Can't Sleep? 8 Tips to Improve Your Sleep Hygiene

Arush Rijal

August 13, 2024

sleep hygiene and improvement of sleeping habits

How much frustrating it becomes, when you are deprived of sleep, get in your bed, close your eyes and still can't sleep?

If you're struggling with sleep disorder or being unable to achieve sound and quality sleep, then you must understand that its time to fix your sleep hygiene.

Here's some tips on knowing your sleeping problems, how to fix sleeping issues and tips to improve sleep patterns and get rid of sleep disorders. Before heading to the tips, you should understand the importance of sleep, how much sleep does an individual needs and what are benefits of sleep and how sleep deprivation can affect you.

Why is Sleep Important?

During deep sleep, the body undergoes physical repair processes, such as muscle growth and tissue repair, and the brain clears out waste products accumulated throughout the day.

Let's begin with the importance of sleep. A human body needs adequate sleep in order to become healthy. A quality sleep is as better as a balanced diet. Sleeping not only is better for your health but also needed for the overall well being and functioning of your body. Here's why sleep is important to a human body.

Sleep helps in the physical restoration of the body. During the sleep, the body naturally repairs the tissues, muscles and also improves the immune system of the body.
Adequate sleep enhances the brain health. Proper sleep is important to function the cognitive function if the brain. It helps in enhance of memory, problem solving skills and decision making skills.
Proper sleeps helps in focusing on tasks and concentration on your studies, which is directly related to your career performances. This minimizes the risk of accidents and errors.
The emotional regulation of the brain is directly affected by the sleeping. Adequate sleeps helps un improving mood, makes fresh and active and helps to remove anxiety and stress.
Apart from physical and mental health, proper sleeps helps to improve the metabolic health too. This controls appetite, weight gaining and losing and controls risk of chronic heart diseases.

Sleep Hours Required as per Age Group:

The amount of sleep Hours that an individual needs is determined by various factors such as their health, habits, diet and age. The amount of sleep Hours needed by a person depends specially on the age. There sleep experts panel of American Academy of Sleep Medicine, with other concerning parties have provided a recommended sleep hours for different age groups.

The recommendation was provided after a board study and research on sleep duration and it's effects on health of the person.

Here's the recommended data of sleep hours required for an individual as per the age group.

No.	Age Group	Age Range	Recommended Sleep Hours
1	Infant	4-12 months	12-16 hours including naps
2	Toddlers	1-2 years	11-14 hours including naps
3	Pre School	3-5 years	10-13 hours including naps
4	School Age	6-12 years	9-12 hours
5	Teen	13-18 years	8-10 hours
6	Adult	18 years and older	Not less than 7 hours
6	Old Age	Above 60 years age	Not less than 7-8 hours

Well, these are some of the research and survey based data and recommendations are provided based on the normal individual with no any health conditions and sleeping disorders.

Why Can't I Sleep at Night?

Let's come to the theme of our problem and that is not getting enough required sleep needed for the body. This simply happens because of different reasons but, the main reason we're discussing about is the inability to sleep at night or it is even known as insomnia.

Insomnia Causes, Consequences and Treatments

It is the condition where, an individual can't get asleep during the night. It is a kind of a sleep disorder, where individual can't fall asleep, or stay asleep for adequate period or can't fall asleep on time. This can lead to sleep deprivation, health problems, and difficulty in concentrating and prone to diseases. Insomnia can be short term insomnia and long term insomnia. Various factors leads to insomnia. Some of them are

stress, anxiety, medications and lifestyle habits. The condition you can't sleep at night is a condition of sleep disorder.

