Dig Deeper: Your Sleep Environment

We spend a 1/3 of our life sleeping, this means you spend more time in your bedroom and more specifically on your mattress that anywhere else in your home!

Creating a good sleep environment is actually crucial to the quality of sleep that you experience. In the past we’re discussed tips to achieving better sleep, and one of those tips was to create a sleep oasis. Now, we’re going to go over the main tips to making that oasis happen.

Keep it Cool!

One of the biggest factors to a good night’s sleep is keeping your environment cool. We’ve dug into how heat affects sleep, and what we found is that your body naturally cools down at night but there is evidence to show that a cool room can help trigger your body’s natural reaction and get you into your sleep cycle faster. Keeping the thermostat at a comfortable temperature between 65 and 72 degrees at night helps create your sleep oasis.

The Right Mattress

This is where sleep magic happens, and you need the right mattress to ensure you experience the best night’s sleep. You want a mattress that is able to offer you proper posture, comfort and high quality natural ingredients. The only mattress we’ve found that fits the bill is the Essentia natural memory foam mattress, it addresses the 6 key elements of whole body recovery while being made with natural and organic ingredients. This is why it is the only Hippocrates approved mattress, and what you will sleep on when you join us on campus.

Clean Air

Your central nervous system can go into overdrive when exposed to toxins and chemicals at night, you want to be sure that your body spends less time fighting these external elements and more time healing itself. A traditional mattress can emit up to 61 different chemicals that you would breathe in at night. Choose a mattress, like an Essentia, that offers a clean air environment so that you aren’t breathing in harmful chemicals.

You’ll also want to bring some of the outdoors inside! Having plants in your room can help clean and purify your indoor air. Also, seeing green plants daily offers a peaceful quality to your room and for some can even help reduce stress. Some of the best indoor plants to purify the air are Snake Plant, Aloe Vera, Bamboo palm and Bromeliads.

Complete Darkness 

The amount of light in your bedroom impacts how well you sleep. First off, you want to be sure you ditch the electronics in the bedroom. Artificial light, and especially TVs which emit blue light, trick your body into thinking that it should be up so it produces less melatonin. Melatonin is the hormone that promotes sleep, which is what you want! Try to create a healthy sleep habit by powering down all electronics at least 1 to 2 hours before bedtime. Drink some tea and read a book, this will really help to get your body and mind ready for sleep. If you must have your cell phone next to the bed, be sure to place it screen side down on the table so that the blue light emitted from incoming messages or notifications does not interrupt your sleep cycle.

Keep Bedroom Activities to a Minimum

In creating your sleep oasis, you want your bedroom to be used for only the activities that should be happening there like sleep. Meaning you don’t want the bedroom to become a multipurpose area, for example if you have the space in the house keep work to the office or other area. You don’t want your bedroom to become associated with a work scenario that can keep your mind racing and prevent you from fully relaxing in your bedroom space.

While implementing each of these suggestions at once may seem daunting, remember that most are simple changes that are essentially good sleep habits. The more good sleep habits you practice the closer you are to experiencing nightly nirvana!