The Best Tips For Sleeping Better
Having a hard time falling or staying asleep at night? Before you break out the supplements you’re going to want to learn how to sleep better at night naturally. There are more than 10 healthy sleep habits you need!
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Why do we need healthy sleep habits?
I never understand when people say they can sleep on four hours of sleep a night. Studies have shown time and time again that humans need sleep. You can’t optimize your body to need less than the normal 7-8 hours of zzz’s. (However, there are a very small percentage of people who can feel rested at 6, but they are the exception, not the rule.)
What happens when you don’t get enough sleep?
Lack of sleep has many negative effects. And it can really impair your everyday life. Here are some of the ways that no sleep can effect you in many ways:
Impacts your mood - You can be temperamental, easily annoyed
Makes you Incoherent - Forgetful, brain fog, have a lapse in judgment
Disrupts your emotional wellbeing - You can become depressed
Can causes stress & delirium - You can feel like you’re losing it and become extremely anxious.
Even just one of these side effects can be a super downer. That's why it’s important to get sleep regulated so you can feel and be better!
Here are tips for sleeping better!
Stay Nourished
There are key foods that help you sleep especially if you eat them daily!
Eat Beans
How do we get rid of these hormones? By eating beans! Yep, soluble fiber is the only thing that removes excess hormones from our body. If you don’t have any source of soluble fiber, hormones only build up in your body causing tons of issues in your gut, inflammation, and more!
Beans remove the hormones, but they also contain magnesium. Magnesium is essential for a good night’s rest, as it relaxes the body and muscles.
Get More Magnesium & Melatonin.
Like beans, Nuts and Vegetables are essential for great sleep. Nuts and vegetables contain essential minerals like magnesium. Nuts also contain melatonin, a hormone that your brain produces in response to darkness. It helps with the timing of your circadian rhythms (24-hour internal clock) and with sleep.
Before you buy a few bottles of supplements, focus on eating whole foods first. Seriously, buy some nuts and extra veggies each week so you can get a good night’s rest.
Supplements are only meant to supplement your health and usually for a short time. They’re not a life long solution.
Get Your Body Ready
How to sleep better naturally is all about getting back into our bodies and feeling the light!
Exercise
Exercising for a minimum of 30 minutes a day in any way that feels good to you. From your favorite low-impact exercises or even cleaning the entire house is movement that your body needs!
Learn to relax
Meditation and any type of relaxation techniques can be super helpful in getting better sleep. Meditation can mean anything (even watching tv), but the more you spend actively destressing the better you will get at it!
Get more sunlight
There are many benefits to getting sunlight! First off, just 10-minutes a day will fulfill your vitamin D requirements. Heck yes, but sunlight makes you feel good.
But even more importantly, sunshine can play a role in regulating hormones and sleep patterns. Probably because the sun produces melanin in your skin, which is melatonin which we know encourages better shut-eye!
Remove Sleep Disruptors
If you’ve struggled with sleep these are tips for insomnia.
Quit Coffee
If you want to learn how to sleep better with anxiety then you should definitely quit coffee. It’s probably doing more harm than you think.
One of the things that I learned from following the Karen Hurd Bean Protocol/Diet is that hormones are constantly recycled in our bodies. Once coffee is consumed in the body, it gets a round the world ticket through your bloodstream. And every time it makes a trip, you feel the effects of caffeine.
No wonder you can’t sleep! Those hormones are raging through every 20 minutes, even through the wee hours of the morning.
Don’t Drink Alcohol
Alcohol makes it super easy to fall asleep, but it completely ruins your REM sleep. This means you won’t be getting enough sleep to function properly. Depending on how sensitive you are to alcohol, even drinking one glass/of beer can impact your sleep.
According to the SleepFoundaton.org, one single drink can decrease the quality of your sleep by 9%!
Eek!
I don’t have to be a scientist to tell you that alcohol massively impacts my quality of sleep. Even day drinking, followed up with gallons of water, ruins my sleep. I’m not in my twenties anymore!
Reduce Bluelight
If you’re not sleeping well, you might want to reduce blue light after dark. Blue light prevents the absorption of melatonin, and keeps you up!
