If you struggle with getting good sleep, you know that it can be draining. You walk around like a zombie all day, desperate to go to sleep. Then, when it’s finally time to sleep, you lay in bed struggling to fall asleep. When you do, you continually wake up, which disrupts your circadian rhythm and the cycle keeps going. Here are some ways that you can try to get better sleep at night.
Don’t Eat Before Bed
Studies have shown that eating chocolate and drinking caffeine before bed can negatively affect your sleep. Both things are stimulants that will make it hard for your to fall asleep. Plus, they can affect your body’s internal clock, which can reduce how long your sleep.
Experts recommend that you stop eating at least two hours before bed and that you stop drinking caffeine at least six hours before bedtime. This extra time will allow your body to process everything and hopefully help you get deep sleep Houston TX at night.
See Your Doctor
If you find that you’re continually waking up at night, you might have undiagnosed sleep apnea. When you have sleep apnea, you actually stop breathing during the night and your body jerks you awake to get you to start breathing again. Your doctor will refer you to a sleep clinic where you will do a sleep study.
The sleep study techs will hook a bunch of wires up to your head, chest, and legs and monitor you while you’re asleep. If you start having issues during the study, they’ll hook you up to a CPAP machine and see how you do on that. If they find that the CPAP helps you sleep better, you’ll be given a prescription for one.
Get Moving More
While scientists don’t yet understand precisely how it works, exercising helps increase the amount of deep sleep you get. However, you want to be mindful that you don’t exercise too close to bedtime. Exercising stimulates your brain, and that can cause sleep problems if you don’t allow enough time for your body to calm down.