Sleep is for the weak, they say. Uh-uh. Think again.
In a society that puts crazy pressure on people to achieve MORE MORE MORE, getting less sleep may have become the trade-off. A lot of people do not get enough sleep these days. And that isn’t a cool thing. Sleep is one of the pillars of our health and going to the gym twice a day or eating a healthy meal just won’t cut it, without proper sleep.
There are many reasons why catching proper Zzz’s should not be compromised on a regular basis. In fact, if you feel like you need to hustle more the next day, then you better get to bed early. Maybe not until you’ve finished reading this.
Productivity
Skip the idea that you’re accomplishing more just because you took an all-nighter doing a task that could save your job or your presentation the next day. You might be accomplishing the opposite. When you get enough sleep, this promotes healthy brain function and emotional well-being. It is associated with reduced stress and improved attention, focus, and creativity. That means less errors, good perception, and good judgement.
Health
When sleep deprivation becomes a habit, you’ll feel ugly, may appear unpleasant, and get sick. There’s a higher chance of you getting hypertension, diabetes, and a heart attack which can lead to a shorter life span. Getting enough sleep on the other hand can improve your blood pressure because of reduced stress, curbed pizza and ice cream cravings, to name a few, because your body feels well-rested and insulin is controlled, helping to strengthen your immune system as you give it more time to recover.
Social Interactions
Ever feel like smiling more often when you got proper sleep? Yes, that’s right. You feel like a less horrible person and people like it. Improved social interaction is an after-effect of all that awesome feeling inside after getting good sleep. It may not turn you into a sunny, optimistic human being in a day, but it could give you more stable emotional balance which affects the way you control your anger or anxiety.
OUR TOP SLEEP HACKS
How to Get Enough Sleep
But when we talk about proper sleep, we’re not only dealing with the number of hours, but also look at how “good” it is. Quality and Quantity is what we need. There will be days when four hours would feel like enough while eight hours is not. The easiest way to achieve quality sleep is to eliminate all hindering external factors. In short, control your environment if you can. Assess your room for noise, temperature, and lights.
Manage the Noise
There are some people who need total silence to sleep which is very difficult these days. It could be cars passing by your street, the upstairs neighbor doing Zumba at 10PM (why???), or your roommate having friends over. In these cases, we think it is smart to invest in a pair of really good earplugs. The Eargasm Earplugs, one of the best earplugs in the market, uses really good filters for noise reduction. Their design is also very simple and comfortable to your ear, coming in different sizes for a great fit. What’s great about it too is that you can control the volume! You can turn it down but if you need to keep it at a certain level so you could hear sounds that would alert you for emergencies, you could also do that. We think that’s very important.
But, what if the noise you need to curb is coming from someone snoring next to you?! Then we suggest looking into SleepPro products – anti snoring devices like mouthpieces and chin support straps that are recommended and approved by hospitals, doctors, and dentists worldwide. They work with chronic snorers and their partners to achieve snore-free peaceful nights. They are known not only to be affordable but effective and thus considered to be one of the best snoring solutions available today.
Adjust the Temperature
Ideally, your room should be cool enough, between 60-67 degrees Farenheit, for optimal sleep. But if you feel like the AC is not doing the job or you share a bed with a partner who likes it warmer, we want to share with you this super awesome hack: the ChiliPad™ Cube. It’s a mattress pad with a cooling and heating temperature control system, amazingly allowing you to control the temperature on your mattress. They even have a Dual Zone Cube that has Dual Temperature Zones and controls for larger beds, allowing two sides of the bed to have separate sleep temperatures. We think that is genius (just make sure you stay on your side of the bed)!
Check the Lights
The simple rule is to have less at night and have a little bit in the morning so you can have good circadian rhythms. That’s your body clock by the way, a cycle that tells us when to sleep, rise, and eat to regulate physiological processes. Lots of light at night might trick your brain that it’s still daytime and you get trouble sleeping. A good sunlight in the morning is a good indication that it’s time to wake up. So grab some blinds for your room, avoid using your computer or phones before bedtime and wake up early to let the sunshine in.
Final Thoughts
Sleeping is such a huge part of living a healthy life. We can always make it better by controlling what we can! And if it’s not too much, exercise more, eat healthy, and make a habit of going to bed and waking up at a consistent time. And we tell you, there’d be less counting sheep at night.