Here's How to Get the Sleep Amount—and Quality—You Need
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Medically reviewed by Kashif J. Piracha, MD
Getting adequate sleep is important for your physical and mental health. The National Sleep Foundation recommends seven to nine hours of sleep for adults between 18 and 64 years old and seven to eight hours of sleep for those who are 65 and older. Children, toddler, infants, and newborns need even more sleep.
Many people don’t get the recommended amount of sleep, though. In fact, 35% of adults report averaging less than seven hours of sleep a night. Inadequate sleep can negatively impact mood, mental sharpness, and daily productivity. Here’s how to get the sleep amount—and quality—you need for maximum rest and productivity.
Tips for Improved Sleep
There are small changes you can make to your daily routine to achieve maximum sleep each night. Here are some tips that can help you fall asleep sooner, snooze longer, and wake up feeling better rested.
Be Consistent
Your circadian rhythm is the physical, mental, and behavioral 24-hour cycle that helps regulate what time of day you feel sleepy. Circadian rhythm is ran through body temperature regulation and hormone release.
Slight changes in the environment, such as daylight or a change in temperature, and your schedule can disrupt this natural cycle. When your circadian rhythm becomes out of sync, the time your body begins to naturally unwind is affected. You might have trouble falling asleep, experience fragmented or poor sleep, or wake up throughout the night without being able to fall back asleep.
To keep your circadian rhythm in check, it’s important to establish a consistent wake-sleep cycle by going to bed and waking up at the same time every day. This conditions your body to become sleepy at a certain time each night and remain alert throughout the day.
Create a Relaxing Sleep Environment
Following a day-night cycle, your body is biologically designed to produce more melatonin in the evening to allow you to sleep throughout the night. It is also around bedtime that body temperature begins to fall to create the ideal environment for sleep.
To ensure optimal sleep, it’s important to follow the body’s natural processes. Keep bright lights during the evening to a minimum. Turn off electronics like TVs, laptops, tablets, and phones two to three hours before bedtime, as blue light has been shown to suppress melatonin production.
Since your circadian rhythm is most sensitive to light about one hour after you wake up and up to two hours before bed, investing in blackout curtains could also help you naturally adjust to a consistent sleep-wake cycle.
You’ll also want to lower the thermostat between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit just before bed to prevent night sweats.
Avoid Certain Drinks and Foods Before Bed
Drinking too much right before bed can cause frequent urination overnight. Having alcohol or caffeine after dinner can cause you to have to get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night too.
Besides how much you drink, what you drink—and eat—can impact your sleep too. Some drinks and foods you may want to reconsider shortly before bed:
Alcohol: Consuming even low amounts of alcohol can disrupt your cardiovascular relaxation during sleep. Alcohol consumption may also be linked to rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder, which causes you to act out the dreams you have during a stage of sleep crucial to a good night’s rest. For optimal sleep, limit alcoholic beverages to just one several hours before bedtime.
Caffeine: Caffeine is a stimulant that can increase alertness and reduce sleep. The effects of caffeine begin about 30 minutes after consumption, and half the dose can be felt at least five hours afterward. To prevent sleep interference, avoid caffeine at least six hours before bedtime.
Acidic foods: Citrus fruits, artificial sweeteners, carbonated beverages, and certain grains and fish all contain higher levels of acidity that delay the time it takes for the stomach to empty. The result is an increase in acid reflux, when your stomach contents come back up into your esophagus. Limiting acidic foods or swapping them for alternatives can help lower associated symptoms.
High-fat foods: Foods with high fat have been shown to cause an increase in symptoms that mimic acid reflux. To avoid potential symptoms, heavy meals should be eaten two to three hours prior to bedtime.
Spicy foods: Heartburn, indigestion, and acid reflux can all result from eating foods on the spicier side. Lying down before food is fully digested can intensify symptoms, causing stomach acid to creep into the esophagus and irritate the lining. Additionally, spicy meals increase body temperature, which some research has linked to poorer sleep quality. Keep symptoms to a minimum by avoiding spicy foods altogether or indulging earlier in the day, at times when you’re most active.
