Tips For Sleeping

One of the gifts I've had in life is the gift of good sleep.   It was not until I met my husband that I came to understand that not everyone just goes to bed sometime in the evening and wakes up seven or eight hours later feeling fabulous. However, we changed a few things about the way my husband was living and as a result, his sleep schedule looks a lot better than it used to.  

I had a dinner party on Saturday night and one of the guests was talking about her troubles with sleep.  I realized that a lot of people who have difficulty sleeping are doing some of the same things.  So here are my tips for great sleep. 

1) Don't short yourself on sleep.  You're not allowed to short the company you work for on time, so why is it okay to short your body on sleep?  Sleep, like working , should be something that you make time for and do on time, not something that you do when you're not doing anything else, or are too tired to keep going. In order for sleep to be regular, easy and refreshing, it has to happen at regular intervals. Which brings me to a second point.

2) Keep a regular schedule.  You don't have to go to bed at ten and wake up at six if that makes you feel like you're retirement age, but there should be some eight hour chunk of time- preferably when it's dark out- during which you are resting. If you don't keep a regular schedule, you won't be tired when it's time to sleep, but you will be tired when it's time to wake up.  We keep infants on schedules for these very reasons . What makes us think that when we grow up we don't also benefit from these schedules?

3) Avoid stressful activities around bedtime.  If you're keeping a schedule, you should do the stressful and challenging things first thing after you get up.  Evenings are for having dinner, listening to music, winding down.  The woman at our dinner party was having difficulty sleeping in part because she worked right up until bedtime.  No wonder sleep eluded her! She'd get into bed with her mind racing.  

4)Get some exercise. My brother likes to tease me, claiming that I'm like the workout evangelist, convinced that there would be world peace if everyone just took a jog every morning.  while I realize that regular exercise doesn't cure all ills, it can go a long way to fixing problems with sleep. A physically tired body can drift off in the most delicious way.

5) Avoid alcohol, cigarettes, and caffeine.  Nicotine jolts you awake.  And did you know that if you drink, as your blood alcohol content decreases during the night, you are jolted awake by these changes in your BAC?  That's why one usually wakes feeling so fatigued after having a few glasses of wine. hangovers are half dehydration and half sleep deprivation.  And caffeine, my favorite vice. Well, if you must have it (and I really must have it) , have it before noon.  

6) Make your bedroom restful.  Or, if you live in a studio, make the space in which you sleep restful.  Put the piles of clothes away, make sure that there's just a book and a glass of water on your nightstand.  The reason that hotel rooms can feel so good is that you don't have towers of clutter descending on you at all times. My husband likes to have a white noise machine on while he sleeps (it makes the whirring sound of a fan, drowning out any erratic sounds like horns or the house settling) and I like to have blackout curtains so that we don't have any residual glow from streetlights in our bedroom.  Whatever it is that will create a space of peace and quiet for you, make sure that your sleeping area is reserved for the purpose of sleeping.