What’s your advice for good sleep?

What is your advice for good sleep?

I suggest these three things:

  • Create a relaxing bedtime ritual. Create cues for sleep.
  • Go to bed 10-11pm.
  • Read in bed until you’re tired enough to fall asleep.

Q: What do you find are the best things for you to do to get great sleep?

This is Quetion Friday. Thanks and happy weekend! For fun, check out yesterday’s quotes on sleep.

7 thoughts on “What’s your advice for good sleep?

  1. Well I’m blessed with the ability to sleep easily and deeply so I don’t really have that many tips. When I do get plagued by lack of sleep I usually wake up my husband telling him I can’t sleep and that I’m bored. As you can imagine he’s happy I’m a good sleeper too ;-)

    What I find helps when I do have trouble sleeping is to lie on my back and breathe deeply (it’s amazing how many people don’t know how to breathe!) and slowly, and think about something pleasant but not too exciting: walking along a beach, imagining myself sleeping in a hammock, thinking of a farm I once was and imagining the smells…simple stuff like that.

    I need lots of sleep, if I sleep less than 8 hours a night I get cranky, cold, hungry, and basically have an awful day. Many of my friends sacrifice sleep to be able to fit more activities in their day, I can’t do that. I love sleep!

    *yawn*

    -grimo1re

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  3. Maybe I’m not a good one to answer, as I’m plagued by insomnia (including right now) but the standard advice seems to at least help for me, if not get me through the night:
    * don’t exercise within a couple of hours of bed
    * don’t eat anything heavy within a couple of hours of bed
    * try to go to bed and get up around the same time every day
    * no long naps
    * try to go to bed and get up around the same time every day
    * sometimes relaxation/imagination techniques, like grim mentioned, can help for me. But more often I find myself imagining those things for a few minutes and then going back to thinking about whatever I was thinking about before!
    * if I’m up because I’m worried about something, writing it down (so I don’t forget) and deciding I’ll delay the worry till the next morning can help.

  4. Thanks for the tips, Grim, Bob, and Lila.

    Lila, very interesting about writing something down to forget about it – I do that too!
    And I totally agree about the same time to bed and to wake.

    Grim, great on the deep breathing.

    I’ll totally incorporate your guys’ suggestions into the next part – measuring success of sleep. Sweet!

  5. Having worked with my own and others sleeping patterns, and on top of a few tips already mentioned I would include:

    * Stop drinking caffeinated drinks after midday.
    * Make the room you sleep in dark as possible which queues natural sleep response.
    * Have a warm drink before bed, raising your core temperature and also queuing your sleep response.
    * Opposite to that, a cold shower in hot climates can cool you down enough to get to sleep.
    * Keep a sleep diary – When you went to bed, how long it took to get to sleep, when you woke up and how you felt the next day. After a few weeks you will know how long you need for a full nights sleep, when is best to get to sleep, and when to wake up.
    * Setting the alarm clock for the same time each morning.

    Enjoy.

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