How to sleep better, faster

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It's 2 o'clock in the morning, and our brain is still running at 100 mph. Your eyes start to sting as you close them to no avail. You toss and turn, but nothing is working; it feels hopeless. Maybe you sleep 8 hours on other days but feel sluggish and unproductive. Before providing tips, we should understand what sleep is even for.

Sleep is essential to your health sleep can help you stay Sharp it can help with mood and irritability but it also has some bodily functions as well. It repairs muscle tissue, maintains our immune system, and compiles and refreshes our memory, to name a few things (plus, sleep is the best). Much of the information I'm mentioning is based on the book Why we sleep by Matthew Walker. It's a fascinating read, and I recommend it to those curious about how sleep works.

But for most of us, getting good sleep is not so simple.

For one, our days are jam-packed with work, studying, and extracurricular activities developing stress throughout the day. Not to mention the late hours spent on social media or working. Therefore a lot of the reasons why we have trouble sleeping is because we have a lot of stress in terms of adenosine or ATP and that builds up over the span of a day and because of that we end up getting more stressed we cannot sleep because of it because our brain is loaded with all that ATP or adenosine.

Additionally, sleep is not solely dependent on how much you sleep either.

While the World Health Organization recommends 8 hours of sleep, you must also consider the REM cycle. In REM cycles, as we sleep, we go through a series of light and deep sleeping. When we get interrupted through deep sleep, it can cause that sluggish feeling you get if you sleep at a random time.

So how can we get change this?

These methods take time to implement since you are adjusting your sleep schedule and even more time to find what works well. But don't worry; it's really common for people to take time to change. I'm going to see if I can break this into two parts one is general tips and investments that are low hanging. The other part is to manage stress in a way that is more sustainable.

In previous writing, I mentioned some tips on how to get better sleep, and those were:

1. Winding down

2. Scheduling your sleep

3. Managing your light usage at night

4. Sleeping at good temperatures

Winding down

Work and social life are important; I get that. But if you are constantly busy until the very last minute you sleep, your brain will keep running with those thoughts and keep you up at night until the following day. So find time to block out when you will step away from screens and your work/studies. Do something light that does not require your crazy attention, like drawing, novel reading, or even meditation. Headspace has a good series for people trying to sleep; you can check them out here.

Schedule your sleep

Getting the right amount of sleep for your age is essential, but inconsistency in sleep schedule can also cause exhaustion. Your body follows a Circadian rhythm, which allows you to be awake and sleep. When it gets close to bedtime, we get drowsy and fall asleep. When we travel, for example, we no longer follow our circadian rhythm from jet lag, making us exhausted. Find a time that works for you and stick to it. If you don't know when you need to wake up or sleep, I suggest using a Sleep Calculator.

Managing light usage

Many people know that blue light from phones and screens can suppress melatonin production, preventing you from sleeping. But what many people don't know is that you can make yourself tired using lights. Before streetlights were commonplace, the sun was used as a clock; when it came up, it was morning, and when it went down was sunset. So limiting and dimming light usage at night can make you sleepy and better sleep.

What I would suggest:

Turn on a single lamp before bedtime, not the room light; the reduced amount of light will cause you to be drowsy.

If it isn't too bright, have part of your blinds open, the natural bright light of the sun can help you up in the morning (Plus vitamin D).

If there is too much light pollution in your area, I recommend buying a smart plug and a sleeping mask.

Sleeping at good temperatures

Your body "knows" better than you do, and it will notice subtle changes in the weather that will keep you tossing and turning at night. So listen to your body and see how it feels. For example, turn up the heat or wear an extra layer to the bed if you're cold. Another trick is to drink warm water as the heat can cause drowsiness allowing you to fall asleep better.

Just buy a new mattress.

Probably below one of the lower hanging fruits is just to buy a mattress reason for it is most people probably have not changed their mattress out in the last seven years I didn't have enough and I think that's really important because it's you spend 1/3 of your life in one so probably best take best one for the next seven to 10 years and hopefully you'll get some more quality sleep because of it.

Something that kind of helps too is to is to go outside go for a walk and to get some fresh s*** because it's in Greenery helps with the mood and and generally speaking has just been very useful as well as releasing that stress too by going out to walk running would be better but walking is just asleep

Another thing well you're walking or running to somewhere is maybe going to the gym workout because that also helps majorly to release a lot of stress hormones that that I've been built up throughout the day so regularly working out is very essential to function

But stress is not always just those things it could be because it's caused by certain events that are happening maybe you are bottling up emotions of certain thing which can be which can be very common in a lot of people in these days we have of things that we want to please other people with we want to accommodate for others and in that we end up squashing our own needs for the great good of the people.

This is definitely a tricky one because I don't want to overstep my batteries and said oh you can just you need to stand up for yourself sometimes in the situations you can't and that's crazy unfortunate for people what I would say that would be very beneficial is to write down formally what it is that you're dealing with maybe you are in fact taking up more hours than you really should and you need to consult with that with HR or your boss and manager who you can talk to to kind of discuss and consult with them ways to manage that how you can be more productive. Simply start to you can also just write down things in general because unloading your mind can be very beneficial as you can look at these thoughts later on and kind of process it a little bit better rather than having it all just bottled up inside