Sleep and Fertility: How Quality Sleep Supports Conception

00:00:00 Sleep is essential for hormone balance, stress resilience and our overall fertility. When we sleep, our body undergoes crucial repair and detox processes that are essential for hormone production and our fertility health. Poor sleep, however, could lead to elevated cortisol levels, dysregulated blood sugar balance, and these things can impact our hormone balance and therefore our reproductive health. And it's not just a female issue either. We know that men that just get five to six hours sleep a night have significantly lower testosterone levels, which impacts their fertility. So how do we support sleep for fertility? Well, it's all about supporting your circadian rhythm or your sleep-wake cycle.

00:00:51 And we can do this with several ways. So first of all, you want to be waking up and going to bed at roughly the same time. So first of all, you want to be waking up and going to bed at roughly the same time. Every night, including weekends. We want to be getting natural daylight into our eyes first thing within about 60 to 90 minutes of waking, if not sooner. And we equally want to make sure that we're not stimulating ourselves late into the evening, the early evening or an hour before bed, for example. So avoiding the TV, laptops, phones and scrolling. All of these things emit the blue light.

00:01:28 All of these things emit the blue light. Which disrupts our melatonin production, which is our sleep hormone, which also happens to be a great fertility antioxidant as well. So we want to be supporting healthy melatonin levels. Other things that we can do include exercising first thing as well, when we have this natural rise in cortisol in the morning, and we want to be avoiding things like caffeine from about midday, one o'clock, absolute latest. And don't forget, if you are on a diet, you're going to want to take a break. And don't forget, if you are reducing coffee intake, that other things contain caffeine as well. And don't forget, if you are reducing coffee intake, that other things contain caffeine as well. So things like dark chocolate, matcha or green tea, black tea, and even kombucha.

00:02:12 And some other things that you can do include taking magnesium glycinate in the evening. Now, this mineral is really great for supporting and aiding relaxation, and it might also help with sleep. So you could take that about an hour before you go to bed. And finally, if you do feel stressed from a very busy and stressful day, there may be some mindfulness, some meditation or breath work or journaling in the evening to help you wind down. And finally, if you do feel stressed from a very busy and stressful day, there may be some mindfulness, some meditation or breath work or journaling in the evening to help you wind down. Now, I like to set a bedtime routine about an hour before you go to bed. So I do this with all of my clients, where you turn all of your devices off and you get your body ready for sleep. So you might be preparing your breakfast for the next morning.

00:02:57 So you might be preparing your breakfast for the next morning. You might be getting your clothes ready for the next day, but nothing that's going to be emitting that blue light and stimulating you. And then once you've done that, maybe spend about 20 minutes to half an hour on some relaxation. So that could be a bath. It could be reading. It could be some of those activities we talked about in terms of the mindfulness. And then get into bed at decent time. About 10 o'clock would be perfect, if not earlier.

00:03:27 About 10 o'clock would be perfect, if not earlier. And then again, read a little bit before bed. And this should really set you up for a great night's sleep.