A good night sleep and a happy and productive lifestyle go hand in hand. But, more than your waking life, your sleep affects everything like a pack of dominos. You get into one bad habit, it delays or messes up things, and the sequence ultimately leads to bad quality sleep. But it is not always the case that your sleep might be disturbing you. It can be stress, anxiety, depression or other bodily ailments. But, if you are looking to change things to be able to sleep soundly, here are the things you should be following every day:
1. Fix diet patterns: Your diet is one factor that you can control and affects every decision and factor in your life. From your sleep to your productivity, food intake is a big factor that decides your mind’s focus and activity. This is because, fatty foods, junk foods, or any other kind of high-salt and calorie-heavy foods are not a good idea before bedtime. Generally, you shouldn’t be consuming any of these food categories at least 4–5 hours before sleep.
You can try intermittent fasting or any of the other food diets, but having heavy food right or soon before you go to bed is disadvantageous to your metabolism and sleep quality. Heavy food items keep your systems activated thereby making it difficult to fall asleep or stay asleep. This doesn’t only apply to your before napping food intake, but also how you teach your body to react to food during waking time as well. That means, avoiding food in case you happen to wake up between the night, having a light breakfast to gently start your digestive system among other activities. The way you teach your body to ask and process food during the day, makes it process it and ask for it accordingly during the night.
2. Check your coffee and Alcohol intake: Intake of hard beverages and caffeine heavy choices like soft drinks, coffee, alcohol (in any form), can severely hamper your sleep quality and time. While caffeine activates your nervous system and has long-lasting alerting effects up to 6–10 hours on average, alcohol is an inhibitor. That means while functionally caffeine and alcoholic items are complete opposites and alcohol seems to be the good guy in this, it is not the case.
Alcohol as any form of hard liquor keeps the brain and central nervous system so dull and inactivated that your brain doesn’t go through the required number and duration of REM cycles. You can think of this as not having enough sleep that your body would still feel sleepy throughout the next day after waking up ultimately affecting your body clock.
3. Staying hydrated throughout the day: This is more of a calibration technique to make sure that you do not feel excessively thirsty in between the night, enough to be woken up as a result. Irrespective of your lifestyle, having enough water is a good habit to stay healthy and maintain your weight, and make sure that all of your bodily systems have what they need for working properly. Water acts as essentially the oil to your gears (internal and external body systems), enough to even have an impact on your sleep.
When we go to sleep, our bodies switch on all the regenerative systems. Your muscles, mind, digestive system all break down and grow from wear and tear, and water is one of the main things to help. Having a glass or two of water before you go to sleep can help in feeling refreshed when you wake up and avoid those midnight waking up sessions because of thirst or having to use the bathroom.
4. Manage your sleep schedule better: The time you go to bed and the time you start your day has a big impact on your life. In other words, your body clock adjusts your sleep and other functions based on the time you go to sleep. So sleeping on time is essential to get quality sleep, and that is something you should enforce on yourself. This can be tough if you have an irregular sleep schedule or odd working hours, but night time sleep and waking up early can help you get some good quality sleep.
Managing your sleep schedule to first sleep and wake up on time, is a good habit to get into for your body clock, and mental and physical health. Next step would be to sleep early and wake up early, but taking tiny steps can help you fix any issues with your sleep, as they’re mostly caused because of a bad and irregular lifestyle.
5. Take power naps: Waking up early, staying motivated and in action mode is not only possible for everyone but impossible to get into. Our body has its own energy reserve, and sooner or later during the day, you are bound to fall asleep. But, resisting sleep when you are unable to keep yourself awake anymore after an intense morning isn’t going to do any favors to your overall well-being either. An afternoon power nap, preferably with an alarm should help you feel rested for the rest of the day.
A power nap helps your body achieve some sense of relief and feel refreshed and usually helps you power through the tiredness better than anything else. But the most important part is to stick to a maximum of 20 minutes, and wake up after that as your body tends to slowly shift into deeper mental states of sleep. Anything longer than that time would make your body clock think you are ready to fall asleep and waking up early would feel more sluggish and worse than a 20-minute nap.
And needless to say, sleeping for long durations during the day would make it difficult for you to sleep during the night. It is a risk you should only take if you can wake up easily and have seen yourself taking power naps or waking up to alarms easily. But the most important thing to keep in mind is to know where a power nap ends and deep sleep begins. Stick to one power nap every day and you would be able to see how it helps keep you fresh all-day.
6. Restricting screen time and work before sleep: Your sleep can suffer a major hit in quality and the amount of time you tend to sleep if you take your gadgets and work to bed with you. Apart from sound or vibration disturbances, your body registers the blue-ray emissions from gadgets to treat as if it is day time. This is harmful to your sleep and mental health. The best way around it is to activate the entirely yellow tint night mode in most devices today. It is easier on the eyes and reduces the blue light emissions as well.
However, like all other things it is best to commit to sundown and screen down schedule where you do not reach out to your laptop, television, or any screen in the last hour before going to bed. This helps you in not only relaxing and avoiding those endless notifications but also give time to yourself to calm down, rewind, and plan. Relaxing and engaging in meditation, journaling, reading or anything scree-free is a big boost to your mood, and going to bed for some quality sleep. Like all other things, there can be exceptions and sometimes you need to talk to people close to you or just watch something cheerful at the end of a day. But it is our habits we need to change apart from the absoluteness of doing everything the same way every day.
