A night of good sleep and proper sleep hygiene is crucial for maintaining adequate health and prolonged life. Many strategies to ensure a high level of sleep hygiene, some of which we will be considering in this article.
The approach will help to fall asleep quickly and deliberately. Good sleep hygiene aims to ensure sound health and productivity in what we do. But to start with, what exactly is sleep hygiene?
Sleep hygiene can be defined as the behavior or habits that you can learn and do to promote a night of good sleep. They are behavioral changes that can get you a better quality of sleep. Similarly, you can know what you need to do and what you must do to achieve your goal.
How can you get quicker sleep time deliberately?
- Maintain a regular sleep time
You n must be deliberate with your sleep time rather than depend on chance or wait until you feel sleepy. If you can go to bed at about the same time, you can also get to wake up at a regular time. That deliberateness about your sleep time can go a long way in ensuring you get a good sleep.
In addition, you can schedule your sleep time within the frame of +/- 20 minutes, which allows for some flexibility. Each person needs a particular amount of time that they can stop all work and go to bed. Without this deliberateness, sleep becomes haphazard, and not much energy can come from it.
- Watch out for daytime naps
Avoid them if you cannot keep up with a regular and restricted time for daytime naps. When you take a nap, it indeed reduces your sleep debt and allows you to sleep better at night. However, starting with daytime naps without the ability to maintain it may harm your sleep hygiene. Ask me how?
When you take a daytime nap, especially without any pending sleep debt, it affects the amount of sleep the following night. Moreover, you will not be able to get a quick sleep when the night comes. This situation may lead to sleep fragmentation, where you sleep in only short bits and wake up again.
In addition, inconsistent sleep patterns may lead to the inability to initiate sleep at night when it is most needed. Not properly managed can lead to insomnia and total sleep deprivation if the attitude or sleep habit is not cut short. Each person needs some measure of time within a 24-hour frame to sleep; anything more may do more harm than good.
- Don’t stay too long in bed after you wake up
Not many people realize that it only takes a few minutes to get into full action after waking up from sleep. It would help if you rose from the bed as soon as you gained full consciousness. Let’s say in about 5 to 10 minutes and not more, and you should leave the bed and not stay any longer.
Now, that strategy differs from taking some time to meditate or gather your mind. As a balance, if you discover that your heart is beating too fast after waking up, don’t stay in bed. Sit up to clear your head or until you feel like sleeping again. And if there is time, you can return to bed.
However, don’t ignore this cycle to now stay in bed all through. During your ‘break-time,’ avoid using TVs, laptops, or smartphones because they may disrupt the process in your brain. These devices may stimulate your senses, so you don’t have to return to bed.
- Stay off the TV, Computer, Smartphones, and Books
Many people are fond of bringing devices to bed with them. That’s entirely inappropriate. Anytime you watch TV, use a smartphone or read books in bed, you associate your mind and bed with wakefulness. In the course of using these devices, your mind is struggling between you sleeping and not sleeping. This non-assurance is not suitable for your sleep hygiene and can cause inconsistency.
Technically, the blue light from your TV screen prevents you from getting to sleep on time. It affects your circadian rhythm, which your bed is meant to achieve. Eventually, rest may force itself on you, leaving your TV or computer running through the night, wasting energy.
The best thing is always to keep these devices away from the bedroom. On the other hand, people create some bedtime for reading, hoping to catch up on a few things before sleep. However, if you do this at all, don’t do it while on the bed. Instead, do any reading you need to do on a chair by the bed so that you can retreat at will.
- Your bedroom should be quiet and comfortable
Your bedroom is primarily for sleep, and you should create an environment that makes sleep hygiene possible. In addition, set your bedroom thermostat in a way that makes anyone who comes in feel comfortable. A cooler room is crucial for better sleep.
Ensure to keep away any item that contributes to a noisy bedroom or causes interruptions to your sleep. It’s part of the deliberate actions you must take to have a better quality of sleep hygiene. Apart from the significant noise from human beings, some background noises we refer to as white n that may not pose any problem.
Moreover, if having kids around can disturb your sleep, you should plan for them to be engaged or go to bed early. If the disturbance can come from your pets, keep them outside your bedroom. Generally, let your bedroom remain relatively dark. So, turn off all bright lights and make way for a relaxed environment.
Conclusion
In conclusion to the strategies that can help you get good sleep quality deliberately, you should use the suitable materials. For instance, you should get a comfortable mattress. The best type is usually the full orthopedic or the semi-orthopedic bed, ideal for a healthy lifestyle through proper sleep hygiene. Another reason why some people don’t get good sleep hygiene is that their partner snores. If there is such a case around you, endeavor to ask them to seek help with it so that everyone can be happy.
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