How to Get a Better Night Sleep

Do you have trou­ble falling asleep or do you toss and turn in the mid­dle of the night? If so, you’re not alone: there are mil­lions of peo­ple strug­gle with falling and stay­ing asleep. If you are hav­ing sleep prob­lems, whether you are not able to fall asleep, wake up too often, don’t feel well-rested when you wake up in the morn­ing, or sim­ply want to improve the qual­ity and quan­tity of your sleep, below are the few tips that could help you to have a qual­ity sleep, man­ag­ing stress and anx­i­ety, and tak­ing bet­ter care of your body.

1. Avoid Late Nights Snacks

You might think your tummy is rum­bling, but it really may be bore­dom. Espe­cially if it’s late at night. When you eat and then lay down, the diges­tion of the food can cause prob­lems. A late night snack may cause you to get heart­burn or acid reflux. Falling asleep may be rough when your insides are burn­ing. Eat an ear­lier snack or wait for break­fast to eat so you sleep well.

2. Skip Caf­feine After Dinner

You ate a big din­ner and feel a lit­tle slug­gish. For a pick me up, you have a cup of cof­fee or a glass of soda. Wrong! That lit­tle bit of caf­feine after din­ner may keep you awake all night. By the time the pick me up takes effect, it will be close to bed­time. Caf­feine not only keeps your body awake, but your mind too. You may have trou­ble falling asleep, and when you do, it may be rest­less and full of strange dreams. Skip the caf­feine until break­fast to have sweet dreams.

3. Eat a Small Dinner

A small din­ner before bed­time can help in more ways than you think. You won’t feel slug­gish and in need of a pick me up, you won’t blow a diet plan and you’ll feel hun­gry for a snack ear­lier! Smaller meals typ­i­cally digest eas­ier, pre­vent­ing any prob­lems from creep­ing in dur­ing dream time!

4. Skip Nicotine

Nico­tine prod­ucts can inter­fere with a good night’s sleep. The nico­tine in cig­a­rettes and tobacco prod­ucts is addict­ing, and if indulged before bed­time, can make the body expe­ri­ence with­drawals right away that inter­fere with sleep. If you need to use tobacco prod­ucts, use them an hour or so before you are plan­ning to go to bed. This will give your sys­tem ade­quate time to process the nico­tine and with­drawal with­out harm­ing sleep.

5. Eat an Early Dinner

The sooner you can begin your diges­tion, the sooner you can have a snack. Early snacks have the proper amount of time needed to digest before lay­ing down, pre­vent­ing heart­burn. Early din­ners also burn off more calo­ries, keep­ing you health­ier too!

6. Avoid Greasy Food at Dinner

Does it feel like a huge grease ball is sit­ting in your stom­ach? No mat­ter which way you turn, you can’t get com­fort­able. After toss­ing and turn­ing for > hours, you get up to find the proper med­i­cine to make it feel bet­ter. If you had skipped the big, late and greasy meal, you would be bliss­fully into dream­land by now.

7. Try Relax­ing Music

A song can soothe the soul. At least for some peo­ple. Clas­si­cal music CD’s play­ing qui­etly can set the mood to sleep peace­fully at night. In addi­tion, stud­ies have shown that play­ing them while your baby sleeps improves their think pat­terns. If it can help them so much, it can’t hurt you either! If the mood is peace­ful and relaxed, and if you wake up dur­ing the night, you may fall back to sleep eas­ier since it still remains peace­ful and relaxed.

8. Hot Tea or Milk

There is an old wives’ tale that says to drink warm milk before bed­time to help you sleep. You can try it, but a cup of decaf­feinated tea may taste bet­ter. A warm drink warms your insides, but don’t drink too much to fill your tummy. That could put you right back to hav­ing acid reflux, which hurts!

9. Limit Your Beverages

This goes against a few tips, but only a lit­tle. If you need warm tea or milk to fall asleep, drink in mod­er­a­tion. Drink­ing a gal­lon of warm milk will fill your blad­der up in a few hours. Hav­ing to get up and go to the bath­room dur­ing the night doesn’t make for rest­ful sleep. If you need to sip some­thing, sip in small quantities.

10. Read a Book

This tip needs to be fol­lowed with cau­tion. Pick a book where you can read a few pages or chap­ters each night before bed. The quiet time relaxes your body and mind and focuses on what you are read­ing. Your body will fall asleep faster in a relaxed state and remain that way all night. How­ever, if you choose a very inter­est­ing or scary book, the effects may reverse! You may stay up too late to fin­ish it or be too scared to sleep!

11. Don’t Feed a Sweet Tooth

Sugar right before bed­time can mess up your night of sleep in a vari­ety of ways.

1) The sugar can hype up your sys­tem and make it hard to fall asleep
2) Sugar right before bed­time can cause vivid dreams and even night­mares
3) The sugar, even after brush­ing your teeth, can cause tooth decay!

So, leave the candy in the jar until morn­ing, after break­fast. Then you can please your sweet tooth when
you have enough time to burn it off!

12. Say a Prayer

Whether you are reli­gious or not, and no mat­ter what reli­gion if you are, send a word of thanks up for your day. If you don’t pray, think of your friends or fam­ily for a minute. Let the thoughts relax you so you
can fall into a long, peace­ful sleep.