Improve your sleep within 14 days
Improve the quality of your sleep and improve the quality of your life. In today’s world, if you are not prioritising sleep, you are probably not getting enough. It is arguably the most undervalued pillar of health and is undoubtedly essential for all aspects of your waking life.
With improving technology, comes greater distraction, add to that the ever-increasing tighter work schedules and growing societal pressures, and it’s no wonder that you do not get the sleep that your body and mind require.
You may not realise, that something you are doing in your everyday life, is impacting your ability to sleep. Whether you are suffering from severe sleep deprivation, or whether you just want to improve your routine and the quality of rest, these suggestions should make an impact on sleep within fourteen days.
Over time, you will notice improvements in all areas, especially in your immune system, your concentration, mental wellbeing, weight, and heart health.
Light Exposure & Better Sleep
If you want to get a good night’s sleep, one of the first things you should do in the morning as soon as you’re awake, is to go outside and expose your skin to natural light.
Our daily rhythms are set by light, so it is fundamental that you push yourself to spend some time outside every morning. In order for you to sleep, your body needs to recognise at least a moderate differential between your minimum and maximum light exposure.
For example, If you spend your time at home with the curtains closed all day, your body won’t be able to regulate its rhythm correctly. Or, if during the winter, you wake up when it is dark, travel to work before sunrise, only to work inside all day, then your body won’t be able to regulate its rhythm correctly.
It doesn’t matter if it is cloudy, you will still benefit, just take yourself outside, and sit with a coffee. Wrap up warm if it is cold, or take your morning break at work in the open air and go for a short walk. Half an hour is more than enough, but if you can only manage 5 minutes then that is better than nothing.
Take a look at your evening approach to sleep. Get into the routine of turning off your phone and T.V, and avoiding technology in general for the last hour before you go to bed. Your phone and television emit blue light, which tricks your brain into thinking it is daytime.
This interferes with your body clock, so pick up a book instead and read for the last hour. At night, you could also dim down the lights.
A darker environment will encourage your body’s melatonin production, a hormone that helps to regulate your sleep cycle, letting your body know it is time for sleep. Try this tonight, and be sure to stick to it. Routine is fundamental to improving your sleep.
Exercise Can Help You Sleep
Exercise and the time of day you choose to do it can drastically impact your ability to sleep. People who exercise in the morning, spend the largest amount of time in the deepest, most anabolic stages of sleep.
They are able to regenerate, recuperate, and produce more human growth hormone than people who do not exercise in the morning. Not only this, but most will experience a drop in blood pressure at night, which in turn can lower the risk of stroke, heart disease, and stress. Just think, all of these benefits can come from one simple workout.
Just the thought of morning exercise might put you off, most likely because you won’t feel up to it at the time. But you wouldn’t be feeling fatigued if you had exercised at the right time the day before and engaged your natural body clock. It only takes five minutes of exercise, but try to make this high intensity.
I emphasised that morning exercise is the most effective for sleep and there is a reason for this. You might not know that cortisol, your stress-related hormone, is responsible for waking you up, peaking at dawn. This is an old evolutionary tactic, that would provide you with the energy, vigilance, and readiness to gather food at the start of your day.
If your cortisol rhythm is out of synch and peaks during the evening, you will find that you seem to come alive at night, with a newfound abundance of energy. Exercising early, soon after you wake up, will ensure that you use and reset this fight or flight energy.
Within days, you will notice a difference, as the morning exercise triggers a domino effect, shifting your gears during the evening time, allowing you to relax and unwind.
As soon as you take the plunge and set your morning exercise routine in place, you will not look back. The first session might seem the hardest, but day by day it will get easier. So set your alarm clock a little earlier tomorrow and shift your cortisol rhythms in motion.
Improve sleep with food
If you are struggling to sleep at night or looking to improve your quality of rest, then have you thought about how your diet and eating habits may be affecting it?
To some degree, you may be aware that certain foods, especially drinks can make it more difficult for you to fall asleep, but how and when you consume them also makes a huge difference. Adopt these tips that we are about to share with you, and be witness to improved sleep and better health that makes a noticeable difference in your waking life.
The first thing you should consider is introducing some of the following foods into your diet. Almonds are a fantastic source of melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate your sleeping and waking cycle. They are high in good fats and low in sugar.
A lesser-known sleep aid that has been proven to not only promote sleep, but to improve its length and efficiency, is kiwifruit. These also contain melatonin and other sleep-promoting compounds such as flavonoids and potassium.
Chamomile tea has long been a traditional remedy for insomnia. Certain ingredients are thought to stimulate receptors in the brain which encourage the process that is responsible for stimulating sleep.
How you consume these foods is completely up to you. You might want to try adding them to a smoothie to make it a little more appetising, and then try adding some milk or a dairy-free alternative.
Lifestyle changes can also benefit your sleep hygiene. Avoid things that will cause you heartburn, such as rich and spicy foods. White bread, pasta, and sugary ingredients won’t help this, so cut these out and opt to eat whole grain foods instead. Stay hydrated, avoid skipping meals, and of course, rule out obvious stimulants like caffeine around bedtime.
When you decide to eat is just as, if not more important, because it won’t only affect how you sleep, but your health too. As hard as it seems, try to stop eating two to three hours before you plan on going to bed.
This is the time it takes for your food to work its way from the stomach into the intestines, which is when your body can begin to coast so that you are able to achieve deeper levels of sleep.
