Hi, It’s Alex Fergus here, health coach and creator of the Sound Asleep in 21 nights Sleep program.

If you missed my previous article - The Secret To A Great Nights Sleep - I recommend going back and reading that before continuing with this article, otherwise let me give you a brief recap.

In the first article we learnt about how good quality sleep can boost your energy levels, improve cognitive function and mental clarity, improve learning and memory retention while also prolonging your life and melting body fat.

I told you about my own journey - from being in a chronic sleep deprived state, longing for a ‘sleep holiday’ and where getting out of bed in the morning was extremely difficult.

I’m sure many of you have been in this situation, maybe that’s why you’re reading this article right now. Worst of all was evening time – you know you need to sleep but you’re so wired and frazzled that you simply can’t sleep, this digs you deeper into that sleep deprived hole.

I then explained how I turned by life around and fixed my sleep by looking at circadian rhythms, again I won’t bore you with all the details as I explained it in length in the first article, but in a nutshell our body responds and adapts to the environment we live in.

If we are consistently sending signals of stress – i.e. deadlines looming, bright lights, bad food, or signalling to our body that it’s day time by being in brightly lit environments right before bed, then we end up with a misaligned circadian rhythm.

The symptoms of this present itself in a manner similar to jet lag:

• Sugar cravings,
• afternoon energy slumps,
• tired in the morning,
• wide awake at night,
• increased belly fat levels,
• and a weakened immune system.

In fact, jet lag is simply a broken circadian rhythm.

By learning all of this, and then fixing my circadian rhythm I turned my sleep habits and health around.

 

How did I do this? Well I’m going to share my two most effective 'circadian rhythm fixing tips' later in this article, so be sure to keep reading, but my complete solution is packaged up into my Sound Asleep program.

In this program I educate and help you work with your body, instead of trying to force it into doing what you want it to do.

 

Remember, our bodies want us to sleep! It’s just a matter of providing the resources and environment for it to do so. And this isn’t that hard.

So not only have I now fixed my own sleep, but I ceased work as a personal trainer and instead I now coach and write about health and sleep – working with some of Australia’s top executives, educating them on how to improve their sleep habits, while writing for various magazines and blogs.

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Why the career change? Simple, because the clients I was helping improve their sleep achieved amazing results and soon word got out.

These clients found that they no longer needed to use sleep medication, that they didn’t need to drink themselves to sleep, that they were waking naturally without an alarm in the morning – something that they hadn’t done since they were a child.

 

Not only were my clients waking without alarms, but they were waking up feeling restored and energized. Instead of waking to a screeching alarm clock and wishing for more time to sleep, they were jumping out of bed to kickstart their day.

 

This newfound vitality lasted throughout the day, no 3pm slump, no relying on coffee and sugar hits to get through the day, and best yet, when the day drew to a close they felt that natural sensation of tiredness overcome them. Something that many in our modern world have become desensitized to, or worst, we fight it off with food, stimulants such as bright lights and stress or drugs like caffeine.

Now back to my clients, with the new found energy during the day, they could relax and wind down as soon they felt tired at night. My clients would switch off from work, read a book, watch some television and then head to bed - literally falling asleep in minutes.

And I’m not making this up – I actually track my clients sleep with the OURA ring and I can see their sleep latency score every night!

 

Imagine being able to fall asleep in minutes... every single night!

Imagine living your life in this way? Imagine the newfound energy and productivity. Imagine not having to stay up late at night working because you could get up earlier in the day and operate at a higher cognitive function throughout the day.

Imagine turning off the light every night and falling asleep without waking.

That’s why I am now a health coach as my clients – top level extremely busy executives – are sleeping better than they ever have, in turn, referring me more and more clients! 

How To Transform Your Sleep 

So how can you also transform your health and sleep?

As I outlined earlier and in the first article, a big part of great sleep is a solid and stable circadian rhythm.

I’m going to share with you two tips that on their own may fix all your sleep issues for good. These two tips are outlined in much more detail in my Sound Asleep program, but I’ll do my best to give you a general overview today.

