This is MedMind. The newsletter for science backed tips to optimise your diet, sleep and exercise.

In this edition, we cover:

☀️ How to stay in tune with your body’s early morning hormones

🧘 Why you should stretch your body and mind in the morning

☕️ Coffee substitutes for when it is too late for a cup

Think about how you woke up this morning. What did you do between opening your eyes and getting out of bed? What happened between you getting out of bed and going out to work/school?

Everyone has a morning routine. There will be a set number of things you do every morning that are so ingrained in your life that you may not even realise that you are doing them. It can change the course of your whole day, so it is important to get it right.

In this edition, you will learn how to optimise your morning routine for maximum wellness and productivity and what you should avoid doing first thing in the morning to ensure a good day.

Your morning routine

It starts the night before. A regular bedtime and healthy sleeping habits will ensure a good night’s sleep that will in turn make your morning routine easier and more effective. Strategies for better sleep have been covered in other MedMind articles but here are a few you can implement:

• No caffeine for 6 hours before bed

• No blue light emitting sources for an hour before bed

In addition to a regular bedtime, it is important to have a regular wake-up time (daily, even weekends!).

This will support your body’s circadian rhythm and have you feeling more refreshed after you wake up.

Now that the prep is done, you can get onto the good stuff ⬇️

Open your eyes to sunlight

Try to let the sunlight into your room as soon as you wake up.

Sunlight will support your circadian rhythm, increase alertness and wakefulness, and lower stress. It naturally increases cortisol levels and suppresses melatonin (the sleep hormone). Whilst cortisol gets a bad rep for being associated with stress, it is essential to feel alert in the mornings, and its levels decrease the longer you are awake. Only chronically high levels of cortisol are associated with negative health outcomes.

In fact, cortisol and melatonin perform something of a dance throughout the day, with one increasing as the other is suppressed and vice versa. This is the basis for your circadian rhythm.

Make your bed 

Make your bed every morning, without fail.

Not only will this make your room look nicer (no one likes an eye-sore), but it also gives you a feeling of control and achievement with your first task of the day.

Even if you have a terrible day with nothing going to plan- you failed a test, got berated at work or burnt your dinner. You still made your bed.

It may seem like an insignificant achievement but it quickly becomes a constant in your day that makes a difference.

Start your day as you mean to continue it: with control and good results.

Stretch your body

Yoga will improve your flexibility and mobility and has been shown to decrease stress, anxiety and the risk of injury. Whilst there have been few studies that look at stretching specifically after waking up, the benefits will likely remain the same. It is best to do it on an empty stomach and as soon as you get out of bed.

There are lots of routines available for all levels online. Below is one suitable for beginners.

If you think you might struggle with fitting a stretching routine into your morning one, then wake up 10/15 minutes earlier. The benefits you will get from a morning yoga routine will massively outweigh what you would have gotten from the little extra sleep.

Do some writing

There are two types of writing you can do in the morning. One type, conscious stream, aims to improve your well-being and is a form of meditation. The other, daily highlights, is for a more productive start to the day.

Doing both is best, but if you are strapped for time, I suggest focusing on the daily highlights and dedicating another time of day to meditation.

Here is how you do them

• Conscious stream: as the name implies, this writing exercise is simply you writing down your thoughts. Putting pen to paper and writing whatever comes to mind. Don’t worry about making it grammatically correct or well written. This exercise is designed to force you to slow down your thoughts as you focus on writing them (no one can write on paper faster than they think). It is a relaxing and reflective start to your working day. Aim to fill around a page of A4.

• Daily highlight: write down one thing you want to achieve today that will help you progress towards achieving your goals. This could be work-related (finish essay, complete one project) or wellness-related (run 10km, finish reading that one book you have been putting off). Whatever it is, it should be something quantifiable, and you should be able to write it down in no more than two sentences.

  If you make to-do lists, write your daily highlight as your overarching aim, your non-negotiable daily task. This should guarantee that at the end of every day, you will have taken at least one more step towards your goal (and made your bed!)

Hold the coffee (for a bit) 

Don’t have your first cup for 60 minutes after waking up.

Coffee naturally increases your body's cortisol levels and blocks the sleep hormone adenosine. If you have it too early in the morning, you will unlikely feel its full benefits. This is because (as mentioned above) your body produces cortisol quickly after you wake up anyway. Any coffee you have is unlikely to make much of a difference at that time as the cortisol acts to wake you up. Plus, consuming too much coffee too early in the morning can interfere with your normal cortisol production and stress your adrenal glands.

If you look at the graph below, you will see that your cortisol starts to drop off around the 60-minute mark. This is the ideal time to have a cup of coffee to maintain alertness and avoid the mid-morning lull.

Hopefully, these tips will allow you to craft a morning routine that gets you energised and ready for the day ahead while staying in tune with the hormones your body is producing

4 coffee substitutes for when it’s too late to drink coffee

If you find yourself needing a pick-up in the late afternoon (or within 6 hours of your bedtime, see above), here are some good low-caffeine and caffeine-free alternatives to coffee:

🍃 Green Tea:

• A warm drink with minimal caffeine content

• It comes in different flavours

• It contains antioxidants that prevent cell damage

🍋 Lemon Water:

• It can be consumed hot or cold, making it a good refreshing option in the summer

• You can add honey for a bit of sweetness.

• No caffeine= more hydrating

🍫 Dark Chocolate (>70%):

• Good source of minerals to help with cognition

• For when you are craving a snack instead of something to drink!

☕️ Decaf coffee:

• It contains minimal/ no caffeine

• You can use the placebo effect here and trick your brain into thinking you are drinking actual coffee.

• It is a good starting point for trying to wean off coffee.

So in summary:

• Your morning routine starts the night before

• Try to get sunlight in your room as early as possible

• Stretch your body and mind to prepare for the day ahead

• Avoid coffee for at least 60 minutes after waking

MedMind Weekly Wellness Challenge

Write down what you did this morning after you woke up and how you felt (a rating of 1-10 for energy, stress and motivation). Then choose one thing to improve or add to your morning routine. Make sure you stick to it for at least 2 weeks and compare how you feel then to your score from this morning.

As always, leave any questions you have in the comments and make sure to check your inbox for the next issue!

All the best,

Jan