Having a good sleep at night can help us to get fresh mind, soul, and mood in the morning. Fresh mind, soul, and mood can make us ready to start a new day with a smile. Unfortunately, we sometimes get difficulties to sleep at night. It may be caused by the bad condition of our body and mind, such as tiredness, stress, or sickness. To have a good sleep, we have to be relaxed. There are three ways to have a good sleep: avoid eating and drinking before bed time, create a relaxed condition to sleep, and reduce light at night.
We will have a good sleep if we avoid eating and drinking before bed time. We should have dinner at least two hours before we sleep. Why? The reason is because it is for the digestion. If we have dinner at least two hours before bed time, it will help the digestion process well. We also have to avoid big meals for dinner because they usually contain a lot of fat. Fatty food makes our stomach work harder to digest the food. As the result, we will still awake because of the full feeling. Besides having dinner at least two hours before bed time, we also have to stay away from drinking coffee. Coffee contains caffeine which can make us have a difficulty to sleep. A little observation conducted by Henry Ford Sleep Disorders Centre in Detroit, has proven it. The centre’s director, Professor Timothy Roehrs, asked a reporter named Leila McKinnon to sleep at the centre for two nights. Leila did not know that her drink was given caffeine on the first night. She did not also know that her drink was a drink without caffeine on the second night. As a result, she needed 50 minutes to fall asleep on the first night and only needed 16 minutes on the second night to fall asleep. She also woke up 27 times on the first night and she did not know it. Not only we can not drink coffee, but we also can not drink a lot of water in the evening even though the experts suggest us to drink 8 glasses a day. We will go to the toilet too often if we drink a lot of water and it will make us have a difficulty to sleep at night.
The second way to have a good sleep is to create a relaxed condition to sleep. By having a relaxed condition before sleeping, we will have a good sleep. There are many ways to be relaxed before sleeping. One of them is by taking a warm bath. Warm water can help our body relax because it stimulates our blood circulation and calms our nervous system. For those who live in a boarding house, they may find a difficulty to get warm water. But we still can do other things to be relaxed, for example do some stretching. On the floor, we can stretch our feet and hands. We can also stretch our back by kissing our knees while our legs are in straight position. The activity of stretching can help us to relax our muscles. While we take a warm bath or we do some easy stretching, we can also listen to the music, especially classical music or relaxing music. By listening to the classical music, our mind will be relaxed. It helps us to sleep in a relaxed condition.
Reducing light at night also makes us easier to have a good sleep. We can do simple things, such as turn off the main lamps and turn off the television and computer or laptop. It is because even we close our eyes, they still work, moving to the right and left. If our eyes see the light, especially the brighter one, they will work harder. It makes them tired and we can not sleep well. For some of us who can not sleep without light, we can change our light bulb into the lowest voltage one when we sleep.
It is a good idea if we can do those three ways: avoid eating and drinking before bed time, create a relaxed condition to sleep, and reduce light at night. By doing those three ways, we will have a good sleep. Trust me!
