9 habits that prevent you from getting a good night’s sleep

Is your usu­al morn­ing a bad mood, lethar­gy and apa­thy? The caus­es of per­sis­tent lack of sleep can be dif­fer­ent. But if you exclude health prob­lems and severe stress, only estab­lished bad habits and the wrong dai­ly rou­tine will remain. What pre­vents you from wak­ing up quick­ly, cheer­ful­ly and in a good mood?

Non-compliance with the daily routine

The body “works” bet­ter if you strict­ly observe the dai­ly rou­tine every day. Experts advise eat­ing, exer­cis­ing and going to bed at the same time. This is a good habit that will help you to always be in a great mood and feel good.

It is bet­ter to orga­nize your time and cre­ate a clear dai­ly rou­tine will help keep­ing a diary.

Long sleep on weekends

Do you think that sleep­ing until lunch on a day off can com­pen­sate for a week of lack of sleep with an ear­ly rise to work? You are wrong. By dras­ti­cal­ly chang­ing the regime for only 1–2 days, you only “knock down” your bio­log­i­cal clock. On Sun­day, you won’t be able to fall asleep for a long time, because you have almost become an “owl”, which means that on Mon­day you will again get up “on your left foot” and spend the whole day only think­ing about sleep. In addi­tion, with a late rise, you prob­a­bly won’t have time to car­ry out the impor­tant things planned for the week­end and the enter­tain­ment pro­gram, which def­i­nite­ly won’t improve your mood.

On week­ends, if pos­si­ble, start your morn­ing up to 2 hours lat­er than you usu­al­ly do on week­days. Do not for­get about the impor­tance of main­tain­ing a con­stant regime — regard­less of the day of the week.

Mobile gadgets

A smart­phone or tablet in hand late at night is a seri­ous threat to healthy sleep. And this is a prob­lem for many — until the news feed on your favorite site and all the pho­tos of friends on the social net­work are viewed, the day is con­sid­ered unfin­ished. Try to get rid of this habit that robs you of those very min­utes (and some­times hours) of longed-for sleep in the morn­ing. The bright light ema­nat­ing from the screen stim­u­lates the brain to work active­ly, pre­vents you from relax­ing and tun­ing in to a good rest.

When you are about to go to bed, let the smart­phone remain on the bed­side table, and not in your hands. You will have time to look at all the “impor­tant” news and let­ters tomor­row. Now is the time to rest. And don’t for­get to turn down the vol­ume on your device so that the spam email or the noti­fi­ca­tion of a friend’s new uploaded pho­to does­n’t wake you up.

Sleeping with the TV on

With a TV work­ing in the room, the same sto­ry as with a smart­phone. It dis­tracts, pre­vents you from falling asleep quick­ly. There is an opin­ion that turn­ing on the TV, even when you are already sleep­ing, stim­u­lates the active work of the brain, which means that in the morn­ing you will not be able to get up in a good mood.

Falling asleep with the TV on is a bad habit that is bet­ter to get rid of. This is even if you turn the sound down to a min­i­mum.

Heavy snack late at night

A heavy din­ner or hearty snack short­ly before bed is not a good idea. First­ly, it is harm­ful to the fig­ure and the nor­mal func­tion­ing of the diges­tive sys­tem. And sec­ond­ly, a “work­ing” stom­ach at full strength does not con­tribute to sound sleep — it will be dif­fi­cult to find a com­fort­able posi­tion, heart­burn may appear. There is also an opin­ion that those who like to have a tight din­ner before going to bed often have night­mares.

Hunger tor­ment­ed, which def­i­nite­ly will not let you fall asleep quick­ly? Arrange a light snack for your­self — a sand­wich with grain bread and veg­eta­bles, a por­tion of cot­tage cheese or yogurt, a hand­ful of nuts or dried fruits, a glass of kefir or fer­ment­ed baked milk. From the late evening diet, sweet refined foods, buns, sand­wich­es with fat­ty meat should be com­plete­ly exclud­ed.

Alcohol before bed

It seems that a glass of wine or a glass of cognac with a light snack will help relieve stress after a long day at work. Yes, after that, you will feel a pleas­ant bliss and, most like­ly, “fall into” sleep as soon as you lie down in bed. But even a small dose of alco­hol can dis­rupt the qual­i­ty of rest — espe­cial­ly in the sec­ond half of the night. At first, the per­son is sound asleep, but after a while the num­ber of sud­den awak­en­ings increas­es. In addi­tion, alco­hol can cause feel­ings of anx­i­ety, night­mares and, of course, hang­overs. Wak­ing up with a headache, you are unlike­ly to do exer­cis­es and cook your­self a healthy break­fast.

It is bet­ter to leave a glass of wine for the week­end, when you can sleep an “extra” cou­ple of hours.

The habit of sleeping with pets

It is believed that pet lovers who let pets into their bed are 50–60% more like­ly to wake up in the mid­dle of the night. And rest­less sleep is a guar­an­tee that the morn­ing will not start with a pos­i­tive.

It is bet­ter to take care of a sep­a­rate bed for your pet. Not only will this help you sleep bet­ter, but it will also keep your bed clean. Just think how much bac­te­ria, hair and dirt your fur­ry friend brings to bed. All this then appears on the skin and hair, in the res­pi­ra­to­ry tract.

Synthetic underwear

There are com­plete­ly non-obvi­ous habits that dis­rupt sound sleep. This includes the con­stant use of syn­thet­ic sheets, wear­ing low-qual­i­ty sleep­wear (paja­mas, T‑shirts, shirts). Arti­fi­cial fab­ric can dis­rupt the body’s ther­moreg­u­la­tion, retain­ing heat, and cause dis­com­fort. All this does not improve the qual­i­ty of night rest.

When choos­ing bed linen and sleep­wear, give pref­er­ence to exclu­sive­ly nat­ur­al fab­rics (linen, cot­ton, silk). They will be both con­ve­nient to use and use­ful for sound sleep. And some sci­en­tists even advise sleep­ing in the nude, with­out “bur­den­ing” your­self with paja­mas.

Mess in the bedroom

You can’t fall asleep for a long time, think­ing about whether you man­aged to do every­thing this after­noon? With “bad” thoughts, light clean­ing in the bed­room will help to cope. Some sci­en­tists believe that the mess in the room pro­vokes the active work of the brain — it makes a “con­clu­sion” that the past day was left unfin­ished, and this feel­ing of dis­sat­is­fac­tion in one­self pre­vents one from falling asleep sound­ly.

No need to arrange a gen­er­al clean­ing every evening. It will be enough to con­stant­ly main­tain clean­li­ness in the room, with­out scat­ter­ing things around.