A good sleep is as important as any other element of your life that is related to your mental or physical health. We tend to get so worried and focused on the rest of our daily activities that we might easily overlook or ignore the hours of sleep that we should have each night.
There are numerous factors that may contribute towards sleep-deprivation such as a comfortable mattress, pillow, room environment, exercise, etc. In this read, we will take a look at some of these major factors due to which you are not able to have a good, long sleep.
1. A Bad Mattress will deprive you of a Good Sleep
One of the most ignored elements is the quality or durability of the mattress that you might have been using since the past many months. If your mattress is not supporting your body parts well, you might easily end up with back aches that can get painful within no time.
It is important that your body needs to be in a comfortable position while you are in your sleep. If you are a fitness freak, it is likely that you would be pushing your body to extreme limits at the gym. After a tough session, when you return home and go to bed at night, you might experience body aches.
For that, you need to have a nice memory foam mattress that relieves pressure from various parts of your body while you are asleep. Alternatively, as Sleepify mentions, you could invest in a mattress topper, rather than an entirely new mattress.
2. Too much Caffeine during Late Hours
Caffeine is one of the most common stimulants that is consumed by a lot of people every day. Whether it’s a cup of coffee, tea, soda or an energy drink – caffeine consumption is something that is an integral part of our lives.
However, no matter how great those energy boosts might feel, consuming caffeine before going to sleep is never a good idea. A study shows that if you consume caffeine up to 6 hours before going to bed, it can have adverse effects on the quality or duration of your sleep.
If you are a coffee lover, you might want to cut down on those late night espresso cups to make sure you can have a good, peaceful sleep at night.
3. Not Being Regular with Your Workout
According to Dr. Carlston – Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School – regular exercise directly boosts sleep hormones such as melatonin that eventually leads to you having a good sleep when you hit bed at night.
Another study suggests that regular exercise reduces the time it takes for adults to fall asleep by nearly half, and also adds more than 40 minutes to the total number of sleep hours. Exercise also helps people who experience severe insomnia, anxiety or depression.
However, it is also important that you do not exercise during the late hours as it may stimulate your body that could adversely affect your sleep patterns. Hormones such as epinephrine and adrenaline may get active which might prevent you from having the amount or quality of sleep that your body needs.
4. A Nap is Good, Too many Naps are not
We all love to have a short, power nap at least once a day, don’t we? Considering the fast-paced and competitive lifestyle that we are part of, our body and mind does need a short rest to be able to function throughout the day – until we go to sleep at night.
Having said that, it is also imperative to be aware of the fact that long, irregular or too many naps during a day might affect your sleep at night.
As per a study, a nap of 30 minutes or less can boost your brain’s performance and functioning, however, longer naps can be harmful and might disrupt your sleep quality.
In addition to this, having too many naps during a day might even make you feel lethargic as long as you are up and functioning. You might not be as productive at work or other tasks, than you normally are.
5. Having a Heavy Meal before Bedtime
If you are someone like me, then you would probably agree with the fact that ‘good food is good life!’ Having your favorite cuisine or dessert, or one of those refreshing beverages can be a real treat to enjoy.
However, if you are looking to enjoy that treat at midnight, a few minutes before you might want to sleep – that treat could easily turn into a nightmare.
Depending on your metabolism and other health or body-related factors, consuming late night meals can directly affect your sleep quality or duration and may also impact the natural release of melatonin.
Also, it depends on what sort of night meals do you regularly like to have. Eating a few popcorns while watching a late-night movie with your spouse in the bed might not affect as badly as eating something with high cholesterol, oil, sugar, or salt.
6. Overthinking about Life Issues while in Bed
Of all the factors above, this could be one of the most difficult to control before you go to bed. We are all humans, we have our own life problems, the bad decisions we took in the past, the amount of pressure we have at work, relationship issues, family problems, etc.
All this gets a toll on us as soon as we are in the bed. Those flashbacks might start coming back again, and all the ‘should have’ and ‘could have’ moments of our lives that might increase the time for you to fall asleep.
Easier said than done, you still need to keep stress and negative thoughts away from bed – as much as you possibly can. Try to have a relaxed few hours before you go to sleep, try to spend some quality time with your loved ones to release the stress that might affect you as soon as you get in bed.
Final Words on Sleep Deprivation
Remember, all your life problems, stress, work pressure, relationship pressure – will continue to go on almost forever. Every now and then, you might feel as if you are in the same difficult position where you have to make certain decisions that will have consequences.
That should not mean that you let those elements affect your sleep. One of the major reasons is the fact that not getting good sleep will directly impact your health, and eventually, you will be unable to cope up with those life pressures and your body might start to develop medical conditions.
So without wasting any more time, get yourself a nice mattress and a pillow today, get your life routine, workout and diet plans in place and focus on having a good, long and peaceful sleep so that you can live a healthier, happy life.
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