Tips for Improving Your Sleep
Sleep Tip #1
Have you ever had any difficulty falling asleep? Do you ever awaken in the
middle of the night, only to have difficulty returning to sleep? Have you ever
awoken from a 6-8 hour sleep and yet do not feel rested? These can be signs of
stress related insomnia. Stress, especially due to muscle tension, can be the
main source of poor sleep. Tense muscles can also create the distraction that
keeps you from falling into a restful state of sleep or can awaken you in the
middle of the night when you have drifted into a lighter stage of the sleep
cycle.
There are many things that you can do to break out of a bad pattern of poor
sleep. This tip focuses on the most useful technique to minimize and, hopefully,
prevent insomnia (or poor sleep.) It may take some regular practice to become a
master of the relaxation prior to sleep, but it is worth the effort. Practice of
deep relaxations focused on muscular relaxation has been the most effective tool
for controlling stress related insomnia. This requires you to learn to become
aware of where you “hold” your muscle tension and then how to “let go” of this
tension. Easier said than done.
Start by checking for muscle tension in your jaw, forehead, neck, shoulders, and
back. Even your legs may be holding the tension that keeps you from sleeping
well, though most people find this residual tension in their jaw or
neck/shoulders. These are not the easiest parts of your body to relax so allow
some time. I usually recommend that you practice with your deep relaxation
techniques for 4-6 weeks to begin to see the positive change and I know that the
maximum benefits may take 8-12 weeks of regular practice.
Listening to the guided relaxation before bedtime is a good way to do this. Of
the guided relaxations that I recommend, several really standout. Stress
Management for Sleep has 2 different guided exercises to choose from. One is
based on Basic Progressive Relaxation which is a gentle passive relaxation which
focuses on breath and progresses through the muscle groups of the body starting
with the feet and toes and then slowly works up the body to the more difficult
muscle groups. 10 to 1 Countdown is also a favorite recommendation for relaxing
before sleep.
Whatever you select, remember to give a fair chance to teach you how to relax
and then enjoy drifting off into a deep and restful state of sleep.
Tips for Improving Your Sleep
Baby Sleep Tip – How To Be Sure Napping Will Help Your Baby Health and Your Night Sleep
So you have a new baby. This of course is taking you a lot of time, including
nurturing, changing diapers and, of course, sleeping.
Daily naps are an important part of your baby long day. You have to learn how to
manage it properly, or you are going to mess her night and yours as well.
Rituals for Napping
The first point is to develop rituals for your baby naps. They are aimed
essentially to develop a regular napping time with your baby. This is important
as will develop a foundational habit that will help you with your baby’s bed
time activities.
Regular
Regular nap times and intervals during the day will be the pacer for your
newborn’s daytime. Starting with three naps a day is a handy option that will
mean making your baby sleep at mid morning, early afternoon and late afternoon.
Aging Issues
Of course when your baby will become a little older, they’ll be opposing to
sleeping and will try to avoid naps in favor of playing.
This means that will be more and more difficult for you getting your baby
napping well before dinner. This will crate a trend that will make your baby
tired more and more lately, until this will happen at dinner time.
Dinner or Sleeping?
What are you doing now? Will you keep your baby awake, anticipating dinner and
maybe bed time? Or will your baby sleep now, with the risk of not getting to
sleep at bedtime?
Well, routines should rule over everything else. The usual sensible choice is to
try to keep your baby awake a little longer. Of course there always exceptions
to every rule: if she’s very tired or has health issues, probably is better let
her have an immediate very short nap, then awake her for dinner, have soft post
dinner play activities, and then going back to bed for the night.
10 Tips To Prevent Sleep Problems From Causing Falling School Grades
10 Tips To Prevent Sleep Problems From Causing Falling School Grades
It's been felt for some time now that inadequate or poor quality sleep in
teenagers leads to poor performance at school but it was not until quite
recently that a formal research study confirmed that teenage children with poor
sleeping habits do indeed have lower grade point averages.
Here are 10 simple tips to ensure that an otherwise healthy child gets the
quality of sleep needed to perform well in school:
Tip 1. Set a regular time for going to bed and try not to vary this time by more
than a few minutes from day to day.
Tip 2. Make sure that you get up at the same time every morning, whether or not
it is a school day. Teenagers commonly have a lie-in at the weekends and during
the school holidays and, rather than helping to make you feel better, this
simply disrupts your pattern of sleep.
Tip 3. If you find that you cannot get to sleep within about 15 or 20 minutes of
getting into bed then don't simply lie in bed trying to sleep, because the
harder you try the more difficult it will become. Instead, get up and do
something such as reading a book (not a school book) or listening to some
relaxing music. Once you begin to feel tired, climb back into bed and you'll be
asleep in no time at all.
Tip 4. Don't be tempted to stay up late doing homework or studying for a test.
Although this may seem like the answer to a specific problem in the short term,
and might well keep you out of trouble for handing in your homework late or get
you through a specific test, in the longer term your overall performance will
suffer and any short term gain will soon be lost.
