Sleep is much more important to your health and beauty than most people believe. In fact, sleep has a very wide range of beauty benefits. These benefits include clear, glowing skin, healthy hair, brighter eyes, and fewer premature signs of aging, among other advantages. Getting enough quality sleep is vital to looking as gorgeous as you possibly can at all times.
Unfortunately, many adults get an average of less than six hours per night. This common average is more than two hours less than the recommended eight hours of sleep that adult women should get every night. The best way to reap the beauty benefits of sleep is to get enough sleep on a regular basis. It is extremely difficult for many women to balance their daily busy schedule with a sufficient amount of sleep. No matter how hard you try, fitting in eight hours of sleep on any given night is not always possible. However, another common sleep-related problem is not getting enough high-quality sleep. Fortunately, there are many ways to maximize the quality of the sleep you do get every night in order to reap the most benefits for your health and beauty.
1. Stay Away From Chemical Disrupters
Caffeine is an important part of many women’s daily routine that helps them stay awake, alert, and upbeat throughout the day. However, you need to be careful with your intake of caffeine and other chemicals that can possibly disrupt your sleep at night.
If you consume caffeine, nicotine, or alcohol, try to confine your intake of these chemicals to early in the day. Don’t consume caffeine after noon and limit your consumption of nicotine and alcohol to to at least several hours before you usually go to sleep.
2. Create a Routine and Stick to It
A sleep routine can do wonders for the quality and consistency of your sleep. Your personal sleep routine can be anything. Read a chapter of a novel or a magazine article every night. Listen to peaceful music and stretch for ten to fifteen minutes. Figure out a relaxing routine that works for you and stick to it in order to signal to your body that it’s time to go to sleep and stay asleep all night. Just keep electronics (cell phones, laptops, and TV) out of your sleep routine, as electronic devices can significantly disrupt the ease and quality of your nightly sleep.
3. Manipulate Your Light
Artificial light can wreak havoc on your sleep. Exposure to harsh artificial light close to your bedtime can keep you awake throughout the night and decrease the quality of the sleep you do get.
Avoid the negative effects of harsh artificial light by dimming the brighter bulbs in your bedroom before you go to sleep. Also, if you must use your cell phone before you go to sleep, put it on nighttime mode to make its light more gentle for your eyes and less disruptive to your sleep.
4. Sleep Consistently
It can be hard to establish a regular bedtime that you stick to every night. Of course, there will always be disruptions to your routine that prevent you from going to sleep at the same time every night. However, you should try to stick to a regular sleep time and wake-up time.
Establishing a consistent sleep schedule and making an active effort to stick to it as often as possible can help you fall asleep and stay asleep more easily. Plus, it prevents you from accidentally staying up way too late when you have to wake up early the next day.
5. Exercise Regularly
Regular exercise helps you sleep more easily and more deeply. Try to incorporate at least thirty minutes of moderate to vigorous cardio exercise into your daily schedule. Exercise early in the day in order to increase your alertness throughout the day and help yourself fall asleep at night. However, try not to exercise in the evening as performing cardio late in the day can keep you awake at night.
6. Improve Your Sleep Environment
Cultivate a calm sleep environment in your bedroom to improve the quality of your beauty sleep. Keep your lights dimmed and maintain a room temperature of sixty to seventy degrees Fahrenheit. Also, remove as many sleep-disrupting distractions as possible, including clocks and electronic devices.
7. Decrease Your Stress
Stress can definitely keep you awake at night and decrease the quality of your sleep. It is difficult to eliminate the stress in your daily life. However, try to minimize the stress you consistently feel for the sake of the quality of your sleep.
Whenever you feel overwhelmed or stressed out late at night, take deep, measured breaths, stretch, or meditate. Force yourself to perform a relaxing activity rather than indulging in your stress in order to decrease your stressed-out feeling and help yourself sleep more easily and peacefully.
You don’t have to completely turn your life around in order to sleep better at night. Just make an active effort to incorporate these small, simple habits into your routine to improve your sleep, your appearance, and your life as a whole.
