1. Get To Know Yourself and Your Body
The most important thing you need to do when it comes to improving your sleep is to figure out what is wrong. If you are constantly feeling tired or if you are waking up fatigued, you should visit your doctor. They can run some tests to figure out what’s going on. You may be suffering from various sorts of sleep disorders. Once they figure it out, you can start to make changes to your sleep schedule or routine to improve your sleep.
Likewise you may be sleeping, ort attempting to sleep on a mattress that simply doesn’t suit your sleeping position. Many people are side sleepers, read this guide on how to spot a good side sleeper mattress.
2. Test The Bedtime Theory
You can use the National Sleep Foundation’s very own Bedtime Calculator. This can give you the time when you should be going to bed by inputting when you wake up and how many hours you want to sleep. It will reverse engineer based on the average sleep cycles and patterns. The average sleep cycle is around 90 minutes and the average person goes through 5 of them per night. Because of this, it will count backward 7 and a half hours to figure out your optimal bedtime. You can try this out and stick with it for some time to see if it works for you.
3. Maintain Consistency
You want to maintain a high level of consistency when you are trying to improve your sleep. Being consistent with your sleep and wake times is crucial. Your body has an internal clock. This internal clock is known as your circadian rhythm. You want this to stay balanced at all times. If your brain knows when it’s time to go to sleep and when it’s time to wake up, you will be better off. Not only will it make it easier to fall asleep, but it will make it easier to go through all of the sleep cycles you need for restorative sleep.
4. Regulate Caffeine Intake
While you don’t have to avoid caffeine entirely, you want to stick to drinking or consuming caffeine earlier in the day. This can keep the caffeine from disturbing your sleep cycle. Caffeine can impact you up to 6 hours after you take it. Because of this, you want to try to limit any caffeine intake after 2 in the afternoon. That way, you don’t have to worry about it negatively impacting your ability to fall asleep or remain asleep.
5. Regulate Alcohol Consumption
Alcohol is typically thought of as a sleep aid because it’s a depressant. While true, it’s not good for your sleep. When you have alcohol in your system, your sleep is going to be less restorative because it disrupts your sleep cycles. Your body won’t go through the sleep cycles to provide you with truly restful sleep. Therefore, you want to avoid drinking too much alcohol before going to bed.
6. Exercise More
Exercising is one of the best ways to not only improve your sleep but to improve your overall health. You want to try to add more exercise to your routine if you aren’t getting enough already. You want to try to get a good 30 minutes of high to moderate-intensity exercise into each day. Ideally, you don’t want to do this right before bedtime. If you do a workout with high intensity before bed, it could disrupt your sleep. There was a study that showed that 70 percent of those who exercise a minimum of 3 times per week ended up experiencing good sleep.
7. Get Some Daylight
You want to get some daylight throughout the day. A lot of people spend the majority of their day at their work desks away from natural light. Ideally, you want to wake up and expose yourself to daylight right away. This can help to put your internal clock in sync with the normal day and night cycles. If you are having difficulties going to sleep at night, it could be the direct result of you getting exposed to an abundance of blue light later in the day. This can stimulate your senses because it simulates daylight. Try to avoid using electronics with screens at night. If you can’t, at least disable the blue light or use a blue light filter or glasses to minimize the negative impact it has on your sleep cycle.
8. Nap Strategically
When you are looking to fix your sleep issues, you may want to try strategic napping. However, you’ll need to be careful with this because napping at the wrong times can have the opposite effect. You want to try to nap earlier during the day. This can keep it from negatively impacting your ability to fall asleep at night. Also, you want to keep your power naps to under 30 minutes. Anything more than that and you may find that your naps are counterproductive to improving your sleep.