How to Get a Good Night's Rest: 9 Tips For Restoring Sleep
Sleep is essential for healing, restoring, rebalancing and re-booting. If you have ever struggled with insomnia or had to pull an all-nighter for work or for school; you can feel the effects very quickly. Brain fog, fatigue, irritability, and likely it led to a lowered immunity and you may have even easily caught a cold or the flu.
Ideally, we should be getting 8 to 9 hours of sleep every night. But these days, it is rare. We are overworked, stressed out, and escaping or working on our phones or laptops late into the evening with EMF’s and blue lights.
If you have babies, little kids, animals, or a snoring partner, you know all too well how hard it is to feel fully rested in the morning. Add to that chronic health problems, like sleep apnea, restless leg, hormone imbalances and chronic anxiety, then you can understand how big of a problem this is for many people.
Here are 8 tips for helping you to get a good night’s sleep:
Stick to a schedule. Circadian rhythms are real and structure works best. If you go to sleep around 9pm one night and 1am another night, this is confusing to your body. Try to stick to a schedule, within reason. Your body will thank you.
Create a calming sleep ritual. Reserve some true downtime before bed. Try a good book or a warm bath. Drink some chamomile tea with some milk (not less than an hour before bed though). Try NOT to watch or read the news or anything that will get you riled up before bed. Put your electronics away. A text or email can wait until the morning.
Create a sleep sanctuary. Keep your bedroom for sleeping. Eliminate anything that is too stimulating. Remove televisions, computers (no blue light in the room), a warm night light is okay, but the darker the better. Use black out curtains if there are street lights or headlights that might wake you. Try lavender aromatherapy to help you relax. Calming creams can be helpful too. A magnesium based topical cream that you massage into your skin before bed can work magic.
Stop drinking fluids at least one hour before bed. You want to ensure you aren’t waking up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. And if you do wake up and have the sensation to go pee, try to go back to sleep (unless it is borderline that you might wet the bed). Otherwise, hold it til the morning. Bladder training is a real thing!
Don’t have any caffeine after noon. If noon is too early to cut off the caffeine, definitely no later than 2 or 3pm. If you really need something, try a lightly steeped green tea which has some caffeine but not enough to keep you wide awake. And don’t forget chocolate has a tendency to keep you up. So avoid chocolate and hot cocoa before bed.
Exercise during the day can help! 20-30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise can help you sleep at night. Don’t exercise too close to bedtime though, or this could have the opposite effect.
Do you snore? Wake up choking? Does your spouse say you stop breathing when you sleep?Feel exhausted when you wake up in the morning despite having “slept” 7 or more hours? Do you need a nap in the afternoon (whether you get one or not)? If any of these sound familiar, then you might have something called Obstructive Sleep Apnea (or OSA). This is a serious condition that can be tested and treated at home. If you do have sleep apnea, and are treated, you will feel SO much better! Talk to your physician or health care provider.
Do you have restless legs that keeps you up at night? Restless leg syndrome is very common and can have many causes, including medication side effects, nutrient deficiencies, etc. If you have restless legs, talk to your doctor about medications that may be causing these symptoms and have your doctor look for nutrient deficiencies, specifically B12 and iron.
Melatonin can be used. Rather than using high doses, I recommend a smaller dose of 300 mcg 1-2 hours before bed. This is a micro-dose but it works just as well if not better than the higher doses of 5-10 mg on the market.
Also, check out our Healthy Sleep Bundle, available in our online store. We offer FREE shipping on all supplement orders.
Please contact us if you have any questions about how to boost immunity or about the supplements we recommend to support your immunity and your health.
