How do you improve your sleep quality? Sleep quality is as essential as other health requirements such as workouts and balanced nutrition.
The human body needs rest to regulate its energy levels, and high-quality sleep ensures optimal rest. It includes sleep initiation, maintenance, quantity, and after-sleep energy levels. Without getting a good night’s sleep, both exercise, and nutrition create little value for human health. Below are a few hacks that will improve the quality of your sleep.
Practice a Timely Sleep-Wake Cycle Regularly
Consistent sleeping and waking patterns can set the tone of your body’s circadian rhythm. This is the sleep-wake cycle within 24 hours. A timetable regularly followed is essential to practice this rhythm. It vastly helps in improving your sleep quality. One study identified that people who had abnormal sleeping patterns reported poor quality sleep.
Therefore, it is vital to develop the habit of going to bed at a specific time every night and doing the same when waking up in the morning. You may need an alarm in the beginning, but once the rhythm is set, your body will quickly start reaping the benefits of having a set schedule.
Your Bedroom Matters
The bedroom is, essentially, a space for winding down. Make sure that you design the bedroom in a way that creates a relaxing ambiance. Control the light exposure as well as the room temperature to improve sleep quality.
A comfortable bed, mattress, and pillows are the most important elements of your bedroom when it comes to sleep. Make sure that you invest in high-quality mattresses and pillows so that you don’t have to be subjected to back and neck pains. You can ensure a better night’s sleep by buying a mattress that is designed and built to optimize your sleeping experience. Make sure that you understand what kind of mattress would work best for you and do some research.
Avoid Long Naps
It’s been found that short power naps are healthy. However, long and irregular naps, either during working days or weekends, adversely affect your sleep quality in a negative way. These naps disturb the body’s circadian rhythm and disrupt your sleep-wake cycle.
Research shows that irregular and longer periods of sleep make us even sleepier. Short naps of up to 30 minutes during the day improve your brain activity and quickly boost your mental and physical energy levels. However, naps any longer than that will diminish your overall sleep quality. It is critical that we take short naps or no naps at all during the day. This routine must also be observed on weekends as well.
Quit Drinking Alcohol
Alcohol consumption is dangerous for your health, especially if you do so regularly. If you tend to drink before bed, you’ll find that this impacts your sleep immensely. Studies have shown that alcohol consumption causes or increases sleep apnea, which can potentially be a serious sleep disorder. Alcohol consumption also reduces the production of melatonin in the human body, which controls your sleep cycle.
Alcohol consumption at night decreases the natural growth of human growth hormones during the night. In order to avoid reduced sleep quality, you must eliminate all factors that disrupt your sleeping patterns, and this includes drinking alcohol before going to bed.
Reduce Caffeine Consumption
Caffeine consumption can be healthy for the human body. It boosts energy and focus levels, which help a great deal with your overall daily performance. However, consuming caffeine at night doesn’t produce the same health benefits as it does during the daytime. Your brain functions slow down at night so that the body can naturally rest and relax.
However, caffeine consumption at night disrupts the natural relaxing process and stays in your blood for long periods of time. Therefore it is better not to consume caffeine late in the day or at night if you are aiming to improve your sleep quality.
Avoid Eating High-Calorie Foods Late at Night
The human body performs like a rechargeable battery. It recharges and discharges energy continuously. Diet and nutrition build energy levels, which are then utilized during a workout. It is important that you take note of how many calories you eat and how many you burn. Excess calories are stored as fats and increase unhealthy body weight. Low calories result in muscle consumption during energy utilization. Therefore, a balanced diet and workout are essential for work and rest.
If you perform a workout after sunset, you should consume proteins afterward. But if you don’t, avoid eating late at night. We don’t perform much work at night, and our body enters its natural relaxing cycle. If we eat high-calorie foods, they end up being stored as fat in our bodies, which, in turn, affects the quality of our sleep.
In Conclusion
Improving sleep quality is not an overnight process. It is gradually improved by consistent healthy activities, as mentioned above. You’ll be struggling at the start but once you integrate healthy habits and become more mindful of your routine, you’ll notice that you’ll be able to have a much more restful sleep. Your psychological health will also improve along with your physical health.
