920 Woodstock Rd, Roswell, GA 30075
920 Woodstock Rd, Roswell, GA 30075
In our last article on sleep deprivation, we reviewed 10 reasons why over 70M Americans have trouble sleeping at night. Now, let’s talk solutions.
The good news is that you don’t have to overhaul your entire sleep routine in one fell swoop. Sleep is cumulative – and small improvements stack up over time.
Similar to our article on improving metabolic health, think of this as a ‘playbook’. Start by making 2-3 adjustments and add more as time goes on. And remember, don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress!
With that, let’s start exploring how to sleep better at night so that you can feel your best during the day.
Your circadian rhythm is set by light signals, and the most important one happens right after you wake up. If you don’t get morning sunlight, your brain won’t fully suppress melatonin, making you feel groggy all day and restless at night.
Your body craves consistency. When you sleep at random times, your circadian rhythm gets thrown off, making it harder to fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up refreshed.
Artificial light—especially from LEDs, phones, and TVs—suppresses melatonin and tricks your brain into thinking it’s daytime because of ‘blue light’ emitted from the screens.
Many people still fall sleep and stay asleep after blue light exposure. Still, it’s shown to impact deep sleep cycles (Pubmed). This makes sleep less restorative.
Type 2 diabetes is known to disrupt sleep (Pubmed), but blood sugar issues often start long before a diagnosis. Most Americans don’t even realize they have insulin resistance – which means your body struggles to manage blood sugar.
This is shown to lead to nighttime wake-ups and disrupt your circadian rhythm. Fortunately, this can be largely corrected by making adjustments to your diet.
If you reduce excess carbs and prioritize healthy fats and protein – you’ll help your body stabilize blood sugar and promote deep sleep.
Magnesium plays a huge role in helping your body wind down. It supports the production of calming brain chemicals like GABA and helps regulate melatonin, your sleep hormone. It also relaxes your muscles and lowers nighttime stress signals like cortisol—all key for deeper, uninterrupted sleep (Pubmed).
Improve Sleep with Magnesium Glycinate
If you’ve tried everything and still wonder how to sleep better without feeling groggy – magnesium glycinate is a smart, science-backed place to start.
A well-formulated supplement (like those from Designs for Health) can be a game-changer for sleep quality and overnight recovery.
Vitamin D and B vitamins increase alertness, which is great during the day—but not before bed . To support your circadian rhythm, supplement with these vitamins with your first meal of the day. This will help anchor your energy during the day and promote a healthy wake-sleep cycle in the evening (Pubmed).
Your body needs to cool down to enter deep sleep. If your room is too warm, you’ll wake up more often and struggle to hit restorative sleep stages (Pubmed).
Recent studies show that hibiscus enhances REM sleep and reduces nighttime wakefulness, especially during periods of stress (Science Direct).
As an added bonus, hibiscus is packed with polyphenols – which are powerful antioxidants. There’s also strong associations between hibiscus consumption and reduction in blood pressure.
Glycine is an amino acid that supports deep, restorative sleep by lowering core body temperature and promoting relaxation. Studies suggest that glycine supplementation can improve sleep quality, reduce fatigue, and enhance next-day alertness—even in healthy adults (Gero Science).
Glycine Powder from a Trusted Source
For high-quality glycine, we recommend Designs for Health’s Glycine Powder—a pure, easy-to-mix option with no fillers or additives. It’s a simple, science-backed way to support deeper sleep and better recovery.
Hormones like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and cortisol directly influence how well you sleep. When these hormones are out of balance, it becomes harder to fall asleep, stay asleep, or feel rested in the morning—especially during times of stress, aging, or shift in metabolic health.
If you’re dealing with restless sleep, frequent wake-ups, or chronic fatigue – hormone imbalances could be the missing link.
At Elite Health HRT, we offer in-depth hormone panels that check key markers like testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, cortisol, and more. Use the link below to schedule your initial consult.
Your sleep position might be quietly sabotaging your rest. Research shows that side sleeping—especially on your right side—can lead to deeper, less interrupted sleep compared to back sleeping. It may reduce snoring, improve airflow, and support better spinal alignment (Pubmed).
Alcohol might help you fall asleep faster, but it doesn’t help you sleep better. While it acts as a sedative, it actually suppresses REM sleep and fragments your deep sleep stages—leaving you more likely to wake up groggy, dehydrated, or wide awake at 3 AM (Pubmed).
Looking to go beyond lifestyle tweaks? Peptides like DSIP (Delta Sleep-Inducing Peptide), CJC, and BPC-157 work synergistically to support deeper sleep, faster recovery, and better hormonal balance—without grogginess the next morning. Whether you’re dealing with poor sleep or simply want to optimize your recovery and performance, this blend is a powerful tool.
Our new Sleep Blend offers an advanced option for patients looking at how to sleep better when basic strategies haven’t moved the needle.
