Tips to Get Better Sleep at night

Tired of tossing and turning at night? These simple tips will help you sleep better and be more energetic and productive during the day. A good night’s sleep is just as important as regular exercise and a healthy diet.

1. Stick to a sleep schedule

Stick to a sleep schedule of the same bedtime and wake up time, even on the weekends. This helps to regulate your body's clock and could help you fall asleep and stay asleep for the night. If you’re getting enough sleep, you should wake up naturally without an alarm. If you need an alarm clock, you may need an earlier bedtime.

Avoid sleeping till late even on weekends. The more your weekend/weekday sleep schedules differ, the worse the jet-lag like symptoms you’ll experience. If you need to make up for a late night, opt for a daytime nap rather than sleeping in. This allows you to pay off your sleep debt without disturbing your natural sleep-wake rhythm.

Be smart about napping. While napping is a good way to make up for lost sleep, if you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep at night, napping can make things worse. Limit naps to 15 to 20 minutes in the early afternoon.

2. Increase natural light exposure during the day

Getting close to nature might improve the quality of your sleep, new research suggests. Seniors and men sleep more soundly if they have access to natural surroundings, such as beaches or parks, according to a study published in the journal of Preventive Medicine.

More than 25,50,000 adults from across the country were surveyed about their quality of sleep in the previous month. Most said they slept poorly fewer than seven nights during the month. But those who said they slept poorly on 21 to 29 nights were less likely to have access to green spaces or other natural areas than those who said they slept poorly on fewer than seven nights. The link between good sleep and exposure to natural areas was much stronger for men than for women, the researchers found.

3. Optimize your bedroom environment

It’s tough to overstate the importance of your bedroom environment to the quality of your sleep. Ideally, you want your bedroom to be a sanctuary for sound, restful, restorative sleep. All too often bedrooms are cluttered, noisy, and bright environments that actually fight against good sleep.

Sleep is a sensory experience. To create an ideal sleep environment, you need to pay attention to all five of the senses: sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste.

Sight:

Light is the single most important environmental factor affecting your ability to sleep. Through your sense of sight, the brain takes in information about the light in your environment. That information helps to regulate your body’s sleep-wake cycle and influences the release of hormones, including the “sleep hormone” melatonin. When your environment is bright, melatonin levels stay low, and you stay more wakeful and alert instead of sleepy.

Sound:

Did you know that your brain processes sounds even while you’re asleep? That’s why parents wake so quickly when their baby cries, or your partner’s snoring sometimes leaves you tossing and turning. Our relationship to nighttime sounds can be complicated. Some sounds are disruptive, while others can be comforting and sleep-inducing. The quieter your bedroom is, the more sensitive your hearing will become. Sometimes a too-quiet bedroom can pose problems for sleep, just as a noisy one can. Other things we can manage by our daily activities and in our surroundings like touch, smell and taste.

4. Exercise daily

People who exercise regularly sleep better at night and feel less sleepy during day. Regular exercise also helps in decreasing the symptoms of insomnia and sleep disorder and increases the amount of time you spend in the deep, restorative stages of sleep.

Exercise can contribute to more sound and restful sleep. Physical activity increases time spent in deep sleep, the most physically restorative sleep phase. Deep sleep helps to boost immune function, support cardiac health, and control stress and anxiety.It also help with your stress and anxiety, A regular exercise routine can help to reduce your stress levels.

Now the question, how much exercise is needed, The National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association recommend at least 150 minutes of exercise a week for healthy adults—that’s 30 minutes a day, five days a week. 

5. Be smart about what you eat and drink

Limit caffeine and nicotine. You might be surprised to know that caffeine can cause sleep problems up to ten to twelve hours after drinking it! Similarly, smoking is another stimulant that can disrupt your sleep, especially if you smoke close to bedtime.

Avoid big meals at night. Try to make dinnertime earlier in the evening, and avoid heavy, rich foods within two hours of bed. Spicy or acidic foods can cause stomach trouble and heartburn. Avoid alcohol before bed. While a nightcap may help you relax, it interferes with your sleep cycle once you’re out.

Avoid drinking too many liquids in the evening. Drinking lots of fluids may result in frequent bathroom trips throughout the night.Cut back on sugary foods and refined carbs. Eating lots of sugar and refined carbs such as white bread, white rice, and pasta during the day can trigger wakefulness at night and pull you out of the deep, restorative stages of sleep.

Also there is a little exercise routine which help you get sleep at night when you are having tons of thought and could not sleep.

• Lay down in bed and close your eyes.
• Put one hand on your chest and the other on your stomach.
• Breathe in through your nose. The hand on your stomach should rise. The hand on your chest should move very little.
• Exhale through your mouth, pushing out as much air as you can while contracting your abdominal muscles. The hand on your stomach should move in as you exhale, but your other hand should move very little.
• Continue to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Try to inhale enough so that your lower abdomen rises and falls. Count slowly as you exhale.

Hope it will be helpful for you. 

Cheers to Healthy Life!

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