Improve Your Sleep With These Scientifically Proven Ways

When you try to see and observe which issues athletes are facing mostly, you will find sleep disturbances. Trouble falling asleep is a very common issue among athletes, particularly in beginners who don’t know how to tackle that issue. Most sports sessions are completed in the evening, most probably till eight. After coming home just after a workout, they can’t sleep, and they feel like an insomniac person. Not falling asleep earlier makes them tired even more for the next day. This hampers their next-day training and workout, thereby reducing productivity.

Following are some strategies to improve your sleep. If you are having trouble sleeping, here are five factors that can have a big impact on your sleep.

• When the daylight begins to fade, the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the brain senses this and signals a pineal gland to secrete melatonin, which helps control your sleep-wake cycle. Unfortunately, this signal can be halted by artificial light, which delays the release of melatonin. Light receptors in your eyes are most sensitive to blue light waves. These light waves send a strong signal to the brain that it is time to start the wake cycle. LED bulbs, computer screens, and phones all emit plenty of blue light.

• It only takes 8 to 10 lakhs to delay the release of melatonin, but most household lights are much brighter. This impacts the generation and quality of sleep, making us feel more tired the next day. To avoid disrupting your sleep, use blackout curtains at night. Increase the warmth of your computer screen to reduce blue light, dim or change the color of lights, wear yellow-tinted glasses, and avoid electronics or watching TV in bed.

Melatonin release is naturally mediated by the setting sun in the corresponding drop in temperature. Your core body temperature must drop one degree Celsius to initiate sleep. This drop is detected by the brain and helps initiate the release of melatonin. Room temperatures should be in the range of 65 to 68 degrees. Also taking a hot shower before sleeping can help drop your core body temperature.

The average American consumes three to four hundred milligrams of caffeine, equivalent to 3 to 4 cups of coffee per day. Caffeine has a half-life of five to seven hours, meaning that 50% of caffeine is still present in the body after that time and can still interfere with your sleep. In one study, a moderate amount of caffeine taken at bedtime three hours before or six hours before sleeping led to a significant reduction in sleep quality compared to placebo.

It is not true that alcohol helps you sleep better. Alcohol is actually a sedative and impairs brain activity, which is essential during sleep. Alcohol affects sleep in the following ways: first, it fragments sleep, leading to periods of awakening. Second, it severely suppresses REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, impacting memory integration and learning. The best advice is to avoid it completely.

• Waking up for work or school has led to a chronically sleep-deprived society. But this can be improved by maintaining a regular schedule. Exercising daily has enormous health benefits. One of those benefits is improving sleep quality. Setting an alarm for going to sleep is just as important as setting an alarm to wake up. Avoiding long afternoon naps ensures you are not wide awake at night.

• Studies show that doing a self-assessment of our own sleep quality is unreliable. So, tracking your sleep using wearable devices may offer greater insight into how you are sleeping. If you find yourself lying in bed, not able to sleep, it's better to leave and do something else and return when you are tired. If these sleep tips don't help, then a sleep study may be needed to rule out medical causes such as obstructive sleep apnea.

• Many people, when they are facing trouble falling asleep, try to use some things that are known to be useful for making them sleep. They accidentally use those things that are actually harmful and hurt their sleep. They use them for the purpose of improving their sleep, but in fact, they are making their sleep even worse.

• Two good examples of such things are alcohol and marijuana. Many people take a little bit of drink in the evening or a little dose of marijuana in the evening after work. They think that by doing this, they will sleep better. That is actually not true. This false belief is because people think that sedation is sleep. Alcohol and marijuana both cause sedation. They don’t make you sleep.

• Being sleepy and drowsy is very different from actually sleeping. With sedation, you are intentionally making yourself unconscious. You are not sleeping. People feel sedation after taking things like these, and they think that they have found the cure to their sleeping problems. In reality, it is having a lot of problems with your sleep.

• The first problem is a fake sense of sleep and unconsciousness. You are not sleeping, and you will not feel fresh the next day.

• The second problem is if you continue taking these drugs for longer periods, you have to increase the dose. The smaller dose that you start with will not work anymore for you to cause sedation. So, the increased dose and increased problems.

• The third problem is you will become entirely dependent on that sedation feeling. You will not be able to sleep without these drugs after some time. You will become addicted to these drugs.

