Sleep Quality

Are you sleeping well lately😌? Or Are you suffering from insomnia 🐼? Hopefully, you have had a good night’s sleep recently! Today, we are going to share some tips to maintain or improve your sleeping quality!

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Importance of Sleep

Do you know that sleep can affect us physically, emotionally, and mentally?

When you have poor sleep quality:

1. Prolong low sleep quality or insomnia would make you gain weight and increase the risk of health problems such as liver cancer (physically)
2. It makes you have impaired brain function such as being unable to concentrate or focus on a task (mentally)
3. Poor sleep makes you fussy and easily angry (emotionally)

When you have good sleep quality:

1. It reduces the stress level in your body (emotionally)
2. It improves your brain functioning such as better concentration, thinking, and able to be productive (mentally)
3. It reduces the risk of you getting health problems (physically)

We would like to share 4 different tips to help you maintain and improve your sleep quality!

1. Avoid intake of caffeine and/or alcohol late at night and/or before bed

-☕Caffeine☕-

When you happen to burn the midnight oil, do you drink coffee to help you stay awake at night to finish your unfinished business? I bet you do! Undoubtedly, caffeine was known to help us stay awake and alert. One shot of caffeine is efficient in keeping us awake for up to 6 to 8 hours! Therefore, if you drink coffee around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, your sleep quality would be worsened due to its stimulating effects.

-🍻Alcohol🍻-

Alcohol does have a sedative effect to help us feel relax and increase sleepiness. Thus, making us fell asleep. However, excess alcohol consumption can interrupt our sleep-wake cycle as well as causes us to lose breath temporarily during sleep.

2. Set a consistent sleep & wakeup schedule

Our body operates according to a circadian rhythm, which is crucial in determining when we should sleep and be awake. Setting a fixed waking up time could help to build our sleep drive gradually throughout the time that we are awake and conscious. When our sleep drive is shortened due to inconsistent sleeping patterns, it could delay the process of building of sleep drive. For example, having daytime naps, especially long daytime naps such as one to two hours, will cause you to have trouble sleeping at night. Eventually, this irregular sleep-wake schedule would lead to sleeping difficulties and affect our circadian rhythm.

3. Set up a comfy bedroom environment!

Bedroom environment and setup are one of the key factors in helping us to have a good night’s sleep. Try to ensure that your room is dark, quiet, and temperature-suitable when you are sleeping. Optimizing your bedroom environment will help you to relax and get good sleep! Besides the environmental factors, your bedding would affect your sleep quality as well. Try to choose suitable bedding neither too firm nor too soft, as well as ensure your pillows, mattress are of high quality!

4. Avoid extreme exercises before bed

Regular exercise is claimed to be beneficial to humans both physically and mentally. However, doing exercise 2 hours before bed, especially high-intensity exercises could cause sleep problems. This is because exercise can increase our alertness and awareness which would make falling asleep harder. Despite the stimulatory effect of high-intensity exercises, we can carry out moderate-intensity exercises. For example, walking, yoga, and stretching. Studies found that a 30-minute moderate-intensity aerobic exercise helps us to fall asleep faster.

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In essence, sleep plays an important part in your health. To ensure that you are at the optimum of your health, it is recommended to make sleep your priority and get at least 7 to 8 hours of sleep in a day! The tips are subjected to each individual, but they are scientifically proven to increase sleep quality! We hope that the tips we shared are able to help you in any way. 🥰

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References/Resources:

1. Alcohol and Sleep 
2. Exercise and Insomnia 
3. 17 Proven Tips to Sleep Better at Night