6 Super Simple Ways to Improve Your Sleep Tonight

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Sleep is important for our health and for meaningful living, but sleep can feel so elusive sometimes, especially with our use of screens and our busy lifestyles these days. There are some super simple ways to improve your sleep tonight without sleep or anxiety medication, banning screens past sunset, or learning to meditate. While those things can certainly help and can be necessary for some people at times, I always like to start at the lowest level of intervention and ratchet things up as needed.

Most of the topics I write about are not quick fix solutions, and truthfully, improving your sleep can be a task that takes a lot of time and energy as your look at your diet, lifestyle, stress levels, and bedtime routine. All of the ideas I’m sharing here today are small, little meaningful pieces around sleep that can have an impact relatively quickly. Some of these ideas can seriously, literally improve your sleep tonight in my experience. As always, let’s cover why this matters before we get to what to do about it.

Why Sleep Matters

Sleep impacts how we feel in the moment as well as our long-term health. We all know that feeling of not getting enough sleep: we wake up grumpy, unmotivated, sluggish, and often find ourselves on edge. When we’re tired, it impacts our cognitive performance, reducing our attention, memory, and decision making capacities. It’s more difficult to learn new information, engage in new habits, or do things that require an exertion of effort, like exercise.

Reduced sleep also impacts our emotions. It leaves us more prone to sympathetic arousal of the autonomic nervous system, which means we’re more likely to be in fight or flight. This leaves us hypervigilant and constantly scanning for safety, as well as more likely to interpret faces as threatening. That can drain our energy even more. Lack of sleep makes us more emotionally reactive and more likely to be dysregulated (ungrounded in our feelings so we say and do things we don’t mean), too.

On the flip side, getting the sleep we need helps us remain present and alert, improving our cognitive performance, our emotional experiences and relationships, and our feeling of satisfaction in life. We can keep more of the promises we make to ourselves and accomplish more goals when we get adequate sleep. Sleep is an essential part of meaningful living, because it’s so much easier to live intentionally when we’re well-rested.

Long term, chronic lack of sleep is connected to increased risk of illness from a reduced immune system, disease, and an overall unhappy life. According to the American Psychological Association, “more sleep would make us happier, healthier and safer.” In fact, research shows that high sleep deprivation levels have been linked to reduced lifespan. Yikes!

Benefits of Getting the Rest You Need

Improved memory due to memory consolidation processes while sleeping
Improved neuroplasticity, meaning it’s easier to learn new information, be flexible and adaptive, and tolerate change
Regulated autonomic nervous system
Improved emotional regulation
Higher and stable levels of energy
More positive outlook
Body can engage in organic healing processes
Reduced inflammation in body
Reduced stress- blood pressure drops, body tension is reduced
Overall reduced risk of disease

Detriments of Sleep Deprivation

Irritability, impulsivity, anxiety, aggression, emotional volatility
Reduced cognitive functioning
Emotionally reactive/increased levels of emotional dysregulation
Upregulated autonomic nervous system (fight-or-flight)
Aversive processing, meaning we perceive threat from neutral facial expressions of others
Amplified pain centers of the brain
Reduced working memory
Increased possibility of suicidal ideation
Increased risk of obesity, substance addiction, type 2 diabetes, depression, heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and high blood pressure
Some research also links sleep deprivation to Alzheimer’s, but because new information surfaced in 2022 about falsified Alzheimer’s research, I’m not including that data

Knowing all of this, let’s help you start getting the sleep your body, brain, and heart need to help you show up the way you want to so you can live a meaningful life. Let’s work to improve your sleep tonight!

How to Improve Your Sleep Tonight

1. Turn the red filter on your devices

There’s plenty of research on how light affects circadian rhythms and sleep. While exposure to light after dark in any capacity has been shown to suppress our natural production of melatonin, the hormone our bodies naturally produce as a response to darkness, blue light is particularly potent. Blue and white lights are wonderful for our brains and bodies during the day when we need to be awake and alert, but they can have the same impact on us at night when our bodies are trying to wind down and slip into restoration. Blue light comes from LED and fluorescent lights, and electronic screens (laptops, tablets, phones, and televisions).

