9 Tips to Fall Asleep Faster

By BEN FORER

June 15, 2011

Having trouble falling asleep at night? ABC News spoke with Michael Breus, a clinical psychologist and author of "The Sleep Doctor's Diet Plan," for these suggestions:

1. Count Backwards from 300 by 3s

Breus said the most common reason people have trouble falling asleep is that they cannot turnoff their mind. Breus uses a variety of distraction techniques, one of them is telling people to count backwards from 300 by 3s.

"It's mathematically so complicated you can't do anything else, and it's so doggone boring you are out like a light," Breus said.

He also suggests using a worry journal. A worry journal is where you write down the problems you are thinking about on one side of a piece of paper and a solution to each problem on the other. The solution can be as simple as scheduling a time to think more about the issue.

2. Reduce Caffeine Intake

You should be caffeine-free by about 2 p.m., according to Breus. Most people are not aware that caffeine has a half life of up to eight hours and can affect not only your ability to fall asleep, but also the quality of sleep you are getting.

3. Take a Hot Bath

Take a hot bath 60 to 75 minutes before bed. The bath should be warmer than 100 degrees Fahrenheit and you should be in it for longer than 20 minutes.

Breus said the bath will relax your musculature and increase your core body temperature. He explains the increase in body temperature is important because once you leave the bath your body temperature will start to cool which is a signal to your brain to release melatonin, a hormone that helps you fall asleep.

4. Stop Exercising Four Hours Before Bed

Exercise is great for sleep, but Breus said that it's hard for the body to wind down after doing it. He advises finding an earlier time in the day to do exercise.

5. Keep the Kids and the Animals Out of Bed

Kids and pets can wake you up in the middle of the night and disrupt your sleep cycle.

6. Have a Comfortable Bed

Often times just buying a new mattress can be the secret to getting a better night's rest.

7. Sleep in a Cool Room

According to Breus, people sleep best when the room is between 65 and 75 degrees fahrenheit and the bed's surface is between 82 and 86 degrees fahrenheit.

8. Eat Your Last Meal Three and a Half to Four Hours Before Bed

Eat your last meal three and a half to four hours before bed. The body was not meant to digest food lying down, it was meant to digest food sitting or standing, Breus told ABC News.

9. Monitor the Amount of Light in Your Room

Breus said that light resets your biological clock and can trick your brain into thinking it's morning. As an example he suggests using a book light to read by rather than a lamp on a bedside table that uses a much stronger bulb.

The 30 Second Secret To Blasting Your Energy Levels Through The Roof In The Morning

There is an underlying inner sleep system which the quality of your sleep and your daily energy levels highly depend on.

It’s this inner sleep system that plays a key role in:

• When you go to sleep and when you wake up.
• How energized you feel in the morning, and throughout the day.
• When your body produces feelings of “sleepiness” to send you a signal that you later interpret in a way like…“I feel tired, I better get to bed…”

Most people don’t know how to use this system to their advantage…

You’re about to discover how you can use a simple ‘little-known-about’ method in the first 30 seconds after waking up to your advantage and boost your energy levels in the morning dramatically.

You’ll be able to learn how this works very easily (you’ll fully understand in a moment), and notice results immediately when you apply it into your life.

Your Body’s Natural Body Temperature Rhythm Plays A Key Role In How Much Energy You Have!

Let’s first review your body temperature rhythm.

In grade 5 science class, most of us are taught that our body temperature stays at a constant 98.5 degrees Fahrenheit (36.6 Celsius). In reality, this is false. Your body temperature varies by about 6 degrees every day.

Your body temperature rises and falls by about 6 degrees everyday, this rise and fall of your body temperature is known as your body temperature rhythm, or as some like to call it your "circadian rhythm".

Your body temperature usually rises in the morning around 6 AM, and begins to rise until the afternoon, where it takes a slight "slump." It then recovers from this slump and continues to rise until the evening hours, where it drops all through the night as you sleep.

Believe it or not, it’s this rise and fall of your body temperature that plays a major role in:

• When you feel sleepy.
• When you feel energized.

