Rules for healthy sleep - how to sleep correctly to bring maximum benefits to the body

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Page navigation: The problem of modern man's sleep 4 main rules for healthy sleep Hygiene of good sleep from modern scientists - 15 rules How to independently worsen your own sleep - 12 habits that you need to get rid of urgently Where to start improving the quality of your sleep

Poor sleep stimulates the development of diseases: high blood pressure; heavy weight; elevated blood sugar levels; depression, stress; frequent colds; poor skin condition. Perhaps your illnesses also develop due to inadequate sleep.

From the article you will learn: 4 basic rules for healthy sleep; 15 science-based rules for a good night's rest; 12 habits that worsen sleep; sleep improvement plan. The information will be useful: those who decided to increase the active phase of the day at the expense of sleep - sleep less and do more work; who wants to improve the quality of sleep - sleep as before, but at the same time it is better to rest and feel more energetic during the day.

The problem of modern man's sleep

Lack of time—many people face this situation. Most try to increase the active phase of life by shortening night sleep. The idea is simple and seems easy to implement - with the help of stimulants (tea, coffee), force yourself to wake up earlier and go to bed later. The result of this approach is neuroses, chronic fatigue, stress.

This option of increasing one’s own working time is acceptable for several days (emergency work) and only for young and healthy people. For everyone else, you can save on sleep only by increasing its efficiency - sleep less and rest better.

A difficult day at work - stress - stimulants (tea, coffee, sweet drinks) - poor sleep - stimulants and again a difficult day - most people run in such a wheel

Sleep helps restore body tissue and should be used for healing purposes. Many studies confirm that with regular lack of sleep, a person experiences: fatigue, nervousness, dizziness, and lack of appetite. If the sleep problem is not solved, then chronic problems with internal organs arise.

If a person switches to a normal sleep pattern, many problems go away on their own. When you feel unwell, do not rush into treatment, but simply relax, paying more attention to healthy sleep.

4 main rules for healthy sleep

4 main rules for healthy sleep

1. The duration of sleep should be within one and a half hour intervals: 1.5 - 3 - 4.5 - 6 - 7.5 - 9 hours.

The sleep process is cyclical. Each cycle consists of a phase of slow and rapid sleep, with a total duration of one and a half hours. At the end of each cycle there is a period of increased activity of the body. Learn more about the physiology of sleep.

Waking up at this moment makes it easier to enter a state of wakefulness, as it is accompanied by increased physical tone and a feeling of sufficient sleep.

It's not how much you sleep, but how you do it that matters

2. For healthy sleep, you need to go to bed and wake up at the same time.

The most favorable time for going to bed is between 18 and 22 hours. If this time is not used, a period of activity begins and it is more difficult for a person to fall asleep. A conditioned reflex is developed to go to bed on time at the same time - muscles, internal organs and the nervous system relax and prepare for rest. It is beneficial to wake up between 5 and 6 am.

3. During the day, the body should receive physical activity.

If a person does not strain his muscles during the day, it will be difficult for him to fall asleep in the evening. Conversely, an active lifestyle promotes natural relaxation and faster sleep. More often than others, people with mental work complain of insomnia; with such work, the muscles do not get tired, and skeletal muscles are one of the links in the processes affecting falling asleep. If you don’t have time to go to the gym, do tai chi gymnastics at home.

A decrease in body temperature promotes good sleep. Physical exercise 4 to 6 hours before bedtime will warm up the body, and by the time you go to bed, your body temperature will drop.

4. Maintain hygienic sleeping conditions in the bedroom.

Please note: clean air in the bedroom (ventilate the room), minimum noise, a flat and fairly hard surface of the bed, a comfortable pillow, and so on.

Good sleep hygiene from modern scientists - 15 rules

Reading before bed calms your nerves and helps you fall asleep faster

1. Go to bed on an empty stomach. Have dinner 3 hours before bedtime. A full stomach interferes with breathing, the activity of the cardiovascular system and, accordingly, proper rest. This recommendation applies to children and adults. Dishes with spicy seasonings - pepper, garlic, and so on - are especially harmful to good sleep.

2. Do not drink drinks containing caffeine - tea, coffee, chocolate, cocoa - a few hours before bedtime. Products containing caffeine temporarily stimulate a person, but at the same time, blood pressure necessarily increases, heart rhythm is disturbed, and the person becomes more nervous and irritable. After consuming products containing caffeine, the quality of sleep deteriorates, frequent awakenings at night are observed, sleep becomes shallow and less beneficial for the body.

