Last week I posted a survey on my Facebook page, asking what people thought would have a bigger impact on their quality of life, improving their diet and eating habits, or getting more sleep.
Sleep won by a landslide.
The research for my next project isn’t done yet, but in the meantime, as a thanks to everyone who voted
Here are a few tips to improve your sleep.
Protect your bedroom.
Your bedroom should be dark, quiet and cool, as well as pleasant and inviting. If your bedroom is full of laundry that needs to be folded or paperwork that needs to be dealt with it will be harder to relax and calm down. Try and keep your bedroom clean and tidy and make sure the bed has clean sheets. Try and make the bed and have it looking nice and inviting.
Turn off all screens at least half an hour before going to bed.
Both the blue light emitted by electronic devices’ screens and the sensory stimulation of the television, computers and phones prevent our bodies from naturally entering sleep. Even just reading on a phone or tablet has a different effect on the body than reading from a book or magazine. Watching a movie or reading an ebook “until I feel tired” is a good way of making sure your body goes from over-stimulated to over-tired, rather than naturally calming down and beginning the sleep cycle.
Don’t charge phones next to the bed.
If you need an alarm clock you can get a non-ticking analog alarm clock at Ikea for 30 shekels.
Or use the alarm in your phone but make it loud and charge the phone in another room. That way you also have the advantage of not being able to hit the snooze button.
Get out of bed and start moving.
Try it and see for yourself. Time spent “snoozing” is not only not real sleep, it actually exhausts the body.
If you want to lounge around in bed on the weekend, make a conscious decision to have a lazy morning in bed. Do it with intention, rather than letting it happen to you.
Get a blood test and treat any vitamin deficiencies you may have.
Many people are low on vitamins like B12 and D, as well as iron and magnesium, and all of these can have an impact on sleep quality.
Most importantly (at least, in my opinion)
Schedule your day so that it ends on time. Accept that this may mean leaving tasks unfinished or even taking things off your to-do list.
Studies have shown that we tend to significantly underestimate the time it takes to accomplish tasks, sometimes we need to just leave things undone and go to bed. (And to forget to plan time to relax and wind down at the end of the day, or that will end up coming out of sleep time).
Good luck!
*If you know what you need to do to get more sleep, and are having problems with the execution, or if you suffer from a sleep disorder like insomnia, feel free to contact me and see how I can help you.
Hi! I’m Havva Mahler, a practitioner of Chinese medicine: acupuncture, Chinese herbs, tuina, reflexology, sotai and massage and a motivation and habit change consultant. You can normally find me at my clinic in Be’er Sheva or Sderot, or reading something about health and/or motivation. You can find out more about me here. Get in touch with me here. And sign up to get the next blog post delivered straight to your inbox here.