Sleep Better for Health

How to Improve the Quality of Sleep

Is the quality of your sleep poor? If so, here are some techniques and suggestions that may help to improve the quality of your rest for health, well-being and weight loss.

In addition to affecting how we feel when we are awake, its quality can profoundly affect existing diseases.

Causes of Poor Sleep

Have you ever been so excited about something that you couldn't diminish wakefulness? Fear, anxiety, tension, and delusion can work the same way as anticipation. Insomnia can have psychological causes.

It can also have physical causes. There are a host of physiological disorders and diseases that cause insomnia.

In addition to ordinary infections, muscle aches, and indigestion, disorders (imbalances, diseases) of physical systems such as the cardiovascular, respiratory, nutritional, and endocrine systems and of various organs such as the liver and pancreas can cause insomnia.

Medications, food additives, jet lag, and withdrawal from drugs can also cause it.

If your nights are troubled, it's important to find out what is causing the problem. Unless you have a license to practice medicine, please don't rely on evaluating yourself. In other words, if you have any doubt at all, please consult at least with your primary-care physician.

For example, you may think that your insomnia has a minor psychological cause, whereas a physician may detect an underlying physical disorder.

If you find yourself drowsy during the daytime but think you have slept well, you may actually have sleep apnea. It might be advisable to visit a sleep laboratory to test for narcolepsy or somnambulism (sleepwalking) or to help with nightmares or night terrors.

Your dentist might be the one to inform you that, unknown to you, you are grinding your teeth at night (bruxism).

If you suspect a persisting problem, please seek professional help. If your disorder does have a physiological or psychological cause, treatment of that cause will quickly and automatically alleviate it.

Normalcy

Only you know how you feel.

Are you comfortable and alert during the day? Do you have difficulty falling asleep at night? Do you wake up during the night? Do you feel well-rested upon awakening? Do you feel that your rest was sufficient long? The answers are subjective.

Also, normally your typical pattern will likely change as you grow older. Elderly people sleep less as well as less deeply. Furthermore, many people over 40 have more difficulty falling asleep at night and staying asleep throughout the night.

Occasional bouts of insomnia are normal and nothing to worry about. Normally, you'll probably have a good idea about their causes, which will be alleviated with the resumption of good habits.

For example, if you are grief-stricken or have just disrupted your "biological clock" by flying across five time zones, be patient. Pamper yourself (for example, by eating and exercising and meditating in the ways presented on this website) and soon you'll be back to normal again.

What not to do: Do not worry about an occasional bout of insomnia. We all have them. Do not lie in bed fretting about it. Get out of bed, read a good book until you feel drowsy, and then return to bed. Do not watch television or a movie and do not listen to music or the radio because they can be too stimulating.

The next day, if you are tired and it's possible, take a short nap. Do not use over-the-counter sleeping pills or ask your physician for prescription pills. If you want to know how meditation can help you to sleep better, or cure insomnia, see this section of our website:

to Meditation

If you don't want to meditate, at least use Relaxing Breath. See this section of our website:

to Breathing for Relaxation and Health

What's a good way to tell if you aren't getting sufficient rest? You'll find that the people around you are stupid. (It always amazes me how much dumber other people are when I happen to be tired!)

What should you do if bouts of insomnia are not occasional enough? We don't know. Experiment and find out what works best for you. Here are some tactics that others have found useful.

Sleep Aids

Additionally, have you noticed any foods, drinks, or additives that keep you awake or awaken you in the night?

Food and drink additives often cause sleep disturbance.

Also, try eliminating caffeine from all sources. Avoid obvious stimulants. Drink nearly all of your daily water by the end of the afternoon. If you supplement with PS, do not take it in the evening.

Are you getting too much or too little exercise? If you exercise and exercise intensity is too high, back off by reducing the intensity of the exercise and let your body recover more completely.

Do not exercise in the four hours prior to bedtime. If you don't exercise, please start. Regular, appropriate exercise during the day increases sleepiness at bedtime.

