A good night’s sleep is as important as a healthy diet. You must sleep better in insomnia to keep your overall health well and ensure you have a healthy sleep schedule.
A good night’s sleep is as important as a healthy diet. You must sleep better in insomnia to keep your overall health well and ensure you have a healthy sleep schedule.
Research shows that poor sleep can affect your hormones, exercise performance, and brain function. It can also cause weight gain, increase diseases risk for children and adults.
We don’t want to scare you but don’t take sleep lightly; it can have drastic effects on you. Today we will take a look at some ways you can beat insomnia and sleep better in insomnia.
- Turn of blue light
Blue light is a major reason that you might be disturbing your sleeping cycle. With constant engagement to screens and everything going digital, we barely get time to take our eyes off these devices.
Also, the enticing and addictive algorithm of social media that constantly pushes content to us doesn’t give a chance to keep our phone away. A short frequency of light can affect your eyes and disrupt your sleep.
For your benefit, there are many apps that you can install on your phone or tablet that restricts blue light emission. It is a great way to avoid it and sleep better in insomnia.
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- Nap, if you are sleep deprived
Take a short nap in between daytime but not a very long one. Taking short naps is a great way to relax from your work for a while and give your brain rest. Also, if these afternoon naps go longer – then you might have a hard time sleeping at night. The aptest time is 20 minutes maximum and takes a nap in the cool, dark room get maximum benefit.
Make sure that you don’t nap later in the day; it might affect your nighttime sleep cycle. Naps longer than 20 minutes often disrupt your night sleep and you can’t sleep better in insomnia.
- Increase bright light exposure
When you expose your body to more bright light or natural light, you are likely to get more sleep at night. How does this work?
Everyone has a natural sleep cycle, it tells you when it is time to sleep and when it is to wake up. People suffering from insomnia have improved sleep quality and duration and they fall asleep faster by 83% when they are exposed to bright light. In similar research, adults who get 2 hours of bright light have increased amount of sleep up to 2 hours and sleep efficiency by 80%.
You can efficiently sleep better in insomnia when you gain some natural light for your body.
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- Don’t consume caffeine late at night
Well, you might have heard and read that caffeine keeps you awake, and people have coffee to stay awake. It is true to a certain extent, consuming caffeine 6 hours before bed can disturb your sleep according to a study. Caffeine stays elevated in your blood for 6 to 8 hours hence, drinking a large amount of coffee around 3 – 4 pm can disturb your good night sleep.
So, even if you crave coffee in the evening, then go for decaffeinated coffee and sleep better in insomnia.
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- Stop the clock – watching
If you are not able to sleep and constantly check the clock for the time, you might never sleep. Watching seconds, minutes and the house go by increases your anxiety that will not help you sleep better in insomnia!
Take as many turns as you want to take in your bed but don’t bother to check the time, it will only worry you for how little time you have to sleep well and they wake up again. You can do so many other things to fall asleep like reading a book, count things, or anything that will help you fall asleep.
- Use pillows to ease back pain
People with low back pain often suffer from insomnia because of the immense pain they have to suffer. To sleep better in insomnia you can use a pillow. You can place it in between your knees and make sure your hips are in alignment to reduce any kind of strain.
Another technique you can use is to sleep by your side so that there is no pressure applied to your lower back. Make sure the mattress is supportive and while getting upswing both legs together to avoid bending it at the waist.
- Have a strict sleeping schedule
It was seen in a study that people who have irregular sleeping patterns and go to bed late on weekends have poor sleep.
You might think that after a week’s hard work, when you get that one day off or two days off, then you deserve to enjoy it a bit. Well, you must do it but don’t overwork yourself and go to sleep early at night to keep the clock going on.
- Don’t drink alcohol before sleep
This is an exception for party nights, one or two nights a month or week is fine but not every day. If you want to sleep better in insomnia then you mustn’t drink alcohol.
Alcohol is known to increase the symptoms of sleep apnea, snoring, disrupted sleep patterns. So if you are a regular drinker then you can try and avoid drinking before you sleep. As ironic as it sounds, alcohol doesn’t help you sleep instead it alters nighttime melatonin production.
- Your bedroom environment
Your environment might not sound important to you but it affects how much you sleep and how well you sleep. In one of the studies where women participated – 50% of them had improved sleep when the lights and noise were diminished.
Some people like to sleep with lights on but no one likes to sleep with noise in the background. A calm environment is very important for good sleep. So to sleep better in insomnia make sure you block all the lights and noise or just noise to enjoy your good night sleep.
- Exercise to improve your sleep
Another factor for not getting enough sleep is your body not getting tired enough. Exercise is a great way to sleep better in insomnia.
Different studies have shown that only 10 minutes of aerobic exercise can significantly improve your sleep. Cycling, running, jogging, swimming are some good options. Also, avoid working out 3 to 4 hours before your sleep. You can also do yoga and meditation to relax your body and sleep better in insomnia.
Yoga is a great way to relax your body and it improves your sleep quality significantly.
So, here are a few ways that you can apply to get away from insomnia and have a good night sleep. If you still are not able to get sleep then you must consult your doctor for the same. Often patients going through mental health issues face severe cases of insomnia, and it is natural but if you are going through that, there is a way out of it.
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