Experts tell us that the gap between getting just enough sleep and sleeping too little is profound, suggesting that all of us pay more attention to the role sleep plays in our lives.

If you’re one of the many busy souls getting less than the recommended and research supported 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night, you won’t be able to deprive yourself like this over the long term.

But how much sleep is enough? Experts say there is no “magic number”, different ages need different amounts, and even then the right amount is highly individual. Research has even confirmed that sleep needs change across populations, so what’s right for you may be too much or too little for another.

In the end, you need to make getting enough sleep a priority, just as you do any other healthy lifestyle choice. In return, you’ll reap some pretty impressive benefits.

1. Better overall health: countless studies have found links between insufficient sleep and heart disease, heart attacks, diabetes and obesity. One study found disrupted sleep had an effect after only four days on blood glucose levels in a third of 10 healthy subjects, putting them in the pre-diabetic range.

2. Better sex life: a poll by the National Sleep Foundation has up to 26% of respondents reporting their sex lives suffer because they’re just too tired. For men, impaired sleep can also bring lower testosterone levels.

3. Less pain: any type of pain, chronic or acute, gets better if you get enough sleep; though being in pain makes sleeping a challenge to be sure. There’s a lot of research showing a link between sleep loss and a lower pain threshold; this may be why many doctors now prescribe sleep medication to patients as it can offer better pain management than some painkillers.

4. Less chance of injury: sleep deprivation has been linked with many terrible disasters, not to mention the fact that the Institute of Medicine estimates one of five car accidents in the U.S. are caused by drowsy driving. Being sleep deprived doesn’t just make you a danger behind the wheel, it also makes you more likely to trip, fall off a ladder, cut yourself… be the victim of a nasty household accident that could have been avoided.

5. Better mood: we all know that being tired makes you cranky, but lack of sleep can also effect your ability to regulate your emotions – so you’re more likely to snap, or burst into tears, perhaps start laughing uncontrollably. Over the long term the picture is less clear, but insomnia is linked to depression, anxiety and an increased risk of suicide. No one can say if the lack of sleep is a symptom of depression/anxiety or part of the cause.

6. Better weight control: sleep loss appears to go along with an increased risk of weight gain, partly because if you’re chronically overtired, you won’t have the energy to go for a jog or cook a healthy meal after work. What’s more, the hormone leptin, which plays a part in making you feel full, drops if you don’t get enough sleep, making you just plain hungrier (not to mention craving high fat, high calorie foods) than those who are getting enough sleep.

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9 Great Reasons To Get More Sleep… Continued…

7. Clearer thinking: sleep loss does affect how you think, impairing your cognition, your attention and your decision making abilities. Research has shown that a subject who is sleep deprived is substantially worse at solving logic or math problems than when they’re well rested. Careless mistakes are also far more likely.

8. Better memory: experts know that while we sleep our brain processes and consolidates our memories from the day. If you aren’t getting enough sleep, those memories may not be stored correctly and may well be lost.

9. Stronger immunity: a recent study tracked over 150 subjects, monitoring their sleep habits for two weeks, then exposing them to a cold virus. Those who got 7 hours or less sleep a night were nearly three times more likely to get sick as those who got that magic eight hours sleep a night.

If you or someone you love is having trouble with sleep… being sleepy during the day or when you should be awake and alert, snoring, dealing with leg cramps or tingling, or with gasping or difficulty breathing during sleep, long term insomnia or anything that’s preventing you from getting the rest you need, it’s time to visit your doctor. There are lots of treatments that can help you get enough sleep that’s so important to good health.

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What’s more, the researchers found that sleeping too much (more than 9 hours) doesn’t impact the risk of death; but might still be a sign of serious, even potentially fatal, illness. The study appears in the May 2010 issue of Sleep.

The findings offer solid evidence of the direct link between not enough sleep and increased risk of early death. The British and Italian teams looked at 16 studies that included more than 1.3 million subjects from the U.S., Europe and Asia who were followed for up to 25 years. During that time, there were more than 100,000 deaths among the subjects.

Researcher Francesco Cappuccio, leader of the Sleep, Health and Society Program at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, suggests that regularly sleeping from six to eight hours a night might be optimal for health. He believes that sleep duration should be thought of as a behavioral risk factor that can be modified through education and counseling, as well as affected by changes in the world around us.

