Evening habits affect not only sleep, but also health in general

Night is a time for rest, no mat­ter what the night owls think about it. In the dark, you need to sleep, and these are not idle inven­tions of med­ical con­ser­v­a­tives, but sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly based rec­om­men­da­tions. But what if you can’t fall asleep at the rec­om­mend­ed time? If a night’s sleep is inter­rupt­ed? Per­haps, it is nec­es­sary to observe not only the sleep reg­i­men, but also cer­tain rules of behav­ior before going to bed?

Exact­ly. Med­AboutMe talks about what to pay atten­tion to, what habits to try to devel­op for your own ben­e­fit, and what to give up for­ev­er.

Preparation for sleep

Some­times, of course, such fatigue accu­mu­lates dur­ing the day that there is sim­ply no strength left for any spe­cial train­ing. This hap­pens not only among those who are engaged in hard phys­i­cal labor, but also among white-col­lar work­ers, only fatigue cov­ers a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. I want one thing: to get to the bed, fall into it, and let the whole world turn off until the morn­ing.

But, no mat­ter how great the fatigue, it is nec­es­sary to find strength and per­form a few sim­ple actions. Oth­er­wise, you can harm your health if the sit­u­a­tion is repeat­ed over and over again.

Washing is a must!

Before going to bed, be sure to wash your face or cleanse your face with spe­cial prod­ucts from sweat, dust, dec­o­ra­tive cos­met­ics. Oth­er­wise, bac­te­ria will mul­ti­ply in all this all night, from which noth­ing but trou­ble can be expect­ed lat­er. At a min­i­mum, it can be acne and inflam­ma­tion. But eye infec­tions and fun­gal dis­eases can also devel­op. Yes, and evening care will not hurt, and it is cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly not rec­om­mend­ed to apply cream on dirty skin.

There­fore, one of the oblig­a­tory points of the evening pro­gram is wash­ing with warm water, cos­met­ic milk or oth­er suit­able means.

Brushing your teeth is important!

Before going to bed, it is best to brush your teeth with both tooth­paste and floss. At a min­i­mum, use a mouth­wash. If you neglect these sim­ple actions, by morn­ing a lay­er of plaque will form on and between your teeth, which con­sists of the rem­nants of yes­ter­day’s food and a huge amount of bac­te­ria. And over time, this plaque will turn into tar­tar, and it will have to be removed in the den­tist’s office. Or pre­pare for a meet­ing with caries and gum dis­ease.

Shower options

Wash before going to bed, no doubt, you need. But so as not to cause a ton­ic effect. If you take a show­er in the morn­ing, the body can per­ceive the evening show­er in the same way as the morn­ing one — as a sig­nal to wake up and acti­vate all func­tions. As a result, instead of rest­ful sleep, you can get insom­nia.

There­fore, in the evening it is bet­ter to take a short warm bath, and if this option is not suit­able, then not too hot or cool show­er with low pres­sure. And then gen­tly blot the skin with a tow­el with­out rub­bing it.

Don’t wash your hair at night

And don’t even wet them. First­ly, wet strands tan­gle dur­ing sleep, hair can be dam­aged and lose its appear­ance. And the pil­low gets wet from wet hair. It’s just unpleas­ant to sleep on wet, and def­i­nite­ly not con­ducive to sound sleep. But besides this, mold can appear in a damp pil­low, and this is no good at all. Mold spores are the strongest aller­gen. There is absolute­ly no need to sleep while inhal­ing it.

Exercise is good, but not before bed

Many doc­tors rec­om­mend exer­cis­ing to improve sleep. But there is one impor­tant point: to com­plete intense phys­i­cal activ­i­ty should be no lat­er than 3 hours before going to bed. Oth­er­wise, it may be dif­fi­cult to fall asleep. This is because exer­cise caus­es the release of cor­ti­sol, the stress hor­mone. Dur­ing the day, it helps to stay in good shape, increas­es the speed of reac­tion, pro­motes con­cen­tra­tion, etc. All this is use­ful dur­ing the day, but not when it’s time to go to bed and fall asleep.

