5 Habits to Adopt for Perfect Sleep; Tips for Good Sleep; Health Tips

Sleeping issues continue to daunt most of us from time-to-time.

Our demanding schedules ensure that our sleep is disturbed either in terms of quality or duration-wise. A sporadic incidence of bad sleep isn't that big an issue. However, if you feel that lack of sleep or poor quality-of-sleep is hampering your performance at work or your health, you need to read about the following better sleeping habits:

1. Develop Your Personal Sleep Routine

You don’t need to follow sleep timing-related advice that surrounds us in the form of tabloids and blogs. Just develop a pattern that is suitable to your lifestyle. It doesn’t make sense to follow a routine that inconveniences you and makes you “work” towards getting proper sleep. However, you need to follow some sort of routine. This means knowing when you should switch-off the lights and when you need to wake-up. This is best done by noticing at what time you tend to get a bit heavy-eyed at night. Keep your going-to-bed time around this period. Follow this with a wake-up timing that allows you an extra few minutes to laze in the bed. Ensure a wake-up time with the flexibility of 15 to 20 minutes. Even if you get less than the recommended eight or nine hours of sleep, it won’t matter much if your quality of sleep is good.

2. Eat Lighter & Early Dinner

Ensure that you have had your major meal or supper at least three to four hours before the sleep time. Eating too close to bedtime tends to keep away the sleep. Since the body is actively involved in metabolizing the food that you have consumed, its metabolic rate is up. This means that chances of falling asleep decrease. You might wonder that often after having a heavy meal you get a bit drowsy. However, that is more of a nap that is induced by the body trying to maximize its resources towards digesting the food and slowing down other systems. However, to get a longer and refreshing nighttime sleep, you should eat lighter and a bit early.


3. Exercising Helps

This might sound a bit strange to you but exercise and the quality of your sleep are interrelated. You need to understand that sleeping patterns are essentially a part of your internal body clock. This includes the body’s ability to rest and return to active performance. However, due to issues like stress, anxiety and poor dietary habits, this inherent body clock is compromised. In order to sustain the optimal performance of our bodily rhythm, you need to exercise regularly. This doesn’t mean pumping iron in the gym is compulsory. Any sort of activity where you can dedicate about 40 minutes, combining some stretching, running and jogging is sufficient.


4. Choose Evening/Night Foods with Precaution

Once the evening sets-in, try to reduce your intake of alcohol and caffeine. Even nicotine is known to disrupt the action of biochemicals in our body that induce sleep. There are some foods that help you in falling asleep with ease. For instance, milk and complex carbohydrates found in foods like brown rice contain a higher amount of Tryptophan. This compound is known to assist the sleeping cycle. Avoid foods that are high in sugar before bedtime. These tend to induce the sugar-rush that can disrupt your sleep cycle.


5. Keep Away From Nighttime Distractions

Your pre-sleep routine can include reading a book or watching a bit of TV but ensure that you don’t indulge in something so fascinating that it doesn’t let you switch-off your mind. Shun-out any kind of distracting light coming through the windows by drawing the curtains. Try to avoid watching typical genres on TV that can arouse your senses. This means keeping away from action-packed and thriller movies/serials. Switch-off the cell phone, laptops/tablets or any other gadget that might buzz you. (Health, MensXP.com)   

HEALTH TIPS; FOR NIGHT SHIFT WORKERS

Health Tips For Night Shift Workers:
If you have a job that requires you work the night shift, pay a little extra attention to certain things to avoid adversely affecting your health.

Whether you work in a call centre, hospital or are working with international partners; working the night shift is a way of life for many Indians today. Here are some simple health tips you can follow to avoid the pitfalls of working the night shift.


Health Tips to follow if you work the night shift

Adjust your body clock – We are all naturally programmed to rise with the sun and sleep after dark. So if you’re new to the night shift you might be feeling bright in the day and groggy at night. Doggedly keep to the same time of waking up and going to bed every day so that your body gets the message and will slowly but surely shift your inner clock to match the new timings.
  
Diet – Most people working the night shift have at least one or two meals at work. The danger here is of overstuffing yourself since food is readily available. If you’re working the night shift, try and finish dinner by 8pm or so, before you start your shift. Between 12 midnight and 6 am, it’s best to eat light meals that are high in fibre and protein and low in sugar and fat.
Help yourself get a good day’s rest – When you get back home after a night shift, you may be so tired that you just crawl into bed. But take a few minutes to ensure that you get some undisturbed winks. Draw the curtains to shut out the sunlight as much as possible and turn off your phone. Check that your pillows support your neck and the mattress is not lumpy. A droning sound such as from an overhead fan or air-conditioner acts as a noise buffer and creates white noise, which aids sleep.

Sleeping tips – Try to get a big chunk of sleep in one go (at least 4-5 hours). If you break up your sleep in many smaller pieces, deep sleep will elude you and you will not be as rested as if you had slept at a stretch.

Watch the snacking habit – Most people working the night shift have sitting jobs; nine times out of ten in front of the computer. Keeping your facial muscles active by means of snacking and chewing may seem like fun but you are unwittingly consuming a lot of calories in the process. So if you must munch, avoid chocolates, chips and fried stuff, instead carry along a fruit or puffed rice that have a much lower calorie count.

Ergonomics – When sitting at the workplace, keep some ergonomic principles in mind to keep yourself in shape. Check that the top of your monitor is at or below eye level, use an anti-glare screen to protect your eyes and blink often – it helps lubricate your peepers. Also, every hour look away at a distant object for a minute to avoid straining your eye muscles. Good posture at work will take you a long way to being fit. Your back has the burden of supporting your whole body so treat it with care. Avoid slouching, jerky movements while sitting or getting up from the chair and lastly, make sure your lower limbs support your back. You can do this by ensuring that your feet touch the floor (not just your toes) or use a footboard if you are on the shorter side. A small cushion for the lower back gives additional support.

Hydrate yourself – While working in an air-conditioned office it is important to keep drinking water as the skin loses moisture due to the air-conditioning and even slight dehydration can prevent you from functioning at your productive best. So keep a bottle of water on your desk and drink liberally. Remember that beverages like coffee and tea dehydrate so limit their intake. Have buttermilk instead. Sipping warm water is also a good idea as warmth keeps colds at bay.

Stay alert – If you are feeling groggy and fighting sleep to no avail a simple technique is to get up. Go for a short walk even if it’s just to the water filter. Or keep mints or sugar free chewing gum handy; different things work for different people.

Change shifts forward ­– If you’re changing your shift, make sure you change it forward, not backward. So if you’ve been doing an early morning shift, change it to an afternoon shift, not a night one. This helps your body to cope better with the changes.

Annual health checks – Visit your doctor and get an annual medical check-up done even if you do not have any complaints. Incorporate your physician’s recommendations for your particular lifestyle diligently. Most people working in the night shift tend to gain weight over a few months so make sure to include some physical activity in your daily routine. Even half an hour of brisk walking is good enough; remember frequency of exercise is the key to longevity.

Written by Dr Nisreen Nakhoda, General Physician

HEALTH AND SEX ISSUES, HEALTH AND SEXUAL ISSUES, CULTURE HEALTH AND SEXUALITY