Sleep Troubles? 8 Best Natural Sleep Remedies You Should Try

In this article, we’ll discuss some natural sleep remedies you can try to fall asleep with ease, along with why you need a good quality sleep, and bust some sleep-related myths.

Overview

Sleeping sounds like a regular activity described as the period when the body goes into rest mode. But then why is it given so much importance in our life? It’s because contrary to the popular belief, sleeping is much more than that just a regular activity.

It is when the brain is the busiest conducting your biological maintenance that keeps your body running in top condition. The quality of your sleep directly affects your mental and physical health.

Why Do We Need Good Sleep?

Both, the quantity and quality of your sleep are paramount to one’s health. Optimum sleep durations of 7-8 hours is suggested on an average.

• It helps us to restore and rejuvenate our energy due to vitamins and minerals absorption.
• Repair muscles and synthesize hormones.
• One of the vital roles of sleep is to consolidate memories. All the facts and experiences of the day are processed and stored during our sleep. It prepares our body and mind for the next day too.

Healthy sleep helps in bettering the state of several bodily functions as such:

1. Sharper Brain

Sleeping directly affects your learning and memory. Having not enough and proper sleep can lead to trouble withholding and recalling information. It becomes tough to focus and take in new information. Sleep lets the brain catch up with things and helps to store memories.

2. Mood Boost

Studies have shown that when you have insomnia, you’re five times more likely to develop depression and the odds of anxiety and panic disorders are even greater. Sleep helps to process emotion. The mind needs time to recognize thought-processing and react the right way. When your mind doesn’t get enough rest, it perpetuates more negative emotions than positive emotions.

3. Germ Fighting

Lack of sleep changes the way your immune system works. The immune system is responsible to fight harmful viruses and bacteria in your body. If the immune system weakens it may not react as quickly and you can get sick more often.

4. Weight Control

Sleep deprivation can mess with the hormones in the brain – leptin and ghrelin that control appetite. Being well-rested makes you less hungry. Whereas being tired makes you lethargic and less likely to get out of bed, Eventually you land-up eating more than required food and put on excess weight.

5. Healthier Heart

Your blood pressure goes down when you sleep, giving your heart and blood vessels rest. The less sleep you get, the lesser the heart gets to rest. This leads to heart diseases, including stroke.

6. Stable Blood Sugar Levels

Sleep can affect your blood sugar levels. As the number of sleep decreases, the blood sugar level increases. This issue escalates soon and can cause the risk of diabetes.

Natural Sleep Remedies

A healthy night’s sleep can easily be achieved via some beneficial lifestyle remedies. Natural ways are recommended over medication because medicines can lead to side effects including appetite changes, dizziness, drowsiness, abdominal discomfort, dry mouth, headaches, and strange dreams.

1. Exercise

Regularly exercising can help one to cure sleeping disorders. Even a 30 min workout or as simple as walking can help one to sleep better at night.

Though, exercising close to bedtime is not recommended. This is because your body gets pumped up and it becomes difficult to get sleep. Try exercising early morning or early evening at the best.

2. Diet

Watching out for what, when, and how much you eat, can directly affect the quality of one’s sleep. A grumbling stomach or an overly full belly both can hamper one’s healthy night sleep. Eat dinners rich in fiber so that your body is well-fueled with nutrients throughout the night.

3. Avoid Alcohol And Caffeine

Caffeinated drinks such as coffee and alcoholic drinks should be avoided at night as they are stimulants and disrupt sleep cycles. In fact, the promotes wakefulness.

4. De-stress

Stress is a stimulus. It activates the fight or flight hormones that work against sleep. Daytime worries can surface up at night. It’s important to relax your body and mind. Breathing exercises are a great way to do so. If you get accustomed to yoga, you will 100% begin to experience greater quality sleep in a few months.

5. Improve Your Sleeping Environment

Keeping away your phones and other gadgets from the bed can be helpful to get better sleep. Keep your bedroom cool, quiet, and mildly lit.

6. Magnesium

Magnesium is a naturally occurring mineral that is said to relieve stress and relax muscles. This helps to encourage healthy sleep cycles. Consuming diets that are rich in magnesium will help improve insomnia and daytime dysfunction; making it one of the best natural sleep remedies.

7. Avoid Napping

Daytime napping will lead to unwanted wakefulness at night. It alters the schedule of your internal clock and it hard to achieve night-time sleep.

Also Read: Reasons Why You Fall Sleep At Work And Their Solutions

8. Increase Bright Light Exposure During The Day

Every human body possesses a natural time-keeping clock. This is known as the circadian rhythm. Natural light is essential for a healthy circadian rhythm.

Natural Sleep Remedies: Myths Busted

• Myth 1: Our body can easily adapt to new sleep schedules.
• Fact 1: Most people can adjust their biological clocks. But only at lower frequencies and more for not more than a couple of hours a day. Consequently, it can take over a week to adjust and get accustomed to a new sleeping schedule.
• Myth 2: Extra sleep at night can cure daytime fatigue.
• Fact 2: It is quality and not the quantity of sleep that matters when speaking of healthy night-time sleep. People who sleep for 8 to 10 hours can also wake up grumpy and lethargic. Having a good, healthy, and deep sleep is what promotes freshness in the morning.
• Myth 3: You can make up for the lost sleep.
• Fact 3: we can never really make up for lost sleep fully. Reviving your lost sleep of the week during weekends is not a solution. It only adds to the existing problem and disrupts your sleeping schedule further.

Natural Sleep Remedies: Wrap Up

Tossing and turning the entire night can lead to drowsy and grumpy mornings. It can ruin your entire day in the short-term and cause major health problems in the long-term. Sleep is an essential part of our lives. It explicitly affects one’s health.

Natural remedies can be highly effective as they have no side effects and are great for overall health.