Top Tips to Improve Your Sleep for Better Daily Functioning

Good sleep is not just about lots of sleep: it’s about the right kind of sleep. Sleep affects your ability to use language, maintain attention, understand what you are reading and sum up what you hear. Therefore, if you compromise on your sleep, you are really compromising on your performance, mood, and interpersonal relationships.

If you have frequent sleep issues, you can always seek medical help. It’s easy to do this. Just talk to your local physician or a specialist. Doctors and dental professionals like Dr. Byran Shanahan have experience in different fields and can guide you to a proper treatment plan. You can always find a local doctor in your area who can help. Meanwhile, keep reading to find out how you can improve your sleep in little ways.

Stick to a Schedule

Stick to the same bedtime sleep schedule and wake up time, even on weekends. This helps regulate the clock of your body, and may help you fall asleep and stay asleep for the night. Once your circadian rhythms are set, you will find you don’t have trouble falling asleep or even staying asleep! Just reset your internal clock.

Plan Your Bedtime

A relaxing, routine activity that takes place right before bedtime away from bright lights helps separate your sleep time from activities that can cause excitement, stress or anxiety that can make it harder to fall asleep, get sound and deep sleep or stay asleep. You can also use this to coax your body into a routine and eventually, you will develop healthier sleeping habits.

Make Your Room Sleep Friendly

Design your sleep environment to set the conditions that you need to sleep. It should be cool in your bedroom. Ideally this should be between 60 and 67 degrees. Also your bedroom should be free of any noise that could disturb your sleep. Your bedroom should ultimately be free of any light. Look for noises or other distractions in your room. This includes sleep disruptions such as snoring from a bed partner. Consider using blackout curtains, eye shades, ear plugs, machines with “white noise,” moisturizers, fans, and other devices.

Have a Comfortable Bed

Make sure you have a comfortable and supportive mattress. The one you’ve been using for years may have exceeded your life expectancy, so check this out. This expectancy, for most good quality mattresses, is about 9 or 10 years. Have comfortable pillows and make the room attractive and inviting to sleep but also free of allergens that could affect you and objects that could cause you to slip or fall if you need to get up during the night.

Watch Your Diet

Alcohol, caffeine and cigarettes can disrupt sleep. Eating large or spicy meals can cause indigestion discomfort which can make it difficult to sleep. If you can, avoid two to three hours of eating big meals before bedtime. If you are still hungry, try a light snack 45 minutes before bed. This will ensure your body isn’t too busy digesting your food to sleep.