What you do before bed can make or break your quality of sleep. Sleep is essential for your overall health and well-being. And neglecting this can even have a negative impact on your appearance. Our body needs sleep to repair the damage ordinary life brings, so why not incorporate an evening routine into your everyday life? 

If you read our first post on this two-part sleep series, you know how much poor sleep can negatively impact our skin and appearance. If you haven’t read that already, feel free to go ahead and read it. Whilst of course sleep is crucial in so many more ways, we’re skin obsessed here at Kadee Botanicals so that’s how we chose to hone in on this topic!

This time we’re going to dig into some tips and tricks to help enhance your quality of sleep. But first, a sleep fact worth mentioning!

 

 

Sleep Changes As You Age

Did you know that it’s even more important to optimize your sleep as you grow older than it is for younger people? That’s because the amount of time you spend in deep restorative sleep reduces as you age. 

 

Your brain emits different frequencies depending on the state you're in. The brain waves associated with sleep are delta and theta.

 

When your brain emits theta waves during sleep, it’s considered to be a lighter sleep. Theta waves can also occur when you’re in a deep state of relaxation whilst awake.

 

Delta waves on the other hand are associated with deep restorative sleep, the kind that helps heal your body and gives your skin that picture of health. 

 

As you age, the time you spend in delta waves decreases, in fact, delta waves barely occur in adults over 75. With this in mind, it’s no surprise healing from injuries takes longer as you age. 

 

So you might wonder, how can I increase my time spent in delta sleep? The key lies in what you do before bed. Your bedtime routine.

 

How To Create A Healthy Sleep Routine

 

1. Minimize Light Exposure Or Block Blue Light

You may have noticed how easy it is to scroll the night away on social media or binge-watch shows on Netflix. As enjoyable as that is, it’s best to avoid screen time at least an hour before bedtime. Light exposure suppresses melatonin production, a hormone produced by the pineal gland inside your brain. Melatonin is produced in response to darkness and is responsible for preparing your body for a night of restful sleep. 

 

Light exposure during the wrong times has the ability to shift your body's circadian rhythm and de-sync it from the environment. If light exposure before bed is unavoidable, you can negate some of the negative effects by filtering out blue light on your device through a setting often called night light. 

 

Alternatively, you can wear blue light-blocking glasses which will not only block the blue light present on your screen but will also block it out from other sources like lightbulbs.

 

Why specifically block out blue light? This is because blue light blocks melatonin production more than any other colour. 

 

If you’re one to pay extra attention to the finer details, you could even block out blue light once the sun goes down to emulate the natural environment.

 

 

2. Sleep At A Cooler Temperature And Use Quality Bedding

 

If you're anything like me, hot days sure do make me feel tired and drowsy. This led me to believe that warmth would be conducive to a good night's sleep, but that turns out to not be the case. 

 

This study says that temperature is one of the most important considerations to take into account for a good night's sleep, and erring on the cooler side is ideal. The optimal temperature for a good night’s sleep is around 18.3°C (65°F). This is because your body naturally drops in temperature during bedtime, so keeping the range similar prevents the sleep disturbances that come from being too hot.

 

So set your thermostat to 18.3°C (65°F) and use quality bedding that regulates your temperature well. Compared to cotton bedding, silk is better at keeping you cooler during summer and warmer during winter. Silk bedding also leaves your skin feeling smooth. Try out the Kadee Botanicals Mulberry Silk Pillowcase! To learn more about the beauty benefits of a silk pillowcase click here.

 

3. Wind Down Before You Sleep

 

We all have our own way of winding down at the end of the day. Here are a few suggestions that will help you sleep.

 

Massage

 

The eyes are a common place to feel strain, especially after a long day's work staring at cell phones and computers. Eye massages also come with a variety of benefits, other than winding down. You can use your hands or a tool like the Smart LED Eye Massager or Gua Sha.  Read 10 Reasons You Need An Eye Massage to find out how to massage your eyes, acupressure points, and all the benefits they bring. 

 

Meditation

 

Meditation is an effective way to release thoughts preventing you from falling asleep whilst bringing an overall sense of calmness. There’s plenty of guided meditation you can find for free on youtube as well as apps for your phone. 

 

If you’d rather give it a go without a guided meditation, my favorite way to get me drifting off to sleep is to focus on my breath, gradually deepening it, whilst making an effort not to entertain thoughts for long. I find that focusing on my breath helps me release new thoughts and ideas soon after they arrive, and these quick thoughts soon turn into mini dreams. You know the ones where you’re nodding off and suddenly twitching in reaction to the dream.

 

Feel free to experiment and do your own thing and find what works for you! 

 

Music

 

Listening to music has the power to help you drift off to sleep faster by slowing down the overthinking mind, zoning out, and de-stressing. But did you know it can also help improve your restorative sleep? 

