With increasingly busy schedules becoming the norm for more
and more people in our rushed society, many are finding that sacrificing on
sleep seems like a necessity. Unfortunately, biology disagrees; sleeping is
vitally important and cutting your nightly rest short can have serious
consequences. The Harvard Medical School notes that insufficient sleep can disrupt
your metabolism and encourage weight gain; inhibit memory and learning; alter
immune function; negatively impact your mood; and make you more likely to make
mistakes during the course of everyday life.
Fortunately, you can try many strategies to encourage
restful, full nights of sleep that will make you feel refreshed in the morning.
Among the most effective strategies are:
Find Peace and You'll Find Sleep: If your body and mind are
riled up and excited, you'll have a difficult time getting to sleep. You can
encourage a sense of calm peacefulness by meditating, performing gentle yoga
stretches, or listening to calming, soothing music before you get into bed.
This will help ease your mind from engaged activity mode to a state of
relaxation and make it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep.
Avoid Alcohol: Although you may feel as though drinking a
glass of wine or having a beer helps ease you into a more relaxed state, it can
actually inhibit deep sleep. Alcohol tends to prevent you from reaching deep, restorative
levels of sleep, instead encouraging poorer quality sleep. When you're in
lighter sleep stages, you are more likely to wake up in the middle of the
night, and you may then find it difficult to get back to sleep.
Create a Comfortable Sleeping Environment: If you don't have
the right environment, sleep will be hard to come by. You should make sure that
not only is your room dark due to the main lights being off, but that you also
don't have any digital devices or screens adding brightness to the room.
Blinking lights, digital clocks, and computer screens can also distract you
from sleep.
Save Sleep for the Evening: If you feel tired throughout the
afternoon, you may feel tempted to take a nap. However, doing so can throw off
your sleeping schedule and make it more difficult to reach restful stages of
sleep during the evening. If you feel you need to sleep, during the day, try to
do so before the late afternoon and try not to sleep for more than 30 minutes
to an hour.
Cut the Caffeine: The coffee or soda that is part of your
mid-afternoon routine may actually be coming back to haunt you in the evening.
Caffeine may stay in your system for up to 14 hours, meaning that may find it
very difficult to fall and stay asleep even hours after consumption.
