7 Essential Tips for Better Bedtime Hygiene to Ensuring Quality Sleep and Wellness

Besides, nowadays, when the tempo of life is running so fast, one cannot underestimate the significance of high-quality sleep. Cultivating good sleep hygiene that encompasses the habit and the general routine that enhance restful and rejuvenating sleep is integral to overall health and proper biopsychosocial functioning.

On the contrary, compromised sleep hygiene bears a whole basket of negative impacts that may bring you fatigue, inhibited cognitive function, and a higher incidence of various chronic diseases.

Routines and behaviors during bedtime (i.e., before sleep) are also part of sleep hygiene. Establishing a healthy sleep routine can drastically improve your sleep, ensuring you fall fast asleep, remain asleep longer, and re-energize.

The main focus of this blog is seven essential tips for better hygiene in the evening, which will be illustrated with practical ways and strategies to help you maintain the best sleep environment, manage activities before you go to bed, and maintain a set sleep schedule.

With these sleep hygiene practices incorporated into your bedtime manners, you can make a self-directed effort to improve the quality of your sleep, optimize your health, and enrich your performance throughout the day.

Developing a predictable bedtime regimen is among the most valuable tools for good sleep hygiene. Our bodies need structure and order, and when you follow a consistent sleep schedule, you can train your internal clock to realize that it is time for a rest period so that you drift peacefully to sleep.

Completing a soothing evening procedure communicates to your brain and body that they need to prepare for a state of relaxation, thus facilitating falling asleep. Consider incorporating activities such as:

• Going through a book or listening to a refreshing audiobook or podcast.
• Doing some mellow yoga asanas or mild movements for stretching.
• Try to be engaged with targeted breathing exercises or meditation.
• Have a warm bath or drink a cup of non-caffeinated herbal tea.
• Writing a diary or engaging in contemplative activities could be one of the options.
• Listening to easy-listening music or nature sounds.

Our sleep quality highly depends on our sleep discipline and routine. Regular bedtime and wake-up times help us get used to our sleep-wake cycle. As our sleep-wake mechanism resets nightly, it becomes easier to fall asleep and wake up at the right time.

The bedroom environment significantly contributes to the overall quality of your sleep. A dark room with cool blue light, perhaps quiet music, and a ready-to-use bed will help you relax and fall into a slow sleep rhythm throughout the night. In contrast, however, an excessively warm, bright, or noisy area can easily result in sleep disruptions and leave you with a disturbance.

To optimize your sleep environment, consider these practical tips:

• Maintain a cool temperature: The best room temperature for sleep is about 65 degrees Fahrenheit (18.3 degrees Celsius). It is also the best for your health. Have a fan or a cooling unit on standby (if needed). Use the thermostat to adjust accordingly.

• Block out light: darken your surroundings or wear an eye mask to spare your eyes from potentially disturbing light sources.

• Minimize noise: Use earplugs, a white noise machine, or a fan that makes a consistent background noise, or find a comfortable quiet that can distract you from unfavorable sounds.

• Invest in comfortable bedding: To alleviate back pain, replace old and torn mattresses and pillows with new ones that are adequate in elasticity and comfort.

• Declutter and organize: A messy, unkempt bedroom can distract and generate perplexity, making relaxation difficult and preventing stable sleeping.

The available study results stress the existence of enervating bedding. An article by ScienceDirect looked into how a student's environment affected their academic performance. The researchers uncovered that the students who indulged in a quieter, darker, more relaxed atmosphere had better sleep quality and fewer sleep disturbances (Okamoto-Mizunoe et al., 2020).

What you feed yourself about an hour before bedtime could be decisive for sleep quality. For example, caffeine and nicotine are disruptive to the sleep pattern. They make it difficult to fall asleep and cause awakenings many times at night. Eating large and heavy meals late at night burdens your digestive system and may prevent peaceful sleep.

Caffeine, present in coffee, tea, cola, and chocolate, is a stimulant that, if consumed, can hang around your body for many hours. You should not take caffeine six hours before bedtime, which you want to achieve. Nicotine, which is found in cigarettes, can result in disrupted sleep and sleep disorders.

Prefer light, digestible, and non-sugary snacks or drinks before bedtime if you have an appetite. Consider the alternatives. Here are some better alternatives to consider:

• Herbal teas, including chamomile, valerian, or lavender, are a helpful remedy due to their relaxing nature.

• Certain complex carbohydrates, such as whole-grain crackers or cereal, may help develop an atmosphere that promotes drowsiness.

