Bad sleeping habits?

Throughout these years we have been leading very rushed lives and people is getting more into bad habits, specially if we are talking about sleeping routine. A lack of sleep can induce to several problems, not only the fact that you will be feeling sleepy all day. When you do not sleep correctly, your capacity of thinking can be affected, your energy decrease and your daily routine will be also affected. Sleeping bad habits are not only made because of the use of the recent technology at night, but also because people has routines that affect their sleeping hours without knowing. Sometimes this are also bad habits that are creating more and new bad habits. 

A human in adult age needs from 7 to 9 hours of sleeping in order to coordinate and maintain a good health state. Here is a group of actions or bad habits that people usually have that can contribute to a lack of good sleeping.

Some of the common thoughts around sleeping habits, is about exercise. Usually people believe that doing exercise will help you to sleep better, and it is true, but it depends totally in the time you actually do the exercise. DePietro (n.d) write, “If you work out too close to bedtime, it can act as a stimulate and keep you from falling asleep.” (para. 5). It is recommended to do the workout from 3 to 4 hours before going to bed.

Another big bad habit that most of the people has, is going to bed with the cellphone. Usually people use the smart phone when they are already laying down on the bed. It doesn’t matter if you are answering an important email from work or just checking your social media before falling asleep. The use of the phone can distract you from trying to fall asleep and also the light of the mobile or computer can cause you a lack of sleepiness. DePietro (n.d) says, “When you are exposed to light, melatonin, which helps regulate sleep, may be suppressed and make falling asleep more difficult.” (para. 6).

Having a late night snack or a heavy meal right before going to bed, it also contributes to the lack of sleepiness. When you eat a huge amount of food, this could private your sleep. Our metabolism starts to work right after you ate the first bite, so if you go to sleep right after finishing your meal, your sleep will be interrupted by the metabolism working. Also, drinking caffeine and alcohol before going to bed is a big NO. 

Knowing all of this, how can we change our sleeping routine? What could we do to improve our hours of sleep? Suni (2021) write some actions you could do:

• Sticking to the same sleep schedule every day, even on weekends.
•  Disconnecting from electronic devices like mobile phones and laptops for a half-hour or more before bed.
•  Carefully monitoring your intake of caffeine and alcohol and trying to avoid consuming them in the hours before bed.
• Choosing the best mattress that is supportive and comfortable, and outfitting it with the best pillows and bedding.

Knowing now all of this information, we can realize how bad our bad sleeping habits are. We can figure out why we are feeling tired all the time and now is understandable that we feel like we didn’t have enough and quality time of sleep. Usually people sleep from 5 to 6 hours, but the human body needs at least 7 hours of good sleep to fully work. It could be hard to try to change a really big habit like not sleeping enough hours, but is not impossible. It is really important to start sleeping correctly in order to maintain our good health. Bad sleeping habits could lack you from having good relationships with other people, can make you get angry and irritate more quickly. Maybe right now you can not feel or see that this is affecting your life in a big percentage, but in the future your personal life could give a big turn, along with your body health.

In order to make a change, we could start from following the recommendations that Suni talks about, which ones I already listed before. Starting little by little, I would recommend to set a schedule and follow it every night. You could eat dinner at least 3 hours before going to bed, so your metabolism can work during that period. Not forget how importance is the correct use of our technological devices, leave them apart and do not take them to your bed right before going to sleep. We can set a list of different tasks to do and also apply the "Don't break the chain" method, which one I already talked about in my last blog, in order to change the bad habits and replace them with a good sleeping routine.

References

DePietro, M. (n.d). Changing bad sleep habits. American Sleep Association. Retrieved March 9, 2022 from https://www.sleepassociation.org/blog-post/changing-bad-sleep-habits/

 

Suni, E. (2021, March 10). How much sleep do we really need?. Sleep foundation. Retrieved March 9, 2022 from https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need#:~:text=National%20Sleep%20Foundation%20guidelines1,to%208%20hours%20per%20night.