How are sleep and stress linked?

Perfect sleep needs an ideal state of mind. There is a lot that goes into the role of sleep. If you have stress, you are most likely to have problems sleeping well. Stress not only impacts the sleep quality but quantity as well.

When you give your body a minimum of 7 hours of sleep that is recommended, you avert the danger of mental illness. Common sleep disorder and stress are a dangerous combination against your mental health.

There is a way out, though. Apart from the medical approach to solving stress and sleep disorders, you can improve your sleeping environment and make it comfortable to ensure your quality of sleep. One way of doing so includes getting a great bed and mattress for a comfortable sleep. 

How Stress Impacts Sleep

When the impact of stress hits you hard, the next thing you should be worrying about is your sleep or lack of sleep. Internal bodily activities and hormones well explain the connection between stress and sleep.

Stress first occurs when you experience a perceived threat that you have imagined or felt in real-time. When such a threat occurs, the hormones responsible for stress gets triggered to create a feeling of stressfulness.

When you have a prolonged stress level, your central nervous system fails to work as effectively as it should. This is the system that communicates with your brain to shut down when you need to sleep. Types of stressors can cause your heart rate to change, poor blood pressure, chronic insomnia, or more.

However, when its functioning is impaired, you will tend to have problems falling asleep. Lack of sleep or poor sleep can also lead to more effects of stress and vice versa.

Minimizing Stress Levels to Boost Sleep

If you are suffering from sleep disorders mainly caused by stress, you can tackle them in the following ways.

1. Maintain a Regular Waking Up Time

Curbing sleep disorder can be a daunting task, especially if you try to wake up regularly. However, if you go to bed early and wake up at the same time every day (including weekends), you will train your body to adapt to a regular sleep pattern.

A regular sleeping pattern including time for sleep allows your body to beat insomnia and relieve your mind of some slight stress.

2. Create a Comfortable Sleeping Environment

Everything surrounding your sleeping area should be something you love and gives you comfort. You want to ensure you have the perfect sleep hygiene. Check if your lighting, the room’s temperature, noise in the room, and most importantly, the bed you sleep in are in perfect condition..

Your room should be conducive for sleep, and any distractions available should be eliminated.

You should check if the mattress is as comfortable as you want it to be for your bed. Check its length and thickness and also if it is firm or soft enough to your taste. 

If you have a pet sleeping on your bed, you should consider preparing a separate bed for it elsewhere. This leaves you with ample space to sleep comfortably and with minimal pet distractions to help with sleep efficiency.

3. Reduce the Number of Naps

Napping is common if you often have sleep loss, and you need to catch up on lost sleep. Regular naps, however, tend to interfere with the quality of nighttime sleep.

You need to train your body to adapt to adequate sleep at night and limit the sleep to certain specific hours to ensure you get all the sleep stages necessary. Avoiding some unnecessary daytime naps can help you sleep better at night too. 

4. Maintain Regular Exercise

Exercise is one of the best ways to keep your mind engaged during the day to keep away acute stressors. After an exhaustive exercise, you will have a goodnight’s sleep. However, you should avoid exercising immediately before going to bed, which can have a stimulant effect on your body.

Have your exercise early enough and get a cold shower 3 hours before bedtime. 

5. Minimize Activities in Bed

Let the bed be a place of relaxation. Relax your mind by having a long enough sleep duration and sharing a short intimate moment with your spouse.

Bringing your checkbooks, notes, or unfinished work to bed is unnecessary and can cause sleep disturbances resulting in sleep deprivation. Keep phones away and, if possible, switch them off while sleeping to avoid a stressful situation. Watching television or listening to music at night may divide your attention, making it hard for you to fall asleep.

6. Finish your worrying Before Going to Bed

The bed is not the place to carry your woes and worries too. Rather, you should set aside a short period after dinner to review your day and plan for the next day. This helps you minimize worrying while in bed and allow you to fall asleep faster helping your sleep health.

7. Go for Therapies

If you have stress, no matter how comfortable your bed or mattress is, you will always have problems falling asleep. 

The best way of dealing with stress is going for relaxation therapies. These help you to relax your mind and body before going to bed.

Some of the techniques you could use for stress reduction include taking deep breaths, progressive muscle relaxation, and meditation, among others.

8. Avoid Overscheduling

One of the leading causes of stress and sleep disorders is having an overly busy and hectic life. The time you should dedicate to sleeping, you deplete handling other issues of life causing sleep disruption.

Getting up earlier every day or pushing your sleeping time further makes you deprived of quality sleeping time.

9. Keep off Caffeine

There are different levels of stress and a lot of times, stressful people tend to take a lot of coffee or tea to get access to caffeine that keeps them awake during the day. While this may work, and they will remain awake, the effect is that caffeine leads to chronic stress. Of course, your sleep will be negatively impacted when you get to a level of chronic stress. 

10. Avoid Eating or Drinking Just Before Retiring to Bed

When you eat and immediately retire to bed, the digestion process will keep you awake. It is worse when you suffer from heartburn, as this can make your symptoms worse.

Additionally, too many fluids before bed will overwhelm your bladder, and you will have to distort your sleep every time you visit the washroom.

Minimize Stress and Sleep Disorders with a Comfortable Bed

There are a lot of benefits of sleep. All the problems of poor and insufficient sleep and the measures of sleep begin at the bed. With a comfortable bed, you can cut the risk of sleep disorders and stress on sleep significantly. If necessary, be sure to rule out other issues by reaching out to mental health professionals or the national sleep foundation.

At No Bull Mattress, we got your sleeping worries covered with our great quality mattresses at affordable prices.

Why wait? Feel free to contact us today, or call us  at any of our stores, and we will help you secure the best mattress that will help kick out your sleep disorders.