Getting a good night’s sleep is just as essential as a healthy diet and regular exercise. Unfortunately, according to the National Sleep Foundation, 62% of the American adult population suffers from sleep issues every couple of nights per week.
Sleep deprivation negatively impacts the quality of your life, as well as your overall health. In fact, multiple studies show that lack of adequate sleep can negatively impact your hormones, exercise performance, brain functioning, and energy levels.
In addition, it can lead to moodiness, memory issues, and trouble thinking properly and focusing. Worse of all, chronic sleep can cause high blood pressure, weight gain, and a weak immune system. In-depth studies also reveal that chronic poor sleepers are at a higher risk of developing cancer and dying from it.
If you’re planning to optimize your health, improve the quality of your sleep, and lose weight, you must get a good night’s sleep. Here we highlight the top healthy sleeping habits and why getting a good night’s sleep is essential:
Why Do You Need a Peaceful Slumber Each Night
Getting adequate sleep is vital to ensure optimal health and well-being. When it comes to your health, sleeping is equally essential to regular exercising and eating a balanced diet:
- Multiple research studies show that getting a good night’s sleep is crucial for ensuring better concentration, productivity, and cognition
- The link between sleeping and obesity is unclear, but several studies show that getting a good night’s sleep ensures low weight gain
- At the same time, a good night’s sleep helps lower calorie consumption
- Getting a good night’s sleep helps ensure better performance intensity, better coordination, faster speed, more energy, and enhanced mental functioning
- Catching the necessary nighttime zzz’s helps lower the risk of developing cancer and heart diseases
- Sleep links to people’s social and emotional intelligence. Someone who is sleep-deprived is likely to have trouble recognizing other people’s expressions and emotions.
The Top 5 Healthy Sleeping Habits
If you find it difficult to sleep at night, you should consider checking your sleep hygiene. A healthy lifestyle combined with behavior changes can help you get a fitful night’s sleep:
Reduce Blue Light Exposure during the Evening
Exposure to bright light is beneficial throughout the day. However, during nighttime, light exposure has contrary and harmful effects. It is primarily because of its impact on the circadian rhythm which tricks your brain into believing that it is still daytime.
It, in turn, reduces the production of hormones like melatonin that help your body relax and get a good night’s sleep. But, unfortunately, blue light is popularly used in smartphones, computers, and other electrical devices and is, by far, the worst type of light when discussing healthy sleeping habits.
For this reason, you should learn to cut down your nighttime exposure to blue light. Here’s how you can achieve this:
- Wear glasses that help obstruct blue light
- Download revolutionary apps that block or reduce blue light on your tablet, smartphone, laptop, and computer
- Avoid watching TV at night
- Turn off bright lights at least 2 hours before turning in for the night
Reduce or Long Daytime Naps
While enjoying short, power naps during daytime or evening are good for your health, irregular and prolonged naps can negatively affect the quality of your sleep.
When you sleep during the daytime, it ends up confusing your internal clock. Therefore, you may find it difficult to sleep at night. However, according to an insightful study, individuals who slept during the day ended up getting sleepier during the day.
At the same time, another in-depth study revealed that napping for 30 minutes enhances your brain’s functioning, whereas longer naps can harm your health and sleep. However, multiple studies show that regular daytime napping doesn’t affect the quality of sleep.
Getting The Right Bed For Maximum Comfort
The best way to sleep quickly is to design your bedroom to ensure comfort and relaxation. A mattress is one essential item in your bedroom that promotes healthy sleep. According to multiple studies, a medium-firm mattress offers maximum comfort, spinal alignment, and support; thus, ensuring quality sleep.
Unfortunately, this factor is often overlooked and can contribute to several issues when trying to sleep through the night. When it comes to constructing your sleep environment, make sure you invest in a suitable mattress, guaranteeing comfort and durability. Let’s discuss how you can ensure this:
- Using a high-quality mattress to ensure you’re sleeping on top of a comfortable surface. In addition, make sure your pillow is soft and comfortable to avoid back and neck aches and pains.
- Choosing high-quality bedding such as luxe sheets and soft blankets is essential for making your bed look and feel inviting. Seek bedding that feels soft to the touch and helps maintain an optimum temperature throughout the night
- When buying a mattress, ask for recommendations from friends and family. You can also read online reviews on popular beds. However, before you start your hunt, make sure you’re getting yourself the right bed—-one that supports your body weight, sleep position and meets your unique sleep needs.
