Sleep Better. Feel Younger. (A Happy Life Book) by Andrea Kamenca

Author:Andrea Kamenca [Kamenca, Andrea]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: MindView Press: ARC Notes
Published: 2018-11-03T16:00:00+00:00

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

This relaxation technique consists of tensing, or tightening, one muscle group at a time. After each muscle group is tensed, it is relaxed, and the tension released.

4-7-8 Breathe

This technique was developed by Andrew Weil, MD, director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. The simple three-step process is easy to perform. First, take a deep breath through your nose for four seconds. Second, hold your breath for seven seconds. Third, exhale through your mouth for eight seconds. That’s it! By repeating the process four times, it works! Since the lungs get filled well with air, the body doesn’t have to work to get oxygen; the enhanced oxygen circulation deeply relaxes the body.

Use Your Mind to Sleep Better

Often, people’s minds run amok while they are trying to get to sleep. The brain wants to sort out unresolved issues, worries, or plans for the days ahead. Easy mind exercises can help get your mind off the day’s (or week’s or year’s) anxiety. While the tricks won’t solve underlying problems, they may give a moment of respite, allowing the body to relax and coax the mind into sleep.

Math can take your mind off of your troubles! For some, it could be anxiety-provoking. For others, it’s a healthy distraction. Counting sheep, running multiplication tables in your head, and even counting backward are excellent distractors.

If math and counting aren’t your things, try visualizing a place in nature. It could be a breezy beach or a wintry cabin with a crackling fireplace. Play with different scenes and see what works for you!

Lastly, many people swear by the practice of meditation. There are many ways to meditate. Researching meditation techniques will give you many results, but a simple form of meditation is simply to clear your mind while breathing evenly in and out. A slight variation is to picture a candle flame and breathe deeply through your nose and out through your mouth.

Adjust Your Electronics

Electronics disturb sleep, but why? It turns out that for you to see the devices’ screens, they use a part of the light spectrum that duplicates daylight, specifically blue daylight.

Remember the magic three ingredients to sleep: melatonin, tryptophan, and serotonin? The blue daylight spectrum used for the devices blocks the flow of the sleep hormone melatonin and delays the onset of sleep. But apps are available for reducing the effects of the blue light. Two of them are ‘f.lux’ and ‘Dimmer.’

New Light Bulbs

Bright light stimulates the body and makes you feel energized. Artificial light can do the same thing. The light bulbs in your bedroom could be too bright. A simple solution is to choose your lightbulbs carefully.

There are sleep promoting light bulbs that are expensive but encourage melatonin production and block blue light.

Incandescent bulbs are soft white and are the second best bulbs to use in your bedroom. And, they are affordable.

Red or pink light bulbs are considered excellent for sleep.

Halogen bulbs are the whitest lights which can trigger energy and shut down melatonin.

Compact florescent bulbs and light-emitting diode bulbs (LEDs) have a lot of blue light, so avoid them in the bedroom.

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