If you are frequently getting disturbed in your sleep or continuously not sleeping for several days then it would be a threat to your health. Anxiety, depression, stress, chronic pain, side effects of certain medicines and consumption of excess caffeine might be disrupting your regular sleeping schedule. The idea of maintaining sleep hygiene is about adopting the right attitude toward life with our actions, and behavior and coordinating with environmental factors.
Home remedies for some natural sleep are about making certain changes in our life, diet, surroundings
1. Following Your Body Clock
Waking up in the early morning and exposure to the early rays of the Sun will aid in setting your body’s internal clock at work.. You will fall asleep at the right time, that is at night. It will help in the secretion of melatonin and hormones and enable you to make progress in your mental and physical health.
2. Setting Your Bedroom With a Sleep-Friendly Environment
Bedding Arrangement:
Setting a room in darkness is what you require to make a sleep-friendly environment. You must have a proper bedding arrangement with clean bedsheets, smooth and flat cotton comforters and pillows. Such bedding arrangements help align your spine, relieve stress and relax your body and mind.
Lighting:
You require sufficient melatonin in your body to experience smooth and deep sleep. Because the melatonin hormone balances the sleep-wake cycle. Setting the room in darkness will regulate your melatonin levels and help you experience good quality sleep. Otherwise, it is advisable to use a proper eye mask to sleep at night to avoid exposure to light.
You must keep away your electronic devices in a different room which may be your mobile phone, laptop and even a digital clock. Otherwise, glow and pings from cell phone messages and email may disrupt your sleep.
Noise:
Maintaining silence in the bedroom is the essence of falling asleep faster. If the barking of a dog or any other external noise happens to bother then you can use earplugs to keep away from external noise during sleep.
Temperature:
It is important to keep the room under an appropriate temperature according to the weather conditions to get deep and healthy sleep. In summer, you can have an air cooler and during winter, you can have a room heater to warm up or cool down the room.
3. Avoiding Consumption of Drugs, Alcohol and Caffeine Beverages
It would be necessary to give up depending on drugs, alcohol or caffeine beverages to experience natural and healthy sleep. Nicotine and other drugs will not let you sleep smoothly. Rather, you will experience disturbance in your sleep as a result of disruption in the neurotransmitters of your brain. You may doze off to sleep easily after drinking alcohol but on the next day, you might not feel fresh and active. Limiting caffeine beverages at night is essential to keep sleep disturbances under control.
4. Using Relaxation Techniques
Before going off to bed, you must keep your worries behind. You can arrange to chalk down your worry list on paper half an hour before going to bed. You can listen to ghazals or any soothing music that can relax your mind and body. You can clean and scrub your feet and use a suitable foot cream to massage your feet. It will help remove stress and fatigue from your exhausted feet and boost the circulation of blood. You can also apply oil massage to your scalp which will activate brain nerves with sleep-inducing chemicals during bedtime sessions at night.
5. Avoid Taking Frequent Naps in the Afternoon and Evening Hours
To get interrupted, deep and healthy sleep during the night, you must avoid sleeping in the afternoon or the evening. Or else, it will disturb your circadian rhythm and not let you feel sleepy at night. You must keep working on it if you are not a shift worker. It would be one of the suitable home remedies for natural sleep at night.
6. Taking Hot Water Bath
Taking a bath during the night before sleep regularly will invoke drowsiness. It will improve blood circulation and cool down your body’s temperature. It will release tension from your muscles and stimulate uninterrupted healthy sleep. Adding essential oil to warm water will further help relax your nerves and brain cells. Just enjoy the effect of warm water on your body and practice breathing exercises to prepare yourself for deep sleep. It is one of the effective home remedies for natural sleep.
7. Drinking Herbal Tea
Contrary to regular milk tea, drinking herbal tea will act as a stimulant for deep sleep. Using valerian root or chamomile as tea will calm down the nerves with its bioactive compounds. It will help in releasing the neurotransmitters that will relax your mind and make you drowsy.
8. Performing Yoga, Meditation or Reading a Book or Writing a Journal at Bedtime
Yoga has been known for rejuvenating the mind and body ever since the ancient days. It does help in recovering from insomnia. It is one of the successful home remedies for natural sleep.
You can perform corpse pose or Shavasana or leg up the wall pose to gain restful sleep and improve overall sleep quality. You can practice mindfulness meditation in such yoga poses or padmasana poses. Even writing a journal or reading any book at bedtime will divert your mind from worrisome thoughts and stress and transform into a state of relaxation and sleepiness. also helps you overcome sleep disorders.
9. Ayurvedic Medications
Ayur sleep will fast and natural action on your sleep hygiene. It is a powerful ayurvedic medicine for mind with Ayurvedic herbs like Ashwagandha, Valerian root and other compounds like GABA, melatonin and tryptophan.
You can have just two capsules a day after dinner with milk to gain its effectiveness. It will enable you to recover from conditions of sleeplessness, and jet lags and balance your sleep circadian rhythm. Unlike over-the-counter sleeping pills which damage your brain and cause dependence, this ayurvedic medicine will revitalize your brain nerves and stabilize your circulatory and overall metabolism.
Conclusion
Sleep hygiene is necessary for overall health. Lack of sleep disturbs our metabolism and daily routine and makes us suffer from different diseases. Natural sleep can be achieved through home remedies like following the body clock, creating a sleep-friendly environment, avoiding drugs, alcohol, and caffeine, practicing relaxation techniques, and quit alcohol and caffeine consumption.
Bachelor of Ayurveda Medicine and Surgery. general physician, nadi parikshan, online consultation. Dr Mansi is a renowned general physician who holds an experience of more than 5 years. She specializes in treating issues related to respiratory problems, colds, gastrointestinal issues, diabetes, asthma, and more. She aims to study the problem in-depth and treat it to the root, providing a holistic solution.