While placing your head on a pillow and falling unconscious sounds easy in theory (we smashed sleeping out the park as babies), many of us struggle with our 40 winks come adulthood.
Thankfully, according to sleep expert Anne Marie Boyhan, a simple trick in the morning is all it takes to optimise your slumber.
According to Boyhan, getting yourself some sunlight in the morning could be just the ticket to ensure you sleep better.
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Boyhan, who is a sleep expert at The Sleep Care Co, explained to the Mirror: “Ensure you get natural light during the day. If sunlight reaches your eyes in the morning, it sets your biological clock and triggers the timing of the hormones cortisol and melatonin, which affect sleep.”
Melatonin is a hormone that helps regulate sleep, while cortisol also plays an important part in our sleep-wake cycles.
Our bodies start producing melatonin once it gets dark and the hormone peaks during sunlight hours. So, when properly regulated, a spike in melatonin at nighttime encourages sleep, and has the opposite effect in the day.
Cortisol also energises us in the morning, making us feel more awake, and gradually starts to drop, helping us to sleep.
By properly stimulating the production of melatonin and cortisol (sunshine in the morning, darkness in the evening) it’s easier to optimise our sleeping patterns.
Boyhan added: “If you’re struggling to sleep, set up your bedroom’s environment for sleep success.
“Focus on creating a pitch-black bedroom, and avoid blue light from screens one hour before bed.”
According to the Mirror, more than a third of adults still feel tired when they wake up, even if they went to bed before 10.00pm.
Four in 10 of us consider ourselves ‘bad sleepers’, while six in 10 of us reckon our bedtime routines could be improved.
The paper was quoting stats from a new sleep survey commissioned by furniture retailer DFS, which also found that for 54 percent of people, it needs to be totally dark outside before they can hit the hay, while 27 percent of us need to make sure all the doors are locked before being able to get any rest.
When it comes to room temperature, it’s a major factor for 20 percent of people – who can’t sleep unless it's just right – and a third of the people who took part in the survey said they can’t sleep unless they’ve ‘got that freshly brushed feeling’.
Aisha Nozari