It’s time to celebrate, but we’re not blowing up balloons or baking a cake. Instead, we’re planning our May schedules in a way that will allow us to get a full seven to eight hours of sleep every night in honor of Better Sleep Month.
The Better Sleep Council designated May as Better Sleep Month in 1985 with the original goal of selling more mattresses. A good mattress is certainly important to sleeping comfortably, but there’s a lot more to getting a good night’s rest than that alone.
Better Sleep Month has helped our team at Iowa Sleep focus on the part of wellness that many forget – sleep. Getting enough rest every night is essential to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. We’ve already shared how sleep can help control your weight and impact diabetes, but did you know that sleep can also help you reduce stress, boost your immune system and help prevent gum disease, according to an article by Everyday Health. Now that you know the importance of sleep, we encourage you to put this knowledge to use.
Here’s our challenge to you: Try adjusting your (and your family’s) daily schedule so that you’re mentally getting your body ready for sleep about eight hours before you want to wake up. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be in bed. The key here is to calm your body down from your busy day. Here are some ideas for how to accomplish this from our sleep experts:
- Avoid looking at your cell phone or computer before bed.
- Reduce the amount of light around you as it gets closer to bedtime – your brain associates lots of light with being awake.
- Read a book.
- Enjoy a warm, tasty drink (sans caffeine or alcohol, of course). See our favorites.
Ready to take on our challenge? If you don’t think you can manage this schedule for the whole month, try it for just one week. You’ll see how much more energetic and productive you feel when your body is fully rested.
Let us know your successes!