sleeping stages Archive - Simply Healthy Sleep - The online-magazine for your perfect sleep experience

About 80 % of all humans are affected by sleep disturbances. Sleep disturbances not only lead to concentration disturbances and decrease of efficiency. In long term, they might negatively affect quality of life. Lack of sleep increases the risk for numerous serious illnesses, like diabetes, depressions or cardiovascular diseases. Read more about 9 useful hints to prevent sleep disturbances.

Detect and prevent sleep disturbances

You are having problems to fall asleep at night? You are lying awake for a long time during the night? You are sleeping eight hours but still are not feeling well rested?

9 hints that prevent sleep disturbances

If you follow them, you will fall asleep relaxed and are going to improve your sleeping quality:

Care for a well-balanced nutrition. Avoid fatty, large meals in the evening. Our body would be busy with digestion. As a consequence, phases of deep sleep would be shortened. But, these phases are important for physical and mental regeneration. Furthermore, the immune system is strengthened during deep sleep.
Avoid alcohol consumption. Alcohol is favoring falling asleep but it disturbs sequence of sleeping stages and leads to a restless sleep. Besides an increased urge to urinate, sweating and snoring, alcohol also might lead to bad dreams.
Caffeine negatively affects our sleep. Try to avoid it a couple of hours before going to bed.
Try to do sport on a regular basis. Already a short evening-walk in fresh air favors falling asleep. But, exhausting workouts right before going to bed are not advisable: this stimulates your circulatory and falling asleep will be harder.
Try to finish physically and mentally exhausting work early in the afternoon and let your day end peacefully. Let stress and hectic of everyday life behind you. Relaxation techniques like yoga or autogenous training might come in useful.
Rituals for falling asleep are not only useful for babies and infants.
Create a pleasant atmosphere in your bedroom. For being able to relax completely, ban all technic devices from your bedroom (TV, tablet, smartphone). Also, re-locate unfinished work like work papers or ironing.
Besides the atmosphere, the room-climate also is important for a restful sleep. The ideal room-temperature is from 61° to 64° F, the perfect humidity is from 40 to 60 %.
One sleeping phase lasts about 90 minutes. You will feel more awake when waking up between two phases of sleep. Try to set your alarm clock

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After a long party night and after consuming several alcoholic beverages most people are looking forward to go to bed. The hours past were tiresome and the alcohol further contributed to exhaustion and tiredness. But, when the alarm goes off the next day only few are feeling fit and well rested. Alcohol makes falling asleep easier but alcohol clearly disturbs the course of the sleeping stages.

Alcohol eases falling asleep

Every one of us knows that falling asleep after a couple of beers or wine is easy. Often, you feel too tired to brood. But, several studies advise against regular consummation of alcohol to support falling asleep. Although it makes tired it significantly disturbs sleep, especially in the second half of the night.

Disturbed chronology of the sleeping stages

Already a couple of beers, wine, mixed drinks or few hard liquor influence our central nervous system. And this disturbs the sleeping stages. After the phase of falling asleep, normally a short phase of REM-sleep follows. But, after consuming too much alcohol you enter some kind of comatose deep sleep. Then, during the second half of the night follows restless REM-sleep instead of phases of deep sleep. This may lead to restless dreams, sweating, abruptly awakening and going back to sleep might become difficult.

Increased urge to urinate

Furthermore, the intake of a larger quantity of alcohol increases the urge to urinate. Alcohol is blocking hormones that are responsible for water storage and the body is stimulated to pass water. And as a further consequence you become thirsty.

Sweating

Alcohol increases your heart frequency and this in turn increases transpiration of your body.

Impairment of respiration

Consumed in a higher dose, alcohol might impair breathing. Since alcohol relaxes the musculature people who normally don’t snore might become snorers. The soft palate and the upper airways are significantly more relaxed than usual and this might cause snoring. For people who are already suffering under sleep apnoea it might even become dangerous. Due to the influence of alcohol the breathing stops might increase.

Which amount of alcohol influences the sleep strongly depends on individual factors like age, gender or physical condition. But, often two or three alcoholic beverages are enough to negatively influence a healthy sleeping structure.