• Warm milk or a small yogurt bowl has a tryptophan amino acid. This amino acid plays a role in the promotion of sleep.

In reality, as evolution is often challenging and exhausting, our modern, electronic device-obsessed world offers more and more tendencies to spend hours of our lives staring at electronic screens like smartphones, tablets, and laptops. The blue light coming from our screens can surely disturb our sleep quality.

Artificial light, which is blue in nature, suppresses melatonin, which is essential in regulating sleep-wake cycles. If melatonin levels are unbalanced, one might have difficulty falling asleep and attaining a deep and rejuvenating sleep.

To counterbalance the negative influence of screen time on sleep, it's critically important to set the "screen curfew" and use no electronic devices for at least one hour before bedtime. This will naturally affect your body's melatonin production, making you sleepy and ready for a good night's rest.

Dr. Fariha Abbasi-Feinberg, a sleep medicine specialist at Millennium Physician Group in Florida, emphasizes the importance of disconnecting from digital devices before bed. Our circadian rhythms are thrown off when blue light from portable electronics fools our brains into believing it is daytime. Step away from the screens at least an hour before sleep so your body can get ready to produce melatonin, which is crucial for better sleep."

Instead of scrolling through social media or watching videos before bed, how about engaging in activities that will help you relax, like reading (preferably a physical book), doing gentle stretches, or listening to soothing music?

Integrating relaxation practices into bedtime is one of the more efficient approaches to ensuring restful sleep. These methods apply stress- and anxiety-relieving mechanisms that ultimately treat insomnia.

Some effective relaxation methods to consider include:

• Deep breathing exercises: The body's natural response to slow and deep breathing is to lower the stress level.
• Progressive muscle relaxation: It includes gradually tightening and then releasing the particular muscle groups that help achieve the state of tranquility and relaxation.
• Guided imagery: Introspection of tranquil pictures or discipline of your senses by imagining them can take your mind out of chaos, which is excellent preparation for sleeping.

It has been scientifically proven that using relaxation techniques helps people sleep better. The study investigated the effects of progressive muscle relaxation and guided imagery on sleep quality among older adults

The researchers found that those participants practicing these relaxation techniques had an increase in sleep quality, sleep onset latency (the time it takes to fall asleep), and sleep efficiency compared to another control group (Nakamura et al., 2020).

Although a short nap can be good in some cases, over-napping or grabbing a nap in the late afternoon can mess up the internals of your normal sleep-wake cycle, making it difficult to get to sleep at night and causing grogginess the next day.

If you take a nap too long or even at the time when you are supposed to sleep, your body becomes unable to gather sleep drive, which is necessary to gain sufficient sleep. This contributes to insomnia during a regular bedtime and disturbs sleep quality.

Setting aside time for sleep and avoiding disturbances can significantly improve the quality of sleep for many people. However, if sleep issues continue despite these strategies, it might indicate that a sleep disorder or medical condition is present and thus requires professional assistance.

Even after applying the different methods recommended in this blog, if you still experience insomnia, excessive sleepiness during the day, or any other sleep problem, you should consult a healthcare professional.

Sufferings like sleep apnea, leg restlessness, or abnormal sleep schedules can impede good-quality sleep and require health evaluation and resolution.

The first doctor you can consult with is your primary care physician or a specialist whose expertise lies more in diagnosing and treating sleeping disorders. He or she will help you detect the core of your problems and develop the most optimal intervention plan for the case. In some cases, this will be lifestyle changes, fronted by cognitive-behavioral therapy and, in some cases, even medication.

When seeking professional help for sleep-related concerns, consider the following resources:

• The American Academy of Sleep Medicine's "Find a Sleep Center Near You" website is a tool that assists people in locating accredited sleep centers and sleep specialists.
• To confirm which sleep clinics or experts the coverage plan will cover, contact the health insurance provider. This enables you to prevent unwanted out-of-network expenses.
• As a part of your first assessment, seek your primary care physician’s referrals to trustworthy sleep clinics or specialists they can suggest.
• If you are looking for board-certified sleep specialists near your area, online directories or databases run by professional organizations like the American Academy of Sleep Medicine or the American Board of Sleep Medicine might be helpful.

Quality rest is a core factor in ensuring physical and emotional wellness. Applying the seven tips mentioned in this blog—getting a sleep routine, designing a sleep-friendly setting, avoiding things that stimulate you or huge meals just before you go to bed, reducing your screen time before you sleep, practicing relaxation techniques, avoiding long naps, and seeking help from professionals when the conditions demand it—you will be doing yourself a favor in the long run by creating healthy sleep habits that promote restorative sleep.