Six Easy Tips for Better Sleep
Have you ever been kept awake at night by stressing about the fact you were still awake? Ridiculous isn’t it? You’re definitely not alone though, with one in three Australians regularly struggling with sleep.
Why do we struggle with sleep? Some of it is we under value sleep, the modern, busy person ‘sleep when I’m dead’ mentality. For some it’s shift work or children but often it’s other lifestyle factors that are completely fixable.
Here’s how to help yourself get to sleep, and stay asleep for long enough that your body repairs.
1. Remove Stress
I’m not talking life stress, although that will help, I’m talking about stress around sleep. Some sleep experts suggest that rather than aiming for eight uninterrupted hours of sleep per night, we aim for 35 sleep cycles per week. A cycle is around 90 minutes and involves going from awake, to light sleep, to deep sleep (repairing), and then REM sleep (dreaming). If the eight hours can’t or didn’t happen one night, don’t stress just catch up with a nap or a big sleep in on the weekend.
2. Kill The Lights
Most of us have many bright lights, and various screens on in the house up until we go to bed. We are overloaded with light and so the body doesn’t produce the hormone Melatonin which signals the body to sleep. Actually, one hour of ipad reading before bed will delay Melatonin release by 3 hours, less is released and REM sleep is decreased. Turn the screens off at least an hour before sleep time, and switch from bright lights to lamp, fire or candle light. Since we no longer sleep when the sun goes down, turn off or dimming lights can start signalling the body it’s wind down time.
3. Keep It Cool
Our bodies and brains actually need the temperature to drop a little in order to sleep well. Set the temperature on your heater or air conditioning to drop in the middle of the night and slowly rise again towards waking time. Or don’t use them at all and let the natural temperature changes do their work. It also helps if you have a hot shower or bath right before you go to bed, paradoxically the hot shower creates a cooler core temperature after and this will help you sleep.
4. Get Your Kit Off
Many of us swear by this and now the science backs it up, you will sleep better naked, at least semi-naked. The body is better able to regulate temperature, and you’re not getting tangled in fabric. Just have a bathrobe handy if you need to get up and out during the night.
5. Create a Ritual
Having both a regular bed time and a routine or ritual around bed time not only signals the body and brain it’s sleep time, it can also ease stress. Secure the house, have a hot bath, journal, dim the lights or whatever will work for you, just be consistent.
6. Eat and Drink
Having a stomach full of food when you go to bed decreases the quality of sleep, the body will be busy digesting instead of restoring. If we go to bed hungry though the body stays in a stress state and we don’t get the restorative benefits of sleep. It’s a little different for everyone but generally if you stop eating two to three hours before sleep your rest will improve.
While sleep does dehydrate us, ideally we don’t want to get up for the bathroom through the night so ease up on the water an hour before bed. Ease up on the alcohol at the same time. We may feel like alcohol puts us to sleep but it’s actually sedating us, not the same thing and we miss out on the important REM sleep.
It may seem like a lot but it really is just a few little tweaks to your evening, and the payoff is huge. Good sleep repairs and restores the body, improves mood and brain function, enhances athletic performance and even skill acquisition. To me that is well worth the effort, make one change at a time and sleep well.
This article was originally commissioned and published by Blank GC (www.blankgc.com.au)