Overthinking at night? 6 strategies for better sleep.

From washingtonpost.com

By Lisa Strauss 

Use a soothing distractor, schedule worry time and examine buried feelings — these and other tools can help settle your mind

Overthinking at night — about insomnia and other matters — is a common problem for many of my patients with sleep disorders. It interferes with falling asleep or going back to sleep, and prevents peaceful rest when they can’t sleep anyway.

Overthinking usually refers to thought processes such as racing thoughts or perseveration. The content — such as worries or the next day’s demands — may also be maladaptive. It may be fuelled by a diagnosable condition such as depression, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or hypomania. It can also be stimulated by intense experiences such as stress, exciting plans, perfectionism, insecurity, caffeine use or a painful or worrisome life event.

There are many psychological tools to help with overthinking, but two people with comparable struggles may not benefit from or prefer the same tools. We insomnia specialists try to have available sizable and diverse tool kits that address cause or manifestation without sacrificing specificity.

Irrespective of tools, there are some general principles that may help with overthinking:

• Suppressing unwanted thoughts may make them more determined, and they can come roaring back. Good techniques allow us to coexist peaceably with our thoughts.
• At night, it is best to use simple, calming techniques that do not re-litigate the content of our concerns.
• Issues that inflame overthinking — such as overwork, too little support, isolation, guilt, mental health concerns and insufficient exercise — matter. Why are you overthinking? What do you need more or less of in your life? These questions are best addressed during the day or early evening.
• Engaging in abundant negative or anxious thinking can condition unwanted habits of mind. The Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh cautions us to be careful which plants we water over and over in our minds. These are the plants that will grow big and strong and, in turn, demand more care and feeding.

One of my patients was a caring partner, mother and friend, and successful in a meaningful and demanding career. She had a child with mental health challenges and would lie awake at night worrying, questioning her own actions and gaming out possible scenarios.

The thinking was unconstructive and interfered with rest and sleep. Talking through her feelings of helplessness and fear was important. I also offered her some strategies that helped. Here are some of them:

Use a soothing distractor

During periods of insomnia, turn to more soothing thoughts to compete with your default thoughts. The human mind cannot entertain two narratives simultaneously.

Listen to peaceful audio books, podcasts or conversational radio programs, or read calming stories or books (with the light very dim and blue-blocked). Each time the unwanted thoughts arise, don’t push them away. Let them recede into the background and gently return your attention to your soothing distractor.

If interior techniques such as visualizations last long enough for you (they don’t for many people), walk through a calming and pleasant memory such as a vacation or the rooms of your grandmother’s house. Don’t choose a distractor that would keep you up, and don’t focus on sleep as a goal while using it.

Schedule worry time

This is, at most, a 30-minute technique that should be used in the early evening, after the stressful part of the day but hours before sleep in case it leaves some residue of stress or worry.

By facing problems constructively, they are less likely to plague us at night. This technique also teaches us to tolerate not acting or ruminating when it isn’t time.

List all your worries and stressors. For each one, ask yourself: Is there anything I can do about this in the next two weeks (even if I can’t completely resolve the issue)? If yes, what can you do and precisely when will you do it? Action steps should mitigate either the problem itself, such as working out a payment plan for an overdue bill, or its emotional effect, such as reminding oneself that more income-generating work is forthcoming.

Update the list each evening and continue with the action steps until you no longer need the technique.

Give yourself a few optional minutes each evening to think any way you’d like about the items on the list. The rest of the day and night, when the thoughts arise, say, “Not now; I’ll get to you during my scheduled worry time.” If you have determined that there is nothing to be done about a certain problem, when thoughts about it arise, remind yourself that there is nothing to do.

Try exposure therapy for thoughts

This is a daytime technique. Variants are used for the thoughts that can accompany OCD, but I teach it for preoccupying thoughts more generally.

• Take a few days to list your recurrent negative and anxious thoughts.
• Record them into the audio recorder on your phone or computer three times in a singular long recording.
• The first time, recite the thoughts in the tone in which they naturally pop into your head.
• The second time, exaggerate that tone.
• The third time, make the tone absurd.
• Listen to the recording on a loop for an hour a day while you are doing something else such as playing a computer game that doesn’t involve words or sound, or cleaning up.

You may feel a bit worse at first (and you can always abandon the technique if you need to). After several days, though, the recording should become boring and repetitive background noise such that when the thoughts arise in the privacy of your head, they are easily relegated to the background.

