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8 Ways for a better night sleep

1. Reduce your stress Stress sends your mind into overdrive and makes it extremely difficult to relax. Anxiety can keep your mind ticking, preventing you from falling asleep, irrespective of how exhausted you are. Try this: Practice some relaxation techniques such as breathing exercises, yoga, reading a book or even going for a walk. Appropriate relaxation techniques will vary for everyone so find what works for you. 2. Avoid alcohol before bed Contrary to what you may believe alcohol does not help you sleep better. While it may make you feel sleepy initially, alcohol interferes with your sleep cycle, making it hard to sleep soundly throughout the night. You also wake up earlier in the morning and can experience daytime sleepiness.

Try this: Consuming alcohol as much as six hours before bed has been shown to increase wakefulness during sleep. It’s therefore best to completely avoid drinking before bed. However, if you need alcohol with your evening meal, make sure you drink water with it and finish drinking at least two hours before bed.

3. Limit your caffeine consumption
Caffeine is a stimulant that blocks sleep-inducing chemicals in the brain and increases adrenaline production, temporarily increasing alertness. While caffeine is the wake-up fuel for so many of us, it can also contribute to sleep deprivation, by keeping us awake when we should be sleeping.

Try this: The time to cease consuming caffeine i.e. tea or coffee, varies for everyone. Some people may need to stop at midday, while others may be able to consume caffeine until 5pm. Find the time that bests suits you.

4. If you smoke, don’t smoke before bed
Nicotine is another stimulant that makes falling to sleep difficult. Smokers can also be woken up during the night by nicotine withdrawals.

Try this: The best advice is to quit smoking altogether. This will not only improve your sleep, it will also improve your health in a number of other ways.

5. Avoid eating large meals too close to bed
Eating large meals too close to bedtime can leave you feeling uncomfortable and make it hard to sleep. People who experience heartburn – the backflow of acid and food from the stomach to the oesophagus – need to be especially careful about lying down too close to eating, as this can exacerbate symptoms, making sleep impossible.

Try this: Eat your meal at least two hours before lying down. You can however, eat a small snack closer to bedtime.

6. Exercise regularly
Regular exercise improves your quality of sleep and is a great way to relieve stress and reduce anxiety levels, which interfere with sleep. Strenuous exercise within two hours of going to bed however can increase your core body temperature, making it more difficult to sleep.

Try this: Include at least 30 minutes of physical activity each day. Choose an activity you enjoy – go for a run, swim, ride or play a social game of touch footy with your friends.

7. Enjoy a glass of milk
Milk, as well as banana, almonds, tuna, and yoghurt, contain tryptophan, an amino acid needed to make the sleep-inducing substances serotonin and melatonin. Eating carbohydrates with tryptophan-containing foods makes tryptophan more available for the brain, while calcium helps the brain use the tryptophan to make melatonin.

Try this: Milk and yoghurt contain protein, carbohydrate and calcium, making them the perfect snooze foods. For better sleep, enjoy a hot chocolate or tub of yoghurt an hour before going to bed.

8. Turn off technology
Research shows mobile phones and Blackberries are making us a sleep-deprived nation. People are constantly having their sleep interrupted by text messages, emails or phone calls. The extended hours surfing the Net or talking to friends on social websites is also cutting into valuable sleeping time.

Try this: Enjoy a full night’s sleep – turn off technology. Also limit your computer time by giving yourself a “computer curfew”. Come 10pm, switch off your computer and hit the sheets.