Jane Beazley wants to send you to sleep…
Do you ever feel like the world has gone mad, or that you are living in a dream because the things that are happening can’t possibly be true? Yeah, us too. Daily life is stressful enough but add on the constant bombardment of the news and it is all too easy to find yourself lying awake at night, unable to get to sleep, or waking at 3am to toss and turn for a couple of hours. Sleep is incredibly important to our health. It aids our cognitive function, including our concentration, our mood, and therefore our relationships, our mental/emotional health, as well as reducing our stress levels. It contributes to our general health too, including our metabolic health, our weight, cardiovascular health, and our immunity. It is vital, but it is all too easy to find ourselves in a negative sleep spiral.
If you are struggling with your sleep, here are some things to think about:
- In the day, do some exercise and get outside for some fresh air and daylight.
- In the hours before bed, try to manage your food and drink intake, so that you don’t go to bed hungry or uncomfortably full, or with so much fluid in you that you will need to get up in the night. Reduce your caffeine, nicotine and alcohol intake as well, as they can also contribute to poor sleep.
- Try and reduce any worries that you may have. This can be very difficult, but maybe don’t add to them, for example, reduce your news and social media intake, especially in the hours before bed.
- Try and stick to a regular sleep schedule. That will look different for all of us, but a regular schedule will hopefully mean that at a given time, 10pm for me, you are winding down and getting sleepy. For reference, we should be aiming for 7-9 hours of sleep a night.
- Perhaps most importantly, create a restful and calm environment in the bedroom. Things to consider are a nice temperature, soft lighting, calm activities, and reducing screen time. I am a bit of a hypocrite there as I love to fall asleep watching something calm on my phone, but that suits me. If you need something to switch off your brain, I can recommend the Calm app, which does some nice sleep stories. Their story Blue Gold, about the lavender fields of Provence, narrated by Stephen Fry, is perfect. I’ve never heard the end of it.
- Lastly, if you have worked on all of these things and are still struggling, speak to your GP. There might be other factors affecting your sleep, such as the menopause or sleep apnoea, that they can help with.