Get a great night's sleep. Here are some tips:
Sleep in a cool,
dark room
Avoid caffiene several hours before bedtime
Avoid meals several hours before bedtime
Sleep on a great mattress
Make sure you don't have sleep apnea
Wear a nasal strip
to open air passages
Wear a bite guard if you grind your teeth
Go to bed around the same time each
night
Get up around the same time each morning
Don't have anything in the bedroom
electronic, only do 2 or 3 things in the bedroom ever, sleep, read and have sex.
Have
a good outlook on life. Nothing worse than nightmares over unresolved issues. Clean house in your psyche so you
can rest easy and not worry.
Be well nourished and hydrated throughout the day with food that's
healthy for you. Do you really want to waste the whole night's energy trying to digest a 16oz steak? Think what other
good work the body could be doing instead.
A great mattress? Try several, see what you like. There is easily
such a thing as "too hard". I recommend whole heartedly the Tempur-pedic mattress, the one with
memory-foam. It takes a little getting used to, but once you "get it" and let yourself sink into it, you can sleep
so very well. You can get "knock-off" memory foam mattresses on ebay, I got one that was knock-off and also irregular,
I love it. Also, if you have a great bed that's just too hard, get a memory foam "topper".
It's all you need. Another good mattress is the Sleep Number Bed. It adjusts so you can always find
your proper level of comfort, harder or softer.
Don't want to spend a fortune on a bite guard? Not sure if
you need one? Try a Sleep-Right bite guard, see what you think. If you need one you've feel good almost
immediately when you put it in. Your jaw will be tired and welcome the support that added wedge between the teeth will give.
Lastly, don't underestimate the amount of sleep you need. People seem to wear it as a badge
of honor that they can "get by" on 4 or 5 hours. Don't just get by! Studies have proven that sleep deprived
folks have more accidents, have lower productivity levels and die sooner than the rest of us. Get 8 hours. At least
that, every night, for the rest of your life.
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A good night's sleep is priceless. But what is a "good" night's sleep? For our purposes
it's sleep that restful, deep, rejuvenating. We want to awake refreshed, limber, and alert. A "good"
night's sleep is one that is good for the body and mind. And that includes muscles and joints.
During the
day we tax our muscles constantly. Whether it's chopping trees, which few of us do, or sitting at a computer,
which most of do, we use our muscles. At the end of the day they are tired, have micro-tears, need nourishment, oxygen, and
above all they need to relax. They need to unclench and let all the muscle cells do their housekeeping tasks
for the evening. Then when we awake, the tissues can be mended, nourished, hydrated, and flushed of all chemical wastes.
Your joints can align themselves automatically while you're sleeping if you get a "good"
nights rest. One where you sleep deeply and soundly, but not sleep like the dead. Let me explain. A regular good sleep,
medium depth, you still toss and turn a bit, wiggle, flex, clench, release. Like a house settling down at night
that creaks and groans as the heat of the day escapes and the cool of night rushes in, your body settles. When you move in
your sleep, unconsciously, your joints are lining themselves up properly. When you awake, you may take a long stretch instinctively,
with no conscious thought, and hear things pop and snap. Just joints making a final lovely adjustment, one
last line up before you get out of bed and start moving again.
Several things mess all this up - you don't
sleep deep enough, you are restless with worry, you ate too much, you drank too much, you are overtired, you are
sick, you are floating on caffiene. You'll toss and turn all night that's for sure, but not in the "good"
way.
You may sleep too deeply. You are exhausted, you are depressed, you drank too much, you
took sleeping pills. Then you just fall into a black hole of sleep, sleep like the dead and awaken full of aches and pains.
Why? Because you sunk into a position and stayed there too long, you were too tired, etc., to wake your
subconscious enough for the body to wiggle, move, toss. You just laid down in one position and stayed there all night. Nothing
got settled or aligned and on the contrary, somethings got stuck in the same position too long.
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