Having a Sleep Schedule Could Greatly Improve Your Rest

Sleep is important.

Getting enough sleep isn’t always easy, we might have a hard time falling asleep when we want to or we might not want to go to sleep early at all. Our free time can be sparse and sometimes the time we have before we go to bed feels too precious to lose out on. Whatever our obstacle is, sleep is the cornerstone of mental health, and not getting enough can cause our mood to deteriorate and can increase our risk of developing depression and anxiety. 

Does your bedtime affect your quality of sleep?

How much sleep we get is often determined by what time we go to sleep and how consistently we can maintain that schedule. Our body regulates its hormones (like melatonin, the sleep hormone) based on a 24-hour circadian rhythm. If we’re unable to sleep at the same time each night, the quality of our sleep can suffer along with our mood and well-being. Interestingly enough, mood and quality of sleep have a two-way relationship where mood affects our quality of sleep and vice-versa. This means that poor sleep can decrease our mood for the next day, which can make it harder for us to get quality sleep as a result. If we regulate what time we go to sleep each night, we can mitigate the chain reaction created by poor sleep and poor mood. 

How do we maintain a consistent sleep routine?

If we want to achieve a schedule that allows us to have a deep, restful night’s sleep we need to know how much sleep we need and what time we should get into bed. Research demonstrates that getting less than 7 hours of sleep creates a pattern of drowsiness and decreased mood in adults. If we know we have to wake up at 7 AM that means, at the very least, we need to have fallen asleep at midnight. Ideally, we would go to sleep earlier to give ourselves the opportunity to maximize the amount of sleep we get and give ourselves some buffer time to wind down in case we don’t fall asleep easily. Once we’ve established what time we should be going to sleep, we need to compare it to the time we’re used to sleeping and slowly work towards going to sleep earlier. Making our bedtime 15 minutes earlier each night until we fall asleep at our ideal time is a good way to allow our bodies to slowly adjust to the new schedule. 

Winding Down Before Bed

Giving ourselves some time before we go to bed to relax and unwind can give us the opportunity to actually fall asleep when we mean to. Turning off our TVs and plugging our phones in before bed will make a big difference in our ability to drift off. Blue light stimulates our brain in a way that prevents melatonin from being secreted into our nervous system, meaning it will be harder for us to fall asleep on a biological level. Keeping our bedrooms cool and dark will also allow our bodies to realize that it’s time for sleep and we’ll start secreting sleep hormones much easier. A trick that many people use to get into a sleepy mood is reading before bed. If we’re not ready to fall asleep yet but we want to do something to wind us down we can turn our AC down, dim the lights, and dig into a book we like before we fall asleep. Books don’t emit any blue light and they draw our attention away from thoughts that might keep us awake like worries or complicated life issues.