Prioritise Sleep To Boost Your Mood
Sleep is critical for regulating neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine that stabilise our mood. Improving your sleep by being consistent and prioritising enough time for sleep helps ensure emotional stability and reduces symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Minimise Technology Before Bed
Disengaging from technology before bed is really important for improving sleep quality, as the light from our devices, as well as the brain arousal caused by engaging on social media, can inhibit our ability to fall asleep easily.
Creating a bedtime routine that incorporates technology to “stop” time and replacing it with a relaxing activity, such as reading, writing in a diary or practising mindfulness immediately prior to bed is one way to help limit the effect of technology on your sleep.
Practice Pre-Bed Mindfulness
Mindfulness for sleep can be a useful way to calm your mind and body to promote relaxation to prepare for sleep, especially if you often have trouble falling asleep.
There are many different forms of mindfulness and it is important to find what works best for you to get the most out of it. It is also important to practise the techniques of mindfulness often, as the more we do them, the better we get!
Have A Regular Sleep Schedule
Sleep plays an important role in supporting the production of specialised cells and proteins that are required by our immune system to fight off infection effectively.
Ensuring you maintain or improve your sleep and sleep quality by having a regular sleep-wake schedule will help maintain a healthy immune system.
Track Your Sleep, But Don’t Obsess
Tracking your sleep can be a valuable way of recognising patterns in your sleep-wake behaviour that may be problematic, enabling you to better identify the ways in which you may be able to change your behaviour to improve sleep.
It is important, however, not to become over-reliant on tracking your sleep, as this can lead to obsessing about the data, creating anxiety and further worsening sleep. It is important to recognise that the data should be seen more as a pattern of your sleep-wake schedule rather than a gold-standard measure of sleep.
Dr. Jade Murray
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University
Dr. Jade M. Murray is an expert in sleep and circadian medicine. She completed her PhD at Monash University in 2018 and focuses on how circadian rhythms impact health. Her research aims to develop personalised strategies to improve sleep and overall well-being.