Planning Your Perfect Night Of Sleep?

Let’s go through your ideal night of sleep and sleep preparation together, starting in the afternoon.

Getting Ready For Nighttime
Preparing for sleep at night begins during the daytime. Engage in some sort of aerobic exercise such as brisk walking in the afternoon or early evening. Daily exercise is one of the best ways to improve the quality of your sleep because it helps you fall asleep faster and sleep longer. People who exercise spend a greater amount of time in stage three and four sleep, the most restorative and repairing stages of sleep.
But don’t go overboard and rev up your body with exercise within three hours of bedtime.
Eat a modest, healthy dinner four hours before bedtime. You may eat a light evening snack before bed - even better is a snack that is correctly balanced with proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. This snack will help stabilise blood sugar through the nighttime hours. Some people can handle caffeine; others can’t. If you fall in the latter category, then quit drinking or eating caffeinated products by noon.
As the sun goes down, your body will relax naturally. When the light fades, the hormone melatonin is released into your bloodstream, making you sleepy. The amount of melatonin your body produces is affected by the amount of light going into your eyes.
Follow your body’s signal. Turn down the lights. Light messes up our hormonal response at night.
Don’t watch an action-packed movie or even the late local news programme, which tends to play up violent news stories. Watch something calming, play your favourite soothing music, or perhaps watch a funny TV show or movies since laughter helps to relax you. Take a warm shower or bath, adding soothing salts or lavender oil. Get all your senses involved. Dim the lights, listen to music, and relax.

When To Head To The Bed
Sleep before midnight is better than sleep after midnight. If you can’t bear the idea of going to sleep that early, remember that your very health is at stake. Ninety to 95 percent of your 60 to 100trillion cells are replaced each year, and much of that occurs during sleep that comes early in the night. Not only that, but while you sleep your body rejuvenates itself. Sleep and water are the two best anti-ageing secrets. If you value your looks and your life span, getting to bed at 10 p.m. won’t be difficult. For many patients with chronic disease, the most important recommendation is to be in bed by 9 p.m. and to sleep at least eight hours. God designed us to fall asleep when it is dark and to wake up when the sun rises.

The Sleep Diet

To some people, the need for sleep seems a sign of weakness. Getting by with less rest is the new macho – and women, especially, are buying into it. But while you’re asleep, every system in your body is being fine-tuned, reset, cleaned up and restored to its optimal operating mode by an army of molecular troubleshooters. New things you have learnt are being processed, memories are being organised and stored, and the immune system is building a new contingent of natural killer cells to fight off battalions of infectious agents. Growth hormone is being produced to repair damaged tissue (in adults) or build new tissue (in children) and to block the corrosive effects of stress.

When you sleep well, you’re in peak operating condition. When you don’t, you feel groggy and none of your systems is firing on all cylinders. You don’t think straight, make good decisions, remember where you parked the car or feel like making love. The resulting chemical glitches will put you on the fast track for heart disease, stroke, diabetes and even obesity.

Here are some surefire strategies from top specialists for a truly good night’s sleep.

The daily schedule
Wake up at the same time every day. A good night’s sleep actually starts in the morning. The second your eyes flutter open, light shoots down the optic nerve and into the brain’s biological clock. That stimulates production of hormones that regulate everything from how you think to how you feel.

"Sunlight activates the brain," says Frisca Yan-Go, medical director of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Sleep Disorders Centre. And activating it at the same time every morning teaches your body that at midnight it’s supposed to be asleep, and at noon it’s supposed to be awake.

Wake up at a different time every day and the clock is out of sync. You feel groggy and hungover for hours.

Give yourself an hour – the one right before bedtime. You need it to wind down and make the transition from the person-who-can-do-everything to the person-who-can-sleep. Unfortunately, most women are not giving themselves one single second. According to a 2007 poll by the US National Sleep Foundation, in the hour before bed about 60% of them do household chores, 37% take care of children, 36% do activities with other family members, 36% are on the internet, and 21% catch up on work.

Put yourself first. Women aren’t used to putting their needs ahead of others’, but sleep is so vital to health and happiness that we must make it a priority. If the dog’s snoring wakes you up, put him in another room. If your partner’s snoring wakes you up, help him get treatment. If he refuses to cooperate, put him in another room.

To some people, the need for sleep seems a sign of weakness. Getting by with less rest is the new macho – and women, especially, are buying into it. But while you’re asleep, every system in your body is being fine-tuned, reset, cleaned up and restored to its optimal operating mode by an army of molecular troubleshooters. New things you have learnt are being processed, memories are being organised and stored, and the immune system is building a new contingent of natural killer cells to fight off battalions of infectious agents. Growth hormone is being produced to repair damaged tissue (in adults) or build new tissue (in children) and to block the corrosive effects of stress.

When you sleep well, you’re in peak operating condition. When you don’t, you feel groggy and none of your systems is firing on all cylinders. You don’t think straight, make good decisions, remember where you parked the car or feel like making love. The resulting chemical glitches will put you on the fast track for heart disease, stroke, diabetes and even obesity.

Here are some surefire strategies from top specialists for a truly good night’s sleep.



The daily schedule
Wake up at the same time every day. A good night’s sleep actually starts in the morning. The second your eyes flutter open, light shoots down the optic nerve and into the brain’s biological clock. That stimulates production of hormones that regulate everything from how you think to how you feel.

"Sunlight activates the brain," says Frisca Yan-Go, medical director of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Sleep Disorders Centre. And activating it at the same time every morning teaches your body that at midnight it’s supposed to be asleep, and at noon it’s supposed to be awake.

Wake up at a different time every day and the clock is out of sync. You feel groggy and hungover for hours.