Red light appears to have the least impact on melatonin production and circadian rhythms at lower intensity for shorter periods of time. It is important to note that research shows that there can still be a negative impact of exposure to red light after dark, but it’s much less pronounced than the impact of blue light. You could totally give up screens and all light after dark. And if that feels extreme to you, it’s easy to set your devices to red light filters after dark and see for yourself if you’re able to wind down more easily and improve your sleep. For me, it’s made a notable difference in eye strain as well as being able to go to sleep and stay asleep more easily. I hope it helps improve your sleep tonight, too!

If you’re an Apple user, I’ve got you covered with step-by-step directions for just go to do that. If you’re an Android user, I’d recommend Googling it (I didn’t want to link to something that’s not accurate, and since I don’t have an Android, I can’t verify any of the information I found).

For iPhones

Go to Settings and search for Color Filters. Another option is to go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Color Filters
Turn Color Filters on
Select Color Tint and pull the intensity and hue up to the highest levels
For ease of access, turn the red light off momentarily and create a shortcut for the red light. Go back to Settings > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut. Check Color Filters. Now, you can click the right button on your phone three times in succession to turn the right light off and on easily.

For Macbooks

Go to System Preferences > Accessibility > Display
Turn on Color Filters
Create a shortcut by going to System Preferences > Accessibility > Shortcut and then making sure Color Filters is checked. Now you can press the Touch ID button three times in succession to turn the red light filter on and off.

For the television

We have a Samsung Frame TV, which allows you to go into the settings and increase the red light on the screen as well as reduce brightness. If you’re interested, play around with your tv’s setting and see if you can find a less intense setup for watching after dark that helps you improve your sleep tonight.

2. Wear sleep glasses (or blue light blocking glasses)

I work remotely full-time, and it has really taken a toll on my health. At the end of a long day, I used to feel tired but wired, and my eyes were weepy, itchy, and blurry. After getting an exam from the eye doctor and trying new contacts to no avail, I decided to find some other ways to improve my vision and sleep at the end of the day.

Honestly, I was skeptical of blue light blocking glasses when I began my research. I’ve tried the super inexpensive $10 blue light blocking glasses in the past, but never noticed a difference except for how they reflected everything on my screen in a glare. I decided to give blue light blocking glasses another try, though, and do some research on the front end. I definitely wanted it to to find an affordable, accessible pair that had a positive impact.

I started by researching a popular brand: BLUblox (now Bon Charge). As I began to peruse multiple “Best Blue Light Blocking Glasses” lists, I noticed that never Bon Charge made any of the lists. On top of that, some of their glasses are available on Amazon for about $125 a pair (as of March 2023) and receive mediocre reviews. Because of that, I decided not to go with them, but I’d love to hear from you if you’ve had an experience with BLUblox/Bon Charge.

One pair that was recommended on several lists I perused was the Luminere brand. I was surprised to find that Luminere is easily accessible on Amazon, which also means easy returns if they don’t work out. And as of March 2023, they’re $39 and you can decide if you want regular glasses or ones that fit over prescription glasses. Luminere glasses were developed by Dr. Michael Breus, the Sleep Doctor. Dr. Breus is a clinical psychologist who specializes in helping people get the sleep their bodies need.

I love these glasses and they’ve made a huge difference for me, reducing eye strain and helping me to be ready for bed around 9 pm most nights. Even in my first evening wearing them, I found that I didn’t really notice how rose colored the world looked because of how comfortable my eyes felt. This wasn’t until I looked at my AirDoctor air purifier (which uses blue light for its display) and thought it was turned off. Try it for yourself: put these on as the sun sets and see if it helps you wind down naturally more easily and improve your sleep tonight.

