We all tend to take a good night’s sleep for granted, until the night rolls around where we are lying in bed wide awake tossing and turning. The negative effects of a lack of sleep on body and mind are numerous and range from the annoying to the life-threatening.

The good news is you do not have to resign yourself to a lifetime of sleeplessness. There are a number of things you can do that will address common causes of insomnia and enable you to get back to sleeping properly. So without further ado, here are 15 proven ways to improve your sleep.

#1: Don’t Take Your Smartphone to Bed

Over the past decade we’ve all fallen in love with our smartphones. But that love affair may well be causing millions of people to lose sleep. Your human lover may or may not be perfect, but he or she does not emit blue light that’s going to interfere with melatonin production and contribute to insomnia. Your smartphone does.

What’s so important about melatonin? Melatonin (1) is a hormone that plays a key role in synchronizing our sleep cycles. If melatonin production is disrupted by something like blue light the result can be sleeplessness. Emergencies happen, so you may not want to turn your phone off at night, but you should try leaving it on the nightstand facing down rather than taking it into bed with you.

#2: Avoid Caffeine Late in the Day

Caffeine is the world’s most popular stimulant. Nothing else even comes close. And while science has shown there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a robust cup of Joe – and that it might, in fact, be beneficial (2) – you need to be careful not to drink coffee, or other caffeinated drinks, too close to bedtime.

Drinking coffee a few hours before you go to bed is likely to result in a night of tossing and turning. Be aware too that caffeine is often found lurking in unlikely places, including tea, yogurt, pain relievers and, yes, even decaf coffee. There is no one-size-fits-all rule regarding caffeine late in the day, but a common sense approach is to avoid caffeine after dinner.

#3: Don’t Eat Right Before Bedtime

Speaking of dinner, eating too close to bedtime is a good way to ensure a sleepless night. Going to bed with a full stomach can prevent you from getting comfortable, can lead to an upset stomach, and can cause acid reflux (3), something you don’t ever want to experience. Going to bed right after you eat is also a surefire way to pad your spare tire. It is, in fact, the method used by Sumo wrestlers to pack on the pounds.

No one is saying you should go to bed hungry, because that will likely lead to sleeplessness as well. The trick is to find a balance. In most cases that means eating a modest meal 3 or 4 hours before you plan to turn in. If you find yourself a bit peckish right before bedtime, try having a banana instead of leftover casserole.

#4: Make Exercise Part of Your Routine

The benefits of exercise cannot be overstated (4). Those benefits include reducing the risk of stroke, reducing the risk of developing heart disease, cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure, energizing your sex life, helping you lose weight and helping you sleep. People who make regular exercise part of their routine tend to sleep better and have fewer problems getting to sleep.

You don’t have to become a gym rat to reap these benefits, including better sleep. All it takes is a half hour of vigorous activity a day. The only thing you need to be mindful of is not exercising too close to bedtime. That’s because vigorous activity will elevate your heart rate and boost your energy, making it harder for you to drift off. So, as is the case with eating, don’t exercise too close to sleep time.

#5: Go to Bed at the Same Time Every Night

Humans are creatures of habit, and that includes sleeping. One of the best ways to ensure a good night’s sleep is to establish a routine of going to bed at the same time every night. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to go to sleep at the same time as everyone else. It just means to find a time that works for you and stick to it.

Some suggest setting an alarm to go off in the evening an hour before bed. This can alert you that it’s time to start wrapping things up. Also, it’s important to wake up at the same time every day, because getting up late or early could disrupt your ability to get to sleep when the appointed hour rolls around.

#6: Beware the Nap

Lots of us love our naps. But while naps can help recharge our batteries and set us up for a productive 2nd half of the day, they can also disrupt our sleep cycle and cause us to lie in bed staring at the ceiling at night.

Ideally, you would want to nap 6 or 7 hours after waking up and to limit your nap to 20 or 30 minutes at most (5). Napping later in the day, or napping for longer than that, could interfere with nighttime sleep. If you are unable to catch a nap in the middle of the day you’re likely better off just powering through to your regular bedtime, rather than trying to “catch up” by napping in the evening.

#7: Try Drinking Some Chamomile Tea

If you tend to lie awake unable to sleep you should consider having a cup of chamomile tea before bedtime. Chamomile tea contains no caffeine and is loaded with things like apigenin (6) that is believed to play a role in relaxing the nervous system. Chamomile has been used for centuries as a means of promoting calmness because it works.

