How to Improve Sleep in 10 StepsNew Title

When was the last time you or your kids woke up without an alarm and felt ready for the day? If waking up is a struggle for people in your house, you are in the right place.

When it comes to being focused, cheerful, and at your best, sleep is a foundational pillar too often overlooked. There is so much talk about productivity, focus and willpower in all forms of media. But willpower is a euphemism for self-control. The talk is all ‘it just takes willpower to make the change’. There is something critical missing from that message. Having the health and wellness habits in place so that you are not leaving mountains in your way that you can easily flatten. Self-discipline is a lot easier when you are biologically set up to succeed. Sleep is one of those tools we all have that can smooth the road to better focus, self-discipline, and lighter moods. This pillar and others need to be in place to clear the path to positive mindset. Sleep is my favorite place to start when coaching.

When we are not getting enough sleep, we are biologically set up to crave sugars and grains. This puts us on a blood sugar rollercoaster, driving cravings and a lack of self-control. I’ve seen many clients get their sleep habits in order and cut back their sugar and carb portions without even noticing. 

Work, whether office or school, takes longer because an unrested brain is inefficient. Whether we are talking about an elementary child working on their after-school reading, a parent at the office or a teen studying for an exam, the need doesn’t fundamentally change beyond how the hours needed.

If you, your partner, or kids aren’t waking refreshed, it’s worth the effort to change.

Here are my 10 tips on how to get a better night of sleep!

1.      Figure out how much you need: The number of hours a person needs varies by life stage, stress, health status and more. So those charts with a range of sleep hours per age group do a great job giving you a starting place to figure out your own, or your children’s individual needs. For adults in our working years, it’s an average of 7-9. For high school aged kids, the normal range is 8-10, for school aged children 9-11 hours. Invest the time to figure out what the need is for you and block that time religiously. Do the same for your kids. It takes some of the stress off the family dynamics if everyone is well rested.

2.     Get into a routine:  Do your best to go to sleep and wake up at the same times every day.  Our bodies like patterns. Your body's clock will get in the routine of knowing when it is time to sleep and when it is time to wake up, making it much easier to fall asleep at night and get up in the morning. If falling asleep is an issue, one surprising thing to look at is gut health as that is where some of the wake sleep cycle hormones are generated.

3.     Get Moving: Exercise will increase time spent in deep REM sleep, which is the most important part of the sleep cycle. I know how hard it is to get started, or restarted, but you will feel the benefits soon if you aren’t moving much these days. It doesn’t have to be anything complicated or extreme. But being active via gardening or going to the gym or something in between does contribute to your best quality sleep.

4.     Clean Up Your Diet:  By avoiding alcohol, caffeine, nicotine and large meals before bed, your body will thank you with a more restful sleep.  It will help you fall asleep faster and have a more regular sleep cycle. When you eat with less than 2-3 hours before you fall asleep, your body gets preoccupied with finishing the digestion and doesn’t get to focus on the internal clean-up routines that turn out to be the primary need for sleep. Oh, and balanced blood sugars helps too.

5.     Incorporate Quiet Time into The Bedtime Routine:  By clearing your head of the distractions of everyday life, your mind will be more at ease when you go to sleep.  Take a moment to yourself and focus on nothing.  It will relax you and prepare you for a restful and rejuvenating night's sleep. We moms may enjoy listening to a book, journaling or mediation, kids might enjoy coloring or crafting, teens… will find their own too. It is about finding something you lose track of time doing that leaves you feeling settled and peaceful. 

6.    Create a Sleep Sanctuary:  Make your bedroom a place of rest.  That means eliminating anything that makes unnecessary sounds, having a bed that fits your needs, whether it be firm or soft, and keeping your bedroom at a comfortable temperature. It also means controlling light, electronics and other nuisances that might disrupt you, as much as can be controlled. While it takes some effort, it is something parents can do for their kids especially those that struggle to get to sleep.

7.     Switch the House to Nighttime Mode: Dim the lights an hour or more before bed and get off devices. Better yet, turn off all the electronic communications- think anything using WIFI or Bluetooth connections that might be in the bedroom or on the other side of the wall of someone’s bed. In a training I did years ago they stated that something like 30% of people are at least mildly sensitive to these or other electromagnetic frequencies. Try turning off the WIFI, the phones, the routers and booster and every other device within say 10-foot radius of the beds for 5 nights and see if you feel a little more refreshed from the sleep you get. See if you notice any change in the kids, waking more easily or any other signs of better rest. It won’t necessarily be true for all, but it’s an experiment worth conducting. People who do notice a difference are electromagnetic sensitive. If you feel a buzz in your backside when you keep your phone in your pocket, that’s what you are feeling.

8.     Avoid Long Naps:  Extended naps during the day can seriously mess with your sleep schedule.  Cap your nap at 15-20 minutes.  Those short power naps will energize you without causing you to still feel awake at bedtime. 

9.     Kick Out the Pets:  This is the standard advice many pet lovers don’t want to hear. When you let your pets bed sleep in your bed, you invite all kinds of obstacles to a good night’s sleep.  They rarely sleep all night and might rouse you when they move around just enough to mess with your sleep cycles. I share this because its standard advice but knowing most pet owners who let the fur babies in bed will ignore it completely!

10.  Late Night Drinks:  Enjoy a cup of chamomile tea or warm milk before bed.  Milk debate aside, these drinks both contribute to either the production of or releasing of serotonin or melatonin, both crucial factors when falling asleep and staying asleep. 

These are good starting points to improving sleep. If it’s not enough, and you decide to talk to a practitioner about your quality of sleep, be sure to get into detail about whether the challenge is getting to sleep or staying asleep, if you wake at specific times, how long you stay awake etc., as all of this will help that practitioner narrow focus for any needed diagnosis, whether its blood sugar imbalance (yes, that can cause night waking), sleep apnea (which can be driven by allergies among other better known issues) and more.

Be sure to get on my list to stay in touch and keep learning with me! And if you need help implementing it, set up a call to see about working together.

http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/10-tips-to-get-better-sleep

http://www.helpguide.org/articles/sleep/how-to-sleep-better.htm