors up above control how long you sleep, and how deep your sleep is. To summarize, the factors that affect your sleep the most.

1) The body temperature rhythm.

2) Natural sunlight entering your eyes, as it has a direct effect on your melatonin
levels.

Understanding how the body temperature rhythm affects your sleep is the key to optimizing your sleep. The body temperature rhythm is really what makes the sleep clock a... "Clock".

Usually, your body temperature follows the same pattern regardless of when you go to sleep. For instance, if you routinely get up at 8 am every day, this means your body temperature begins to rise at 8 am. If you feel drowsy for the next 3 hours, this means your body temperature is slowly rising during this time, and hasn't reached it's peak point. For most people the optimum peak point of body temperature is at around 6 PM to 7 PM, this is when we are naturally most active and have the most energy. Study the previous graph if you still aren't clear about how the body temperature rhythm flows.

If all of a sudden you revert to waking up at 6 AM instead of 8 AM, this doesn't mean that your body temperature will begin to rise at 6 AM, it will remain low and begin to rise at 8 AM like it usually did, and possibly making you feel drowsy for 5 hours instead of 3. Unless you expose yourself to high-intensity light, as we'll explore soon. This is why it is so hard to force yourself to wake up early, and why the popular belief persists that waking up earlier than usual is painful!

This natural "clock" is also why some people do not need an alarm clock to wake up at PRECISELY the same time every day. This isn't a mysterious psychic force they have; their body temperature simply rises at precisely the same time everyday. In the next section we'll examine all the details of optimizing your sleep clock.

Section Summary

Take this short quiz to better learn and remember what you've just read.

1. What best describes deep sleep?

a. Super high brain waves, twitching muscles and rapid eye movement.

b. A type of human hibernation, we can use deep sleep to sleep past really cold times.

c. Low brain waves, respiration, heart rate, and blood pressure. Dilated blood vessels to allow blood to the muscles.

2. What is the sleep clock?

a. A system inside your body that counts the time until your inevitable death.

b. A system that measures blood pressure to determine when it's time to sleep and when it's time to be awake and alert.

c. A system that measures light intensity and body temperature to determine when to leep, and how physically recharging your sleep is.

3. We sleep during the night because...

a. We're all vampires except we're not aware of it because we enter a different state of consciousness while we're out partying with Dracula.

b. It just seems like a good idea to sleep at night so we all do it.

c. Melatonin is produced during the day which prevents us from sleeping.

d. Melatonin is produced when we're exposed to darkness, which causes us to feel sleepy and our brain waves to lower.

4. Our immune system turns on to fight diseases in what sleep stage?

a. Stage 1

b. Deep Sleep (stage 3 & 4)

c. REM sleep

d. When we're sleep walking or snoring.

OK. That's enough for part III. You can go to part IV when you're ready.

Part II: Sleep Mechanics

You're reading How To Sleep Less And Have More Energy Than You Ever Had Before.
Author: Kacper M. Postawski

Sleep Mechanics

What is Sleep, and Why Do We Sleep?

Your Crash Course on Brain Waves

Ah, before we take a step further into the meat of this juicy information, I'd like to give you a new understanding, which will make this easier to grasp. You may have already learned that our minds exhibit a certain brain wave when we're alive. It's not important for you to understand how these brain waves work or what they are, it's simply a measure of brain activity.

The general understanding you may want to have is that brain waves can either get high" and more intense. Or they can get "lower" and become slower, less intense, and for lack of a better word, lazy.

(Click on the image to see it larger)


The 5 Stages of Sleep

There are 5 stages of sleep. Meaning, you're not always having the same experience when you're sleeping, albeit you're not aware that you're having them. As you read about these, and you allow this new understanding to come into view - you may begin to realize just how this mechanism may have played a key role in some of the sleepy experiences of your life.

When You're Fully Awake

Before you sleep, you're awake. Duh! But what really happens in your mind when we're fully awake? It's at this point that our wakefulness system is at its peak point during the day, and our minds exhibit really high brain waves, called beta brain waves.

When we're awake, and in beta brain waves, we are mostly in-tune with our super active conscious mind, which races from thought to thought, and keeps us on track with our daily lives. We'll get into the fun part of understanding the conscious / subconscious mind later on in the "Vivid Dreams – Unlocking Shadow Memories" e-book you received in the downloadable package with this book.

Stage 1 Sleep

Whether you know it or not, you have consciously experienced Stage 1 Sleep all your life.

Can you remember a time when you were drowsing off, day dreaming, or "zoning out" during a boring class or lecture?

It's usually during times like these (and you'll learn why) that we enter Stage 1 Sleep. During this stage we exhibit slightly lower brain waves called alpha brain waves, and some theta brain waves. Alpha brain waves are also sometimes called "awake waves" - because we're still very awake when we're exhibiting them.

In this stage our body relaxes, respiration and heart rate slightly drops, and our minds tend to drift into an altered state of creativity and relaxation, where thoughts drip like honey and it feels goooooood to just be there.

You can think of Stage 1 Sleep as a "doorway" to your sleep.

Stage 2 Sleep

During stage 2 sleep, we experience patterns of brain waves called sleep spindles, and K-Complexes. These are sudden bursts of brain activity. Some scientists think this symbolizes the gradual attempt by the brain to "turn itself off", in a manner of speaking.

During this stage we are still very wakable. In fact, during sleep studies, most people broken up out of Stage 2 sleep say "I was still awake."

