The average person spends 26 years of their life sleeping and at least 7 years trying to get to sleep. That’s 33 years spent in bed. That’s a lot of life in anyone’s money.
Given that we are learning all the time about the power of sleep as a boost to our mental and physical well-being, including general health, weight regulation and even fertility, it seems pretty odd that it often goes to the back of the queue.
I’ve tried lots of things and just cant switch off…
Struggling to sleep can be related to many things. Stress, anxiety, fear of ‘wasting time’, outdated beliefs that sleep is for wimps to physical discomfort, or illness.
Sometimes waking up during the night, or early in the morning, and not be able to get back to sleep all result in our feeling that we haven’t slept well or had enough sleep.
The result: feeling tired, tense, irritable and just not being very tolerant of the world around you and those in it. Eventually, even the worry about sleeping starts, adding to the issue.
Our Top 10 Secrets to Sleep Success
I just can’t sleep. What do I do? Help is at hand. The science helps us and there is a big role here for designing and reinforcing good habits. Here’s our Top 10:
- Go to bed and get up at the same time every day (weekends included).
- Wake up and get up – avoid lying in and put your mind to a positive use.
- Create a pre-sleep routine – ideally relaxation based, such as reading or a bath.
- Pay attention to your bed and bedding – make your bed a welcoming place.
- Work toward eliminating caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol in the evening.
- Avoid a heavy late night meal.
- Exercise – evidence confirms exercise improves restful sleep.
- Remove media – try removing TV and computers from your bedroom.
- Move your phone out of reach so you can’t easily play with it before sleep.
- Keep a cool and dark bedroom – the ideal is 18°c.
Nothing works
At the risk of self-promotion there may be some stuff going on which is creating a disturbance that could be resolved by a little work. We’d be happy to discuss that.
Until then…….Sweet Dreams