Are you getting enough?

For Bill Shakespeare it was a chance to dream but for too many of us a good night’s sleep is either a singular rarity or time to be eroded upon if something more important comes up. Here at PharmiWeb we are so committed to being the number one portal site for the Life Sciences industry that we often sleep here in the office and our intensive research into getting a good night’s sleep has produced some excellent tips worth sharing…

• Get a relaxing regular routine to prepare your body and more importantly your mind for sleep. Routines enable your mind to go into auto-pilot, stop concentrating so hard and slip out of the high tempo of the day.
• Try to avoid caffeine based drinks for at least three hours before going to bed, tempting though it may be to have a last drink of tea, coffee or double vodka Red Bull it’s far more sensible to treat yourself to some Horlicks or Ovaltine. It’s no coincidence that wards full of sick children are offered a warm milky drink before bedtime.
• A warm relaxing bath is a better way to end the day than a quick shower, try adding lavender to the bath water to enhance the experience.
• Writing can be very therapeutic but is an increasingly rarely used method of coming to terms with problems or issues. If something is weighing hevaily on your mind then try writing it down.
• It is an unfortunate juxtaposition that the most mindless, sleep inducing television is on during the day whereas all the interesting stuff is on late at night, if you’ve got a video that obeys programming logic, try recording Richard & Judy or Tricia and playing it back just before bedtime. An untaxing book can have a similar effect, anything by Jeffrey Archer or John Grisham could fit the bill here, Sartre’s ‘Nausea’ is best avoided. Many people find music very relaxing before going to bed, Deep Forest, Enigma or Massive Attack will all help to drift you gently away.
• No matter how pressing that report is or how much revision you still have to do you should always try and allow at least an hour’s space between when you stop exercising your mind and when you start trying to get to sleep, any less and the problems you were attempting to solve will just keep coming back.
• If you’re feeling hungry then try having a banana which is an excellent sleep enducing food, foods that are a challenge for the digestive system to break down, like cheese may well keep you awake.
• Have that final cigarette an hour before you go to bed, smoking can prolong your alertness and not just through panic about setting the sheets on fire.

Sweet Dreams.