20 Evidence-Based Ways to Turbocharge Your Sleeping

Restorative sleep is the foundation of good health, and very few actually sleep well at night. Sleep disturbances run deep in many forms: everything from poor sleep habits to environmental elements. Here is a 20-sleep-improvement strategy that is scientifically backed, showing everything from diet to lifestyle changes.

1. No Food before Bed

Of all the good tips to sleep well, one seems to go against having meals just before sleep. A big or hefty meal upsets digestion at night and complicates falling asleep. If you feel that you should eat something, try something easily digested, like complex carbohydrates made from whole grains, fruits, or vegetables. Fat-heavy or highly protein-based evening meals are best avoided because these take more time to process through the body and might interfere with orexin production.

Tips: Completely avoid food at least two to three hours before going to bed, allowing digestion to take a lead.

2. Avoid eating spicy food prior to bedtime

Spicy foods are infamous for causing discomfort—from acid reflux that might make a night of sleep rather uncomfortable to the food itself. In addition, spicy foods raise the core body temperature; this opposes the normal way the body lowers its temperature to get ready for sleep.

Tip: If you like spicy foods, have them in the daytime if you are having problems sleeping.

3. Use your bed only for sleeping and lovemaking

This is for the reason that your bed should relate psychologically only to sleep or intimacy. The activities of watching television, studying, or just over-scrolling on your phone make your brain confused about times of sleep.

Tip: Ban devices from the bedroom and, when possible, work elsewhere during the day.

4. Stop Flogging Yourself for Bad Sleep

It's easy to get cranky after a sleepless night, but such self-criticism perpetuates the problem. Everyone has a different chronotype, or genetically determined sleep pattern, that determines when they feel naturally sleepy. Rather than beating yourself up, just acknowledge your sleep rhythm and accommodate your practices to it.

Tip: Make allowance for variety in sleep, get into routine, and quit obsessing over bad nights.

5. Nap Wisely

Timing is almost everything in napping, and this is a great refueling method. An early-day 20-30 minute nap can be refreshing for enhancing alertness and mood. Longer naps, or taking naps too close to bedtime, interferes with sleep.

Tip: Naps are most effective if they are less than 30 minutes and before 3 p.m.

6. Caffeine Intake Reduction

Other active ingredients and big stimulants include caffeine, which one can find in beverages other than coffee: tea, soda, energy drinks, and even pre-workout supplements. That's great, to help someone get through a busy day, but when it comes to lunchtime, there are some grave implications for sleep later in the night.

Tip: It is good to stop caffeine intake early in the afternoon to get restful sleep.

7. Use Caffeine Judiciously

Well, for the lovers of naps, caffeine administered just before napping will make one feel more alert after some time later when it wears off. Caffeine takes some 20 minutes to become active inside the body. Thus, timing can create that feeling of restored napping.

Hint: A cup of coffee before sleeping will raise their energy upon wake-up.

8. Limit Blue Light Exposure

The blue light from phones, tablets, and computers depresses the secretion of melatonin, which mediates sleepiness. Proper usage of these gadgets before bedtime, or with the use of special blue light-blocking glasses, helps your body produce melatonin levels indigenously.

Try switching off the appliances 30-60 minutes before sleep or putting your screens into night shift mode that blocks out the blue light.

9. Sleep under a cool environment

Your body is supposed to drop its temperature as it prepares for sleep, and that is a reason a cool bedroom will always work in your favor. A too-warm room negatively affects this procedure and results in restlessness.

Tip: Keep your thermostat set between 60-67°F (15-19°C) for the best sleep environment.

10. More Daylight Exposure

Natural light, during the daytime, assists in setting your circadian rhythms in a pattern that improves your sleep. Each morning, upon rising, open your curtains and take advantage of the daylight. It doesn't matter if it is an overcast day.

Tip: Try to get at least 30 minutes of daylight each day; this will help your body produce more melatonin later in the night.

11. Invest in good sleeping gear

Your choice of mattress and pillows becomes very important to awaken to a good sleep experience. A comfortable mattress, designed for sleeping position and body type, can always cure the various pains and aches associated with sleep.

TIP: A lot of mattresses to lie on to find the best match for their type of sleeping or preference.

12. Never Judge Your Sleep with the First Few Minutes

Most people mistake sleep inertia—the groggy feeling you experience after you first awake—as a sign you didn't sleep well. Instead, it is entirely normal to feel disoriented upon waking, especially if you've made up some of your sleep debt from earlier nights.

Tip: Allow yourself to wake up for a while before determining the quality of your sleep.

13. No animals on the bed

Though sleeping with a pet may comfort you, studies have also revealed that your pet actually disrupts your sleep through movements or noises. This is minimized by having the pet sleeping in the same room but not on the bed.

Tip: Provide a comforting space for your pet to be near you, but then keep them off your bed.

14. Utilize White Noise

White noise masks the disrupting sounds in a room and makes conditions more constant and sleep-friendly. It can be through anything—the whirring of a fan, some white noise playlist on YouTube, or even a white noise machine.

Tip: Pick one kind of noise that can help your brain tune out the background distractions.

15. Take your room to pitch black

Even very small rays of light interfere with your sleep. Blackout curtains or shades are very good in not letting the lights in; plus the minor ones, such as a candle fluttering away, disrupt the sleep cycle.

Hint: Your bedroom should be pitch black during sleep.

16. Go to Bed When You're Tired

It's tempting to push through sleepiness, especially if you're engrossed in a TV show or other activity. But doing so can lead to having missed your sleep window—and thus falling asleep that much later.

Exercise: The key, again, is listening to your body. Go to bed when you're tired, rather than getting that second wind.

17. Put Devices on Sleep Mode

Most modern devices have a sleep mode that turns off notifications during certain hours, and it simply avoids those midnight texts or calls from unnecessarily waking you up.

HINT: Put your device on sleep mode where emergency contacts can come through but everything else is blocked.

18. Keep cold air from blowing right on you

A fan or air conditioner may at least cool a room, but the direct flow of air on the skin makes most people apprehensive; this diminishes circulation and could even spasm muscles.

Hint: Think about turning the fan or air conditioner so that it does not blow air or a cool breeze on your body.

19. Keep Your Feet Warm

Warming up the feet allows the flow of blood and aids the body to be more aware that it is sleep time, while thick socks will make the feet perspire and thus bring about discomfort or even fungi building up.

Tip: Wearing socks with an actual very light weight or having a thin cover over your feet is best.

20. Practice Gratitude

This is quite an excellent bedtime routine: writing down three good things that happened during one's day in combat with anxiety. The focusing of one's thoughts on gratitude puts the thoughts off negatively and towards the positive, helping a person to relax to go to sleep.

This may be a mirror image, writing down something positive by pen and paper before bed will allow the mind to unwind from the day.