Examine overlooked feelings

This is a technique for getting in touch with buried feelings. I suggest it especially to those who are preternaturally competent and stoical, rarely letting themselves feel vulnerable. The feelings may catch up with them at night in the form of distress and overthinking.

Early morning is a nice, quiet time for getting in touch with underattended feelings. It is a listening task, not a thinking task.

Prompt yourself with half sentences such as: “What I’m scared of is” or “What I’m sad about is” or “What I’m disappointed by is” or “What I feel ashamed about is” or “What I regret is” or “What I’ve been most traumatized by is.” Pick a few half-sentences per sitting. Commit to thoughtfully addressing what arises at a later time (not at night).

Think rationally

Cognitive-therapy techniques invite us to bring rational thinking — for instance, evidence for and against, and correction of cognitive distortions — to bear on our assumptions.

These can be excellent tools during the day for reappraising our worries and other upsetting thoughts. For example, if you are worrying about something, ask yourself what are the worst, best and most likely outcomes, in that order.

Self-soothe

Underneath the rational layer, there can be a primally frightened part of us. Children don’t ask their parents for proof of their soothing assertions or ask what qualifies them to make those assertions; they bask in the soothing.

Cultivate more soothing language and a kinder tone toward yourself (day and night), and try to believe yourself. There are many other strategies for self-soothing as well.

I have written previously about repeatedly observing one’s own overthinking to cultivate self-awareness and establish a competing habit of mind. There are many other useful techniques — from meditation to journaling to wind-down time to relaxation techniques such as breathing to slow your thoughts and Yoga Nidra to keeping a pad of paper bedside (to be used very sparingly) for jotting down things you want to remember tomorrow to worry exposure.

I hope some of my suggested techniques offer you a great start and help you reduce or eliminate overthinking and get restful sleep.

Lisa Strauss, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in private practice in the Boston area. She specializes in sleep disorders.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/08/18/overthinking-insomnia-worry-sleep-strategies/

My View: Learning to live with insomnia

From buffalonews.com

What can I say about insomnia? Let me sleep on it. Wait – I can’t. That about sums it up. Not being able to fall asleep is very frustrating. While the world sleeps, I am wide awake listening to my fan drone on and on, my cellphone is set for the soothing sounds of a midnight thunderstorm. My window is open, and the bedroom is at a cool temperature. A perfect setting for “sleep ... perchance to dream.” To quote Shakespeare.

Carol J. Russell treats insomnia with 2 a.m. pizza.

But it’s not happening in my world. In my world, there is a lot of tossing and turning.

Since I am awake, I usually get up to get something to eat. (I was wondering where those extra pounds were coming from.) Eating at night is performance art at its best. You aren’t going to make an actual meal, although I have made a plate of microwave 90-second rice topped with Romano cheese. So good! I have also made sandwiches.

Why does a bologna sandwich at 2 in the morning taste better than it does in the afternoon? Forbidden fruit, that’s why. We humans are not supposed to eat lunch at 2 a.m. Cereal is also a good choice. But the absolute best 2 a.m. snack is – of course – cold pizza. Not microwave or toaster-oven-heated pizza. It has to be cold, paired with a cold glass of white wine.

You might ask why I haven’t tried a sleep medication. The answer is, I have. A few years ago I tried a doctor-prescribed sleeping pill. It did work, but the side effects were interesting to say the least.

After taking the pill, I did have a night’s sleep, but I also woke up to a half eaten bag of cookies on the bed table next to me. I had no memory whatsoever of getting up, going downstairs to the kitchen opening the pantry door, taking out the package of cookies, going back upstairs, getting into bed and eating half a bag – while sleeping! That was the end of sleeping pills for me.

At least I didn’t go for a joyride or shop online, as I’ve heard can happen with these medications.

I do have friends who also have insomnia. One friend told me she gets up at 5 a.m. after not sleeping all night and does laundry. While the washing machine is going, she will sit in a recliner and fall asleep. Another friend vacuums. Still another irons. That definitely is something I would never do. “Does not iron” was in my wedding vows. Way too boring. Although that could be the answer I am looking for.

Functioning during the day with no sleep is challenging. If I don’t have plans for the day and I remain home, I can at least rest, but if I have a busy schedule after a sleepless night, I am running on fumes.

