Get regular exercise. Regular exercise can improve the symptoms of many sleep disorders and problems. Aim for 30 minutes or more of activity on most days—but not too close to bedtime. Be smart about what you eat and drink. Caffeine, alcohol, and sugary foods can all disrupt your sleep, as can eating heavy meals or drinking lots of fluids too close to bedtime. Get help with stress management. If the stress of managing work, family, or school is keeping you awake at night, learning how to handle stress in a productive way can help you sleep better at night.
Improve your sleep environment. Keep your bedroom dark, quiet, and cool, and reserve your bed for just sleeping and sex. Develop a relaxing bedtime routine. Avoid screens, work, and stressful conversations late at night. Instead, wind down and calm your mind by taking a warm bath, reading by a dim light, or practicing a relaxation technique to prepare for sleep.
Postpone worrying. If you wake during the night feeling anxious about something, make a brief note of it on paper and postpone worrying about it until the next day when it will be easier to resolve.
Authors: Melinda Smith, M. Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep — Sleep benefits and sleep needs, dreaming, circadian rhythms, sleep cycles and stages, and sleep disorders. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Your Guide to Healthy Sleep PDF — Why sleep matters, the stages and cycles of sleep, the dangers of sleep deprivation, and dealing with common sleep problems.
National Institutes of Health. The National Sleep Foundation. All About Sleep — Figure out if your child is getting adequate sleep and learn about the sleep needs of different age groups.
Details the most recent recommended sleep times by age group. Berkeley Wellness. Consequences of Insufficient Sleep — Articles and videos on the consequences of sleep deprivation and chronic lack of sleep, including its impact on driving, judgment, and disease risk. Harvard Healthy Sleep. This holiday season alone, millions of people will turn to HelpGuide for free mental health guidance and support. Evidence shows that adults need seven to eight hours of sleep each night, and regularly sleeping fewer than five hours a night is linked with cardiovascular problems and poor immune health.
People get better at staying awake on limited amounts of sleep if they do it more frequently. While a glass of wine close to bedtime might help someone fall asleep more quickly, that same alcoholic drink will disturb their sleep later on in the night. Overall, drinking before bed reduces the amount of time someone spends in REM sleep , particularly in the second half of the night, and high amounts of alcohol affect REM sleep in the first part of the night, too.
If someone is snoring loud enough for it to be bothersome, it could be more than just an annoyance. People who snore are likely to have poor sleep patterns , and get less sleep than non-snorers. Snoring, which results when the airway is blocked during sleep, is a symptom of obstructive sleep apnea—which increases the risk for heart disease if it goes untreated.
Knocking that clock out of balance puts people at risk for multiple health problems, including obesity and psychiatric conditions like depression. But there are a few very rare individuals who can manage with only five hours sleep a night without experiencing deleterious effects.
In , a team led by geneticist Ying-Hui Fu at the University of California San Francisco discovered a mother and daughter who went to bed very late, yet were up bright and early every morning. Tests revealed that both mother and daughter carried a mutation of a gene called hDEC2.
But while it might not be possible to train yourself to sleep less, researchers working with the military have found that you can bank sleep beforehand if you plan well in advance. At the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research they had people go to bed a couple of hours earlier than usual every night for a week.
This does involve a lot of effort, so in general what you need to do is work out your personal sleep requirement and then try to stick to it. In his book Counting Sheep Paul Martin describes a method of working this out.
Every night for two weeks you go to bed at the same time and see what time you wake up by yourself next morning. This is time spent valuably allowing your body and mind to function at their best during waking hours.
It may use up a third of your life, but it makes the other two thirds so much better. He disliked getting out of bed so much that he stayed there working all morning, even receiving visitors in his bedroom.
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