We sometimes tend to make a habit of sleeping too short. Think about nights out, a night's work, or just another Netflix episode while your alarm goes off early the next morning.
According to Matthew Walker, professor of neuroscience and author of the book Why We Sleep, poor sleep is detrimental to your health. Sleep deprivation doesn't just catch up with you. But how do you make sure you do sleep well?
From the moment we get up, our bodies produce the hormone adenosine. The concentrations of this hormone increase throughout the day and at the end of the day make us feel sleepy.
Caffeine, however, makes you feel awake and alert despite these high concentrations of adenosine. Adenosine has to compete with the caffeine molecules, so to speak, shutting down the desire to go to sleep.
About half an hour after you drink a cup of coffee, caffeine peaks. This causes you to experience the well-known energy spike, which can be very nice at the beginning of a workday. However, it can take about 5 to 7 hours before only half of the caffeine is out of your body again.
So do you want to sleep better? Then try to avoid caffeine as much as possible or at least consume it as early in the day as possible. It is important to know that caffeine is not only in coffee. Other products such as tea, ice cream, cola, black chocolate and energy drinks can also contain caffeine.
On sunny summer evenings, most people can still feel tremendously energetic at 11 p.m., while in winter they can easily crawl into bed as early as 9 p.m.
Light plays an important role in this. Light gives energy and its disappearance makes us tired.
Once the sun goes down and it gets darker and darker, your body begins to produce melatonin. This hormone signals to your body that it is time to go to bed.
The slightest bit of light, even if it is a small nightlight, can put your body on the wrong track and make it think it is daytime. The production of melatonin is then inhibited, making you less tired. Especially the blue light from smartphones, laptops and tablets greatly inhibits the production of melatonin.
Now, of course, it is difficult to sit in complete darkness at night or go to bed as soon as it gets dark, especially in winter. What you can do is dim the light as much as possible. Try to avoid bright lights at night and turn on mostly ambient light. This is often warm, yellow light, like that from old incandescent bulbs or candles.
Can't really do without your smartphone or tablet at night? Then use a filter for blue light so that this is limited as much as possible.
If you meditate regularly, you've probably experienced what breathing can do. Just a few deep, calm breaths in and out can relax your body and calm you down inside. By focusing on your breathing just before you go to sleep, for example through an evening meditation, you bring (negative) emotions and thoughts to rest and your body can relax.
Getting a good night's sleep once is nice, but ideally you would like such a good night's sleep every night. How do you make this a fine habit? One way to do this is to come up with an evening ritual for yourself. What do you like to end your day with? This could be anything:
Set an alarm clock an hour before you go to sleep. When your alarm clock rings start your evening ritual. From then on, try to look at your screens (mobile phone, laptop, television) as little as possible. Instead, read a book, take a bath and end your day with a nice evening meditation.
You can do a meditation sitting down, but it is extra nice if you can sleep right away. So make sure you are completely ready for the night, lie in bed and turn on a meditation. A great advantage is that you can stay wonderful when you fall asleep during or after the meditation.
The quality of your sleep improves when you have a fixed sleep rhythm. Your biological clock knows exactly when it is time to get up and go back to bed. This means that you automatically wake up around that time in the morning and start getting sleepy around that time in the evening.
Such a sleep rhythm is easy to maintain if you have a regular work day and have to start at set times. But often on weekends we throw our sleep rhythm into disarray. That's when most people go to bed a little later and/or sleep out. Want to improve your sleep? Then try to keep fixed sleep times, including weekends.
