Struggling with a wind down routine,

Or with actually just staying asleep,

and overall energy levels..

It's no argument that sleep is one of the most, if not the most important part of your wellbeing, and with smart devices and tv's at bed time becoming more and more normalised, partnered with growing external factors that increase stress, its no surprise that the number of people struggling with their sleep is skyrocketing..

With the average Military Personnel being impacted the most with a poor average of only 6 hours of sleep per night, sitting significantly below the recommended 7-9 hours.

When it comes to getting a good night sleep you need to practice these proven techniques...

Limiting fluids and food at certain times of day.

Believe it or not everything you consume from water to coffee has a massive impact on your nights sleep.

Now as hard as this will be for many, NO caffeine after 3pm or 9 hours before you plan on sleeping. Now if your on the gate duty or on watch I know where you'll be telling me to go, but bare with me!

Caffeine enters your system and blocks the receptor called adenosine, the chemical adenosine builds up throughout the day and is responsible for making you feel tired. Thats the reason it gives you such a buzz, however the adenosine doesn't disappear, it has just been suppressed, so as the caffeine wears off it hits you like a ton of bricks causing "The Caffeine Crash".

It also can spike your blood pressure so ensuring you use caffeine at designated times of day can really help.

Water and food - No water from 1 hour before bed, this is to reduce the number of times or chance of you waking up in the night for a wee. This may seem minor but each stage of your sleep is crucial and interrupting the cycle restless it back to the beginning which can leave you feeling restless the next day.

Screen time

Screen Time is a modern day killer for a solid sleeping routine and is only getting worse. And sorry to break the news but your phone in ‘Night Mode’ so it removes all blue light isn’t a get out of jail free card.

With or without night mode active, being on your phone can still interfere with sleep timings and patterns significantly. Being on your phone in bed increases dopamine due to brain activity rising, and it can easily go from “One more YouTube video on the top 10 Ocean Secrets” to 10. Before you know it, it’s 3am and you’ve got to get up in 4 hours.

The good news is avoiding this can be easy.

Create a strong structure in place to avoid night time scrolling, from charging your phone on the other side of the room or even downstairs to getting apps that physically lock you out of addictive apps after a certain time frame. A great app for this is called “One Sec” and can be found on any smartphone App Store.

Avoid fluctuating wind down and wake up times

Your body is extremely intelligent to the point it actually creates and exerts energy at certain times of day to maximise efficiency. This is rooted back to the days we used to hunt for survival. That is also why we have ‘Morning people’ and ‘Night owls’ due to the fact the tribes would hunt and rest at certain times to protect each other.

So naturally, you may be in one of these categories, but to stabilise your sleeping pattern insure that you are winding down and creating a solid routine that you abide by every evening. This will reduce any disruption to your brains sleep state.