5-Minute Sleep Fix: Quick Tips for Deep Rest

Struggling to get a good night’s sleep? In this quick and actionable episode, Aaron Shaw, Founder of Healthspan PhysioCoaching, shares five science-backed tips to improve your sleep starting tonight. From creating a sleep-inducing environment to establishing a relaxing bedtime routine, these strategies will help you optimize your recovery, reduce stress, and wake up feeling refreshed and ready to conquer your day.

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Discover how small changes—like limiting screen time before bed and maintaining a consistent sleep schedule—can have a massive impact on your healthspan, the length of time you stay healthy, vibrant, and active in life.

Tune in for practical advice you can implement right away and learn why prioritizing sleep is one of the most powerful tools for improving your mental and physical well-being.

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Transcript

Do you want to sleep better tonight? You've come to the right place. I'm going to give you five tips in five minutes on how to improve your sleep starting tonight. Now we know that if you don't sleep well, I think it's right up there with being sick. If you are exhausted because you're not sleeping well, just like when you're sick and under the weather and you get a cold and you feel like garbage, nothing else really matters. It's hard to focus on anything in life. Certainly not going to enjoy life. If you are sick,

or if you are exhausted because you didn't sleep the night before. So we're going to talk about that today. You're going to have five simple action items here. I'm going to give one minute to each five right after I introduce myself. My name is Aaron Shaw. am from Healthspan Physio Coaching. I am a coach. I love working with people who want to extend their healthspan and healthspan is the length of time within our lifespan that we are healthy, active, vibrant, and ideally free from preventative

conditions, conditions that we can really control. So sleep is something that most of us, there are certain sleep conditions out there for sure, but there are things that we can do to improve our sleep. Sleep is so incredibly powerful that all of your body's recovery from the wear and tear and stress and demands of life happens when we sleep. And sadly, we tend to de- prioritize sleep. That's the thing that gets cut out.

We'll add more stuff to our plate, but we don't add in the time to recover. So there'll be five tips here. If you have any questions or any other other topics you want me to kind of hit with a quick bullet like format, please comment on this, send me a message and I will do so. So I got a timer here and when I set it to go, it is going to be five tips in five minutes about improving your sleep starting tonight, starting with tip number one.

Maintain a consistent sleep schedule. The key here is going to bed and waking up at the same time every day, even on weekends. We have this thing called a circadian rhythm and I did another episode on circadian rhythm, which is super interesting and important, but it really depends in no small part on the time you go to bed and the time you wake up. So being as consistent as possible. I'm an advocate of actually setting an alarm when it's time to go to bed, not just when it's time to wake up or at least setting an alarm.

to start your evening routine, when to start turning things down, when to start dimming the lights. It really makes a difference in that consistency and you're creating the habit for your entire system to shut down. So set an alarm to wake up, set an alarm when it's time to go to bed, stick to that and don't sleep more than an extra 30 minutes on the weekends, maybe an hour at the most because you're gonna get what's called social jet lag.

Tip number two, you want to have a really nice sleeping environment. You really want to have an environment where it is dark, it is quiet, it is cool. And the temperature, when I say cool, we're talking 60 to 67 degrees. That is what most of us would even say like a little bit cold. You want to have blackout curtains so there's no light in there whatsoever. You want to have white noise perhaps if you really need that. I sleep with white noise machine every single night. Always sounds like it's raining, but it's that dark, cool environment.

that promotes melatonin. So it produces melatonin, which I also did a full podcast episode on melatonin. So you may want to check that out as well, but this melatonin helps regulate your sleep. want to have a room that's free from alarm clocks. know, those alarm clocks that like either bright red light or whatever it is from chargers. Cause we know we're plugging everything in and really focus on keeping that room cool, really cool than what I think most people

think of, most people think that it's actually a little bit too cool, but colder is better, 60 to 67 degrees. Tip number three, you want to limit blue light exposure before bed, really kind of limit light overall before really going to bed. the thing that people get stuck with is when it's time to go to bed, they lay down in bed and the phone's in their face and you start scrolling stuff and you are literally shining a flashlight in your face. And I don't care if you've got blue light protection or blue light glasses or whatnot, it's light in your face. so

light in your face, just like when the sun's out, your body says, hey, it's time to wake up. It's time to be stimulated, active, engaged. It is not a time to go to bed. And we all know that feeling when you get up in the middle of the night to use the restroom or if you're in a hotel or somewhere and you flick the light on and you realize like, whoa, it's little startling to the system. That's what happens. avoid screens at least one hour. If you can avoid screens two hours before going to bed at night and instead read, listen to an audio book or something like that, guaranteed you'll sleep a little bit better.

Tip number four, have an established and very clear relaxing bedtime routine. this means reading, meditating, taking a warm shower, taking a warm bath, doing some gentle stretching, something that's quiet, relaxing, chill. What this does is it lowers our cortisol level. cortisol, which is basically opposite of what happens if you're like doom scrolling on your social media or whatnot,

lowering our cortisol will help our brain realize that it's time to wind down. We want to message our body through the environment that, hey, now's the time we're going to take it down a notch. It's been a robust day, probably done a million things and really taking the time to quiet things down. can also incorporate guided meditation. This would be a good thing to do during this bedtime routine. There's so many good apps out there.

Check out the Calm app, that's a really great one. Just two or three minutes of meditation, guided meditation, just close your eyes, it will help. Tip number five, be mindful of evening eating and drinking. So you definitely want to avoid any large meals and sorry folks, but really avoiding alcohol close to bedtime. Alcohol might make you drowsy, but it will absolutely disrupt the stages of sleep, especially the stages that you really need for cognitive function.

Heavy meals can cause discomfort. Your body's going to be preoccupied digesting as opposed to shutting your system down so you can sleep. Alcohol is going to reduce your REM sleep, which you've probably heard about. I've also done other episodes on that as well. So check that out. If you're hungry before bed, and I'm a grazer, it's okay to have something very, very light, but ideally you want that to be an hour or a couple of hours before bed. Maybe consider even limiting your fluid intake so you don't wake up to multiple bathroom trips in the middle of the night. That can make a difference as well.

So with that.

Five minutes, five minutes, five tips. Hope that's helpful. The key here is to make sure that each one of these steps that I just went through is incorporated into your evening routine, into your nighttime routine. We call this like sleep hygiene, but I'm telling you, if you have a hard time sleeping of all of those things, probably the most important one, if you're doing this, this would make a massive change. If you can get your face away from a screen.

away from your smartphone, away from the television, away from the computer for two hours before going to bed. And instead take those two hours, even an hour and a half and just start dimming lights, just start cooling your space. Just start shifting into lower gear. You will sleep better. And if you sleep better, you will feel better. Your cognitive function is better. Your physical recovery is better. Your stress level is better. All of these things absolutely proven by science.

but you need sleep. So I hope that helps. Hope you get a great night's sleep tonight. If you have any questions about sleep, send me a message. If you have any things you want just rapid fire, like, hey, give me the top five points on a certain topic. Let me know. I'm happy to do more of these quick episodes. If you want another deep dive into a different topic related to healthspan, happy to do that as well. Healthspan is exercise, nutrition, sleep, emotional wellbeing, and preventative care. And with that, hope you sleep well tonight.