Tip 5. Avoid the temptation to take a nap in the afternoon after school. If you
do find that you're so tired you can't keep your eyes open then go ahead and
take a nap but limit it to no more than an hour.
Tip 6. Avoid any form of drink that contains caffeine after about 3 o'clock in
the afternoon. This of course means tea and coffee, but also includes colas and
chocolate drinks.
Tip 7. Avoid eating a heavy meal too close to bedtime. You certainly don't want
to go to bed feeling hungry and a light snack before bedtime is fine, but going
to bed on a full stomach can make it difficult to get to sleep and affect the
quality of your sleep.
Tip 8. Although teenagers will often spend a lot of time in their bedroom and
turn it into more of a 'living' than a 'sleeping' room, avoid using the bed for
anything other than sleeping. Don't sit in bed reading, writing, watching TV or
playing games but reserve it only for sleeping so that your body associates
climbing into bed with going to sleep.
Tip 9. Don't take any vigorous exercise within several hours of going to bed. If
you want to play football or engage in other sporting or vigorous activities
then do these shortly after school and not an hour or two before going to bed.
Tip 10. When it comes to bedtime make sure that your bedroom is quiet, dark and
cool. Don't shut the room up, turn up the heat and climb into bed to watch TV.
Instead, turn the heating down, open the window a little if possible to let in
some fresh air and have the room as dark as you can get it.
Follow these 10 tips and within no time at all your quality of sleep will
improve, you'll feel more awake and active during the day and your grades will
improve.
Getting to Sleep Quick - 6 Tips
1) Keep a regular sleep schedule. This gets your mind and body into a routine. My light goes out somewhere between 9:45 and 10:15 pm almost every night. I know that may seem ridiculously early to some of you, but up here in northern New England people seem to go to bed and wake up earlier than other places I've lived.
2) Stay away from reading fiction before bed. I love a good novel, but fiction stimulates your imagination and does not help you relax your mind and get to sleep. Before I adopted this practice, I can't tell you how many times I'd stay awake late to finish a chapter or even a whole book. And then my mind would still be thinking about the book after I turned off the light. Now, I pick nonfiction instead. Yes, nonfiction can be interesting, but it rarely gets my mental energy going like a good thriller. Mental energy is not what you want when trying to fall asleep.
3) Take a few minutes to quiet your mind. This will help stop that ceaseless thinking. Ways to quiet your mind are: slow and deepen your breathing; think of a few things that went well with the day and be grateful for them; release the emotions attached to anything that didn't go well; stop consciously thinking about things. That last one means to stop trying to think about any issues you have, and stop consciously putting your attention on them. If something is still on your mind, write it down on a notepad next to the bed and resolve to deal with it tomorrow. This is really an important step because if you haven't released something that's bothering you before you try to go to sleep, you'll be replaying it over and over unless you have extremely good control of your thoughts.
4) Keep away from any form of caffeine after 1:00 pm in the afternoon. No coffee, decaf, tea or soda with caffeine. If you are susceptible to the effects of caffeine, it will make it harder for you to quiet your mind when you want to sleep. If I have a Coke at three in the afternoon, I'll feel tired but unable to sleep until midnight. (Another note: I can also always tell if there was MSG in my Chinese dinner because my heart will be thumping and I'll be wide awake staring at the ceiling at 1 am.)
5) Focus on your body and relax one area at a time starting at your feet. This both helps your body physically relax and helps you keep your attention on something other than your to-do list, what's going on at work, how mad you are at someone, etc...
6) Visualize walking down an endless stairwell. Keep your attention on your feet as you visualize your walking. This is similar to number 5 above. Giving your attention to something mindless and repetitive helps your brain shut down.
Those are my tips for how to fall asleep quickly at night. They work for me, and if you have a sleep problem, I hope that maybe they can work for you too.
Sleep Apnea - 7 Tips To Help You Sleep
Do you keep your partner awake at night with your snoring? Are you often
tired during the day? Do you sometimes find yourself suffering from morning
headaches, being a bit forgetful, unable to concentrate and irritable? If so,
you may be suffering from sleep apnea.
Sleep apnea is a very common and often undiagnosed sleep disorder that,
according to some estimates, affects five percent of the adult population.
Characterized in particular by loud snoring and daytime tiredness, sleep apnea
occurs because you stop breathing during sleep. This can occur literally
hundreds of times each night and your breathing can be interrupted by up to a
minute or more on each occasion.
Your breathing is interrupted either by a physical blockage to your airway (for
example, loose skin in the back of your throat, or perhaps your tongue, blocking
your airway), in which case you are said to suffer from obstructive sleep apnea,
or by a failure on the part of your brain to send out the necessary signals to
the muscles of your body that control breathing, in which event your condition
is described as central sleep apnea.
It is also possible to suffer from mixed sleep apnea which, as the name
suggests, is a combination of both obstructive sleep apnea and central sleep
apnea.
Both men and women suffer from sleep apnea, although the condition is more
commonly seen in men and, in particular, men who are over 40 and overweight.
The main consequence of sleep apnea is that, because your sleep is very light,
fragmented and of poor quality, you also suffer from insomnia, or excessive
daytime tiredness. Your partner would probably disagree and say that the main
problem is your snoring, but that’s a different story!
