With our increasingly busy routine, many people need to learn what good sleep is, that restorer of sleeping the whole night. We must stop sleeping badly to live better. It’s worth saying that sleeping badly at night brings health problems, in addition to fatigue… and a horribly bad mood throughout the day.
Have you been through this? Even sleeping through the night, do you still wake up tired? This is the case for many people, unfortunately. But we have good news for you, dear reader: it is possible to change that – or at least reduce this unpleasant situation.
A bed is for sleeping
Try not to read books, talk on the phone, work, or eat in bed. Who can relax watching their bank account zero in bed? Associate your bed with sleeping. This is also part of the sleep ritual we talked about earlier. Some prefer to make the environment even more relaxing by playing slow and soft music with a white noise machine. So every time you go to bed, your body knows it’s time to sleep.
Don’t confuse quantity with quality
We tend to think that the more time we spend sleeping, the more restorative sleep will be. But not quite. Remembering six hours of deep sleep will leave you refreshed after more than eight hours of light sleep. Therefore, it makes no sense to stay in bed for ten hours, thinking that you will wake up zero. The idea is to get quality sleep and long enough to feel good.
Avoid smoking
We talk about coffee at night, but nicotine is a more active brain stimulant than caffeine. Thus, smokers tend to have trouble sleeping, sleep poorly, wake up easily, and spend less time in deep sleep. And this is not just an assumption: Scientific evidence suggests that sleep improves when a smoker stops smoking.
Be relaxed
Make your bed a relaxing space by choosing bedding sheets and preferably organic bamboo bedsheets, body pillows, and weighted blankets. And, before going to bed, list things that need to be done the next day or possible solutions to your worries. I know this sounds like a waste of time, but it’s not.
Alcoholic beverages
We usually relate alcohol to sleep. It’s common for someone to say that they’re going to take a lot to sleep well. It seems true, but it’s not quite like that. It turns out that the sleep caused by drunkenness is of poor quality. You will sleep easily after a drunk, but the period of deep sleep (the restorative one that brings the feeling of rest) decreases a lot. Just remember how you wake up broken during a hangover. Therefore, if you want to sleep well all night, be careful with the alcohol you consume.
Eat before bed
Only go to bed if you are fed (maybe something low calorie). The fact is, you won’t be able to sleep well if you’re hungry. Unbalanced eating reduces your deep sleep time. Tip: Have a cup of digestive tea (without caffeine) or a cup of hot milk.
Ever heard of the thirty-minute method?
It works like this: If you can’t sleep within thirty minutes, get up, go to another room in the house, listen to light music, and read a light text (no news and other content that makes you think). And only go back to bed if when you realize you’re going to be able to sleep. If another thirty minutes go by and you can’t sleep, get up again and repeat the method.
Before adopting, remember that your activities during the day directly affect your sleep. How our body arranges itself throughout the day makes all the difference for you to sleep well at night. So, the answer to your bad sleep is to change some of your everyday habits.
