How to make sleep sound and refreshing: 6 ways, the secrets of healthy dreams

A sound sleep, after which a per­son wakes up in the morn­ing cheer­ful and ready for a new day — this is what many strive for, but not every­one suc­ceeds. Sleep dis­tur­bance is one of the most com­mon com­plaints that peo­ple turn to doc­tors of var­i­ous spe­cial­ties. There are more than enough rea­sons that pre­vent you from falling asleep and hav­ing a good night’s sleep. In some cas­es, you just need to mod­i­fy your lifestyle, buy a new pil­low and bed linen, in oth­ers, resort to herbal reme­dies or alter­na­tive med­i­cine meth­ods. How­ev­er, some­times it can hap­pen that the cause of insom­nia is a very spe­cif­ic dis­ease, and one can­not do with­out ade­quate treat­ment with mod­ern med­i­cines. What can help a per­son enjoy a sound and sweet night’s sleep? Inves­ti­ga­tion from Med­AboutMe.

Method 1. Modifying the conditions for a night’s sleep

This is the very first method of deal­ing with insom­nia, and some­times just one is enough. In order for the sleep to be strong and refresh­ing, the bed­room must meet cer­tain con­di­tions:

• The bed should not be too soft. The ide­al mat­tress is ortho­pe­dic. It usu­al­ly has vary­ing degrees of stiff­ness on both sides. As a result, you can choose the one that best suits a par­tic­u­lar per­son.
• The pil­low should also not be too soft, but rather ortho­pe­dic. Feath­er filler is a thing of the past, and it is increas­ing­ly being replaced by mod­ern (bam­boo) filler. In pil­lows, blan­kets or mat­tress­es that are filled with down, wool or feath­ers, unwant­ed ten­ants (mites, bed­bugs) quite often appear, in addi­tion, they have increased aller­genic­i­ty.
• Bed sheets. There are peo­ple who can not fall asleep in a bed cov­ered with dark or too bright linens, the abun­dance of draw­ings also does not con­tribute to relax­ation. Ide­al shades are light, pas­tel, mat­te or cream.
• The bed­room should not be hot. The opti­mal con­di­tions for a night’s sleep are an air tem­per­a­ture of 16–20 ° C and a humid­i­ty of at least 50%. Dry and hot air, which often fills rooms after cen­tral heat­ing is turned on, dries out the mucous mem­branes of the res­pi­ra­to­ry tract. Insom­nia may occur due to nasal con­ges­tion or headache.

Method 2. Do not eat before bed

Many peo­ple know that you should not abuse exces­sive amounts of food before bed­time. Why is this unde­sir­able? Dur­ing sleep, all process­es in the human body go into slow mode. How­ev­er, if the stom­ach is filled to capac­i­ty with food, espe­cial­ly if these are such “heavy” foods as fried meat, pota­toes, a dozen pies with cab­bage, he does not have to dream of any rest. He is forced to work half the night in his usu­al mode and will cer­tain­ly take revenge on his mas­ter with the appear­ance of insom­nia.

Ide­al­ly, the last meal should be 3 hours before going to bed. Do not eat after 18 is rel­e­vant only for those who go to bed at 21 o’clock. For those who like to retreat into the arms of Mor­pheus lat­er, din­ner can be resched­uled for a lat­er time, but no lat­er than 21:00.

The last meal should be light: it can be boiled or steamed veg­eta­bles, fruits, cot­tage cheese and cheese, yogurt, kefir, a cou­ple of slices of whole grain bread. It is ide­al to go to bed with a feel­ing of slight hunger.

Method 3. Water procedures

A few min­utes in a warm bath or relax­ing show­er is one of the best ways to calm your ner­vous sys­tem. All the prob­lems of the past day remain in the past and for a few min­utes you can for­get about every­thing in the world. There­fore, if you can’t fall asleep for a long time at night, you can try water pro­ce­dures.

Method 4. Aromatherapy

The use of essen­tial oils can be attrib­uted to one of the most ancient areas of alter­na­tive med­i­cine. These com­pounds are high­ly con­cen­trat­ed sub­stances that should nev­er be applied direct­ly to the skin, as there is a high risk of burns. How­ev­er, low con­cen­tra­tions of essen­tial oils in the air can act on the ner­vous sys­tem, pro­mot­ing relax­ation and mak­ing it eas­i­er to fall asleep.