Some people go as far as using red lights only at night or even using candles to light their space. But a much easier solution to bluelight are Blueblocker glasses.
Stop Scrolling and Watching TV
Feeling anxious or excited by scrolling through social media or watching the news or the latest Netflix drama or action flick?
Well Instagram and Law & Order SVU are probably keeping you from a good night’s rest. Anxiety and excitement can wake the body when it’s time to go to bed which can disrupt your circadian rhythm.
Save the action movies or TikToks for the afternoon.
Create a Sleep Routine
Once you’ve nourished your body for sleep and limited the use of sleep disruptors, it’s time to create a routine - these are tips on how to sleep through the night.
Take a magnesium Bath
If you’re really struggling with relaxing before bed, I highly recommend a magnesium bath. I’ve done these and it completely relaxes my muscles so I can jump into bed and feel super loosey goosey.
I typically like to take these baths when I’m extremely stressed or sore.
Take time to Wind down
Whether you work from home, are a stay at home parent, or go to an office, the stress of the day can really stay with you. Each night, right before you’re ready to get some shut eye, take time to wind down. This can include not having any screen time, reading, and stretching before bed.
Try Breathing techniques
I am a big believer in learning breathing techniques to help lull you into sleep. There are so many breathing techniques such as Kundalini or WIM Hof or just regular deep breathing that can focus the mind and ease you into getting to sleep.
Tips to Sleep Fast in 5 Minutes
How to sleep instantly is all about getting your bedroom ready!
Get a better mattress
Yall, this is so important if you want to sleep better. I had a really old mattress for a long time and I never made the connection to why my back hurt every morning. Once I got a new mattress, it made falling asleep so much easier.
This is the exact mattress I have, and my boyfriend and I absolutely love it! It’s the perfect balance between comfortable and hard. We’ll also be buying these for our retreat house in Mexico.
Get Cooling Sheets & Pillows
When I was a kid, we had the best sheets that always stayed cool somehow. Now sheets are made with a lot of different synthetic materials that can keep you hot and uncomfortable.
That’s why it’s so important to invest in cooling sheets and pillows. We got these bamboo sheets for our house in Mexico, but now we have them for our bed in the states and plan on gifting them to our close friends and family because it really makes a difference in our quality of sleep.
Another big factor was our pillows. We got these bamboo pillows that are extra comfortable, but also keep us from sweating.
Keep the Temperature cool
After spending a summer in Nayarit Mexico without Air Conditioning I can tell you that hot & humid temperatures aren’t great for getting quality sleep.
So, if you can afford it, keep your room cool. Obviously, choose a temperature that is comfortable for you. I like it at 77 degrees fahrenheit, but that’s only because my partner is a heater. I call him my blanket because he’s always so warm!
Keep the room dark
One of the most important tips for sleeping better is to keep your room dark! Get blackout curtains if you need to, and close the blinds. Do whatever you need to do to remove all sources of lights from your bedroom.
In Mexico, we had a solar light next to the bedroom window. For the first, two weeks of our four month stay, I couldn’t figure out why there was always a light on, until I looked up! Once I removed that light, man did my sleep improve!
Don’t sleep with your Phone in the Room
Cell phones are a huge disruptor to sleep. Even if you wake up in the middle of the night and look at your phone, the light will wake you up and prevent you from falling asleep.
We don’t sleep with our phones next to our beds, we don’t even have a digital clock, luckily we wake up naturally around 6am. But if we ever have an early wake up call because we have an early flight, we definitely bring our phones in to our room and set an alarm. But we don’t keep the phone next to our bed side, we leave them on the other side and make it no so easy to find.
I also change my phones screen to have a red filter at night. I use an accessibility shortcut to turn the screen by hitting the home screen three times. You can learn how to do this to by clicking this link.
How to get a good night sleep and wake up refreshed
There you have the best tips for sleeping better so you can feel invigorated when you wake up! To get the best sleep you must start from the inside out, stay nourished, move your body, and set up your room to get the best sleep every night, not just when you’re tired.
Have any tips that help you sleep? Share them below!
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