Start using at least a few of the 15 rules and you will experience improvements in your life

3. The bed should not be too soft - the muscles do not relax, but not too hard - there is a lot of pressure on the skeleton and muscles. Do not place a pillow under your shoulders. Don't let your head hang off the pillow. You should not put your hands under your head - this impairs blood circulation in them.

4. To fall asleep quickly and have good sleep efficiency, you need to feel your muscles relax. A relaxed muscle has the following properties: warm, filled with blood, heavy. Autogenic training helps well in this matter, the basic techniques of which can be mastered by every person.

5. Be sure to ventilate the room in which you sleep - a long sleep in a stuffy room is less beneficial than a short sleep in a room with fresh air. On this point, sleep hygiene coincides with the rules for sports activities.

6. If possible, avoid working late; such a habit worsens sleep at night and, accordingly, the quality of life the next day. If you worked late in the evening today and managed to get something done, this does not mean that you have increased your productivity, because tomorrow you will be lethargic and will not be able to perform your duties effectively. Scientists have long proven that night rush jobs and brainstorming do not increase labor efficiency, but rather reduce it.

7. For a good night's sleep, it is necessary that the lights in the bedroom are turned off; do not try to train yourself to sleep in the light - this will only make sleep more superficial, such sleep will not allow the body to rest.

8. For good sleep, learn to wake up. When you wake up in the morning, do not jump out of bed, but get up slowly after stretching - do it with pleasure and without rushing.

9. A very important rule of sleep hygiene is the condition of the bed. Sleeping on a soft bed will not provide adequate rest, and sleeping on a hard bed can lead to pain in the spine in the morning. The mattress should not be soft - so that the back does not bend under its own weight, but also not hard - so that the spine can maintain its natural curves. Sleeping on such a mattress will be a joy for both adults and children. Nowadays mattresses are sold in different hardnesses and with different fillings. Go to the store, sit and lie on different mattresses. Choose the one that suits you and sleep happily.

10. A pillow for healthy sleep should be small and hard enough. Sleeping on large down pillows will not allow your body and mind to rest, as cerebral circulation is disrupted.

11. Reading before bed will help most people fall asleep more soundly and quickly. Just follow the rule - read quiet classics, not modern fantasy and novels about ghouls.

12. During sleep, the body should be in a horizontal position. You should not sleep on your left side - this will worsen your heart function, and your left lung will function worse. The body suffers from oxygen starvation. It is optimal to sleep on your back and right side. It is strictly forbidden to sleep on your stomach. Breathing and oxygen supply to the body becomes very difficult.

13. There is a well-known wise aphorism: “A calm conscience is the best sleeping pill.” About 1 hour before bedtime, analyze the entire day and draw conclusions about where you did the right thing and where you did wrong; you should finish this analysis about 1 - 1.5 hours before bedtime. Consider past experiences as learning material. You can also develop a personal bedtime ritual to relax your nervous system. A ritual can consist of a variety of actions (light physical exercise, reading a book, music, any hobby, and so on), their main task is to distract a person from work worries, thereby preparing for sleep.

14. Immediately before falling asleep, bring your psyche into a passive state, for which purpose direct your gaze (with your eyes closed) towards your feet.

15. Don’t try to force yourself to sleep; if you can’t fall asleep, but you need to sleep, do quiet household chores: listen to music, read a book. If your body really needs sleep, then you will definitely fall asleep, only after a while.

About the stages

When a person sleeps, his consciousness goes through several stages. Scientists record electrical impulses in the brain at different stages of sleep. Entering into doze occurs with jagged visual images and twitching of muscles that release tension. We are dozing, and it is easy to wake us up at this moment. At the 2nd stage, breathing evens out, visual images disappear, and body temperature decreases slightly. The period takes up about 45% of the time.

Delta sleep is the time when the potential of nerve cells begins to recover. The transition from the second stage to the fourth takes only 7% of the time. But the importance of this period is great. It is deep sleep that allows the release of growth hormone into the blood. The substance helps not only children grow, but also recover from illness.

The paradoxical sleep phase is the period when the body’s activity increases, breathing quickens, blood pressure rises, and the eyes move. It is the person who is awakened at this time who can talk about dreams. During the night, cycles of the paradoxical period give way to deep sleep. It is known how many hours it takes to restore the body. This is the first 3 hours after falling asleep, when the body reaches the fourth stage.

