The Perfect Sleep Cycle
A restful night’s sleep is as important as a healthy diet and regular exercise. If you aren’t sleeping well, you will see many negative effects on your brain function, energy levels, and your health. It can cause unexplained weight gain and increase your risk for a variety of illnesses and diseases.
On the flip side, a good night’s sleep can help you maintain a healthy weight, give you the energy to lead an active lifestyle, and help you feel better overall. If you are struggling to lose weight, one of the first questions your health professional may ask is how well you are sleeping. That is because sleep is vital to keeping your hormones balanced and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
Increase Bright Lights In The Day, Reduce Blue Lights At Night
One of the tricks to get a restful night’s sleep is to increase the bright lights during the day. Everyone has a natural time-keeping clock called the circadian rhythm. When you stay awake at night, it confuses your rhythm and it begins to affect your health negatively.
Keeping bright lights on during daylight hours, keep your circadian rhythm healthy and it increases your energy naturally. As a result, your sleep quality will improve, reducing instances of insomnia.
Another issue that could affect your sleep is too much blue light. Blue lights are electronic devices such as phones, tablets, and computers. It can trick your brain into thinking it’s daytime, throwing your circadian rhythm off.
Expects advice you turn off all blue light devices, including your television, for two hours before going to sleep. It should improve your sleep and help increase your natural melatonin.
Healthline reported that a study found that two hours of bright light was enough to affect the sleep quality in those adults who suffer from severe sleep disturbance. If getting daily sunlight is not feasible, it’s possible to purchase light bulbs that will give you bright light exposure.
Limit Caffeine Late In The Day
Caffeine has many benefits and is arguably one of the most consumed drugs in America. However, when consumed in the evening, it can make sleep downright impossible.
Health experts advise limiting your caffeine six hours before your bedtime to increase your sleep cycle. They encourage you to drink caffeine when you wake up in the morning to enhance your focus, energy and increase your metabolism.
If you notice you are sensitive to caffeine, it’s best to limit your caffeine after 5 p.m. or six hours before your average bedtime. That should be enough to improve your natural sleep cycle.
Limit Daytime Naps
Mayo Clinic reports that another thing you can do to improve your sleep cycle is to limit daytime naps. Long naps can interfere with your nighttime sleep. Health experts recommend if you need a nap to limit it to a 30-minute nap and avoid sleeping in the late afternoon.
When you take regular long naps during the day, it disrupts your internal clock, and it causes you to struggle to sleep at night. Some research suggests that taking regular naps in the day may result if the person being sleepier than the one who doesn’t take any naps at all.
Reduce Alcohol Consumption
Another big problem for healthy sleep cycles is alcohol. Just having a few drinks is often enough to reduce the quality of your sleep. It can impair your natural melatonin production, which plays a key role in sleep well at night.
Alcohol can cause or increase symptoms of sleep apnea, snoring, and disrupted sleep patterns such as waking up and not getting a restful night’s sleep. Health experts say to combat this effect alcohol has on sleep; they recommend not to consume alcoholic beverages four hours before bed.
Take A Melatonin Supplement
There have been several references to your natural melatonin in this article. However, if you still struggle to sleep after making some changes to light, nap schedule, and reducing caffeine and alcohol, you may need to take a supplement.
When exposed to darkness, your body naturally produces melatonin. It is essential not only to go to sleep but to stay asleep all night. Melatonin is one of the best, non-habit-forming sleep aids on the market today.
The Sleep Doctor reports that melatonin works by helping to strengthen your sleep-wake cycles and as a result, helps you stay more alert in the daytime and get better rest at night. It’s no surprise that when you can sleep well, your attitude, energy, and brain function will improve.
Melatonin can be useful to overcome jetlag. If you travel frequently, it could be useful to maintain your healthy sleep cycle even when you travel to another time zone. Scientists believe melatonin could be useful to treat cognitive impairment, neurodegenerative disease, and some cancers.
Implementing these five tips should greatly improve your natural sleep cycle and help you get a good night’s rest. If none of these tips help you, it may be time to make an appointment with your health professional to see if there is something medically wrong preventing your body from getting the sleep it needs.
To learn about other help benefits, check out another articles at Trusted Nutrition related to Intermittent Fasting