The US National Lung, Heart, and Blood Institute it states that sleep is necessary to think clearly, maintain reflexes, and make decisions. Although we do not need science to tell us that little or bad sleep affects our day to day, if we must know how, improving the quality of our sleep, we will improve our life.
We have already explained to you how to sleep well when it’s hot and science has told us some tips to help you fall asleepsuch as exercising or avoiding caffeine in the afternoon.
Why do we need to sleep well?
According to the biologist and scientific popularizer santiago campillo“we forget that quality sleep is tremendously important.” Lack of sleep affects our mood, makes us more prone to depression, and changes the way we face the world.
At a physiological level, a bad soil can promote the appearance of neurological and metabolic diseases. In fact, sleeping the necessary time and in a deep and adequate way helps our body to strengthen the neural system, reduce heart disease, the risk of diabetes and improve the action of the immune system.
The first evidence collected by The National Sleep Foundation of the United States collect in this study that each person has different sleep needs, in terms of hours, and this value varies depending on each person and depending on their needs.
Previous routines before bed, vital for a good rest
As Dr. Nuria Roure explained to us in her book I finally sleep“pre-sleep routines are very beneficial. Always repeating the same thing at more or less the same time and in the same places helps the brain to facilitate sleep.”
I finally sleep: The definitive method for a good rest (Practical book)
Science is clear that the environment in which we sleep is as important to achieving restful sleep as our previous routines to go to bed to sleep. Noise, for example, affects more than we think according to this 2016 study by Fietzas well as air quality (Strøm‐Tejsen, 2016) or temperature (Okamoto-Mizuno and Mizuno, 2012).
Checking Instagram or TikTok before bed or watching TV in bed are counterproductive. The call blue light disrupts our circadian rhythms according to science. In nature, this light is associated with the daytime sky and, as explains Santiago Campillo “It is, by far, the light that most suppresses melatonin production.” So no electronic devices before bed.
Why we should only use the bed to sleep
But there is one more element that greatly influences sleep, the bed. We are not talking about the comfort or not of the bed, but about associating the bed with rest. Sleep experts are clear about something and that is the bed is only for sleeping (and for sex) and we will only sleep in the bed. If this rule is broken, we have a problem.
“When we finish carrying out our routines and enter our room, our brain associates the environment and the bed with the moment of sleeping,” explains Dr. Nuria Roure. But this changes when we adopt different behaviors in our bed or in our room that are not typical of sleep and rest. “That it misleads the brain, which no longer knows when or where to sleep. We are sending him the wrong signals.”
Carrying out activities that require concentration in a space intended for rest is counterproductive. He even talks about reading in bed, something that he does not advise against but with which he asks for caution. We can only read if it is on paper and as long as it helps us to relax and for a maximum of 25 minutes. “If a novel hooks us and we can’t stop reading, it’s not a good book for bed”, so the best books in history are left out, because they are too hooking. To read them, better in a space other than the bed.
Using the bed only for sleeping and sexual intercourse it’s the best we can do. This simple trick will help us fall asleep. Little word of science.
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Photos | Zohre Nemati, ethan, karolina gac and Connor James in Unsplash
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