Getting a night of unsatisfying sleep is a universally disliked experience. Whether you’re taking too long to fall asleep or waking up in the middle of the night, low-quality rest can negatively impact your mental and physical health.
But good news: you don’t have to stay in prolonged suffering! There are proven ways to increase your sleep quality. Here’s a guide to understanding sleep and how you can get the rest you need.
Why Do We Need Sleep?
Anyone who has involuntarily fallen asleep knows how hard it is to resist sleep. In the same way our stomachs grumble and our throats get dry when we’re hungry and thirsty, our bodies give us cues when we need rest: we yawn, our eyes get droopy, and our heads become heavy. Our bodies are primed to recognize sleep as a core necessity.
And although the science of sleep is complex, there’s one main takeaway from all the research: sleep is vital to our physical and mental health. We know that sleep is linked to our ability to mend ourselves since vital restorative capabilities, like muscle growth and tissue repair, happen while we sleep. Sleep also promotes memory retention and learning; in the absence of sleep, we can experience difficulty retaining information and impaired judgment.
Health experts recommend that adults get at least 7 hours of sleep a night, but if you’re not getting quality sleep, you may be sleeping less than the recommended hours. This can lead to problems like increased muscle pain or diminished mental performance. So, how do we sleep better at night?
4 Key Tips for Better Sleep at Night
1. Implement a regular schedule of moderate exercise
We all know that exercise is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle. But if you need yet another reason to exercise daily, here it is: exercise helps you fall asleep faster and improves the quality of your sleep.
Exercise is essential for preventing various diseases like diabetes, but it’s deeply linked to your sleep quality, too. Research shows us that exercise can increase the amount of deep, restorative sleep you get while decreasing the amount of time it takes to fall asleep. The most effective way to leverage exercise for better sleep at night is to implement a regular schedule of moderate exercise, like walking two miles within thirty minutes.
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2. Keep to consistent bedtimes and wake times
If you’re tired from restless nights, it’s tempting to fit in sleep whenever you can. You may be sleeping in or taking naps. But the best way to get better sleep is to keep to a routine, and that afternoon nap can disrupt your chances for quality rest at night.
Your body is ruled by your own internal clock, called a circadian rhythm, which influences your sleep cycle. Your circadian rhythm is best regulated when you wake up and sleep at the same time every day, so it’s best that you head to bed and set an alarm for the same time every day. Cut out naps and irregular sleep times (which also means no more hitting the snooze button whenever you can!) and you may see an improvement in your sleep quality.
NatureWise’s NightTime Slim supports consistent bedtimes. This supplement contains melatonin, which helps signal to your body that it’s time to sleep. Plus, it includes other ingredients like L-Theanine and L-Tryptophan, which encourage peaceful sleep so you can wake up as rested as possible.
3. Regulate your stress
Stress, begone! Stress can be any emotional or physical strain that we feel. And while stress is a normal part of the human experience, long-term or intense stress will have negative consequences on our health, including our sleep.
Stress and sleep are closely linked. Stress can decrease the quality of your sleep, but less sleep can also make you feel more stressed. In fact, 43% of American adults have reported that “stress has caused them to lie awake at night in the past month”. So if your thoughts are racing and you’re feeling tense, seek out ways you can help relax your body and mind. Many favor deep breathing as a solution to disengage from stressful thoughts. Additionally, journaling has been found to reduce stress and anxiety. These two popular stress-relieving techniques require minimal resources but have maximum impact.
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4. Reduce your caffeine intake
It’s no shock that caffeine waves away sleepiness. In fact, this is exactly what we hope for it to do when we drink our morning coffee. But caffeine consumption can affect our sleep quality more seriously than we think.
More specifically, caffeine can impact how much deep sleep we get, making us more tired the next morning. And thus, the cycle begins. We drink coffee to stay awake; it then decreases our sleep quality, and we drink more coffee. To get better sleep at night, it’s best to cut your caffeine intake. If completely removing caffeine seems like a giant leap, try consuming caffeine only in the mornings, leaving a significant gap of time before you head to bed.
If you need an extra boost throughout the day to keep yourself on a regulated sleep schedule, try adding Magnesium to your diet. Magnesium can provide elevated energy levels and restorative sleep, so you can forgo naps and ensure better rest sleep at night.
Here’s to Better Sleep and a Better You
We can all experience lack of quality sleep at any point in our lives, and it’s best to tackle it as soon as possible. However, consult your doctor if you suspect that your restless sleep is linked to more serious problems, like breathing troubles or mental health concerns.
Most people spend a third of their day sleeping, so it’s only natural to want the best sleep possible. These tips will help get better sleep at night and improve the overall quality of your health!