Sleep Hygiene: What Is It and Why Does It Matter?

Do you suffer from sleeping problems or poor quality sleep? You’re not alone. Over 70 million Americans suffer from sleep issues. Some of these issues may be caused by health conditions. Others could simply be the result of poor sleep hygiene. You might be wondering what sleep hygiene is and how it impacts your sleep.

Sleep hygiene is a set of practices and habits that lead to better sleep quality. Such practices cover a wide range of activities and lifestyle choices. People who wish to combat sleep problems or simply get a better night’s rest should follow different sleep hygiene practices and make them a regular part of their lives.

Read on to learn why sleep hygiene is important and how you can start practicing it.

Why is Sleep Hygiene Important?

Sleep hygiene is important because it creates the right conditions to help you get a good night’s rest. People who practice poor sleep hygiene often suffer from sleep problems or have poor quality sleep. This can lead to both short-term and long-term health issues. Some of the problems associated with poor sleep quality include:

1. Difficulty Concentrating

We need our minds to function properly to help us in our day-to-day lives. The simple act of calculating the change in your pocket or organizing a folder requires a fair amount of brain power. However, you may have noticed these seemingly simple tasks become more difficult when you haven’t slept properly the night before.

This is because poor sleep quality has been linked to concentration issues. This means your performance in school or at the office will be worse if you don’t get a good night’s rest.

2. Increased Anxiety

Millions of people across the United States suffer from an anxiety condition. Such conditions force your body into fight-or-flight mode, even if there isn’t any danger present.

People with anxiety suffer from nervousness and racing thoughts, and these can be mentally exhausting. Anxiety can be caused by a number of factors. However, it is believed its symptoms can get worse if you don’t get enough sleep. This problem can lead to a feedback loop if the anxiety is contributing to your poor sleep quality in the first place.

3. High Blood Pressure

Blood pressure performs the vital function of circulating oxygen through your body. Healthy blood pressure ensures this process occurs at the pace your body demands. However, if your blood pressure gets too high, it can damage your heart and arteries. In extreme cases, it can even lead to heart attacks.

Studies have found that people who suffer from poor sleep quality and those who don’t get enough sleep often develop high blood pressure. This is because sleep helps naturally reduce your blood pressure. Therefore, if you miss out on sleep, your blood pressure may increase and stay at dangerous levels.

4. Developing Diabetes

Diabetes is a common condition in which your body can no longer process the glucose you derive from the foods you can consume. This causes excess sugar to build up in your bloodstream, which can lead to symptoms such as:

● Increased thirst

● Blurred vision

● Dry mouth

● Numbness

● Fatigue

● Weight loss

The exact cause of diabetes is unknown. However, some studies have found that people with long term sleep issues have a higher chance of developing diabetes.

5. Higher Risk of Stroke

A stroke is a serious event in which a blood vessel clots or ruptures. When this occurs, a portion of your brain can’t receive the oxygen it needs. As a result, a portion of your brain cells die. Strokes can lead to severe brain problems. This includes:

● Having trouble speaking

● Paralysis

● Headaches

● Vision problems

● Having trouble walking

Strokes can be prevented if people are willing to make certain lifestyle choices. This includes not smoking, losing weight, and cutting back on alcohol. Getting a good night’s rest is also believed to reduce the risk of having a stroke.

Ways to Practice Sleep Hygiene

Sleep is a complex process that is dictated by many bodily functions. This also means there are a large number of activities and habits that can promote better sleep. Some ways you can practice sleep hygiene include:

Sleeping at Consistent Times

All creatures have an “internal clock” that dictates when they should sleep and wake up. This internal clock is somewhat flexible. However, your sleep quality will generally be best when you follow your natural sleep cycle.

For this reason, you should try sleeping at consistent times. You can think of this as setting your own bedtime as an adult. It may help to set an alarm that tells you when to start winding down your activities and when to get into bed.

Following this routine consistently should help your body find a comfortable sleep pattern that benefits you in the long run.

Be Careful About Daytime Naps

Napping can be a hit or miss activity for most people. Some naps leave us feeling refreshed and rejuvenated, while others leave us feeling groggy.

If you’re taking naps to make up for lost sleep, you should know that napping could impact your sleep quality at night. The good news is that there are certain ways to take naps that leave you feeling fresh and don’t impact your sleep at night.

Avoid Napping after 3pm

The first trick is to limit your naps to the early afternoon. As a rule of thumb, you should avoid napping after 3pm.

Limit Your Nap Length

The second trick is to limit your naps to 20 minutes in length. This is the typical length for a “power nap” which will help you feel fresher and more alert once you wake up.

