Overcoming insomnia and improving your sleep needn’t be hard. Often the reason why people can’t sleep is down to a few bad habits which prevent the natural onset of sleep.
Below are 7 ways to get a better night’s sleep based upon some of the most common causes of insomnia. By applying these simple habits you’ll gain a better nights sleep so you can sleep all night and wake up fresh, alert and ready to start the day.
Here are 7 easy ways to get a better night’s sleep:
No alcohol before bedtime
Alcohol got a nice relaxing effect, so it’s tempting to think having some before bedtime can help you get a better nights sleep.
But unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. It’s deceptive, don’t trust it! While it might get you to sleep faster, it affects quality of your sleep. This means you spend less time in the deeper more refreshing stages of sleep and more time in light sleep, leaving you feeling sleepy in the morning and during the day.
You’ll also have more of a chance of waking up during night and once you’ve woken up, you might not be able to get back to sleep again.
So ultimately, you’d be better off without it.
Only use your bed for sleep and sex
Your minds association with your sleep environment is a big factor in getting you to sleep. Use your sleep environment for day to day activities, and your mind will associate it less and less with sleep.
The best solution is to use your bedroom only for sleeping, but this might not be possible for some people, who may also need to work in their bedroom.
The most important item in your sleep environment is your bed. So at the very least, make sure your mind associates this with sleep and nothing else. Well maybe sex too, but that’s it!
Light up your days and darken your nights
The amount of light seen through your eyes is one of the clues your body uses to work out of time of day. Your body naturally associates light with day and alertness and dark with night and sleepiness.
Try to expose yourself to daylight as soon as you wake up. This will help kick start your body into action and wake up feeling refreshed. Keeping in darkness will only make your body think it’s still night time and you’ll have real problems getting up.
If you need to wake up when it’s still dark outside, consider investing in a lightbox. Lightboxes produce a special type of light that mimics natural daylight. So a few minutes in front of a lightbox should give you all the benefits of waking up to natural sunlight.
At night you should expose yourself to as little light as possible. Dim the lights in your house if possible or be very selective with which ones you use. If you use your computer before you go to bed, make sure the brightness setting of your monitor is turned right down.
Avoid stimulants before bed
Try to avoid all types of stimulants before you go to bed, such as:
Sugar- Heavy exercise
- Caffeine
- Smoking
Just before your bedtime, after a natural peak, your body will start to wind down and you’ll feel sleepy. Any stimulants taken around this time will mess up this natural wind down stage and you’ll find it harder to get to sleep.
Take regular exercise
Just a little exercise each day can make a big difference to your sleep.
This works in two ways. First, your body feels nice and relaxed. Second, exercise is a great stress reliever, so you’ll have a great mindset for sleep with no anxiety or negative emotions that can keep you awake.
The great thing is, it doesn’t take much effort at all. You don’t need to go to the gym and bust those weights, just make the commitment to move a little more.
Take a walk down to the local shops instead of taking the car to the supermarket. Take the stairs instead of the lift. Go for a walk in the evening to use up your last bit of energy.
It’s the little things that can make a big difference to your sleep. Exercise also has the advantages of making you feel good and look good too!
No unplanned naps for more than 30 minutes
Being spontaneous is great, but your body cycles hate anything out of the ordinary. For this reason you must stick to your sleep pattern like glue to build up regular sleep timings. Any unplanned naps can really mess things up and one bad nights sleep can easily develop into future insomnia.
If you nap for more than 30 minutes, you’ll start to enter the deeper stages of sleep. When you wake up you’ll end up feeling worse than you did before.
To avoid this, you would need to nap for around an hour and a half. But doing so would affect your sleep timings. So it needs to be a regular occurrence or not at all.
Don’t watch TV in bed
Undoubtedly the most common cause of not being about to get to sleep. If you watch TV in bed you’re doing two things.
First it messes up your body’s natural wind down process. Your body associates light with daytime and alertness, so staring into a big box of light confuses the body into thinking it’s daytime.
Second, your mind begins to associate lying in bed with staying awake and not sleeping.
This two mix so your brain thinks bed is for watching TV and your body things it’s daytime anyway. So it’s going to take quite a bit of time lying in bed after with the lights turned off for your body to recognise it’s time for sleep.