Tip #1 - Set A Regular Bed Time

The first tip to re-aligning your circadian rhythm with your environment is to set a regular bed time.

Sound simple? It’s because it is. But it is also one of the most effective things you can do to improve your sleep. In fact, this was the first thing I done many years ago when I needed to address my sleep issues. 

Why is it so effective?

By setting a regular bedtime you entrain your bodies cortisol/melatonin cycles to fall asleep at the right time of the night. We are syncing your sleep habits with the rising and setting of the sun like our ancestors did.

When you reconnect with your natural circadian rhythm, your hormones work as intended – you will notice that you become sleepy at a regular time, that you fall asleep faster and even better, that you start waking at a regular time as well – waking feeling refreshed and energized near sunrise.

 

As I have explained a few times now, your body and it’s hormonal cycles respond to the environment and signals you send it. By setting a regular bed time, we start retraining these cycles. Now this bed time can be any time you like, just make it achievable for your current life and then stick to it every night for as long as possible.

What do I mean by bedtime? That’s a good question as I actually use two ‘bed times’ with my clients and in my Sound Alseep program.

Set an 'In Bed' Time 

The first time I call my ‘In Bed Time’. This is the time you need to be in bed every night.

For this examples let’s go with a 1030pm 'In bed' time.

 

Next, Set a 'Lights off Time'

The second time is what I call my ‘Lights off time’. This is generally 30-60minutes after your ‘In Bed Time’. So let’s set this at 11pm – 30minutes after after In Bed Time.

So we now have two times – your In Bed Time, which is self-explanatory – it means at your set time you need to be in bed.

Then you have your Lights off time. Once in bed you have until your ‘Lights Off Time’ to read, think, write, talk, mediate, cuddle your partner, listen or play on your phone

Every night, no matter what, you have to be in bed with all the lights off by this 11pm Lights Off Time.

Both of these times are set in stone and you must adhere to them for as long as possible until you reset your circadian rhythm.

So let’s use these times in an example. Let’s say you get home from work at 7pm. You spend an hour cooking and eating dinner, and tucking your children into bed. At 8pm you fire off a few emails for an hour. It’s now 9pm. You know that your In bed time is 1030pm and lights off time is 11pm.

So you still have at least an hour an a half before you need to be in bed. You decide to prepare your lunch for the morning and then spend the remaining hour watching a short documentary. At 1015pm you finish the documentary and know you have 15minutes until your ‘In Bed Time’.

Plenty of time to brush your teeth, lock the house and get into your PJ’s.

It’s now 1030pm – you have 30minutes until lights off. In this time you decide to read a novel.

Now, there is where it gets interesting – if at anytime during this 30minute window you feel tired, you immediately turn the lights off and go to sleep – it may be 10:35, or it may be 10:55. If you feel slightly tired, turn the lights off and go to sleep.

If you don’t feel tired during this time, no worries, as soon as your lights off time comes around then you do exactly that. Put down the book (even if you’re up to a good part), and switch off the lights.

For the first few nights this may be difficult and you may find yourself still wide awake. That is fine, just do some thinking, mediation or deep breathing. After a few nights you will start entraining your body to know to fall asleep around this time.

Once you have done this for a while you will find your body naturally starting to wind down as it gets closer to your bed time and lights off time. It’s an extremely powerful technique to use to help fix your sleep problems. Plus it doesn’t require any fancy supplements or sleep aids. Try it tonight and let me know how you get on.

That’s my first big sleep tip. You can action it tonight! If you have questions about how this works, remember, I'm only scratching the surface here, my Sound Asleep Program goes into far more detail and covers all the common questions that may be going through your head.

 

Tip #2 - Restrict Blue Light at Night 

The second one I wanted to share with you today is about blue light.

This is a huge topic and I have written extensively on my blog at www.alexfergus.com so if you want to know everything about it head over there and have a read.

But in a nutshell  it works like this.

Visible light is made up of various colours – think of sunlight hitting a prisim. There is a particular wavelength of light – 380nm to 500nm that has a profound negative impact on melatonin production. This wavelength of light appears as blue light to our eye.

