Good Sleep Is Half Your Health: Learn How To Invest In Quality Rest
With the importance of wellbeing and mindfulness becoming more understood by society, we are learning the significance of having a good sleep every night to contribute to this. A bad night’s sleep can cause a lack of concentration, make you feel constantly tired, and unmotivated to do anything.
In fact, a lack of sleep can have a detrimental effect on your life, health and mind, including your hormones and brain development. This is why there is so much emphasis on regularly gaining a decent amount of sleep. Without it, you won’t be able to focus on your wellbeing. If you’re struggling to achieve this, this article will provide you with ideas to help you invest in quality rest that will lead to good sleep every night.
Your Bed and Bedroom
Where you sleep and what you sleep on are believed to be key factors to sleeping well and relaxing. Studies have shown that external noise, like nearby traffic, can contribute to sleep disturbance and possibly long-term health issues. If you’re suffering from this, then maybe you need to have some white noise playing in the background or even soft music. There are some apps that can be used for this very reason.
However, temperature has been proven to affect sleep quality and increase wakefulness more than external noise. How many times have you been affected by extreme weather, like unusually high temperatures in the summer or a freezing night during winter?
Having something that effectively blocks out external light coming in from your windows, like black out blinds or lined curtains, is also important. Doing this is an investment, so it’s worth saving for, at the very least a blanket over the window is better than nothing until you’ve managed to purchase a good blackout curtain or blind.
Perhaps an even more important factor is your bed, in particular your mattress. Finding the right mattress takes time and patience, which it should, considering it’s a long-term investment. Knowing the right size and dimensions of your mattress will help you find one that’ll fit into your room, as stated by www.puffy.com website. The last thing you’ll want is to purchase one that is too big for your bed frame or is too small for both you and your partner to comfortably sleep on. Without a mattress that suits your needs, especially if you have health issues and thus require a mattress that can support you, you’ll never achieve regular quality sleep.
Bedtime Routine
For those of you that have children or young dependents, we often develop a bedtime routine for them, which they’ll do every night. We make sure they follow this routine every night, so they get enough sleep. This is similar to what our own parents or guardians did to us for the very same reasons. Yet, as we grow we often forget the importance of gaining adequate sleep and a routine to encourage this. Having a regular bedtime routine and time to wake up will help with the quality of your sleep as it encourages your body into a routine. You may even find that if you decide to lay in over the weekend, it makes you feel groggy or heavy headed. If so, that’s because your body has adapted to your weekday sleeping routine.
A bedtime routine helps us to unwind, with our mind and body realizing that it’s time to prepare for sleep. There is no right or wrong way to do this, but instead it’s about what works for you. What we do know is that research has shown that there are things that inhibit sleep, but you can do things to help yourself, such as
Reducing blue light exposure through laptops, tablets and phones, will help your brain realize it’s time to sleep. Exposure to this light before your bedtime makes your brain think it’s still daytime. If you’re unable to stop using these devices, then glasses that block blue light and apps to do the same on your phone or tablet, will somewhat help. It’s also good to turn off bright lights and your television at least two hours before you go to sleep.
Avoiding stimulants like caffeine and alcohol can also help you sleep better. Studies have shown that consuming caffeine up to 6 hours before you go to bed can impact on your ability to sleep. It can stay in your bloodstream 6- 8 hours after consumption, so drinking large amounts after 3pm will affect your sleep quality. After a couple of alcoholic drinks, your sleep pattern can become disrupted, and it could cause sleep apnoea.
Don’t eat late in the evening, including snacking, as this can hamper your ability to sleep. Sleeping on a full stomach is also uncomfortable and can also cause hormone disruption. It’s been proven that a carb loaded meal, four hours before going to bed can help with sleep, just as a low-carb diet can. The thing to take away from this is that eating a sensible meal for dinner is helpful in gaining adequate sleep.
Avoiding long or irregular daytime naps because they could confuse your internal body clock, causing you to struggle to sleep at night and possibly being sleepier during the day. Research has shown that taking naps in the day may not disrupt everyone’s sleep at night, so it’s very much subjective, depending on the individual and why they’re napping in the day. So if you’re struggling to sleep at night and are napping in the day, consider either reducing or eliminating your daytime nap to find out if this is contributing to poor sleep at night.
Mental Wellbeing
Some of you will be able to relate to not being able to sleep because you can’t stop thinking about a stressful situation or have something on your mind that your thoughts are focused on. This often leads to a restless sleep because our mind is unable to unwind and relax. The mistake here is trying to sleep without attempting to unwind.
Gentle stretches, whilst listening to music may be helpful in breaking the cycle of thoughts that are consuming your mind. Reading can do this too. The point here is to give your mind a break from these thoughts because it’s this release that will provide you with the opportunity to begin to relax. Other things that are effective include meditation, deep breathing, having a warm bath or visualizing.
You need to explore what’s right for you and incorporate it into your bedtime routine. The main thing is you persevere until you find what works for you and keep to it to consistently maintain good sleep. Considering we do it every night, we need to ensure it’s of a good quality to ensure we can function properly the next day. But more importantly, our health doesn’t begin to suffer.