What’s worrisome is that the National Sleep Foundation reports that as many as 40% of Americans sleep less than 7 hours a night.

If you’re like many people in our always-on world, you’re not getting the sleep you need. Endless commutes, family responsibilities, worries over money or health, not to mention the fascination we have with our 24/7 access to everything makes getting the right amount of sleep harder than ever.

Not only is cutting sleep robbing your body of the rest it needs to recharge (and stay healthy), but too little sleep makes handling everyday stress that much harder. What’s more, lack of sleep is known to leave you with impaired work performance, lackluster thinking skills and questionable judgment.

If you’re cutting sleep don’t plan on doing this over the long term. Catch up on your sleep as soon as you can. Your doctor will tell you that your body needs from 5 to 9 hours of sleep every 24 hours, which is why it’s important to find a way to get the rest you need by establishing a healthy sleeping routine.

You’ll want to go to bed and get up at the same time, even on the weekends, during vacations and on holidays.

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It’s also important to keep your sleeping space restful, quiet and a comfortable, constant temperature. Staying away from super stimulating TV programs, discussions and the like before bedtime is also essential.

Exercise, though not too close to bedtime, is important, as is avoiding alcohol, caffeine and nicotine as well as large meals and medications that delay or disrupt sleep.

Today there’s an abundance of research that shows benefits of getting enough sleep includes giving you the edge to help you perform at your best, be more creative and have stronger long term memories. This latest bit of work suggests that it might be optimal for your health (and longevity) as well, so rest easy.

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The report covers a range of both good and bad health habits of American adults – these include using alcohol, smoking, being active regularly, your body weight and the amount of sleep you get.

The study used data from the 2005-2007 National Health Interview Survey (known as NHIS for short), conducted each year by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. The results are based on data collected from 79,096 interviews with American adults 18 years and older. The responses highlight differences between gender, ethnic and social groups when it comes to many common behaviors.

In terms of alcohol, rates of use have remained stable over the years. The latest survey found that…

- Men were more apt than women to drink (68% vs. 55%); women were more likely than men to abstain from alcohol (31% vs. 18%).

- Whites were more likely than any other groups (African-Americans, Asians, Native Americans, or Alaska Natives) to indulge in alcohol.

- And here’s a surprise – the more educated a respondent, the more likely they were to drink. Seventy-four percent of those with a graduate degree were drinkers, compared to 44% of respondents who’d earned a high school diploma.

We all know how dangerous cigarette smoking is to the body, but many still struggle to quit. Since 1997 rates of cigarette smoking have gone down by a few percentage points, yet the CDC survey found that…

- One in five adults were smokers, but more than half (58.5%) had never smoked at all.

- Four in 10 smokers had tried to quit smoking in the last year.

- Adults with more education tended not to smoke.

- Respondents with a GED (General Education Development) were more likely than non-high school graduates and high school graduates to be smokers.

The amount of exercise Americans are getting has remained stable over the years, and the most recent survey results show that…

- About six in 10 adults took part in at least some leisure-time physical activity, while about three in 10 regularly did something physical.

- Adults with higher levels of education were more likely to be physically active.

- Men were more likely than women to be physically active.

When it comes to body weight, everyone knows that obesity rates have been rising steadily over the years. Carrying more weight than you should has serious consequences for the body. Here’s what the survey found about body weight status…

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Are Your Bad Habits Getting the Better of You..? Continued…

- Six in 10 adults could be considered obese or overweight.

- Adults who were more educated were less likely to be obese.

- Four in 10 adults reported being a healthy weight.

- Men were more likely to be overweight (67.9% vs. 53%); but men and women were equally likely to be obese (25.7% vs. 25.0%).

Experts are quickly coming to recognize that getting enough quality sleep is super important to your overall health and well being. When it comes to sleep, the study found that…

- Six in 10 adults typically got 7 to 8 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period.

- Three in 10 adults averaged 6 hours of sleep, or less, each night.

- Those with higher levels of education were likely to sleep six hours (or less) a night.

- Men in the 25-44 age group were more likely than women to sleep 6 hours or less; but women over 65 (or older) were more likely to sleep less than 6 hours.

So… you see where we are. The survey is helpful in getting a picture of the health behaviors of Americans. It seems there are still a good many of us engaging in unhealthy habits, despite the best efforts of government and medicine to get the word out about the benefits to body and mind to living healthy.

