When it comes to peak health and performance, we tend to see fitness and nutrition as a two-head dragon. But what about sleep?
A quality sleep regimen is of the upmost importance, and without a good night rest your risks of experiencing negative side-effects such as poor-performance, slower cognition, mood swings, hormone fluctuation, weight gain, depression, and more, also increase. Improving your sleeping pattern can provide immediate benefits. Those benefits include but are not limited to:
- Improved mood;
- Improved brain functions;
- Reduced stress;
- Improved performance;
- Weight maintenance;
- Lower health and blood markers.
Below is a list of helpful tips to help you improve your sleeping pattern. And the good news is that you can implement them right away!
- Caffein. Avoid consuming caffein more than you need throughout the day. It would be even best if you can avoid having it within 5 hours of going to bed at night.
- Routine. Try to go to bed relatively around the same time every nights so that you would wake up around the same time every morning.
- Digital devices. Keep them outside the bedroom before bedtime. This way, you will not have the temptation to be checking them at bedtime, which would keep you awake longer than you should be.
- Cold. Set your bed or room temperature to around 70ºF (21ºC).
- Supplementation. The brain produces melatonin in response to darkness. You can also obtain this hormone as a supplement. Some examples of natural sources of melatonin include nuts and seeds such as walnuts, flax seeds, sunflower seeds, peanuts, etc.
You do not have to implement all these tips at once. Remember, slow and steady win the race. So, pick one, and work on it until you are comfortable enough, or until the new habit has settled in. It usually takes about 66 days for habits to develop, and once your new habit does, try adding another one from this list. Let me know how you did in the comments below!