Top Ten Tips For Better Sleep

Although the benefits of sleep are clear, many of us struggle to get the proper amount of zzz’s at night. This may be due to busy schedules, stress that keeps us tossing and turning, kids and pets who wake us up in the night, blood sugar crashes, and insomnia. 

 

The first thing to do is to prioritize sleep (to the extent that it’s realistic in your life). Many times we just resign ourselves to sleep deprivation; while there are circumstances where sleep has to take a back seat out of necessity, do what you can to honor one of your body’s most basic needs.
 

Here’s a reminder of why getting enough sleep promotes good health, both physically and emotionally. Good sleep helps your body repair and heal cells, improves memory, increases your ability to handle stress, reduces risk for disease, improves your mood, reduces cravings and helps you maintain a healthy weight. Best of all, it’s free! Ideally, you want to get seven to eight hours of sleep each night, because the deepest healing comes in the later REM (dream) cycles.

 

But even when we have time to sleep, sometimes falling asleep and staying asleep is the problem. Since so many of my clients, friends and family have been struggling to fall asleep lately (including myself!), whether due to anxiety about the state of the world, personal or work/financial stress, and sometimes creative ideas running through our minds, I put together a list of tips that I hope will help out!

 

 

Jaime’s Top Ten Tips for Better Sleep:

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1. Don’t eat within a couple of hours of going to bed so your body doesn’t have to digest your food while it’s trying to rest. Especially don’t eat sugar and refined flour before bed, or you may be woken up during the night due to low blood sugar.
2. Turn off all electronics (especially news and social media) and give yourself some time to get quiet before you go to sleep. Dim the lights, light a candle, use lavender essential oils to calm your senses, read, journal, or do one of the following relaxing activities. If you do need to have a device on, you can try *blue light blocking glasses, which are supposed to help filter out the LED and blue light from screens and devices that disrupt your body’s production of melatonin (which relaxes you and prepares you for sleep at night). *While many people report finding these glasses to be helpful, there’s not yet enough research to make a conclusion.
3. Try Dr. Weil’s recommended breathing exercise: breathe in through your nose for the count of four, hold for the count of seven, breathe out through your mouth for the count of eight. Repeat four times. This is surprisingly calming for such a short little exercise.
4. If you deal with noise in your house or neighborhood that keeps you from sleeping (barking dogs anyone?), I will now reveal one of my favorite products ever: noise cancelling headphones from Bose! If you want to experience immediate relaxation, put them on and let the silence begin. They also help if you get woken up early in the morning by noise that’s out of your control. A white noise machine, or apps that give you white noise options like rainfall, are also an option.
5. Listen to a guided meditation or visualization meant to put you to sleep. I’ll be honest and say I’ve never been able to stay awake for an entire guided visualization at night. I fall asleep even when I try to stay awake for the whole experience. A good sleep aid, for sure:) Apps like Calm have your favorite actors reading bed-time stories, or you can search online for a voice you find soothing. Some people find listening to ASMR to be a great sleep aid. Or listen to soothing music. I recently bought a cd player (yes, you read that correctly), so I can listen to music until I fall asleep, without having a phone or screen on near my bed. Find what works for you!
6. If you need complete darkness in order to sleep, try a sleep mask, or black-out curtains.
7. Get some exercise during the day to make sure you’ve exerted enough energy to allow for deeper sleep. You can even do yoga stretches or Qi Gong before bed to relax your body.
8. If you need it, there are two natural sleep aids you can try: melatonin, which regulates your sleep cycle, and valerian root, a natural sedative. Both are available at health food stores in the vitamin section.
9. If you have too many thoughts running through your head at night, to-do lists, things to remember, anxieties, etc., keep a journal next to your bed and write it all down. Let the journal take the weight of all your thoughts for the night.
10. Don’t stress about not getting enough sleep. Sometimes the stress of not being able to fall asleep is what’s keeping you up! Know that as long as you’re doing what you can to allow space for your body to rest, your body will eventually get the sleep it needs.

 

 Photo by Tracey Hocking on Unsplash