These 3 Tips Will Totally Transform Your Sleep!
Are you looking for better sleep?
Struggles to fall asleep, or stay asleep affects roughly 1:3 Americans. Sleep is so important to our health and wellness. Sleep affords our bodies time to repair … muscles, organs, and other cells are repaired during sleep. When we skimp on our sleep, we weaken our immune system, you aren’t able to think as clearly, and your appetite will increase. This is because your levels of ghrelin which is the hormone that is responsible for telling your brain that you are hungry goes up. What’s worse is that levels of ghrelin's complementary hormone, leptin—which signals to the brain that you’re full—drops without solid rest. So not only are you having signals sent to your brain to keep on eating, but there are also no signals going to your brain that you’re full. Meaning you’re likely to just keep on eating.
The good news is that these 3 tips will help you achieve good sleep FAST!
Optimize your bedroom to allow for high-quality sleep. There are many factors that go into ensuring high-quality sleep. First, you want to be sure that your room is on the cooler side. This has been shown to be one of the most important factors to having a good night’s sleep. Research has shown that an ambient temperature of 60-67 degrees is the optimal temperature for deep sleep.
Create a bedtime routine. Creating a bedtime routine is important in signaling your brain that bedtime is coming. This is a time where you should be turning off your devices. The blue light emitted from devices suppresses the sleep enduing hormone melatonin. Implementing some relaxing activities to your bed time routine can be a huge help in preparing yourself for sleep. Things like preparing a hot non-caffeinated beverage, doing some meditation, deep breathing activities, light stretching, taking a warm bath are all great ways to signal to the brain and body that your day is done that sleep is near.
Minimize light/sound. Doing what you can to ensure that your bedroom is a place of peace and quiet is so important to good sleep. Optimally, your bedroom would be free of light and sounds. Room darkening shades/curtains are also a huge help. Consider a sleep mask if room darkening is not possible. Creating an environment that is quiet is also helpful to helping you fall asleep fast. Consider the use of a white noise machine or earplugs to help block outside noises.
These three tips should be a great starting point to getting good quality sleep. Even starting with one of these above tips will help you to begin to give your body the rest and relaxation that it needs so that it can continue to function optimally for you. Getting enough sleep should not be a luxury! Challenge yourself to try one or more of these tips tonight!
Be safe, & be well!
XO,
Stephanie