With our very full lives and brains, 1/5 French people are subject to sleep disorders. So, to optimize our chances of sleeping well and being in superb shape the next day, we now adopt these 10 commandments of sleep, recommended by doctors.
1. Have a real sleep pattern. Whatever your lifestyle, your workload or the number of people living in your household, you must sleep at roughly fixed times to be well rested, and this from 7 to 10 hours a night depending on the person. . Avoid (too much) breaking this rhythm on weekends with all-night fiestas or late mornings until 3 p.m.!
2. Exercise during the day. Nothing better to get tired, relax and make you want to go to bed. Not to be done in the evening however, because it wakes up our muscles which will not want to go to bed right away! Instead, do quiet activities, like relaxation.
3. Eat reasonably in the evening. The ideal is to avoid overeating in the evening and in particular fatty products. Instead, we favor vegetables and carbohydrates (pasta, rice, etc.) which will allow better regulation of intake throughout the night. But eating light does not mean picking! Otherwise, your gurgling belly will force you to get up to gobble up cheese in the middle of the night. Finally, we avoid alcohol at dinner, or not only will we be running to the bathroom all night but in addition we will want to fidget in all directions when the effect of alcohol wears off.
4. Avoid stimulants in the early afternoon. Coffee, you are entitled to it until the end of the midday meal. For tea and Coca-Cola, the last gong rings at snack time. After this time, it is better to avoid stimulants.
5. Have a bedroom made for good sleep. The perfect bedroom?
A room with shutters and curtains that hide the light well (melatonin, the sleep hormone, is stimulated by darkness).
Do not overheat your bedroom or put duvets that are too hot. The ideal temperature for good sleep is between 20 and 25°C.
Have a good bed, with a mattress that is neither too hard nor too soft, and good pillows.
Paint its walls with soothing and preferably matte colors.
Do not work in your bed! The bed is made for sleeping, for sex or for reading (and more). Otherwise, you will equate it with something stressful and will have a really hard time getting any sleep in it.
6. Adopt a pleasant ritual before sleeping. Whether it's drinking a good herbal tea with a spoonful of honey, kissing or calling a loved one, or taking a good bath with lots of smelly products (at least 2 hours before bedtime), set up a pleasant ritual before of sleeping. And you will return to your bed, soothed.
7. Plan your next day. To have more time in the morning, prepare your outfit the night before as well as all the things you will need to take with you. Besides, to remind you what you need to do and prevent the list from spinning in your head all night, write them down on paper. And like that, the next day, you will only have to cross out everything you have done one by one.
8. Go to bed as soon as you feel tired. You have a helm at 10:30 p.m.? To bed ! If you miss this cycle, you will have to wait for the next one! Conversely, only go to bed when you feel sleep cues (yawning, itchy eyes, etc.)
9. Calm your thoughts. In bed, your brain grinds and prevents you from falling asleep? So get rid of those thoughts, literally. Imagine for example that you are on a beach and that you blow all your thoughts, one by one, into a colored balloon, before tying it and seeing it disappear in the distance. Unless you prefer to imagine a large room, with a grinder in the middle. There, you take your thoughts one by one, visualizing them well, and you throw them in this trash can. It's up to you to find the metaphor that suits you!
10. Stand up. Yes, when you toss and turn and toss in your bed, you get irritated and will have even more trouble falling asleep. Instead, get up, go read Biba or a good book, and when you feel your new sleep cycle coming:yay! We throw ourselves into bed.
