New Year's resolutions to help you sleep better in 2021

新年决心常常是伟大的我deas that involve big lifestyle changes—that often seem impossible to keep. But what about the little (more feasible) adjustments you can make to improve your health? Here I’m talking specifically about your sleep. Taking small steps to improve the quality of your rest can leave you more refreshed in the morning, and have a snowball effect of benefits both physiologically and psychologically.

Consider these six sleep-related resolutions you can make—and hopefully maintain—that will help you catch even better zzz’s in the new year.

将手机和电子设备放在卧室外面过夜

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Ah, the simplest yet somehow toughest struggle of them all: Freeing yourself from your phone. Smartphones are widely thought to be bad for your sleep—fromstress-provoking social mediato literally disrupting you all night as they ding and buzz with notifications. And that’s not even mentioning the blue light that screens emit, which can throw off yourcircadian rhythm, or the 24-hour, wake-rest cycle your body’s designed to follow that’s based largely on ambient light. Under normal circumstances, your brain starts torelease melatonin, a hormone that causes drowsiness, about two hours before you go to bed. It makes you enter a calmer state. But continuing to expose yourself to blue light from screens in the hours leading up to bedtime disrupts that natural process and can lead to prolonged wakefulness and lower quality sleep.

If you真的can’t be without your phone overnight—there could be a family emergency, or maybe you’re on-call at work—try capitalizing on thesleep-friendly tech settingsavailable on your device. One of the basic and least noticeable settings you can use is called “Night Shift” on iOS, or “Blue Light Filter” on Android. This feature helps reduce your exposure to blue light on a custom schedule, or sunrise to sunset, or at your whim (though it’s more of a hassle to open your settings each day to enable it). While almost any bright light can suppress melatonin,exposure to blue light is especially bad。The efficacy of these settings has yet to be proven in research, but it’s a small change to your lifestyle and tech use with the potential to be a massive boon to your sleep and rest.

To take it a step further, enabling Do Not Disturb is a solid halfway point between decreasing your phone’s blue light output and leaving your phone outside your room. Do Not Disturb stops your phone from sending notifications throughout the night. But there’s a nifty loophole for those who fear being totally unreachable: the setting can be customized to allow notifications from certain contacts, or to ring if someone calls twice within, say, one minute. It won’t let your phone keep you up, but also gives you the extra security of knowing people can get in touch if they really need to.

留出时间在睡觉前每天晚上放下

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There are plenty of day-to-day stressors—from the 24-hour news cycle and “doom-scrolling” to disagreements with partners to work deadlines. Even watching a scary or suspenseful TV show can work you up. But stress and sleep don’t jive well, so it’s best to use the time before you go to bed to de-stress.

Try soothing activities that will help you relax. Reading a book, for example, or having a quiet conversation with your partner about the personal victories of each of your days are both good options. You could get in the habit of listening tosleep podcasts or storiesin the evening. Curling up on the couch with aweighted blanket—like our favorite fromGravity Blanket—can be soothing, triggering thesame feel-good hormones, like oxytocin and dopamine, as when you receive a hug, and helping you settle down before bed.

Better yet, build your wind-down into a fullnightly routine, in which you sequentially incorporate activities that you find relaxing and that aren’t stimulating, as well as necessities like brushing your teeth. You could consider using anessential oil diffuser, like ourfavorite by Airomé, to train your body to associate a certain scent with sleep and relaxation. (Lavender may be a good starting point, it’s often thought toelicit relaxation。) Eventually, your body will come to associate your new habits with the end of the day and sleep, so simply starting the routine may help you feel sleepy as bedtime approaches.

Spend some time outside everyday

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Sure, sleep mostly happens in the bedroom, but even little things you do throughout the day can change its quality. Your body’s circadian rhythm is highly correlated with natural light and dark patterns, following the sun. As such, sunlight is one of the biggest external signals that helps your bodydifferentiate day and night和its waking and sleeping hours. Getting exposure to natural light on a regular basis can help keep your circadian rhythm humming along.

If you want to go to bed and wake up earlier, you can manipulate your circadian rhythm by consciously timing light exposure. Even a few relatively一天早些时可以改变它。因此,花时间外在要求e in the morning if you want to feel tired earlier in the evening. One easy way to do this is build outside time into your work commute (assuming that’s still a thing for you). Consider parking your car a couple blocks away or at the far end of the parking lot or getting off a stop or two early from public transit and walking the rest of the way. Even for folks who work from home, taking a quick walk, even pre-coffee, around your neighborhood can mimic a regular commute and help you start the day on the right foot.

In terms of light, the inverse is true as well. Exposure to bright light close to bedtime inhibits melatonin production and can make it harder for you to doze off (yet another reason to put your phone to bed before yourself). In one study, people who used an e-reader within the four hours leading up to bedtimetook longer to fall asleep and felt less alert the next day。Aside from extricating yourself from electronic devices, dim your home’s ambient lighting at least an hour before you plan to retire. Using your TV’s sleep timer or setting asmart plug或者聪明的灯泡with a living room lamp to shut off at the same time every night can serve as a great reminder for when it’s time to turn away from the light.