• The fourth problem you are going to face with these drugs is the withdrawal syndrome. You cannot abruptly leave taking these drugs. You will have severe withdrawal symptoms if you do this. So, you will become severely addicted to these drugs.

• Alcohol will litter your sleep with many more awakenings throughout the night. You will not feel restored and fresh the next morning. This is not the real problem. The real problem is that people don’t remember that they have been waking up throughout the night again and again. They will not realize that this problem is due to alcohol, which is continuously disrupting their sleep throughout the night.

• The next thing alcohol does with your sleep is that it blocks your REM sleep, the dream sleep, which is essential for a variety of your functions. It either blocks or significantly reduces the REM sleep. In one study conducted in the 1980s, it was found shockingly that if you are deprived of your REM sleep and not getting your dream sleep for some days, it would be as dangerous for you as food deprivation. It simply means that REM sleep is as necessary as your food.

• Well, you must have thought after all that discussion, what happens when you miss sleeping completely for a night or a part of the night? Can you get back that lost sleep? If you sleep in the day, can you recover your lost sleep by that? Let's answer these questions one by one. Sleep is not like the bank in which you can’t accumulate debt continuously with the hope of paying it off after some time. Let's make it more clear.

• Suppose there is an individual who gets deprived of sleep for a whole night of eight hours. Then, you provide that individual with a recovery night for sleep the next day or even the next day. Suppose that an individual slept for more than eight hours. Did that person get back all of the lost eight hours in which he did not sleep? The answer is no. You cannot compensate for that lost sleep. You can never get that sleep back.

• So, you can never accumulate the debt with the hope to pay it off later on. It is very common for people to do that they will not sleep for eight hours every day during the week day. Then suddenly, on the weekend, they will sleep a lot. They have a belief that they have completed their sleep by oversleeping at the weekends.

• There was a study conducted in which it was found that people who are not getting enough sleep or have less than eight hours of sleep have 65% increased chances of mortality than those with getting eight hours of sleep. The study also observed the other group. This group was having two to three hours less sleep during the weekdays and was oversleeping at the weekend.

• This group was slightly better in terms of mortality rate than the previous one. The point is even if you are not having less life due to sleeping less. The chances are very high that you are going to suffer a diseased life. You will lack a healthy life. The diseases most likely to affect you are obesity, diabetes, and a poor cardiovascular system. Even those people who try to oversleep during the weekends are likely to suffer from these diseases. It supports the fact that you cannot recover your lost sleep even at the weekends.

• Some people wake up in multiple awakenings by snoozing their alarm. They snooze and sleep again for some time. Unfortunately, this is not a good habit, and this is very common among people. Regularity is very important for your sleep. You should go to bed at a fixed time. You should wake up at a fixed time. However, alarms can help you in doing that. But snoozing your alarm and then sleeping for some time is not a good thing to do.

• A study was conducted to find out its consequences. It was found that multiple awakenings put stress on your cardiovascular system and increase your stress levels. But you will think now that you are only pressing the snooze button three to four times. Well, for once in a while, it will not have an effect on your health. But if you are doing that continuously for a number of days, then you are definitely going to have some bad consequences.

Follow these scientific strategies to improve your sleep. Sleep is important part of your life. It makes you fresh and energetic. Without enough sleep, you cannot be energetic for the next day. You won’t feel fresh. Ever wondered why you feel tired in the morning after waking up? Or have you ever thought about why you feel drowsy throughout your day when you are at work? This all happens because you are not getting enough sleep. Just getting enough sleep every day solves many problems in your life. Besides solving problems it will also help in your daily activities, whether they are physical or even mental. Avoid those things that are stopping you from getting enough sleep and get to those things that are beneficial for your sleep.

You should avoid the following things for better sleep;

• Artificial Light

• Temperature

• Caffeine

• Alcohol

• Marijuana

Some people wake up in multiple awakenings by snoozing their alarm. They snooze and sleep again for some time. Unfortunately, this is not a good habit, and this is very common among people. It was found that multiple awakenings put stress on your cardiovascular system and increase your stress levels. For once in a while it will not have effect on your health. But if you are doing that continuously for number of days, then you are definitely going to have some bad consequences.

You cannot compensate for that lost sleep. You can never get that sleep back. So, you can never accumulate the debt with the hope to pay it off later on. It is very common for people to do that they will not sleep for eight hours every day during the week day. Then suddenly, on the weekend, they will sleep a lot. They have a belief that they have completed their sleep by oversleeping at the weekends. This is the misconception.