Tips for how to sleep well and improve your sleep
Insomnia is a global epidemic that is increasingly spreading, but whose risks we too often underestimate.
For this reason, today, we want to give you 10 tips to sleep better or well and improve the quality of your life .
You must know that the world no longer sleeps!
Said like this it may seem like a catastrophic statement, but the ever-increasing amount of work, the new technologies (smartphones, tablets, smartwatches and the like) that create the so-called “technostress” prevent people from resting in a regenerative way .
Add to all this the communication channels and social networks active 24 hours a day, which has meant that people in every corner of the planet can no longer afford to sleep or rather rest peacefully .
In fact, today 45% of the world's population suffers from insomnia .
It is not just a Swiss or Italian problem, but a global one that threatens our health and quality of life.
To make matters worse, a sad statistic has been reported that 25% of drivers have admitted to falling asleep at the wheel at least once .
How does sleep affect our health? We recommend you stay until the end to discover the benefits of a truly restorative sleep .
Before discovering our 10 tips for sleeping well, some clarifications are necessary on which our advice is based.
How many hours of sleep do you really need to feel good?
The optimal hours of sleep for our body are determined by age, genetics, sleep-wake rhythm, and the quality of sleep itself.
Many studies say that the average sleep duration for an adult is around 7-9 hours .
To be more precise, in the following table you will find, with reference to the age groups, the recommended hours of sleep.
| Age range | Recommended hours of sleep | |
| Newborn | 0-3 months | 14-17 hours |
| Newborn | 4-11 months | 12-15 hours |
| Little child | 1-2 years | 11-14 hours |
| Kindergarten | 3-5 years | 10-13 hours |
| School age | 6-13 years | 9-11 hours |
| Teen | 14-17 years old | 8-10 hours |
| Young adults | 18-25 years old | 7-9 hours |
| Adult | 26-64 years old | 7-9 hours |
| Elderly people | 65 years or older | 7-8 hours |
What are the consequences of sleep deprivation?
The consequences that sleep loss or not sleeping well can have can be recorded throughout the body, the first to appear can be: cognitive deficits, learning and memory disorders .
Additionally, sleep deprivation can impair performance and post-exercise recovery, mood, increase fatigue, and decrease energy.
While poor quality of our sleep can impair our decision-making processes, the speed and accuracy of our performance.
Does sleep affect memory?
As we said earlier, the strong correlation between sleep and memory has been discovered for over a century.
While it is true that sleep loss degrades the body at all levels, the first symptoms that appear are cognitive deficits and memory disorders.
Here's how our brain stores information: During the day, everything we hear and receive is temporarily stored in an area of the brain called the hippocampus.
Considered a passing memory.
Since the capacity of the hippocampus to contain information is not infinite, a periodic “reset” is necessary to prevent new information from “overwriting” the old one.
This task is entrusted to sleep, you should know that while we sleep (therefore in the absence of new information) our brain processes the contents of the hippocampus by storing useful information in the frontal neocortex and eliminates superfluous information by consolidating our long-term memory, in this way the hippocampus is freed and is ready to face the following day, managing to capture all the necessary information.
As we have seen, good quality and quantity of sleep is useful not only to “free up” space in the hippocampus, but also to better integrate the new information acquired during the day with that which we already had in our stable memory.
How many stages of sleep are there?
There are essentially two phases of sleep:
- Slow wave sleep (SWS), also called non-REM (NREM), is the deepest phase of sleep and is usually predominant during the first part of our night's rest and decreases in intensity and duration as the hours pass.
- Deep sleep (SWS) is contrasted by the REM phase (i.e. rapid eye movement), which is less deep and increasingly intense and extended towards the end of the sleep period.
You should know that normally, during the night, you go through several sleep cycles, switching from NREM to REM in about 90 minutes .
You don't believe it , try this exercise : decide the time you want to wake up, for example 6.30 in the morning.