 

This study found that relaxing music significantly increased the amount of time spent in slow-wave sleep, also known as delta waves. And there are plenty of songs on youtube created for this purpose, for example, “Drifting into Delta” by The Orchard Enterprises.

 

The Luxurious 4D Eye Massager is the perfect addition to your nighttime routine. Whilst reaping the benefits of a nice relaxing eye massage, you can also soothe your mind by listening to relaxing music. Just connect your smartphone to the inbuilt Bluetooth speaker!

 

Read

 

Keeping your mind engaged whilst reading or listening to an audiobook is another way of keeping intrusive thoughts at bay. You’re no longer thinking about what to do next, or that moment you said the wrong thing, just riding along in an unattached manner. 

 

Pick the right book for you. For some, business books keep them wired and awake thinking about their next venture, for others, it bores them to sleep. If the goal is to prepare your mind for sleep, choose a book that’s a balance between entertaining and not overly speculative for your mind. 

 

 

4. Utilise Habit Stacking

 

We are creatures of habit. When trying to improve our nighttime routine to improve our sleep and health, we recommend following James Cleary’s advice in “Atomic Habits”. In this book, he suggests a method called habit stacking.

 

Instead of arranging your new habit to be at a specific time and place, you can habit stack by pairing it with an already formed habit. By doing this, you're using the original habit as a cue for your new habit. This is an effective way to create new habits, with less resistance. 

 

So perhaps you’ve already got your nighttime products and their use down as a habit. Utilizing habit stacking, you could switch your device settings to block out blue light right after doing your skincare, and following that you could set the thermostat to 18.3°C (65°F). 

 

Your evening bedtime routine might look something like this:

 

1 Apply your nighttime skincare routine

2 Block out blue light

3 Set thermostat

4 Brush your teeth

5 Wind down with a good book, massage, music, or meditation

6 Sleep time!

 

Just remember, the key is to stack on top of an already formed habit. If you don’t already have a skincare routine down and your priority is to improve your quality of sleep, you could block out blue light right after you put the kids to sleep, finish cleaning up after dinner, etc. Whatever already comes naturally to you. 

This study found that relaxing music significantly increased the amount of time spent in slow-wave sleep, also known as delta waves. There are plenty of songs on youtube directed to achieve exactly this, for example, “Drifting into Delta” by The Orchard Enterprises.

 

5. Monitor your sleep for progress

 

Thanks to modern technology, we now can monitor our sleep. Smartwatches can gather information like the hours you slept, and even the amount of time spent in different stages of sleep. My watch provides a handy sleep score to let me know how my sleep went without having to analyze the data myself.

 

With that said, as an adult, you should aim to have 7-9 hours of sleep. Anything less than hours can be detrimental to your health in the long run. It’s also ideal for 20% of that time to be spent in deep sleep.

 

Monitoring your sleep can provide useful feedback, highlighting the tweaks in your nighttime routine which are working for you. Of course, you don’t necessarily need a device to show you how your sleep went, you can simply tune into your energy levels and performance throughout the day. You could also try keeping a sleep diary and taking note of the actions you took before drifting off to see whether you notice any themes. 

 

Product recommendations

Thank you for indulging in this blog post! We’d love to take this opportunity to outline who we are, and what we stand for, as well as some product recommendations you might adore!

 

Here at Kadee Botanicals, our products are formulated with care for your skin, overall health, and the environment. 

Kadee Botanical Products are inspired by Nature and free of:

• Sulfates (SLS & SLES)
• Parabens
• Mineral oils (petroleum based)
• Artificial colours
• Artificial fragrances
• Animal Derivatives
• MEA/DEA/TEA
• Harsh Detergents
• Propylene Glycol
• Phthalates
• Triclosan
• Silicones
• Gluten
• Not tested on Animals

 

Use the Kadee Botanicals Eye Cream to brighten those darker circles with the highest source of vitamin C out there, Australian Kakadu Plum and Lilly Pilly. This anti-aging eye cream has the soothing combination of cucumber oil and jojoba oil, at your service to fade out those fine lines!

The  Brightening LED Eye Massager can help reduce the appearance of wrinkles and boost skin elasticity, giving you a more youthful appearance. Relax and soothe your eyes with high-frequency vibration massage, vibrating at 11,000 times per minute. Tighten pores and stimulate your skin’s natural production of collagen with the use of red light therapy.

 

The Luxurious 4D Eye Massager is like next-level bliss, utilizing soft airbag pressure and heat to relieve tension and stress. It’s also foldable so you can easily tuck it away and take it with you on holiday for added luxury. This massager even doubles as a Bluetooth speaker. Just connect your smartphone and play some relaxing tunes for an extra immersive experience!

 

The Mulberry Silk Pillowcase is a one-time investment with ongoing wrinkle prevention. Ordinary cotton pillowcases strip away moisture from your skin, whereas silk pillowcases don’t. We like to prevent our pillowcases from stealing away the action of our nighttime products, now you can too! To learn more about the benefits of a silk pillowcase click here!