How To Get The Best Sleep For A Long Life

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Did you know that the key to longevity is sleep? You could sleep for a long life, but how exactly do you get a good night’s rest.

Faraz Khan and Kirk Parsley get into the basics of sleep in this interview.

Dr. Kirk Parsley’s Background

Wanted to be a physical therapist. Then went to military school and got on the seal team.

He worked with athletes, they reported cognitive and emotional problems that were not connected to their diet. That is how he found out the importance of sleep.

Why is sleep so important for a long life?

Your body and brain are good for about 16 hours. After that time, they need about 8 hours to repair.

Throughout the day, tissues are breaking down. The repair process happens when we sleep.

Sleep is anabolic. You build/repair yourself when asleep.

Being awake is catabolic. You are breaking yourself when you are awake.

Aging is a mismatch of anabolism and catabolism. It’s important to effectively use sleep for a long life.

How many hours of sleep do we need per night?

That number is right around eight hours. It depends on your day when you were awake.

If you were running the entire day, sleep as much as possible. The sweet spot for a normal daily activity is eight hours.

If you are an athlete, or you are burning your brain at medical school, you need more than 8 hours.

Do you find that people wake up in the middle of the night?

Almost everybody has a stress component.

Adenosine is the reason why people often wake up at night. Men experience it more because they have more muscle mass, which leads to more adenosine.

Women have less adenosine and that is the reason why they need more time to fall asleep.

Kirk has a free pdf program which is teaches how to decrease stress while sleeping.

What would you say to a client that has stress as a cause of bad sleep?

Download the sleep guide PDF.

Make a list of your stressors. Make a pact with yourself that the best you are ever going to be with handling your stress is after a good night’s sleep.

You need to set up a night routine. You have to have an alarm to wake you up.

What are two to three tips that you have to do before you go to bed?

If we looked at how we evolved, we always used the sun as a reference to when to go to sleep and when to wake up.

These are the cues for your body to go to sleep:

-decreased blue light
-decreased body temperature
-decreased mental cognitive activity

All you have to do is to block blue light, decrease stimulation around you and lower temperature a little bit and get in bed.

What are your thoughts on HRV – heart rate variability?

Kirk thinks that the most efficient way to improve HRV is via sleep.

Hormones, but mostly stress hormones can stimulate your heart to beat faster.

It is important to have a balanced nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system increases your HRV, parasympathetic slows it down.

When you sleep six hours instead of eight hours sleep, your stress hormones increase. Because you did not repair completely overnight, you are going to use your body as fuel.

Kirk’s Thoughts on Melatonin Supplementation

Melatonin does not make you fall asleep. Melatonin starts the cascade of events that prepares your brain and body for sleep.

If you don’t have the right nutrients in the brain, melatonin is not going to be successful in getting you to sleep.

It is proven on animals that if you give them too much melatonin, it decreases their number of receptors to melatonin.

For people that want to start using melatonin, use very small doses. Two to three micrograms.

How do tryptophan and 5 hydroxy-tryptophan help us fall asleep?

We make melatonin from tryptophan. That is the reason why Krik does not use melatonin. He learned how melatonin was produced.

With magnesium, tryptophan becomes serotonin. Serotonin transforms to melatonin .

This is a way to nutritionally supplement your brain.