At this time, the periods of deep sleep are longer, and the periods of paradoxical sleep are short. Closer to the morning, people are in the first, second stage or in the paradoxical phase. The main functions of the first four stages, or deep sleep, include the restoration and accumulation of energy connections, and at the last stage, information is processed and a behavioral program is built.

How to independently worsen your own sleep - 12 habits that you need to get rid of urgently

Working in the evening impairs sleep

In this section we give bad advice that should be avoided by anyone who has decided to improve their own sleep.

1. Before going to bed, remember all the grievances and troubles that happened to you during the day - you were rude on public transport, your boss looked askance, there is a crisis in the country, the dollar exchange rate fluctuates, and so on.

2. Before going to bed, imagine your main human enemy and quarrel with him one more time. If you do this constantly, you will develop a tension headache, which can last for several days, around the clock.

3. Convince yourself that you have problems on the sexual front. For many men and women, insomnia is often associated with dissatisfaction with their intimate life.

4. Become a workaholic. Stay late in the office, take unfinished work home, and review tomorrow’s work day before going to bed.

5. Poorly washed off cosmetics in the evening can cause insomnia in women.

The first step to good sleep is to break sleep-impairing habits.

6. In the evening, eat a lot of spicy, meat dishes.

7. Drink a cup of aromatic coffee or tea at night - enjoy it for 5 minutes, and then stay up half the night.

8. Trying to relieve daytime stress with the help of alcohol, a person himself runs away from healthy sleep.

9. Watch a horror movie or crime news program at night.

10. Listen to active dance music before bed.

11. To fall asleep “faster”, cover your head under the blanket - this causes oxygen starvation and impairs the functioning of all internal organs and systems.

12. It is also undesirable to do active health procedures (hardening, fitness) before bedtime.

Where to start improving your sleep quality

1. Identify and eliminate the reasons that prevent the body from resting at night, to do this, carefully study the 12 points above, which characterize the main ways sleep deteriorates. Often, after eliminating the causes that impair sleep, positive results are already visible. If these results are not enough, move on to the next point.

Every person is naturally given the opportunity to get a good night's sleep. Poor sleep is an acquired habit.

2. Start gradually, point by point, implementing the recommendations set out in the paragraph “Good sleep hygiene from modern scientists, 15 rules.” The sequence of application of recommendations should be individual, some people need to start with point No. 2, and for others, salvation is point No. 7.

You won’t be able to feel the beneficial effects of “proper sleep” right away; it takes 3-4 weeks to rebuild your body, let your body adapt to the good, and then you will reap the benefits of the changes.

Additional articles with useful information

Human sleep - what an ordinary person needs to know
For most people, sleep is a vital necessity that few people pay attention to. This can be done, but only at a young age, when the body works stably. Over time, problems accumulate and good sleep can help the body fight them, while poor sleep will only make them worse. In most cases, we ourselves spoil our sleep and, as a result, worsen the quality of our entire life.

Features of sleep in children

The best way to achieve understanding between adults and children is for adults to take into account the characteristics of the child’s psychology and physiology. You need to pay attention to many nuances, one of them that many ignore is children's sleep. The correct regime of wakefulness and sleep is the first thing you teach your children to do.

Why you need to rest at night

Many people know about the benefits of sleep, but they are interested in the question of why sleep at night and not at other times of the day. According to scientific research, by the end of the day a person becomes tired, the production of melatonin begins, which becomes so abundant in the blood that falling asleep is inevitable. At night, the amount of substance decreases, and we wake up in the morning refreshed.

If you sleep well at night, then:

• metabolic processes in the body are normal;
• a person ages more slowly due to the destruction of free radicals by melatonin;
• immunity is strengthened;
• mood improves.

The night is given to get some sleep. And you need to sleep a lot so that the hormone melatonin is produced in sufficient quantities and prevents the development of cancer cells in the body. It is impossible to fully rest during the day because the sleep hormone is not produced at this time. The brain will have time to enter the REM sleep phase, but will not be able to fully recover. Therefore, it is better and healthier to sleep at night.

Prepare the bed

The same applies to a sleeping place - if it causes regular discomfort or inconvenience, what kind of restful sleep can we talk about?

Do you have enough space on the bed to spread out comfortably? Is the mattress too soft or hard? Isn’t the blanket too light and not warming, or, on the contrary, heavy and “stuffy”? Is the pillow too huge and shapeless? Does the bedding material irritate your skin?

