How To Sleep Better

How Much Sleep Do I Need?

A lot of people believe that they are suffering from lack of sleep. They think that they just have to go to bed earlier in order to feel better. While this might help, most people will still feel tired after they wake up from sleeping 10 or 12 hours. The truth is, lack of sleep isn’t really your problem. You need more quality sleep.

When it comes to sleep, quality is much better than quantity. If you have quality sleep, you can usually get by on a lot less sleep than you think you need. What exactly is quality sleep? There are different levels of sleep. Most of the time, we don’t get into a very deep sleep. When we go to sleep, we’re still aware of everything that goes on around us. When you clear your mind and relax every part of your body, you will be able to go deeper into sleep than you ever have before.

Sleep is generally divided into REM sleep and non-REM sleep, sometimes called nREM sleep. REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement, and most of the dreaming takes place during REM sleep. REM sleep is important, despite not being deep sleep. It renews your mind, replaying what you learnt during the day. Adults generally spend 20-25% of their sleep in REM sleep.

nREM sleep is generally divided into four phases, with the third phase and fourth phase being the deep sleep.  That’s when your brain slows down and your body repair itself. If you are awaken during deep sleep, you generally need several minutes before you are really awake.

In order to get quality sleep you need to optimize your sleeping environment. Your bedroom should be pitch dark when you sleep. As well as cool and quiet, although you may not be able to completely control these things. Also make sure that your mattress and pillow are comfortable.

Sleeping during the day is generally a bad idea, you don’t get more energy and you may have trouble falling asleep in the evening. But short naps, often called power naps, done the right way can boost your energy.

When you wake up in the morning, get out of bed.  Don’t stay in bed half sleeping, it will only drain your energy. Make it a habit to get up at once when you wake up, it takes some effort the first couple of mornings but you’ll soon get used to it.

If you have trouble falling asleep, you may need to exercise more. It has been scientifically proven that exercise improves your sleep. Avoid heavy training in the evening, your body needs time to cool down.  Needless to say, regular exercise does improve much more than your sleep.

The main advantage of trying to get more out of your sleep is that by sleeping less, you get more time for others things. But not only that, you have more energy to get more things done during the day. Given such advantages, it is well worth trying to optimize your sleep, even if it can be uncomfortable in the beginning.