How to Improve Your Quality of Sleep

by Daniel Tannenbaum February 24, 2020

Having a good night’s sleep is vital for your health, just like having a healthy diet and exercising regularly. By comparison, low quality of sleep can have significant impacts on your daily life, affecting your hormones, brain functioning, and even sometimes your weight.

Good quality of sleep can improve your performance throughout the day, helping you to exercise better and promote your overall health and wellbeing.

There are various different ways you can help to improve your quality of sleep, some effective methods being those listed below:

Reduce blue light in the evenings
Optimise your sleeping environment
Get the right pillows, blankets and sheets
Exercise regularly

Whilst these methods can help to promote a healthier quality of sleep, it’s also important to rule out any underlying sleep disorders, such as sleep apnea. Identifying the reason behind your struggles with sleep can help you to find the most effective ways to tackle them.

Reduce Blue Light in the Evenings

Whilst exposure to light can be beneficial in the daytime, during the night it can have the opposite effect. When we are exposed to certain types of light, it can help to alert your brain that it’s daytime, and reduce the amount of melatonin in your body.

Blue light has been shown to suppress melatonin production the most - and is also emitted in large quantities by electronic devices such as smartphones and laptops. There are certain apps that can help to block blue light from being emitted on your electronic devices.

Aside from these, you can also reduce your blue light exposure simply by switching off from these devices for a couple of hours before bed.

Optimise Your Sleeping Environment

To optimise your sleeping environment, try setting up your bedroom for a good night’s rest. Numerous studies have shown that reducing outside noise and light can help to improve sleep quality (Source: Healthline)

Body temperature is another key feature that has been known to have an impact on sleep quality. Whilst anything around the temperature of 20 °C appears to be comfortable to sleep in, it is entirely down to personal preference.

Therefore, by reducing the amount of light and noise in your sleeping environment, and making sure that the space is a comfortable temperature, you could help to further promote a better quality of sleep.

Get the Right Pillows, Blankets and Sheets

When trying to improve your quality of sleep, it can also be important to consider what you are sleeping in. Getting certain types of pillows, blankets and sheets can promote better quality sleep for some people.

For example, weighted blankets available from Calming Blankets have been proven to stimulate the nervous system, promoting calmness and reducing restlessness. Studies have shown that weighted blankets can improve the quality and quantity of sleep, as well as reducing stress and anxiety.

Weighted blankets range from 4.5kg to 9kg and will also increase melatonin production in the body, whilst reducing amounts of the stress hormone cortisol.

Exercise Regularly

Exercise has been well known to help improve people’s sleep, studies showing it to reduce the time it takes to fall asleep and increase the amount of time spent sleeping. Therefore, by incorporating a healthy amount of exercise into the daily routine, you can help to improve the quality of your sleep.

However, whilst exercise can help to promote sleep, performing it just before bed can be problematic. Exercise stimulates the body, increasing alertness and the hormones that promote this.

Therefore, exercising before bed can make it more difficult to drift off. This is not the case with everyone though and it depends on the individual.

Conclusion

By incorporating these methods into your daily routine, you can help to improve the quality of your sleep, and thereby improve upon your health both mentally and physically. Calming Blanket offer a range of different heavy duty blankets to help alleviate stress and anxiety whilst promoting healthy sleep. See our full range of weighted blanket available here.

Sources:

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/block-blue-light-to-sleep-better