Sleep is essential for your mind and body to recharge and to enable you to feel refreshed and alert. It boosts your whole system and allows you to combat infection and maintain good positive health. You simply cannot function effectively and cannot concentrate, think clearly and process memories and information without sufficient sleep amounts.
An internal body clock regulates your sleep cycle and controls when you feel tired and when you feel refreshed and alert. it operates on a 24-hour circadian rhythm and peaks and troughs throughout the cycle.
Set aside eight hours for sleep. Have it as a target to aim for by going to bed early enough so that you wake up in time for your alarm. The recommended amount of sleep for a healthy adult is at least seven hours. Most people don’t need that much as they get older but more than eight hours in bed is seen as well rested.
Go to bed and get up at the same time every day, including weekends. Being consistent reinforces your body’s sleep-wake cycle.
If you don’t fall asleep within about 20 minutes of going to bed, or you wake and can’t fall back to sleep, get up and leave your bedroom and do something relaxing for a short while. Read or listen to soothing music. Go back to bed when you’re tired. Repeat as needed but continue to maintain your sleep schedule and wake-up time.
And avoid naps in the day to compensate lack of sleep. These can confuse your sleep: wake cycle.
Don’t go to bed hungry or overfull. Avoid heavy meals within a couple of hours of bedtime because the discomfort might keep you up or give your stomach-ache.
Nicotine, caffeine and alcohol are stimulants. Caffeine takes hours to wear off and can interfere with sleep. And even though alcohol might make you feel sleepy at first, it can disrupt sleep later into the night.
It need not be massively energetic or take hours exercising, but regular physical activity not just exercise is good for your system and can promote better sleep. However, avoid being active too close to bedtime. Even a quick walk at lunchtime or using the stairs more will be good for you and is great for your cardio too! Spending time outside every day with fresh air and light will be helpful as it triggers positive chemicals in the brain.
Keep your room cool, dark and quiet. Exposure to light in the evenings might make it more challenging to fall asleep as it tricks the brain into thinking it’s not yet time for bed. Avoid the use of light-emitting screens before bedtime or looking at your phone in bed.
Consider using muted lightshades to dim the room, earplugs, an eyemask, a fan or other devices to create an environment that suits your needs.
Or if you have annoying LED lights on any appliances in your room that shine out in the dark, create something to block them out so you aren’t focusing on them in the darkness.
Doing calming activities before bedtime, such as taking a bath or using relaxation techniques, or meditations might promote better sleep.
Stop working at the latest, an hour before bedtime so you can wind down and do something you want to do that you enjoy and find relaxing.
Body and bedroom temperature can profoundly affect sleep quality.
As you may have experienced during the summer or in hot locations, it can be very hard to get a good night’s sleep when it’s too warm or too cold. Invest in the right tog duvet or multiple layers so you can better regulate to your most ‘snuggly’ sleep temperature. Thinner layers can be applied and pulled back much easier than one big thick duvet or blanket.
Additionally set your bedroom furniture to be comfortable for you
Your bed, mattress, and pillow can greatly affect sleep quality and joint, neck or back pain. If you are moving a lot in bed and this disrupts your sleep, potentially look for an upgrade and then consider buying a good mattress, and a pillow that offers your spine the right support for you. If you can invest in good quality bedding every 10 years.
If you do have worries, too many things on you mind or work issues niggling you before bedtime, allow yourself the space to sleep and your brain the chance to download.
Write down all the things that are on your mind and then forget about them until the next day. Writing allows your brain to release and download and stop storing information in your head it thinks you want to recall right now in your short-term memory. It keeps holding it for you so you will remember it, and all these things that are worrying you or need to be sorted out will just keep circling round in your head and keep you awake and ruminating over them.
Your whole system needs sleep that is why we spend so much time doing it!
The brain needs sleep. This is when it does its paperwork and admin. It reviews, reorganises and prioritises all the information it’s had to register, take in and store during the day. So it can put it where it needs to go and loses information it thinks you don’t want, need or isn’t relevant or harmful for you.
When you are worried or anxious and thinking about something, or often many different things that are stressing you, your brain takes this as a danger signal because it’s all you are thinking about now and it’s your whole focus. So it triggers your stress response mechanism to a perceived danger and you feel the physiological effects of that body response. The butterflies in the stomach, the knots in your chest, muscles tighten, headaches, heart rate increasing and other emotional responses. Because everything in the body is priming for a fight or flight survival response. If you don’t sleep, don’t sleep enough or have poor quality sleep, you simply cannot process all the brain needs to function properly.
Use a pad, a diary, a notebook whatever suits you best and have a specific contained place you can write things down available for you to use and scribble on at night before bedtime. This will store those issues safely and securely so you know you can come back to them without forgetting anything. Many of the issues will seem more manageable or even trivial in the morning or at least give you more time to focus on them after a good sleep and fresh eyes and enable you to prioritise when you have other resources to help you.
Calm you mind and your body in bed
Use this as a simple calming exercise. Close your mouth and quietly inhale through your nose to a mental count of four. Hold your breath for a count of seven. Exhale through your mouth, making a whoosh sound for a count of eight. Repeat the process three more times for a total of four breath cycles. If that feels too much to begin with, you can use less counts but always make sure you exhale slowly and for a longer count than you inhale. This is one of many breathing techniques I use and it slows your body system down and allows it to reset into a more natural breath and pulse pattern.
Doing other calming activities before bedtime, such as taking a bath or using relaxation techniques, will also promote better sleep.
And one for good measure!
No judging – this works! If cold feet keep you awake at all, especially during the winter, warm them up with a soft pair of socks. You can just use them to warm your feet up and then kick them off but the extra layer under the covers can help improve circulation in your extremities, which can help you fall asleep more quickly
When you work long hours at home or at work and add to it all the other running around you do when you are juggling your commitments every day, you are depleting energy stores, like taking money out of your bank account. The amount of sleep you need to recover and fill your bank account back up to the right levels cannot necessarily be made up during the weekend. You still have a deficit when you start back on the Weekdays and over the course of the week this will start to wear you down and make you tired and more likely to be emotionally challenged. And can become the cause of your increased, stress, anxiety or irritability.
Dr D M Rappaport (physician and consultant)
“If you sleep more on the weekends, you simply aren’t sleeping enough in the week,”. “It’s all about finding balance.”
I hope these are useful if you are struggling with sleep or finding it difficult to get enough sleep.
Focus on taking more control over your own life with these tips and reclaiming a little more balance through good health and wellbeing.
Additional Sources:
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