There are a range of treatments available for sleep apnea (including surgery in
particularly severe cases), but in the vast majority of cases your quality of
life can be improved considerably with a few simple lifestyle changes and
natural remedies. Indeed, in mild cases, this is often all that is needed.
Here are 7 simple tips to offset the effects of sleep apnea related insomnia and
restore some of that lost daytime ‘get up and go’.
Tip 1. Look at your weight.
If you’re overweight then this is undoubtedly contributing to your problem.
Losing just a few pounds can make a significant difference.
Tip 2. Avoid alcohol.
Alcohol relaxes your throat muscles and this makes it much easier for these
muscles to ‘collapse’ during sleep and block your airway. There’s no need to cut
out alcohol altogether, but you should restrict your intake and certainly cut
out alcohol in the three or four hours before going to bed.
Tip 3. Avoid sleeping pills.
Sleeping pills can also relax your throat muscles and cause similar problems to
those seen for alcohol. Sleeping pills, however, can also cause a variety of
other problems as well and there use is not recommended in cases of sleep apnea.
Tip 4. Avoid tobacco.
Smoking inflames your nasal tissues causing them to swell and restrict your
nasal airway. Ideally, you should give up smoking altogether but, if this is too
high a fence to jump, then try to cut down and, in particular, reduce your
smoking during the evening.
Tip 5. Sleep on your side.
If you’re typical of the majority of sleep apnea sufferers you sleep on your
back, making it far easier for the tissues in your throat, and for your tongue,
to block your airway. Even if you go to sleep on your side, you probably roll
onto your back shortly after falling asleep.
Try propping yourself up with pillows or cushions so that you sleep on your
side. If this doesn’t work then sew something like a tennis ball into the back
of your pajamas. You’ll find that rolling onto the tennis ball will be quite
uncomfortable and it will soon condition you to sleep on your side.
If you can’t sew, find a shirt or tee-shirt with a breast pocket. Pop the tennis
ball into the pocket and then wear the shirt back-to-front.
Tip 6. Improve your nasal breathing.
If you suffer from a ‘stuffed up’ nose, then try using a nasal spray to help
open up your nasal airway. Nasal sprays should not however be used regularly or
for prolonged periods, as they can cause damage to the tissues of the nose.
As an alternative, pop along to the drug store or chemist and buy yourself one
of many very cheap devices that are available today to help keep your nose open
while you sleep. Your pharmacist or chemist will be happy to show you what’s on
offer and to help you to make the right choice.
Tip 7. Avoid sleep deprivation.
Make sure that you are getting enough sleep and that you’re following a regular
bedtime routine. Also make sure that your bedroom conditions are set for sleep
(the right temperature, quiet, dark etc.) and that you’ve dealt with the worries
of the day and are relaxed and ready for sleep each night.
One of the major consequences of both obstructive sleep apnea and central sleep
apnea is insomnia, and curing the insomnia associated with sleep apnea is a
major step in the management of the condition.
These are just a few simple tips but you’ll be amazed at just what a difference
they can make.
Insomnia Prevention And Other Sleep Inducing Tips
One of the first things you must do when trying to prevent insomnia is to work aggressively to improve your sleep habits.
For example, self hypnosis, relaxation breathing, and biofeedback are often helpful options that can lead you to relaxation and a more restful sleep.
Establish a set bedtime routine.
Regardless of whether it is the weekend or the work day, get up at the same time and go to bed at the same time.
This helps your body to set a more scheduled internal clock which will enhance your ability to sleep better more consistently.
Control your environment.
Get rid of the excessive light pushing through the windows, eliminate irritating bedroom noises, and rid yourself of uncomfortable room temperatures.
Remember the bed should only be used for sex and for sleep, absolutely nothing else. Avoid using the bed to watch television or to read. These activities should be conducted in a chair or on the couch, but avoid doing these in the bedroom. Your bed is for sleep.
If you don't fall asleep within 30 minutes of lying down, get up out of bed.
Try a relaxing activity such as listening to soothing music or even repeating your nighttime routine. You might also find that a nighttime snack is helpful for the prevention of insomnia. It might also be helpful if you avoid taking a nap during the day.
There are special situations that can cause insomnia that require some less common insomnia prevention tips.
For example insomnia from jet lag and can be particularly irritating. In this case, insomnia prevention can be helpful if you intentionally began to alter your bedtime to coincide with the time schedule of your predetermined destination.
Insomnia associated with working swing shifts also benefits from insomnia prevention tips.
It is important to establish good sleep habits with a regularly scheduled time to go to bed and a regularly timed schedule to get up. Many people find it is also helpful to keep this same schedule even on their days off.
Some shift workers also find insomnia prevention is working when they take a quick nap prior to working the swing shift.
Remember the prevention of insomnia is your goal here. You often have to find which combination of suggestions work best for you. Don't get discouraged if you have to try more than one suggestion. That is not uncommon.
After all it really doesn't matter what combination of insomnia prevention tips works for you, what really matters is that something works.
Happy insomnia free nights!
