Going to sleep at night would seem as natural as rolling off a log, right? Well on any given night 30-70% of us don’t find it easy to do what’s so natural. Here are some of the most common mistakes we make:
1. Changing our bedtime from night to night
When we don’t have a consistent bedtime, the body never gets into a pattern of knowing when it’s time to go to sleep. We have to train the brain and the body that it’s time to get ready for bed, and then time to go to sleep. As much as possible, get to bed at the same time every night.
2. Eating too large or too rich a meal too close to bedtime
If you’re a working person, with the demands of today’s work world, it’s tempting to work late, come home late and shove down a fairly sizeable meal. The food barely has time to digest, and often doesn’t, interfering with the body’s need for a relaxed and clear digestive track. This in turn interferes with going to sleep. Consider how to fix that problem earlier in the day.
3. Going to bed hungry
In seeming contrast to 2. above is many people’s need for a bedtime snack. Because low blood sugar can often be the cause of waking up during the night, a bedtime snack IS a good idea, provided it’s the right kind. Since the goal is to even out the blood sugar, rather than kick it into high gear, the snack should contain a little bit of protein (that’s important) and some easily digestible carbohydrates. A bowl of ice cream does not really fill the bill, sorry to say.
4. Watching tv, surfing the web or text messaging right up to the moment of trying to go to sleep
Why not, you say? These things relax me! Well, actually, each of these is stimulating in itself, though it may focus your energy into one place. But the real reason is that each of these contains blue light, which interferes with the gradual production of melatonin, the chemical that gets us down into sleep. If you’re having trouble sleeping, try turning off these devices about an hour before bedtime and reading or relaxing in another way leading up to bedtime.
5. Going to bed in a less than comfortable sleep environment
Whether it’s a lumpy mattress, a stuffy room or a noisy bed partner that interferes with getting to sleep, each of these has an important role in our readiness to get a great night’s sleep. Most of these things are fairly easy to correct, unless you sleep with a snorer, but consider your sleep environment as you would the site of a great vacation. Choose it with care and thought, invest some money in it and reap the benefits.
6. Letting worries take over your attempts to go to sleep
All of us have things on our mind that could be the cause of a less than great night’s sleep. Try to keep a pencil and paper by your bed to write some of these things down and get them off your mind and onto the paper for the morning so you can relax into sleep. If worries persist over time, seek some help for them so you can sleep.
7. And perhaps most serious, is to let sleep problems persist, whatever their cause, without investigating what can be done about them. Most sleep problems can be helped. The longer you wait to find out what you can do about them, the more likely you are to develop secondary worries about going to sleep that are on top of the actual sleep problem.
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