The healthy bedtime habits you adopt at bedtime every night have a huge impact on whether or not you’ll fall asleep and stay sleeping throughout the night. In fact, this can often be said about the things you do throughout the entire day too. When you wake up, do you see sunlight right away? Do you exercise? Are you active during the daytime? Do you eat nutritious meals? These all play a role. That said, for the purposes of this article, we’re going to focus specifically on what you do right before you hit the sack.
Building Healthy Bedtime Habits into Your Routine
Creating your healthy bedtime habits, also known as your “sleep hygiene” involves a number of steps that you take before bed as well as in creating our sleeping environment. When you struggle with your sleep quality, it may have to do with mental or physical health issues such as anxiety or pain. However, it might also have to do with issues within your control and that you can start changing right away.
If you’ve been suffering from chronic insomnia, it’s best to speak with your doctor. That way, you can work together to track down the underlying cause of the issue, and you can find the right treatment to overcome that serious medical challenge.
However, if you are aiming to improve the quality of your sleep overall or if you want to get through the occasional sleepless night, creating the right healthy bedtime habits can make a substantial difference.
Use These 10 Tips to Help Get Better Sleep at Night
Apply these healthy bedtime habits to your nightly routine to encourage your body and mind to get to sleep and remain asleep throughout the night.
- Stick to a sleeping and waking schedule, going to bed and getting up at the same time every day of the week, including weekends.
- Make sure your sleeping and waking schedule gives you enough time to be asleep for at least 7 to 8 hours per night.
- Don’t go to bed if you feel energized and wide awake. Unwind first with calming activities.
- If you don’t fall asleep within 20 minutes of going to bed, get up, do something quiet in dim lighting for a few moments, and head back to bed when you feel more restful.
- Avoid unnecessary light exposure for an hour before bedtime and all night long. Don’t check your phone, turn on bright lighting or watch TV if it is at all avoidable. This light exposure – even for a few seconds – can be detrimental to your body’s natural sleeping and waking hormone and neurotransmitter cycle called your circadian rhythm.
- Create healthy bedtime habits into a routine you follow in the same – or a similar – way every night. This can trigger your brain to know it’s time to shut down each night. For instance, choose dimmer lighting, shut off your devices, have a quick shower, get into your sleep clothes if you wear them, brush your teeth, brush your hair, pray or read for a few minutes, get into bed and turn off the light.
- Support your efforts with a sleep supplement containing only clinically researched ingredients. Use it to help you establish your new routines for sleeping and waking.
- Avoid caffeine and alcohol before bed. This is important to your healthy bedtime habits as both these substances significantly interrupt sleep quality.
- Decrease fluid intake before bed. Stay hydrated all day long, but don’t drink a full glass of water right before bed unless you want to get up a couple of hours later to go to the bathroom.
- Try yoga nidra before going to bed. This isn’t a sleep meditation, but it’s similar. This style of meditating is great as a healthy bedtime habit because while your goal is ultimately to stay awake through the entire session, it prepares your body and mind to be calm and restful, making it easier to fall asleep afterward.