 

So any time you see ‘white light’ from the sun, or from a screen like you’re looking at now, there is blue light present. All regular artificial sources of light emit blue light in large doses– lightbulbs, tv screens, phones are all examples. The sun also emits blue light, but light from candles or fire is low in blue light and high in orange and red light.

Now various researchers have found that this blue light suppresses melatonin production in the body (1). Remember melatonin – that’s our sleep & darkness hormone, and we want a lot of it at night as we get ready for bed.

This blue light has a huge impact on melatonin – in fact one study compared the effect of a double espresso and bright light exposure on sleep prior to bed. The caffeine had a 45min circadian biology delay.. the bright light 85min delay!

No one in their right mind would drink a double shot of coffee right before bed, but yet we happily leave the bright lights on and stare at a brightly lit screen moments before we try and sleep!

Speaking of bright screens before bed times, a study done in the national academy of sciences found that light emitting devices prior to bed prolongs the time to fall asleep, delays circadian clock, suppresses melatonin, reduces the amount of REM sleep and reduces alertness the following morning. 

Can you understand why you’re not sleeping now? Our body responds to environmental cues, bright light inches from our faces at night sends a signal to the brain that the sun is up. This effects your circadian rhythm, this keeps you awake and night and feeling horrible the next morning.

 

Oh and while we’re looking at studies, if you’re trying to lose some weight you might find this interesting:

A study done on dim light exposure shown to disrupt circadian rhythm and lead to increase in body weight. What does it mean by dim light? 10 lux – which is only a few times brighter than moonlight (a sunny day can be over 100,000 lux in brightness).

So my second tip to reset your circadian rhythm and in turn boost your sleep is to avoid bright blue light in the hours prior to bed. How do you achieve this? Well you could move into the forest and disconnect from society, in fact a study was done on that as well.

In a 2013 study, Wright and his research team showed one week of camping in the Rocky Mountains with no artificial light, not even flashlights, synchronized the circadian clocks of the eight study subjects with the timing of sunrise and sunset.

But that’s not very practical. So what do I recommend instead? Simple – just block blue light. Ideally block it from the source by using filters or special light bulbs, but if that’s not possible then just block the blue light from entering the eye.

The eye is the most sensitive receptor to light, so buy wearing specially designed glasses called Blue Light Blocking Glasses we can block the filter the blue light so that it won’t reach the eye, and in turn won’t send a signal that it’s the middle of the day!

Swannies - Blue Light Blocking Glasses. Highly recommended to help you sleep. Discount code ALEXFERGUS will save on your purchase price as well!

Now if you don’t want to wear the fashionable blue blocker glasses, you could look at avoiding blue light in your environment – use red light bulbs or candles instead of conventional lights, switch off your tvs and phones, and read paper books instead of kindle devices.

But this can be difficult, so simply wearing the glasses in the hour or two prior to bed is a practical solution that allows you to have your cake and eat it to.

Melatonin is released 4 hours after the bodies eyes haven’t been exposed to blue light, so for optimal sleep you would wear your glasses 4 hours prior to bed or as soon as the sun goes down.

But for many of my clients this is not possible and instead they simply put them on when they get home or even when they get into bed at the end of the night. Anything is better than nothing!

So there we go, implement these two tips in your nightly routine and I promise that you will see a huge improvement to your sleep quality and your overall health.

 

Anything Is Better Than Nothing

Now you might be thinking these strategies all sound great but you simply don’t think you can implement them. Maybe your working hours are not the standard 9 to 5, or there’s something else that makes sleep tricky for you, then let me clear something up.

I am a health coach – I primary work with clients on a one on one basis. I look at their particular routines, their schedules, their diet and their health goals. From their I build practical solutions specific to them.

I have been doing this for many years now working with a diverse range of clientele – I have mentioned the busy business executives, but I have also worked with stay at home mothers, young single athletes, shift workers, clients who do a lot of travelling  to name a few.

The outcome is this – no matter what their story I can provide some tweaks and recommendations to help them sleep. They may not be able to implement everything but like I tell them – anything is better than nothing.

