Inland Empire Health and Wellness Coach, Evan Roberts, stresses the importance of sleep to all of his clients and the world.
The owner of Elemental Health and Wellness Coaching, Roberts, says that sleep is the one area that contributes to a higher level of health and wellness.
In a day and age where billions of people across the globe pride themselves on being worker bees and living under the notion of “I’ll sleep when I die,” it’s important to remind people that it’s okay to rest and that sleep is imperative to living a healthy life.
“It’s important to sleep, but it’s even more important to gain quality sleep. People don’t realize that garnering quality sleep will allow them to enjoy a healthier life and possibly elongate their life,” said Roberts.
While Roberts understands that not everyone has the opportunity to work with a health and wellness coach, he is passionate about spreading valuable information on improving people’s sleep quality.
“One of the best things a person can do to improve their quality of sleep is to stop eating about two to four hours before they go to sleep. This is because eating before bed keeps your body from entering important sleep cycles, and it spikes cortisol which keeps you awake. Your heart rate will be elevated from consuming food so late,” continued Roberts.
He also said that the consumption of alcohol heavily tampers with sleep and that the same time constraints should be applied to the consumption of alcohol.
“Also, when you wake up in the morning, you want to start the day getting outside within the first 20 minutes. When you get outside early in the morning and get ambient light all around you, it’ll interact with your skin and eyeballs and set your circadian rhythm that it’s morning time. By the evening, your body will go into a natural process of easing itself to sleep,” Roberts said.
He said that by 10 PM each night, it’s best practice to turn off all artificial lights and, at the very least, to dim your lights to eliminate as much blue light as possible, which can keep a person awake past bedtime.
“Blue light blocking glasses are essential if on your phone, laptop, tablet, watching tv etc. at night. All of our digital devices give off blue light, but when you wear these blue light-blocking glasses, you filter it out. So, for example, when watching a show on TV or looking at your phone at night, the blue light is tricking your body to make it think that it’s still daytime; as blue light suppresses the release of melatonin,” Roberts said.
He says the amount of sleep a person needs per day varies, but the general recommendation is seven to eight hours per night.
“It depends on how well the person is sleeping. The only way to truly know how much sleep each person needs would be to track sleep. Some people only require six hours of sleep because they’re getting quality deep sleep and REM,” continued Roberts.
Roberts also shared a study performed on rats that showed a correlation between sleep and longer life and how not garnering sleep for 24 hours could have the same effect as consuming alcohol.
“Sleep is one of the most important things we can do for our health. For one, your longevity is tied to your sleep. They studied rats, and rats deprived of sleep lived shorter lives. In addition, if you don’t get proper sleep, you can decrease glucose tolerance, which means you can wake up prediabetic. The CDC also found that being awake for 18 hours straight poses the same effect on a person who has a blood alcohol content of .05 percent and a person who is awake for 24 hours straight has the same effect on a person with a blood alcohol content of 0.10 percent,” said Roberts.
Other simple sleeping tips that Roberts shared that will improve a person’s quality of sleep that are entirely free of charge include:
- Sleeping with all lights off
- Ensuring that the room is cool
- Practicing deep breathing right before bed
Another great resource free of charge is Robert’s podcast, The Elemental Evan Show.
“In my latest episode, Overfed but Undernourished, I break down how the U.S. and many parts of the world are currently overfed in terms of caloric intake, yet people lack nutrients. Here in the U.S., we have all-you-can-eat buffets and cheap processed foods implying that we are well fed. While it’s true that most people in the U.S. can fill their stomachs with food, most of the population lacks nutrition. We know this simply by looking at the rise of diseases such as cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s etc. If we were achieving our necessary nutrition levels, these diseases would be much less common,” commented Roberts.
In the latest episode, he covers the type of food groups that make up a majority of calories, why these foods are nutrient deficient, foods that are nutrient-dense and should be on our plates, the amount of sugar found in many foods, the difference in caloric intake from 1970 to 2010 and what changes you can make to become adequately fed and properly nourished.
For more information, visit elementalevan.com.
To listen to the podcast on Spotify or Apple, search Elemental Evan.