Sleeping is one of the basic and most rewarding human activities. It doesn’t only bring you a number of health benefits but it also helps you to relax and enjoy some time off alone. Unfortunately, a lot of people are struggling to establish regular sleep patterns.
Studies show that over a third of Americans don’t get the recommended seven hours of sleep each night, while as much as 40% of 40-59 year-olds report short sleep duration. The reason can be anything from stress to modern technologies, so it is fundamental to identify the problem and deal with it to prevent sleeplessness.
Sometimes it can be a long and challenging process, while some techniques make instant results. In this post, we are going to discuss 20 ways to improve sleep and boost your health and mental condition.
The Benefits of a Good Night’s Sleep
Before we start talking about the ways to improve your sleeping habits, we want to give you extra encouragement by explaining the benefits of a good night’s sleep. The advantages of sleeping well include:
- Improved health condition: Sleeping well helps you to prevent a number of serious health conditions. According to the report, poor sleep is one of the largest contributors to heart disease, inflammation, cancers, and more.
- Stress reduction: People who don’t rest enough can never fully recover from everyday duties. They don’t let their brains process the daily influx of information, which boost stress and causes long-term exhaustion.
- Feeling energized: Do you know that feeling when you sleep for eight or nine hours and wake up completely fresh and energized? Well, this is what quality sleep does to your body and your mind.
- Better memory: Sleep plays an important role in the consolidation of memory. You can study as for long as you want, but your brain can hardly store new information without a nice nap.
- Weight loss: Insufficient sleep interferes with the hormone balance in the body, which often leads to obesity. On the other hand, people who sleep well can also lose weight much faster.
- Natural self-repair: Jake Gardner, a member of assignment service and top essay writing who specializes in psychology, says sleep represents a natural way for humans to self-repair: “Although we are asleep, our body and our mind are working hard behind the curtains to prepare us for the day to come.”
- Mood boost: People who don’t sleep well often feel under the weather. This is completely natural given the fact that they feel tired and exhausted. Therefore, a good night’s sleep will give you a great mood boost.
- Sharper concentration: When you feel fresh and relaxed, you can easily focus on everyday duties and cope with every problem.
- Enhanced athletic performance: Athletes who don’t sleep well are not able to flourish. Only quality sleep can help you to enhance athletic performance.
- Quality social life: For all the reasons we mentioned above, sleep also becomes an important factor in your social life. When you feel sharp and energized, you look forward to meeting people and engaging in social interactions.
How to Sleep Better: 15 Practical Tips
Now that you know the benefits of sleeping well, you probably strive for it even stronger. Therefore, it is time to show you 20 practical tips on how to sleep better night after night. Let’s take a look!
- Exercise regularly
People who feel tired physically almost never have a problem falling asleep. It’s just how our bodies function – give it a big test during the day and it will react by falling to sleep in the evening. It doesn’t even have to be a serious training session.
On the contrary, all you need to do is take a 30-minute walk or jog, go back home, take a shower, and go to bed. With a bucket full of duties that you need to handle on a daily basis, this should be more than enough to prepare you for a nice sleeping session.
2. Don’t eat before you go to sleep
If you want to sleep well, you need to let go off your work. Keep in mind, however, that we are talking about all types of work here and that includes your inner bodily functions. What do we mean?
We are saying that you should never eat before going to bed because it will cause your body to wake up and work hard in order to digest the food. Your mind will be more than ready for a nap, but your body won’t, so save the evening portion for tomorrow.
3. Stop using your phone while in bed
Do you know that almost 90% of smartphone users actively check email on their phones? It’s the first thing they do in the morning and the last thing they do in the evening. Add websites, social media, and live chat to the equation and you will realize why it is necessary to stop using your phone while in bed.
About 25% of people aged 18 to 24 say that they don’t sleep well because of technology. Such a practice only keeps you awake and forces your mind to keep working, which is the direct opposite of sleeping. Turn off your phone and check the messages in the morning – rest assured you won’t miss anything in the meantime.
4. Get comfortable
A lot of people neglect this issue, but have you ever truly considered changing the environment you sleep in? There are many details that could disturb your regular sleeping patterns, including clock-ticking noise and sounds of electronic devices.
Besides that, make sure that your bed is comfortable enough. Do you really enjoy the mattress and pillows? It may seem irrelevant, but such details can make or break your hopes of sleeping well.
5. Sleep in a dark room
Light is yet another thing that could disturb you while trying to fall asleep. This can be a big issue, but it’s easy to solve it. First of all, you should try to maximize exposure to sunlight during the day because it gives you that much-needed dose of energy.
Secondly, you should get blackout curtains to stop any kind of outside light from entering the room. This makes a huge contrast compared to your daily sunlight exposure and also helps your mind to develop a natural sleeping cycle.
