Tips for getting to sleep

Stay Asleep All Night

Stay asleep longer and have a better quality of sleep by doing the following:

• Get up. Nancy Foldvary-Schaefer, D.O., of the Cleveland Clinic suggests that if you go to bed and lie awake for more than 20 minutes, get up. Do something relatively mundane, and when you feel sleepy, try to go to bed again. Repeat this cycle until you fall asleep. You might not get the amount of sleep you were wanting, but you’ll get a better quality of sleep.
• Keep a regular exercise program. “The data is quite clear that regular exercise not only helps people fall asleep easier, but also keeps them in deeper sleep,” Micheal J. Breus, Ph.D., says.
• Kick furry friends out of bed. Pets are notorious for interrupting sleep. When they’re on the bed, they take up the room you need and paw at you when they want you to wake up.
• Avoid alcohol before bed. “Alcohol is the most commonly used sedative-hypnotic, but while it allows you to crash faster, it causes markedly disrupted sleep as it is metabolized,” Foldvary-Schaefer says.

• Keep your bedroom cool. Your body needs to drop two degrees to go from the first stage of sleep (getting ready to sleep) to the fifth stage of sleep (the REM cycle), says Alan Letton, chief science officer for Sealy mattress company. “Ensure that your mattress and pillow work with your body to do so, not make you warmer.”