Since my retirement, I now have the freedom of sleeping later in the morning and planning my day accordingly. I usually try to schedule any plans or appointments I make for 2 p.m. or later.

To any and all readers who see themselves in this article, I say to you, and I’m quoting that great newsman Edward R. Murrow, “Good night, and good luck.”

https://buffalonews.com/opinion/my-view-learning-to-live-with-insomnia/article_fb2f5ae6-3163-11ee-ab53-9b975e70bb8e.html 

The living hell of insomnia – and the solutions that don’t work

From telegraph.co.uk

By Roger Lewis

In this peculiar book, Marie Darrieussecq details her own battles with sleep deprivation – and those of other writers from Ovid to Hemingway

Insomniacs, whom the French author Marie Darrieussecq, with weary irony, calls “those champions of fatigue”, will try anything to drop off: earplugs, eyeshades, herbal teas, lime-blossom essence on the pillows. “I do a few Pilates stretches,” she writes in Sleepless, “with the same little inflatable ball that I also take with me when I travel.” Her bedsheets must be white, never ­patterned. For 30 years, she has been “running with barbiturates” and the like – Lexomil, Imovane, Atarax, Temesta, Donormyl. ­Cannabis didn’t work as “I felt wasted all day”. She drew the line at resorting to a morphine suppository. 

Night after night, Darrieussecq wakes at 4.30am: too early to get up, “too late to start living”. The ­digestion is upset, and one seems to see double. Cold, heat, pain – all are heightened. “Meaning is erased,” says Darrieussecq, “time is ­compressed.” Insomnia is like ­pushing a wheelbarrow uphill, in which squats a huge toad. “It’s so heavy, and its body gets bigger as the night goes on.” No wonder sleep deprivation is a torture technique, deployed still at Guantanamo Bay. Chronic insomnia attacks the ­short-term memory; exhaustion engenders a sort of idiocy. The walls of the bedroom seem to ­pulsate; worries crash upon you like waves. I should know: I’m an insomniac myself. 

                                              John Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare CREDIT: UniversalImagesGroup

Darrieussecq got herself hooked up to monitors in a lab, where the technicians found that she kept waking up 20 times an hour, a state known as “hypervigilance”. It turns out that writers are often prone to this – and, as Sleepless recounts, go on about it as if it implied some superiority. “I think insomnia is a path towards what I would call a higher intelligence,” said ­Marguerite Duras, in a boast worthy of Sontag or Woolf. The latter had to be whacked with a wet towel after taking too much Veronal, a white crystalline hypnotic. She was advised instead to drink milk and stop writing. Proust, who said of his insomnia, “I’m living in a sort of death punctuated by brief awakenings”, needed absolute silence. His walls were lined with cork, and he rented apartments above and below his own to keep them footstep-free. 

Whether or not sleeplessness grants visionary powers, there’s certainly a link with alcoholism. The insomniacal Hemingway and Faulkner drank a bottle of whisky a day. Jean Rhys required two ­bottles of wine; Lawrence Durrell needed four or five pints – also of wine. As for Darrieussecq: “I’m incapable of falling asleep without my red wine.” (Surely the litre of coffee she takes each evening can’t help; I daren’t touch even decaf beyond mid-afternoon.) 

“The world is divided,” we are told, “into those who can sleep and those who can’t.” This seems as sound a definition as any. ­Insomniacs often claim they’ve gained six or seven years of ­wakefulness by not wasting time slumbering – but it’s a horrible sort of wakefulness, an unproductive prickly grogginess, and I always envied Churchill, who had a bed in his office for afternoon naps. He claimed his snoozes “won the war”. Pepys, Darrieussecq tells us, slept through the Great Fire of London: “His servant had to shake him to get him out of bed.” People who sleep soundly will often say, annoyingly, “I have a clear conscience”, as if the insomniac were, like Macbeth, guilty of heinous crime and sin. 

                                                 Marie Darrieussecq, author of Sleepless CREDIT: Yann Diener-POL

The plain fact is, as Darrieussecq puts it, that “nothing prevents the insomniac from not sleeping” – not hot milk, immersion in an icy bath, acupuncture, meditation, fasting, or even heavy blankets filled with glass beads. “The anti-insomnia blanket prevented me from ­sleeping,” she says, concluding that every trick is generally hopeless.

