Become ruthless about sleep

Sleep is the single greatest vitamin on the planet, and it's free

By now, many of you have likely heard that sleep is suddenly popular. From the success of wearables like Whoop and Oura to the surprising popularity of Matt Walker’s book “Why We Sleep,” sleep is currently the prettiest belle at the ball. Joking aside, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that without great sleep, you can’t have a great life. I won’t go into all the science behind sleep (just listen to this podcast from Nourish Balance Thrive) but I will list a few tactics that have helped me get better sleep on a consistent basis. I struggled with quality sleep for a long time, and the fixes were, in hindsight, very simple and very much low hanging fruit.

Get a bed you love - Not a bed you like, but a bed you cannot wait to get into. It’s annoying trying to find a great bed, especially one made without weird chemicals, but it matters. If you have gobs of money, it’s not that hard (get an Essentia or a Samina or the super fancy plush one from Avocado). It’s a little harder if you’re looking for something in the $1,000 range but not impossible. I ended up getting a latex base from The Futon Shop with a CertiPUR topper on top of that from PerformaSleep (long story: I tried a PerformaSleep mattress and they sent me a topper for free; I ended up returning the mattress, but they never asked for the topper back). Prior to my several months of mattress hunting, I was getting weird rib/oblique/QL pain while I slept. Maybe my old one was too firm or too soft—hard to say. What matters is that I found one I was comfortable on.

Get a pillow you love - I’ll make this one easy for you. Get a Neck Nest pillow. It’s fantastic. I start out on my back, and then at some point in the night I switch to my COOP Home Goods pillow and go onto my side. Both pillows are adjustable, meaning you can remove filling to get the fit just right, which is very important.

Stop sleeping too hot - You might not think you are, but if you’re having any kind of sleep issue (not waking up refreshed, waking up at night, etc) I can promise you that you are most likely sleeping too hot. Get your credit card out again, because Old Greg is going to cost you money once more: the ChiliPad has been a game changer for me. Their new one, the Dock Pro, looks amazing and way more powerful. If you can afford it, just get that one. I still have the original ChiliPad, which works well, but not as well as the Dock Pro, to hear friends tell tales of it. Unless you’re a freak who is actually COLD at night (aka a woman), you need to be sleeping colder than you currently are. (Note: if you get a latex or memory foam mattress, it will retain a little more heat.)

Related: Eat Dinner Early - I aim to take my last bite of food a full three hours before I go to bed. My body wakes up naturally around 6 most days, which means that if I want 9 hours in bed (to get me 8ish hours of sleep) I’m going to need to go to bed by 9, which means I need to be finished eating by 6. Sometimes, when I’m feeling spicy, I’ll go to bed at 8:30, which means—math nerd alert!—that I need to be done eating by 5:30. Sounds weird, right? Yeah, I know. Oh, and stop drinking, unless it’s during the day (your boss won’t mine; Gary is cool). Seriously: alcohol is terrible for your sleep. So just do as I do, which is, if I’m going to have a glass of wine, I do it on the way to work OR at lunch, like the cool Italian-American dreamboat that I am!

I know, it sounds a little extreme. People will make fun of you. But whatever. Be a weirdo. Defend your sleep like a dragon hoarding gold. Not saying you can’t have fun in life and go to eat and drink and stay out late and travel, but 80% of the time you need to be on your sleep game. Even more so if you’re doing any kind of athletic training (which I will talk about in a later newsletter). The days where I wake up at 6 having gotten 8+ hours of solid sleep are the best days I can think of. The days where my sleep was garbage and my first thought in the morning is “when can I take a nap?” are not. Related:

Go to bed earlier - I know, I know, TV is fun! After all, there’s that one show where the guy says the thing to the other guy! Very funny. But if you’re like most people, you’ll say, “But Greg, I get plenty of sleep. I go to bed at 11, and get up at 6. That’s 7 hours of sleep!” To which I say: No, ma’am. That’s 7 hours in bed. You probably slept 6-6.5 hours. Not enough. Most people can’t change their wake time (biology, work, etc) but they can determine their bedtime.

Track your sleep - I wear an Oura ring to track my sleep and recovery. The main four metrics of HRV (HRV is basically a measurement of how recovered your authonomic nervous system is), Resting HR, Respiratory Rate, and Temperature Deviation are not only great at helping me gain insight into how well I did or did not sleep, but also can tell me if I’m sick before I feel anything. (It also tipped my sister off that she was pregnant). Basically, if my temperature deviation goes below baseline, I can pretty much guarantee you that I’ve slept well and have recovered well.

If you think you might have something like sleep apnea or, less well known but just as bad in many ways, UARS (upper airway resistance syndrome), do an at home sleep study. This is a good one, because it gives you an apnea index as well as your respiratory distress index, which is useful in diagnosing UARS.

Wear something like a Breathe Right Strip - These help open my airways up nicely. You can also wear a Mute nasal dilator. Or try mouth taping. Or try all three! James Nestor’s book “Breathe” is worth a gander. Basically: only breathe through your nose, especially at night. If you want to go next level for nighttime breathing, you could also look into finding a myofunctional therapist. It’s basically PT for your tongue and throat muscles, and helps essentially create more room in your upper airway so you can get more air in when asleep by toning and tightening. (Very useful for when it’s ENT bikini season.)

And if you’re still having trouble sleeping, this is a good article that I’ve referred to many times. But clean up the low hanging fruit first, and then worry about rare causes later.

I have spent an absurd amount of time thinking about this stuff and could go on and on about the importance of carbs for good sleep (especially when training) to the quarter life of caffeine (12 hours…in other words, have coffee before noon at the latest because 12 hours later you’ll still have a quarter of that caffeine in your system) to the importance of morning sun exposure (first thing in the morning, no sunglasses…this helps set your circadian rhythm).

ANYWAY. Let me know in the comments what your biggest sleep hurdles are.