Catch Some Z's

Let's face it: we need sleep to survive. However, it's hard to consider getting a good eight hours of sleep as important as eating a meal or drinking some water. We at shakeoffstress want to help you to get a good night's sleep. Using a couple different websites, we've made you a ten-step guide for sleeping success!!

1) Keep it Consistent

The CDC recommends that people of all ages should try to get to bed and wake up around the same time every day. And yes, unfortunately that includes weekends! However, that doesn't mean that you have to wake up at the crack of dawn on Saturday after a long week. The recommended hours of sleep per night for teenagers aged 13-18 is between eight and ten. Therefore, a healthy sleep schedule could range from sleeping at 8 P.M. until 6 A.M. to sleeping at 12 A.M. until 8 A.M. You get to choose which schedule works best for you and which schedule you're most likely to stick to. Utilizing an alarm clock or the Alarm feature on your phone can help you make your schedule into a routine.

2. Say Goodnight to Midnight Snacks

We're back with the same CDC article and another unfortunate recommendation: avoiding big meals before bed can help to increase your chances of a good night's sleep. That doesn't mean that you can't have big meals at night! It just means that consuming these meals a little earlier before bed can be beneficial to your sleep health. They also recommend to avoid drinks heavy in caffeine such as coffee or tea. Don't fret: there are a lot of low or no caffeine alternatives to these hot drinks that can serve as delicious replacements.

3. Exercise!

The last recommendation we're going to include from the CDC article is to get in some exercise during the day. Exercise doesn't have to mean a strenuous workout at the gym or running five miles every day. Anything that gets your body moving counts!! Some fun exercise ideas include taking a walk, doing some yoga, or swimming some laps. There's even a whole variety of fun dance videos on Youtube that will help you to break a sweat without even feeling like you're working out. Just like our first tip, exercise is completely customizable to what you want to do and what makes you feel good.

4. Keep it Clean

Let's move on to another article from Headspace: a great app centered around mediation and mindfulness. One of their tips to get better sleep is keeping your space clean. It's easy to get busy and find your space getting more and more cluttered as the week goes on. Setting aside ten minutes on a day when you have more time to spare dedicated to picking up your room can be beneficial to sleep health. I use twenty minutes on Sunday to pick up my desk and put away any laundry that's accumulated on my dresser.

5. Quiet please!

Having a clean space is a great first step to getting better sleep. It can also be helpful to make sure that your space is quiet and dark. However, if you find that a quiet space is just too quiet, there are many different videos on Youtube or recordings on streaming platforms that are meant to help you relax and fall asleep. These can be anything from the sounds of whales braying or ambient noise from a cafe. If you search for it, there's almost always something out there that can fit your needs. A great place to start is asoftmurmur.com where you can make your own ambient noise with sliders and different recordings.

6. Do Not Disturb Mode

Having notifications bugging you before bed can be stressful. Especially when they're related to work or school. The Headspace article cites a study that found checking emails before bed cause both stress and anxiety. A great way to avoid this stress can be turning on a setting that silences notifications after a certain time on your phone. I set my Do Not Disturb to turn on an hour before I go to bed. This setting is great because it silences all notifications, no matter what app they're on. For me, it reduces the temptation to be checking my phone right before I go to bed if it pings or lights up.

7. Give Thanks

Our last tip from Headspace is gratitude. They recommend making a habit out of writing down a couple things you're grateful a couple times a week. It could be anything from a couple words to a full on essay. Not only is making a habit out of gratitude beneficial to your sleep, it can also help to reduce depression and anxiety. Gratitude can even help you with aspects of your biological health, like your blood pressure.

8. Sleep Please

Another recommendation for better sleep is to reserve your bed only for sleep. I know that with virtual school this year, my bed became my second home and was my preferred place for doing homework. However, many articles recommend to make sure that you save your bed for when you're ready to hit the hay. This helps you to keep sleep and work separate, and avoid thinking or stressing about your to-do list when you're winding down for the night.

9. Nap Time

Our ninth tip for this guide is to make sure that you're not napping too frequently or too late. This article from Oura recommends that you should be done napping for the day at least three hours before you're planning on going to bed. Sticking to this schedule helps to ensure that you will be tired at night and have less trouble falling asleep. One common complaint is that after a big meal like dinner, it's difficult to avoid taking a quick cat nap. This drowsiness can be avoided by making sure to get in some activity after dinner such as going for a walk or doing the dishes.

10. Rubba Dub Dub

Finally, this article from Medical News Today recommends taking a shower or bath before bed to relax and wind down. Biologically, this can help to even out your body temperature so you're comfortable by the time you're getting ready to go to bed. For showers to aid sleeping, make sure that the water temperature is warm. Save those cold showers for the morning!

We here at shakeoffstress like our sleep, so we hope that this ten-step guide helps you to get yours. We hope this article was informative and gave you some information about how you can get both a healthy and fulfilling night's sleep. Before you go, check out our sister blog post for April about how a lack of sleep can be contributing to your stress. Thanks for reading :-)

Questions? Comments? Leave them down below!!