Limit Your Caffeine Intake

Most of us rely on tea or coffee to help us get up in the morning. Such caffeinated beverages are an invaluable part of our lives. However, they may interfere with your sleep quality at night.

Caffeine is a powerful stimulant which lingers in your system for many hours. It takes about five hours for the concentration of caffeine in your plasma to fall to half of its original value. This means you may still have a significant portion of caffeine in your system after ten hours. Even this concentration of caffeine can impact your sleep quality.

For this reason, limiting your caffeine intake is considered an important sleep hygiene practice. You can do this in two ways.

Choose Your Caffeinated Drinks Wisely

We all know that caffeine is one of the strongest caffeine beverages out there, but you may be surprised to learn that a single cup of brewed coffee contains around 95 mg of caffeine. A single shot of espresso contains around 60 mg of caffeine, while a cup of black tea has around 45 mg of caffeine.

So you should choose your drinks according to the amount of caffeine you are willing to consume. We recommend cutting out stronger beverages such as coffee entirely and switching to green tea, as it contains only 30mg of caffeine.

Avoid Consuming Caffeine Later in the Day

Consuming caffeine later in the day is especially bad because it means your body will still contain a relatively high concentration when you get into bed at night. This means you will likely stay up longer than usual and won’t feel tired until it is well past your usual bedtime.

Studies have concluded that people should avoid having caffeine after 5pm to reduce the chances of it affecting their sleep at night.

Cut Down on Alcohol

Some people might believe drinking alcohol helps them sleep. After all, it is a central nervous system depressant that induces relaxation and sleepiness. However, you might be surprised to learn that drinking alcohol, especially in large quantities, has been linked to bad sleep quality and shorter sleep durations. This is one of the reasons why people with alcohol disorders suffer from insomnia and other sleep disorders.

Alcohol suppresses the Rapid Eye Motion (REM) cycles that would otherwise occur during deep sleep. As a result, your body won’t enter its deep sleep state if you consume a moderate or large quantity of alcohol before sleeping.

Consuming a small quantity of alcohol can still impact your sleep. However, the effects aren’t as significant as consuming larger quantities. For this reason, you should stick to having one or two drinks at most at night.

Create a Dark and Quiet Sleep Environment

Your sleep environment can impact your sleep quality to a large degree. Any lights or sounds in your sleep environment can disturb you while you are sleeping and reduce the likelihood that you will enter a deep sleep.

For this reason, you should try creating the ideal sleep environment that is both dark and quiet. You may need to move some things around or move to a different room to accomplish this.

For example, if light from street lamps enters your bedroom window at night, you should invest in curtains or blinds that block out this light completely. Similarly, if the message alerts on your cell phone keep waking you up, you should keep your phone on silent as you sleep.

If you can’t create a dark and quiet sleep environment, you can improvise by wearing a blindfold sleep mask and earplugs to avoid lights and sounds from bothering you.

Set the Right Thermostat Temperature

You may be surprised to learn that the human body has a natural temperature cycle that works through each 24 hour period. Your body temperature typically rises from early morning until dusk. The body then starts releasing heat and cooling down at night, or just before bed. This temperature drop continues until about 5am, and then your body temperature starts increasing again.

This temperature cycle is important because it controls your natural sleep cycle. Anything that disrupts your body’s natural temperature change could impact your sleep. This includes your bedroom temperature.

Studies have found that a room temperature of 65 o F won’t interfere with your body’s natural heat and cooling cycle. This means you should set your thermostat to this temperature just before you plan to get into bed.

Avoid Screens Before Bed

Screens are everywhere in the digital era. Televisions, computers, tablets, smartphones, and even fridges have screens. We use these devices to consume visual content and communicate with others, so it’s easy to forget that these screens are actually light sources beaming light directly into our eyes.

Being exposed to such light before bed can impact your sleep quality. This is because the light from these devices includes blue light of a particular wavelength. This blue light blocks your body from producing melatonin, which is the hormone that naturally induces sleep.

For this reason, you should avoid using devices with screens before bed. If you have to use these devices for unavoidable work activities at night, you can wear special blue light filter glasses that stop this blue light from entering your eyes.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, following sleep hygiene is important if you want to improve your sleep quality. You should adopt a combination of the habits and practices described above because poor sleep quality has been linked to many health problems.

Practicing good sleep hygiene is easier than you think, so there is no excuse not to create the perfect conditions that promote good sleep. You and your body will both feel the benefits of good sleep hygiene after just a few days.