- Ways to get a good night's sleep
- What is sofrotherapy?
- Trouble sleeping while traveling
- Specifics for sleep without a prescription
A deep night's sleep is of utmost importance for our he alth. Fortunately, falling asleep can be made easier. Sometimes it is enough to just follow some simple advice.
Where to start? Certainly not by taking a sedative or sleeping pill. From the point of view of making it easier to fall asleep, it is important to act throughout the day, but especially what we do in the evening, what we eat before going to bed, and what - in a psychological sense - we take to bed with us. The decor and atmosphere of the bedroom are also important. See for yourself that completely ordinary treatments will help you fall asleep and finally have a good rest.
Ways to get a good night's sleep
- Arrange the bedroom so that the surroundings are conducive to relaxation, e.g. paint the walls in a calm color (warm pink, salmon, peach or warm green or blue). Make sure that the room does not reach the hustle and bustle of the street and the light of street lamps or shop neon lights. Get a comfortable bed. In winter, put an air humidifier in the bedroom or place a damp towel on the radiator. Make sure that the room is not too hot (a good temperature for sleep is around 18 degrees Celsius). Do not decorate the room where you sleep with clocks when you happen to "count the rams", the sense of the passage of time will only stress you out.
- Don't take naps during the day. At most a quarter of an hour after a great effort to regenerate.
- Change your diet to an easily digestible one. Eat your last meal no later than 2-3 hours before going to bed. The last course should be fish, poultry, warm milk with a teaspoon of honey, possibly ice cream or a piece of dark chocolate. These products contain tryptophan - an amino acid that slightly raises the level of serotonin, a hormone that allows you to relax.
- Don't drink alcohol before going to bed. In the second half of the day, do not drink strong coffee, tea or even cola (they contain stimulating caffeine).
- In the afternoon, keep your drinks to a minimum so you don't have to get up to go to the bathroom at night.
- Take a long walk before going to bed (even when it's raining), and then ventilate your bedroom well.
- Take a warm, relaxing bath with essential oils and listen to relaxing music.
- Go to bed at the same time (with a tolerance of up to half an hour) and only when you really want to sleep.
- Don't take your trouble and work to the bedroom. Sheis to be associated only with sleep, possibly with sex. Getting closer is an ally in the fight against insomnia; relieves tension, and the hormones secreted during it have a beneficial effect on the sleep centers in the brain.
- Don't watch horror movies before going to bed, which keep you in suspense and awake.
- When you wake up in the morning, even if it's too early to go to work, stay awake. Take a moment and get up without haste.
What is sofrotherapy?
Sofrotherapy is based on the fact that instead of performing routine activities before going to bed, we have to imagine them. It is helped by mastering the basics of yoga, consciously relaxing and visualizing by creating specific images in your mind. During sofrotherapy, we relax the body and, step by step, imagine every activity we usually do before going to bed. This technique is useful when we need to fall asleep in a new environment (e.g. after a change of apartment) or in unusual conditions (during a long trip).
Trouble sleeping while traveling
We travel more and more often and to more and more distant corners of the world. Unfortunately, sometimes we pay for such a luxury with sleep problems. The condition that affects us while traveling by plane and crossing time zones is called jet-lag syndrome. Then we have problems both with falling asleep and staying asleep all night without interruptions. So we are tired during the day, we have weaker reflexes and weakened concentration. Sometimes it is accompanied by disorders of the digestive system and ailments such as diarrhea or constipation, painful intestinal cramps, a feeling of fullness in the stomach.
Scientists have proved that jet-lag syndrome can be prevented early enough by consumed melatonin - a substance naturally produced in our brain by a small gland, the pineal gland. It turns out that after the age of 50 its production decreases and, inter alia, therefore older people have trouble falling asleep. After dusk and night come, the pineal gland tells the pineal gland to start producing melatonin. It makes us sleepy and makes us willing to go to bed.
In the morning, when the daylight wakes us up, the secretion of melatonin slows down. In this way, this natural substance regulates the rhythm of sleep and wakefulness in our body, determines the activity of the body and the time in which it should rest. If we take melatonin at the right time before the trip (the leaflet attached to the medicine informs about it in detail; the time of taking the tablet depends, among others, on whether we are traveling east or west), we will avoid jet-lag problems.
Specifics for sleep without a prescription
You can reach for them when we have trouble falling asleep only from time to time.
- lekosen, hova (herbal sleeping pills)
- kalms, nervendragees-ratiopharm, persen, valerian for the night (calming tablets)
- valused, passiflor, passispasmol (calming tinctures)
- lemon balm, tea for insomnia, nervinum (infusing herbs)
- sedatif PC, homeogene 46, sedalia, valerianaheel, valerin, incarnata, ignatia 15 CH (homeopathic remedies)
- melatonin - tablets that restore the natural rhythm: sleep (at night), wakefulness (during the day), e.g. when we work shifts or travel to another hemisphere.
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