It is impor­tant to con­sid­er that these sub­stances have dif­fer­ent effects: some calm, while oth­ers, on the con­trary, excite. And their incor­rect use can lead to the oppo­site effect: all night long there will be a desire to tidy up the apart­ment, do exer­cis­es or move fur­ni­ture. There­fore, before you buy any essen­tial oil, you need to study all its pos­si­ble effects.

There are var­i­ous ways to con­vey essen­tial oils to a per­son, which are used in aro­mather­a­py:

• Aro­ma medal­lion. A few drops of oil are dropped into the lock­et and hung next to the bed.
• Apply­ing a sub­stance to var­i­ous mate­ri­als, for exam­ple, to a scarf, cot­ton wool, nap­kin. These items are placed near the bed.
• Oil burn­er. It is sold in spe­cial­ized stores and is suit­able for expe­ri­enced aro­mather­a­py lovers.
• Mas­sage with essen­tial oils. Once again, it is worth not­ing: you can not apply them direct­ly to the skin. Usu­al­ly, a few drops of essen­tial oil are intro­duced into the base cos­met­ic (almond, avo­ca­do, olive, etc.), and the result­ing mix­ture is used dur­ing the mas­sage.
• Aro­ma­van­na. This is the most pleas­ant way of aro­mather­a­py, which com­bines the ben­e­fi­cial effects of essen­tial oils and the relax­ing effects of tak­ing a bath. Oils can be dripped direct­ly into the water, or you can first enrich cos­met­ic oil with them, and then also add it to the bath.

Method 5. Soothing herbs

Med­i­c­i­nal prepa­ra­tions based on the fol­low­ing plants have a hyp­not­ic effect:

• Melis­sa offic­i­nalis,
• dill gar­den,
• creep­ing thyme,
• Thyme,
• Oregano ordi­nary,
• Hop,
• Valer­ian,
• Moth­er­wort.

There are var­i­ous ways to use these prod­ucts: you can brew them with hot boil­ing water and take them short­ly before bed­time, accord­ing to the instruc­tions for use (it is usu­al­ly includ­ed in the pack­age, or writ­ten direct­ly on it), or you can add plants to the bath that you plan to take before bed­time. Some of them, such as valer­ian or moth­er­wort, are also sold in tablet form.

How­ev­er, it must be remem­bered that, despite the gen­er­al mis­con­cep­tion, med­i­c­i­nal herbs are also seri­ous reme­dies. They can inter­act with med­ica­tions, cause over­dose and addic­tion. There­fore, such moments should be clar­i­fied with a doc­tor.

Method 6. Sleeping pills

This is the most extreme method, which is resort­ed to in the case when all the pre­vi­ous ones were inef­fec­tive. The fact is that most of the sleep­ing pills are addic­tive, men­tal depen­dence. That is, with a sharp ces­sa­tion of treat­ment, a per­son may devel­op a with­draw­al syn­drome (it is sim­i­lar to the with­draw­al syn­drome in peo­ple with alco­hol depen­dence). In addi­tion, these drugs have a depress­ing effect on the ner­vous sys­tem, have var­i­ous side effects, and inter­act with oth­er drugs. There­fore, they should be pre­scribed exclu­sive­ly by a spe­cial­ist: a gen­er­al prac­ti­tion­er or a neu­rol­o­gist.

The main groups of sleep­ing pills:

• Ben­zo­di­azepines (phe­nozepam, diazepam, lorazepam),
• bar­bi­tu­rates (phe­no­bar­bi­tal, sodi­um eta­m­i­nal),
• Mela­tonin recep­tor antag­o­nists (ramelteon, tasimelteon).

Oth­er groups are appoint­ed much less fre­quent­ly. It should also be not­ed that the hyp­not­ic effect is one of the side effects for drugs that are used to treat dis­eases that are not relat­ed to sleep (first-gen­er­a­tion antial­ler­gic drugs — suprastin, diphen­hy­dramine, taveg­il).

Sound and refresh­ing sleep is the key to a suc­cess­ful day. Sweet dreams wish you por­tal Med­AboutMe.