One of the prime energy supporters in your life is sleep. Specifically, quality sleep. If it's not quality, the amount of sleep you get isn't as relevant as you might think.

How do you rate your sleep quality? Do you sleep soundly throughout the night, toss and turn, or lay there thinking? Or something other?

Science, medicine, and experience tell us there are mental and physical benefits of good sleep. It boosts your immune system, improves your mood, strengthens your resilience, regulates weight, and in general makes you a healthier person. Everybody wants quality sleep, regardless of how many hours they subscribe to as being a healthy amount of time. This article addresses the quality of the sleep only.

Some nights you don't fall asleep fast because you aren't tired, you're too tired, there are distractions in your brain or house (wherever you are sleeping on a given night), or you have biological issues (sleep apnea, heart arrhythmias, being too hungry or full) that keep you awake. Health issues are something you need to get your doctor's help on, the rest will be addressed here.

What I've come up with from my research is there are things you can do all day to support a sound night's sleep. Furthermore, there are things you can at night that relate specifically to sleep, adding to what you do during the day, so you have quality sleep.

The Top 4 Essentials

1. Create a Bedtime Routine

• a regular schedule of going to bed, and getting up

• foster a dark, quiet, and cool room and sleep in a comfortable bed

• remove distractions

• quit working 90 minutes before bed

• go to bed before you get your second wind; whether you are a lark or owl, there's a "natural" time for you to go to bed.

2. Clear your mind, manage your stress. Meditation, leisurely strolls, reading, and quiet music can help all of that. If you honor the suggestion to quit working at least 90 minutes before bedtime, your mind will have a chance to unwind and get in the groove of sleeping. Take that work ban one step further and initiate a blue-light ban two hours prior to bedtime; TVs, tablets, computers, and smartphones all generate blue light, though there are apps that change the light from blue to more of a yellow so that if you are on your devices near bedtime at least you don't have that bright, blue light that confuses the brain as to the time of day.

3. Don't eat too late or go to bed on an empty or full stomach. Avoid alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine in the evening too. Foods and nutrients that help you sleep include pumpkin seeds for the zinc which converts the brain chemicals tryptophan into serotonin, and magnesium which helps decrease cortisol, the stress hormone. There are more, but those two keep popping up so I'm passing them along.

4. Energize through the day with quality food, exercise (more than 2 hours before bed), and fresh air/sunshine. Yeah, when you expend energy during the day it paves the way for a night of quality sleep.

Let's cover one more aspect of quality sleep:

The amount of deep and light sleep you get. First, the technical explanation of sleep cycles. A good night's sleep consists of around five or six sleep cycles; each cycle lasts around 1.5 hours, and we need all five stages in order to wake up feeling rested and refreshed. One cycle consists of the following stages:

• Stage 1 - This is when you feel drowsy, relaxed, and hover between being awake and nodding off.

READ MORE @ http://www.proudlyblog.com/2016/08/top-4-essentials-for-quality-sleep-in.html

ARTICLE SOURCE: Proudlyblog.com