When your temperature is dropping, you feel “sleepy” and more towards the “tired” side. This is like a cue for your body to create feelings of sleepiness.

When your body temperature is rising, you tend to feel energized, alert, relaxed, and more “awake”.

The 30 Second Method To Boosting Your Energy In The Morning

There is a hormone in your body called melatonin. It’s also sometimes called as the “vampire” hormone, or the “sleep” hormone.

The longer your eyes are exposed to darkness, the more of this hormone is released inside of your blood.

The instant your eyes are exposed to light, the level of melatonin in your blood begins to decrease rapidly.

It’s this hormone that contributes a lot to the drop in your body temperature. Melatonin also makes you feel “sleepy”.

When you wake up in the morning, you have A LOT of melatonin inside of your blood. This is the main reason why you may feel like a “zombie” when you wake up.

Combined with a low body temperature in the morning, most people are so low on energy that they mistake the tired and drowsy feeling in the morning as the need to sleep, and end up sleeping longer and doing more damage to their sleep systems.

In reality, this is not the need to sleep, but actually the result of sleeping!

The 30 Second Trick To Rapidly Lowering Your Melatonin Levels And Boosting Your Body Temperature In The Morning

Here it is…When you wake up, you MUST expose your eyes to natural sunlight within 1 minute of waking up for AT LEAST 30 seconds.

As you do this you will notice the drowsy and tired feeling you usually get in the morning fading away, as your body feels more and more energized.

At first glance this sounds very simple, but hundreds of people who apply this technique from the Sleep Wiz Revitalizing Program system achieve incredible energetic results instantly in the morning.

Here’s How And WHY This Works

As you already know, when you expose your eyes to light your melatonin levels begin to drop and your body temperature begins to rise, as you slowly feel more awake in the morning.

But… have you ever wondered why you feel less energetic on cloudy and rainy days?

Why does this happen?

Because LIGHT Comes In Many Intensities.

Most people don’t realize that spending the day in-doors is the equivalent for your eyes as spending the day in darkness.

Let me explain…

Light intensity is measured in units called “luxes”. 1 Lux is about the light your eyes would get if you were to sit in a pitch dark room with 1 candle.

• During sunrise and sunset, your eyes get about 1,000 to 5,000 luxes of light!

• During the afternoon on a sunny day your eyes get about 100,000 luxes of light!

• Inside your home, or in an office, your eyes get about 100 to 500 luxes of light.

The level of melatonin in your blood always depends on the light intensity coming into your eyes.

For your eyes, being indoors and not being exposed to high intensity light is the equivalent as being in complete darkness. This has huge effect on your melatonin levels and your body temperature rhythm.

When you expose your eyes to high intensity light such as natural sunlight in the morning you drastically lower your melatonin levels right away, and your body temperature begins to rise as a result.

However, most people spend the first hour or two of the morning sitting indoors, and wondering why they feel “so tired” while they gobble down another cup of coffee (later on, you’ll be shocked when you find out what coffee really does for your sleep system).

When you’re sitting in your home in the morning, half of the light outside is being blocked by your windows, drapes and shades. Your eyes get at most maybe 200 to 300 luxes of light. This keeps your melatonin levels high, stops your body temperature from rising and keeps you low on energy. This does further damage to your sleep system in a perpetual loop, lowering your energy and immune system day by day.

I hoped you really enjoyed the information in this special report. This is just one of the MANY techniques and inner sleep system secrets you’ll learn in Sleep Wiz Revitalizing Program which you’ll use to supercharge your sleep system and blast your daily energy levels sky high, so you can wake up fully energized and live your whole day with passion!

The Sleep Wiz Revitalizing Program also teaches you how to optimize your sleep and have more time and energy than when you slept longer. Grab it today and start to revolutionize your life by super-charging your energy levels and getting more out of your sleep than you ever thought possible.

