How to improve sleep quality: effective tips

Sleep is an inte­gral part of human exis­tence. It is the reg­u­la­tor of the prop­er func­tion­ing of all organs and sys­tems, as well as an impor­tant com­po­nent of the men­tal and emo­tion­al state of the indi­vid­ual. How­ev­er, a full night’s rest is increas­ing­ly becom­ing a rare occur­rence. Res­i­dents of megac­i­ties suf­fer from acute lack of sleep, chron­ic fatigue, stress-induced insom­nia, and many oth­er unpleas­ant phe­nom­e­na. Is it pos­si­ble to influ­ence the qual­i­ty of night rest by chang­ing some habits and prop­er orga­ni­za­tion of sleep?

What factors have a negative impact on the quality of sleep?

The rhythm of life in mod­ern soci­ety sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces sleep time. This trend has a neg­a­tive impact not only on the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of a per­son, but also on health in gen­er­al. Pro­longed lack of sleep caus­es a weak­en­ing of the immune sys­tem and pro­vokes the devel­op­ment of heart dis­ease.

The fol­low­ing fac­tors have a par­tic­u­lar­ly neg­a­tive effect on the qual­i­ty of a person’s sleep:

• Lack of con­sis­tent sleep and wake pat­terns

If a per­son goes to bed at dif­fer­ent times, then it is much hard­er for him to fall asleep. This, in turn, reduces the time of a good night’s rest.

• Low phys­i­cal activ­i­ty

It is not­ed that peo­ple who reg­u­lar­ly play sports fall asleep eas­i­er and sleep much more sound­ly. Some­times, to improve sleep, you need to add an evening short walk.

• Huge din­ner

A heavy meal in the evening helps the diges­tive sys­tem to con­tin­ue its work dur­ing the night, increas­ing the heart rate. This con­tributes to fre­quent noc­tur­nal awak­en­ings and an increased sense of anx­i­ety.

• Alco­hol con­sump­tion

Doc­tors note that con­trary to pop­u­lar belief about the relax­ing prop­er­ties of alco­hol, drink­ing alco­hol before bed­time harms the qual­i­ty of a person’s sleep.

• Con­sump­tion of caf­feinat­ed prod­ucts

It is known that caf­feine pro­motes the release of adren­a­line into the blood, increas­es anx­i­ety and blocks the action of spe­cial sub­stances respon­si­ble for the qual­i­ty of sleep.

• Long day­time sleep

Sleep time dur­ing the day­time should not exceed half an hour. Oth­er­wise, it will be dif­fi­cult to fall asleep in the evening and the qual­i­ty and dura­tion of a night’s rest may suf­fer.

• extra­ne­ous noise

Rest with con­stant noise adverse­ly affects the well-being of a per­son and leads to the devel­op­ment of chron­ic fatigue.

• Wrong sleep­ing pos­ture

It is also an impor­tant fac­tor influ­enc­ing the qual­i­ty of human sleep. Pos­es “on the stom­ach” or in the fetal posi­tion have a neg­a­tive effect on a full night’s rest. Doc­tors rec­om­mend replac­ing them with sleep­ing on your back or left side.

Stress prevention as a way to increase sleep time

Many peo­ple expe­ri­ence stress on a dai­ly basis. They lead to dete­ri­o­ra­tion of phys­i­cal health, exac­er­ba­tion of chron­ic dis­eases, vio­late the psy­cho-emo­tion­al state of a per­son. Fre­quent stress depletes the ner­vous sys­tem, reduces immu­ni­ty, weak­ens the strength and ener­gy of a per­son.

Stress also neg­a­tive­ly affects the qual­i­ty of sleep. In espe­cial­ly severe sit­u­a­tions, insom­nia can devel­op, which is prac­ti­cal­ly not treat­able. There­fore, the pre­ven­tion of stress should take one of the lead­ing places in the strug­gle for a good night’s rest. Her most effec­tive mea­sures, quite fea­si­ble at home, include:

• Relax­ing walks in the fresh air;
• Warm baths with sea salt and essen­tial oils;
• Access to fit­ness cen­ters, pools, dance stu­dios:
• Mas­ter­ing relax­ation tech­niques (yoga, med­i­ta­tion);
• Shop­ping (buy­ing new clothes, cos­met­ics, acces­sories);
• Friend­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tion, estab­lish­ing rela­tion­ships with old acquain­tances and the par­tic­i­pa­tion of loved ones.

It should be remem­bered that avoid­ing stress­ful sit­u­a­tions is almost impos­si­ble. How­ev­er, reduc­ing their fre­quen­cy and strength of man­i­fes­ta­tions is quite a fea­si­ble task, hav­ing coped with which, you can improve a person’s sleep.

Getting up on an alarm clock: the impact of habits on human sleep

In an effort to influ­ence the qual­i­ty and dura­tion of sleep, it is nec­es­sary to clear­ly under­stand the mech­a­nism of its work. It should be borne in mind that it con­sists of two phas­es: fast and slow. Replac­ing each oth­er, they form a sin­gle cycle of human sleep, last­ing 60–90 min­utes. The slow phase is need­ed by the body for phys­i­cal recov­ery (cell regen­er­a­tion, mus­cle growth, hor­mone syn­the­sis). While dur­ing the fast, the ner­vous sys­tem is restored and the infor­ma­tion received is processed.

Wak­ing up on an alarm clock pulls a per­son out of REM sleep, mak­ing him dis­ori­ent­ed for a while. There is a nat­ur­al desire to turn off the wake-up sig­nal or resched­ule it to a lat­er time and return to a state of dor­man­cy. How­ev­er, it is still not worth doing this, because, in this way, anoth­er sleep cycle is launched, from which it will be even more dif­fi­cult to exit. A per­son after such a delayed rise may feel tired and over­whelmed for sev­er­al more hours.

You should wake up slow­ly, prefer­ably with­out the help of an alarm clock. After such a rise, a per­son feels more rest­ed, alert and bet­ter pre­pared for a new day. The habit of going to bed a lit­tle ear­li­er will sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase per­for­mance dur­ing the day.

A good moti­va­tion for get­ting up can be the morn­ing exe­cu­tion of some item from the tasks planned for the day. This will reduce the list of work post­poned for the evening, and will pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty to increase the time of sleep. The pro­duc­tive ful­fill­ment of one rou­tine duty in the morn­ing will great­ly sim­pli­fy house­keep­ing and free up time for relax­ation, cre­ativ­i­ty, and self-care.

An attempt to get up on an alarm, but the con­stant trans­fer of the rise sends a sig­nal to the brain that it is not ready to start a new day, leave a cozy and safe bed. It will still not be pos­si­ble to ful­ly fall asleep after the sig­nal to wake up; instead, a per­son begins to cul­ti­vate in him­self a feel­ing of anx­i­ety, his own use­less­ness and help­less­ness. This slip­pery slope leads to the devel­op­ment of deep depres­sion, which in turn leads to fur­ther sleep dis­tur­bances.

A clear dai­ly rou­tine and fol­low­ing your bio­log­i­cal clock will make you feel less tired, your brain will work more clear­ly and order­ly, and your work effi­cien­cy will be high­er.