Our bodies are more fickle than you might imagine. If you feel like you are not getting a good night’s sleep, it might be because something is disrupting you in the night. Here are some of the things that could be preventing you from getting a good night’s rest, and what you can do to fix it.
Your Day
Before we even begin to tackle what might be affecting you at night, it is worth pointing out that there is a chance that the events of your day might be affecting the way in which you sleep. If this is the case for you, you need to take steps to improve sleep hygiene so you can have a more restful night’s sleep.
There are many voices and experts you can turn to when trying to make improvements here. Why not try Rise Science’s guide to improving sleep hygiene? This could teach you more about the discipline while also helping you to work out what you need to do to really get a good night’s sleep. More often than not, a good night’s sleep can be dictated by what you do in the day. If you make sure that you set up your day to be as good as possible, it can help you have a much better night’s sleep too.
Caffeine
Many of us like to have a drink or two with caffeine in them to help us get through the day. They can be great for an extra perk that can pick us up and give us that little bit of energy to help get us over the edge. However, you can overdo it if you are not careful.
How many caffeinated drinks are you having in one day? You might be taking in more caffeine than you think, and this can be seriously affecting your sleep. However, you can’t simply cut it out cold turkey, as this could result in a major crash that only makes you feel worse. Instead, you should try to ease it out as gradually as you can. If you are used to four cups of coffee a day, cut down to three and go from there. Try to also put in a cut-off point where you won’t drink any more caffeine – switching to decaffeinated drinks will make things much easier for you to sleep.
Your Mattress
Is your bed comfortable? If you feel like you wake up with aches and pains all over, it might be because your mattress is not the right one for you. We need to have somewhere that is just right for us to help promote a good night’s sleep. You might think that you like a softer bed, but this could result in your hips, neck, and spine not being properly supported. Instead, you could find that you wake up with aches and pains, and feel like you did not have a refreshing night’s rest overall.
The pricier option here is to replace your mattress and get a new one that you know is going to support you properly. There are many types of mattresses out there, and you should try to find one that is comfortable and able to support you properly, even if it is a little bit harder than you are used to. You can also choose to get a mattress topper that could help to work with your existing mattress to provide the extra support you might need. Buying a topper could also help with some of the other issues that might be affecting your sleep.
Overheating
Many of us struggle with overheating when we sleep. We like to have a warm room during the day, but having one at night can cause bad dreams and other issues that mean we don’t have a pleasant rest. Overheating also means that you can excessively sweat in the night, so you wake up feeling unpleasant as well as tired. Trying to ensure that your bedroom is the right temperature to sleep in can be difficult, but you do need to make sure that you have a cool room to sleep in. Our body temperature naturally drops when we sleep, and it will be much easier to do in a room that is a little cooler.
You should also make sure you have the right bedding. Layers are always going to be better than one thick duvet as it means that you will be able to adjust your temperature rather than choose whether you will go with or without any covers. You can also buy special mattress toppers that help with temperature control – just the thing if you also need to target your support in bed too. If you can, you might also want to consider sleeping with the window open in the summer months to help with air flow and keeping those temperatures down.
Screens
Are you glued to your screens right up until you go to sleep? More and more of us are choosing to have a television in our bedrooms. While it can be a fantastic luxury to lie in bed and watch our favourite films and television shows, it can have a bad effect on our sleeping habits.
Televisions (and laptops, smartphones, and any other devices you might use to watch your favourite shows) emit blue light. This blue light keeps us awake and stops us from having a good night’s sleep. If you feel like you come home, start watching TV, and don’t stop until you got to sleep, you could be doing more damage to your sleep schedule than you think – especially if you also spend all day staring at a computer screen at work.
You need to make sure that you take steps to protect yourself from this blue light. It is inevitable that we will have to deal with blue light in this modern age, so you need to make sure that you are equipped to manage your exposure to it. Turn on the blue light filter on any devices that you might have, and consider purchasing some blue light glasses to use during the day. In the evenings, pick a time at least an hour before you intend to go to sleep where you are not going to use screens, so you can properly unwind and relax before you go to sleep.
Start a Diary
If you are serious about improving your night’s sleep, you need to think about some of the ways that you can monitor how you are resting. Consider starting a sleep diary. Use it to record things like how often you wake up, what the conditions of the room are, how much sleep you are getting and what you feel like the quality of that sleep is.
This, together with some of the other solutions that we have listed above, could help you have a much more comfortable night’s rest. Take the time to get to know what your sleep patterns are like, and make some clear and targeted steps to improve them. Before you know it, your sleep could be a lot healthier and less disruptive, meaning that you have a more restful night’s sleep overall!
