It happens to everyone, at least once in their life, that they cannot sleep. You try to turn around, walk in the house, go back to lean on the pillow but nothing, however, tired you are. You spend hours staring at the ceiling, falling asleep on the sofa and waking up after a couple of hours. You become dazed and unable to go back to sleep once you get to bed. Troubled dreams, waking up sweaty, and with your heart throbbing become your daily nightmare.
If it is once, it can happen; but if it becomes a habit, and if you cannot fall asleep despite the tiredness, then the lack of night rest can become a problem for your health. Sleeping well is an essential condition for quality life: it helps to keep fit, prevent heart attacks, diabetes, improves memory, and much more.
What factors influence the quality of our sleep?
Several factors affect the quantity and quality of sleep: environmental conditions and lifestyle, bad habits and ubiquitous technology (smartphones and tablets in bed), the rhythm of cities (noise and light pollution), increasingly extended hours of modern work. These and others are all conditions that influence our sleep.
Sleep hygiene
Researchers identified a series of practices and habits known as “sleep hygiene” that are useful for improving one’s sleep patterns and optimizing sleep hours.
Here are some simple tips that will help you sleep peacefully and wake up with the right energy!
Tips for better sleep: habits to follow during the day
Maintain the natural body sleep to wake cycle:
Make an effort of going to sleep and waking up at the same time every day. In this way you will help your body set the internal clock, optimizing the quality of sleep. Try to avoid sleeping late at the weekend: if you have to make up for an evening when you have been up late, opt for a nap during the day. To help your circadian rhythm, try to take the morning sunlight: you can drink your coffee outdoors, or have breakfast in front of a bright window. Try to spend as much time outdoors as possible during the daytime, perhaps walking or doing some movement. Let natural light enter your house or even office as much as possible. If necessary, you can use one light therapy box, which simulates the natural effect of the rising sun and which can be particularly helpful in short winter days.
Avoid nicotine, alcohol, and coffee:
at least starting in the early afternoon. Nicotine and caffeine remain exciting for several hours and can ruin sleep. Avoid large meals before bedtime and don’t eat overnight. Prefer a light dinner with easy-to-digest foods, trying to avoid spicy or acidic foods, which can cause heartburn and problems.
Move a little every day:
Exercising regularly helps you sleep better and increases your attention levels throughout the day. Even milder exercise, such as walking for only 10 minutes a day, improves sleep quality. Exercise speeds up metabolism, raises body temperature, and stimulates hormones like cortisol. However, avoid physical movement in the hours before bedtime: better in the morning or late afternoon. Relaxing, low-impact exercises, such as yoga or stretching, if done in the evening can help promote sleep.
Use Ancient Remedies:
Ancient Remedies Always Work! If you are having trouble sleeping, a warm bath can help, take an hour or two before going to sleep. A hot bath or shower before going to bed relaxes the respiratory muscles and mucous membranes and helps to reconcile a peaceful sleep. Another very useful traditional remedy is to drink a glass of warm milk before bed. As it is rich in tryptophan, or the amino acid precursor of serotonin, milk can be of great help for those who have difficulty falling asleep. If you don’t digest milk, opt for herbal tea, which reconciles sleep, and gently promotes relaxation. The most suitable plants are lemon balm, passionflower, linden, and valerian, which facilitate sleep by supporting the neuro vegetative sphere, or hawthorn and Roman chamomile, perfect if you also suffer from anxiety.
Create an evening ritual before going to bed:
You can read a few pages of a book (perhaps avoiding thrillers or horror!), Do meditation or listen to relaxing music: these habits will warn the body that it’s time to go to sleep. The ritual can last from ten minutes up to a maximum of one hour: in this way, it will help you to go from wakefulness to sleep in a sweet and gradual way.
Put it all on paper:
The absolute prerequisite for sleep is a calm mind. You can decide to get rid of your worries, commitments, and thoughts by trying to mark everything in a notebook. This can be kept on the bedside table to write down those thoughts that usually have the bad taste of appearing right in the half-sleep phase, when finally the mind, free to wandering, maybe catching a task you had completely forgotten about. It is a therapeutic way of realizing that worries are recurring thoughts, and will help you not to be afraid of forgetting something and clear your mind. Write and, once the notebook is closed, you can fall asleep peacefully: thinking is safe and you can take care of it the next day.
Improve the environment in which you sleep
Eliminate clocks and cell phones from the room:
Watching the clock frequently only increases your stress, making it more difficult to try to relax to sleep. Keeping your cell phone in another room will facilitate sleep and will also help you decrease your smartphone addiction.
Make yourself comfortable:
The bedroom must be as suitable as possible for sleep: fresh, dark, silent. Use everything that may be useful to you: soft lights, blackout curtains, earplugs, or eye masks. The mattress must adapt perfectly to the body and must be soft enough to allow the body to find ideal relaxation, as well as the pillow. Use your bed only for sleep: one of the worst things you can do to sabotage your sleep is to use the bedroom for other non-sleep related activities. The only exception to the rule? Of course, intimacy with your partner!
Avoid bright screens an hour or two before bedtime:
The blue light emitted by phone, tablet, computer, or TV halves the production of melatonin, the hormone that regulates the circadian rhythm. Besides, most programs are very stimulating instead of relaxing. Try to listen to music or audiobooks. You can however minimize the impact of blue light by using devices with smaller screens, lowering their brightness or using the appropriate software or app that alters the brightness of the screen according to the time of day.
Meditation and relaxation
Eliminate all sources of stress and negative thinking from your head and focus on the sensations of your body. You can try using this relaxation technique: thanks to visualization, progressive muscle relaxation, you will be able to relax your mind and finally get to sleep. Close your eyes and take deep, slow, regular, and ever deeper breaths.Concentrate on your breathing, listen only to your empty mind. As you breathe, starting from the toes to the head, focus on the muscles, and feel how they relax and relax with each deep breath. As you relax, you will fall asleep without even realizing it.
If all these techniques don’t work, think of asking for help. In some cases, medical or psychological support can be effective, especially if insomnia becomes chronic: in fact, it is necessary to identify and act on the causes that determine the disorder and on the behavioral factors that maintain it over time.
