Fight those sleepless nights with these foolproof suggestions
Sleep: it’s something many of us are well aware is important but still fail to get enough of. It’s not necessarily due to a lack of effort, either – as the pressures of work, working out and other aspects of day-to-day life can all foil our attempts to get even just six hours of nightly slumber.
However, as Marie Claire warns, failing to clock up at least six hours of sleep a night would be a health risk. So, if you often suffer from insomnia, how can you put a stop to it?
Sleep naked
“Unfortunately, heat does impact on our sleep,” sleep expert Dr Robert Oexman told the Daily Mail in 2016. He indicated that, according to logic and reputable studies, sleeping naked lets sweat evaporate from the body.
This, in turn, significantly cools the body’s temperature – meaning that, yes, going nude before you slip under your bedcover would bode well for your attempts to sleep.
Drink a cherry and banana smoothie
Melatonin is a hormone responsible for inducing sleepiness. Usually, the body only produces melatonin naturally during the dark hours – but, if you often struggle to sleep, it could feel as though your own body isn’t producing quite as much melatonin as you really need.
It’s convenient, then, that eating cherries and bananas spurs the release of melatonin. So, why not prepare and drink an iced cherry and banana smoothie just before getting into bed? Make sure you don’t drink too much of it, though – lest you end up needing a night-time toilet visit.
Eat some ice cream
As cooling down your core body temperature would be a reliable way for you to ease your sleeping difficulties, you could find that eating cold food works especially well for lowering this temperature.
Consuming ice cream would be a good step, as the creaminess of this particular food would prevent it from feeling too much like a shock to the system as you eat. You should, however, avoid any ice cream overly high in either sugar content or caffeine.
Take a daily CBD supplement
The acronym CBD refers to cannabidiol, one of the most prevalent active ingredients in cannabis. However, as Harvard Health Publishing explains, CBD is incapable of causing a “high” by itself.
Furthermore, research suggests that CBD consumption can help regulate various major functions of wellbeing – including mood, appetite, inflammation and, yes, sleep. Hence, you could consider purchasing and taking CBD ingestibles that are clinically proven to be safe and won’t prove either psychoactive or addictive.
Drink boiled lettuce water
This particular strategy has been publicized on TikTok, and simply entails boiling a number of lettuce leaves in a cup before drinking the water left over.
At one point, TikTok user @shapla_11 added peppermint to this water to improve its taste but has since issued a disclaimer about her fans doing likewise.
“Btw guys don’t use peppermint – apparently it actually keeps you awake so for the best results use camomile tea or avoid adding any other tea,” she explained as quoted by Pedestrian.