My Sound Asleep Program is built to be the most comprehensive sleep program on the web. I have included all my tried and tested tips &protocols, cutting edge sleep hacks that science has only just stumbled upon and even a few alternative tips that may seem rather woo-woo.

It covers all the bases and there is something for everyone. As I tell my clients, you may not be able to implement ALL of my recommendations, but even if you implement the ones that you can you will start seeing an improvement in your sleep.

Plus - my Sound Asleep Program is much more than a series of tips to help you sleep. It's a entire program, delivered in a very specific way to help you and your body address the underlying issues stopping you from getting the sleep your body craves.

By following the protocols within the Program, you start mending old habits, providing the correct nutrients to optimize sleep (we cover the best diet for sleep), entraining the body and hormonal system all before we incorporate more advanced techniques to help you sleep.

 

Time Poor?

I received a question after my first article about the time involvement of the Sound Asleep Program. The reader remarked how they are already studying and working and don’t have the time to start learning about the science behind sleep – they just want to sleep better!

My response is simple – do not worry, this is not a biology course, it is a program built around practical tips and takeaways - all delivered in my unique system to help you sleep.

Simple as that.

For those that want to explore the science behind my recommendations I do provide links, but most people are not interested in this. They want the takeaway, the result, the change.

From a time investment point of view there is probably a few minutes reading for each lesson topic (2-3 topics per module, with 8 modules in total).

At the end of the reading material will be an action point for you to implement that night. The idea being that you learn one simple step per night – this gives you time to learn, implement and experience the impact. Then you can move onto the next topic.

You can work through the program at your own pace, so if something comes up you simply resume the program whenever suits. In fact, you may find after implementing the action points in the first few topics that you don’t need to work through to the end!

 

Sleep When You're Dead?

Finally, someone remarked that they had no time to sleep, they lived such a busy life that they had to burn the candle at both ends out of necessity. Despite wanting to sleep more they simply don’t have the time.

Firstly, I would like to ask this individual a question – how productive is your busy day? Are you operating at peak performance all day?

I have worked with clients who have told me the same thing, but then after improving their sleep quality and duration they looked back on their old self and realized that they weren’t operating as best as they could have been. In fact they often regret not making the changes to their health and sleep earlier.

Burning the candle at both ends? You May find that improved sleep quality leads to higher productivity. 

A good night’s sleep will help boost cognitive function and performance in all aspects of life.

It will help with learning and memory recall and also helps repair and restore all cells of the body. You may feel fine, but until you actually experience what a few good nights’ sleep can do for you, you may never realize how flat you actually are.

Secondly, if you are pressed on time then wouldn’t you want to maximize the quality of your sleep? Wouldn’t you rather get 6 hours of deep restorative sleep compared to 8 hours of tossing and turning all night?

It has been well shown that sleep quality is better than sleep duration when it comes to health, performance and fat loss.

My Sound Asleep Program will help your sleep quality improve even if you’re only in bed for a few hours. If I can’t convince you to make more time for sleep, then at least let me help you improve the quality of your sleep!

Have a think about it, take a moment to imagine how your life would be impacted if you woke up every morning refreshed and energized. If you have any questions or further concerns, please leave them in the comments section below.

I have one final article coming up, so I’ll be sure to address any questions in that update. But that’s not all I’ll be covering in the 3rd article, I’ll also show you first hand how fixing one of my clients sleep issues led to less time in the gym, greater energy, more family time and – you wouldn’t believe it – but a lower body fat percentage!

All of this will be in the next update, so be sure to keep an eye out for that link in your inbox in the coming days! If you haven't subscribed for updates below make sure you do this now so that you don't miss out.

Remember, if you have any questions leave them below, or you’re going to implement either of my tips I gave you in this video please let me know by leaving a comment. I know how great you feel after a goodnights sleep and I really do feel that you can tap into this newfound energy and wellness by simply implementing those two simple tips I outlined earlier!

Speak soon,

Alex

PS. If you have your own tips for getting a great nights sleep please pst them below. I would love to hear them and fellow readers may also benefit from your tip!