Read on to uncover our top five tips to help you slip into slumber effortlessly and improve the quality of sleep you get.
Reduce Blue Light Exposure
Do you spend an hour watching Netflix or scrolling Instagram before it’s lights out? That little habit is doing more than helping you unwind: it’s negatively impacting your sleep in a big way. Screen devices such as your phone and your laptop use blue light to illuminate their screens. This type of light has a very short wavelength that produces a higher amount of energy. In the past few years, a huge amount of scientific evidence has revealed that this short-wavelength light suppresses melatonin (the chemical in our brains that makes us sleepy) production more than any other type of light. The results are shortened sleep time, difficulty falling asleep, and diminished sleep quality due to frequent nighttime awakenings.
The good news? You don’t have to give up your favorite night time habits to improve your quality of sleep. Enabling your phone’s night mode removes blue light from the equation and free downloads like the Flux app for your computer allow you to select a variety of settings for day and night. These settings will replace the blue light coming from your screen with red light, which doesn’t impede melatonin production.
Bedtime Routine
Train your body to know it’s bedtime with a consistent bedtime routine. You probably haven’t followed a religious bedtime routine since you were a little kid – and remember how great you slept back then? Around the same time every night, go through the motions of washing your face, brushing your teeth, reading a book, etc. You can even add in meditation or a nice cup of tea (no caffeine!) to get yourself as relaxed as possible. The key here is consistency; if you do the same routine around the same time every night before sleep, your body will start to recognize your routine as a cue to get sleepy.
Got a case of the Mondays? That Monday morning feeling can last all day, impacting your mood and workflow. While fatigue is certainly not limited to the beginning of the week, the reason breaking away from the weekend is so difficult for most people is that the bedtime routine goes out the window as soon as you leave the office on Friday.
Keeping a bedtime routine on the weekend can be difficult, but the more closely you can adhere to your normal schedule, the easier Mondays will be.
Find the Right Temperature
Here’s a bit of trivia for you: body temperature is a crucial factor in falling asleep. As part of your body’s normal circadian rhythm, your body’s internal temperature rises and falls every day. Your body naturally associates a lowering temperature as a cue for sleeping; your body’s temperature rises throughout the day, then falls in the evening. This is part of why you begin to feel drowsy in late afternoon.
If you live in a cold environment, you’re lucky. Sleeping with the windows open may be all you need to reverse your sleepless nights. But if incessant heat is keeping you up at night, there are still plenty of things you can try to improve your nighttime routine. Lower your bedroom’s thermostat a few degrees, a fan in your room, or take a cool shower 15-30 minutes before bedtime.
White Noise
Do you find silence deafening? You’re not the only one. White noise machines are not just for babies anymore – nearly 5 percent of Americans use white noise machines to help them fall asleep. Research shows that white noise activates brainwaves that lull the brain to sleep and help to drown out background noise such as traffic or neighbors. You might already have some natural white noise in your room, like the rhythmic hum of a ceiling fan. But if you want to try using white noise as a sleep aid, you can find lots of white noise videos on YouTube or use the SimplyNoise site to create your perfect sleeping environment.
In some cases, a lack of noise might actually be the problem. If you’ve recently moved to the suburbs after spending years in the city, you may have become accustomed to letting the sounds of traffic or nearby trains lull you to sleep. The makers of Sleep Machine considered this. This phone app is available for Android and iPhone, and allows you to create a variety of sleeping environments by mixing and matching sounds from a library, which includes white, pink, grey and brown noise as well as noises you’d encounter in the city, alongside the ocean or in the country.
Bedding
You’ve done all the preparation for good sleep – you’ve turned off your cell phone, lowered your thermostat, finished your bedtime routine and started your white noise generator. None of the preparation is worth it if you’ve got scratchy sheets waiting for you when you climb under the covers. Invest in some lovely high threadcount sheets for a luxuriously cozy sleep, then build your bedding to fit your needs. Think about creating a comfortable atmosphere – that’s different for everyone! Do you like a lot of pillows or just one? A fluffy comforter or a soft quilt? An extra top sheet or just a fitted sheet? You spend one third of your life in bed, so make sure your bed is customized to be as comfy and sleep-friendly as possible.
Follow these easy steps and you just may find yourself making it through the day without that second – or third or fourth (we’re not judging) – cup of coffee.
What helps you get better sleep? Share with us in the comments!
Your tips are really good and it helps me for better sleep. But for regularizing sleep cycle natural supplement for sleeplessness this is good.
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