The Cozy Way to Add Years to Your Life and Life to Your Years

There’s a cozy way to add years to your life and life to your years:

Sleep.

Sadly, too many people skimp on sleep when they get up at 3 a.m. to take their kids to hockey practice or stay up until 3 a.m. to fight about politics on social media.

In a world that operates 24/7/365, it can seem like there are better things to do than sleep. But most of it is nonsense. Unless you do emergency-related work, nighttime is best spent sleeping.

You’re wired to sleep at night.

That’s why skimping is deadly:

“This meta-analysis demonstrates that inadequate sleep, specifically sleeping less than 7 h per night, is associated with a 14% increased risk of all-cause mortality. These findings underscore inadequate sleep as an important risk factor for mortality, particularly among adults in modern societies where sleep deprivation is increasingly prevalent.” (1)

That’s why prioritizing sleep matters.

And here’s how to sleep like a log:

1. Make sure your bedroom is comfortable: not too hot and not too cold. If you’re too hot or too cold, you won’t sleep as well as you can. A bedroom at 60 to 65 degrees at night is best for most people.
2. Make sure your bedroom is very dark. The darker the better. Make sure there are no lights from any electronic devices. Your body perceives this light as daylight, and this negatively affects the quality of your sleep.
3. Make sure your bedroom is very quiet. Complete silence or white noise from a fan, humidifier, or a similar device is best.
4. Avoid eating within a few hours of bedtime. Give yourself some time to digest your food before you go to sleep.
5. Don’t drink water in the evening. Drink water in the morning and throughout the day between meals, but don’t drink water in the evening.
6. Ideally, spend the few hours before bedtime resting. This makes it easier to wind down, fall asleep, and sleep deeply.
7. Ideally, avoid all screens the few hours before you go to sleep (or use blue-light-blocking tools). Artificial light, especially blue light from computers, tablets, phones, and similar devices, inhibits the secretion of melatonin, a hormone that impacts your sleep and wake cycles.
8. Reserve your bed for sleep and sex. If you associate your bed with things like paying bills and checking e-mail, it can be tougher for you to wind down and fall asleep. Use your bed only for sleep and sex. When you get in bed, you’ll get a strong signal that it’s time to doze off (or have sex then doze off).
9. Increase your exposure to light during the day. Get outside during the day whenever possible. When you’re indoors, let in as much light as possible.

“And if tonight my soul may find her peace in sleep, and sink in good oblivion, and in the morning wake like a new opened flower then I have been dipped again in God, and new created.”
—Shadows by D.H. Lawrence

(1) Imbalanced Sleep Increases Mortality Risk by 14-34%: A Meta-Analysis. GeroScience, 2025, 0.1007/s11357-025-01592-y.

About Jason Gootman
Jason Gootman is a Mayo Clinic Certified Wellness Coach and National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach as well as a certified nutritionist and certified exercise physiologist. Jason helps people reverse and prevent type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other ailments with evidence-based approaches to nutrition, exercise, stress reduction, holistic wellness, and, most importantly, lasting behavior improvement and positive habit formation. As part of this work, Jason often helps people lose weight and keep it off, in part by helping them overcome the common challenges of yo-yo dieting and emotional eating. Jason helps people go from knowing what to do and having good intentions to consistently taking great care of themselves in ways that help them add years to their lives and life to their years.