4 Pillars of Recovery - Part 1

Sleep as the Recovery Superstar

When we look at recovery and the importance of it for repeating the flow cycle and returning to baseline and beyond, it’s important to consider what are the most impactful ways to recover.

While all 6 dimensions of our health can be influenced to some degree with recovery strategies, often external support is needed to have the greatest impact with the dimensions less in our complete control like social, environmental, and existential.

Because it is helpful to have more complete control over the actions tested for recovering from stressors, the 4 pillars of recovery are the foundation to focus on.

The 4 Pillars are:

• Sleep

• Movement

• Nutrition

• Stress Mindset

Within each of the pillars are many specific actions that are within our control to test the efficacy of. Each person’s stress fingerprint is unique, so being curious and open to the experience of testing actions steps and observing the outcomes is how we move closer to becoming Unstressable.

Sleep

Sleep is our recovery superstar. If you can only work on one change from this list, this is the one you probably should start with if you're not currently sleeping well or getting enough sleep.

Environmental cues

Set up your bear cave.

When we set up our environment for sleep success, we get to sleep that much easier and get better quality sleep. By setting up your sleep environment with cues to trigger sleep, you're putting much in place that will really make a difference in upping your sleep game.

I like to call this your bear cave because you want to make your sleep environment cold - usually somewhere in the 60 - 70 F range - Even if your sleep environment temperature isn't too modifiable, you can still take a hot bath or shower before bed to help promote the onset of sleep. While this sounds a little counterintuitive and you'd think that you'd want to take a cold shower, the increase in body temperature from the hot water and subsequent drop off as you cool down is a more powerful signal for inducing sleep. Our brain takes the cue of a drop in body temperature as one of the signals for sleeping.

Also, make your bedroom as dark as you can possibly make it. Use blackout blinds and get rid of any blinking lights from chargers, wall plugs, or alarm clocks if you can. When you aren't able to get rid of everything or you live in a large city with lots of light pollution, you can also use a sleep mask. I love this one - https://amzn.to/3siiy5h The 3D shape covers all around your eyes to block out more light than any mask I've used before and it's super comfortable to sleep with.

In adjusting light, you can also adjust light exposure before bedtime with the devices you use and use table lamps or incandescent bulbs instead of overhead lighting and bright daytime lighting.

Noise pollution is another one to think of. When I went to school in Toronto, not only did I need to use a sleep mask because I couldn't stand the light pollution, but as I tried to sleep, I noticed there was a constant buzz in the city that never went away. I had to use earplugs and often a fan or white noise machine to combat the sounds of the city, not to mention other students in the dorms slamming doors or running down the hallways screaming drunkenly at 3 a.m.

Earplugs work great for helping you to sleep in noisy environments, like with snoring dogs or people, and there are many white noise apps that can help with this as well if you're not going to be tempted to check your phone all night.

Biological cues

Sleep on a consistent schedule - even on weekends.

This is what most of us get wrong about improving our sleep. You can't stay up late half the week and sleep in all morning on the weekends to make up for sleep debt. It doesn't work well that way because we end up shifting our sleep drive when the workweek comes back around and struggle to get to sleep on time to start the week when we need to.

If you really want to have a huge impact on improving your sleep, start going to sleep more consistently at the same time. The second part of this is whether it's the workweek or weekend, waking up at the same time every day. This also will trigger you for better sleep overall.

Set your circadian rhythm in the morning and evening

Direct sunlight exposure during sunrise and sunset has a strong influence on the setting of our circadian rhythm to help promote sleep drive and better quality sleep. The blue-orange gradient of sunrise and sunset are strong biological cues we've evolved to regulate wakefulness with. And we can take advantage of this by getting outside during these peak hours. While staring at the sun directly is not a good idea, by seeing the sunrise or set in our peripheral vision we can make the most of this opportunity if we need a trigger for better sleep.

Watching the sunrise through a window doesn't count for this cue as the direct exposure to the sun rays to our eyes is what counts according to Andrew Huberman.

Sleep supplements and aids

Sometimes we need a bit of help to sleep. Even when we've got everything else lined up well, there are situations where we have prescribed a sleep aid from a doctor or try out a sleep supplement to see if it will help.

Prescribed sleep medications should be taken as directed and not used otherwise if you don't have a prescription for them. Checking with your doctor is important here. And if you're taking a medication, it's also a good idea to check before taking any additional supplements.

Supplementing with natural sleep products like melatonin, GABA, l-theanine, and reishi mushroom can be helpful as temporary solutions to promote sleep and provide deeper sleep but shouldn't become things we are dependent on to sleep.