Sleep Hygiene: The Value of a Good Night’s Sleep
Sleep hygiene refers to good sleeping habits. It seems simple: go to bed early and you’ll wake up feeling ready to take on the day. Sleep hygiene is actually much more complex and must be practiced efficiently on a daily basis. In this article, we’ll talk about the importance of a good night’s sleep, how to track your sleeping patterns, and how you can improve your sleep hygiene over time.
There are tremendous values in having good sleep hygiene that go far beyond feeling more awake. Sleeping is important for brain function, your heart health, and allows the body time to repair and reset for the next day. Without sleep, or consistently neglecting your sleep hygiene, you are more prone to high blood pressure, diabetes, heart failure, strokes, and heart attacks. Lack of sleep will also lead to a significant decrease in energy and the ability to focus throughout the day. By building good sleeping habits, you will avoid these disruptions and will benefit from stronger brain health, an improved immune system, reduced stress, and a healthier heart.
So how do you evaluate your current sleeping patterns? How do you track your sleep throughout the night? To start, the general recommendation of daily sleep duration is between 7 and 9 hours. Tracking your sleep can be done a few different ways. In recent years, wearing an overnight tracker like a Fitbit or Apple Watch has increased in popularity. However, with recent technology advancements, there are also many free Apple and Android apps that use your microphone to track your breathing sounds overnight. These apps will then send you a detailed analysis of your REM cycle, deep sleep times, and a summary of your sleeping patterns. Before you commit to a sleep tracker, first try writing in a journal. Keep track of the time you go to bed, the time you wake up, and any daily habits that may affect your sleep hygiene. You can then use your journal to identify the patterns that lead to a good night’s sleep.
Once you’ve successfully tracked your current sleeping habits, it’s time to identify where you can improve! Remember, good sleeping habits take time to build and will always need to be worked on. First, aim for consistency in your days and nights. Figure out which days you are sleeping the best and what things you are doing during the day that might lead to a better night’s sleep. Are you limiting your coffee intake on certain days? Are you eating balanced meals during the week versus the weekend? Consistency also means going to bed at the same time every night and regularly waking up at the same hour.
Having good sleep hygiene also means improving your nightly routine. You want to remove anything from your routine that may trigger a restless night. For example, thirty minutes before you go to sleep, put your phone away to reduce your blue light exposure. Instead of using your phone or watching TV, read a book or meditate for 15 minutes. It’s equally important to optimize the room you sleep in. If you have issues falling asleep without noise, use a light sound machine overnight. If you are sensitive to light, purchase heavy weight curtains. Find anything in your room that may be triggering inconsistent sleep and make the necessary adjustments to fix them.
With these changes made, overtime your sleep hygiene will improve and you will begin to enjoy the rhythm you have built. Once you have established healthy sleeping habits, the benefits of sticking to your new sleep schedule will be life changing!
Looking for more ways to improve your sleep? Click here to read about the benefits of Habit Stacking and how you can make small changes over time to achieve big results!
