Best ways to sleep
Best ways to sleep
It’s good that you want to know the Best ways to sleep. Sleep isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity, it’s a part of us and we need to take care of it to be happy, healthy and well rounded – if you regularly neglect your sleep you could find you’re more irritable, that you’re more likely to be overweight, more likely to have a heart attack later in life and generally not as positive and optimistic as your snoozing counterparts.
So how can you make sure your sleep is happy? Well it turns
out we had it right when we were kids! Think like an eight year old and you’ll
be getting a great night’s sleep every night.
Set A Bed Time
When you were a kid you had a bed time, when you were a kid
your parents would have not only set your bed time but you’d have been
carefully monitored leading up to it too. You can’t start watching a new cartoon
that’s half an hour long when its bed time in ten minutes and you’re not
allowed to go out to play when bed time is looming either. You know bed time is
coming up so get ready, you can’t just watch this TV show (if you really can’t
bear to miss it record it or watch it online tomorrow) and you’re not just
popping out for a quick drink, it’s bed time so it’s time to start getting
ready which leads to…
Habit
Unless you were really tuckered out or had a long car
journey you would have never just been put straight to bed when you were a kid,
there would have been bath time and teeth brushing, you would have been put
into your jammies and you might have even got a story. At what point did we
just drag ourselves up the stairs, strip our clothes on the floor and climbed
straight into bed? It’s time to get back into a bed time routine, if you
perform the same actions right before bed every night your brain will soon
start to associate them with winding down and getting ready for sleep – don’t
forget the bedtime story, half an hour reading is much more likely to get ready
for sleep than half an hour telly in bed.
No Snacks Before Bed
No parent with an ounce of common sense would have let their
child chow down on junk food anywhere near bed time, kids are hard enough to
get to sleep without having to stop them bouncing off the walls long enough to
get them clean. If you’ve had anything to eat or drink before bed your body
still needs to digest it, a small healthy snack is ok but if you eat bar of
chocolate or a late dinner your body isn’t going to stop this food half way
round your digestive track and leave the rest until morning, no it needs to be
digested there and then so don’t give it anything too big to process up to an
hour before bed time.
Tire Yourself Out
Remember the summer days of your childhood? You’d spend
hours out with your friends, riding your bikes and climbing trees – you’d be
out moving around and making yourself tired. You’re hardly going to go play in
a tree house for the day just to get a good night’s sleep but grownups can play
too, only we go to gyms and we run because it’s healthy not because we’re
playing tag. This might not sound as fun but if you’re struggling to get a good
night’s sleep it could simply be because you’re not tired enough. Invest in
your own exercise bike (again, not as fun) and make sure your body really needs
to sleep at the end of the day.
Take a Nap
I miss nap time, even in nursery, finishing milk time and being told to simply lie down on the rug for ‘quiet time’ which would inevitably lead to a dozen little toddlers all catching thirty winks. You might get some funny looks if you curl up in the board room after lunch for a quick power nap but if you’ve got the time, twenty minutes when you get home from work might be all you need to get you through the evening. If you’re self employed or you work from home you might want to try a quick siesta at lunch time and you’ll be amazed at how much energy you have for the rest of the afternoon.