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A long afternoon nap has the ability to prepare the brain to remember. “Sleep is not just for the body. It’s very much for the brain,” explains study author Matthew Walker, an assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

The research conducted at Berkeley involved 39 healthy young adults divided into two groups. At noon on the study day, all the subjects performed a memory exercise that involved matching faces with names. Both groups performed similarly on this task, then half of the participants were given the chance to nap for 90 minutes. The other half remained awake. The subjects then took part in another exercise at 6:00 pm.

The subjects who didn’t nap did about 10% worse on the memory tests than those who napped. And get this… under normal conditions a person’s ability to learn naturally declines about 10% between noon and 8:00 pm, but the nappers didn’t suffer with the decline.

By conducting electroencephalogram tests, the researchers could look at the subjects’ brain activity and found that memory refreshing seems to happen in the stage between deep sleep and the dreaming state. We know this as rapid eye movement or REM sleep.

This research reinforces the importance of sleep, and the role it plays not only in processing memories, but also before learning in helping to prep the brain for taking in new information.

You need to be sure to sleep long enough to give your brain a chance to go through the cycles of sleep according to the experts.

A well known and much respected researcher in the area of sleep and memory, assistant professor of psychology Jessica Payne of the University of Notre Dame, has found that a good night’s sleep results in better inferential ability. She said the study findings “really add to something we already know about why sleep is important.”

Lack of restorative sleep is more serious than we ever thought. When you’re sleep deprived, you create a “sleep debt” that causes your body to demand that you make up the sleep you’ve missed.

Lack of sleep also forces you (and those around you) to cope with impairments in judgment, reaction times and other mental functions. Studies have shown performance when sleep deprived is even worse than when intoxicated.

If you’re one of the many who try and shortchange themselves of rest, here are some warning signs, courtesy of the National Sleep Foundation, that you’re too tired to drive…

- You’re having trouble keeping your eyes focused

- You can’t stop yawning

- You can’t remember driving the last few miles

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If you find that you’re drowsy during the day, even during mundane activities or meetings, experts take this as a sign you aren’t getting the amount of sleep your body needs.

While the right number of hours per night is highly individual, and changes over your lifetime, a clue that you’re not getting enough sleep is if you fall off within five minutes of laying down.

Another tip, try not setting an alarm on the weekend… if you sleep later than you do during the week you’re probably not getting the rest you need.

Both the student trying to learn and the older person working to preserve cognitive function can benefit from sleep… and naps.

Sleep is known to enhance creativity, improve long-term memory and help to you hold onto important memories. So don’t deny yourself those wonderful, restful and invigorating afternoon power naps… you’ll be helping to improve brain power as a result.

To your good health,

Kirsten Whittaker
Daily Health Bulletin Editor

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This finding comes from work in the U.S. on a group of volunteers who were willing to adjust their sleep patterns so they could be monitored.

For seven days, one half of the group was given extra sleep, while the others were told to make no changes to their sleeping patterns.

The next week they were all sleep deprived. “After this week of either extended or habitual sleep per night, all the volunteers came to the lab and they were allowed only three hours of sleep, per night, for a week,” explained award-winning researcher Tracy Rupp from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

Next, both groups were given tasks of varying complexity – tests showed that subjects who had banked sleep the week before were better off during the sleep restriction.

Those who banked sleep didn’t lose reaction time and alertness like the group who’d slept normally. Even a week after the experiment, the sleepers who banked sleep were recovering better from being deprived of sleep than those who had slept as usual.

“What we’re basically saying is if you fill up your reserves and pay back your sleep debt ahead of time, you’re better equipped to deal with the sleep loss challenge.”

The research team isn’t able to say just how much sleep you need to bank for maximum effect. Like the amount of sleep each of us needs, the amount to bank is likely very individualized.

Of course so many of us know well the feeling of going to bed early before a big day and not being able to fall off to sleep. This is where good sleep habits can truly make a difference, especially relaxation techniques, in helping you slow your thoughts and let go so you can slip into sleep easily.

And though the latest work didn’t look at napping, the researchers point out that short rests during the day have been shown to improve performance, at least in the short term.

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Earlier work has found that those who suffer with chronic sleep deprivation might be able to function just fine just after waking, but experience slower reaction times as the day goes on… even if they tried to catch up the night before. Chronic sleep deprivation appears to take some time and effort to fix.

