People who wake up energised always do this before 10 pm

Do you struggle to keep your eyes open until you have your morning joe? Are you someone who battles the grogginess all day long? Well, you are not alone. Many people struggle with morning alertness.

But you may have also come across individuals who wake up energised. So, what’s their secret? No, they aren’t born with those skills. In fact, those are some superpowers they have earned by following some simple habits that they completed before 10 pm! A 2022 study by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, published in Nature Communications, found that three factors play a crucial role in waking up energised. What are they? Sleep, exercise, and breakfast. By making some adjustments in these factors, you can wake up in the morning without feeling sluggish.

How? Let’s find out.

The key to waking up energised

The researchers found that the secret to alertness is a three-part prescription. They analysed the behavior of 833 people. The participants of the study were observed over two weeks, during which they were given a variety of breakfast meals. They were asked to wear wristwatches to record their physical activity and sleep quantity, quality, timing, and regularity. The participants also kept diaries of their food intake and recorded their alertness levels from the moment they woke up and throughout the day.

Twins, both identical and fraternal, were part of the study to disentangle the influence of genes from environment and behavior.What were their findings? The researchers found that staying alert in the morning is a result of the previous day's habits! Getting plenty of exercise the day before, sleeping longer and waking up later, and eating a breakfast rich in complex carbohydrates, which is low in sugar. “All of these have a unique and independent effect. If you sleep longer or later, you’re going to see an increase in your alertness.

If you do more physical activity on the day before, you’re going to see an increase. You can see improvements with each and every one of these factors,” Raphael Vallat, first author of the study and UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow, said in a release.

Breakfast matters

Going on a sugar rush in the morning will not only affect your present day, but also the next. The researchers point out the importance of having a breakfast rich in carbohydrates but low in sugar. “A breakfast rich in carbohydrates can increase alertness, so long as your body is healthy and capable of efficiently disposing of the glucose from that meal, preventing a sustained spike in blood sugar that otherwise blunts your brain’s alertness,” Vallat said“We have known for some time that a diet high in sugar is harmful to sleep, not to mention being toxic for the cells in your brain and body,” Walker added.

“However, what we have discovered is that, beyond these harmful effects on sleep, consuming high amounts of sugar in your breakfast, and having a spike in blood sugar following any type of breakfast meal, markedly blunts your brain’s ability to return to waking consciousness following sleep.

”

Get a good night’s sleep

In order to wake up energised and fresh in the morning, you have to focus on your sleep. The researchers found that sleeping longer than you usually do, and/or sleeping later than usual, led to increased alertness very quickly after awakening from sleep.

Getting seven to nine hours of sleep is ideal for ridding the body of sleep inertia, the inability to transition effectively to a state of functional cognitive alertness upon awakening, as per the researchers.

“Considering that the majority of individuals in society are not getting enough sleep during the week, sleeping longer on a given day can help clear some of the adenosine sleepiness debt they are carrying,” Matthew Walker, senior author and UC Berkeley professor of neuroscience and psychology, said. “In addition, sleeping later can help with alertness for a second reason,” he said. “When you wake up later, you are rising at a higher point on the upswing of your 24-hour circadian rhythm, which ramps up throughout the morning and boosts alertness.”

Move your body

Though it is unclear what physical activity does to improve alertness the following day, Vallat thinks, exercise is generally associated with better sleep and a happier mood.“It is well known that physical activity, in general, improves your alertness and also your mood level, and we did find a high correlation in this study between participants’ mood and their alertness levels. Participants that, on average, are happier also feel more alert,” Vallat said. “It may be that exercise-induced better sleep is part of the reason exercise the day before, by helping sleep that night, leads to superior alertness throughout the next day.” On the other hand, the researchers found that genetics plays only a minor and insignificant role in next-day alertness.Note: The information provided in this article is for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before starting any new medication or treatment, or before changing your diet or supplement regimen.