Are you one of the 25% of the Americans who suffer with Insomnia every year?
Is lack of sleep or quality of your sleep effecting your daily activities and your health?
A good quality sleep starts with good daily habits.
You may be making some of these mistakes in your life style that might be affecting your sleep.
Lets look at these 5 habits and how you can improve them to sleep better at night.
- Starting your day right
- Dinner Habits
- Soft drinks and caffeinated drinks
- Evening Routine
- Bed Time Rituals
At the bottom of this post, you can download free checklist for healthy living.
- Start your day right:
To have a good night sleep, your body needs to know it is bed time.
As we spend hours in artificial light and ignore the natural cycle of light and darkness, our natural bodily rhythm get disrupted and not just causes trouble to fall asleep at night, it also creates hormonal imbalance.
Spending 30-40 minutes early morning in sunlight will reset your body rhythm and will allow your body to generate right amount of Melatonin for you to fall asleep at night.
If you cannot spend 30-40 minutes in day light in the morning then split it across 2-3 times a day in smaller slots.
Also Read: Boost your energy naturally with these 5 life style changes.
2. Eat early and eat light dinner:
It takes 3-4 hours for food to digest well.
Eating heavy dinner and eating it closer to bed time, keeps digestive system active late in the night. This causes disruption in sleep cycle.
This can also cause disease like heartburn and acid re-flux.
Eat atleast 4 hours before bedtime and eat light dinner.
3. Healthier Drinking Habit:
Just like heavy dinner, caffeinated and/or sugary drinks will keep mind and boy active well into night and will interfere with good night sleep.
Caffeinated drinks will also cause dehydration and keep waking you up during night.
Avoid caffeinated and sugary drinks atleast 5-6 hours before bedtime.
4. Evening Routine:
After dinner, instead of heading straight to the couch, spend some time outdoor. Take a light walk, which with help with digestion and help induce deep sleep.
Avoid screen time atleast 2 hours before bedtime.
Start winding down with activities that will help your mind and body slow down.
Light reading, listening to music or even as simple as folding laundry will help you slowly get into slumber.
Also Read: Risks of sitting too long and how to avoid it
5. Bed Time Ritual:
Right before going to bed, sitting in the bed, doing some mindful breathing or meditation for 3-5 minutes will do magic to calm down your mind and help you fall asleep and stay asleep through out the night.
I enjoy doing this meditation called ‘Nadi Shudhhi’, you can learn it for free here. Once learned, you can do it on your own before going to bed.
Hope these 5 habits will help you fall asleep and get a good night sleep.
Also Read: How to prevent technology addiction
Download Free Checklist for Healthy Living
