Reasons You Don't Sleep Well

Poor sleep is a problem that can have far-reaching effects in your daily lifestyle. Many times, reasons for lack of sleep can be traced back to a few key themes.

1. Leading a sedentary lifestyle. Your body uses sleep to recover and rebuild itself after the work and stress it has had to endure throughout the day. When we have prolonged periods of time with no inactivity, the body no longer needs that time to turn off and recover. The result is a poor quality of sleep and inability to fall asleep. To combat this, just move! It doesn't need to be anything crazy, but doing activities throughout the day will help your body re-realize the need to sleep for recovery and get you back on track.

2. Late-night meals and snacks. When we consume food shortly before bed, a couple things happen. First, food is energy. Putting fuel in your tank before you lay down won't work well, because your body will feel that it needs to expend that energy. Second, your body will then have to digest that food. This process can interrupt your sleep process and lead to restlessness.

3. Devices. This is probably the most common of the three. Our bodies have a natural cycle in which we are awake and alert when it's light out, and sleep when it's dark out. Having devices out close to bed time can trick the brain into thinking it still needs to be awake and working. Along with that, oftentimes devices are showing movies/social media/etc. that stimulate our brain. Our brain needs to rest in order to sleep, so having these work against each other will not help you.

Follow these tips, identify these habits, and you'll find you can fall asleep much faster and have a much higher quality of sleep overall!