Improving Sleep Habits

 

Are you loving sleeping in each weekend? That lazy Sunday morning stretch and yawn? Coffee in bed, and the Sunday newspaper-or more likely a few hours perusing social media? That is delightful.

However, long mornings in bed after waking up late may not be serving you. Did you know that people who wake up early have better mental health outcomes? I understand from the World Wide Web that many of us are having a difficult time mentally after the toll Covid-19 took on us. Why not try getting your sleep routine in order to see if it helps?

If you are having mental health challenges, you should probably see your doctor and not take advice from my blog post. But if you are just feeling like you want to have an organized 2023 and you want to include a few habits that may help you get through with good results, keep reading.

According to the Mayo Clinic website, you can adopt good sleep habits which includes sticking to a sleep schedule. But why are good sleep habits important? People who have good sleep habits get sick less often, maintain a healthy weight, reduce their risk of some serious diseases, have better moods, think more clearly and get along better with people.

Many of these benefits make sense, for example I know that when I’m fatigued my diet is terrible. I always imagine I’m compensating for the fatigue I feel my trying to get more energy in the form of food. What about getting along with people? Of course if you feel tired you may be cranky as well, or lack patience. Ultimately if you do a little research you’ll find a lot of information stating good sleep habits are beneficial.

I normally wake up at about 5:30 AM or a bit earlier depending on what I have going on that day. Waking up so early means I go to bed very early. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Early to bed, early to rise…”

But beyond the Mayo Clinic and Benjamin Franklin, why would you want to get up early each day? According to the website sleepfoundation.org can enjoy the following benefits

• Compatible sleep and social schedules, work school and society starts early, be there or be square

• Improved mental health, late risers are more likely to have depression

• Time for morning exercise, or whatever else you want to do

• Time for breakfast, not necessarily the most important benefit, I would suggest though that having time to connect in the morning with you partner or offspring could be a huge benefit for your day, and theirs.

Of course not everyone will have a desire to get up early, there are people who are late to bed and late to rise naturally. I say more power to you. I’m going to a theater performance next week that starts at 7:30 PM and because that is much later than a normal start to my evening, I’ll be living like an adult for the first time in a long time.

If you find waking up very early too hard, start incrementally, wake up fifteen minutes before your regular wake up time. Work on that for a few weeks then change to wake up a half an hour earlier than your original wake up time. you may find that you are tired earlier in the evening therefore early rising may not work for your schedule or social life. My brother and his wife start dinner at 8:00 PM most evenings. I can’t imagine being up that late, that is very close to my bedtime!

I wake up naturally, but if you need help, try something gentle. I don’t like to recommend purchases because I think you can always figure out a way not to pay for something, but…how about a clock that has an alarm that is a light. There are very expensive alarms that gradually increase the amount of light over a period of time. Like the sunrise. I have a cheap version of this alarm clock that simply lights up. I keep it in my bathroom which is adjacent to my bedroom. This way the light seeps into my sleep space without being right next to my bed. It is better than a regular alarm in that it is silent, and it auto turns off so I don’t have to get out of bed to deal with it. It does wake me, but it does not jerk me awake. Very nice.

There are alarms for your phone that will wake you with all manner of delightful sounds, like cat purring, or birds chirping. Why not start out your early rise journey or all rise journeys with a pleasant sound? In fact I will go so far as to suggest all our life events can have a delightful soundtrack.

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