Sleep is one of the key pillars for better health and wellbeing, although not everyone takes the importance of sleep hygiene seriously. With life and the demands of life being increasingly challenging for most, prioritizing a good night’s sleep is a lot more difficult than first thought.
From parents who are struggling to get their kids to bed at a reasonable time, to young professionals that are expected to work long hours to cement their position in the business, sleep often sits at the bottom of the priority list.
However, in order to perform at your best and to be there for everyone else, sleep should be the first thing you get more of. With that being said, here are some tips to improve your sleep quality for better health and wellbeing.
Assess how much sleep you get every night
Assessing how much sleep you’re getting every night is a good way of determining what improvements you need to make. There is a thing of having too much sleep, but for most people, a lack of sleep is what is causing both physical and mental problems.
Take a look at your current routine by taking a sleep diary. This will give you a rough indication of how many hours of sleep you’re getting each week and if it’s not totalling up past a certain number, then you’ll want to make improvements.
Ideally, around seven to nine hours of sleep is needed to help your body recover and revitalize itself for the following day. That’s between 49-63 hours of sleep per week that you should be aiming to achieve.
Monitor your sleep performance with apps
Thankfully, with the technology that we now have at our fingertips, we’re able to monitor our sleep more effectively to see just how much or how little we’re getting of quality sleep.
REM sleep is deep sleep and that’s the type of sleep quality you want to get the most of. That undisturbed sleep is going to help your body recover ahead of the following day, particularly after an intensive day of working or exercising.
There are plenty of apps to take a look at using at night when you fall asleep. Apps like Sleep Cycle and wearable devices like the Apple Sleep Watch are worth considering to help track your sleep cycles and quality of sleep beyond just how many hours of sleep you’re getting.
Set a consistent sleep schedule and wind down activities
A sleep schedule is something that’s useful to implement because with habits, a routine is created and it can help your body wind down for the night time much more efficiently. With that being said, look at how you could create a consistent sleep schedule by setting a bedtime every evening.
Of course, there are going to be occasions where you can’t go to sleep at the time set either because something unexpected has happened or you have an event going on that is past your bedtime.
However, the more times you can get to sleep at the same time every night, the more helpful it is to improve your sleep quality in the long-term.
Optimize your sleep environment
Your sleep environment is an important influence to how well you sleep at night. Ideally, it’s worthwhile looking at ways in which you could improve your sleep environment, and that can be done by identifying what it is that’s stopping you from sleeping.
For example, if you have a lot of outdoor noise, whether that’s outside of the bedroom in the home or out in the local area, then it might be worth getting ear plugs or playing white noise. White noise is an effective way of cancelling out the noise from outside that might be causing you trouble sleeping.
Blackout blinds are useful for when you want to make the space a lot darker and therefore a great aid to ensure you’re falling asleep quicker as a result. There’s nothing worse than sitting in the dark, tossing and turning, trying to get to sleep.
Temperature could be an issue that stops you from falling asleep, so test different temperatures to see if this makes a difference too. A nuzzle pillow might be good for helping you sleep better, especially if you deal with neck pain.
Limit screen time before bed
Screen time can be detrimental to your sleep time because the blue light can play havoc with your brain late at night. It can keep you wired and cause you to struggle to fall asleep as a result.
With that being said, you should try and limit your screen time before bed so that you’re not keeping your brain awake in those last hour or so. It might be worth having a ban on your phone being used in the bedroom, especially if you’ve found yourself using your phone a lot more often in bed than you’d like.
Reduce and restrict caffeine intake to mornings only
Caffeine is a wonderful thing to have in order to wake your body up, but it’s something that might be worth limiting to just mornings. If you’re drinking a lot of coffee, you should also look to reduce this as it will help improve your health as well as your sleeping habits.
If you’re drinking coffee well into the afternoon, then it can have a similar effect as the use of screen time late at night. You might find you’re more wired going into the evenin,g and it can often lead you to anxious thoughts and feelings, which might not be the best to have when trying to go to bed.
Try to exercise regularly to burn energy
To help improve your sleep quality, you should look at exercising regularly in order to burn the energy you have available. That way, you’ll find yourself more tired in the evening and more able to fall asleep as a result.
Improving your sleep quality is important not just for your health and wellbeing but your state of mind. Use these tips to ensure your sleep quality improves from now on.