Chances are, if you have been sleeping throughout the night, you do not have any complaints. If you have difficulty sleeping through the night, you know the detrimental effects sleep deprivation can have on you. Luckily, there are methods you can use to improve your quality. Best of all, they do not cost anything at all.
Importance of Sleep and The Effects of Sleep Deprivation
Sleep is essential for good health. While you are asleep, your body undergoes necessary repairs. These repairs include work done on your brain. Studies indicate that low sleep quality is associated with a decline in many areas of cognition. Stated, you do not think as clearly when you have not slept well.
Age Slower:
While you are asleep, your body secretes a hormone called HGH. This is a human growth hormone. It does not make you pack on vast amounts of muscle, but it does have some fantastic effects. The best way to describe it would be an anti aging hormone. It improves the quality of your sleep directly. It also allows your body to shed off excess fat more efficiently. HGH even improves the elasticity of your skin, so you look younger longer.
Feel Better:
Metabolic by-products accumulate within your brain throughout the day. When you lay your head down, go to the lymphatic system that drains these from your brain. This system is analogous to the lymphatic system in your body. When you sleep in layman’s terms, your brain clears out all the garbage built up throughout the day.
Deprivation Saps Your Vitality:
The adverse effects of sleep deprivation can be severe, which makes good sleep even more important. Lack of sleep spikes your cortisol levels, your body’s stress hormone, which indirectly affects your entire body. You will age quicker and fall ill more often. Sleep is not only crucial for good health; it is necessary.
Tips to Improve Your Sleep Quality
Your body wants to have a good sleep. So, it would be better if you listened to it. It will tell you how to get the sleep you need. Here are a few tips that we have found to be incredibly helpful.
Maintain a Consistent Sleep Schedule:
When you sleep on a consistent schedule, your body will fall into a rhythm. This rhythm is called the circadian rhythm. Your body secretes hormones that allow you to fall asleep more efficiently on a schedule. If you follow the schedule, you will not encounter nearly as much difficulty when it is bedtime.
Block Blue Light After 5 P.M:
Blue light blocks the secretion of your body’s sleep performance. Unfortunately, most modern electronic devices emit a lot of blue light. They emit enough of it that it will affect your sleep quality. Most phones have blue light filters if you go in to their settings nowadays. You could also get blue light blocking sunglasses. Either way, once the sun sets, you should not be looking at any more blue light for the rest of the night.
Reduce Stress by Reducing Monthly Expenses:
In the modern world, financial stress causes the body more havoc than almost any other disease. When you are stretched thin financially, your body excretes more cortisol. As stated earlier, cortisol leads to several adverse health effects. Check out these simple ways to reduce your monthly expenses
- Limiting take out and coffee shops
- Narrowing down streaming services
- Conserving energy to lower your Eversource utility bill
- If you have a yard, you can save a good amount on your grocery bill by planting herbs and vegetables
- Cancelling unused subscriptions or memberships
While some of these changes may seem small the savings add up quickly giving you less to stress about
No More Restless Nights
As long as you follow a good routine, it would be better not to encounter too much difficulty falling asleep. If you do have difficulty, we recommend seeing a sleep doctor. The sleep study can diagnose any particular ailments that are affecting you. One last thing that you can try is to increase your physical activity level. Sometimes if you are not getting enough activity, you will have too much energy at bedtime to fall asleep.