Also, consider adding exercises to the earlier hours of the day as exercising late in the evening may stimulate your body. Add in exercise to your day.Īnother way to support your circadian rhythm and create an ideal sleeping pattern that helps you go to bed earlier is by including exercises into your routine. Studies have shown that stress may disrupt sleep quality, and self-care activities may help manage your stress levels and help you fall asleep easily and sleep better. Try to be intentional about managing your stress levels by engaging in self-care activities such as journaling, meditation, yoga, deep breathing, taking walks, and other activities that ease your body and make you feel lighter. Stress may increase your cortisol levels, and this hormone keeps you awake and aroused, even when your body should be relaxed and winding down for sleep. Research shows that daylight may help you go to bed earlier, increase your sleep duration (some studies suggest that an extra hour spent outdoors increases sleep time by 30 minutes), and enhance sleep quality. Sunlight helps support your circadian rhythm, as it signals your brain to be awake and alert because it’s daytime. You jolt up your energy levels and prepare yourself for a productive day by doing this. When you see the sun rising in the morning, consider it your cue to go out and take in some sunlight. Make getting morning sunlight a daily routine. Once you’re feeling good, you can start rolling back your routine an additional 15 minutes each day until you reach your desired morning start time.įor even more ideas to add into your day to help ease the transition, check out the rest of our list. The next day, try it again and see how it feels. Continue it into the evening, and finish off by going to bed 15 minutes earlier. This may include setting your alarm earlier, and cascade into eating breakfast, drinking coffee, working out, driving to work, eating lunch, and so forth. So, a great first step is to shift your entire daily schedule ahead by 15 minutes each day. It’s also better for your sleep health to slowly make changes, as too big of a swing in sleep schedule can leave you lying wide awake in the night, or feeling too drowsy in the morning. This helps for a few reasons, mainly that slow change is generally easier to implement compared to big sweeping adjustments. If you’re looking to make a lasting and meaningful change to your sleep schedule that includes waking up earlier in the morning, it’s best to do so gradually. Shift your daily routine 15 minutes ahead each day Here are ten ways to gradually accommodate your sleep schedule. If you’re looking to adjust your sleep schedule, know that you’re taking an essential step towards better overall health. And a lack of it is associated with poor physical and mental health and increased risk of chronic diseases. Ideas to gradually set an earlier sleep scheduleĬonsiderable evidence suggests that a good night’s rest is essential for recovery, optimal daytime functioning, cognitive functioning, metabolic health, and heart health. Some of these habits include going to bed late, not getting enough sunlight during the day, napping excessively, drinking caffeine too close to the evening, eating too late at night, and so on, causing a disruption to your sleep schedule. Many of us may have adopted habits that may throw off our circadian rhythm in the heat of the pandemic, either to cope with pandemic stress or because we struggled with separating work from our personal lives. When it gets thrown out of sync, it may contribute to various health issues like depression, fatigue, daytime sleepiness, diabetes, obesity, low energy levels, insomnia, and other sleep problems. Your circadian rhythm is your body’s internal clock that follows a roughly 24-hour cycle and regulates your sleep-wake pattern and other bodily functions such as hormone release and digestion. Many of us have shifted our sleep schedules later in the evening, often because our work or school arrangements allowed us to stay in bed longer each morning.Īlthough going to bed early and waking up earlier may seem like a long-forgotten habit, by making some small and simple changes to your daytime and nighttime routine, you’ll be on your way to having a sleep schedule that accommodates the latest version of ‘pandemic-new-normal’. If the idea of getting back into an earlier morning routine to accommodate commute times and in-office hours sounds like a struggle, you’re not alone. As vaccination rates increase and the latest COVID surge begins to wane, offices and schools may soon be heading in the direction of in-person attendance, at least in a more concrete way than other points in the pandemic. Will the world return to pre-pandemic routines? It’s a question on many of our minds. Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on Linkedin Share via Email
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