Three Easy Changes for Better Sleep

Plus: a new study on how quickly ultraprocessed foods age us, Manny Pacquiao's 10-minute ab workout, and more.

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Whenever someone asks me what they should be doing to recover faster and feel better in general, my answer is always the same: prioritize sleep. That’s when the good stuff, like tissue repair and clearing out the gunk in your brain, all happens. LeBron James reportedly aims for a luxurious 12 hours a night and credits high-quality REM sleep as one of the major reasons he’s still playing well at 40.

But we are not all billionaires who can call Luka Doncic a teammate, and gently transitioning into sleep mode can be difficult for a lot of people who, say, read the news and have functioning brains that are prone to falling down wormholes of anxiety. Modern life doesn’t make restful sleep easy. Especially if you only have a few hours to yourself after logging off work for the day, and all you want to do is go dummy mode binge-watching Severance or whatever.

Yet aspiring for quality rest is a worthwhile pursuit, and this past month I’ve made a few tiny tweaks in addition to all the stuff I’ve written about before—not eating dinner too close to bedtime, limiting my alcohol intake, trying to keep a consistent wake-up schedule in the morning, sometimes taking Noon mushroom gummies—that have helped me fall asleep a teeny bit easier.

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Ditch your minty toothpaste

It’s a little weird that most commercial toothpastes are mint flavored by default. Mint improves alertness and wakes the brain up, which is the last thing you want before it’s time to zonk out. Recently I added a “nighttime” toothpaste to the rotation, specifically this fluoride-free ginger variety from Boka, pictured above. I like it. Soothing and functional.

Read for at least six minutes before bed

Yasi Salek put me onto this when I talked to her, but a 2009 study by the University of Sussex found that reading for just six minutes before bed helps ameliorate stress and was more effective for reducing anxiety than other calming modalities, like drinking tea or going for a walk. (Very British, innit.) There’s some evidence that reading a book in bed increases the quality of your rest too. Just, whatever you do, don’t read on your phone.

Turn on your phone’s blue light filter

Blue light is terrible for sleep. But did you know that you can minimize blue light on your iPhone by changing the settings? Mind you, this tweak is a bit more intense than going "night mode” all the time—your screen does look a little weird—but it’s easy to toggle on and off by triple clicking your Home button should you need to edit photos or something. (And don’t just take my word for it! The big homie Sami Reiss of Snake also does this.)

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Settings —> Accessibility —> Color Filters —> Blue/Yellow Filter “on.”

2. Go back to Accessibility —> Accessibility Shortcut —> turn on “Color filters”

3. Triple click the Home button to activate and deactivate.

I hear it’s even easier to do on an Android, but I haven’t tried it out so I can’t confirm.

Anyway, this stuff is all mindless and easy and has helped make the transition to night-night a little bit smoother. If you have any other tactics that have been working for you, by all means, please share them in the comments.

~*Other stuff*~

Ultraprocessed foods and aging: I was talking to Michelle Davenport recently, and she sent along a fascinating study that took a look at diets high in ultraprocessed foods and how quickly those are aging us. The study of ~16,000 participants, published in the British journal Age and Ageing, found that for every 10% of “energy intake accounted for by ultraprocessed foods” participants were .21 years biologically older. I had to double check the math on that, as a 35-year-old who largely subsists on ultraprocessed foods is biologically closer to someone who is… 42 lmao.

Manny Pacquiao’s insane ab workout: I came across this recently and gave it a try. I could only last four minutes. Let me know how far you get.

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