Have you tried meditating every day?

If not, we recommend at least twenty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes just before going to bed.

After the pre-bedtime meditation period, get into bed and do not turn your mind loose! Keep mentally focused on your practice until you fall asleep. (Incidentally, perhaps because their practice is so deeply relaxing, master meditators seem to need less sleep than the rest of us.)

Similarly, do not talk, listen to a radio, music or television, or watch television or a movie after your pre-bedtime meditation.

If you are experiencing troubled sleep, avoid daytime naps. If you don't have insomnia, we think that a 5 to 30 minute nap in the daytime is an excellent practice. (Except when I'm on vacation, which is when I deliberately obliterate ruts, I myself nap daily.)

Is your bedroom quiet?

If not and you are unable to move to a better location, consider using white noise or earplugs. Start thinking of sounds as like foods: be selective about which ones you ingest.

Is your bedroom dark enough?

If not, try a blackout blind, or even perhaps taping some aluminum foil to the windows. Alternatively, try a sleeping mask. (I have a good one that's molded so that it doesn't press against my eyelids. I always use it for daytime naps.)

Try to be regular in your habits. Our bodies thrive on routines. Go to bed at the same time every night.

Do not regularly use an alarm clock. If you regularly rely on one to wake you, you are not getting sufficient rest. We didn't evolve using alarm clocks. Using them is a chief cause of chronic sleep deprivation syndrome, which taxes our health and well-being.

Similarly, go to bed early and get up early. We evolved going to bed about dark and getting up about dawn. That's our most natural rhythm.

Try progressive relaxation.

Progressive relaxation, incidentally, also works in a sitting position on long airplane flights. There are different ways to do it.

You can just lie on your back when you get into bed. Starting with your toes and working up your body, tense a muscle group for six seconds and then relax it and move on to the next muscle group.

Work up from your toes to your feet, calves, shins, hamstrings, thighs, buttocks, abdomen, chest, upper back, hands, forearms (front and back), biceps, triceps, shoulders, and neck.

Do you share your bed with someone? If so, that person may be disturbing you more than you realize. Try sleeping alone.

If you are a poor sleeper, wind down in the evenings. Do not listen to or watch the news in the several hours before bed. At least in the evening, do not associate with people whose minds are agitated. Avoid drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

Try a warm bath before bed; it will help relax you. Try having someone give you a massage before bed.

If you want an occasional sleep aid, Andrew Weil, M.D., recommends trying two capsules of a standardized extract of the herb Valerian.

Like him, we do not recommend using any such aids, whether natural or not, on a regular basis. Instead, focus on eliminating the cause of the problem.

Is your bedroom at a good temperature for you? It can be difficult for anyone to sleep well if it's too hot or too cold.

Do you have a good mattress and foundation? Mattresses do wear out. (Recently, I replaced my old mattress with a Tempur-Pedic and it's terrific! What an upgrade! Unfortunately, Tempur-Pedics are expensive and not everyone likes them; however, the market does provide a number of alternatives and one should work well for you.)

Do you rest in the best position? Do not sleep on your stomach or back. Sleep on your side with your thighs perpendicular to your spine and a small pillow between your knees (to reduce the tension from your top leg pulling on your lower back).

Keep your arms down, in other words, not over your head (under a pillow or as a pillow). To switch sides, just swing your knees up and flop over. If you do not sleep this way, you can quickly train yourself to do it automatically. A side benefit of doing so is that you won't ever wake up with a morning backache.

Do you have a good pillow? A good pillow should support your neck in the best position; it will keep your head, neck, and spine in alignment. Since some people have broader shoulders than others, your pillow should be the proper height to support your neck properly.

Especially if you do not meditate, try visualization. See this section of our website:

to Visualization

If you are following the free program presented here on our website and seriously use these tips, we predict that you will soon be resting better and feeling better.

Good for you!

This completes this section of our website. Either choose from the main menu or click on the link below to go to the section that gives an overview on exercises to help you:

to Weight Loss Exercises

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