Royane Real
Better Sleep For Better Brains
By Royane Real
Author of: “How You Can Be Smarter - Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better and Be More Creative
For your brain to work at peak efficiency and maximum capacity, you need to be getting enough sleep. Why is getting enough sleep so important?
Not only your body, but your mind requires a good rest. Your brain actually uses the hours that you are sleeping to consolidate your memories for the day. This is the time when important information gets sent into long term storage in your brain.
But for many of us, some common sleep robbers are interfering with our ability to get enough sleep each night. If you’re not getting enough sleep, you’ll be less productive, less creative, and you won’t be able to think as clearly, as quickly or remember everything you need to know. In short, your brain power will go down the drain!
Not everyone needs the same amount of sleep. Some people can get by with only five or six hours of sleep each day, while others do best with eight or nine hours.
How can you tell whether or not you’re getting the right amount of sleep that your brain requires? Here are some questions that you can ask yourself to see if your brain and your body are getting enough sleep, or whether you should be sleeping longer and sleeping better.
When you wake up, do you feel refreshed and ready for another day? Or do you groan when the alarm wakes you up, wondering where you’ll get the energy to get out of bed? Does your body feel desperate to sleep longer?
Do you drink cup after cup of coffee trying to force yourself to get through the day? Do you sleep in on the weekends trying to catch up on the sleep you’ve missed?
If you’re always tired because you’re not sleeping well, or because you’re not sleeping enough, you may have to become a detective to track down the cause. Once you know the reason for your poor sleep, you can take steps to help yourself sleep better. You’ll have to experiment to see what works best for you.
Too Much Caffeine
A very common reason why many of us sleep poorly is that we drink too much caffeine throughout the day. Caffeine is a stimulant that is found in many beverages such as tea, coffee, cola drinks, and many over the counter medications.
The stimulating effects of caffeine start very quickly and last for several hours. Caffeine can be a great pick-me-up in the morning, but for most people, drinking caffeine later in the day can lead to insomnia. If you find that you feel jittery throughout the day, and feel that your mind is racing at night, you may be drinking too much coffee or too many cola drinks.
Many people get on a vicious caffeine merry go round. They can’t get to sleep at night because they’ve had too much coffee the day before. They sleep very little at night, and then because they are so exhausted the next day, they keep drinking cup after cup of coffee just trying to stay awake.
Getting off this merry go round of drinking too much coffee is not always easy.
If you have a hard time settling down at night because you drink a lot of coffee, try to cut back your consumption of caffeine to one cup or two cups per day. Or try to stop drinking caffeine all together. If you decide to reduce your consumption of caffeine, or if you want to quit altogether, you may feel better if you taper off slowly.
If you want to feel calmer at night, make it a rule not to drink any caffeine after 1:00 in the afternoon. Many people find that drinking warm milk before bedtime helps them to relax and feel sleepy.
Alcohol Can Cause Poor Sleep
In many people, drinking alcohol is another factor that can interfere with sleeping properly. Although alcohol can make you feel sleepy, it interferes with some of the important stages of sleep that the brain needs in order to feel good the next day. Remember, that without a good sleep, your brain isn't able to consolidate information properly for long term storage and retrieval.
Your Body Needs Exercise
Do you get enough exercise during the day? Some people have a hard time sleeping because their bodies are not getting enough exercise. So many of us today spend long hours sitting at computers and watching TV, that we are completely out of touch with the fact that our body is made to move.
If we don’t get up and get some physical exercise each day, we won’t sleep very well. Taking an evening walk can be a great stress reliever. Doing very vigorous exercise can be great for developing our heart and lung capacity, but it can be overstimulating if done too close to bedtime.
Be sure to wind down physically and mentally in the hours before your bedtime. This will help you sleep much better.
For more ideas on how to have your brain work at its best, get my popular book “How You Can Be Smarter - Use Your Brain to Learn Faster, Remember Better and Be More Creative” Download it today and learn more ways to get the maximum use of your brainpower. It’s available at http://www.lulu.com/real
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