Better Sleep: Don’t Dream it, Live it

If there was ever a time to stop taking your sleep for granted, it is now. There’s so much more to sleeping better than simply closing your eyes and laying your head on the pillow. In fact, there’s heaps of research that tells us that good sleep starts long before you get in to bed. A confluence of factors make up the spectrum of good sleep – from our everyday habits, our diet and our sleep environment; all of this ultimately influences the quality of our sleep.

Daily Habits do Affect Our Sleep

One thing we are coming to learn about sleep is quantity does not equal quality. You may think that getting the recommended 8 hours of shut eye means the job is done, but that’s not say you slept optimally. Genuinely good sleep an ever-moving target needs to shift with us; we humans are not static creatures. Someone training for Iron Man needs more sleep – that is a fact – but so does a new mom who’s expending plenty of energy nursing a newborn, yet she is seen to be sitting around for most of the day. The structure of the athlete’s day and the structure of the new mom’s day look vastly different yet they both need adequate sleep to function optimally. The athlete versus the new mom debate aptly illustrates how what we do when we are awake irrefutably affects how we sleep.

Rethink your bed and behaviour for Even Better Sleep

Knowing how to sleep well must be innate, but it’s just not that simple. How can you do better in the day to sleep your best at night? The answer lies in adjusting your habits, behaviours and environment to better support your sleep – call it money for nothing. Dr Rangan Chatterjee (www.drchatterjee.com) Medical Doctor and presenter of the podcast, Feel Better, Live More has some achievable tips on how to ‘do’ daily life to sleep better:

 1. Wake up at the same time daily, weekends included.

2. Get exposure to bright natural light within 30 minutes of waking up.

3. No caffeine after midday (that includes Ceylon tea, energy drinks and even dark chocolate).

4. Exercise earlier in the day rather than later.

5. Keep alcohol to a minimum in the evening or avoid it altogether.

6. Don’t eat anything 2 -3 hours before bed.

7. Avoid excessive blue light exposure in the evening – television, computer screens and cellphones.

 The key takeaway from Dr Chatterjee’s advice is to focus on what you can control – the power really is in your hands. Use your power to invest in the best sleep tools that you can, and that includes your bed. A bed does more than just support the weight of a sleeping body – your mattress matters – and we at Dream Republic have taken the guesswork out of buying a bed by stocking the world’s best mattress brought to you by Serta . If a healthy spine is foundational to overall wellness, then a good mattress is foundational to the best sleep of your life and that’s why our brands, Serta  and Lylax  are endorsed by the Chiropractic Association of South Africa (CASA). Our brands have also won awards and accolades abroad including the US Women’s Choice Awards 12 years in a row – if we can win recognition in one of the globe’s most discerning consumer markets then you know you’re investing in the right brands with Dream Republic .

March is Sleep Month, and we are offering an exclusive month-long 15% discount on all online purchases to all SA Decor and Design readers. Simply visit www.dreamrepublic.co.za, select your product from our extensive Lylax , Serta  and Wellness Collection  ranges, go to checkout and enter the code Decor15 to apply your discount