5 Tips on getting the perfect night’s sleep
Learning how to get your best night’s sleep when you have such little time for it, is important. Between caring for the kids, cleaning the house, and maintaining professional responsibilities, sleep can start to seem like a luxury. A loss of sleep can have detrimental effects on your day to day. It can impede your ability to think, reason, and problem solve. It has also been known to age your skin, cause weight gain, and kill your sex drive.
Whether you’ve been having trouble falling /staying asleep, or simply want to get the best sleep you’ve ever had, here are a few simple sleep tips and tricks you can follow to easily improve your nightly sleep quality.
Cut down on caffeine.
If you’re having trouble falling asleep, having too much caffeine throughout the day may be the issue, according to Harvard Health Publishing. “For some people, a single cup of coffee in the morning means a sleepless night. Caffeine can also increase the need to urinate during the night.” Try reducing your caffeine intake or getting rid of it altogether to if it’s affecting your sleep.
Keep a sleep diary.
According to research published by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, when menopausal women kept a nightly sleep diary and spoke to a sleep coach on the phone for six sessions, they experienced fewer insomnia symptoms. A sleep coach might not be available in your area, so consider using the SleepBot app instead, which functions as a virtual guide. It will help track your sleep patterns so you can better understand what’s disrupting your rest.
Consider having a later bedtime.
Just because you crawl into bed at a decent hour doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get more sleep. “Plan to be in bed only for the time you’re truly sleeping,” says Dr. Khan. First, figure out how many hours of sleep you want to get. Say that’s seven hours. So if you have to be up at 6 a.m., go to bed at 11 p.m., not 9 p.m., and don’t hang out there watching TV or noodling around on your phone.
Turn off your devices
Switch off all electronic devices, including your phone! The light emitted from tablets, laptops, and smartphones can keep you up at night, mess with levels of the sleepytime hormone melatonin, and wake you up if they buzz in the middle of the night.
Drown out the noise.
The noise from distant cars or overhead planes disrupts your rest, and that comes with a surprising consequence. A recent study published in the Antioxidants & Redox Signaling found that outdoor nighttime noise is linked to a greater risk of oxidative stress, a risk factor for heart disease. A simple solution for environmental annoyances is to turn on a fan, earmuffs, or get a white noise machine to drown out sounds.
Resource: www.womansday.com