6. Go to sleep early
Speaking of regular sleeping rhythms, we have to mention one more thing – humans evolved in a way that makes it natural to go to bed early in the evening and get up early in the morning. We understand this could be difficult for some people, but it’s just the way we function.
This is a big issue for positions because these roles demand full focus and attention. If you are a night owl who never goes to bed before midnight, perhaps you should start changing your habits gradually and try going to bed well before midnight.
7. Don’t forget to hydrate
Most people don’t pay attention to hydration, but it actually plays a major role in the way you sleep and relax. How come? Well, it turns out that water intake affects our bodies just like any other physical factor.
Dehydration causes your mouth and nasal passages to become dry, setting you up for sleep-disruptive snoring and a parched throat and hoarseness in the morning. Now, we are not saying you should drink too much water late in the evening (you would have to go to the toilet frequently), but you better make sure to hydrate continuously throughout the day.
8. Limit your daytime sleep
Most people enjoy a quick daily nap from time to time because it helps us to regain our strength and prepare for the rest of the day. A daily nap is often irreplaceable, but do you really need to sleep for two or three hours in the afternoon?
First of all, you don’t have to sleep that much during the day – your mind only needs 15 or 30 minutes to recover fully. Secondly, a longer nap will disturb your routine and stop you from falling asleep in the evening. Keep it short and sweet and you will have a good night’s sleep.
9. Don’t change your sleeping habits during weekends
Do you get up early in the morning from Monday to Friday, but can’t wait for the weekend because you can sleep by noon? While it may sound attractive and convenient, it is by no means a useful habit sleep-wise. You should stick to the same sleeping pattern every day and let your mind rest as usual. Weekend changes will only make you weaker and probably disrupt your workday routine as well.
10. Listen to classical music
All of you music lovers out there will enjoy this tip. Namely, listening to classical music can help you to relax and fall asleep easier. However, be careful about what you choose to listen to while in bed because the nature of the composition determines its final effect.
Studies show that music with a relatively slow beat may help your body hit its internal snooze button, especially compositions following your nightly heart rate of about 60 beats per minute. You only need to avoid dramatic tunes, so make sure to select a peaceful melody.
11. Cool down the room
Humans are used to sleeping in cooler rooms. Therefore, you should maintain a moderate temperature level of approximately 65° F or 18° C to help your body relax and prepare for a good night’s sleep. It’s just a matter of our inner mechanisms because the body temperature has to decrease in order to fall asleep quickly.
This is why you don’t sleep well during hot summer nights – the temperature is way too high for your body to relax and get comfortable. Of course, the same goes for cold winter nights if the heating is off.
12. Stop brainstorming and write down your tasks
Brainstorming is yet another cause of sleep deprivation. Namely, some people have too much work to complete and so they go to bed while still thinking about tomorrow’s commitments. A mind cannot relax and you can’t fall asleep this way.
You can prevent it by taking a few minutes to write down the things you need to do tomorrow. Although it seems irrelevant, to-do lists make people feel safe and secure because they know they won’t forget anything. It’s a simple tactic, but it does miracles for professionals who can’t get their minds off work.
13. Use sleep apps
Generally speaking, it’s always a good idea to avoid technology because it interferes with your sleeping routine. There are, however, some apps that can assist you in dealing with insomnia and each one comes with a full set of sleep-friendly features. We will only name a few interesting options, but it’s up to you to check them out one by one:
Sleepio: This tool promises to help you fall asleep up to 50% faster.
Relax Melodies: You can probably guess what this app is about. It’s a source of beautiful melodies that make you feel calm and relaxed.
Sleep Genius: Use it to discover your perfect bedtime and improve sleep cycles.
14. Practice relaxation
Trying to relax is always easier said than done, but it’s actually very convenient advice for persons struggling with sleep deprivation. All it takes is willpower and concentration to start breathing deeply and visualizing nice places. It can help you to calm down and stop worrying about everyday tasks. The same relaxation tactic is common where authors have to create lots of papers in a relatively short time span.
15. Meditate before going to bed
This tip goes hand in hand with the previous one, but it requires a little more dedication and effort from your side. Meditation is a mental technique in which you are trying to focus sharply on a highly specific goal. Therefore, it can help you to concentrate and fall asleep faster.
However, there are numerous meditation techniques to try out there, so it’s up to you to research and find the one that suits you the most. Just like students search edubirdie review or the resume services, you can also look for various alternatives online to identify the most appropriate meditation mechanism.
Conclusion
Sleep is a natural state of mind in which humans recover both their physical and mental strength. This is exactly why people who don’t sleep enough struggle with constant tiredness, fatigue, and the feeling of exhaustion.
The problem happens to all of us from time to time, but you have to react in case you are dealing with it long-term. In this post, we showed you the benefits of sleeping and discussed 20 ways to improve sleep and boost your health and vitality.
Do you often suffer from sleep deprivation? Do you have some special way to deal with it? Share your experiences in comments as we would love to see how you are fighting sleeplessness.
