Why is irregular sleep harmful?
Sleep is an outlet for your stress, and out of many essential habits that effect your health, sleeping on time, and waking up on time, is beneficial to everyone’s physical and mental health. The circadian rythm which is the body’s build-in clock, needs to be kept in mind. In case of a disturbed health or a long duration of imbalance in work-rest distribution, the routine is messed up, and thus a number of sleeping issues appear.
A disturbed resting pattern can be detrimental to mental health, and affect regular moods, focus, and a peaceful mind! To fall asleep on time in the best way to reboot a distrupted sleep cycle. Apart from this, building a healthy sleep pressure, and making efforts at lowering stress levels before bedtime can be helpful.
Establishing a routine
The first step is to organise your daily activities according to time. Time management is absolutely essential, especially for busy people, who struggle with lack of time, or cannot make time for family and friends. As a result, stress levels increase, and people have difficulty sleeping on time, which again, leads to a serious rest deficiency.
So, it is essential that you set an alarm as early in the morning as possible, so you have a lot of time in the morning for work, exercise or meditation. Waking up early can really give you a fresh mind, and if you use it in a healthy manner, you could make the most of your day.
Also, in order to wake up early, you must go to bed not later that 11 p.m. To achieve this, you have to put aside late night screen-time, delaying dinner, or keeping excessive house-work for the night. We will talk about how to keep stress levels low before your bed time in the coming section.
Lower stress levels
The best ways to keep your stress levels low before bed time is by
- reading a light book
- watching something that makes you feel happy
- meditating
- breathing exercises
Take some time to yourself to relax, close your eyes and focus on the problems you are facing, and acknowledge them while knowing that you can work your way out of them. Manage your environment- that is, check for too much light, or if your covers are too warm, play some soft music to induce a good rest.
Meditation
Meditation can be squeezed into any busy schedule, if even done for a short period of time like 10 minutes. There are plenty of guided meditation sessions available of YouTube, which you can search up according to the time suitable for you.
Meditation is an effective way to relieve insomnia and get better rest, if practiced regularly. It can increase melatonin (the sleep hormone), reduce blood pressure, and decrease heart rate- which can considerably make you fall asleep faster.
Meditation for Sleep: How to Use Meditation for Insomnia, Better Sleep (healthline.com)
Limit Screen-time
Looking at a screen at least 30 minutes before you go to bed can be detrimental to your eyes, brain, and mental health and can become a reason for sleep issues. A lot of young people go through serious mental health problems due to overuse of social-media just before bed time.
It has been said that seeing something which affects your mind just before you go to bed delays your REM cycle- thus making you fall asleep at a much delayed time. So set some ground rules, and beware of becoming inseparable from your screens in the nighttime!
A Journal
Journals are excellent ways to vent out your thoughts, and have a clear head before you call it a day. It can help organize all your thoughts and let you know yourself better. This practice can have an amazing effect on your sleep cycle, and help you have a healthy sleep routine.
