In addition to a balanced diet, drinking enough water, and exercising regularly, it’s also imperative for you to get good sleep. There might be times where your sleeping schedule becomes unhealthy and disturbed that can lead to physical health deterioration and alteration in your cognitive performances. In fact, even the brain functioning to be negatively affected.
Sadly, in this fast-paced world of today, one of the biggest issues that people around the world are battling are lower sleep quality and quantity. While some of them spend the night away being productive (or at least that is what they think), some get too caught up with social media. What we are not taking into account is that sleeping for at least 7 to 8 hours is important to not only improve our overall health and wellbeing but even productivity.
Read on as we discuss a few ways in which you can fix your sleeping schedule which, in turn, will improve your personal and professional life.
Make your bed as comfortable as possible
Even though this point may seem obvious, you will be surprised to learn just how low it can be on the priority list for most of us.
Every item on your bed has an important role to help you fall asleep. First, you need to focus on the mattress that you sleep on. It’s important for the matches to not be lumpy as it can lead to back pain. If it is, don’t waste any more time to replace it. Second, get a pillow that has specialized technology to give your neck and shoulders added comfort. Getting a pillow for neck pain, for example, will be a great idea if you have chronic pain in your shoulders and neck.
Also, having a down comforter or any thick quilt can be great to fall asleep faster. Usually, these comforters and quilts are made of soft material that feels really good against the skin. The expenditure that you incur to make your bed comfortable is actually small investments to improve your health.
Create a healthy sleeping pattern for yourself
In this case, you have to make sure that go to bed at the same time as you did the last day and yes, this pattern has to be followed throughout your life.
Even though it may sound quite strict but sleeping at the same time every day can help regulate your circadian rhythm. It starts to work in a set flow while simultaneously aligning your body functions with sunrise and sunset. Not only will this help to improve your quality of sleep, but it will also help strike a balance between too much sleep and too little sleep.
If you are not consistent with your sleeping patterns, then the overall functioning of the circadian system, as well as melatonin production, can be negatively affected. Melatonin is a hormone that helps to promote sleep in our body, which again, is quite important.
At first, you will definitely find it a bit difficult since this is a big lifestyle change. With time, however, you will get used to this pattern and even see just how positively this change will affect your life. We will recommend you buy an alarm clock to help regulate your sleeping schedule.
Relax your body and calm your mind
We are under constant pressure to meet deadlines or achieve our goals but, this stress can have a really bad effect on our capability to fall asleep. It is always healthy to maintain a good work-life balance for your mental peace as well. This is precisely why you should perform certain activities to help calm your mind while simultaneously relaxing your body.
Taking deep breaths, meditating, even developing a bedtime routine can help you achieve this. When we talk about a bedtime routine, you can listen to music, take a hot bath, or prepare your wardrobe for the next day. Slowly, your brain will start associating these activities with bedtime aiding your mind and body to work accordingly.
Avoid late-night binging
In order to fix your sleeping schedule, you also need to have a proper meal schedule as well. When you snack late during the night, you tend to alter the HGH and melatonin production in your body that will lower the quality of sleep you experience.
It should be interesting to note that as per research, there are a few snacks and meals that can actually promote slumber. If you have a high carb meal four hours prior to bedtime, you will fall asleep faster. But then again, another research found out that having a low-carb meal can also improve sleep. All in all, the effect of snacking will vary from one person to another which makes it open to trial and error interpretation.
Get a good quality humidifier for your room
A humidifier is an appliance that with its advanced technology can help to improve the quality of air in whichever room you place it in. We will suggest the bedroom as improved airflow quality will reduce the number of times you wake up do you to dry nose or any other discrepancies.
As the name suggests, a humidifier can also help maintain the humidity levels between 30% to 45% making your home atmosphere much more optimal. It is also a really good way to improve the pH levels of your skin causing minimum loss of moisture.
Switch off the lights before you get in bed
When you sleep in a dark room, your body starts preparing itself to fall asleep. The reason behind this is that our brain automatically associates darkness with bedtime.
The melatonin secretion in your body starts expanding helping you fall asleep sooner. While you are at it, don’t forget to make sure that the temperatures of your bedroom are in equilibrium. Sleeping in a room that is too chilly or hot will only make you face difficulties in falling asleep.