Marinelle Adams
Are you longing for a better night’s sleep? Improving your sleep environment as well as your bedtime routine with these essentials is the recipe for sleeping through the night.
If sleepless nights staring at the ceiling for hours sound familiar to you, you’re likely not getting enough quality sleep, but there are things you can do to change that.
Insomnia is a really frustrating condition. Sometimes, you don’t even need a doctor to diagnose it because it’s really simple to figure out that you’re struggling with a sleep disorder.
Those nights when you can’t fall asleep. Or, even if you do fall asleep, you wake up very often during the night, or you wake up too early. Or maybe you’re simply not waking up rested even after a night’s sleep. The results of such nights? You experience irritability, problems paying attention to tasks, trouble remembering stuff, sleepiness, and so on. After just a couple of nights without quality sleep, you’re basically like a zombie.
Well, this is no way of living. First of all, sleepless nights or poor-quality sleep can lead to a number of health conditions related to both your mental and physical wellbeing. Secondly, it’s simply frustrating and can affect many areas of your life.
But what if we told you that your restless nights might not be a result of a sleep disorder but only a result of a poor bedtime routine? If that’s the case for you, sleepless nights will become history if you pay attention to these bedtime essentials for a good night’s sleep.
A comfortable mattress
It may be a no-brainer that the mattress can have a significant impact on your sleep quality, but it is worth mentioning because many people don’t actually pay attention to this detail. If you’re sleeping on the same old and uncomfortable mattress that you have been sleeping on for the last decade, consider ordering a new one now.
The right mattress that encourages a good night’s sleep needs to support your body in a neutral position. More precisely, the spine needs to have a nice curvature, while the main pressure points such as buttocks, heels, shoulders, and head need to be supported in perfect alignment. For this reason, experts recommend that the mattress be neither too firm nor too soft.
The right temperature
You’ve likely already heard some experts saying that the bedroom temperature should be excellent for a good night’s sleep.
Now, we know that a warm room seems cozier and more comfortable, and you think that it will help you fall asleep faster. However, warm bedroom temperatures can affect the humidity levels in your bedroom, leading to dry skin, nasal passages, and throat. We’re guessing that you don’t find any of this ideal for quality sleep either.
So, most experts recommend 65 degrees Fahrenheit (18.3 degrees Celsius) as the ideal room temperature for sleeping. Plus, the perfect bedroom humidity level for goodnight’s sleep should be around 50%. If the climate, environment, or room conditions can’t keep humidity levels at approximately 50%, use a humidifier.
Blackout curtains
If you live somewhere in the suburbs without any streetlights, you can ignore this one. But, if you live somewhere in the city where there’s a lot of light coming in from outdoors, find that this is a factor that may be keeping you up at night.
Just think about it: know these weekend days when you’re planning to sleep late, but the moment the sun rises, you wake up as the light comes inside? If yes, you need to find a solution.
Light, be it from the sun, the moon, or streetlight, can affect your median cycle by fooling your brain into thinking that it’s daytime and you must be awake. That’s why you find it difficult to fall asleep when there’s a lot of light coming inside your bedroom.
The solution? Blackout curtains.
Blackout curtains will ensure that your room will be dark and your sleep won’t get disturbed by any light from outdoors.
High-quality sheets
Just for a second, imagine the feeling of freshly washed and dried sheets on the bed. You love that feeling, right? Everybody does. It helps you relax and get really comfortable and sleepy.
But the thing is that your sheets should feel like that all the time, not only on the first night after washing them. So, use high-quality sheets that are made from high-quality materials such as cotton, linen, or even wool. These materials are not only natural but are also breathable.
Synthetic materials such as polyester aren’t breathable enough and can make you wake up in the middle of the night in a pile of sweat because they trap body heat in excess.
High-quality, comfy pajamas
It should go without saying that what you’re wearing while sleeping also has a huge impact on how well you rest during the night.
Let’s be honest, no matter the time of the day, no one feels comfortable in synthetic fabrics that don’t allow the skin to breathe, irritate the skin, and feel very rough. So, if you don’t feel comfortable at the office wearing a, say, t-shirt made of polyester, how would you feel comfortable during the night when you should relax in bed? You won’t.
Comfort is a crucial element for a good night’s sleep. And your pyjamas are where you should start to ensure that you’re feeling comfortable while resting. Luckily, pyjamas stores sell a lot of high-quality designs for sleepwear. Thisisj has ultra-soft sleepwear that can help you feel comfortable when going to sleep.
A good book
When was the last time when you went to bed early enough to still have time to read a few pages from a new book? If you don’t even remember when that happened last, this is a habit you need to reintroduce into your bedtime routine.
A British study has found that reading from a physical book just a few minutes before sleep can help you reduce stress by 70%. So, you’ll be able to fall asleep faster.
Why are physical books better than tablet books? Because electronic devices emit blue light, which affects the body’s natural production of melatonin, the sleep hormone.