Before this, your body is at work, running on full power to digest what you have just put in. Until this process is done, you won’t be able to reach those deeper, restful, anabolic levels of sleep that you and your body require.
Your heart will need to work much harder, and this isn’t the time for a racing heart. You increase your chances of heart disease and heart attack during sleep when you eat consistently before bedtime. So give your heart the rest it needs to stay healthy and stop eating so late. Take a look at your routine and try incorporating these tips into it.
Set up your environment for sleep
Your bedroom should be a peaceful haven, an environment that is set up with one priority in mind, sleep. What you associate your bedroom with can have a huge potential in influencing your ability to wind down and relax.
It is time to start rethinking your relationship with your it and time to make positive steps towards creating an environment that will not only maximise your chances of deep sleep but one that will enable you to fall asleep fast.
If your bedroom is a place in which you eat dinner, watch T.V, or slumber during the day, then you are programming your brain to associate it with activities other than sleep. Remove your television and other electronic distractions that could hinder sleep, including your phone so that you aren’t tempted to check these during the night.
The obvious things such as light make a huge difference too. Buy a blackout blind to block outside light coming in that could trigger your brain into thinking that it is morning. Artificial light, especially that which comes from your phone, contains blue light, which naturally occurs during the day to boost your attention and keep you awake.
The temperature of your room can play a vital role too. Your bodily temperature will begin to drop in the initial stages of your sleep cycle to encourage tiredness. It is important to keep your room temperature between 15 and 18 degrees Celcius so that your body isn’t working overtime to achieve this.
Sleep in cotton sheets and wear loose-fitting pyjamas if you must, as tight-fitting polyester will encourage your body temperature to rise.
Essential oils are widely used to calm, relax and encourage sleep. It is well worth purchasing a diffuser and using it to wind down in the last hour before bed. Lavender and cedarwood oils are tipped as being the most effective. If you do not want to buy a diffuser, then a cheaper option is to apply four drops of oil onto your pillow.
Lastly, the colour of your bedroom may have something to do with why you can’t sleep. Blues and greens are associated with calmness and relaxation and have proven that they can help people to sleep for longer. Avoid colours such as purple, brown, and grey as these will tend to stimulate your mind.
Relaxation Technique For Sleep
Sleep should be something that you welcome every night and confidently pull back the covers and close your eyes. Don’t think that you are alone when you lie there struggling to relax, you do not have a problem that isn’t fixable. You can easily overcome this workable obstacle so that you can get to sleep easily every night.
Whether you are feeling anxious, restless, stressed, or even if there is just too much running through your mind, the important thing to remember is not to panic! There is plenty of time for you to relax and fall asleep naturally, this is not a race.
Mindfulness is a wonderful tool that will enable you to free yourself from unwanted thoughts and avoid being caught up in emotion so that you can settle and relax. A clear mind will allow relaxation, and anxious thoughts will trigger adrenaline and provoke your heart to race.
So as you lie there in bed at night, try to take your mind off of the worries and stresses of waking life, and silence your mind so as to calm it. A popular technique is to light a candle and turn off all of the lights. As a species, we have long been drawn to fire. For thousands of years our ancestors have used it for warmth, protection, and cooking, so you shouldn’t find it hard to concentrate.
Try to focus all of your attention on the flame. Notice how it flickers, the colour, and the glow around the flame. We are captivated by fire, so this is a rather easy technique to practise mindfulness so that you are able to focus on your awareness, your thoughts, and bodily sensations.
When you enter a mental state like this, it is much easier to forget about the things that worry you and make it hard to relax. This way, you can stare into the flame and clear your mind of any unwanted thoughts, and live presently in the moment. If you feel yourself becoming sleepy then don’t forget to blow out the candle.
Why is Meditation Good for Sleep?
Today we romanticise being busy and praise those that overwork themselves. Achieving the right balance, however, should be something that is recognised and upheld.
Balance is important for sleep, so it is vital that you take time out for yourself to nourish your mind and de-clutter it. When you relax your body and brain, it is easier to quieten distracting thoughts that interupt the sleep process.
Stress is a major problem for sleep and we now know that it is the underlying cause of most illnesses today. Prioritise avoiding it as much as you can. That doesn’t mean, however, that you need to make life-changing adjustments to your work schedule, but it is healthy to allow more time for yourself.
Meditation is a fantastic tool that will not only reduce stress but help you fall asleep at night. It is something that has grown enormously in popularity recently, so if you haven’t already tried it, then certainly consider introducing it into your daily routine.
Meditation reduces your level of stress hormones and increases the natural levels of melatonin to help with more restful sleep. There are many different ways to meditate, but if you are new to this, then I advise that you listen to a guided sleep meditation to start with. That way you won’t have the added pressure of getting it right the first time, so just relax and let the host lead you through the process.
The most important thing that meditation will teach you, is to be silent. You might struggle at first with your thoughts and find it quite challenging to silence them for any length of time. Try to be present, and enjoy this moment for what it is, without giving thought to the worries that the future might bring, or the regrets that the past might hold.
If you find that you are unable to concentrate whilst listening to somebody else’s voice, then you should try silent meditation. Don’t feel disheartened if you are unable to achieve silence straight away, as this is a process that needs to be learnt and practised. So why not start tonight and work meditation into your bedtime routine.