5 Tips to Help You Fall Asleep More Easily
Falling asleep may sound easy enough, but for many individuals, it's a real challenge, and often leads to insomnia. Sleep is a basic biological need. It's something your body and mind needs for normal functioning.
Falling asleep is a necessary, but normal part of your regular sleep/wake cycle. The pressure of falling asleep continues building during your wake hours, until sleep time. This pressure to fall asleep is referred to as "sleep debt", and is "paid off", or decreased while you sleep. When you don't reduce this sleep pressure or sleep debt, sleep deprivation occurs, and this can lead to a number of diseases.
To help you fall asleep more easily, you can try these five tips.
- Take a Warm Shower
There's a common thought that heat exposure creates discomfort. While this is probably true, most people find sleeping in an overly warm room uncomfortable. However, in this case, this heat exposure can actually help you fall asleep. The science behind taking a shower to fall asleep lies in the warming and relaxing feeling of the water. But, this isn't the whole explanation. Also, when you walk out of a steamy, hot bathroom and into a cooler room, you'll feel a strange sensation of discomfort. Your skin, being wet, will crave your warm bed sheets.
Also, warm showers or baths help your body's natural circadian process, increasing not just your ability to fall asleep faster, but also your quality of sleep.
- Lower the Room Temperature
As you fall asleep, your body temperature changes. Core temperature lowers, while the temperature of your feet and hands increases. When your room is too warm, you may find it difficult to fall asleep. It could help to set your thermostat to cooler temperatures (60 - 75 degrees F). Of course, each person's preferences are different, so you'll have to experiment until you find the temperature that works well for you.
- Force Yourself to Stay Awake
A little reverse psychology could ease excessive sleep quality. One study showed sleep-onset insomniacs instructed to lie in bed, and force themselves to stay awake with their eyes open ended up falling asleep faster than those instructed to falls asleep without this paradoxical intention (PI). Those in the PI group had an easier time falling asleep, and displayed less sleep performance anxiety.
- Buy a Mattress With the Ideal Firmness
There isn't a "one size fits all" firmness for mattresses. Each individual, depending on activity level, sleep position, age, and body mechanics will sleep better on different levels of softness or firmness of a mattress. So, you'll have to match your mattress with your sleep type and body type in order to achieve the best night's rest.
- Using CBD
These days, individuals are still using marijuana as a sleep aid, especially one form of it — cannabidiol (CBD). That's a compound found in cannabis and hemp that's not psychoactive. Consumer Reports conducted a survey recently on CBD, which showed 10 percent of the survey's respondents report using CBD to help them sleep. Most said it worked.
Other research published in a journal Current Psychiatry Reports 2017 review of cannabis and sleep, suggests CBD might also impact sleep directly by interacting with brain receptors that control the daily sleep/wake cycles of the body.
CBD can:
- Regulate your circadian rhythm
- Limit anxiety
- Help with neurological disorders
These all can keep you from falling asleep. CBD interacts with the network of receptors in your brain, its proteins, and other brain chemicals that are important in producing quality sleep. By taking CBD, you could potentially find yourself in a more restful and much-improved quality of sleep than individuals who don't.
Most notably, CBD appears to alleviate pain and anxiety, both of which can affect your ability to fall or stay asleep. And, since you're using CBD to help you fall and stay asleep anyway, why not try a new CBD-infused pillow?
Sleep Better with a CBD-Infused Pillow
CBD-infused pillows are soft, comfortable, and effective at helping you fall and stay asleep. Because they're infused with CBD, you experience all the benefits of this cannabinoid like anxiety and stress relief, pain reduction, improved mood, and more, along with better sleep. Don't hesitate, see for yourself how well CBD-infused pillows work.