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| Habits keep you awake |
habits keep you awake at night
If you have problems with sleep, then, quite possibly, you create most of them for yourself. How is this possible? It’s just that you most likely have one or several of 8 habits that keep you awake at night ...
So, here are 8 evening habits that interfere with normal sleep at night:
1. Use of electronic devices
The screens of smartphones, tablets and laptops emit the light of the blue part of the spectrum - in a word, precisely that part of it that the midday sun emits. The result of exposure to such light is the suppression of the body's ability to produce melatonin, a sleep hormone. Naturally, this creates problems with sleep.
How to get rid of this problem? The easiest way to do this is to stop using all electronic devices at least an hour before going to bed. Instead of looking at the screen of your smartphone or tablet all this time, try to find alternative ways of hanging out - for example, read a paper book, or do meditation. In addition, you can find a program for your smartphone that filters the blue part of the spectrum emitted by its screen, or even do it yourself by changing the settings. Currently, both iOS and Android Oreo have settings that make the light emitted by the smartphone screen “warmer” after sunset so that it does not stop you from falling asleep in due time.
2. Going to bed at different times
When we stay up late at the weekend, or even do not sleep all night, it bewilders our internal clock. As a result, in order to return to the usual rhythm of sleep and wakefulness, we have to make considerable efforts. To solve this problem, try to get up and go to bed at about the same time, regardless of the day of the week. Yes, and forget about Friday parties until two in the morning!
3. Attempts to fall asleep immediately, without preparation
Of course, since before falling asleep, we have certainly demanded that a certain ritual be followed, including a good fairy tale, a couple of decades have passed ... but, despite this, experts believe that we never outgrow the need for a relaxing period right before bedtime. And if we do not try to relax before going to bed, as a result we can spend a sleepless night, turning for hours on end from side to side, no matter how much we are tired.
In order to get rid of this problem, set aside an hour before bedtime. Try to do all the necessary things (brush your teeth, make a bed, and so on) in the first 20 minutes, then spend the remaining 40 minutes on relaxing activities - for example, you can take a warm bath or read a good book. By the time it’s time to go to bed, you will be well prepared for this.
4. Drinking coffee before bedtime
Since caffeine is a stimulant, often people don’t see anything wrong with drinking a cup or two of coffee after dinner - just when we all begin to feel tired and drowsy. However, in doing so, they make a mistake. Caffeine is eliminated halfway from the body in a period of five to six hours - that is, even after five to six hours, half of the caffeine that got there with food and drinks will still remain in your body.
And this means that when you drink coffee in the afternoon, you yourself are depriving yourself of the opportunity to sleep normally. Fortunately, the solution to this problem is very simple: Avoid eating any foods and drinks that are high in caffeine after two in the afternoon if you are going to go to bed before midnight.
5. Too plentiful and hearty dinner
If we stay up late for some business, we are much more likely to “reinforce” a more solid and satisfying dinner - we need to take strength from somewhere. Unfortunately, a late bountiful dinner not only saturates us, but also contributes to our inability to fall asleep. After a large amount of food enters the body, your metabolism is boosted accordingly to digest it all. Well, in addition, lying with a full stomach is simply uncomfortable. The combination of these two conditions makes falling asleep very, very problematic. To avoid this, try to dine about two to three hours before bedtime, no later.
6. Exercise before going to bed
Considering how busy our lives can be, it may seem to you that doing exercises right before bedtime is a very reasonable and convenient solution. And although physical exercise, without a doubt, is an extremely useful pastime, loading your body immediately before bedtime, you do not let it sleep normally.
Physical activity just before bedtime affects your sleep as follows. Firstly, it artificially raises your body temperature. Since in order to go into sleep, the body must naturally naturally relax and slightly lower its temperature, this increase in temperature can delay your falling asleep. Secondly, exercise increases brain activity, and additional stimulation prevents you from relaxing and falling asleep. If you really want to do physical exercises before going to bed, try to limit yourself to only the lightest and most relaxing of them, and leave the harder ones for the daytime.
7. Attempts to go to bed too early
Common sense tells us that, if we want to fall asleep early, we must go to bed earlier. However, in this case, our common sense, alas, is mistaken. Yes, this may seem counterintuitive at first glance, but if you go to bed too early, you will most likely find it much harder to fall asleep. Yes, yes, when you go to bed too early, instead of falling asleep, you stay awake for quite some time.
As a result, instead of falling asleep, we toss and turn in bed, turning over from side to side every minute, which only leads to irritation due to the fact that, like, it would be possible to sleep - but it does not work out. Irritation leads to stress, and he, in turn, leads to the fact that you do not manage to fall asleep at all. How to deal with this? The easiest way to avoid this is by going to bed only when you really feel tired. This way you will avoid most of the problems arising from waiting in bed until sleep comes to you.
8. Using the bedroom not for sleeping
People watch movies in the bedroom all the time, or, for example, study there. It is very likely that you have more than once or twice arranged your marathons of your favorite TV shows right in bed - simply because it turned out to be the most convenient place in your house. Unfortunately, such actions can only exacerbate your inability to fall asleep in the evening.
Why is this so? Yes, because when you do not sleep in the bedroom, but do some other things that have nothing to do with sleep, your body and mind gradually begin to consider the bedroom as another workplace. As a result, when you go there, it does not automatically begin to relax, instead assuming that they need to continue to stay awake and give all the best for work. To counter this, let your bedroom and bed in it become for you a place only for sleep and intimacy. So you will gradually train your mind and body to automatically associate this place with sleep and relaxation, and they will begin to behave accordingly when you enter there.
A few thoughts in the end
Considering how important a full and regular sleep is for the stable functioning of our body, it is extremely important to avoid bad habits that worsen the quality of our sleep and prevent us from falling asleep in time. Getting rid of habits that make your sleep intermittent and restless, and replacing them with the alternatives we have proposed, you will soon find that falling asleep every day at the same time is not easy, but very simple.
And since a full sleep is important to ensure working ability, well-being and positive thinking, this can change your whole life for the better!
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