Sleep Disorder Cause and Treatment, Can't sleep

Factors contributing to Insomnia

Sleep disorder can result from various factors, such as:

Sleep disorder can result from the overlying medical condition of a person. Some chronic diseases like diabetes irregulates the metabolism and occurs sleep disorders and breathing problems such as Asthma makes a person difficult to sleep sound.
Anxiety, stress and overthinking can cause sleep disorder. These kinds of emotional feelings and stimulation brings hormonal disorders and affects the sleep of a person.
Medications and use of chemical drugs can also result in sleep disorder problem. Chemicals like caffeine, alcohol, nicotine and variety of medical and other drugs can effect the sleep.
Poor lifestyle habits and excessive screen time leads to developing the sleep disorder. Not maintaining sleep schedule and proper sleep hygiene can lead to occur sleep disorders.
Noisy and disturbed sleeping environment can cause sleep disorder. Late night works and unhealthy sleeping environments leads to occur sleep disorders.
Hormonal changes due to age, pregnancy and other factors can lead to sleeping disorders.

Consequences of Insufficient Sleep:

Be Careful Chronic sleep deprivation can significantly increase the risk of developing serious health issues, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity, as well as impair cognitive function and emotional well-being.

Deprived sleep makes a person unhealthy, less active, and lazy. There are lots of negative consequences of Insufficient sleep. Besides physical, mental and metabolic health, it affects the social life and interaction of an individual. Let's discuss some of the negative consequences of the insufficient sleep.

Increases risk of heart disease, diabetes and hypertension.
Reduces memory powers, concentration and problem solving skills.
Anxiety, Stress and Depression are likely to occur due to sleep deprivation.
Poor Sleep affects the immune system of our body and makes it more susceptible to illness and viral infections.
Hormonal imbalance that causes weight gain, loss sexual interest and appetite problems.
Decreased performance and risky to accident or physical casualties due to effect in brain and vision and sensory parts of the body.

How to fix your Sleep Hygiene?

For sound and restful sleep, you should focus on adopting the healthy sleeping habits. For, a healthy sleeping habit, you must fix your sleep hygiene. Fixing your sleep hygiene helps you to improve sleep quality and benefit yourself.

Sleep hygiene simply refers to the habits and practices adopted for managing sleep to ensure a sound and restful sleep. This includes creating a proper sleep environment for an uninterrupted sleep. Various sleep strategies are adopted for fixing the sleep issues in order to minimise the poor effects of poor sleep and bad sleeping habits and improper sleep hygiene.

Here's some tips on how you can fix your sleep hygiene using these simple tips.

Manage Your Sleep Schedule. You can make a pre sleep routine, allocating yourself adequate time to sleep. Managing sleeping schedule helps to improve the sleep quality.
Prepare a Bedtime Routine. You must always prepare bedtime routine. You mustn't work too late at night or even sleep early. Following a strict bedtime routine can help you manage restful and adequate sleep.
Digital Detox. You must cutoff screen time in order to ensure proper and sound sleeping. Excessive screen time is the main cause that you can't sleep properly at night. Nowadays screen time has become a problem for kids and it even affects the vision.
Balanced Diet and Exercise. Proper balanced diet and exercise is the remedy for almost 50% of the health problems and almost every treatment requires the balanced diet consumption. As, sleep disorder can be caused by substance and chemicals, consuming balanced diet can help you.
Enhance Sleep Environment. For a better sleeping experience, you must optimise your sleeping environment. Your sleep environment directly affects your sleep quality and it's consequences. You must ensure that your sleep environment is quiet, calm and comfortable with proper air circulation.
Workout on Your Stress and Anxiety. You must manage your anxiety and stress using stress management techniques, that can be doing yoga, playing games and attending conferences.
Monitor and Improve your sleep Patterns. You can monitor your sleep and improve the sleep patterns. There are many applications that can help monitor your sleep behaviour, sleeping patterns and improve it.
Consult with an Expert. Sleeping Disorder is a serious problem and it might affect you in a worse way. So it is always beneficial to consult with an expert. You can also get suggestions about your medications and it's solutions from the doctors and experts.

Following these tips, you can improve your sleep. A restful and sound sleep is the foundation of a healthy life. Sleeping is as important as breathing. So its important to fix your sleep hygiene and help yourself.

Inadequate sleep can severely impact your health and well-being, affecting everything from cognitive function to physical health. By understanding the importance of sleep, recognizing the signs of sleep disorders, and implementing effective sleep hygiene practices, you can significantly improve your sleep quality. Remember, good sleep hygiene is essential for a healthy and productive life.