The Struggling: Falling Asleep

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We've all been there sometime in our lives. Just laying in our bed, tired, but still no chance of drifting away into our subconscious and resting our bodies and minds. The quality of your sleep can harm your health in many ways, for instance, sleep deprivation is linked to obesity and high blood pressure, poor concentration, and lack of energy for exercising, healthy eating, and leisure activities. Sometimes it can be because of an sleeping disorder, like for insomnia but most often it's actually because of our own daily lifestyle that we can't get to sleep. Just to name a few of the culprits that reduces our sleep quality dramatically are coffee(caffeine), stress, alcohol and technology. To much caffeine: Caffeine is a great source of energy but it does have it's downside. Caffeine is a stimulant and caffeine does cause mild physical dependence in heavy and long term users. Most people don't realize that caffeine can take up to eight hours before it's out of their system. In other words when we go to sleep, there is still a lot of caffeine in our system and this factor can definitely alter our quality of sleep. Stress kills your sleep: Everybody stresses, even teenagers stress about getting good grades. The fast world we live in today makes it much easier to stress. Certain types of stress is good as it helps us perform better like an athlete before an event. But things get bad when we stress constantly about our lives. Not having any stress is unrealistic in everyway, but we can manage our stress so that those worries can't ruin our precious sleep. Walsleban suggests giving your body time to unwind before going to sleep. Take a bath, read a book and learn to practice deep breathing and relaxation exercises to calm nerves and encourage a peaceful night's sleep. Alcohol: Yes, alcohol can make it extremely easy to fall asleep, but as soon as it's metabolized, you wake up. Not necessarily to the point where you physically get up, but your mind wakes up again. It's alright to drink a wine or beer a few hours before bed so that it can metabolize before you go to bed. Drinking straight before bed alters your sleep pattern since it reduces REM sleep and it increases non-REM sleep, which is a lighter slumber. This all can add up to inefficient sleep. *EXTRA NOTE*: This also applies to food. Eating a big meal before bedtime will cause your stomach acid to come back up into the esophagus, which can trigger heartburn, pain, or coughing. Not the best thing you want when you're trying to fall asleep. Technology does not go well with sleep: The blue light emitted by screens on cell phones, computers, tablets, and televisions restrain the production of melatonin, the hormone that controls your sleep/wake cycle. Reducing melatonin makes it harder to fall and stay asleep. Technology can also keep our brains alert, making it think that it needs to stay awake. Try to give yourself sometime away from technology before you go to bed. Your mind will slowly shutdown and you will fall asleep much easier and also stay asleep. Just make sure that messages, emails and other notifications doesn't bother you while you're sleeping. Conclusion: Not all of us can follow these guidelines and that's only because we're human. Technology will always be around us and stress will always haunt us from time to time, but we can certainly try to get rid of it, even if it's only to some degree. Keep these points in mind next time you want to drink coffee before bed or when you're on your cell phone until late. Remember stress and anxiety can be reduced by using the methods described above. Try them for yourself. Happy sleeping!