Having trouble sleeping? Our 5 tips for quality sleep

Getting a good night’s sleep is at least as important as drinking water, eating food, or exercising. Sleep allows us to handle our day-to-day tasks, concentrate, fight pathogens, or even maintain a healthy weight. We live in a fast-paced world, where stress is a daily occurrence and problems with falling asleep or poor-quality sleep are something that each of us will likely encounter in our lifetime. 

Why is quality sleep important?

During sleep, many physiological functions take place in our body that support physical regeneration, metabolism, cardiovascular function, as well as the ability to concentrate and learn. Short-term sleep deprivation can lead to concentration problems, loss of energy and irritability, and increase the risk of accident occurrence. 

Chronic sleep deprivation increases the risk of:

• Cardiovascular diseases
• Diabetes
• Obesity
• Immune system related diseases
• Hormonal imbalances
• Depression, anxiety, and psychological problems

Whether you’ve been experiencing sleep deprivation for a long time or you’re simply going through a difficult time, we recommend you try some of these tips to getting a good night’s sleep that we’ve put together for you.

1) Observe your sleep hygiene

Insomnia is sometimes not caused by some mysterious disease, but rather by poor lifestyle and irregular sleeping patterns. You can feel a significant improvement of your sleep if you follow the so-called sleep hygiene practices:

• Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. This also applies to weekends. Sleeping in on the weekends to catch up on sleep can do you more harm than good. Even if you end up going to bed later some days, you should get up at the usual time in the morning.
  
• Avoid taking afternoon naps or at the very least, keep them under 30 minutes.
  
• Create a bedtime routine. A set of habits and steps repeated every night before going to bed signals your brain that it’s time to go to sleep. These include changing into your pyjamas, brushing your teeth, putting relaxing music on, reading, etc. Experiment and create a routine that will help you calm your mind after a busy day.

2) Keep your stress hormone, cortisol, at bay

The stress hormone, cortisol, is essential for our bodies to function in an optimal way – if it’s in the right amounts and at the right times. Cortisol levels are highest in the morning in order to help us wake up. 

Cortisol ensures the body’s rapid response to a certain stress factor, the so-called fight or flight response. Shortly after our ancestors escaped the sabre-toothed tiger, their cortisol levels returned to normal. 

The problem is that in modern society, instead of the sabre-toothed tigers, we have to face our bosses, deadlines, and mortgages that haunt us all day long and there is no escaping them. We experience long-term, chronic stress and cortisol remains in circulation in elevated doses throughout the day and night. This can cause problems with falling asleep or waking up and difficulty getting deep sleep. 

What can be done to get cortisol levels back to normal and get good quality sleep?

• Minimise stress or learn techniques to manage it better. Meditation, breathing exercises, or yoga can help.
  
• Avoid exercising before bedtime. Exercise, especially the kind of exercise that makes you sweat, temporarily raises adrenaline and cortisol levels. These hormones delay the production of melatonin so that when it’s time to go to bed, you don’t feel tired. Save the high-intensity exercises for the morning, and in the evening, you can opt for more moderate yoga or stretching.
  
• Increase oxytocin levels. According to research, oxytocin, also known as the love hormone, helps keep cortisol at normal levels and relieve stress. Physical touch is one of the quickest ways to increase oxytocin levels. Have a hug, get a massage or spend time with your pet.

3) Reap the benefits of natural CBD oils 🌱

It is scientifically proven that the use of a high-quality CBD oil has positive effects on the nervous and immune systems, relieves pain and inflammation, and decreases insomnia. Since there are no known negative side effects of CBD oil, it is a popular choice for patients with sclerosis, epilepsy, depression, or anxiety disorders. 

Just a couple of drops before bedtime can create a feeling of relaxation and help with falling asleep, frequent night-time awakenings or the restless legs syndrome. It is also suitable for pregnant women, people with high blood pressure and people with allergies. The CBDium Sleep Therapy is specially formulated for people who suffer from sleep disorders.

4) Beware of blue light from screens

Melatonin is another hormone responsible for the depth and quality of sleep. Its production begins in the dark and vice versa; is suppressed by the light. The largest natural source of blue light is the sun. Its light lets our body know when it is time for increased physical activity and when to go to sleep.

However, we overexpose ourselves to blue light not only during the day, but also after dark – due to the screens of our devices – TVs, smartphones, tablets, monitors, and LED bulbs. Excessive blue light delays melatonin production, leading to sleep cycle disruption. To reduce the amount of harmful light, try these tips:

• Avoid backlit screens for at least 3 hours before bedtime.
  
• If you spend a lot of time in front of screens, you can block excessive blue light by wearing blue-light-blocking glasses or turning on the night mode.
  
• Replace your phone or tablet with a book or an e-reader with e-ink technology, which reduces blue light exposure.
  
• LED lights are generally not recommended for the bedroom. If you use decorative LED strip lights, at least choose those with yellow light. 

5) Caffeine and alcohol: Good servant but bad master? 

We often use caffeine to compensate for poor sleep and fatigue. The smell of morning coffee is truly irresistible and caffeine undoubtedly has a stimulating effect for most people. But if we are not careful about the quantity and time of our last coffee, it can have a negative impact on our sleep.

We even know of a type of people, the so-called slow caffeine metabolisers, to whom it may take up to twice as long for caffeine to pass through their body. Maybe you are one of them and you can’t fall asleep because you still have a significant amount of caffeine in your system.

And what about alcohol? Can a mere glass of wine during dinnertime interfere with the quality of your sleep? Although it acts as a sedative for some people and helps them fall asleep faster, alcohol significantly reduces the quality of sleep. Even small doses of alcohol disrupt the so-called REM sleep, which allows us to dream and regenerate our bodies, causing us to wake up tired and fatigued. It might be worth trying to cut out alcohol and caffeine completely for at least a month and see what effect it has on the quality of your sleep. 

Even small changes to your sleep routine count

Our bodies were not designed for long-term stress, artificial light from screens, or the extreme overload of information and stimuli that we face on a daily basis.

All this has a negative impact on the quality of our sleep, which in turn has a negative impact on our quality of life. And all that is needed is to make a few small changes – build a calming evening routine without screens, observe sleep hygiene, and be more mindful of stimulants and alcohol.

If you’re going through a difficult time, high-quality CBD oils can help you calm down and restore your mental well-being. We hope these tips will help you not only improve your sleep but also your quality of life.