7 Must-Try Tips For Sleeping Better At Night

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Sleep plays a huge role in improving both your mental and physical health. Getting enough sleep ensures your body has sufficient time to recharge. Lack of enough sleep may negatively impact your daytime energy, reducing productivity, emotional balance, and more. Despite this, you may find yourself tossing and struggling to get the much-needed sleep.

Enjoying an eight-hour sleep may seem like an impossible goal when you’re wide awake at 2 AM. However, it’d be best to understand that you have much more control over your sleep quality than you probably realize. Over the years, people have been utilizing several strategies to ensure they have a quiet, uninterrupted sleep, improving their productivity and wellbeing. This includes using a natural sleep aid, optimizing the bedroom environment, and more. 

However, the first step to improving your sleep quality is identifying the cause of your restless nights.

Why Can’t You Sleep At Night?

There are many factors that might make it hard for you to get the much-needed sleep. This includes:

1. Sleep Disorders

Sleep disorders may make it hard for you to get a restful sleep. Some of the common sleep disorders include:

  • Restless leg syndrome. This disorder creates an uncontrollable urge to move your legs as you’re sleeping. These sudden movements may wake you up, interrupting your sleep. 
  • Jet lag. This is a temporary sleep condition among travelers. When you move from one time zone to another, your circadian rhythm will be interrupted, making it hard for you to enjoy a quiet sleep. 
  • Insomnia. This is one of the common types of sleep disorders. Individuals who have insomnia find it difficult to fall or stay asleep, leading to reduced productivity and concentration.

2. Lifestyle Choices

Your daily activities may affect the quality of your sleep. For instance, indulging in too much alcohol before bedtime may make it hard for you to enjoy a relaxing slumber. The alcohol will interfere with your sleep cycle, including rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, a crucial stage for dreaming. While alcohol may help you drop off to sleep quickly, you may have an unrefreshing sleep.

good night sleep

Apart from alcohol, taking caffeine and other diets such as spicy or sugary snacks may affect your sleep quality.

3. Medications

Some types of medications may cause nighttime waking. They include beta-blockers, antidepressants, and more. For this reason, it’s crucial to visit your physician to enquire whether such medication may interfere with your sleep cycle.

4. Underlying Condition

This is another factor that could make it hard to enjoy a sound sleep. For instance, when you’re anxious, worried, or depressed about your future or company, you’ll experience difficulty falling or staying asleep. Also, a condition such as chronic pain may affect your sleep quality.

As discussed above, several factors could be making it hard for you to get much-needed sleep. For this reason, it’s important to visit your physician who’ll identify the root cause of the problem.

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5. Create A Sleep-Inducing Environment

Your bedroom environment will determine whether you’ll fall asleep quickly and easily. For this reason, it’s crucial to make your bedroom a place of comfort and relaxation. While this might seem obvious, most people often overlook their bedroom environment, making it hard for them to fall and stay asleep throughout the night.

When designing your bedroom environment, you might consider utilizing the following factors to maximize comfort and reduce distractions:

  • Invest in quality beddings. The condition of your mattress, pillows, and other bedding will affect your comfort as you’re sleeping. Over the years, you can invest in high-performance mattresses and pillows to maintain a proper spine position while you’re sleeping, avoiding strains that could affect your sleep quality. Although it might be a huge investment, these quality beddings will ensure you get quality sleep, improving your productivity in the long run. 
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  • Cultivate peace and quietness. Maintaining noise to a minimum is one of the steps to creating a sleep-inducing environment. In some cases, you can’t eliminate external noises. In such a scenario, you might consider using a fan, white noise system, and earplugs to stop external noise from bothering you as you’re sleeping.

6. Develop A Bedtime Ritual

A bedtime ritual will signal your mind it’s time to sleep. For instance, when you were a kid and your guardian or parent read you a bedtime story and tuck you in every night, this ritual made it easier to fall asleep. Even in adulthood, developing a sleep ritual may have the same effect.

There are several rituals you can develop to help lull you to sleep. Disconnect from devices at least one hour before sleep. Drink a glass of warm milk. Or you can read your favorite book for 30 minutes before sleeping. Also, you can exercise lightly before sleeping. Vigorous exercise may affect the quality of your sleep and lead to fat itch.

7. Stick To A Sleep Schedule

Keeping in sync with your body’s circadian rhythm will help you sleep better at night. Having a regular sleep-wake schedule will leave you more energized and relaxed than sleeping the same number of hours at different times, even if you only alter it by one hour.

The following are ways that can help you stick to a sleep schedule:

  • Sleep and wake up at the same time every day. This helps set your circadian rhythm or internal clock, improving your sleep quality. Choose a bedtime when you’re normally sleepy or tired, saving you from tossing and struggling to sleep. If you enjoy a night of uninterrupted sleep, you’ll wake up naturally without an alarm. 
  • Avoid sleeping in. For most people, weekends are days for sleeping in to pay for the deprived sleep hours during the week. However, it’s important to understand that sleeping in may affect your sleep schedule and you may end up experiencing jet lag-like symptoms. Thus, you may opt for a quick nap in the afternoon rather than sleeping in. However, it’d be best if you were smart about your napping. It’s advisable to limit naps to 15 or 20 minutes. Too much napping may affect your sleep-wake cycle, making it hard to enjoy a relaxing slumber.
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Conclusion

As discussed above, sleep plays a huge role in keeping both your mental and physical health in check. With so many ways you can use to improve your sleep quality, identifying the cause of your sleepless night will go a long way. Conduct extensive research to ensure you sleep better at night, improving your productivity.

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