Stage 3 & 4 (Deep Sleep)

During stage 3 and 4 our brain waves reach their lowest frequency, we exhibit very low brain waves called delta brain waves, and our mind goes back and forth between delta and theta brain waves.

It's during these 2 stages that we are truly officially "asleep", this stage is also called deep sleep. As we enter deep sleep, our blood pressure, respiration, and heart rate, reach their lowest point of the day. Our blood vessels dilate and most of the blood which is usually stored in our organs during the day travels into our muscles to nourish and repair them.

Stage 5 (REM Sleep)

Stage 5 Sleep is probably the most fascinating stage of sleep, as scientists still do not know the true purpose of this stage. Stage 5 sleep is also termed Rapid Eye Movement, or REM sleep.

During the 1950s a scientist by the name of Nathaniel Kleitman discovered that when people were in this stage of sleep, their eyes moved very rapidly in all directions. He also discovered that when people were woken up from this stage, 95% of the time they said they were dreaming just at that time. This is why REM sleep is also commonly referred to as dream sleep. It's believed that we dream mostly in the REM sleep stage.

What happens to our brain waves during REM sleep?

As you have learned so far, it would naturally make sense that our brain waves become even LOWER in this stage of sleep - however, the opposite is true. Our brain waves rapidly increase, and they're very identical to the ones we exhibit when we're wide awake! This kind of makes sense as you think about it - since when we experience dreams, they often feel so real and vivid it's hard to realize they weren't real when we finally wake up.... and of course, sometimes when we wake up we tend to wish those dreams WERE in fact real :o)

We ALL dream every night; however, not all of us remember our dreams when we wake up. You'll explore a killer technique to remember all your dreams vividly in the How to Get The the "Vivid Dreams" e-book that came with this book.

Sleep Cycles

Now that you know the basics of how sleep works, we can explore how deep the rabbit hole really goes :o) What is quality sleep?

Well, first you may want to understand that the sleep stages explained above don't happen only once during sleep. They happen multiple times during sleep in what are called sleep cycles.

During a sleep cycle, we progress from stage 1 to stage 5 multiple times. It would seem really complicated to write out how this works, and because I want you to understand this and grasp this concept clearly, I've drawn it out for you! Aren’t I Great? Refer to the graph below (click on it to see it larger), and then we'll go over it in detail.



So what's happening here? Well, the typical way we travel through our sleep stages in sleep cycles is as follows:

1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, REM, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2 REM 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, REM, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2 REM......

On average, each one of these cycles takes about 60 - 100 minutes, varying from person to person.

As you study the graph carefully, you may notice a couple of other things happening

1. Notice how the first period of deep sleep is the longest. Notice how the stages of deep sleep get shorter and shorter, and eventually non existent towards the end of the night.

2. Notice how the first duration of REM sleep is very short; notice how these periods get longer towards the end.

The understanding you may get out of this is that sleep gradually gets lighter as the night progresses.

You may have also realized that we don't spend an equal amount of time in each stage of sleep. You're right, and this is where we'll answer the "What is Quality Sleep?" question. Look at the chart below (click on it to see it larger):



How Important is Deep Sleep?

- It's been proven that when we're deprived of deep sleep, we experience our greatest day-time impairments, such as drowsiness, nausea, headaches, muscle aches, and trouble concentrating.

- When we're deprived of sleep for any irregular amount of time, our body will sacrifice all other stages of sleep to regain "deep sleep". It's believed this is why our body tries to gain as much deep sleep as possible in the first 3-4 hours of our sleep.

- Because deep sleep is the first stage of sleep the body tries to get the most of, it's the stage least likely to be missed. As you may recall from the previous graph, the periods of deep sleep were longest in the beginning.

- Our immune system also turns on during deep sleep to fight diseases. This is why we sleep more when we're ill.

How Important is REM Sleep?

Studies show that when we're deprived of REM sleep, we exhibit certain day-time difficulties as well, mainly trouble with concentrating, and sometimes drowsiness.

However, because the body tries to recover deep sleep first as a result of sleep deprivation, we can assume that REM sleep isn't as important to restoring our physical functions. It's not clearly known what purpose REM sleep serves; however, scientists do have a theory that we absorb most of our daytime learnings during REM sleep. This would explain why babies spend so much time sleeping, 50% of that time in REM sleep.

So what is Quality Sleep?

As you may have already guessed, quality sleep consists of being able to sleep deeply. For our minds to easily slide into the deep stages of sleep, and stay there for the time needed. Easier said than done.

So I've got a question for you: What controls how long and how deep you sleep? There's an underlying mechanism in our bodies called our "body clock". However, I don't like the name so I will simply refer to it as the sleep clock. Your sleep clock is a system inside of you which controls how you sleep, how deep you sleep, when you sleep, and how awake you feel during the day. Once you understand this system you'll be able to take control over your sleep and your energy!

The challenge in our society is that our sleep systems have been weakened by so many outside stressors that we're not even aware of, that our sleep clocks are totally out of whack. This is why so many people can't sleep deeply, why they may suffer from insomnia, poor day-time energy levels, or find themselves waking up several times in the middle of the night. Usually when you wake up in the middle of the night it is at the end of a sleep cycle in Stage 2 or REM sleep when our brain waves are highest and we're most wakable. This happens because of a weakened sleep system.

End of part II. The next part is coming soon.