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#Post#: 329--------------------------------------------------
How to Sleep Better and Not Feel Tired
By: Red Date: April 16, 2013, 4:18 pm
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Everybody sleeps, but does everybody get enough sleep? In this
day and age with 7 billion people on the planet, it's difficult
to know exactly the amount "enough" is, so we can't be too sure.
Everyone's sleep cycle is different, and unless you get some
sort of evaluation of your sleep, you can't accurately schedule
how long you should be sleeping. I'm going to use very
generalized statistics in this post as an example to work off
of, and hopefully they can work for you.
SLEEPING
To start, it's best to create a routine when starting to go to
sleep. First, you might bathe, then read, then sleep, and that's
a start. It's important that you don't exercise or do any
strenuous physical activity beforehand, because this makes your
heart pump at a faster rate and keeps you awake. Part of resting
is letting your heart rate slow down to use less of your body's
resources. Another thing to avoid is caffeinated drinks or any
sort of stimulants. Also avoid chocolate, as it has a small
natural amount of natural caffeine. It's best to avoid any sort
of stimulant after 3:00 pm or 5 - 6 hours before you plan on
sleeping, as these keep your mind awake, and sleep is essential
for letting your mind rest and regroup.
It's ill-advised to be on the computer within the hour before
sleep. Screens can keep up awake - that includes phones and
ipods as well. Not to mention, they're oftentimes distracting.
Instead, it's recommended to read a book or spend some time
reading a manual to something, or planning what you'll be doing
tomorrow. It's also probably best to stop doing any homework at
least 30 minutes before. You can retain things better if you
reiterate them before sleeping, but studying can increase stress
and won't help you if you're already overworked or overwhelmed.
Also, if the next day is the big test, study during the day if
you feel that you need to, but statistically, you'll perform
better if you don't study the night before.
As a matter of hygiene, you should brush your teeth before you
go to sleep and after you wake up. If you need to bathe, take a
bath before bed, but not a shower. Showers keep you on your feet
and wake you up. Take a shower in the morning if you want. If
you have acne, it's best to use clean soft pillowcases every
night and clean sheets. I, personally, change mine at least once
a week, but if I could do it more often, I probably would. If
you have a bad back, try changing the position you sleep in. The
healthiest is said to be sleeping on your back, with sleeping on
your side coming in at second, but it's been warned not to sleep
on your stomach. If you're like me, and naturally seem to end up
on your stomach every morning, maybe consider buying a body
pillow to keep yourself stationary against or a better pillow of
your neck. People recommend memory foam, but personally it
doesn't help me. It's also said that placing a pillow under your
knees while sleeping on your back can be more comfortable. Use
what works. As an added note, don't force yourself to sleep in a
certain position if you don't feel comfortable - you can keep
yourself up longer than you need to.
Many people like to sleep in warm rooms while others like it a
bit cooler. Others require a breeze of some music/noise to fall
asleep. It's all a matter of preference, but according to
experts, the best sleeping temperature is somewhere around 65 -
75 degrees Fahrenheit. It's alright to have some form of fan or
wind as long as they aren't too noisy or distracting.
Oftentimes, people like to sleep with their windows open, and
that's also fine, but leads to more uncontrollable variables
affecting you while you sleep, for example, the weather may
change unexpectedly. If you like to listen to music or listen to
television as you sleep, you may want to reconsider. I've
already mentioned that screens do not facilitate sleeping, but
as far as music goes, as long as your ipod stops playing, at
most, 30 minutes after falling asleep, you should feel better in
the morning. Obviously, calming music is recommended.
It's important that you drink fluids an hour before you plan to
sleep and use the bathroom beforehand. Not only can you wake up
in the middle of the night if you drink something immediately
before falling asleep, but you may also have more nightmares
apparently. As a midnight snack, choose yogurt and not something
too sugary. While it is true that a sugar or caffeine crash can
put you to sleep, that doesn't mean you'll feel okay when you
wake up. Bananas are also advised. If you're a carnivore, don't
eat a large amount of red meats before sleeping.
YOUR WAKING DAY
If you feel wide awake as soon as you wake up, good! You've
woken up perfectly on an REM cycle - where the brain is most
active during sleep. REM cycles happen about every 90-100
minutes or so for about 15-30 minutes. It's during these cycles
that you dream most vividly. That's not to say you don't dream
during your other cycles, but REM is definitely the most active.
REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement, and, as you can probably
deduce, your eyes move quickly during this stage of sleep.
As far as waking up goes, it's best to wake up gradually and not
all at once. For a teenager, something close to 10 hours is
recommended, but that drops to 8 for adults. Babies and children
need significantly more when they can get it. It's important to
fall asleep within 20 minutes of the same time at night and wake
up between 20 minutes of the same time in the morning. Because
of this, sleeping in is not recommended, but if you miss a
couple hours one night, you might consider sleeping in on a
weekend to get it back, as long as it doesn't become a habit.
Our bodies do have a sleep debt, and it does add up, so the more
you can get, normally the better, but do what makes you feel
best. If you simply can't stand sleeping 10 hours into the
morning, don't do it, but don't cut yourself down to four. If
you need to get up earlier the next day, compensate for it the
night before and start going to sleep earlier. As you make a
habit of waking up and falling asleep at certain times, your
body will naturally adjust and come to learn your habits.
