When you are sleeping, that is the time for your body to replenish. A good night’s sleep is essential for the proper functioning of the body. The difficulty of falling asleep or getting back to sleep is insomnia. Lack of sound sleep shows adverse effects on your brain functions, hormonal results, and exercise performance. The most common reasons behind insomnia are trauma, stressful life, loss of a loved one, job loss, divorce, or financial conditions. Here are seven tips that can help you relax and get a sound sleep.
1. Do Not Exercise Before Bed
Exercise is the key to a healthy body, mind, and soul. Studies show that exercise also helps in improving your quality of sleep. It reduces the symptoms of insomnia and enhances all features of sleep. A study conducted on older adults showed that adults who did moderate-intensity exercise fell asleep faster and got additional hours of sleep.
It would help if you did not do any strenuous workout three hours before going to bed, as exercise will raise your body temperature for the next five to six hours. To be in a sleepy state, your body temperature should be dropping. Taking anabolic steroids during exercise like Canadian Juice Monsters take and that will help you recover rapidly from your exercise and getting proper rest later.
2. Reduce Long Daytime Naps
Almost everyone from every age-group indulge in these naps. Some people have a habit of taking a nap at noon, and some take it after a long day of work, and some take it because they are sleep-deprived. Power naps are suitable for an instant shot of energy, but irregular, long naps during the day affects your sleep negatively.
Taking long naps during the daytime confuses your body’s internal clock, which makes you struggle for rest at night. According to a study, a nap time of thirty minutes or less can improve your brain function, learning ability, and enhances your performance. But long naps can lead to higher mortality and morbidity, especially in older adults. To get the maximum benefit from your nap time, make it short by training your mind and body.
3. Avoid Late Night Caffeine Intake
Caffeine remains the most consumed beverage in the United States and has a reputation for providing energy and alertness to stay active during daytime work. A single dose of caffeine can enhance your focus and energy during both physical and mental work. However, coffee can stimulate your nervous system and remains active in your blood for a long duration preventing your body from relaxing and falling asleep naturally.
A study suggests that caffeine can severely disrupt the sleep cycle if taken at night even at six hours before sleep. Coffee, in many cases, can cause insomnia. Therefore, try to avoid caffeine intake for a sound sleep. Even then, if you are a coffee lover, you can make your cup of coffee, but try having your last cup of coffee before 4 p.m. If you still have cravings for coffee, try having a decaffeinated coffee. The idea is to avoid caffeine late in the day.
4. Maintain Consistent sleep timings
One of the most crucial factors in beating insomnia is nap timing. If you maintain a lifestyle of sleeping and waking up at irregular times every day due to work or stress, your sleep cycle receives a setback. Irregular sleep timings cause an imbalance in melatonin levels in the brain, which is a hormone that signals the brain to sleep. Your body’s biological clock functions on a set loop every day, aligning your sleep pattern to sunrise and sunset. Therefore, sleeping too late on some days or waking up too early on other days affects your biological clock and may cause insomnia in the long run, according to this study.
To maintain a healthy circadian rhythm and overcome poor sleep, maintain a consistent sleeping and waking times. You can take the use of an alarm clock to discipline you to sleep time. Within a few weeks, your circadian rhythm will familiarise you with consistent sleep timings. You will enjoy high-quality sleep, and you won’t need an alarm clock any further.
5. Optimize Your Bedroom Environment
Bedroom ambiance is essential for a good night’s sleep. Some people are sensitive to light, warmth, and noise. Even a slight alteration to their ideal sleeping environment can affect their sleep pattern. That is why it isn’t very easy to get proper sleep when you are traveling or visiting a new place. The bedroom environment, external noise, lights, furniture arrangement in the bedroom and the temperature of your room, all have a long-term impact on your sleep and can contribute to insomnia.
Therefore, to find a good night’s sleep, ensure you invest in good quality furniture i.e., bed, mattress. Include ambient smart lighting in your bedroom that dim off automatically inducing you to sleep. Use good quality glass for windows that can cancel noise from outside, and maintain a warm cozy temperature using a high-quality room heating system.
6. Do not drink yourself to sleep
It is a ritual these days to party hard late at night on weekends and take in a couple of drinks before hitting straight to bed. While it may seem that alcohol can make you tired, hungover, and induce sleep, according to several studies, long-term effects of alcohol use cause sleep apnea and irregular disruptive sleep patterns. Alcohol alters the production of the sleep hormone melatonin and thus, hampers the circadian rhythm of the body.
Apart from affecting the sleep hormone, nighttime alcohol consumption also affects the human growth hormone that also plays a key role in maintaining the biological clock of our body. Therefore, to beat insomnia, consume alcohol in moderation, and refrain from drinking late at night or before going to bed.
7. Take a soothing shower before hitting the bed
A study suggests that a relaxing shower can help people sleep better by improving the quality of your sleep and by giving a deep sleep. A hot bath taken an hour and a half before hitting the bed enables you to fall asleep faster. If you are not a fan of taking a late-night shower, you can even relax your body and improve your sleep by putting your feet in hot water.
Conclusion
The points mentioned above will help you relax your body and get a sound sleep in the long run. Remember that apart from following these steps, you should maintain a healthy diet and manage stress properly.
