Sleep Hygiene: A New Concept

Sleep disorders are being increasingly recognized. They take a toll on your work performance if neglected and cause variety of other psychological problems like mood disturbances, weakness, headaches e.t.c. A sound sleep is important for a sound mind.

How to get a sound sleep?

It is recommended that sleep be taken seriously and everyone of us has to be aware of a new concept called Sleep Hygiene. This mainly refers to the psychological strategies to prevent and treat sleep problems. Contrary to popular belief, amount of sleep is only one of the parameters to judge the usefulness of sleep. Small measures which can be incorporated in daily routine can make a huge difference.

The sleep architecture(mixture of sleep stages) determines the morning freshness on waking up.Recommendations for a proper sleep hygiene are :

1. Avoiding sleep related drugs to as far as possible. Although some drugs give close to normal sleep quality but one can get addicted (dependent) to these drugs.

2. One should go to bed only when one is sleepy and try to make sleep time regular on day to day basis.

3. One should use the bed and bedroom only for activities like sleep and sex and not for anything else.

4. Proper sleep hygiene also involves Inculcating good habits like not snacking, taking coffee, or exercising before going to bed. One should also switch off all lights so that the clock inside our brain know its night time. Any source of noise should be turned off too. Snoring partners should be made to see the doctor. Such partners should not use high pillow and try to lose weight and might suffer from a medical problem.

5. Daily day time work out also benefits in getting a proper night time sleep. Sleep amount, last but not the least, varies from individual to individual.But less than 5-6 hrs of sleep everyday might cause impairment in fine activities and attention span.

6. One should also avoid excess water intake in the evening.

7. Avoidance of alcohol to as much as possible will cause least disruption of sleep.

8. Relaxation techniques like Yoga has been shown to be very beneficial in inducing a sound sleep in most people who practice it.

All these practices will help get a sound sleep. This therapy is also called Behavioral therapy and surprisingly has been found to be as effective as drugs in the treatment of patients with Insomnia(sleeplessness). But lack of the awareness of the potential in these small measures makes people running for the doctor for sleep problems.

It is thus recommended for everybody to maintain proper Sleep hygiene.