Not only does this sleep banking idea have implications for business people, but also for the military where it could be a lifesaver. The idea, if supported after some more testing, could become a part of pre-tour routines for armed forces.

The next step is to find out why the extra sleep can be banked and to identify just what’s happening in the brain – something that we can be observed with advanced brain-imaging machines.

According to the National Institutes of Health, 50 to 70 million Americans deal with chronic sleep disorders and sleep problems that can truly affect health, not to mention alertness and safety.

Sleep disorders that don’t get treated have been linked to high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, depression, diabetes and other chronic conditions. The trouble for many of us is that we overlook or ignore our sleep problems and don’t mention them to our doctor.

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Earlier work has shown that processes that improve memory go on while we sleep, but this is the first study to look at what happens during times of so-called wakeful rest.

“Taking a coffee break after class can actually help you retain that information you just learned,” explains researcher Lila Davachi, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at the Center for Neural Science at New York University. “Your brain wants you to tune out other tasks so you can tune in to what you just learned.”

For the project, 16 adults, aged 22 to 34, were shown pairs of images (a human face and an object, or a human face and a scene) and told to associate the object with the person in the picture, but not told they’d be tested on this later on.

This learning period was followed by a time of wakeful rest (about 8 minutes) where the subjects were told only to relax and think about whatever they liked. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to measure the brain activity before, during and after the testing.

The researchers found that the activity between the hippocampus and neocortex – two areas of the brain known to be involved in memory and processing – increased as the subjects were shown the images and during the resting phase as well.

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The subjects who had the greatest increases in activity between the two brain areas while resting and looking at the images did better on associative memory tests than those who had weaker reactions.

It seems the greater the activity in the two regions of the brain, the stronger the memory.

“Your brain is working for you when you’re resting, so rest is important for memory and cognitive function,” Davachi says. “This is something we don’t appreciate much, especially when today’s information technologies keep us working around the clock.”

So, could taking a short break and letting the brain relax when studying for an exam or getting ready for a business presentation be a better way to learn and memorize?

Study leader Dr. Davachi says, “People tend to think that if we want to remember something, you should do something active, like rehearse the material. And you can do that – we know it helps, but my suspicion is just letting your mind wander is going to be okay.”

For now researchers can’t say that one type of wakeful rest is better than another for enhancing memory. Your best bet might be to sit quietly and do nothing, just letting the information sink in.

The researchers involved in this work hope their findings will be of value to anyone trying to improve their memory, and help science further understand memory and how it works.

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An abundance of research now proves that getting enough sleep gives you the edge to help you perform at your best, be more creative, have stronger long-term memory and preservation of important memories.

Where once sleeping was dismissed as down time, research now knows that sleep has distinct stages that cycle through the night, and that your brain does stay active during sleep, with different things happening during each stage of sleep.

“It turns out we are not like TiVo,” explains Dr. Robert Stickgold of Harvard Medical School who also serves as director of Boston’s Center for Sleep and Cognition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, comparing our mind to the video recording device. “TiVo is good at recording one station while it shows you another. We can’t do that. We can’t simultaneously take in information and process it.”

He believes that sleep helps in the information processing part of the equation, maybe giving the brain a chance to go “offline” for a while and then shift into a different mode that’s evolved over time to help us perform memory processing.

Research points to REM sleep (the stage of rapid eye movement) as being the time when issues are resolved and new information tucked away or discarded.

Stickgold points out that when faced with a big decision, few of us say, “I’ll go out for a hamburger.” What do we do? We sleep on it…

Just why sleep is so crucial for memories is still a mystery, although the mystery is starting to be unraveled.

Another researcher in the area of sleep and memory, assistant professor of psychology Jessica Payne of the University of Notre Dame, has found that a good night’s sleep can result in better inferential ability.

Evidence from her work suggests that when you sleep you learn the hierarchy of information and the more sophisticated relationships. “Sleep is not only important for your ability to remember,” Payne says, “but it also helps you be more creative, find more interesting and distant connections and be more innovative.”

And while there’s no public service initiative to promote the benefits of a good night’s sleep, the experts are calling for that to change.

Sleep depravation has been linked to all kinds of troublesome conditions, not just obesity (because it disrupts insulin regulation), but high blood pressure and heart disease as well.

