Your sleep habits can reveal important signs about your health, so how do you know when you have a sleep problem? About one-third of adults suffer insomnia during their lifetime, explains Shanon Makekau, MD, the Chief of Pulmonology & Sleep at Kaiser Permanente Moanalua Medical Center; 10 to 15 percent suffer from chronic insomnia. Dr. Makekau points out that insomnia can range from trouble drifting off to waking up during the night and being unable to fall back asleep.If this sounds like you, Dr. Makekau says certain medications or substances—from caffeine to nicotine—and stress could be preventing you from rest, among other issues. ‘Often insomnia will improve with simple changes in sleep hygiene along with overall regression of life stressors,’ she says. ‘If you have an extended bout of insomnia that doesn’t go away after you change your habits, it’s important to talk to your physician because insomnia could be a sign of an underlying medical issue.’ What is sleep hygiene? Check out this guide to ‘cleaning up’ your sleep.
You can’t drift off: Clean up your sleep
Ban electronics at bedtime
One of the best things you can do to improve your sleep is keep all your gadgets―that includes tablets, TVs, laptops, and yes, even your phone—out of reach and, if possible, out of your room. The blue light produced by screens messes up your internal circadian clock by making your brain alert at a time when it should be asleep, according to a study done by Brigham and Women’s Hospital. This not only leads to insomnia but can hurt your overall health, the researchers say. Instead of using your phone to wind down at night, place all electronics on a charging station in another room and keep a good book handy. (Okay, maybe not too good of a book!)
Exercise in the a.m.
Want more sleep success when the lights go off? Make sure you’re getting your sweat on. Exercise is a simple but powerful tool in helping you off to dreamland, according to a studypublished in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. But don’t expect it to be an instant fix, says lead researcher Kelly Glazer Baron, PhD, a clinical psychologist and director of the behavioral sleep program Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Hitting the gym that morning won’t necessarily help you sleep better that night; rather it’s the consistency that’s important, she explains. In the study, people who exercised at a moderate intensity (think brisk walking) for at least 30 minutes three to four times a week slept the best.
Toss your alarm clock
Waking up to an obnoxious noise blaring in your ear is no one’s idea of a fun time but it’s a necessary evil in our modern times, right? Maybe not. Your body’s circadian rhythms are fine-tuned to regulate both your sleep and wake times. Timing your waking not with an alarm but by the point you are in your REM cycle leads to a much better night’s sleep as well as a more pleasant morning, according to a 2015 study. And it’s not incompatible with your 9 to 5. Figuring out when you need to go to sleep to wake up naturally is as simple as using this sleep time calculator. There are also gadgets that will wake you gently when they sense that you’re ready to rise (try the Sleeptracker Wake Up Monitor).
Cut down on smartphone use
Not only is it a sleep sin to snooze with your phone under your pillow, but how much you use it during the day time could also be affecting how well you sleep. The more screen time you log during sunlight hours, the less time you log in the sheets during the nighttime, according to a study published in PLoS One. Even worse, the sleep you do get will be lower quality, the researchers added. Here are more things you can do during the day to boost your sleep at night.