Tips to help you sleep and get enough sleep

Sleep is an extreme­ly com­plex process. It con­sists of two phas­es: fast (super­fi­cial) and slow (deep) sleep, which sequen­tial­ly replace each oth­er every 1.5 hours. In the phase of deep sleep, all process­es in the body slow down, which gives it the oppor­tu­ni­ty to recov­er: breath­ing becomes even and calm, mus­cles relax and even body tem­per­a­ture drops slight­ly. con­trac­tions and brain activ­i­ty. It is dur­ing this peri­od that we dream. Alas, for most mod­ern peo­ple, the deep sleep phase is sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced, if not com­plete­ly absent.

What can reduce the qual­i­ty of sleep? To weight gain, type 2 dia­betes, heart dis­ease and even oncol­o­gy … But this is in the long term. In the mean­time, imme­di­ate­ly after wak­ing up, apa­thy and chron­ic fatigue will cov­er you. We has­ten to assure you that in most cas­es your con­di­tion has noth­ing to do with sleep dis­or­ders that need to be treat­ed. Most like­ly, the mat­ter is in the wrong dai­ly rou­tine and neglect of soporif­ic rit­u­als. All this, as you know, is easy to cor­rect. And here’s how.

Take care of choos­ing an ortho­pe­dic mat­tress

An uncom­fort­able bed can sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the peri­od of non-REM sleep, says Michael Deck­er, MD, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor, Geor­gia State Uni­ver­si­ty, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Amer­i­can Med­ical Acad­e­my of Sleep. “A mat­tress that is too hard or too soft can cause the cap­il­lar­ies of the skin to pinch when lying on it, which caus­es a lack of oxy­gen and nutri­ents in this area.says the sci­en­tist, This, in turn, will stim­u­late the nerve cells, which will imme­di­ate­ly send a mes­sage to the brain that it is time to roll over. Fre­quent change of posi­tion in a dream will make it super­fi­cial”. Michael Deck­er rec­om­mends choos­ing a medi­um firm mat­tress or a firm mat­tress with a soft­er raised top. More­over, the expert advis­es to remem­ber that the mat­tress, more­over, has its own ser­vice life — it should be changed after 10 years.

Try to wake up in REM (light) sleep

Did you get enough sleep but still did­n’t get enough sleep? Most like­ly, you got out of bed in a deep sleep phase. At this time, it is very dif­fi­cult to wake up… But if the alarm clock wakes you up into REM sleep, you will get out of bed rest­ed, even if you slept less than usu­al. How to guess the time and wake up in the right phase? The mod­ern method involves the pres­ence of spe­cial gad­gets (for exam­ple, Sleep­Track­er), which, by read­ing your phys­i­o­log­i­cal indi­ca­tors (pulse, res­pi­ra­tion, brain activ­i­ty), will wake you up at the most suit­able moment for this in a giv­en peri­od of time. I must say, doc­tors do not like this method too much — so far it has a lot of errors (about 25–30%). Experts pre­fer the exper­i­men­tal method and advise try­ing to wake up at dif­fer­ent times with­in 15–20 min­utes. Woke up refreshed — it means that your awak­en­ing fell on the super­fi­cial phase of sleep. Of course, you can only catch the per­fect moment to start the day if you go to bed at the same time.

Use lamps with dif­fer­ent light col­ors

Gone are the days when we got up at dawn and went to bed at sun­set.… The mod­ern pace of life has divid­ed peo­ple into owls and larks. The for­mer hard­ly get up in the morn­ing, while the lat­ter begin to nod off almost at nine in the evening. We sug­gest adjust­ing your activ­i­ty peri­ods with white and yel­low lights. It is good for owls to turn on lamps with white light dur­ing awak­en­ing for cheer­ful­ness, and for larks in the evening, so as not to fall off their feet ahead of time. Anoth­er option is to use a sun­rise alarm clock. It will be use­ful to rep­re­sen­ta­tives of both cat­e­gories.

Turn on hyp­not­ic sug­ges­tions before bed

A team of Swiss researchers found that hyp­no­sis ses­sions can sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve the qual­i­ty of sleep. “With the help of these record­ings, we were able to increase the dura­tion of deep sleep by 80%, and the total dura­tion of sleep by 67%” — says the co-author of the study Bjorn Rach, Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Fri­borg, Switzer­land. The only “but” is that such a rem­e­dy only affects those who are sug­gestible, more­over, only women par­tic­i­pat­ed in the study … ” So, if all of the above applies to you, lis­ten to an audio record­ing of hyp­not­ic sug­ges­tions for 15 min­utes before going to bed.

Relax

A hec­tic lifestyle leads to the fact that when you go to bed, you still scroll through unre­solved prob­lems in your head. That is why you need to end the day (and start, by the way, too) with­out fuss. Spend an hour before going to bed with­out a com­put­er and TV, read a book, take a walk, lis­ten to calm music, slow­ly doing house­hold chores. On espe­cial­ly stress­ful days, try to relax with deep breath­ing tech­niques (inhale for 4 counts, exhale for 8 counts) or acu­pres­sure (mas­sag­ing the back of the neck is espe­cial­ly effec­tive in this case).