5 Small Measures To Improve Your Sleep

Roughly 62% of adults worldwide feel that they don’t sleep well when they go to bed. According to the World Economic Forum, losing just one or two hours of sleep per night can have the same impact on motor and cognitive functions as going without sleep for a full day or two.

So for you it is crucial to not only get the right amount of sleep but also improve the quality of your sleep (several consecutive hours of sleep). Here are 5 small tips that can help you do just that:

1. Make your bedroom screen free
   The blue-light emitted by e.g. your phone screen suppresses the secretion of melatonin more than other artificial light sources. Melatonin, a hormone released by the pineal gland regulates your body’s sleep-wake cycle. Therefore, a bright screen just before you want to hit the sack can significantly harm your ability to fall asleep as well as your sleep quality.
2. Control your room temperature
   When lying in bed trying to snooze, your body temperature decreases to initiate sleep — cooler room temperatures can actually help facilitate this. Therefore, if your room is cool, rather than warm, it will be much easier to fall asleep. In general, the suggested room temperature for a good night’s sleep is between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal sleep.
3. Meditate!
   According to the National Sleep Foundation, meditation can be hugely beneficial to help you fall asleep. However, if you want to listen to a guided meditation, you usually have to look at your phone to start it. Using your Alexa home speaker is a great way to circumvent this. There are a few sleep meditation skills available and they are becoming more. A great skill I use is sleep w/ me, but any of the guided meditation skills will probably work.
4. Avoid caffeine late in the day
   In the book “Why We Sleep”, Matthew Walker makes a strong point against caffeine, as the duration of action is much longer than we expect. If you have a coffee at lunch, a quarter of that caffeine is still in your body at midnight. So imagine how helpful the espresso after dinner is for you…
5. Natural sleep aid
   Sleeping pills are no solution to your sleeplessness, most of the time, it doesn’t really help: According to a Consumer Report study, only about a third of people who took sleep medications — either OTC or prescription — reported very good or excellent sleep on those nights. However, a good recipe that really helped me is the tranquilizer beverage by Tim Ferriss: 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar (he uses the brand Bragg) and 1 tablespoon honey, stirred into 1 cup of hot water.

There is a ton of stuff on the internet in terms of sleep advice. I tried to congest it to the tips that helped me and my friends and family the most. I suggest you try them out and let me know what worked for you, so I can refine this.