Take back the night, A simple guide to a good routine

Sleep is one of the most important aspects of overall health and in modern times the emphasis on a good night's sleep has gotten less and less. With the rise of hustle culture which prides itself on working insane hours and getting little to no rest, we live our lives on a blueprint for disaster as sleep deprivation has a lot of negative implications for both your mental and physical health.

Mental health:

When it comes to mental health, a lack of sleep can be a large factor between feeling good and feeling bad. I am not saying that mental health can be magically fixed by a good night's sleep but it can help ease your mind if you optimize and my advice is to focus on the basics of sleep, nutrition, and exercise as all three of these have been shown to positively effect mental health. When you lack sleep everything feels ten times harder to perform, workouts feel weak studying feels close to impossible. Sleep can improve mental clarity, overall mood, and memory.

Physical health:

Sleep is where the majority of recovery takes place and gives your body a chance to mend from the accumulation of both physical and mental stress throughout the day. A lack of sleep can increase the risk of several different conditions:

• Depression

• Hypertension

• Obesity

• Cardiovascular Disease

How to get a good night's sleep:

Now that we have discussed why sleep is important we can now talk about how to make a solid sleep routine and get a restful night.

1. Routine

Routine is the first part of the equation the aim should be to go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day. This does your circadian rhythm a world of good as your body gets used to when to get tired which leads to consistent energy levels throughout the day.

Bonus tip set two alarms a day one for waking up and one for getting ready for bed this allows you time to relax.

1. Creating the environment

Sleep isn’t something you can force it’s something that happens when your body feels relaxed enough to fall asleep. This is where optimising works well as we have the control to make an environment made for good sleep.

Here are three things you can do to sleep better:

Use your bed for only sleep, today people work from their bed, watch TV in their bed, and lounge in their bed. Consistently doing other things will make your brain disassociate sleep from the bed.

Have a dark room, bright lights can disrupt the production of melatonin and negatively affect your circadian rhythm. Keeping a darker room can help you fall asleep faster and achieve a deeper sleep.

Keep the stress to a minimum, this is easier said than done but it is important as the body needs to be calm to get a good night's sleep. Both mental and physical stress can cause an increase in cortisol (the stress hormone) which makes it harder to sleep and lessens the quality of sleep.

Conclusion:

Sleep is one of the best tools in your toolbox and lack of it can be holding you back from the life you want an easy structure can help you rest easy and bring back energy, so don’t neglect it.

Thanks for reading this article and I hope you have a restful night's sleep today but before you nod off, give this a share if you think this can help someone.