Are you struggling to get a decent night’s sleep? Do you toss and turn and wait forever for sleep to take you? Is this lack of sleep having a detrimental effect on your daily life? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then research drawn from a recent study may well be of great use to you.
A lack of sleep may not prove disastrous if it’s an occasional problem, but if the issue persists, then you may well start to suffer the genuine consequences of sleep deficiency, which can be very problematic, to say the least.
An interesting study carried out by Betway insider delves deeper into the issue and comes up with interesting conclusions in relation to how to best get yourself prepared for a good night’s rest.
In their study, they asked individuals to do a number of tasks and activities before going to sleep and then monitored their progress in terms of how quickly they got to sleep as well as the quality of sleep they attained.
Fourteen tasks were set, and perhaps unsurprisingly, meditation before going to sleep proved most successful. Clearly, this is the type of pre-bedtime routine that helps you get in the right frame of mind before trying to sleep, but it isn’t necessarily something a lot of us have tried or have experience in.
In second place, the act of having a face mask worked wonders, and that was closely followed by watching a comedy movie; both these activities will definitely lighten the mood, and watching something that makes you laugh and puts you in a good mood will always help to ease your mind and potentially push more troubling thoughts (perhaps about work the next day) firmly to one side.
Other activities that scored high include listening to music or reading a book, two very common ways to settle yourself in for a night’s sleep. Cleaning your bedroom before was also a task that worked well, perhaps because the movement and associated exercise from doing so would lead to a more tired state.
In terms of tasks within the research that did the opposite, in other words, were not conducive to sleep, watching a horror movie was at the bottom of the pile, and that makes sense. If you’ve watched a film that results in you being petrified, the chances are you may well struggle to get to sleep, not least if you think someone may be trying to get into your house with an ax.
Watching the news was another activity that didn’t result in a good night’s sleep, similarly watching a true crime TV show. One result from this research is perhaps something of a shock.
Individuals who spoke with family or friends before sleeping didn’t have the greatest quality of sleep and took quite a while to fall into a state of sleep.
This may be down to a number of factors and might also depend on the nature of the call you have. In other words, if you are talking to a family member who drones on and on, or a friend who is merely talking about themselves endlessly, these types of calls may lead you to get frustrated and, therefore, not be in the best frame of mind before going to sleep.
Sleep is an area of our lives that we don’t pay enough attention to, and any study that helps us to understand how best to unwind will always be greatly received by those who are not the best sleepers.