Sleep Strategies That Improve Your Health
We provide you with the best sleep strategies for your mental health. Did you know that your quality of sleep impacts your physical and mental health? You may or may not have thought about this, but it contributes directly to our mental and physical wellness. If we’re struggling with a good quality of sleep, we may need to work to challenge or re-frame our current strategies that might not be that helpful in allowing us to have a great nights sleep.
Should we continue to fall short with having good sleep strategies and habits it can have a serious impact on your energy throughout the day, your productivity, your emotional balance, and even your weight. Many of us continue to struggle to get a good night sleep, toss and turn all night, forgetting that we have to ensure we have healthy sleep habits. We want to make this as easy as possible for you because we know that your having difficulty getting a good nights sleep. But there is a good solution! This solution is to make it simple by making important changes to your sleep schedule and your current habits. These changes to your day or night time routine will make a longstanding difference in your quality of sleep, leaving you feeling more alert, aware, cognitively sharp, emotionally more balanced and having more energy for the day.
How can I get a better night’s sleep?
Do you currently have strategies that help you sleep? Use what’s works well already for you but look at adding new ideas and tips too. We’ve included only a few ideas, of many possible ones that you may find helpful.
You may feel frustrated with your lack of sleep. It may feel like an impossible task sometimes when you’re still awake at 3 am, you may not realize that you actually have more control over your quality of sleep than you think. Often how well you sleep at night, impacts the way you feel during your waking hours, so the way to heal your problems with sleep can often be found in your every day routine.
Some unhealthy habits that we do everyday or lifestyle choices may cause us to be overstimulated at night leaving us to toss and turn when we go to bed. Additionally, it can negatively effect our mood, our brain health, heart health, immune system, energy, and our weight. The following strategies can help you enjoy your sleep at night, improve your mental and physical health, as well as improve our thoughts and feelings during the day.
The best sleep strategies for sleep improvement may include the following below:
- Firstly adjusting your body to it’s natural sleep-wake cycle, or circadian rhythm, is one of the
most important strategies for sleeping better. If you keep a regular sleep-wake schedule,
you’ll feel much more refreshed and energized than if you sleep the same number of hours. - Before you go to bed, practice the same relaxing rituals to train your brain for sleep.
- Eliminate light stimulation for at least one hour before bed. (This includes any kind of screens!) ie. tablets, phones, televisions; etc.
- Exercise during the day.
- Establish a consistent bedtime and waking time.
- Avoid napping.
- If you have trouble falling asleep, replace activating thoughts with relaxing ones.
- If worries haunt you at bedtime, schedule a worry time during the day.
- Ensure that your sleeping environment is conducive to sleep.
- Avoid caffeine, alcohol, and spicy foods in the late afternoon and evening.
- Use relaxing breathing techniques to prepare for sleep.
- If you can’t fall asleep after thirty minutes in bed, get up and do something relaxing in the dark.
- Avoid prescription sleep aids. Melatonin can be helpful for some people but not all.
