How Sleeping on Your Back can Cause Nightmares

Only 8% of the American adult population sleeps on their back. While it comes with a few benefits, it’s not the ideal sleeping position for everyone. As it causes your tongue to roll back and make it more difficult to breathe, those who snore and have sleep apnea can find their conditions to worsen over time. Sure, it can help preserve the quality of the skin on your face but since it can also disrupt sleep, it’s still not the best for some beauty sleep.

On top of all of these, sleeping on your back can also be the very reason why you tend to have nightmares quite often. According to some experts, getting disrupted sleep can make nightmares stick to you and affect the quality of your shuteye.

Something about sleeping on your back is said to cause nightmares more often. And because it can also disrupt your sleep, you tend to remember the bad dream which can then cause you to have a hard time falling back to sleep once again. This can then seriously affect the quality of your zzz’s.

So what should you do? Learning to sleep in other positions would really come in handy in this case. It can be a tough task, however, since we all have our comfort preferences when going to sleep. It’s well worth a try, though, if you want to improve the quality of your slumber.

One good way to help you get used to a different sleeping position is by getting a mattress that suits the said sleeping position. While back sleepers need firm mattresses for excellent back support, side sleepers are better off with medium firm to soft mattresses in most cases. This will reduce the resistance your body will get from the mattress and will allow you to sleep more comfortably on your side.

Salem Bed has a wide range of mattresses in various firmness levels. Check them out here.

Turn the Lights Off to Avoid Gaining Weight in Your Sleep

Most of us have our own preferences when it comes to going to bed. Some like the feeling of kulambo on their feet while others absolutely cannot fall asleep without an extra pillow to hug. There are also those who can’t sleep unless it’s completely dark while others have to keep the lights on when they catch some shuteye.

They’re all well and good if they help you sleep but you might want to rethink sleeping with the lights on. A recent study shows that sleeping with the lights on when you sleep can cause women to gain up to 5 kg over the course of five years.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise as studies have also presented evidence before that disrupted and low-quality sleep also tends to cause weight gain. This additional information, however, further makes a case for everyone to try to achieve the best sleep environment to get the most out of their shuteye.

As sleep has also been established to be helpful in weight loss and maintenance efforts, it makes perfect sense for everyone who wants to shed a few pounds to try to get better zzz’s. Improved sleep can certainly help you lose weight, so why not aim for such a goal?

We understand that it might be hard to completely change your sleeping habits but with the right techniques, you’re sure to get good results. In this case, you can transition to night lights instead of forcing yourself to quit cold turkey. By gradually diminishing the amount of light present when you go to bed, you can ease yourself to sleeping with the lights off eventually.

Here are a Few Tips to Help You Sleep to Some Music

A lot of us need some background noise to fall asleep. Some need white noise while others tune into their favorite songs to sing them to sleep. If you like to do the latter, there are quite a few different ways to accomplish the feat.

If you want to try streaming songs for some variety, however, Spotify would be a great app for you to use. If you’re on one of their premium plans, you don’t have to worry about the ads that can wake you up right when you’re already dozing off.

However, aside from the ads, you might also have to worry about running out of battery while you sleep. Sure, you can always just leave your phone plugged in while you listen to music but that can come with dangers, too. So the best option is to find ways to automatically stop the music streaming app when you fall asleep.

Until recently, the only technique to get this done is by turning off the autoplay on your bedtime playlist. It works but you have to make sure to turn off the autoplay function. Otherwise, it won’t stop playing songs and your smartphone will have depleted battery levels come morning.

A more foolproof method to stop music from playing from your Spotify app has been recently created, however. Now, you can set a timer for your bedtime listening session.

Spotify rolled out their Sleep Timer for Android devices just recently so you can now set your listening time when you go to bed with your music on. The app will then automatically stop playing music when the timer runs out, letting you fall asleep with your favorite tunes in the background without having to worry about your battery.

Here are the steps to set up the Sleep Timer:

1. Go to the song you’re currently listening to.
2. Click on the overflow menu on the upper right corner of the screen.
3. Scroll up and select the ‘Sleep timer’ option.
4. Select the time duration you want your app to continue playing.
5. Relax, enjoy, and fall asleep.

Paired with some comfortable earphones and the coziest bed, you might just be able to sleep better with this new Spotify feature.

Video Games and Sleep

When the words video games and sleep are mentioned in one sentence, it often doesn’t good things for the latter. In most instances, it’s a discussion about how video games are bad for sleep as they can easily delay zzz’s.

It’s a major problem because a lot of us like to destress using video games after a long day. They’re entertaining and enjoyable for lots of people, so they can be a relaxing activity for many.

Unfortunately, a lot of videogames are very engrossing that they can make you delay your sleep for hours. The screens you play them in also have effects on the body that it can make you lose up to 39 minutes of sleep after spending 150 minutes on a videogame. These are the reasons why they’re not exactly recommended to those who want to sleep better.

However, game makers are already recognizing the problem as of late. As a result, they are now creating games that will help people sleep or encourage them to sleep.

What are these games that you can try at bedtime? Here are a few examples:

1. Meditation Game

Designed to help you relax, this game is mostly a guide that will help you wind down and center yourself. It involves moving your phone about and breathing exercises. Some folks also play this game during the day, especially when they’re very stressed out.

2. Antistress

Another relaxation game that will prove to be useful to you not only at bedtime but also whenever you’re strung out is Antistress. It’s actually not much of a game but more of an app that will give you access to items that you can fiddle with digitally. This will help you calm down through distraction.

3. Sheep Sleep

If you think you need to visualize the sheep you count when waiting to nod off, then Sheep Sleep can help you out. It will let you count sheep, in the most literal sense, to help you fall asleep.

4. Pokemon Sleep

While this one isn’t available yet, it’s still worth mentioning because it’s designed to incentivize sleep. It’s amazing for such a popular franchise to take a risk in developing such an off-beat game but it might just work for the best.

There isn’t a lot of information available about the game yet since it’s only slated for release in 2020 but it really sounds like a great idea. What it will do is to track players’ sleep and then get something out of it once they woke up. As video gamers are notorious for not getting a good deal of shuteye, incentivizing players might just help encourage them to get some zzz’s.

 

While we’re still not completely sold that videogames can help promote better sleep, there’s still a chance that playing select ones during bedtime can be beneficial to your relaxation. So why not give it a chance, right? Play them in a cozy bed and you might just find yourself nodding off in no time.