Quality of sleep improves when you take the actions the post puts up here.
Time and now I hear from my relatives, friends, and others that they can not sleep now like they used to sleep earlier. It happens a lot when they stay at home more and can not go out in the present crisis period. How did they use to sleep earlier? They slept like a log, no wake up at night. But now they can not do so. Nowadays, it happens a lot to most of us, which is why I write this post here.
In the daytime, you work and move your muscles. So it keeps you active and awake. When you are busy, so is your brain. As a result, your mind makes the most aggressive brain waves called beta brain waves (12 to 33 Hz).
Let me tell you first what happens when you sleep. Your sleep moves from stage-1 to the stage-5.
Stage-1
Your body prepares you to sleep. So it relaxes. As a result, your breath rate, as well as heart rate, go down. Your brain makes Alpha brain waves (8 to 13 Hz)) mainly with some theta brain waves ( 3.5 to 8 Hz).
Stage-2
Sleep then goes to the next stage, where sudden bursts of brain activities happen. Brainwaves like K-complexes and sleep spindles appear with some theta waves.
Stage-3&4
In this stage, you have a deep sleep. It’s a dreamless sleep with no eye movement. It’s possible when low-frequency brain waves appear in your brain. They are mainly delta brain waves. Sometimes the brain waves change from delta to theta and vice versa.
Stage-5
In this stage, you see dreams when your eyes move. Here you have an active brain, but body paralyzed.
An average healthy person spends around 5% in stage-1, 45 % in stage-2, 25 % in stage-3&4 and 25 % in Stage-5. If you plot data in a pie chart, then it will look like the figure below.
Every stage is essential. But right now, I focus more on stage-3&4 that gives you deep sleep. When your sleep time is much less than 45 % in stage-3&4, then your quality of sleep is poor. So you lose sound sleep. Once you lose deep sleep, you feel drowsy throughout the day. Time and again, you get headaches. Your muscles ache, your mood worsens, your power to concentrate goes down too, and so on.
The point is what happens when you spend less time on this stage for a long time. Your immune system breaks down. So it fails to fight with diseases you are likely to have in the long run. So, you suffer from high blood pressure, stress, mood disorder, and so on. In short, I want to emphasize deep sleep enhances the quality of your sleep.
Now the point is how to improve the quality of sleep. Let’s know the factors which control your sleep.
Rise and fall of your body temperature
When you wake up early in the morning, your body temperature begins to rise then. After that, as you do some work, your muscles work more. As a result, your body temperature goes up. It hit a peak when you are most active and energetic. At night, your body cools down, and you feel sleepy.
The most important thing is deep sleep depends on how quickly your body temperature falls. You know it falls as quickly as it rises. So focus on how fast you can raise it in the daytime. Why so? If you can do so, it will fall very fast at night. So you can sleep deeply at night. Simply put, your sleep quality improves.
Factors controlling body temperature
Exercise
What happens when you do exercise, yoga, running, or any physical labor? Your body temperature rises fast, and blood circulates more in your body. So you feel more energy throughout the day. At night the temperature drops quickly, so do your power. As a result, you get deep sleep at night.
Exposure to sunlight
Do you know what happens as soon as you walk a few minutes in bright sunlight? Your body temperature goes up, and melatonin level drops. So it delays the temperature drop, which makes you more alert and energetic in the daytime. At night, your body temperature, as well as the melatonin level, goes down. As a result, you sleep deeply at night.
When you stay indoor more, you don’t expose yourself to sunlight. So your melatonin level goes up in day time. As a result, your body temperature drops down. So you feel drowsy, sleepy, and tired in the day. So you can not sleep a deep sleep at night.
Relax your brain to improve the quality of sleep
When you go to bed at night with stresses and anxiety that keep your brain busy before sleep, then the quality of your sleep lowers down.
Then what’s the way out? Relax your brain beforehand. So do exercises, meditation, or any such stress-reducing technique before 6 PM, so that you become stress-free at bedtime.
If still, you worry, make a list of worries, and throw into the wastebasket.
Make a list of people who had helped you in the past. Then express your gratitude silently to them and go to sleep.
Avoid sunlight or bright light after 6 PM.
Make your room dark enough to help you sleep better. What will you do now? Switch off lights, computers, or any other bright lights after 6 PM. Otherwise, it will make you more alert in bed, disrupting your sleep.
Quality of sleep improves when you make the ambiance comfortable.
Declutter your bedroom to release your stress. Then keep everything in order. Keep the room-temperature not so hot, not so cold. Keep it at optimum. Check whether your mattress is wavy or not. Otherwise, you will toss around at night. Make it noise-proof.
Avoid tea or coffee before sleep to increase the quality of sleep
If you have a habit of drinking tea or coffee before sleep, then you are sure to have sleeping problems at night. Why so? It makes you more alert. So it may increase your anxiety, digestion problem, blood pressure, and heart rate. Al these problems worsen your sleep quality.
In short, quality of sleep improves when you take the above actions