So, you’ve got a perfect sleep environment, a positive mindset and timing like clockwork. All’s well right? Almost! There’s one more thing that could be holding you back from deep refreshing sleep. Your own body.
Sleep is natural, but you need to allow your body to perform the process of sleep. Where your body’s natural sleep cycle takes over and sends to gently off to sleep. But there’s many things you can do to unwillingly stop your sleep cycle from working properly. If your sleep cycle isn’t operating properly it could, in time, lead to insomnia.
This article will take you through the steps on how to bring your body into perfect alignment with sleep and how to get your sleep cycle working like a well oiled machine. 
Let the natural wind down process do its job
You need to allow your body’s wind down process to occur. Basically, make sure nothing gets in the way of it.
No stimulants
Before the wind down process begins, avoid eating or drinking anything that could stimulate your body. This includes:
- Sugar
- Caffeine
- Nicotine
Best to avoid all of these after your evening meal. Many experts also recommend no caffeine after mid afternoon. Not that you’ll need caffeine with all that deep refreshing sleep just waiting around the corner. 
Avoid alcohol
Alcohol’s a depressant right, and taking it makes you feel relaxed. So surely drinking alcohol before bed is the perfect excuse? Unfortunately not! It may get you to sleep faster, but the quality of your sleep would be greatly reduced. This means you’ll spend longer in light sleep and you might wake up a few times in the night and the quality of your sleep is more important than the number of hours you sleep.
Take plenty of exercise – but not before bed!
Take plenty of exercise during the day and your sleep will certainly thank you for it. Exercise helps you squeeze every last bit of energy out of the day. So when you sleep, you’ll feel nice and relaxed. It’s also a fantastic stress reliever too, so it’ll have a positive effect on your mindset too.
Just make sure you don’t take any heavy exercise around 3 hours before you go to bed. Doing so will mess up your body’s wind down process. Light exercise though, like an evening stroll, is perfect for sleep.
Keep warm in a cool environment
As part of the wind down process, your body temperature dips ever so slightly. It’s not noticeable, but it’s happening inside. Scientists have linked alterations in temperature to sleepiness. This finding explains why some people find it hard to sleep in a warm atmosphere.
So to allow this dip in temperature, tuck yourself up in a warm bed but in a cool environment. That way you’ll be nice and warm, but not too hot.
You can even take steps to encourage this dip in temperature. It’s been shown that having a warm bath an hour before bedtime promotes sleep. It’s not the bath doing this, it’s the actual cooling off. When you get out of the bath, you help kick start the body’s cooling process. And while you’re there, why not add some lavender scent to your bath, which has also been scientifically proven to promote sleep. Bliss!
Avoid sleep medication if possible
Medication may seem like the silver bullet, but it can come with a range of issues. Sleep medication can actually reduce the quality of your sleep, much like alcohol. They may also make you drowsy in the morning – the hang over effect.
If that wasn’t enough, their effects can ware off if you keep using them and your body can actually become dependant on them. So like many drugs, they work great to start with but after that, you need them or you’ll have even worse sleep than before.
I am of course generalising. Different sleep medication have different side effects, but the advice remains the same. Only take them if you really need to, and for short term. Medication can be part of the solution for the causes of short term insomnia, outlined in the Causes of Insomnia article.
If you do take sleep medication, make sure that it is the smallest dose necessary and that it’s a short acting sleeping pill. So it gets you to sleep and then wears off in time for the morning.
Taking sleeping medication long term can be tempting, but it doesn’t really solve anything. It’s much better spending time fixing your sleep problems and falling asleep naturally without the medication if you can possibly help it.
Eat a light evening meal
Having a big breakfast, medium lunch and small dinner is the best way to go as far as your sleep is concerned. This way, your body gets most of its energy in the morning to start your day, with a top up at lunch and a small top up at dinner, when your body begins to wind down.
The thought of having a big breakfast though isn’t all that appetising for some people, myself included. Having your main meal at lunch may be a better alternative.
Whatever you do, don’t have a big dinner within 3 hours of going to bed. Instead of winding down, your body instead has to say up to digest your food, which can keep you awake. It also increases the risk of heartburn and indigestion. On top of that it’s not good for your health. Your body can’t use the food as energy at that time of the day, so it’s forced to convert it into fat to store it. Not good if you’re trying to keep a figure!
Sleep and Genetics
Unfortunately, sleep isn’t something we can completely control. We can help promote it, and we can certainly hinder it. But ultimately, the amount of hours sleep you need and the nature of that sleep is embedded right down in your DNA.
Electricity pioneer Nikola Tesla claimed to need only 3 hours sleep. Albert Einstein on the other hand slept ten hours a night. He believed his dreams allowed him to think more clearly.
Genetics also effects how well you are able to fall asleep. Napoleon was said to be able to fall asleep at will.
Certain sleep disorders can also be hereditary.
But sleep being part of our DNA may actually turn out to be a good thing. Scientists have recently discovered a way of altering a gene that reduces our need for sleep from around 7-8 hours to 5 – 6. It’s already been successfully done on rats, maybe humans would be next?
There’s been a lot of interest in sleep research recently. Space agencies for example want to be able to control their astronauts need for sleep. Being able to hibernate would be very useful for long manned space missions.
We all know how fast technology has developed over the years. Maybe advances of the understanding of sleep will come at the same pace? We’ll have to wait and see. 
