Sleep is one of those areas of health that gets very little attention unless there is a serious problem. However, a night of good sleep has several benefits, including a boost to your health and energy levels. There are several things you can do just before hitting your bed to improve sleep quality. In this post, we will look over five things that you must do to improve sleep quality.
Today, the choices of the lifestyle we live are affecting our sleep quality. The irregular or interrupted sleep hours are reducing the quality of our sleep. Due to this, we cannot perform well the next day despite having 7-8 hours of sleep.
A worldwide population of 600 million people is believed to be affected by sleep deprivation or sleep disorder such as insomnia or sleep apnea. The abundance of artificial light, a poor diet, and lack of exercise are the root causes of sleeplessness.
Most of us spend our time using our mobile phones before sleeping. It is one of the most common activities performed overall worldwide before sleeping and is harmful.
Let’s find out what we must do before sleeping to improve sleep quality.
Eat 3-4 hours before going to bed
Many dieticians recommend that we must eat our last meal of the day 3-4 hours before sleeping. Not sleeping immediately after eating your last meal is a great way to improve sleep quality.
Our brain is a glucose consumer. It needs glucose as a fuel to perform its function in our body. When we eat a heavy meal just before sleep, the glucose level in our body is high at that time. Instead of having the glucose go down in three hours, it takes five to six hours at night due to the slow metabolism rate. It signals to the brain that we are awake.
Sleeping over high glucose levels deteriorates our sleep quality. Also, when we sleep just after eating a meal, our body is busy digesting the food. It can result in various issues such as indigestion, an increase in body weight, and a higher risk of stroke.
So eating early not only improves sleep quality but also protects you from many health issues.
Take a shower
Have you ever heard that taking a shower before sleep can help us improve sleep quality?
If not, no problem, keep reading.
According to new research at the University of Texas, having a shower an hour or two before sleep improves sleep quality.
So how does it happen?
There is always a difference between our body core temperature in the regulation of the sleep/wake cycle. Our body’s core temperature changes throughout the day. We tend to gradually cool by evening time before we go to sleep.
Our core body temperature needs to drop by about 2 or 3 degrees Fahrenheit for good sleep quality. Bath and showers stimulate the body’s system by increasing blood circulation from the internal core of the body to the hand and feet, resulting in efficient removal of body heat and decline in body overall temperature. Also, it decreases the average amount of time it takes us to fall asleep. We can take both cold and hot showers, depending on the season and your preferences.
So taking a shower before sleeping not only helps us to get clean but also to improve sleep quality.
Turn off your devices
One of the main reasons that most of us were awake last night for so long would be a cell phone or laptop.
During the evening or when we start falling asleep, our brain starts producing a special hormone called melatonin. This hormone handles the feeling of sleepiness or tiredness.
Electronic devices like cell phones, tablets, laptops, and computers emit short-wavelength light, commonly known as blue light. This light reduces the production of melatonin in the brain and decreases the feeling of sleepiness.
In turn, we tend to wake up and spend more time with these devices at night and not giving ourselves enough time to sleep or rest. We keep unveiling our eyes to these photon-emitted devices, which tells our brain to ”STAY AWAKE’.
For better sleep quality, it’s very important that when we lay down on our bed, we must be peaceful, happy, and relaxed. Engaging with our cell phones too close to bedtime can negatively impact these feelings and the quality of our sleep.
Practice mindfulness
With growing pressure at work and smartphone addiction, it’s obvious that stress, anxiety, and depression exist in everyone’s life. It also drastically negatively impacts our sleep.
If disturbed sleep is normal in your nights, then you may need a reliable and natural way out, like mindfulness.
Mindfulness is a form of meditation that allows awareness of our thoughts, feelings, body sensations, and surrounding environment.
A new study suggests that even short meditation training can reduce stress, anxiety and improve sleep quality. In this study, participants with no formal meditation experience were given instructions on guided meditation(meditation that involves an instructor) for four specific mindfulness practices:
- A three-minute mindfulness breathing exercise
- The body scan (focusing on different areas of the body)
- Focusing on everyday tasks
- Kindness meditation
Over time, participants were asked to perform these exercises for at least 10-15 minutes daily. The result showed that participants who meditated daily showed improvement in their sleep quality over two weeks.
Performing this practice before sleeping sets the stage for sleep by allowing us to be more aware of our thoughts and to be able to let go of those stressful and anxious situations instead of getting stuck in them.
Performing a regular daytime mindfulness meditation practice will help us sleep better and deeper at night.
Reading
Reading books allows us to gain new knowledge, but they also help us sleep faster. Yes, reading a book before sleeping is an excellent part of a bedtime routine.
I am not talking about reading academic books here because we have a whole day to read them. Instead, try reading fictional books that are comforting, captivating, and relaxing.
Reading for only about 20-30 minutes has the same effect that meditation does on us: it makes us feel calm and relaxed.
Recent research has found that reading a good book before bed can help us reduce stress levels by as much as 65% and make us sleep peacefully.
Sticking at our phone screens at night signals our brain not to sleep. But reading a book makes us feel calm, relaxed and signals to the brain that it’s time to sleep. Keeping a book instead of our phone next to the bed is a great habit that we can acquire.
Although Reading itself doesn’t make us feel sleepy, it just simply pulls our attention from the troubles of the day and makes us sleep easier without any unnecessary thoughts in our mind.
I always enjoyed reading a book before bedtime—it’s one of my favorite parts of the day just before sleeping. It makes me feel that there is always someone to make me feel more calm and relaxed every night before sleeping.
Besides making reading a regular part of our evening routine, keeping technology away from us, Practicing mindfulness for just 10 minutes, and soothing bathing is all possible ways to make sure we stay asleep deeply and peacefully throughout the night.
