Getting a Good Night's Sleep

Do you often wake up in the mornings feeling
more tired than when you went to bed?
Do you regularly wake up
during the night for no apparent reason?
Or do you have trouble
getting off to sleep in the first place?
Poor-quality sleep can quickly lead to reduced performance at
work from reduced concentration, poor memory and diminished motivation,
impaired judgment and irritability. Lack of sleep can also cause
the body to crave high-calorie foods, potentially leading to weight
gain. All of these side-effects can increase stress which, in
turn can adversely affect your sleep and work.
If you are one of the millions of people who occasionally suffer
poor quality sleep, and you want to feel more rested, alert and
ready to go, then the good news is that you can improve the
quality of your sleep and so maximize your work performance.

Tip:
If you have more serious difficulties sleeping or are constantly
tired, you may have a sleep disorder that requires medical
attention. The web site www.sleepeducation.com does a great job explaining sleep
disorders. If you are concerned about your sleep problems,
you should, of course, consult a medical expert.

What affects the quality of your sleep?
Good quality sleep is an uninterrupted stretch
of roughly 7-8 hours, during which your mind and body rest and
recuperate, ready for whatever the next day brings. Some people
need as little as 5 hours, and some as much as 10 hours, but the
norm is 7-8 hours for most adults.
The quality of your sleep is affected if it's interrupted. Two
periods of four hours sleep, even quite close together, are not as
beneficial as a solid 7-8-hour stretch.
Getting uninterrupted sleep is obviously a challenge for parents
of young children. However, others may have more control over
their routine. So many factors can affect whether your sleep is
interrupted – from external things like noise and light, to personal
factors like snoring, or what (and when) you have eaten. The secret
is to find out what factors affect your sleep and control the
ones that you can. We have some resources and tips to help you
do that later in the article.
Just as interruptions to sleep affect its quality, so do irregular
sleeping patterns: Changing your bedtime or waking time can play
havoc with your body clock. Shift workers are the extreme example;
they have to change their sleeping pattern regularly to fit with
their shifts, and so they have to work harder to get good-quality
sleep. It is hard to find the same levels of darkness and quietness
during the day, and as our natural rhythm is to respond to natural
daylight and darkness, shift workers have to contend with this
issue every time they change shifts. For more help on shift
work-related sleep problems , the Sleep Foundation has information
and advice on how to cope.
Regular day time workers may find that they are also affected by
changes in sleep patterns at the weekends. The body takes a few
days to adjust to a new pattern of sleeping and waking. So people
who like to sleep till noon at the weekend but then party the
night away may find that their bodies have just about worked out
how to do this by Monday morning, and so they find it a real
struggle to get to work on time!
Jet lag is another well-recognized affect of changing sleep
patterns, which occurs when you travel across several time zones.
When traveling across time zones, your body clock gets confused by
the levels of light and darkness at different times of days.

Did you know that jet lag hits harder
when traveling west to east rather then vice versa? So a
traveler from North America to Europe will usually suffer
greater effects of jet lag on the outward (east bound) journey
than on the return home. This is because our bodies cope
better with extending the day, than with reducing it.

A traveler from New York to London, for example, is more
likely to suffer jet lag when he reduces his day by 5 hours
on the outbound journey, than when he extends his day by 5
hours on the way home.

For more information on jet lag, British
Airways has some good information, and also a neat little Jet Lag Advisor to help you work out when to avoid daylight,
and when to seek it.

How well do you sleep?
The
first step to a better night's sleep (and a better day's work) is
to evaluate how well you are sleeping at the moment. When it comes
to getting a good, uninterrupted night's sleep there are a great
many factors to consider. Take a look at www.sleepeducation.com for some more detail on these.
A good way to work out how what affects you is to keep a sleep
diary. This will help you identify the factors that you can control.
If you do find your sleep problems needs medical attention, it
can give your medical adviser full information on which to base
his or her recommendations.

To evaluate you sleep habits further, we also recommend a couple
of online tests that help you do this. (The first test is provided
by the better health site of the government of Victoria,
Australia, and the second is at www.sleepnet.com ):

The Sleeping Habits Quiz .
The Sleep Test .

Changes for a better night's sleep
Once you have analyzed how well your sleep, and especially if you
have kept a sleep diary, you will start to see things that you can
control for your better night's sleep. Do you sleep better when
you eat earlier, or avoid a certain type of food? Do you sleep
better when you go to bed 30 minutes later than usual or vice
versa? Write these down and start to make those changes to you
habits and routine.
Here are some tips to consider when you are planning the changes
you need to make:

Ensure that your bedroom is neither too hot nor too cold, and is
quiet
Make sure your mattress and pillows are comfortable
Avoid tea, coffee and other drinks that contain
caffeine before you go to bed (some people find it difficult
to sleep if they drink coffee as early as 4pm)
Also avoid alcohol – it may make you fall asleep, but it can
affect how deeply you sleep and so you may wake up during the
night or simply have poor quality sleep
Don't eat within two hours of going to bed
Don't exercise strenuously before going to
bed, but do exercise during the day so you are physically as
well as mentally tired.
Do things that help you to relax before going to bed, such as
taking a warm bath, doing some gentle yoga, or using aromatherapy

Working on a regular sleep routine (when this is in your control) can also help:

Try to go to sleep and get up at the same
time every day. This will help to "set" your body clock, and
"teach" your body to go to sleep at the same time too.
Avoid naps during the day
Try not to get stressed by not being able
to sleep as this just makes the situation worse. If you wake
up during the night, get out of bed and do something relaxing
until you feel sleepy again.