6. Serene Bedroom Environment
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Many people change where they live or what they drive more often than they change their mattress or pillows. Yet nothing lasts forever.
Although there isn't much published research on mattresses, mattress quality may affect how sleep feels to the sleeper. Discomfort can make falling asleep more difficult and lead to restless slumber.
Does your mattress provide the support you like? Do you wake with your back aching? Is there enough room for you and your sleep partner? Do you sleep better, or worse, when you sleep away from home?
Mattresses may be made of inner springs, foam, fabric, water or air. They may be firmer or more responsive to your body. This, in turn, may affect body temperature and humidity, as well as comfort.
Shop around carefully for one that suits your weight and build. If a mattress is too soft or too firm, not only might it prevent peaceful slumber, it may be bad for your back as well.
The surface should support your spine but give slightly. If you buy a mattress and find – after a trial week or two – that you’ve made a mistake, it is best to give in and buy another.
If you can fall asleep easily on your sofa or chair, and it is difficult to fall asleep in your own bed, you may be associating your bed with everything but sleep.
Do you use your bed for work? Balance your checkbook while propped against the pillows? Watch television there? These are ways to tell your body to be alert in bed, not to go to sleep.
To teach patients to associate their bed and bedroom with sleep, sleep specialists advise a strategy called stimulus control, performed under the supervision of a specialist.
Patients learn to use their bed only for sleep and to follow a regular wake-up schedule.
Another effective approach involves restricting your time in bed, initially, to the number of hours you actually sleep. Then, as you can rely on sleeping these hours regularly, you increase your time in bed by 15-30 minutes per night.
A less dramatic approach would be to decrease your time in bed by 30 to 60 minutes.
Clouds of colour:
Swathing your room in peaceful colours such as ivory, sky blue or delicate rose can have a wonderfully calming effect on the nervous system.
Soft furnishings such as curtains and bed linen should be soft, luxurious and tactile. Use only natural materials, they last longer than synthetics and “breathe” more easily.
Restful Lighting:
Your bedroom light needs to be soft, not too bright and glaring, so that your mind and body feel like it is going through a natural “sunset” that triggers our sleep cycles.
The issue isn’t merely how light affects your eyes. Light also affects the way your brain produces hormones that regulate your sleep cycle. Even a minimal amount of light can disrupt your sleep.
Choose a lighting scheme that optimizes rest. Veto harsh, overhead lights in favour of small table lamps. Try amber or soft-light bulbs of low wattage, keeping a brighter directional lamp at your bedside for reading.
Candles are very soothing and can aid meditation and winding down, but remember to blow them out before you go to sleep. Candles that are encased in glass windbreakers, that cannot be knocked over, or set fire to anything when they burn down are best, as you may fall asleep before you blow out the candle.
Candles are a major fire hazard and cause many house fires, so please be incredibly security conscious when using candles in your bedroom when you intend to fall asleep.
If the problem is that your sleep partner wants to read or watch TV while you sleep, ask your partner to go to another room; or you can wear a “sleep mask”. In the case of bright street lights, use heavy shades or other window treatments that keep the room very dark.
Feng Shui sleep aid tips:
The bedroom is one of the most important rooms in the house. The Chinese principles of feng shui can help you to arrange it so that the room is suitable for relaxing, regeneration and romance.
Feng shui governs the placing of furniture and objects so that “chi” or energy, can flow in the most propitious way. It enhances a serene environment.
The best position for the bed is diagonally opposite the door, so that you can see who is entering the room. If a line of chi between the door and a window crosses the bed, it is thought to cause illness.
Keep electrical equipment out of the bedroom completely, as it detracts from the main function of the room.
Harmful electromagnetic waves – even from clock radios –can have an adverse effect on sleep.
Overall symmetry is important: side tables should complement each other’s positions, and pictures should be hung in pairs.
Photographs of parents, children and friends should have no place in a couple’s private space.
Mirrors in the bedroom should not face the bed. The Chinese believe that the soul leaves the body when we sleep and will become disconcerted if it comes across itself in a mirror.
Clearing clutter:
Clear unnecessary clutter from the bedroom to create a sense of calm and enhance the flow of chi:
• Medicine bottles
• Cosmetics
• Used tissues
• Piles of clothes
• Old unworn clothes and shoes
• Full waste bins
• Work and papers
• TV’s and musical systems.
Peace and quiet in the bedroom:
Noise has an increasing presence in life, whether from neighbours, machines, dogs, road traffic or aircraft. But you have a right to a good night’s sleep and there are ways to minimize the problem.
