Sleep is a fundamental biological process that all of us need and getting lesser of it is associated with various mental and physiologic health issues. At least you can relate to days you don't get enough sleep and how you feel during the following day, a feeling of thirst to satisfy a need. Did you however know that the quality of sleep you get depends on a number of factors including the alignment of your bed?
In the recent times, families choose interior designers to design and come up with a layout of their rooms, bedrooms and living rooms. Have you given thought to the way these design experts align your room? How they align the bed, the couch and more?
Well, these experts in the field of interior design will always align your bed facing away from the door. This is in line with the principle of the ancient Chinese, the Feng Shui principle that the bed can't directly face the door. According to this principle, such a lay out is an art and science of creating harmonious environment with the things around us and building a connection with them.
In this article, we'll look at ways of creating a harmonious sleeping environment and habits to adopt for better sleep.
Ways of creating a harmonious sleeping environment
- Choose calming colours for your bedroom. Spa blue, Dove grey, pale green and pestle pink are soothing colours for the eye and will help enhance sleep.
- Optimize bedroom lights to enhance sleep. Choose soft glowing lamps with dimmer switches that allow you to adjust brightness according to your preference. Distribute these lamps at varying heights in the room for a relaxation kind of mood.
- Choose all cotton, high thread linen for your beddings. Incase you are a night sweater, consider beddings with moisture wicking properties to keep you dry and cool during your sleep. A soft blanket, pillows with different densities and sufficient bed space are a harmonious sleeping environment.
- Add a bedroom plant. Most homes are fond of using flowers to enhance beauty of their atmosphere. These same natural flowers can be situated in the bedroom for ambience and creation of a harmonious sleeping environment. Choose flowers like lavender, snake plants, aloe Vera as these have been shown to improve air quality and reduce stress levels.
Now let's look at;
Habits to adopt for better sleep
1.Avoid eating heavy meals after 9 p.m. Studies show that heavy eating or drinking as one approaches sleeping time is associated with reduced sleep duration and quality. Remove this habit from your list and watch how your sleep quality improves.
- Avoid your cell phone or any blue light gadgets for an hour prior to sleep. Studies show that using cell phones and or electronic devices that emit blue light prolongs time taken to fall asleep, delays the circadian clock and decrease production of the melatonin hormone. Keeping away your cell phone an hour before you go to bed is a good habit to enhance your sleep quality.
- Avoid caffeinated drinks after dinner. Some of us are addicted to the beverage, coffee and the caffeine. However, limiting intake of this beverage after dinner will have a great effect on how you sleep, sleep duration and quality. If you are one who likes to take caffeinated drinks after dinner, try changing the pattern to fruits. Having fruits like cherries or a banana after dinner has been shown to enhance sleep quality. This is because of the presence of melatonin, a sleep hormone in the fruits.
However, eating fruits before bed can be helpful to some people and disadvantageous to others.
For example: Ulcer patients tend to be affected by bananas. Alternating supplements containing melatonin instead of fruits can be useful in such instances.
There are a number of supplements on the market but choice matters. Choose a natural supplement containing melatonin. Melatonin will help you fall asleep faster and also give you better quality of sleep. You can as well make use of sleep aid supplements if you usually take long to fall asleep or wake up suddenly in the night. These are natural sleep aid products and herbal in nature; so you don't need to worry about a load of toxic chemicals.