A good night’s sleep is vital because it allows our brain and body to rest, repair, and recharge, thereby improving cognitive functions such as memory, focus, and decision-making. Getting enough quality sleep supports your immune system, helps regulate mood and stress, maintains metabolic and cardiovascular health, and reduces the risk of chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease.
Here are six ways to get a good sleep:
1. Meditation
Meditation is a powerful tool for calming the mind and improving sleep quality. It immensely helps people with insomnia. Meditating calms the mind by reducing anxiety, stress, and overthinking, lowering nervous activity, and allowing the body to enter a calm state, which helps sleep.
2. Regular sleep schedule
Consistency is king when it comes to sleep hygiene. One must go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time, no matter whether it’s a weekday or a weekend. Our brain expects regularity. It thrives best in the conditions of regularity. By sticking to a steady schedule, your body’s internal clock, the circadian rhythm, stays in sync, making it easier to fall asleep and wake up naturally.
3. Get out of bed if you do not get sleep
One of the most counterintuitive yet effective tips is to leave your bed if you’ve been awake for more than 30 minutes. You should get out of bed and go to a different room to do something like read a book or listen to a podcast. Add a crucial warning not to eat or stare at screens, as it trains your brain to wake up to do that. Our brain is an incredibly associative device, and very quickly it will start to learn that this thing called your bed is this place where I’m always awake. Breaking this association is vital because it trains the brain to think that bed is the place where I’m always going to be wide awake. Only by returning to bed when truly sleepy can one relearn that one’s bed is for sleep.
4. Avoid alcohol before bed
Doctors advise avoiding alcohol as a sleep aid. Alcohol is a sedative, so it knocks you out, but it fragments your sleep. Our sleep is interrupted by numerous small awakenings, which makes for miserable, low-quality sleep. Even worse, alcohol suppresses REM sleep, the crucial dreaming phase linked to memory, learning, and emotional processing. Alcohol is very good at blocking our REM sleep, so alcohol’s not our friend when it comes to improving sleep quality.
5. Keep your bedroom cool
Ambient temperature can be a silent sleep killer. Doctors advise aiming for a temperature of about 18 to 18.5 degrees Celsius (roughly 65 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit). You need to drop your core body temperature and your brain temperature by about one degree Celsius to fall asleep and stay asleep. A cooler room helps initiate this temperature drop naturally. An ideal sleep environment is cool, around 18°C, which helps the body lower its core temperature, supporting the release of melatonin and natural sleep onset.
6. Create darkness in the last hour before bed
In today’s lit-up world, darkness is a disappearing luxury, but it remains critical for quality sleep. One must try dimming down half or three-quarters of the lights in their home in the last hour before bed. Total darkness can be beneficial because it stimulates the production of melatonin, the hormone that helps us fall and stay asleep. Darkness triggers the brain’s pineal gland to produce melatonin, and even low light exposure can suppress melatonin.
When we sleep well our mind and body functions at its best during the day. A poor-quality sleep on the other hand can make way to multiple health complications. So, ensure you have a good sleep and make it a regular lifestyle habit
Disclaimer: This article is meant for informational purposes only and must not be considered a substitute for professional advice.
