Do you have trouble falling asleep or don’t get enough hours in the night?
Try these simple hacks to improve your sleep tonight!
1. Use Lavender to Drift Off Easier
This may sound like a wives’ tale, but an actual scientific study done using 12 people was presented to the European Sleep Research Society in 2008, where lavender oil was put onto their bedclothes and was shown to help participants drift off to sleep easier.
Now you may be thinking, “I don’t want to be putting lavender oil over my bedclothes every night”, and I totally agree. What I recommend is buying an oil based lavender diffuser which will have exactly the same effect and place it on a bedside table, or anywhere within a few feet or your bed.
Warning: The US National Institutes of Health advises against the use of lavender if you’re pregnant as not enough is known about its effects.
2. Cut Out Caffeine After 3 P.M
The number 1 thing anyone can do to help improve sleep is to cut out caffeine later in the day.
While it has its benefits in the morning, scientific studies have shown that cutting out the intake of
Caffeine after 3 p.m. will not only help you get to sleep quicker, but also improve the quality of that
sleep.
If you do need your intake of caffeine past the time above, I recommend cutting down on the amount you’re using and to have your last one no later than 2 hours before you go to bed.
3. 90 Minute Interval Rule
When you fall asleep, your body naturally goes through different cycles of sleep. The cycles are typically 90 minutes long and at the end of each one is when you’re at the lightest part of the cycle.
What this basically means is if you wake up during a deep sleep part of the cycle, you’re going to feel tired, where-as if you wake up during the lighter sleep part you will feel much more awake and ready for the day ahead, even if you’ve had extra hours of sleep and you wake up during the deep sleep part of the cycle.
Now that you know this information, what you need to do is calculate how many hours a night sleep you like to get, allow about 30 minutes extra as it will take you that long to nod off, and then calculate from the time you go to bed to the time you wake up how many sleep cycles you will need to wake up at the lightest part of your sleep.
For example, if you want to get up at 7.00 a.m., and need at-least 5 hours of sleep to function properly the next day, try and get to sleep at around 12:45 a.m.
Tip: Use an online sleep calculator such as sleepcalculator.com
