We all know just how important sleep is to our ordinary everyday health, both mental and physical. If you regularly fail to get enough sleep, this means that you are likely to struggle to keep weight loss down, keep a regular and steady heart rate and a good blood pressure, and navigate and calm your emotions. You might also find that you get stressed, your cortisol levels raise, and that causes a reduction in the operation of your immune system. None of that is what you want, so it’s important to ensure that you sleep as well and as deeply as possible. In this article, we are going to take a look at six of the things that can really mess with your sleep which you will want to keep an eye out for, and do something about if necessary.
Poor Diet
Although not many people realise the importance of this, it’s true that diet is one of the major causes of poor sleep in most people. If your diet is full of unhealthy products, in particular processed foods, then you are going to find that you are much less likely to sleep well each night. The best diet consists of almost entirely fruits and vegetables, with little of anything else except some grains and nuts and seeds and so on. You should ideally avoid animal products as much as possible, and you should certainly only eat whole foods and not anything processed if you can help it. Do that for a week and watch what happens to your sleep levels. You might be amazed at the difference you see in that short amount of time.
Restless Leg Syndrome
RLS is a syndrome that causes your legs to feel as if they are itching or burning, and so need to move around a lot. For sufferers of RLS, it can mean that they struggle to get to sleep properly, and it can be a very debilitating and troublesome problem for that reason. Anyone can get it, but certain people are more likely to experience it or to have it more severely than others. It’s not uncommon to find RLS in pregnant women, and it can crop up in people who have had kidney failure. However, it can also happen to anyone and the actual cause of it is not entirely certain. If you feel you might be suffering with this syndrome, you might want to speak with your doctor to see what can be done.
Alcohol
Even drinking just a little alcohol in the day can affect your sleep levels, and yet this is so common that many people don’t even notice it, perhaps because they are drinking a lot of the time anyway. Alcohol appears to make you sleepy, and it might actually help you to nod off at first. However, it also has another effect, which is that it is more likely to cause you to wake up again many times throughout the night. Many of these mini-awakenings are barely even registered by the individual, but they still happen and it means that you will wake up the next morning feeling as though you have not slept well. This is at least part of why you often feel bad after a night of drinking.
Stress
Of course, we all know what it’s like to lose out on sleep because you are stressed from the day you have just had. But this can be much more subtle than people give it credit for, and for that reason it is also quite nefarious in many cases. Stress can be a purely physical thing as well sometimes, to the point where you don’t really know that it is there psychologically, but it is still affecting your sleep. Increased levels of cortisol interrupt your body’s natural cycle, and you are much less likely to have a proper night’s sleep. It is much better to avoid stress in the day as much as you can, ideally through lifestyle choices where possible, but also with good breathing techniques, especially before bed.
Poor Diet
Although not many people realise the importance of this, it’s true that diet is one of the major causes of poor sleep in most people. If your diet is full of unhealthy products, in particular processed foods, then you are going to find that you are much less likely to sleep well each night. The best diet consists of almost entirely fruits and vegetables, with little of anything else except some grains and nuts and seeds and so on. You should ideally avoid animal products as much as possible, and you should certainly only eat whole foods and not anything processed if you can help it. Do that for a week and watch what happens to your sleep levels. You might be amazed at the difference you see in that short amount of time.
Restless Leg Syndrome
RLS is a syndrome that causes your legs to feel as if they are itching or burning, and so need to move around a lot. For sufferers of RLS, it can mean that they struggle to get to sleep properly, and it can be a very debilitating and troublesome problem for that reason. Anyone can get it, but certain people are more likely to experience it or to have it more severely than others. It’s not uncommon to find RLS in pregnant women, and it can crop up in people who have had kidney failure. However, it can also happen to anyone and the actual cause of it is not entirely certain. If you feel you might be suffering with this syndrome, you might want to speak with your doctor to see what can be done.
Alcohol
Even drinking just a little alcohol in the day can affect your sleep levels, and yet this is so common that many people don’t even notice it, perhaps because they are drinking a lot of the time anyway. Alcohol appears to make you sleepy, and it might actually help you to nod off at first. However, it also has another effect, which is that it is more likely to cause you to wake up again many times throughout the night. Many of these mini-awakenings are barely even registered by the individual, but they still happen and it means that you will wake up the next morning feeling as though you have not slept well. This is at least part of why you often feel bad after a night of drinking.
Stress
Of course, we all know what it’s like to lose out on sleep because you are stressed from the day you have just had. But this can be much more subtle than people give it credit for, and for that reason it is also quite nefarious in many cases. Stress can be a purely physical thing as well sometimes, to the point where you don’t really know that it is there psychologically, but it is still affecting your sleep. Increased levels of cortisol interrupt your body’s natural cycle, and you are much less likely to have a proper night’s sleep. It is much better to avoid stress in the day as much as you can, ideally through lifestyle choices where possible, but also with good breathing techniques, especially before bed.
Screens
Most of us look at screens all day, and many of us look at them before bed or even in bed. However, this could be doing more damage than you might have realised when it comes to your ability to sleep. When you look at the screens of laptops, phones and tablets, their light has a way of inhibiting your body’s production of melanin, a chemical which the body clock uses to regulate itself. Essentially, the body loses its ability to know when it’s time to fall asleep, so you will find you are much more likely to stay awake rather than simply fall asleep. Simply not looking at your phone for the couple of hours before bed could help you to improve your sleep in some incredible ways.
A Sedentary Lifestyle
You need to get a decent amount of exercise daily. If you are not exercising as much as you should be, there are obviously many ways in which this is going to negatively affect your life and your overall health. One of the things that exercise does for you is that it helps to tire the body out in a natural way which is very good for you, and particularly good for helping you to fall asleep at night. If you are really struggling to fall asleep most nights, you might want to ask yourself whether you are actually exercising enough, or whether you might want to move around a little more. In particular, some light exercise in the afternoon, such as a brief jog around the block or a local park, can be enough to massively improve your body’s ability to sleep well and deeply.
As you can see, there are a wide range of things that can interrupt your sleep. If you are not sleeping well, consider taking a look at each of these in turn to see whether you might be able to improve things in future.
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