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Beyond this, lack of sleep also has well documented ties to weakened immunity and memory. Accidents are a well-known risk of driving or operating machinery when people are routinely not getting the amount of sleep they need – in fact, drowsy driving has been shown to be the same as driving drunk.

So what’s the right amount of sleep to get? The amount varies from person to person and needs change throughout our lives. Most adults require 7 to 8 hours each night -newborns sleep 16-18 hours a day; preschooler’s 10-12 hours a day; school age and teens need about 9 hours a night.

Stickgold has a suggestion to see if you’re getting the amount of sleep you need. “Watch what happens on the weekend if you don’t set an alarm,” he advises. “If you sleep more than you sleep during the week, you aren’t getting enough sleep. Try for one week to sleep for eight hours a night and see if things get better or worse.”

Once you do, Stickgold believes you’ll see for yourself how things you do every day get easier. And you might find some life saving health benefits as well, all without pills and just as close as your bedroom.

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But new research finds that regular sleep loss can’t be fixed so easily. And in our 24/7 world, where one in six Americans regularly get six or less hours of sleep each night, where shift work and overtime are increasingly popular, the results cannot be overlooked.

The National Institutes of Health suggests that adults get 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night in order to maintain good health.

If you’re not getting this regularly, you run an increased risk of health problems, impaired memory and even a weakened immune system.

Too little sleep also impacts your reaction times and is often to blame for all manner of accidents.

Researchers looked at the effects of both short and long term sleep loss using nine young, healthy volunteers, aged 21 to 34 years old, whose sleep habits the team disrupted over a three-week period.

The subjects stayed awake for 33-hour stretches with 10 hours of sleep in between – a quirky enough schedule that didn’t let the subjects internal clocks adapt.

The sleep depravation used here is about the same as someone who gets 5½ hours a night and can be compared to the typical on call schedule of a resident physician.

Both cognitive and motor skills tests every few hours during the wakeful period were used to measure the subjects’ ability to stay alert as compared to a control group of volunteers who were getting a normal amount (8 hours) of sleep per night.

The sleep-deprived subjects didn’t do so badly during the first few hours after waking, especially during that first week. But their reaction times got worse and worse with each hour they were awake.

There was a big drop in performance between the first and second week of sleep depravation.

This effect persisted even if the subjects had tried to catch up on sleep the night before. And while a well rested person can catch up from the occasional late night pretty easily, the more sleep deprived you are, the more you lose that sense of rejuvenation that comes from a good night’s sleep.

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The team found that when the chronically sleep deprived subjects stayed up past bedtime again, their performance plummeted just as their circadian rhythms (the term for our internal body clock) reached a natural low point.

The drop was so impressive that Dr. Daniel A. Cohen (a neurologist at Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) and the team were convinced these subjects were increasingly at risk to accidents or mistakes.

These findings are certainly important to anyone who works an alternate shift, or is constantly cheating themselves of sleep. Don’t think there aren’t consequences to the body of doing this.

“We know that staying awake 24 hours in a row impairs performance to a level comparable to a blood-alcohol content beyond the legal limit to drive,” said lead researcher Cohen, also associated with Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston. But when the already chronically sleep-deprived don’t sleep at all, “the deterioration is increased tenfold.”

What this tells us is you can’t “bank” sleep on the weekend. You need to practice good sleep habits, along with other smart lifestyle choices, to ensure your body gets the rest it needs to function at its best.

Future work in this area will try to uncover how quickly you might recover from chronic sleep loss once you change your sleeping habits.

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Now new research out of Northwestern University has found that sound may work in much the same way on the sleeping brain, adding to a growing body of evidence that memories are processed during sleep.

The latest study appears in the November 20, 2009 issue of Science and examines whether sound cues linked to newly learned information help the brain hang onto that data.

“We have known that the memory system is quite active during sleep and that the memory can be strengthened at this time,” says John Rudoy, lead author of the study and a neuroscience Ph.D. student at Northwestern.

The participants in this study, 12 young adults who were asked to learn a new task and then take a nap, were better able to hold onto the newly learned memory when they were exposed to sound cues during their nap, though none of them remembered hearing any sounds.

The task involved being shown 50 images, each appearing one at a time in different places on a computer screen. The images had a matching sound – a meow with the image of a cat, shattering glass when seeing a wine glass.