In the evening, you can safe­ly take a walk in the fresh air, slow­ly and with­out load­ing.

Cor­ti­sol, by the way, makes you want to eat more sweets and fats, if not in the evening, then the next day.

Evening meals — only light

Din­ner should not be too plen­ti­ful and heavy. Noth­ing fat­ty, fried, salty for din­ner should not be served. It is more use­ful to refresh your­self with por­ridge, yogurt, veg­eta­bles, cot­tage cheese, and before going to bed, drink a glass of warm milk or kefir.

Overeat­ing late in the evening can cause heav­i­ness in the stom­ach, which will inter­fere with sleep. How­ev­er, overeat­ing is gen­er­al­ly harm­ful, at any time of the day.

The habit of eat­ing mod­er­ate­ly in the evening will not only help you sleep bet­ter, but also pre­vent the appear­ance of extra pounds.

No alcohol

Many peo­ple get used to drink­ing a glass of wine in the evening, a por­tion of cognac or whiskey, a mug of beer, because alco­hol can real­ly cause drowsi­ness and relax­ation. But this action is tem­po­rary. In addi­tion, alco­hol neg­a­tive­ly affects the qual­i­ty of sleep: it changes the phas­es, short­en­ing the deep sleep phase. As a result, the body does not get enough sleep as it should.

There is anoth­er effect: diuret­ic. Instead of sleep­ing peace­ful­ly, you will have to vis­it the toi­let.

Caffeine is also banned.

And with it, theo­bromine con­tained in dark choco­late and cocoa. In the after­noon, it is bet­ter to give up cof­fee, strong tea, cocoa and choco­late, even milk choco­late.

Gadgets and a computer in the bedroom do not belong

It is nec­es­sary to turn off the smart­phone, tablet, lap­top 40 min­utes before bed­time. Let them rest until the morn­ing, and they will let you rest. Blue light from screens dis­rupts the cir­ca­di­an rhythm and knocks down the “inter­nal clock”, inter­feres with the pro­duc­tion of mela­tonin. And how much time is qui­et­ly “eat­en up” by social net­works, games, mes­sag­ing with friends!

The right temperature in the bedroom

It is use­ful to sleep in a cool room, at a tem­per­a­ture of 16 to 20 ° C. It is bet­ter to take shel­ter warmer than to heat the air to a trop­i­cal heat.

Expert com­ment

Sara Stan­i­cai, psy­chother­a­pist

The way you spend your evening nec­es­sar­i­ly affects the qual­i­ty and dura­tion of sleep, and ulti­mate­ly your health and well-being depend on it.

If you don’t have the strength to do any­thing all the time in the evening, you don’t even want to wash your­self — this is a sig­nal that you don’t get enough sleep reg­u­lar­ly, and the sit­u­a­tion needs to be cor­rect­ed. And not with a por­tion of alco­hol or a cig­a­rette, “to relax”, but a seri­ous change in the dai­ly rou­tine. Nei­ther alco­hol, by the way, nor cig­a­rettes real­ly help. Nico­tine, on the oth­er hand, can cause unnec­es­sary excite­ment, and alco­hol, although it helps to fall asleep, inter­feres with sleep. Because it makes sleep shal­low, inter­mit­tent, not allow­ing the body to tru­ly relax.

What else should you avoid before bed?

Con­flicts and clar­i­fi­ca­tion of rela­tions. This caus­es a surge of emo­tions that will inter­fere with sleep. Set aside all con­flicts for the morn­ing. Per­haps by morn­ing the irri­ta­tion will pass by itself, and the sit­u­a­tion will be resolved. If not, the boil­ing of feel­ings will def­i­nite­ly sub­side, and every­thing can be resolved more calm­ly and more pro­duc­tive­ly.