Your quality of sleep affects your quality of life even more than you realise. Make sure you’re doing everything you can to have the best night’s sleep by avoiding these 10 major mistakes.
1. You sleep on your stomach. Sleeping on your stomach not only affects your breathing, it can also result in serious neck and back issues over time.
2. You have coffee after dinner. The average half-life of caffeine is about five hours. Save your flat white habit for earlier in the day. A good rule of thumb is to have your last cup of coffee at 3pm.
Related: 8 Ways No Sleep Can Mess With Your Face
3. You drink booze before bed. You nay feel sleepy after drinking, but the quality of sleep isn’t the best. Alcohol actually interferes with your REM sleep, causing you to feel more tired the next morning. It’s not worth it.
4. You sleep in super-late on weekends. Binge-sleeping won’t cure the effects of bad quality sleep. If you think you can run on minimal sleep during the week then make up for it on weekends, you’re doing it wrong. Skimping on rest is never okay.
5. You judge your sleep quality by your sleep tracker. You don’t need a tracker to tell you if you’ve had decent sleep. You’ll know you’ve slept well because you’ll feel it the next morning. If you’re waking up feeling groggy and doze-y throughout the day, it doesn’t matter what the tracker says – you need to do something to improve your sleep quality.
Related: 9 Things That Happen to Your Body while You Sleep
6. Your room is extremely bright. Block out curtains or blinds are the best investment you could ever make for a good night’s sleep. We weren’t made to stare at synthetic light at night.
7. You stare at screens before bed. Any screen stimulated brain activity, and that’s not the best idea when you’re trying to shut down. Also, the light is telling your brain to wake up when that’s the last thing it should be doing.
8. You don’t have a consistent bedtime. Don’t confuse your poor body. Crashing at 9pm on Sunday then staying up all night on Monday to finish Making a Murderer seriously screws with your sleep pattern. Consistency helps your body know when it’s time to sleep and time to wake up.
Related: This One Daily Habit Will Improve Sex and Sleep
9. You exercise too late. Late workouts (within about 3 hours of bedtime) can overstimulate your metabolism and raise your heart rate. Instead of making you feel sleepy, it can cause restlessness and frequent awakenings.
10. Clockwatching. You know – ‘If I fall asleep right now, I’ll have exactly 6.5 hours of sleep…’ Try to ignore the clock. And, if you wake up in the middle of the night, don’t check how many hours until your alarm goes off. Just go back to sleep!
Read more about sleep
Read more about body health
Read more about mind health
