Get a better night’s sleep with these five tips.
Many of us do not get enough sleep. We demand much from our bodies, but then don’t put any effort into making sure our body gets the rest it needs to run efficiently.
We don’t feed our sleep deprived body high nutritional quality food; instead filling it with caffeine and sugar for a quick pick me up. Then put our body under high amounts of stress in the gym, at work and home, and expect it to function properly.
Are you getting enough sleep?
Everyone is different; some do well with 7 hours, some need 9. Look in the mirror, if you have bags under your eyes, you probably need more sleep. Chronic tension headaches, being tired all day, joint aches, or total body achiness, irritability, and mind fog are all signs of needing more sleep.
To improve the quality of your sleep here are a few recommendations:
1. Turn of all electronic devices an hour before bedtime. This is due to the blue light that these devices emit. Blue light triggers are brain to wake up and only happens in nature in the early morning as the sunrises, which signals to our brain it is time to get up. But when we spend out evening staring at a screen this same message is then getting sent to our brain making it hard for us to go to sleep and get into the deep restorative sleep, we need.
2. Keep a regular sleep schedule. Your body’s internal clock works off of something called the circadian rhythm. We disrupt this rhythm when stay up late one night, get up extra early one morning, and then sleep in the next. This disrupts the body’s natural ability to wind down in the evening to help you fall asleep, because your body never knows when bedtime is. And also, makes it hard to wake up in the morning for the same reason. Additionally, keeping to a regular sleep schedule that is always within an hour of the same wake-up and bedtime will improve your sleep quality and hormone function.
3. Avoid caffeine within eight hours of bedtime. The half-life of caffeine is five to six hours. This means that if you drink typical cup of coffee, which has 95 milligrams of caffeine, at noon you will still have 42.5 milligrams of caffeine in your body around 6 p.m. Because of this half-life caffeine can still be in your body hours later when it’s time to sleep and not needed, but still keeping you awake.
4. Avoid alcohol within four hours of bedtime. Alcohol may help you fall asleep, but it also negatively affects the quality of your sleep by not allowing the body to get into a deep sleep or staying asleep.
5. Keep your room dark, quiet, and cool. Outside light and noise will disrupt the quality of sleep and keeping your room cool around 68 degrees helps us sleep better.
Practicing good sleep hygiene is important to ensuring you get the best and most restful sleep possible to perform and function at the highest level.
