Setting your body’s natural clock
1. Try to sleep at the same time every day
Your body has an internal clock and sleeping at the same time everyday helps set an alarm on that clock. Once you get into this habit you’ll notice that you’ll feel tired and ready to sleep everyday around that time. Don’t set any drastic times,start with a reasonable time. If you’re getting enough sleep you should not need an alarm clock to wake up. Keep lowering your sleeping time until this happens.
2. Don’t take too many naps
Naps are a great way to catch up on lost sleep but they can also be very harmful to your sleeping routine, especially if you deal with insomnia. Sleeping helps us gain energy and by taking too much naps you would be gaining energy that would later on need to be used, stopping you from sleeping at night. The same goes for sleeping in. It would give you a bunch of extra energy.
Before going to bed
1. Take a warm shower
A decent body temperature is crucial to getting good sleep. Our body temperature naturally drops before we go to bed but often times we start to sleep much later than when this happens, making our bodies too cold by the time we’re ready to sleep. This can cause some major discomfort. Showering before sleeping helps warm up our body and stop its temperature from dropping too much.
2. Stay away from bright lights
Bright lights before bed can trick your mind into thinking it’s still daytime, which disrupts your body’s internal clock and could prevent you from sleeping. Lights from technology can be especially disruptive, so stay away from your laptop, tablet or and even your phone at least 1 hour before going to bed. If you absolutely need to use these, turn down the brightness as much as possible. And If you’re one of those people who can’t sleep in the dark, try to invest in a night-light. They give off enough light that you’ll feel comfortable but little enough that they won’t disturb your sleep.
3. Wind down and relax
Even if you follow all these instructions, you’ll most likely toss and turn when you get to bed if you’re mind is still excited. Stress, worry, anger, and events of your day can give you trouble sleeping. Learn to manage you thought and do relaxing things before bed. Any mindless and easy activity can help you relax before sleeping. You could read a book or a magazine, listen to music, get ready for the next day… whatever relaxes you.
Tips:
- Don’t procrastinate during the day, you’ll just end up with more things to do before bed
- Some foods that help you sleep
Half a turkey sandwich
A small bowl of cereal
Granola with milk or yogurt
A banana
