Sleep rules (and excuses)

Sleep is a big part of our lives – we should be spending a quarter to a third of it sleeping! Being home is always good for my sleep routine and it sort of resets my body clock – there’s no doubts about it. That’s probably because my mum has a fairly early bedtime which usually means that I get bored and go to bed too. While being home I came across an article about sleep in the free Asda Good Living magazine (I LOVE a free magazine!) and it got me reflecting about my own sleep routine.

The article was titled ‘The Slumber Diaries’ (written by Julie McCaffrey, March 2016 issue) and aimed to help one sleep deprived mum to get more sleep. This person however slept as little as 2 hours a night! Personally I can’t imagine doing that – I get cranky if I sleep less than six hours and so I really feel for people who have insomnia – if I feel awful after six hours of sleep I can’t even imagine how tired a person must be when they only get 2 hours of shut eye night after night.

When I’m at university (and I’m sure this is true for the majority of students) it is often harder to get those 8 hours of sleep – not necessarily because we can’t sleep but because we choose to do other things. If you’re not a twenty year old grandma like me, going out is definitely a bigger temptation. With me however, the temptation usually is more along the lines of films and cups of tea and I absolutely love spending my evenings with friends, wrapped up in blankets. But what disturbs my sleep most at university is my part time job as it involves working shifts. It definitely takes a couple of days for my body to reset itself again by which time I may need to go back to night shift mode.

The article mentioned earlier also had a lovely set of “Sleep Rules” which appeared to make a lot of sense however I immediately recognised that I probably break a lot of them. They included:

“1. No mobiles, tablets or computer screens in the bedroom for at least 45 minutes before bed.” Rule number one and I’m already guilty of breaking it. With my phone always near me it is so easy to just have a quick peak on Instagram or Facebook, or there’s a text or an email that I could reply to in the morning but why wait, right? Me and my boyfriend also made it a habit to FaceTime right before bedtime so that we could talk about what we have been up to that day – with that being one of my favourite parts of the day it would be difficult to give that up however let’s not make excuses and think of solutions. I could easily talk to him half an hour earlier and then spend some time reading to switch off. And one final reason/excuse for keeping my phone next to me in bed (and I bet 90% of us are guilty of it) is that I use it as an alarm. I mean, how difficult is it to buy a separate alarm clock that won’t tempt us with notifications and updates?

“2. Wind down by reading or listening to music.” I love reading in bed! I should make it a more regular thing.

“3. Cut down on caffeine and, if you smoke, stop smoking!” This one’s easy, I don’t smoke and I don’t really drink coffee unless I’m in work and very tired.

“4. If possible, give up alcohol for at least five nights a week and drink more water to stay hydrated.” Since my tonsillitis over Christmas which resulted in antibiotics somehow I just don’t fancy drinking so since then I think I’ve only had one gin and tonic. With regards to water I am trying to drink at least 2L of fluids a day – I had a FitBit band for Christmas and the app is very helpful in keeping track of how much I have actually drank.

“5. Don’t eat or drink after 8.30pm as the body warms up to burn calories and this hampers sleep.” I’m not a big fan of eating dinner late, I do however have a bad habit of snacking, especially whilst watching TV.

“6. Set your alarm for the same time every morning, including weekends Don’t use your phone alarm or you may be tempted to check messages.” There is absolutely no pattern to this with me. Sometimes I will get up before 8am all week but another week I will sleep until 10-11 whenever I can. Maybe I should try getting up at the same time every day, it would definitely mean having more time to get things done as I am definitely more productive in the mornings.

“7. If you haven’t fallen asleep within 30 minutes, get up and do something relaxing. Only go back to bed when you’re sleepy.” Once I actually switch my lights off I rarely struggle with falling asleep. For a while though I felt like I kept getting good ideas or remembering things I had to do the next day after going to bed so I kept a notepad and pen next to my bed - very helpful and I knew I could stop stressing about forgetting to do things.

“8. Exercise during the day, ideally outdoors.” I like running outside, I find I don’t get bored as quickly as I do on the treadmill but I definitely lack creativity when it comes to doing other forms of exercise outside.

“9. Try separate duvets if your partner disturbs your sleep.” Not a problem I’m experiencing at the moment.

A friend I know from school has recently written a blog post about her sleep routine and tips to fall asleep, click here if you fancy a read. I found it really interesting and it definitely made me think more about my sleep routine.

So here it is, nearly a thousand words about sleep in under an hour. If only I could write the remaining 700 of my essay so quickly...