Some basic sleep hygiene (copied from Healthy Sleep Habits - Sleep Education by the AASM)
Follow these tips to establish healthy sleep habits:
- Keep a consistent sleep schedule. Get up at the same time every day, even on weekends or during vacations.
- Set a bedtime that is early enough for you to get at least 7-8 hours of sleep.
- Don’t go to bed unless you are sleepy.
- If you don’t fall asleep after 20 minutes, get out of bed. Go do a quiet activity without a lot of light exposure. It is especially important to not get on electronics.
- Establish a relaxing bedtime routine.
- Use your bed only for sleep and sex.
- Make your bedroom quiet and relaxing. Keep the room at a comfortable, cool temperature.
- Limit exposure to bright light in the evenings.
- Turn off electronic devices at least 30 minutes before bedtime.
- Don’t eat a large meal before bedtime. If you are hungry at night, eat a light, healthy snack.
- Exercise regularly and maintain a healthy diet.
- Avoid consuming caffeine in the afternoon or evening.
- Avoid consuming alcohol before bedtime.
- Reduce your fluid intake before bedtime.
These might seem like nothing special. But they work. If you practise 'm all. I don’t follow all these rules myself and my sleep suffers as a consequence. For example, I check my phone when I wake up at night. Really bad. I read in bed. I shouldn’t really. We need to associate our beds with sleep (and with sex maybe), not with reading. I drink too much coffee too late in the day. I eat and drink too much too late at night.
When I drank I fell into a black hole when I went to bed, some sort of comatose state from which I woke -on average- some five hours later, hungover and often still under the influence and hungover. I never dreamt.
Then I got sober and a much more natural sleeping pattern emerged, with periods of deep sleep and lighter sleep following each other, dreaming which I had to get used to, waking up and falling asleep again, or sometimes not feeling asleep again. This happens till today. It’s very unusual for me not to be able to fall asleep, but I tend to wake up a lot at night.
For me it all comes down to my mental health. I sleep best when I’m not anxious, not depressed, when I generally feel good. That might seem like something very obvious, but it’s still worth considering. Good sleep comes with good health, mentally, physically, spiritually. So it might be a good idea to focus on that and good sleep will follow, if combined with a good bedtime routine and sleep hygiene.
… So that’s a good thing because it’s helpful!)