3. Use a red light reading lamp

There’s research that shows that reading before bed improves sleep. I knew this from experience, and you might, too. There’s something soothing to me about the predictable patterns of letters on a page, arranged in neat little rows, plus it helps me turn my brain off and interrupt my cycle of thoughts by reading a fictional story.

I noticed after turning my devices on red filters and wearing my sleep glasses that the normal light in my bedside lamp seemed awfully bright in comparison. I went in search of a gentler solution to support reading, thinking I might want a red light bulb initially. I ended up not loving that idea and settling for a red light reading lamp instead so I can clip it directly on my book. And for $14 (as of March 2023), I’m over the moon happy about this little clippy light. I don’t have any hard data to share on if it makes me fall asleep even faster, but I certainly notice less strain on my eyes than when my bedside lamp is on.

All this talk about red lights, you might be wondering what about red light therapy and sleep. It can be another helpful resource, definitely, but it’s not as affordable or accessible as the considerations in this post, and it often takes a routine to see the benefits, so it’s less likely to improve your sleep tonight.

4. Take a magnesium supplement

Magnesium is a nutrient that our bodies need. It supports our mood, blood sugar levels, and cardiovascular system. Magnesium is also involved in helping our bodies convert food into energy and supporting our neurotransmitters, which run the communication system throughout our brains and bodies. It can help to reduce depression, improve insulin sensitivity, reduce inflammation, prevent migraines, reduce anxiety, and- you guessed it- improve sleep!

While the research is sparse at this point, this is an intervention with low risk, high reward potential that can help to improve your sleep tonight. I used to take Natural Vitality’s Calm Magnesium Supplement, but didn’t love the taste of it, even the unflavored version. It’s also a fizzy supplement, so that was an interesting and upregulating experience before bed, unlike the name implies. Now, I use Empirica’s Tri-Mag, which I’m a huge fan of. The flavor is pleasant, the experience is soothing (no fizzies!), and I feel like it helps lull me to sleep. Smidge Evening Magnesium is another brand that comes highly recommended, but I haven’t tried it out yet. If you do, let me know what you think!

5. Reduce EMFs while you’re sleeping

Electromagnetic fields (EMFs) are the frequencies emitted by our electronic devices, and those fields give off radiation. Some scientists don’t believe EMFs are an issue, but the research on EMFs is so limited, and once you become sensitive to them, it can be difficult to function “normally” in modern society. Some “scientists” also said smoking was healthy for years, so keep that in mind. If we put the pieces together, we can see how EMFs can negatively impact sleep because EMFs reduce melatonin production, which we learned about earlier when exploring red light filters.

There are several expensive ways to reduce EMFs, but two options that cost you nothing but a few minutes of your time are to turn off your wifi at night and put your phone on airplane mode at night. Both of these options reduce your EMF exposure while you’re sleeping and can improve your sleep tonight. Also, really, do you need your wifi on while you’re sleeping anyway?

If this method works for you, you can get a remote control for the outlet to make it easier to turn off your wifi and router to help improve your sleep. I also like to turn off our TV at night since we have a SMART TV and I don’t want it searching for wifi.

6. Practice yoga nidra

If you’re already putting on the brakes because you hate yoga, stay with me! This isn’t hardly yoga in the way most people think of it. Yoga nidr is a yogic sleep, meaning, it’s like a meditation, but it’s designed to be accessible and soothing to your brain, body, and heart. As a therapist, I used yoga nidra with my teens who are under so much stress and pressure to help them get little pockets of rest and peace and even they like it! My absolute favorite yoga nidra for sleep is by Jennifer Piercy, and you can use this link to find it, or search it up on the Insight Timer app (which is a free meditation app). I’ve listened to this recording for years and even put it on last night when I was heading to bed. Give it a try and see if it helps to improve your sleep tonight!