Here are 5 natural ideas on how to improve your sleep quality. As you know getting a good nights sleep is vital to keeping you healthy fit and young looking.

Getting a great nights sleep can also make you feel wonderful, as it is both rejuvenating and refreshing. For many of us, however, a good nights sleep seems out of reach, and so many people suffer from occasional or even chronic insomnia.

What Is Insomnia?

Insomnia is a condition that interrupts your ability to either fall asleep or stay asleep.

If this sounds like you, you may be hesitant to turn to harsh medications to help you to fall asleep. Here is some helpful advice you can try on how to improve the sleep quality you get without having to resort to sleeping tablets.

How To Improve Your Sleep Quality

Eliminate Caffeine

Although most people can’t survive without their morning cup of coffee, you have to remember that caffeine is not just in coffee. It can be hiding in the cola that you drink, tea and even foods that you eat.

Eliminating it 100% may be difficult, and in small amounts, caffeine does have its benefits. If you battle to sleep, try to limit your consumption of caffeine to the mornings only. Even coffee six hours before bedtime can disrupt your sleep, and this is not the way to go about trying to improve your sleep quality.

Exercise

Not only does exercise help you maintain a healthy body weight and better mental outlook but a Sleep Foundation study found that those who exercised were less sleepy during the day and slept better at night.

While a new exercise routine may leave you a little tired at first, regular exercise will give you more energy and help you fall asleep at bedtime. This may have to do with the chemicals released by the body when you exercise. The neurotransmitters released by the brain during exercise have all sorts of beneficial properties and improved sleep is one of them.

Try Meditation

Meditation has a restorative effect on the brain. There are all sorts of benefits that meditation can have for a person.

Many of the benefits of meditation include reduced stress levels and a better ability to cope with difficult issues in one’s life.

Meditation is also great for insomnia. A Harvard study found that mindful meditation helped combat insomnia. It invokes a relaxation response in those who participate helping them relax enough to fall asleep quickly and stay asleep through the night. If you are not familiar with how to meditate there are many guided meditation audio programs that you can buy or check out from your library.

Sleep Hygiene

Sleep hygiene is a practice to help you sleep better at night. It has to do with environmental cues.

Try these tips to improve your sleep quality:

• No electronics
• Keep Your Room Dark And Quiet
• Do Not Work In Bed (I am guilty here)
• Make sure you have a good mattress
• Get up and go to bed at the same time every day
• Don’t sleep during the day (unless you work night shift)

Getting up at the same time every day and avoiding naps helps your body follow a circadian rhythm. We need this to improve sleep quality.

So Remember … To Improve Your Sleep Quality…………..

1. Stop hitting the snooze and train yourself to get up at the same time every day. If you hit the snooze button once or twice (or 6 times), you are not really training yourself to get up at the same time every day. If you know you do not need to get up until 7:30, stop setting your alarm for 7. Save yourself the 30 minutes of interrupted sleep and set the alarm for 7:30, then get up the first time it rings.
2. NO NAPS. If you are not used to getting up in the morning, then this may be the hard part for you. Napping can throw you off for sleeping at night because you simply are not tired enough to get to bed on time. Skip the nap (and the caffeine), and stay up so that you can get a good nights sleep.
3. A cup of chamomile tea at night before bed will help you to relax and drift off.

Now you have an arsenal of information that should help you fall asleep faster at night. Remember, finding what works well for you may take some playing around with.

So, if you don’t get it right the first night or two don’t give up.

These sleep strategies are proven to work, but they do take time. Build some new and healthy habits over the next few weeks and you should be sleeping like a baby again.