Sleepless is a peculiar book, though it captures the skittering, jittery mood of an insomniac’s “white forgetfulness”, of what it’s like to be simultaneously over-stimulated and over-stretched. Darrieussecq is known for her disconcerting approach – her first novel Truismes (1996), which sold a million copies, concerned a woman who turns into a pig – and true to form, there are many digressions here. Yet they often fail to add up: paragraphs about Africa, Japan, Chernobyl, extinct animals, deforestation, pangolins, hotel rooms, complete with smudgy snapshots. The net effect of all these jottings and footnotes? I was soon dead to the world.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/sleepless-by-marie-darrieussecq-review/ 

How to sleep in a heat wave, according to experts

From edition.cnn.com

Are you waking up in a puddle of sweat — if you can sleep at all? That’s the grim reality for millions of people around the globe suffering through severe, unbearable heat waves.

Fans, lukewarm showers, and watching what you eat and drink are a few of the many tips on how to sleep during a heat wave.

July is the hottest month on record for the planet and very likely the hottest period in 120,000 years, according to global climate authorities. “These are the hottest temperatures in human history,” Samantha Burgess, deputy director of the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, told CNN recently.

It’s expected to get worse: A new study found the number of days of “dangerous heat” — defined as 103 degrees Fahrenheit (39.4 degrees Celsius) — will more than double by 2050 in the midlatitude regions, which include Western Europe and countries such as China, Japan and the United States. Tropical areas could face those temperatures for the majority of the year.

No relief at night

It’s not just the unbearable sunshine — temperatures at night aren’t dropping as they should. Nights are warming faster than days on average in most of the US, the 2018 National Climate Assessment found. That’s dangerous for sleep — a vital period when the body and brain do housekeeping chores such as repairing and discarding old cells and generating new ones.

Warm night-time temperatures have robbed people around the world of an average of 44 hours of sleep annually during just the first two decades of the 21st century, according to a 2022 study. And unfortunately, daytime naps and longer sleep on cooler nights did not seem to make up for that lost sleep, researchers found.

To get the best quality sleep, experts have long recommended sleeping in a cool room — between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit (15.6 to 19.4 degrees Celsius) is best. What happens when you can’t achieve that during a heat wave?

Studies have shown higher night-time temperatures increase wakefulness and reduce deep wave and REM (rapid eye movement), both critical to how well the body repairs and refreshes itself at night.

Exposure to heat waves during pregnancy may be associated with adverse outcomes such as preterm birth, according to a 2019 study. Older adults may have higher heart rates and more physiological stress when sleeping in warmer temperatures. A 2008 Australian study even found deaths due to mental and behavioural disorders rose during heat waves, especially for older adults.

10 tips for sleeping in the heat

Learning how to better cope with sleep problems during heat waves might limit the negative impact on our health, according to a team of experts from the European Insomnia Network. Here are their top tips, along with some guidance from experts in the US.

Stay hydrated. Drinking plenty of water during the day can help your body better regulate your temperature at night.

But don’t drink for the hour or two before bed, or you’ll end up waking yourself in the night to go to the bathroom, said sleep specialist Dr. Raj Dasgupta, an associate professor of clinical medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. Instead, “try sucking on ice cubes before bed.”

Eat light. Eating lighter, especially for the last meal of the day, can help set you up for better sleep, experts say. Avoid sugar and carb-laden foods, saturated fats and too much fibre as the day goes on, as that can disrupt sleep as well, according to a 2016 study.

Dress lightly. Sleep in the buff or choose loose, cotton clothing — avoid synthetics, which can trap heat next to the skin.

Look for chances to cool the bedroom. If you’re lucky enough to have a cooler period during the day, open windows and doors and start up fans to ventilate the bedroom, then close it off when the temperature rises.

If there are no breaks from the heat, close blinds, pull window shades, and do what you can “to keep the house and bedroom as cool and dark as possible both during day and night,” the network experts suggested.

Avoid alcohol. Drinking booze in the evening dehydrates the body and sets you up for night-time sweats, said Dr. Phyllis Zee, chief of sleep medicine and professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Set aside time to relax. For you and your child, set aside an hour or more before bedtime for calming activities, such as “reading a book, listening to a story or to music. This could help in cooling down and relaxing,” according to the network.

Shower in tepid water. Before you hit that hot sack, take a lukewarm or cool (but not cold) shower or foot bath, which may help to reduce your heat stress and set you up for sleep. How does that happen?

