Because we all know how a better night’s sleep makes us feel, here are 5 tips to get a better night’s sleep.

Our energy is better, our mood is better, our workouts are better, heck we even eat better. 

On the flip side we all know how miserable we feel when we don’t get enough sleep or didn’t sleep well.

For many of us we just do not get enough sleep. We demand much from our bodies, but then don’t put any effort into making sure our body gets the rest it needs to run efficiently.

Then we feed our sleep deprived body low nutritional quality food, fill it with caffeine and sugar for a quick pick me up, and place it under high amounts of stress in the gym, at work and home expecting it to function properly.

Maybe this is you, maybe not.

So how much sleep do you need?

Everyone is different; some do well with 7 hours, some need 9. Look in the mirror, if you have bags under your eyes you probably aren’t getting enough sleep. Chronic tension headaches, being tired all day, joint aches, or total body achiness, irritability, and mind fog are all signs of needing more sleep.

If you’re like many people you may find that you just don’t sleep well. If this is you, you are not alone as many people go to bed on time but struggle to sleep well.

To improve the quality of your sleep here are a few recommendations:

1) Turn off all electronic devices an hour before bedtime. This is due to the blue light that these devices emit. Blue light triggers the brain to wake up.  In nature blue light is only present in the early morning as the sunrises, which is to signal to our brain it is time to get up. But, when we spend our evening staring at a screen this same message is then sent to our brain making it hard for us to go to sleep and get into the deep restorative sleep we need.

2) Keep a regular sleep schedule. Your body’s internal clock works off of something called the circadian rhythm. We disrupt this rhythm when stay up late one night, get up extra early one morning, and then sleep in the next. This disrupts the body’s natural ability to wind down in the evening to help you fall asleep, because you body never knows when bedtime is. And also, makes it hard to wake up in the morning for the same reason. Try to keep to a regular sleep schedule that is always within an hour of the same wake-up and bedtime to improve your sleep quality and hormone function.

3) Avoid caffeine within eight hours of bedtime. The half-life of caffeine is five to six hours. This means that if you drink a typical cup of coffee, which has 95 milligrams of caffeine, at noon you will still have 42.5 milligrams of caffeine in your body around 6 p.m. Because of this half-life, caffeine can still be in your body hours later when it’s time to sleep and not needed, but is still keeping you awake.

4) Avoid alcohol within four hours of bedtime. Alcohol may help you fall asleep, but it also negatively affects the quality of your sleep by not allowing the body to get into a deep sleep and staying a sleep.

5) Keep your room dark, quiet, and cool. Outside light and noise will disrupt the quality of sleep and keeping your room cool around 68 degrees helps us sleep better.

Use these tips to improve your sleep to get the best and most restful sleep possible and wake-up feeling refreshed.

Summer is coming and that means shorts, tank tops, and swimsuits.

Look and Feel Amazing This Summer sign-up for our 30-day VIP Trial

SIGN-UP HERE