Daily Health Bulletin

Everyone’s talking about sleep… and how important it is to our health. Not getting enough sleep ups your risks of depression, diabetes, heart disease, even weight gain as well as impacting your home and work life… leaving you dragging and exhausted all the time.  If you’ve done all the right things to help yourself… cutting out late night caffeine, creating a comfortable sleep space and addressing the other things that encourage healthy sleep… and still you lie awake, there are seven effective sleeping tips you can try.

The National Sleep Foundation suggests getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night, though most of us only get 6 hours and 40 minutes. It’s our hectic schedules… long workdays… stress filled lives that keep us from getting the sleep we need. But there may be other things sabotaging your sleep according to Kristen L. Knutson, Ph.D., assistant professor at the University of Chicago’s Department of Medicine.

Here are other suggestions she has for getting the restful sleep you need.

1. Watch your drinks in the afternoon, especially around 4:00. Anything that has caffeine such as teas, flavored waters, orange sodas and energy drinks are all sleep stealing culprits. Stop caffeinated drinks by 2:00 so that you give any caffeine you’ve taken in time to be processed by your body.

2. Choose superfoods, a light, whole wheat pasta with fresh veggies, a little diced chicken breast, tomato sauce and a sprinkle of Parmesan for dinner is a sleep inducing choice. This meal has a combo of protein and tryptophan, an amino acid that changes to sleep promoting serotonin once in the body. If you’re hungry before bed, try a small serving of cottage cheese with banana, milk and graham crackers or yogurt with cereal.

3. Sip wine earlier, at dinnertime around 6:00 pm, rather than later on at night. Drinking late may have you falling off to sleep faster, but will make the second half of your sleep cycle restless – cutting deep sleep and increasing the ease you’re roused from sleep. Not to mention the sluggish, headachy feeling you’ll have when you wake.

4. Take an early bath, a warm bath before bed is known to raise your body temperature and make it hard for you to drift off, but a bath earlier – when you get home from work – is not going to impact your sleep and can still give you those restful, serene moments.

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5. Stretch before sleep, you don’t want to do an intense workout within 6 hours of going to bed, but a bit of light yoga before turning in can really help. The restful Reclined butterfly pose from Tanya Boulton of Pure Yoga East in New York is a good one to try.

6. Set the mood, even before you get into bed, turn the lights down so that the dimness is a natural signal to the biological clock that it’s time to wind down. Use lower watt bulbs in your bedroom or install a dimmer to make the lighting just right. If you like to read in bed, do so using the lowest watt light you can.

7. Ban all handhelds, do not give in to the temptation to use your handheld devices in bed, as this tends to wind you up, making it harder to fall off to sleep. Unplug at least an hour before bedtime and keep everything out of hearing range. Use a real alarm clock instead of the one in your cell phone.

By paying attention to these seven sleeping tips, you might just find you are finally getting the rest your body needs to stay healthy.

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