When you wake up, you may want to take a shower and brush your
teeth. I usually don't feel very hungry when I first wake up,
and that hurts me later if I skimp on breakfast, but if I brush
my teeth, it seems to signal my body to suddenly be hungry and
want food. Your biggest meal of the day should be breakfast, and
it should be fairly soon after you wake up. If you don't eat an
hour after waking up, your body goes into survival mode and
burns less calories, meaning that if you're trying to starve
yourself to lose weight, you won't burn an adequate amount of
calories for any food you eat at all. It's important to get the
nutrition you need, but constant vitamins can kill your kidneys,
so it's best to try to eat as balanced a meal as possible. This
is usually why diets don't work, because people deprive
themselves of the minerals they need to be burning the right
amount of calories in the first place. IF you are on the path to
killing excess body fat, there's a couple things you need to
adhere to. Firstly, the only reason your body burns calories
while exercising is because you have muscles, and without them,
you wouldn't have any fat-burning-machines, so to speak. If you
burn fat, try to replace it with muscle, so you get what you're
going for, and can stay that way. It's because of muscle that
people like me can eat virtually anything and stay relatively
skinny. If you're not on the path to burn fat, that's perfectly
fine. Having fat on your body is not a bad thing as long as you
can keep your body healthy and treat it nice. Also, if you're
ever stuck in a survival situation, extra fat can keep you
alive. Another thing, don't worry about weight when you exercise
since it repeatedly rises and falls over the course of a day
whether you even exercised or not. The important thing is that
you are comfortable with yourself where you're at.
In addition to eating the right amount, you need to be concerned
about nutrition. Not only will good nutrition help you sleep and
keep your body in working order, but you can start feeling
better and have more energy immediately after eating something
that's fulfilling. Keep your food pyramid in mind when you plan
food and research recipes to plan daily meals. It's also
important to keep things somewhat diverse, so if you're picky,
ease yourself in to trying new things. Also, drink plenty of
fluids - water in particular. Forget the "8 cups a day" thing,
scientists have gone back on their word and say that as long as
you drink when you're thirsty, you should be fine. If you are
training to do some strenuous activity, whatever you do, DO NOT
DEPRIVE YOURSELF OF WATER. People are often found dead in the
Sahara with a liter of water still on them, and that's not
because they were killed. They often die of dehydration because
they figure that they should ration their water. This can be
avoided in two different ways: If you plan on being out for an
extended period of time, bring extra water, and if you feel
thirsty, DRINK. For people like us that live a white-collar
lifestyle of a student, sitting indoors for hours on end, I
can't stress this enough. It's easier for lazy people to get
dehydrated because they spend time indoors and don't realize
that they're sweating. Soda, juice, water, it doesn't matter,
just drink it. You probably shouldn't drink soda because it
degrades the enamel on your teeth very quickly, but if you need
a little bit more flavor in your water, chop up some
strawberries, pears, and apples and throw them in your water
bottle overnight. There's plenty of other things you can use
instead, like mint and lemon, but keep in mind that while lemon
water and lemonade is healthier for you overall, they have the
potential to hurt your teeth more than soda would. As a side
note, citrus in the morning wakes you up. Don't eat too much at
night.
As I mentioned before, your biggest meal should be breakfast
with all the other meals after that progressively smaller, but a
big breakfast can equal tons of calories. If you are trying to
lose weight, it's important to watch how much you eat so you
know how much to burn off until you hit "the wall" (where your
body runs out of calories and has to start burning fat for
energy). Actually, the hobbits got something right. They have
multiple meals throughout the day, but much more than us normal
humans do in our society. To keep your metabolism high, eat
more, yet smaller meals, and exercise when you can.
On another point, in order to sleep better and feel more awake
during the day, EXERCISE. Maybe it seems counter-intuitive to
you now, but exercising boosts your heart rate and metabolism
for the day. After your first big breakfast of the day, take a
walk if you can. If you can't, do some sort of cardio like
running in place for five minutes if you can. Exercising is
important even if you don't want to burn fat, it keeps your
organs doing their job and clears out your pores. Just make sure
to shower after a hard workout. If you're having a slow school
or work day, do a couple push-ups or sit-ups to kick your body
into gear, but make sure your body's stretched out appropriately
before doing anything crazy. Throwing out your back or neck is
not only demoralizing, but also painful and definitely won't
help your sleep, or driving, for that matter. Because of this,
it's best to not work up first thing after waking up or eating.
Give yourself time to rest - the body isn't a machine and needs
time to adapt to its surroundings.
Umm, that's all I can really think about right now. Questions,
as usually go in replies in this thread. Don't ask me a question
about computers or something in this thread, because I'll
probably just move it to my other tutorials ABOUT computers.
Got a fact I posted that you need to debunk? Let me knoe and
cite your sources so we all can be more well informed! I love
being proved wrong, to an extent. I love getting things right,
you catch my drift? Yeah. Most of this was taken from articles
all around the web, but a lot of it was just knowledge I've
accumulated over the ages that I couldn't possibly cite, really,
so you either have to take my word for it or try things for
yourself and do what works, which I actually recommend doing.
Yay!
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