How To Get A Better Night's Sleep
So here's the deal, we are all happier when we feel good, and there is a lot that goes into that.
How To Get A Better Night's Sleep
So here's the deal, we are all happier when we feel good, and there is a lot that goes into that. Some of the big ones are physical and emotional health. Important factors to both of these are our nutritional intake, how much our body moves, our relationships, and sleep! Sleep allows us to recover and reenergize for the next day. If one is chronically under-sleeping the chances of their performance decreasing goes up tenfold.
Even though you seem dead to the world or "out like a light" when you're sleeping, your body and brain are actually hard at work! There are many important tasks at hand to do while we sleep such as controlling blood pressure, regulating stress hormones, clearing the brain of toxins, and organizing information via nerve communication.
The consequences of sleep deprivation are no joke either. For short-term loss of sleep, your focus can decrease, cortisol (stress hormone) can increase, and cognition and memory decrease, along with other negative effects on general mood. Chronic sleep deprivation can lead to more serious feelings of anxiety and depression. It can also increase one's risk of diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer, and dementia... serious stuff! How does that happen? Well, when we don't get the rest we need in one night, blood pressure increases, inflammation levels rise, and blood sugar isn't regulated the way it needs to be. Doing this every night for weeks, months, or years adds up fast.
Alright, so how do we sleep better? There are many general guidelines to help people get to sleep faster and stay asleep during the night, it just takes some effort on our part to prioritize getting a good night's rest.
- Dim the lights in the house the closer you get to bedtime
- No caffeine after noon
- Turn all screens off an hour before bed
- No screen time in bed (no phone or TV time)
- Get natural sunlight exposure as soon as you wake up in the morning
- Set a sleep schedule and stick to it
- Establish a relaxing bedtime routine to calm the body from the day
YAY! These seem like good tips, but what's up with all this talk about sunlight and phones? Early sunlight exposure has been seen to have great improvements in helping people fall asleep at night. By getting into direct sunlight within 60 minutes of waking up (not through glass, sunglasses, your car windshield... direct sunlight!!) you can kickstart your circadian rhythm. The circadian rhythm is an internal 24-hour clock for our bodies, hence why routine plays such an important role!
And what about phones and tv screens? Why do they keep us up at night? There are a few reasons for this. Going back to sunlight and how it wakes up our bodies in the morning, phones can have a similar effect on the brain. When our eyes take in the blue light from our phones, it releases chemicals in the brain quite literally saying "There's activity happening here, we better stay awake!" So the best thing to do, and often one of the harder habits to break, is to turn the darn things off at night. Relax, do something that calms you down and prepares you to go "lights out," for the night.
