This blog post is sponsored by MegaFood®. I’m one of their blogger ambassadors. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
“Sleep like a baby,” The common saying that so many wished could happen. Do you ever wonder when and how sleep become such a problem, considering it could be classified as the most important element of health?
Sleep tends to be more of a fleeting thing with adults, with many suffering from sleepless nights.
So the question becomes, what has gone wrong and how can we reach deeper sleep every night?
That’s what we answer in today’s podcast with Erin Stokes, ND and Medical Director at MegaFood. Listen as we take a deeper dive into sleep, what it means for our body, how our circadian clock affects every cell and ultimately how you can sleep deeper.
Listen on iTunes | Listen on Stitcher | Listen on Google Play | Review the Podcast
5 Ways to Reach Deeper sleep
Inside the podcast, Dr. Stokes recognized five ways to reach deeper sleep. I’m going to break those down here and help show you how you can make a plan to get more sleep. Because as you learn in the show, sleep is one of the most healing states of our body. We need sleep and deep sleep, so here are five ways to get more of that.
1. Create a bedtime routine
It may sound like a childish step because it’s one that so many do with their kids, but whether it’s a nightly bath, brushing teeth and reading books, we know bedtime routines work well in children. Since it works so well for kids, why not try it out as an adult? What you do before bed can affect how well you sleep. Creating your bedtime routine can help your body relax and prepare to reach deep sleep even before your head hits the pillow.
Try taking a warm bath, lengthening your nightly skincare routine, reading a book over soft light, and listening to slow paced music over a Netflix or Instagram binge. All of these things can be helpful in transitioning your body from waking to a sleeping state.
2. Create a Healthy Sleep Environment
Our environment always matters, even when you sleep. Take time to create a relaxing environment to rest at night. Whether that means you invest in a better pillow, purchase light-blocking curtains or a sound machine, make your sleeping environment cozy and calm so your body can feel the same way.
One critical component when it comes to your sleep environment is to eliminate external light. Light is one of the most influential factors of our melatonin release – which is the hormone responsible for deep sleep. By eliminating as much light as possible from your sleeping environment the more likely you are to continuously release the necessary amount of melatonin to reach REM sleep – the important restorative part of our sleep cycle.
3. Journal
Does your mind race before you go to bed, preventing you from falling asleep quickly? Or maybe you find yourself waking up in the wee hours of the night with thoughts running through your head?
Given stress is one of the biggest culprits of poor sleep, taking time to de-stress and relax before bed can help reduce the mind wandering. Try keeping a journal beside your bed and commit to bulleting out your thoughts and concerns before bed.
4. Try Essential Oils
There are many properties in oils that can help your body enter a more calm state. Oils like lavender, sandalwood, and ylang-ylang, all have properties known to help you relax. Try diffusing them into your bedroom or rub the oils on topically, especially to the bottoms of your feet or behind your ears to activate a deeper effect.
5. Use Supplements
Sometimes our body is just deficient in nutrients like magnesium, to or hormones like melatonin. Supplementation can be a useful and powerful tool to help you reach deeper sleep.
A few of the most powerful natural sleep aids include magnesium, valerian, and ashwagandha.
MegaFood {my preferred supplement brand due to quality} offers a variety of supplements that can help your body reach the relaxed state it needs to sleep. Included in my nightly supplement routine is MegaFood Magnesium.
A few other MegaFood supplements that I recommend for deeper sleep include:
- MegaFood Dream Release™ – This product is specifically designed to promote deep, restorative sleep*. Valerian and California poppy are traditionally used to promote restful sleep in those with occasional sleeplessness, while calming Magnesium and Sensoril® ashwagandha help release tension*.
- MegaFood Melatonin Berry Good Sleep™* – These adult gummy vitamins are made with organic wild blueberries and tart cherry, both natural sources of phytonutrients, which give them their berry color and a delicious taste—with no artificial flavor.* Give yourself a rest from hard-to-swallow tablets with this delicious pre-bedtime, drop-shaped gummies.
- MegaFood Un-Stress® – This supplement helps replenish key nutrients that are easily depleted during times of emotional, mental and physical stress. It features key nutrients, including B vitamins, vitamin C and zinc, plus the Soothing Herbal Blend delivers supportive organic herbs, including organic ashwagandha, organic chamomile flower , nd organic astragalus root*.
my brand of choice
As we’ve talked about before, not all supplements are created equal. Just like food, supplements can be tainted throughout the production process so it’s important to always know where the nutrients in vitamins are sourced from.
That’s why I like to stick to high-quality brands that are transparent and use third-party testing in the form of certification to further validate the trusted ingredients they use and the product effectiveness. If you’re on the search for supplements, I would recommend MegaFood.
MegaFood is taking the concept of “keeping it real” to the next level by building trust with the consumer {us} with their 24/7 live facility cams. They also work with a network of trusted farm partners to obtain the whole foods they use in their high-quality supplements. So if you’re looking for a supplement company that you can trust, MegaFood is one I stand by.
They recently became a certified B Corp which means they are committed to higher standards of transparency and accountability, and they are a force for social good within their community and beyond. Additionally, MegaFood is the first supplement company to have its entire line of products certified Glyphosate Residue Free by the Detox Project, an independent research and certification organization dedicated to bringing awareness to the public by testing consumer goods and food products for toxic chemicals.
In fact, they are so passionate about eliminating glyphosate (the #1 used herbicide globally) that they’ve teamed up with the Environmental Working Group to urge the EPA to ban glyphosate! If all corporations cared as much as MegaFood does then I’m confident the world would be a much better place.
learn more about what you use
If you want to learn more about the brands you already use, make sure you ask yourself these questions about quality:
- Where is it coming from?
- Am I taking the right form?
- Is this bio-available in your body?
- Does it oxidize or go rancid?
If you don’t know, dig around on the company’s website. Look up the information and make sure they are disclosing all ingredients. A little extra time spent researching the company is always a valuable tool in fighting confusion.
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*This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.