Kacper Postawski is an innovative sleep science researcher and the creator of the Sleep Wiz, your surefire natural remedy to end insomnia forever and enjoy energizing sleep in as little as 3 days! He can show you how to fall asleep effortlessly, create more time, and an abundance of energy in your body by optimizing your sleep system! He dispels the “8-hour sleep myth”, tells you what most people never realize about sleep, and what the drug companies DONT WANT YOU to know.

How To Create Energy From Nothing

A lot of people feel "tired", and blame it on getting not enough sleep, or other external factors. Basically, the fact that they're tired is always "out of control". What they don't know is that there's a reason for feeling "tired", and that there's a simple method to change "tired" to "energized" in a heartbeat...

Most of us feel tired during one of the four:

1) After waking up in the morning.
2) After intense physical activity, or long hours of work.
3) After sitting in one place for a long period of time.
4) During the evening, or in the late evening hours.

What do all four of those have in common? There's one very common process that happens in our bodies in all four cases. During all of these we all experience very similar"symptoms" of tiredness. These include yawning, rubbing our eyes, feeling sllooowww, and having the urge to just get into bed and sleep.

Why Do We Get These "Symptoms"?

Our bodies have a natural temperature rhythm. Our body temperature rises when we are awake, and promotes feelings of alertness. Our body temperature also falls when we're sleeping, and promotes feelings of drowsiness, and a desire to sleep.

The natural DROP of body temperature in our bodies is a CUE for our body to produce feelings of tiredness, drowsiness, and the strong urge to sleep. I call this the "natural sleep response". When we're exercising, or putting excessive physical demand on our body, our body temperature RISES rapidly, however when you END the physical activity, there is a RAPID body temperature DROP until your body temperature regulates sometime after. It's during this DROP that most of us think there's no other way out but to sleep, and we usually jump into bed and do just that.

The feeling of the body temperature drop after long hours of work is usually mistaken by us as a deep need for sleep. In reality, we don't need to sleep, we just need to "cool down". Allow me to give you a personal example:

As a kid I used to work at a FULL SERVE gas station for 8-9 hours in a row. This meant I had to be on my feet running around pumping gas for 8-9 hours with one 10-minute break. It was hell! Even when I had the early morning shift I would come home and feel TOTALLY DRAINED and TIRED, I usually fell asleep and slept till the evening.

However, as I began learning the inner science of our sleep system and the inner sleep clock, I tried a little experiment one day. Instead of going to sleep I came home and played fetch with my dog out in the yard for about 45 minutes instead. To my surprise, after just a few minutes of a little light activity (throwing a plastic chewed up Frisbee across the backyard), the feeling of tiredness faded and I was able to stay awake and alert WAY into the early morning hours.

How did this work?

I simply allowed my body temperature some time to return back to the normal pattern it proceeds. I gave it time to "come down". When it returned back to normal, I didn't feel tired and the intense pressure to sleep faded.

This same body temperature drop happens after you sit in one place for a long time. Listen, you could take a person who is robust, athletic, and naturally energetic, but if you put them in front of a TV for 3 hours, THEY WILL GET TIRED! This is simply because our body temperature drops when we're NOT MOVING.

That's why the biggest antidote to feeling tired is exercise and movement, NOT SLEEP.

During the morning our body temperature is low too, which creates feelings of drowsiness and tiredness, however, most of us chose to mask this feeling by consuming large amounts of caffeine. The other main temperature drops happen in the afternoon, and in the mid-evening.

In the Sleep Wiz Revitalizing System I describe the EXACT methods to gain a full understanding of your body temperature rhythm, so you can create a quick RISE of body temperature in the morning, and delay the body temperature drop in the evening. This allows you to stay awake and ALERT longer, have more energy and MORE TIME (time is a precious commodity!).

Kacper Postawski is an innovative sleep science researcher and the creator of the Sleep Wiz, your surefire natural remedy to end insomnia forever and enjoy energizing sleep in as little as 3 days! He can show you how to fall asleep effortlessly, create more time, and an abundance of energy in your body by optimizing your sleep system! He dispels the “8-hour sleep myth”, tells you what most people never realize about sleep, and what the drug companies DONT WANT YOU to know.