Calculate backwards, 90 minute cycles and consider 7-9 hours of sleep, so: 6.30am - 5.00am - 3.30am - 2.00am - 12.30pm - 9.30pm , you will have to go to bed at 9.30pm or 11.00pm.
Is an afternoon nap good for you?
Napping is often considered synonymous with laziness. Nothing could be more wrong .
Hundreds of experiments have revealed the enormous benefits associated with even very short periods of sleep .
So closing your eyes for a few minutes every day can help you develop a stronger memory, be more alert, improve your reaction time and your productivity. Natural remedies can also improve the quality of your sleep.
Why do I often feel sleepy during the day?
Our immune system promotes tiredness and drowsiness when our body is recovering from an infection
It is a defense mechanism put in place to save energy.
This “mechanism” is also activated when we introduce a dysfunctional food into our body such as a GMO or irradiated food .
So post-prandial sleepiness (especially after lunch), unless you have accumulated a strong sleep debt, can be caused by a virus, a bacterium or a dysfunctional food that activates an immune response in our body.
10 Tips for Better Sleep
Now, after learning more about sleep, how it affects our bodies, how many hours of sleep we should get on average, and why we should never deprive ourselves of it.
It's time to read the reasons why you are on this article, here are the 10 tips for sleeping well:
- Try to go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every morning , even on weekends, possibly sleep from 10pm to 6am.
- Make sure that the room where you sleep is completely dark, quiet, relaxing and with a generally cool temperature of 15 to 18 degrees .
- Remove all electronic devices (e.g. TV, computer, smartphone ) from your bed while you sleep and turn them off at least 30 minutes before going to bed .
- Avoid having a too large dinner or going to sleep hungry.
- Do not drink alcohol or stimulant-energizing drinks (e.g. energy drinks, coffee, tea) in the evening.
- Avoid strenuous exercise and exposure to bright artificial lights in the late hours of the day.
- Take a warm bath 90 minutes before getting under the covers , it will more easily lower your internal body temperature in the following hours, consequently improving the quality of your sleep.
- Drink a herbal tea with a relaxing effect (e.g. Melissa, Linden, Hawthorn, Passionflower, Valerian, Hemp Sativa)
- Read a paper book in bed , before going to sleep or plan a relaxing activity such as meditation or deep breathing , with a warm and relaxing indirect light such as that coming from salt lamps.
- Integrates micronutrients with an anxiolytic-calming effect (e.g. magnesium, hawthorn, saffron, Vit. B)
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Buy NowSleep Better, Sleep: Brain Detox
We have just seen the 10 tips for sleeping better, but the best way to conclude this article is to reiterate a simple concept, but often underestimated:
Sleep is essential for the health of our brain and its functioning.
In fact, good sleep increases attention, promotes concentration, increases emotional control, promotes creativity, reduces anxiety and depression and is essential for memory and its consolidation.
You should know that brain cells produce a kind of “toxic waste.” If allowed to accumulate, it has a negative effect on thinking, behavior, and mood.
To prevent this from happening, the body regularly releases a special cleansing fluid called “cerebrospinal fluid” into the brain tissue. This fluid removes unwanted waste and carries it to the liver for detoxification.
Brain cells contract at night and the space between them increases by about 60%. This allows a large amount of cerebrospinal fluid to flow rapidly through the brain, carrying away toxins very efficiently.
So the advice we can give you to no longer have sleep disorders and difficulty falling asleep is:
To live a healthy, healthier and better quality life, get a good night's sleep every night by following our instructions!
Sources:
- World Association of Sleep Medicine (WASM) Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2019 Feb; 54:120–126. Published online 2018 Oct 23. doi: 10.1016/j.conb.2018.10.006
- J Therm Biol. 2018 Dec;78:192-203.doi: 10.1016/j.jtherbio.2018.09.012. Epub 2018 Oct 5 Review Nat Rev Immunol. November 2019; 19 (11): 702-715.