- A good bed offers full-body support and pressure-relieving comfort for pain-free sleep. In addition, it should be durable enough to last for at least up to eight years; therefore, leading brands provide 10—15 years of warranty.
- When selecting a mattress, you should also consider the materials. Memory foam is one of the most popular mattress materials, known for its body-hugging In addition, its slow response rate and motion isolation make it an ideal choice among combination sleepers and couples.
However, people who tend to sleep hot avoid memory foam due to its heat retention properties. Another similar mattress type is latex, which is naturally cool and hypoallergenic. It offers exceptional bounce and conformity for ease of movement and support in all sleep positions.
Another popular mattress material is hybrid, a combination of spring and foam—-it offers the goodness of both materials and ensures maximum comfort. Moreover, hybrids support sleepers of all body sizes. However, latex and hybrid are at the higher end of the price spectrum.
- Firmness is also a leading factor that affects the comfort of your mattress. Heavy individuals and stomach sleepers prefer firm mattresses, while petite and side sleepers search for plush and soft beds. However, the ideal firmness that works for most sleeper types is medium-firm, suiting the needs of average back sleepers.
- It is best to buy a mattress in person to try and test it before making the final purchase. Check a mattress store that offers a minimum 15-minutes of sleep trial to try your favorite mattresses. Typically, the staff also guides you in making the right choices as per your sleep requirements. When selecting a mattress, check for its in-home trial; usually, it comes with a 100-nights to 365-nights trial to ensure the bed is right for you. Furthermore, they also come with customer-friendly return policies, so you can return the mattress for a full refund during the trial period.
Optimize Your Sleep Schedule
Take control of your regular sleep schedule to take a step towards getting a fitful night’s sleep. To avoid destroying your day-to-day schedule to benefit your sleeping time:
- There’s no way you’ll get used to a healthy sleep routine if you keep waking up at different times during the morning time. So pick a time to wake up each day and stick with it, even during the weekends where you feel like sleeping in late.
- To ensure that you get the recommended and necessary amount of sleep, work on budgeting your time to sleep. Consider your wake-up time, count backward, and identify your target bedtime. If possible, try to offer yourself extra time before getting ready to turn in for the night.
- To catch a good night’s sleep is cautious with naps. Irregular and long naps during the evening can throw off your sleep schedule, which, in turn, makes it difficult to sleep at night. Your nap time should be early afternoon for no more than 20 minutes.
- When adjusting your sleep schedule, it’s best to make changes gradually with a maximum difference of 1 to 2 hours each night. In this way, you can ensure your body gets used to your new schedule in a much more sustainable manner.
Take a Melatonin Supplement
Melatonin is the vital sleep hormone that commands your brain to relax and fall asleep. As a result, melatonin supplements are a popular sleep aid.
Melatonin helps in treating insomnia, and it is the easiest way to fall asleep faster. However, an in-depth study shows that taking only 2 mg of melatonin before turning in for the night can help enhance sleep quality. Plus, it energizes people for the next day and allows them to fall asleep faster.
At the same time, another insightful study shows that more than half of the group fell asleep faster and noticed a 15% improvement in their quality of sleep. Not to mention, no withdrawal effects were detected during the studies.
Melatonin is also a great way to adjust to new time zones and when traveling. It is because melatonin helps your body’s circadian rhythm come back to its normal state. In certain countries, you’ll require a prescription before purchasing melatonin. In other countries, you can easily find melatonin in physical and online stores.
A good idea is to take 1-5 mg of melatonin thirty to sixty minutes before bed. Kick start with a low dose to figure out your tolerance and add the quantity according to your need. Melatonin may alter your brain’s chemistry; it’s recommended that you consult a doctor before using it.
To Sum it Up
The fact is that humans can’t function without an adequate amount of sleep. Alongside exercise and nutrition, good sleep is essential to ensure your health. If you want to get optimal health, you need to take care of your sleep.
Another in-depth study about insufficient sleep reveals that lack of sleep increases the risk of obesity 89% in children and 55% in adults. Not only that, poor sleep is a leading cause of multiple health issues like heart diseases, hypertension, anxiety, depression, diabetes, and in chronic cases lead to death. So if you’re ready to achieve well-being, it’s best to make sleep a top priority. Don’t forget the right mattress can help you get a good night’s sleep.