Doctors' advice states that the mattress should be firm rather than soft in order to provide good support for the spine, and it is better to choose a dense and low pillow (even better - an orthopedic one, selected exactly for you, with “body memory”). But the choice of your convenience, as always, is yours.

How many hours should you sleep

First, we need to understand that there is a difference between how much sleep a person can sleep and the amount of sleep actually necessary for optimal functioning of the body. According to experts, on average, adults sleep 7-6 hours. At first glance it may seem that these are pretty good indicators. In fact, this is a typical example of chronic sleep deprivation.

Most healthy adults require between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night.
For children and adolescents this figure is slightly higher. Despite the fact that older people should also not have less than 7 hours of rest, many in old age suffer from insomnia. In this case, you should at least partially compensate for the lack of night rest with daytime sleep. Table of sleep needs by age

Interestingly, researchers from the University of California at San Francisco discovered that some people have a gene that allows them to sleep 6 hours a day and still get great sleep. However, this gene is found in only 3% of the world's population.

Develop reflexes

Rituals play a huge role in our lives, even if you don't notice them. You don’t – but the body notices, and how!

If you have difficulty sleeping, try to “persuade” your body to follow your rules. For example, if you try to perform actions in the same order every day before going to bed - say, a half-hour walk around the house, then a glass of kefir, a warm shower, then in bed reading a couple of pages from your favorite book, and then turning off the light and sleep - the body will quickly get used to the fact that it is after this sequence that it can relax and rest.

If you go to bed at a different time every day (see point one), and just before going to bed you either read for hours, or sing, or watch TV, or sort things out with your family – your body will be “on edge” all the time (“it’s time – it’s not time”, “can I calm down already”?).

Also, somnologists consider it very important to choose a clearly designated place for sleeping - if the volume of the room allows, you need to fall asleep only in the bedroom and only on the bed, then just moving here will set the body in a sleepy mood. Neither working, nor having long emotional conversations, nor eating, nor playing with children, nor lying around during the day with a book or watching TV is very undesirable here.

Consequences of lack of rest

It may seem that lack of sleep is not such a serious problem, and all the consequences of lack of sleep come down solely to daytime lethargy. In fact, as scientific experiments show, lack of night rest affects a person in much the same way as alcohol abuse.

Lack of sleep is:

• fatigue, lethargy, lack of motivation;
• bad mood, irritability, increased risk of depression;
• impaired brain activity, problems with memory, learning and concentration;
• decreased creativity and ability to quickly solve problems, difficulty making decisions;
• inability to cope with stress and manage emotions;
• impaired motor skills, increased risk of accidents;
• weakened immune system, tendency to frequent colds and infectious diseases;
• hallucinations and delusions are possible;
• increased risk of stroke, diabetes, hypertension, Alzheimer's disease, and some types of cancer;
• decreased sex drive;
• premature skin aging.

In addition, scientists have found a direct link between lack of sleep and weight gain. The bodies of people suffering from lack of sleep produce increased amounts of cortisol, a hormone that increases appetite.

Relax psychologically

To the same extent, we are talking about limiting mental and emotional stress before bedtime - all parents know how difficult it is to put their children to bed if they are naughty late at night or are carried away by computer games or watching TV. This also applies to adults.

An urgent solution to some accumulated tasks that require brainstorming or serious memory strain, emotional conversations, exciting films, a showdown - after such a load, the body simply will not be able to fully relax and calm down in time, what kind of sleep is that!

Remembering that “the morning is wiser than the evening,” put off all complex and important questions, conversations and decisions until tomorrow. Try to relax and start the relaxation process by turning on quiet melodic music, thinking about something pleasant and kind, dreaming about something desired, imagining yourself swinging on the sea waves or a swing in a summer garden. Plan to wake up in the morning with a good mood and the best option for the course of tomorrow - they say positive thoughts work great in real life!

"Prepare" the room

Not only do you need to prepare yourself for bed, but also the room.

It is advisable to ventilate the room before going to bed - oxygen-rich fresh air will perfectly contribute to healthy sleep. The optimal temperature for sleep is 18-20°C. But if you like to sleep with an open window or balcony in the summer, be sure to try to avoid cold drafts by closing the doors to the bedroom.

However, closed doors will not hurt in any case - for the sake of a restful, full sleep, it is worth isolating the room from all sorts of outside noise and light. Even loudly ticking wall clocks or appliances with illuminated indicator lights are not recommended for placement in the bedroom, as are noisy electrical appliances such as humidifiers or air purifiers.