4 Memory Foam

How To Sleep Well

If you suffer from poor sleep and find that you wake in the morning without feeling refreshed and alert, you will know the effect it can have on your day. Even if you do not regularly find that you have a bad night sleep, almost everyone has disrupted nights of sleep at some point.

There are a number of factors that can determine how well you sleep but these can be split into a number of different categories, including external factors, mental factors, physical factors and environmental factors. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

External Factors

These are elements that you can do least about in curing the direct source of the problem and often only occur infrequently, so we will cover these first. They include elements such as noise from outside or a high temperature on a very hot night. Whilst these are infrequent problems there are steps you can take, dependent on the issue and how often the problem occurs. Keeping your curtains closed during the part of the day the sun is shining into the room can help keep the heat gain to a minimum. Open the windows at night and have a fan that can help cool the room at night; alternatively a portable air conditioner may be appropriate if you have a long period of hot nights. A fan can also help provide a background source of white noise and act as a distraction to other external noise.

Mental Factors

Have you ever had the feeling that all your problems come on you just as you close your eyes to sleep? Stress can be a large distraction, particularly when you are going to sleep and many people can find this a problem. If you are one of these, try some simple relaxation techniques; alternatively a white noise machine that plays soothing sounds can provide a source of distraction that will allow you to drift off with fewer worries. It can also be helpful to establish a calming ritual that you follow each time you go to bed to help train your mind that you are about to sleep.

Physical Factors

Being overweight can mean you sleep less well, but so can what you eat and drink just before you go to bed. Avoid eating in the two hours before you sleep and do not have too many drinks that contain caffeine during the day and particularly in that same period.

Environmental Factors

In this I include your bedroom and surroundings when you go to sleep. For a calming sleep it helps to have a calm bedroom. Keep it tidy and without clutter, and ideally at a cool temperature. Your bed is obviously very important to how well you sleep and given that you will be spending almost a third of your life in bed, it pays to get a mattress that is comfortable and will help you sleep well.