Improving The Quality Of Your Sleep

There's more to getting a good night's worth of deep, restorative, rejuvinating sleep than making sure your hours clock up. What else can you do to make sure you wake up feeling as refreshed as possible? If you're a parent, you're no stranger to the concept of a bedtime routine, or the fact that child development experts seem to think setting one up is really important. As adults, we tend to forget that we, too, benefit from bedtime routines. 

Once you're pretty sure you know how many hours of sleep you personally need, set a bedtime. That's the time you go to bed, not necessarily the time at which you go to sleep — nobody can sleep on command, after all. You should be tired when you hit your pillow, but not so tired that you've been walking around with match sticks in your eyes for hours. You also benefit from waking up at the same time each day — weekends included. 

 

If you wake up just before your alarm goes off or your wakeup time is so regular that you find you don't even need an alarm, you're doing something right.

Exposure to light and dark, which regulates melatonin production, is another key part of creating healthy sleep. You want to see less light at night, and more during the day. 

 

Make dimming the lights (or simply getting less bright bulbs for the bedroom) a part of your bedtime routine. Resist the temptation to stare at bright electronic devices at night. If you have to use the bathroom at night, get into a habit of not turning the lights on, as this can mess with your circadian rhythm. During the day, make sure you see daylight as much as you can, by spending time outside and creating a workspace that allows natural light in wherever possible. During the winter, or if you happen to be unlucky enough to have an office in a basement, think about getting a light box that simulates natural daylight.

Surprisingly many things interfere with healthy sleep. Smoking, drinking too much alcohol, not moving around enough during the day, drinking caffeine later in the day, and being stressed are the biggies. These things are all bad for your general health, playing a much larger role in your wellbeing than disrupting your sleep. You know the answers here, so we won't lecture you. As for stress, we can't always control how much we're exposed to, but we can practice relaxation techniques and purposely put our worries aside in the evenings. 

 

The other key ways to get more restful sleep involve turning your bedroom into a cozy den:

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Getting into a new routine is hard, but the benefits are likely to be tangible pretty quickly. Once you notice you feel more productive, happier, less stressed, have better memory skills, and are actually surprisingly awake more of the time, you will be happy you made the effort to take y