Healthy Sleep Tips

There are many ways we can improve sleep that don't involve medication or complicated programs. Here are a few simple sleep tips:

 

1. Develop a regualr sleep routine and stick to it. That means a regualr go to sleep time and regualr wake up time. Try to avoid gicing yourself a 'sleep-in' or changing your patterns for the weekend. Over time it will start working for you. You will feel sleepy at your regualr sleep time and you should begin to naturally wake at your rise time. Use an alram clock if you need to to get started, but get rid of it as soon as you can and let your baby be yoru clock. it is amaxing how good our bodies can get at waking us at the exact same time every day.

 

2. Try to avoid jumping quickly from 'bright lights and wide awake' to 'dark room trying to sleep'. Whilst our mind can make sense of the quick change, our bodies are left lagging behind and confused. So we lye in bed closing our eyes but being wide awake inside. A better approach is to gradually start the preparation for bed. Turn your eyes away from bright light sources such as TVs, ipads and phones. Switch the ceiling lights to table and side lights. Slow down the conversation or fast thinking. Let your mind relax. Maybe read a little or tidy up the house for the morning. This way by the time you actually crawl into bed and turn your lights off your body is prepared and ready for the night.

 

3. Don't overdo those things we all know are no good for sleep. Caffinated products such as coffee, black tea, dark chocolate and energy drinks are the main culprits. If your habit is a tea or coffee after dinner then it's a habit that you will need to address.  The same applies to heavy tea and coffee drinkers throughtout the day. The Caffeine builds up in your system so even though your coffee or tea is consumed mostly in the mornings it is still affecting your sleep at night. The other poor sleep contributor we sometimes overdo is alcohol. Alcohol can be a bit confusing because we often feel sleepy after a drink or two, and even nod-off quite easily. This is true for most people, but the catch is that alcohol can affect our deeper sleep, making us restless through the night and significantly affecting the quality of our sleep. So as with Caffeine, we need to be careful not to consumer too much alcohol (especially in the evening) if we are looking to improve our sleep.

 

4. Lastly, make sure your sleep environment is conducive to good sleep. It should be nice and dark, quite, cool (but no cold) and a comfortable place for you. Sounds logical I know, but we can sometimes let the simple things slip. We can leave the side light on, have the radio playing in the background or not change the bed set for hot or cold conditions. Getting these simple thiings right can sometime be all a poor sleeper needs do to turn their sleep form terrible to terrific!

 

Sleep is very important to our wellbeing so paying attention to getting the simple sleep things right is time very well spent.