7. Waking up like a boss: Just as important as sleeping on time is, waking up early is a major boost to your lifestyle. This is more of a lifestyle correction as your change your body clock accordingly. That is, waking up on time and preferably early gives you more time to work out, plan your day and do other things to freshen up. Of course, it shouldn’t be at the cost of sleeping late and waking up early therefore affecting the number of hours you sleep. You need 7–8 hours of sleep as an adult, and any less would accumulate in your sleep debt making you sleepy and ultimately sleep more the next day.
Waking up early as per Robin Sharma’s ‘The 5AM Club’ has its own immense benefits and sleep quality is just one of them. You sleep on time, and wake up on time getting a good head start to do what you like before the world around you begins the race. Compromising on the number of hours you get just to wake up early wouldn’t be beneficial either. The best way to go about this is to start sleeping early. The best time to wake up is ideally between 3 AM and 5 AM.
The best thing about waking up early lies in your native survival instincts as a human being too! Humans have always tried to gain the evolutionary edge over other species to hunt and collect before there is chaos in the world. The same applies to our lives, where instead of hunting, we need to get out ahead of the competition and be better than the version of ourselves we were the previous day.
8. Switch up your room environment: If you tend to see that you wake up in the middle of the night all sweaty and warm, it is a signal to switch up your room environment. This means better ventilation or air conditioning as per your climate, as it helps keep your body cooler and avoid waking up due to discomfort. Excessive sweating, waking up too regularly after going to bed are signs of sleeping in a room that your body thinks is too hot. Moreover, making sure your lighting, mattress and bed coordinate and help with the same environmental elements is also a good idea. Gentle night lighting as well as cooler mattresses and pillows go a long way in helping you sleep like a baby.
You can opt for gel memory foam pillows that have beads and holes in them to help regulate air and keep you cool in general. A memory foam pillow without such elements is bound to make you even more hot and unable to sleep despite the comfort. Your room environment should be as comfortable as possible and good quality mattresses are another factor to ensure you have all you need. The best mattress and pillow combo would be the one that fits your body, as well as regulates air and supports you as per your requirement.
A Westin bed style mattress or gel memory pillow would be a good solution if all else fails or if you want to sleep in absolute luxury.
9. Working out during the day time: Your physical activity and fitness levels dictate a lot more about your sleep than you would think of. No physical activity means that your body is at idle mode and not consuming as many calories as it should be during the day, therefore gaining fat. That means your mind’s thinking sector after a day of doing no physical activity might be tired but the rest of your body and mind isn’t. You would be prone to waking up regularly between sleep, and even have difficulties going to bed after not much or zero physical activity during the day.
On the contrary, working out during the day time helps you achieve a certain level of energetic behavior and be prepared for the rest of the day. It is similar to the thought pattern of completing one difficult task after another till you are tired and have to go to sleep. This way you are bound to sleep well enough to be prepared to do the same, the next day with a better mood, and of course better physical health.
However, the same applies to work out in the wrong or late hours of the day. Working out too close to the bed to make up for your day time workout procrastination or missing out would make your mind and body too exhausted to not think of it as something you might want to do. It also might be unsustainable for this very reason, and it activates your nervous system. Intensive cardio or weight training is something you should avoid at all costs before going to bed. This affects your sleep and can lead to mental stress as well as keep you awake for long hours before you go to sleep. Additionally, your brain might be too active to go to sleep, therefore not giving you the necessary REM sleep.
10. Rewind and feel thankful: Recent developments in the field of health and mental well-being take unwinding before bedtime a step further. Yes, you should be unwinding and not thinking about anything related to work or stress factors before sleep (although it is built into our survival system by now). But unlearning past patterns can help you go to sleep and live the rest of your waking time in a different mental sleep that helps in going to sleep a necessary and healthy factor. That is, you automatically tend to think of sleep as a much-needed pause in your life and it psychologically helps in relieving your stress as well.
The best way to go achieve this level of good quality sleep and mental state is to just sit with yourself. That means, sit idle and think back on the happy memories of your day and write them down in a journal. A sense of gratitude and looking back on your day, processing everything can help you live in the moment more and go to sleep easily without any stress looming in the back of your mind. A sleep journal especially designed for this purpose can be just as helpful as any of the other factors mentioned above.
Conclusion:
Going to sleep shouldn’t be a challenge but a way to feel relaxed. It should be something you should be able to do it properly as sleeping is one of the most important parts of our lives. Revitalizing our physical organs, helping our bodies develop, and mind relax, sleep is one thing that should not be a cause of additional stress. However, not all of us tend to fall in one stress trap or another ultimately affecting our sleep because of physical conditions, stress factors, environmental factors among others.
But still, going to sleep on a stretch and for the right amount of hours (no less and no more), is a habit you should try your best to enforce. Life is long and your work and other things can wait, but your health and sleep cannot. With some lifestyle changes, you can go to sleep you have done your all, and get rid of the necessity of taking pills or external medication. Sleep should be something that comes naturally instead of forcing through external factors.