The task the subjects did was to put the images in their original spot when they were presented, along with the matching sound, a while later. This part of the study ended when the subjects could do this memory task two times with all the images.

Within the hour after finishing the memory task, the subjects were asked to take a nap in a dark, quiet space. Electrodes were put on their heads to monitor brain activity.

Only after verifying the subjects were in a deep phase of sleep did the researchers play half of the 50 sound cues heard during the learning part of the experiment. They also added 25 new sounds to the mix.

When they woke up, the subjects were given the memory task to do again. After nap scores were worse than the scores before napping. The researchers believe this shows some loss of memory over time.

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But the recall of the correct location of specific images, after being exposed to sound cues for those images during sleep, was far better, even though there was no memory of hearing any sounds.

“The research strongly suggests that we don’t shut down our minds during deep sleep,” continues researcher Rudoy, “Rather this is an important time for consolidating memories.”

So does this mean there’s a way to help us super-charge our learning capacity? It’s too soon to know for sure.

For now, researchers believe that existing memories can be made stronger during sleep, but that new learning doesn’t take place.

According to Howard Eichenbaum, PhD, who directs the Center for Memory and Brain at Boston University, the brain replays memories while we sleep, and sounds may well trigger more specific memories.

He’d like to see future work compare the amount of memory retention associated with sounds during sleep as opposed to more traditional ways of learning… like studying.

This way students and actors everywhere would know which is more effective, listening while you’re sleeping or studying a bit more when you’re awake.

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Lack of sleep is well known as the culprit behind anxiety and depression, as well as upping the chances of getting hurt and casting an overall shadow over work and family life.

Just recently there was a report from the U.S. government that finds only one third (30.7%) of adults are getting enough sleep each night, while another 11.1% reported not getting enough sleep for each of the past 30 days.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that as many as 50 to 70 million American adults deal with sleep and wakefulness disorders.

If you’re not getting enough sleep, you’re more prone to depression, anxiety, obesity, hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol and risky behaviors like smoking, drinking too much and being too inactive.

The report, based on data collected in the 50 states, D.C. and the three U.S. territories, points out that sleep loss is a complex issue that can come from a combination of causes including occupation, lifestyle and specific sleep disorders.

Of the U.S. adults (403,981 of them) who responded to the survey, 11.1% said they didn’t get enough sleep every day of the month just past.

It’s more women than men reporting a shortage of sleep, and there were ethnic differences too. Blacks got less sleep compared to all other ethnic groups.

Those under 45 were also more likely to report days of insufficient sleep than those older than this.

When it came to which of the 50 states was most sleep deprived, West Virginia tops the list, coming in at 19.3%; North Dakota was at the bottom of the list with 7.4%.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, adults require from 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night. Experts like Dr. Bruce Nolan, director of the sleep center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine who was not involved in the study points out, “There is a relatively small percentage of people getting what sleep experts feel is an adequate amount of rest and sleep. That is a very important physical and mental health concern.”

Where once people, the medical profession included, might have thought sleep a waste of time, the research is causing many to revise their thinking.

“We have lots of evidence that getting good quality sleep is associated with better quality of life,” Nolan points out. So if you can manage to get 7 hours of sleep a night you’ll notice that you’re more alert, you do better on the job and enjoy an overall improved quality of life. You’ll feel more energetic.

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If you’re having trouble sleeping there are things you can do to get the rest you need. Start with your own doctor about your sleeping problems, and consider a sleep specialist if you’re not getting better. Sometimes sleep medications can be the answer, though you’ll also want to be sure to:

- Keep a regular sleep schedule so that you go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, even on the weekends, holidays and on vacation.

- Do not nap during the day.

- Make your sleeping space a dark place that’s a comfortable temperature and quiet. Check your mattress and pillow to be sure they’re comfortable and offering good support.

- Avoid stimulating activities, games or the nightly news, as well as caffeine, nicotine, chocolate, sugar or alcohol at least 2 hours before bedtime.

- Use techniques like progressive relaxation, guided imagery or deep breathing to quiet your mind.

- Don’t go to bed hungry, but avoid eating large meals at least 3 hours before bedtime. Limit fluids from early evening to avoid trips to the bathroom.

Making a few simple, natural changes in your sleep routine is one of the best ways to ensure your body gets the rest it needs. Eating right and regular exercise are important, but increasingly experts are seeing that getting enough rest is also critical to lasting health.

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