Evening habits to transform your sleep
Our evening habits are make or break when it comes to getting a good night of sleep that will support our mental and physical health.
But with the busy and stressful nature of our modern lifestyle we might not even realise that many of our evening habits are causing havoc and confusion in our brain that seriously hindering our ability to get adequate sleep.
As we have explored in other blogs, sleep is essential for both our short term and long term health.
What are the evening habits that will transform our sleep?
Minimise artificial light exposure - artificial light exposure through the eyes disturbs the natural production of melatonin, the hormone responsible for making you feel sleepy. It confuses your internal body clock. We recommend to keep the lights in your house low or off and don’t look at your phone or laptop a couple of hours before bed time.
Address your stress - Stress and sleep are not good friends. It’s important that you know what activities work for you to reduce and manage your stress. It may be exercising, socialising, journalling, meditation, gardening, painting, the list is endless. What is important is that you take time to invest in activities that make you feel great and that reduce your stress, this will help you to get a good night of sleep.
Cut out alcohol - Unfortunately even just one alcoholic drinks is disruptive to our sleep quality. Whilst it might give a short term sensation of tiredness and relaxation, you will not achieve the high quality of sleep that we all require and may wake up the next day feeling more stressed and tired.
Body Temperature - We need to reduce the body temperature in order to get to sleep. The most effective way to do this is to have a hot shower or bath before bed, the heat on the skin will actually result in a cooling of your internal body temperature. From here make sure you room is cool and dark as this is the optimal conditions for sleeping.
If sleeping well is on your radar then I invite you to take our Free 7 day sleep challenge.
For this challenge I have recorded a mini series of videos covering the key areas of sleep science to support you in developing new day time and evening habits to promote strong sleep.
Click this button to sign up for free
