Ensure a Good Nights Rest (How to sleep better, faster, stronger!)

I thought it would be nice to share tips that help me sleep like a king since there are so many peo­ple who con­stantly say they have trou­ble sleeping.

The way your bed feels against your skin plays a pow­er­ful role in help­ing you sleep better.

Keep your bed­room neat and tidy to have an awe­some envi­ron­ment that pro­motes  tranquility.

When was the last time you washed your sheets? Isn’t there some­thing spe­cial about slip­ping into your bed when every­thing was freshly laun­dered?  I love that feel­ing and love going into my bed know­ing it’s nice and clean.

As time goes on with­out wash­ing them, the sheets accu­mu­late dirt and every­thing starts feel­ing rough.  Wash your bed sheets, cov­ers and pil­low­cases every week to pro­mote com­fort and get rid of nat­u­rally flak­ing skin, sweat and body oils.  This is very impor­tant for those with res­pi­ra­tory issues as well.

Your bed sheets need to be taut and wrin­kle free.  I’ve noticed that if the bed­sheets are wrin­kled and bunched up under­neath my back, it’s a sub­tle thing, but after lying on that uneven sur­face for 8 hours, they are the direct cause of new knots on my back.

Take off the blan­ket and pil­lows for a moment so that you can stretch each cor­ner of the sheets to make them com­pletely smooth.

What if it’s time to buy new sheets? You spend a third of your life sleep­ing, so don’t you think you deserve to be spend­ing that time on the mate­r­ial you love most?

The qual­ity of sheets are often con­veyed by the thread count but the best sheets are not nec­es­sar­ily the ones with the high­est thread count, but the ones that you think look and feel good against your own skin.  If two sheets have the same thread count, but their weave and the way their cot­ton has been treated is dif­fer­ent, one may feel like silk while the other may feel super cozy and warm.  The best thing you can do is phys­i­cally touch the sheets before buy­ing them and choose the one that feels the best to you.

Ran­dom Life Hack: Wash your pil­low cov­ers or swap them with clean ones every other day to sig­nif­i­cantly reduce face acne break­outs. Your body pro­duces a lot of oils, espe­cially when you’re young and your hor­mones are on over­drive, and that oil con­stantly rubs off on your pil­low and builds up every night, block­ing your pores and pro­mot­ing acne overnight. The deter­gent may be a con­trib­u­tor as well, so you may want to try some­thing that’s for sen­si­tive skin.

How’s your mat­tress doing?  Flip it!

The springs tend to sag and cre­ate an impres­sion over­time on the area you always sleep on, reduc­ing the amount of pre­cious back sup­port the bed pro­vides.  Have some­one help you flip your mat­tress around every few months as it’s quite chal­leng­ing to do it alone.  Alter­nate flip­ping it upside down and switch­ing the feet-side with the head-side.

Even­tu­ally, after about a decade, after you have flipped your mat­tress in every com­bi­na­tion pos­si­ble and feel that your mat­tress is con­tribut­ing to your back pain or stiff­ness, then it’s time to buy a new mattress.  Again, you spend a third of your life sleep­ing, so don’t neglect this call to search for new mat­tresses.  They don’t cost as much as you think.  I mean, seri­ously? $379 for a queen-sized mem­ory foam mat­tress on Ama­zon with a solid 5-star review rat­ing?  Yeah, sign me up.  And in regards to mat­tresses where you have a choice in firm­ness, I would rec­om­mend you con­sider a mat­tress that is on the firmer side if you tend to sleep on your back.  The sup­port is nice.

Sleep is not an instant switch you sim­ply turn on and off: Treat your­self like a dimmer.

Will you sleep soundly when your bed­room is clut­tered like this? Hmmm.

You need to relax grad­u­ally and pre­pare your body for sleep so that when you do finally go into bed, you will fall sound asleep.

Refrain from using the TV, com­puter and phone at least 15 min­utes before going to bed.  The bright pro­jec­tion screen of a mon­i­tor in your eyes tricks your body to think it’s still day time.

Treat your bed as your sleep­ing sanc­tu­ary.  Don’t watch TV in bed.  Don’t bring your lap­top in with you.  Don’t pay your bills in bed.  Get the idea?  Reserve your bed only for sleep­ing (and sex) so your mind and body know that when you slip into bed, it’s time to go to sleep.

Cre­ate a con­sis­tent sleep­ing pat­tern and get your beauty sleep.  Try to sleep and wake up at the same time every night and have that sched­ule con­sist of a full 8 hours of sleep.  Sev­eral peo­ple (includ­ing myself at one point) like to boast that they func­tion fine on 6 hours of sleep, but the real­ity is that even though we oper­ate OK on 6 hours of sleep, we are not oper­at­ing to the best of our abil­ity.  The gene that allows you to truly func­tion per­fectly with only 6 hours of sleep or less is found in less than 3% of the pop­u­la­tion.  So get­ting your “beauty sleep” is very impor­tant for 97% of the population.

Take a warm shower before going to bed. Have the hot water run­ning against your back to loosen your back mus­cles.  The increase in body tem­per­a­ture then sub­se­quent drop pro­motes drowsi­ness and helps me fall asleep and wake up feel­ing like I got a higher qual­ity sleep.

And last but not least… the same way it feels good to have clean sheets, the rest of your bed­room should fol­low suit and be unclut­tered to put your mind at ease.

Hope that helps!  If you got any tips that help you sleep bet­ter I would love to hear them!

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3. Isn’t it Funny?
4. 5 Tips For Reduc­ing Eye Strain
5. Light bulb moments thanks to Albert!