How You Can Improve Your Sleep Health

Quality sleep is important for you to function at your best throughout the day. When you’re sleep-deprived, you tend to feel tired in the morning, which can lead to health problems. Not having enough sleep can cause you to experience mental fog and physical weakness. 

If you get the right amount of sleep, you will feel rejuvenated and get all the energy that you need. Not only will you feel great, but you will have more energy to be creative and do important tasks, making your life more productive.

Here are some effective ways you can improve your sleep health:

• Exercise 

Exercise can improve sleep because it helps the body produce GH or the growth hormone. This hormone helps the body to relax, as well as regulate your breathing and your heart rate. This also helps to get your body to sleep at a normal rate. Thus, it’s safe to say that exercising is crucial if you want to sleep soundly throughout the night, particularly if you’ve been experiencing mild sleep apnea. Exercising has also been proven to help reduce stress, anxiety, and tension, and even to increase the amount of oxygen carried to your brain.

Stretching before bed is recommended because this helps you to focus on your breathing patterns and how your body feels. This means that you might not carry with you the stressors you may have encountered during the day to bed. Rather, you focus on your physical, emotional, and mental wellness as you work into a relaxed state. 

An example of a stretching exercise before bed is the child’s pose. This particular exercise is meant to release the tension you may have been carrying in your neck and back.

You will have to begin in a tabletop position, sink into your heels, let your hips comfortably rest, and put your head between your thighs. Make sure that your toes are touching each other and your knees are far apart. Rest your forehead on the floor and breathe in deeply. Placing a tennis ball on the ground for your forehead while you move from side to side makes for a mini massage. This may facilitate for nervous tension to be alleviated. 

Make sure that you won’t doing any rigorous exercises before you go to bed. These may make falling asleep more difficult because of increased heart rate, adrenaline, and body temperature.

• Take Some Hot Bath 

Before you sleep, you can take a hot bath. Soaking in the tub may help relax your muscles. If you go to sleep while feeling tense, you might not be able to get the shuteye you need. You can also add essential oils, such as lavender, to your bath to benefit from the relaxing scent. You may as well play relaxing music to further facilitate a restful and calm environment. In addition, you can utilize candles to create a dim and Zen space, compared to switching on your bathroom lights. 

• Clear Your Mind

Trying to sleep with so many thoughts running in your mind, especially negative ones, can have adverse effects on your sleep health. As such, you need to make it a point to clear your mind of unnecessary thoughts before you hit the sack.

You can write down your worries and struggles in a journal. Scribbling these down means you are acknowledging that you have concerns, but are placing these on hold while you go to sleep. If there are solutions to some of the issues that you may have, you can write these down as well, helping you realize that there’s always a way through any challenge. After getting some quality rest, you may even have the presence of mind to come up with more viable solutions to the ones you had the night before.

You can also try to meditate before you go to sleep as a way of improving your sleep health. Meditation is the art of clearing your mind and reaching a peaceful space. There is no universal way to meditate, however, one effective meditation method is to sit in a quiet space, close your eyes so as not to be distracted, and to concentrate on your breathing. With practice, you may be able to clear your thoughts by focusing on your breath, which is a process that can relax your muscles, allowing you to sleep peacefully at night.

• Have Some Quiet Time 

The aim of having some quiet time is to silence the noise of the day, which may be in the form of your thoughts and daily sounds, such as traffic, loud music, television, social media hullabaloo, and many others. This is not to say that these are entirely negative facets of your life. It’s just that a quiet sound helps to relax you mentally and physically. 

You can try different methods of quiet time such as stargazing, drinking a hot beverage while enjoying the breeze outdoors, switching off all gadgets, or reading a book. The slower the pace before you go to bed, the higher the chances of you improving your sleep health. 

• Rule Out Underlying Health Conditions

If you’ve been constantly experiencing poor sleep quality, you may need to rule out underlying health conditions. Health conditions that contribute to poor sleep quality include dementia, anxiety, PTSD, depression, poor breathing problems, chronic pain, and, in some cases, the medication that you may be taking. Visiting your doctor can help rule out some of the health conditions that may be causing you to sleep poorly.

Conclusion 

In order to improve your sleep health, you need to try different methods to get you into a relaxed mode. You can try to do some light exercises before you go to bed to release tension. You can try out a hot bath that may relax you, and to also enjoy some quiet time. 

If you suffer from an underlying condition, which may be the reason why your sleep health is compromised, you need to get checked by a medical professional. Yes, you may implement various sleeping strategies, but if the root cause isn’t tackled, these might not work. Your doctor can check you for possible conditions that cause insomnia and treat you accordingly.