“Your body temperature lowers after you leave the shower or bath as your body adapts to the cooler environment,” Dasgupta said. “This drop in temperature prepares your body for sleep because our body temperature has a natural circadian rhythm — the body is primed to cool down when you lay down and warm up when you get up.”

Find the coolest place to sleep. Try your best to keep your bedroom cooler than 77 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degrees Celsius) if you can. To do so, try using ceiling fans or floor or bedside electric fans, which use “up to 50-times less electricity” than air conditioning,” the review noted.

“There are also fairly inexpensive ice cooling fans that can be placed near the bed,” Zee told CNN. “If you’re unable to keep the bedroom cool, sleeping temporarily on lower floors like the basement (if there is one) will be cooler.”

Keep a regular sleep schedule. If you sleep badly one night, don’t go to bed early the next, experts said. It’s important to stick to a regular bedtime to train the brain that it’s time to sleep, regardless of the temperature.

If you do wake up early and can’t go back to sleep without 15 to 20 minutes, get up and do something soothing and mindless, such as folding laundry, until you’re sleepy. If that doesn’t work, start your day, the network experts suggest.

Exercise safely. Don’t put aside exercise, even in the heat. Try to do some physical activity in the early morning, when it is still relatively cool outdoors, experts suggest, as a key way to keep a regular sleep and wake schedule.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/31/health/sleep-cooler-heat-wave-wellness/index.html 

This is why you keep waking up at 4am – and what you can do about it

From independent.co.uk

Some people might see four o’clock in the morning more regularly than they like. Here’s why your sleep could be disturbed

Ever find yourself awake, staring into space at four in the morning? Is it just a bad habit, or is there something more sinister going on? And why does it always seem to happen at 4am?

“We start to experience less deep sleep after around four to five hours,” says Lisa Artis, deputy CEO of The Sleep Charity, who have partnered with Simba mattresses. And once we’re in that lighter sleep faze, we wake much more easily.

If you generally fall asleep around 11pm – which is a very common bedtime, 4am wake-ups are more likely. And there are many factors leading to these inconvenient stirrings.

Hormones

“Sleep is guided by our internal clock or circadian rhythm. One of the most significant and well-known circadian rhythms is the sleep-wake cycle,” Artis continues.

“Sleep is regulated by the levels of two hormones: melatonin and cortisol, which follow a regular 24-hour pattern. Melatonin assists you in dozing off, while cortisol helps get you up, and keeps you awake,” she explains.

Keeping an eye on your hormones is important in preventing those late-night wake-ups.

“Engage in calming activities before bedtime, such as reading, listening to soothing music, or practising relaxation techniques, like deep breathing or meditation,” says Dr Mariyam H. Malik, GP at Pall Mall Medical.

Equally, pop your phone down for a bit.

“Blue light from electronic devices can suppress melatonin production. Try to avoid screens for at least two hours before bedtime, or use blue light filters. It is best to charge them in a separate room overnight,” Malik adds.

Diet

Caffeine, heavy meals, alcohol, sugar, and a lack of magnesium or B vitamins could lead you to have a more disturbed night’s sleep, according to Malik.

Sugar and carbohydrates may have a particular impact.

“A diet high in sugar and refined carbohydrates can cause blood sugar fluctuations, leading to wakefulness during the night,” she says.

“It’s unlikely you’ll feel hungry in the middle of the night if your blood sugar dips,” notes Artis, “but to reduce ungodly hour awakenings, trial alternatives for your last meal or snack of the evening. Instead of carb or sweet-based snacks, opt for protein-packed and magnesium-rich foods, like hard boiled eggs, cottage cheese, pumpkin seeds, spinach, dark chocolate, cashews, chicken thighs or turkey.”

Protein can take the edge off your night-time hunger, she says, while magnesium is known to support sleep.

Needing a wee

Do you wake up needing to wee at the same time every night?

“Try not to drink excessive amounts of fluids before bedtime,” advises Malik. “It’s important to stay hydrated, but try not to drink anything for around two hours before your usual bedtime. Go to the toilet before you go to bed to empty your bladder. ”

Age and life stage

“Sleep tends to become more disrupted as people get older,” Malik explains.

“Sleep patterns change with age, and various factors can contribute to sleep disturbances in older adults. Some common reasons for sleep disruption in the elderly include changes in your circadian rhythm, decreased melatonin production, medical conditions or medications, and potential sleep disorders.”

