Every now and then we encounter that annoying moment of where we can not get to sleep. This stressful ordeal normally happens when you have something important the next day be it work or a meet up with a friend. No matter what you have planned for the next day you still want to get a decent night sleep so that you feel refreshed and lively for the events ahead. If you have a night like this there are many things you can do to help you get a better chance of getting to sleep and sleeping through the entire night. Have a read through these tips and make good use of them in an advent where you can not sleep.
Cut caffeine levels
Caffeine acts as a drug to ward off drowsiness and restores your alertness. Simply put, it keeps you awake and wired. Cutting down on tea, coffee and energy drinks towards night time should help you get a better sleep. You can see some healthy replacments for coffee on Adry’s recent article here.
Get rid of temptations
There are many things that can distract and stimulate you so that you can just not get to sleep even though you know you need to. If you can not get to sleep the first time just stay in bed. Turning on the television, reading a book or going online will not help you get off to sleep any faster and will distract you further tricking your brain into believing you are not tired. Also, when going up to bed try and shut off your mind and do not think about anything to strongly. If you are thinking a lot your brain will be working hard and you will find it much more difficult to get off to sleep.
Exercise and fresh air
Exercise helps you sleep and also stay healthy. It is proven that if you exercise during the morning or afternoon but NOT the night. You will get a better sleep than those who are less active. Fresh air has always been something that helps me sleep better too. My mother tells me stories of when I was a baby, I never slept well and one day she took me to the lake district in the UK and got fresh air and I slept like a baby (ironic right). So a trip out to the countryside or beach may help you out a lot with sleep.
Food and drink
Kind of carrying on from the lowering of caffeine levels with this one. A drink that can help you get a good night sleep is some warmed milk on a stove. This again is something that has helped me a lot in terms of getting a good night sleep when I was younger. Warm some milk on a hot stove so that it is hot but not boiling and drink it before bed. As for food. Yahoo food also says that things like turkey, bananas and oatmeal can help you get a better night sleep but I have not tried that for myself.
These are the main ones that I can think of and go into describing however there is others such as having lavender next to your bed or putting sleeping cream on your body to help you sleep (which normally also contains lavender. I hope these tips helped you out and gave you something new to try out.
Really excellent advice here. One thing you can add: make a habit to go to sleep at the same hour. When I used to have a hectic schedule, my sleep our was different each day. As you can imagine, it wasn’t working. Then I decided to not go to sleep later than 12 o’clock. After few days my body got used to the schedule and, at the right hour, I’d fall asleep in 2 minutes.
Thank you for your comment. This was something I forgot to add to the actual article even though it was my main thing I wanted to talk about. Routine is very important for getting good sleep.
Excellent advice. Another thing would be to not be in front of a screen, be it a computer, tv or game handheld, right before bed.
Yes I did mention this with the temptations part in small detail. Thanks for sharing some extra examples 🙂 Thanks for reading and commenting too.
Sleep is highly over rated, anyone who spends more than 4 hours in bed is clearly tardy.
There are many famous people Winston Churchil, Margeret Thather, who have a normal sleep patteren of about 4 hours, which gives a full 20 hours for fun or meglamania.
Thanks for the comment Bert. I do not get much sleep however I could never cope on only 4 hours of sleep and I am unsure on how people could do that. Sleep is important for growth and repair in terms of your body so it is important to get a decent night sleep.
Hi Roach
Not everyone is the same. I hate to think I am alone. I find a lot of people spend a lot of time in rem (rapid eye movement sleep)which is not deep and restful.
If you go to deep sleep you can sleep less and still feel fine skipping the dreaming part.
I go to sleep quickly but it doesn’t last very long. I have read articles of how to teach your self to do this.
Just putting a different way of sleeping.
The temptation is the usual thing that make us can’t sleep.And thinking
too many things.
Another thing one can try is to play some ambiental music or watch a very, very, very boring movie. It works for me every time and, the next morning, I find myself waking up on the couch. 🙂