Be Active During the Day
Exercising regularly helps you attain more quality sleep by helping regulate your circadian rhythm. But when you do that exercise is key. People who exercise at 7 a.m. have been found to sleep more hours each night, get deeper sleep, and spend 75% more time in restorative sleep than those who work out at other times of the day.
Doing an intense cardio workout close to bedtime can negatively impact sleep because the exercise can increase your body temperature and heart rate—two things that should be lower when trying to go to sleep. With that in mind, try to finish intense exercises one to two hours before bed.
If you want to do some sort of workout before bed, try yoga or stretching exercises. They can help relax you for bed.
Take Naps If You Need To
Research has shown that naps can help the body recover from fatigue and increase mental cognition. And napping for the appropriate amount of time can help you avoid grogginess and ensure a restful night’s sleep. To achieve maximum results, short naps should be between 15 and 30 minutes, and long naps should last no more than 90 minutes.
To further avoid nighttime interference, it’s best to take a short nap in the early afternoon before 2 p.m. It’s also best to set an alarm to ensure you wake up after an appropriate amount of time.
Don't Lie Awake in Bed
Conditioning the brain to associate the bed with sleep can help you fall asleep faster. Meanwhile, lying in bed struggling to sleep can cause your brain to connect the bed with stress. If you’re unable to fall asleep shortly after your scheduled bedtime, engage in a relaxing activity outside of the bedroom to reinforce the bed-sleep connection.
Relax Before Going to Bed
Engaging in low-energy activities before bed can help you unwind after a long day and prepare your body for rest. Here are some ways you might relax:
Sip calming teas like chamomile and lavender
Read a book
Take a warm bath
Play soothing music
Things That May Be Impacting Your Sleep
Approximately 50 to 70 million Americans have chronic sleep disorders. Four of the most prevalent sleep disorders include:
Insomnia: An inability to fall and stay asleep
Narcolepsy: Excessive sleepiness during the day that impedes daily functioning and that can make it hard to sleep through the night
Restless legs syndrome: An unpleasant sensation in the legs that’s momentarily alleviated by movement
Sleep apnea: Momentary gasps for air when your breathing stops or is reduced that interrupts sleep
If your sleep troubles are from a sleep disorder, they could be from factors like:
Anxiety
Seasonal allergies
A healthcare provider can help determine whether there are any conditions—sleep disorder or otherwise—that are impacting your sleep.
What Happens If You Don't Get the Sleep You Need
Inadequate sleep can affect your ability to perform everyday activities such as driving a car, socializing, and functioning at work or school. Poor sleep can also interfere with your mood, making you frustrated, cranky, or anxious. Consistent sleep loss can even result in chronic health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, obesity and depression. That’s why it’s important to not only get an adequate amount of sleep each night, but quality sleep.
Quality sleep is usually achieved when you spend 85% or more of your time in bed sleeping. Poor sleep quality is considered taking longer than 30 minutes to fall asleep, frequently waking throughout the night, or taking longer than 20 minutes to fall back asleep after waking up during a sleep cycle.
A typical night’s rest consists of four sleep stages. There are three stages of non-rapid eye movement that lead to REM. The stages, in order, are:
N1 (light sleep)
N2 (deeper sleep)
N3 (deepest non-REM sleep)
REM
Although all stages are vital aspects of sleep quality, waking up during N3 has been shown to cause impaired mental performance for 30 minutes to an hour after waking up.
A Quick Review
Sleep is essential to your everyday health and well-being. For most adults, less than seven hours of quality sleep each night can negatively impact mood, mental sharpness, and daily productivity. Regularly engaging in physical activity, eating a nutritious diet, having a consistent bedtime, and creating a relaxing sleep environment can all help promote quality sleep. By getting the quantity and quality of sleep you need, you can be more refreshed, alert, and help prevent chronic health conditions like high blood pressure.
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Read the original article on Health.
