Hooray, today you finally managed to sleep the “right” 8 hours! But why in this case in the morning you feel as if you woke up after an accident. Well, let’s hasten to slightly disappoint: restoring the supply of strength during sleep is much more difficult than simply tracking down the set 7-8 hours in unconsciousness. It turns out that it is not only and not so much the duration of sleep that is important, but rather the feeling of vivacity and a charge of strength upon awakening.
We present to your attention 6 non-obvious reasons for poor sleep, as well as simple methods for their elimination.
Reading e-books before bedtime
According to a recent Harvard study, people who read bedtime books on an iPad or similar device are more likely to have a fresh and awake awakening compared to those who prefer a printed version of the literature. Cause? According to Robert Rosenberg, a sleep medicine specialist and author of Sleep tight every night, feel fantastic every day, the blue light from the screen of e-readers and tablets suppresses the release of the hormone melatonin, which controls sleep and wake cycles. In other words, when the level of melatonin is below a certain value, your sleep becomes far from as strong as it seems. Rosenberg recommends disconnecting all electronic devices (computers, smartphones, tablets, books) 1.5 hours before bedtime. In addition, be sure to take your mobile phone to another room at night.
Improper body position during sleep
Does your back hurt in the morning? The reason may be that you sleep all night on one side. Dr. Benjamin Domb says this, in turn, leads to significant hip flexion. If you, like 57% of Americans, are adherents of just such a posture of sleep, then to maintain the natural position of the hips you need to hold a pillow between your legs. “Injuries to the hip joints are among the most common and at the same time difficult to diagnose the causes of sleep problems. Their complexity is also due to the fact that pain often manifests itself in other parts of the body, for example, in the lower back, ”says Domb.
Physical Injury or strenuous routine
Many people work out on a regular basis or have a job that requires them to a workaround for a number of hours. If you have physical injuries on your feet its important to use some compression for ankle sprain and make sure you avoid such stuff because it can disturb your routine and sleep. So, its better to take precautions. Similarly, for strenuous routine, it's the same make sure you have alternative resting hours.
Wrong pillow
Yes, a huge soft pillow may seem like a luxury, but at the same time, it is quite capable of causing serious pain. “A dream with a raised head violates the line of the spine. It’s about the same as moving around for eight hours during the day with your head bowed, ”explains Dr. Sean Stevenson, author of Sleep Smarter: 21 Strategies for Improving Your Body and Health Using Sleep and Achieving Success. The optimal pillow should be soft, but at the same time have an elastic foam filler like Intelli-Gel technology.
Night gnashing of teeth
“If you wake up with a headache, it’s most likely that your jaw is too squeezed or your teeth are grinding during sleep,” says Katie Gruver, a massage therapist from Santa Monica. Studies show that self-massage successfully helps to cope with these symptoms. Take a habit at bedtime and immediately after waking up, combine gentle massage of the areas of attachment of the lower jaw with the application of warm moist tissue to these places. Also, it will not be amiss to plan a visit to the dentist for the manufacture of a night mouth guard, eliminating tooth grinding.
Cup before bedtime
Thanks to sedative properties, alcohol is really able to quickly and effectively turn off almost any person. At the same time, according to family doctor Aaron Clark, he disrupts the natural sleep cycle. In 2015, a study was conducted in Australia, in which a group of people regularly consumed a night vodka cocktail with orange juice. It turned out that during sleep with lovers of a “screwdriver”, alpha activity of the brain significantly increased, preventing deep restorative sleep. Moreover, according to the American National Fund for Sleep Problems, women are more prone to this problem, because their bodies absorb alcohol faster. Of course, from once a week there will be no harm. It’s about systematic and plentiful use.
You have unrecognized apnea
According to a 2012 study, half of the adult women suffer from some type of apnea. And if the representatives of the age range from 20 to 44 years old have a 25% chance, this is already 56% for 45-54 years old, and 75% for 55-70 years old. "The essence of apnea is that during the night, patients have several times a short-term respiratory arrest, and this significantly reduces the quality of sleep," Clark explains. Sleep apnea is most common among women during the period of the so-called pre-menopause when they mistakenly attribute frequent night awakenings to the effects of menopause. As a result, in the morning they feel exhausted, regardless of the time spent in a dream.
Ask your doctor for a referral to a sleep specialist. The best way to diagnose apnea is to conduct a patient’s inpatient study because it is possible to identify this pathology at home using devices only in very severe and severe cases. And if the treatment of mild forms is often limited to losing weight and refusing alcohol at bedtime, then in medium and heavy ones you will have to resort to using CPAP devices that maintain constant air pressure and prevent the closure of airways.
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