TURN-UP YOUR SOUND FOR AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM MARK KENT
Welcome to Day 3 of your 7 Day Super Stress Solutions Course. On Day 1 you learned about the stress response, and Day 2 how to recognize the 6 stages of stress and whether you are stressed out. Today you will learn how stress affects your sleep and how you can improve it.
Super Stress Solution Day 3 Stress and Sleep - How Can I improve It?
Not being able to achieve quality sleep can be extremely disrupting. If you are unable to sleep well you can experience concentration difficulties, more accidents, higher vulnerability to illness and less tolerance for daily stressors. Also research has indicated people who sleep less than 5 hours per night experience significantly higher mortality rates, higher rates of depression and tend to be vulnerable to anxiety, agitation and significant loss of vitality and quality of life. If you have difficulty falling to sleep more than one half hour or wake up intermittently throughout the night and have difficulty getting back to sleep you may have significant sleep difficulties. As well if you wake up feeling unrestored and struggle at times throughout the day with drowsiness and fatigue chances are you may suffering from sleepy deprivation.
Here are some well proven techniques to improve your quality of sleep. Most of these suggestions are designed to reset your body's internal clock and to break the associations formed by anxiety and frustration over anticipating another poor night's sleep. Here are the suggestions:
Maintain regular sleep habits. Specifically get up at the same time each morning regardless of how fitful your sleep was the night before.
Do no engage in any high physical activity at least 2 hours before bedtime. As well reduce any intellectual or emotional stimulation at least 1 hour before bedtime.
Establish a 1 hour passive leisure relaxation downtime before going to bed.
Go to bed regularly; engage in relaxation or easy listening music or light reading. Try to associate your bedroom with relaxation, calmness and rest. Do not engage in stimulating non sleep activities such as TV, computer or work and worry.
Do not watch the clock, put it out of sight. If unable to doze off after 15 - 20 minutes get up and engage in something relaxing and when you feel drowsy or sleepy go back to bed.
Reduce consumption of caffeine and alcoholic beverages at least 3 hours before bedtime. Alcohol may help you relax and fall to sleep but disrupts the normal sleep pattern necessary for restorative sleep the next day.
Do not eat late at night or go to bed hungry. The ideal bed time beverage is a cup or two of warm milk which has tryptophan a natural amino acid which induces sleep.
Resist the urge to nap during the day even if you are sleepy and tired.
Also the resist the urge to take sleep medication as they produce restorative sleep and can cause dependency and significant side affects.