It is sometimes difficult enough to wind down before sleep, without noise augmenting the problem. In crowded cities, background noise can make life a misery and lead to insomnia and bad dreams – but you can take steps to tackle the problem.
Block out noise, or better yet, eliminate it. Even if you fall back to sleep after noise wakes you, the quality of your sleep can be compromised.
Turn off radios, televisions, or stereos in the bedroom (and other rooms as well). If you can’t control the noise, try earplugs.
Good quality earplugs can help you to sleep undisturbed in a noisy environment.
If you live on a busy road choose the room furthest away from the road to be your bedroom. The tendency to have the bedrooms at the front of the house is a disaster for traffic noise, street lights, late night pedestrians etc.
Choose instead a room toward the back of the house where you have much more solitude and less “traffic” overall.
It may be worth investing in double –glazing or heavy duty curtains with lining to help smother the noise coming through your windows. In some cases of severe traffic noise all night, installing a solid wood or brick 6 foot high front fence is the only effective way to buffer the noise.
Terraced housing and poor flat conversions also present problems, as even the normal, everyday sounds of footsteps can echo through adjoining flats or houses.
It is possible to install false walls or acoustic tiling as a sleep aid – such as that used to soundproof recording studios – against adjoining walls.
This may seem an expensive move, but in the long term, a consistent lack of sleep will always be more expensive in terms of energy and quality of life lost.
Noisy neighbours:
If your neighbours are playing loud music, or hammering and drilling late at night, the first step is to have a word with them and come to a reasonable compromise – most people want to get on with their neighbours.
For very loud parties where gentle reminders have been ignored, it may be necessary to inform the police, who will try to enforce some level of quiet.
You may have local “noise pollution laws” set by your council such as no lawn mowing or electric tools, loud music or other excessive “noise pollution“ after 10p.m. for example.
As a general rule, it is customary to keep noise to a friendly minimum between the hours of 11pm and 8 am. Some people need reminding of this.
Move the clock as a sleep aid.
If you have insomnia, looking at the clock can make you anxious. Therefore, it’s best to keep it out of view.
Have your pet sleep somewhere else.
If your dog or cat sleeps in your bed, your chances for sound sleep are jeopardized. Have your pet sleep on the floor, or get your pet its own cushion and place it in another room.
Address your partner’s sleep problems.
A bed partner who snores, tosses and turns a lot, talks while sleeping, or gets up often can affect your own sleep. In some cases, using earplugs or adding “white noise” (from a fan or similar humming appliance) can help.
If your partner gets up a lot, make sure he or she sleeps closest to the door. If your partner tosses and turns, consider a larger bed, or even separate beds.
Adjust the room temperature.
Interestingly, body-heating can have a very different effect from a warm room during sleep. Some studies suggest that soaking in hot water (such as a hot tub or bath) before retiring to bed can be a good sleep aid to ease the transition into a deeper sleep.
This may be due to a temperature shift (core body temperature drops after leaving the tub, which may signal the body it's time to sleep).
Or the sleep improvement may be related to the water's relaxing properties, which may also have sleep - promoting effects.
If you are too warm or too cold in your bedroom though, you are less likely to sleep soundly. Adjust the thermostat, your sleep clothes, or your bedding; open or close a window.
Is It Hot...or Humid Enough for You? Even sleep researchers fail to agree on the ideal temperature. In general, most sleep scientists believe that a slightly cool room contributes to good sleep.
That's because it matches what occurs deep inside the body, when the body's internal temperature drops during the night to its lowest level. (For good sleepers, this occurs about four hours after they begin sleeping.)
But as a sleep aid, how cool should the bedroom be? And what should couples do who share a bed but disagree about the desired sleep temperature? Turning the thermostat down at night in cold weather saves on fuel bills and sets the stage for sleep.
Blankets or comforters can lock in heat without feeling too heavy or confining. An electric blanket may help. Or the heat-seeking partner might dress in warmer bedclothes (even socks!), while the warmer partner might shun sleep clothes or bed covering.
In summer, a room that's too hot can also be disruptive. In fact, research suggests that a hot sleeping environment leads to more wake time and light sleep at night, while awakenings multiply. An air conditioner or fan can help.
Remember the common summer complaint: It's not the heat, it's the humidity? If excess humidity is a problem, consider a dehumidifier.
If too dry an environment is your problem, consider a humidifier. Clues like awakening with a sore throat, dryness in your nose, or even a nose bleed are signs of too little humidity. Note: Be sure to change the water daily.
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7. Soothing Bedtime Sleep Routines
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