To learn if it’s right for you, ask our team during your next visit and we’ll talk through it.
Lifting weights isn’t just for building muscle—it’s one of the most powerful ways to improve sleep quality. Strength training helps regulate your circadian rhythm, lowers stress hormones like cortisol, and increases deep sleep by stimulating growth hormone naturally (Pubmed).
You can’t sleep deeply if your nervous system is still in “go mode.” Breathwork helps shift your body out of stress and into a parasympathetic state—what’s often called “rest and digest mode” Just a few minutes of slow, controlled breathing before bed can calm racing thoughts, lower cortisol, and help you fall asleep faster (WJCC).
If you’re wondering how to sleep better without overhauling your entire lifestyle, it starts with doing a few things consistently—and building from there.
You don’t need a 90-minute bedtime routine or expensive gadgets to start sleeping better. What matters most is consistency and making small, meaningful changes that support your circadian rhythm and recovery.
Start with 2 or 3 of the strategies that feel most realistic for your lifestyle. As you build momentum, you can layer in more. Over time, these changes stack—and the result is deeper, more restorative sleep that improves your energy, mood, metabolism, and hormone health.
Better sleep isn’t about doing everything perfectly—it’s about doing a few things consistently.
Your future self will thank you for it!
If you’re working on how to sleep better, you probably have a few questions. Let’s talk through the common FAQs.
Q1. What are science-backed ways to sleep better?
The ones with the strongest evidence are unglamorous: a consistent wake time including weekends, morning light within an hour of waking, a cool dark bedroom, and caffeine cut off by early afternoon. Most people skip those and reach for a supplement instead. Fix the timing signals first, because they’re what your body clock actually responds to, then layer anything else on top.
Q2. Should I keep the same sleep schedule on weekends?
Yes, and wake time matters more than bedtime. Your clock resets off the morning light signal, so sleeping in until 10 on Saturday shifts it later, and Sunday night you’re not tired at your usual hour. That’s the Monday morning problem most people blame on the workweek. Within an hour of your weekday wake time is close enough.
Q3. What temperature should my bedroom be for sleep?
Around 65 to 70°F for most people. Your core temperature has to drop about two degrees to initiate sleep, and a warm room blocks that. It’s also why a hot shower an hour before bed helps rather than hurts – blood moves to the skin, and the rebound drop afterward accelerates the process your body was going to run anyway.
Q4. How much magnesium should I take for sleep?
Typical doses run 200 to 400mg of magnesium glycinate in the evening, though the form matters more than the number. Glycinate absorbs well and doesn’t cause the digestive issues oxide does, and glycine on its own supports sleep, so you’re getting two things. Start at the lower end. If you’re on other medications or have kidney issues, check with a provider first.
Q5. Does what I eat at dinner affect my sleep?
Timing can be just as impactful as what you actually ate. Eating within two or three hours of bed keeps digestion running when your body is trying to cool down and wind down. A heavily carb-based dinner can also set up an overnight glucose drop, which triggers the cortisol release that wakes people at 3am. Protein and fat with dinner keep blood sugar steadier through the night.
Q6. Does the 4-7-8 breathing technique help you sleep?
The 4-7-8 method (inhale 4 seconds, hold 7, exhale 8) is one breathwork strategy Elite Health HRT recommends. Combined with diaphragmatic belly breathing for 3 to 5 minutes, it activates the vagus nerve and parasympathetic response, lowering heart rate, blood pressure, and nighttime cortisol to help you calm down before sleep.
Q7. Does alcohol affect sleep quality?
Significantly, and in a way that’s easy to miss because it helps you fall asleep. Alcohol is sedating initially, then fragments the second half of the night as it metabolizes, suppressing REM and causing the 3am wake-up. You spend the hours in bed but get less out of them. Even two drinks measurably reduce sleep quality on a tracker.
Q8. What is the best sleeping position?
Side sleeping suits most people, particularly on the left, since it keeps the airway more open and eases reflux. Back sleeping is the position most likely to worsen snoring and sleep apnea, because gravity lets the tongue and soft tissue fall backward. Stomach sleeping tends to strain the neck. If you snore heavily on your back, that’s worth investigating rather than just repositioning.
Q9. Can strength training improve sleep?
Yes, and it’s underrated compared to cardio for this. Resistance training increases the drive for deep sleep, which is the stage that handles physical repair and growth hormone release. It also builds the muscle that supports metabolic health, which feeds back into sleep quality.
Q10. What is a peptide sleep blend and how does it work?
Elite Health HRT offers a custom Sleep Blend combining DSIP, CJC, and BPC-157 as an advanced option for chronic sleep challenges. DSIP has been studied since the 1970s for slow-wave sleep, CJC supports growth hormone release for repair, and BPC-157 supports gut and tissue health. It works best alongside foundational lifestyle habits.
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