It can also affect women during the perimenopause. “The reproductive hormones – oestrogen and progesterone – are entwined with the sleep and relaxation hormones, melatonin and serotonin,” says Artis.

“When oestrogen begins to fall before and during menopause, it can create a disturbance in the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin, meaning it can’t properly balance out cortisol. When this happens, the ability to fall and stay asleep is affected.”

Recurring hot flushes, night sweats, dry skin, and low libido can signal waning oestrogen.

Artis advises incorporating foods with high levels of phytoestrogens into your diet throughout the day to help with this. “Phytoestrogens imitate the natural oestrogens found in your body. As a consequence, they can bind to your body’s oestrogen receptors and produce similar effects.” Try lentils, kidney beans, chickpeas, tofu, edamame, spinach, cauliflower and broccoli.

Worrying

Stress is not good for sleep.

One study by Bupa even found that 32 million Brits wake up worrying about their health at precisely 4:05 am. The report, which surveyed 4,000 British adults, revealed that more than three-fifths of us wake up in the middle of the night.

If you are finding yourself awake at all hours worrying, or waking up with stressful dreams, there are a few things that may help.

“Keep a journal by your bedside and write down your worries before going to bed. This practice can help get your concerns out of your mind and onto paper, making it easier to let go of them temporarily,” says Malik.

You may also want to “engage in mindfulness or meditation exercises before bedtime. Mindfulness can help you focus on the present moment, reducing anxiety about the past or the future.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/waking-up-early-sleep-tips-insomnia-b2383574.html

Sleep better naturally: Effective ways to combat insomnia

From pulse.com.gh

Sleep is very important for the body, it allows the organs in your body to repair itself, refreshes your mind, improves your mood, keeps you healthy, and has many other fantastic benefits. However, sleep may not come easily all the time.

Natural ways to deal with insomnia

How many times have you been sleepy throughout the day only to retire to bed that night and sleep is nowhere to be found? It’s quite stressful anytime that happens but you have no idea how to deal with that.

First of all, insomnia can be a result of many factors sometimes psychological, some health-related, and sometimes it can be as a result of certain lifestyle choices. Identifying what’s keeping you awake can be a giant step to solving the problem.

The first thing to do when you find yourself struggling to drift off to sleep is to determine if it is health-related, you could be anaemic or have other health-related problems that you haven’t checked out for.

Start by eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly, also check your full blood count to see if it’s low it may be another cause as to why you’re unable to rest at night, you can improve your blood count by taking eating more iron-rich foods such as your greens, your beans, red meat, eggs, etc. Also, drink more water. If your slumber woes are health-related taking care of your health will soon eliminate the problem. Again if it’s something eating you up don’t be afraid to open up to anyone with the advancement of technology you can always discuss things with your AI and get it off your chest, maybe you don’t trust your friends that much so why not discuss it with your AI, they can keep a secret and not just that they may even have a solution for you.

Or maybe there’s a lot on your mind? You maybe be going through a tough time or maybe you’re anxious about something and it’s eating away your sleep, you have very little sleep at night wake up feeling very agitated and it’s affecting your sleep even more. The best thing to do will be to meditate, you can close your eyes, and imagine yourself on a very serene beach or a very peaceful field alone far away from your problems. You can even search for sea breeze sounds on your phone, then put the phone a few meters away from you then listen to the peaceful sea breeze and watch yourself drift to sleep.

But maybe your inability to set sail to dreamland is because of certain lifestyle choices, like staying on the screen for far too long or eating way too much food a few minutes before bedtime.

Longer hours spent on screen time can affect your quality of sleep, so instead of staying behind those screens learn to put your phones or laptops away from about 2 hours before bedtime or simply get the blue block lens to protect your eyes from the light that emits from the computer screens, this will help you sleep better.

You can also replace the screen with a book it will surprise you how fast you’ll fall asleep trying to read a book than you will when you try to read on the phone. Also instead of eating heavy and oily foods before bed try eating some bananas, oats, or drink chamomile tea which has a tremendous effect on inducing sleep.

In general, a sound mind and a healthy body will not have trouble going to bed, so exercise regularly, eat a balanced diet, keep a clear conscience, and free your mind of all things that give it trouble, so you can have a good night's rest.

https://www.pulse.com.gh/lifestyle/beauty-health/sleep-better-naturally-effective-ways-to-combat-insomnia/c7x2e4q