Most of us know that sleep is essential for maintaining good health and wellbeing. Getting a good night’s sleep helps protect both your psychological and physical health, improves your quality of life and supports growth, development and repair. These are key elements to maintain during your recovery.  Each person’s sleep needs vary. On average, a person needs 8 hours sleep a night in order to function well during the day, however, some people need as little as 5 hours and some people might not be able to function without 10 hours of sleep a night. 

 

Our modern and extremely busy modern lives, sleep is becoming less and less of a priority.  Those extra minutes and hours we convince ourselves can be better spent catching up on all the things we didn’t get around to doing in the day.  Ironically, as we eat into our rest time, development and repair are the first two elements to suffer and not long after are your quality of life and psychological well-being.

 

With so much at stake, it is surprising that so many of us manage on too few hours of sleep.   Feeling sleep deprived has become the new normal and many see tiredness as something to be expected and worse often view feeling exhausted as a direct link to success in careers and a necessary cost for that success.

 

some basic tips to get started.

 

Do….

 

 

- Aim to keep the bedroom just for sleep and intimacy to create an association between being in bed and going to sleep.  Make your bed in the morning, when you return home, prepare the room for sleep, turn on low lights, turn the sheets down. 

 

- Build a well-established night time routine to get your brain in the habit of sleeping at a set time and to prepare yourself for sleep, in turn, reaffirming a daily mental connection with your bedroom and rest, creating an attractive image of rest, relaxation and recovery.

 

- Aim to record your sleep patterns, even a basic diary of recorded hours and minutes of sleep offer huge insight into habits and nearly always the results challenge what we convince ourselves is probably the case.

 

- Aim to rise at a similar time all days, exercise regularly, our bodies and brains thrive on regularity

 

- Maintain a comfortable sleeping environment: - Not too hot or cold - Reduce noise and light levels
(try earplugs or use music to distract from unwanted noises) 

 

- Remove the clock (or phone) from your bedside table, or turn it away so you can’t ‘clock watch’ 

 

- Aim to eat a light meal, earlier in the evening 

 

- If you can’t get to sleep within 20–30 mins, get up, leave your bedroom and do something relaxing until you feel sleepy again. Do this if you wake up in the night as well. This will help minimize the association of being awake in bed 

 

- Play relaxing music: Can be soothing sounds or your favorite music down at low volume 

 

- Aim for a long relaxing shower or even better warm bath before bed:  Try using lavender scents in the bath and on your pillow (or any scent you find calming) 

 

Don’t.

 

- Avoid using backlit screens such as TV, smartphones or tablets or doing other daytime activities in bed to break the association between bed and activity 

 

- Avoid smoking just before bed as nicotine is a stimulant 

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- Avoid staying up late chatting with friends (either in person or online/on the phone) 

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- Avoid ‘making up for lost sleep’ another time, e.g. napping during the day or lie-ins
at weekends 

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- Avoid alcohol, it severely reduces sleep quality, dehydrates the body and stops you feeling rested 

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- Avoid stimulating activity 90 mins before bed e.g. computer use, games TV etc. 

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- Avoid exercise within 4 hours of bed as it raises your core body temperature which affects your ability to fall asleep 

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- Don’t have the heat up too high in your bedroom - Being too warm at night can affect your sleep as your body drops its temperature to induce sleep 

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- Avoid using smartphone apps to record sleep if they require being on your mattress, whilst they fashionable to use they more often than not cause distraction and dent the quality, if not the quantity of your sleep.