Make your bedroom something worthy of dreaming about

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It’s probably not surprising that your sleep environment can have a major impact on the quality of your rest each night. As you may have surmised, your bedroom’s lighting is paramount: Dim is better. Blackout curtains are one option, but they’re pricey and won't help if you have a partner who stays up reading when you’re ready for some shuteye. Asleep masklike our favorites, theNidra Deep Rest contoured mask和Alaska Bear mask, in contrast, are an affordable godsend. In addition, factors such as temperature and ambient noise, and even subconscious associations with the space itself, can play a role in determining whether you wake up refreshed or exhausted the next morning.

温度在高质量的睡眠是一个主要的角色。一般的公司nsensus is that it’s best to sleep in a room that’s in the mid-60s. If you have aprogrammable thermostat，很容易管理：只需将温度设置为睡前大约一个小时左右即可。我们测试的最好的恒温器，Google Nest Learning Thermostat，在这种情况下易于使用，甚至可以学习您的日程安排，以节省能源。但是，即使您没有气候控制，仍然有选择。如果在户外凉爽的情况下，破裂的窗户也可以降低您的卧室温度。另外，您的体温遵循每日节奏，就像日光一样。在上床睡觉的时间里，它自然会逐渐下降。在晚上进行温暖的淋浴可能会导致变化 - 淋浴本身会加热您，但是一旦您踏入外面，您的体温就会开始降低。另一方面，如果您的房间很冷，请考虑一个加热的毯子, like our favorite byBerkshire, to help you achieve the best temperature for your sleep. If you’re accustomed to sleeping in warmer rooms, bumping the thermostat down (or cracking a window) a small increment at a time every night for at least a week may be easier than a drastic change. Sudden changes to sleep conditions can present their own challenges, and even if you go in increments you should give your body a few days to settle in.

If your space is loud due to a partner’s snoring, dogs barking outside, or passing traffic, you’re probably all too familiar with waking up throughout the night. Noise is a real pest when it comes to sleeping well. Fortunately, addressing sound can be as simple as buying agreat pair of earplugs。You may also consider a白噪声或声音机器, which drowns out other sounds and helps you sleep by covering up random noises that might crop up during the night. Our favorite, theSound+Sleep High Fidelity Sound Machine, offers 10 soothing sounds to choose from—ranging from rainforest to waves, and even waterfall.

Another best practice is limiting bedroom activity to two fundamentals: sleep and sex. Avoid working on a computer or watching TV in your bedroom, for example, to help your brain build a positive association with the space and restfulness, as opposed to stress and wakefulness.

Get yourself on a better sleep schedule

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Quantity isn’t quality… except when it comes to sleep. And in the U.S., one in three American adults isn’t getting the recommended minimum seven hours of shuteye a night. Sleeping enough has obvious benefits, like increased energy, better mood, and clearer thinking. Meanwhile,not getting enough sleepcan increase your risk of heart disease, diabetes, and impact your immune system’s function. Consistently cutting your nights short will even lead to a “sleep debt” that’s virtually impossible to catch up on.

But it’s not all doom and gloom, if you make spending more time sleeping a priority. Step one is to aim to give yourself enough time at night—don’t go to bed at 1 a.m. if you need to be up at 6 a.m, for example. If you’re the sort who loses track of time before collapsing into bed, your aim should be to set up a routine with specific reminders that bedtime is imminent.

Another suggestion: Try to keep a consistent schedule. Going to sleep and waking up around the same time every day (even weekends) will help youmaintain your circadian rhythm and internal clock。One study found that having anirregular sleep scheduleled to insufficient and poor quality sleep among university students. You may think thatsleeping in on the weekendis a good way to play catch-up on sleep deprivation, but it may only serve to破坏您的睡眠时间表if you can’t get to bed at your desired time on Sunday.

晚上睡觉永远是黄金标准，但这并不是一切。对于某些人来说，例如有孩子或孩子的父母，这可能很困难。在这种情况下，小睡是减少睡眠债务并帮助您感觉最好的选择。

Eat your way to better sleep

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Even the food you eat can change your sleep. One study found that eating a couplekiwis can improve your sleeponset and duration. Other researchers concluded drinkingfresh tart cherry juice improved the sleepof older adults with insomnia. Unfortunately there aren’t many foods that help your sleep—the conversation is more often about those that harm it.

咖啡和咖啡因是最大的罪魁祸首。关于您可以喝多少咖啡，何时可以喝的咖啡，依此类推，这是有争议的，但是没有忽略它对您的睡眠不好的事实。Drinking caffeine within six hours of bedtimecan reduce your sleep by as much as an hour. Even relying on caffeine throughout the day can impact your nights. Researchers found thatdependence on caffeinecorrelated to waking up more throughout the night, feeling worse during the day, and decreased sleep quality overall. So set aside thecoffee mugwell in advance of when you want to hit the hay.

Alcohol may make you feel as though you’re sleeping better, but it causes more harm than good. Moderate to high consumption of alcoholdecreases REM, or rapid eye movement sleep, which is thought to beimportant for memory。当然，每隔一段时间拥有成人饮料不是问题，但是总的来说，如果您避开酒精，您会休息得更好。

Other things tosteer clearof at night include high protein or large and rich meals, as well as foods that are spicy. Aside from that, you know the drill—eat healthy foods throughout the day—and your sleep will thank you.

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