One of the many great things about chamomile tea is that you can get it just about anywhere, not just at the health store. Almost all stores that carry tea carry chamomile tea. It’s an affordable, proven method for helping people wind down before laying down.

#8: Drink Some Warm Milk

If chamomile tea doesn’t interest you try some warm milk. When your grams suggested you drink a glass of warm milk before going to bed she wasn’t just dusting off Ye Olde Book of Folk Remedies. It works. Whole milk contains tryptophan. You know tryptophan (7), it’s that compound in turkey that makes you want to pass out after Thanksgiving dinner.

Tryptophan also happens to be an essential amino acid (8), meaning you need to obtain it from outside sources, and it is a precursor to the hormone melatonin, which, as we discussed above, is essential to maintaining the sleep/wake cycle. So you see, it all fits together. When you drink a glass of warm milk you get the essential amino acid tryptophan, which encourages melatonin production, which encourages proper sleep.

#9: Consider Light Therapy

The human sleep/wake cycle is regulated by the sun. Millions of years of evolution have baked the rhythms of sunrise and sunset into our DNA. Your sleep/wake cycle, also known as your circadian rhythm, influences how you experience different times of the day, how your brain processes information and even regulates hormone production.

Sometimes reinforcing the dark/light component of the sleep/wake cycle with light therapy can help reinforce a person’s circadian rhythms and get them back to sleeping normally. Light therapy typically involves sitting next to a Light Therapy Box that emits a kind of light that mimics natural daylight. After the prescribed number of hours, the Light Therapy Box is turned off, which signals to the brain that night is coming and it’s time to wind down.

#10: Adjust Your Thermostat

If you are having trouble sleeping it may have something to do with the temperature in your room. If it’s too cold or too hot it might be undermining your ability to relax. Or it may be causing you to wake up during the night. In either case, the answer is usually no more complicated than adjusting the thermostat.

Sleep experts will tell you that the ideal temperature for sleeping is in a range from 60-67 Fahrenheit. Anything significantly above or below that temperature will have the effect of interfering with your ability to sleep. If you prefer not to adjust the thermostat you can simply add or subtract blankets until you find your comfort zone.

#11: Eat Sleep-Friendly Foods

Not all food is created equal. Most of us know that. Certain foods promote health and wellbeing while others often taste good but promote heart disease, obesity, diabetes and other problems. The same is also true when it comes to sleep. Some foods promote it, others interfere with it.

Eating greasy, heavy food for dinner, or in the hours leading up to sleep, can cause indigestion and an uncomfortable feeling that interferes with sleep. A better alternative is light, healthy foods such as salad, tuna, sashimi, brown rice, turkey and such. These foods will provide the vitamins and minerals you need without making you feel like you swallowed a basketball.

#12: Get a Better Bed

A new bed may not be cheap, but the cost of not sleeping well is much higher in the long run. If you are having trouble getting to sleep and you have eliminated other potential causes, such as caffeine, diet, and blue light the problem may well be your bed. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you may not need an entirely new bed, but rather just a new mattress.

Many people are of a mind that a bed is a bed and if they’re tired they should be able to sleep on any bed that presents itself. This isn’t always the case. Especially if a person has arthritis or is frequently achy from working out. In that case the solution is not to stop working out, it’s to get a more forgiving mattress that won’t aggravate your tired, aching muscles.

#13: Take a Hot Shower or Bath

When you take a nice hot shower, or indulge in a hot bath before going to bed you will lie down feeling much more relaxed than you would otherwise. In most instances you’ll be able to fall asleep easier and faster, and sleep better. There are a number of reasons for this, including the fact that as you cool off from the hot shower the temperature drop will trigger melatonin production.

You don’t have to spend an hour in the shower, or beat a path to the bath every single night. But if you are feeling particularly stressed out and tense partaking of a hot soak can make a world of difference.

#14: Use Blackout Curtains

Often times even people who live in the suburbs have a streetlight or other light source that shines directly into their bedroom. In some cases the light can be so bright that ordinary curtains aren’t enough. If you find yourself besieged by outside light sources at night try installing blackout curtains.

You’ll often find blackout curtains in hotels because people come and go at all hours there. Jetlagged travelers also often need to spend some time sleeping during the day, and blackout curtains help them do that. So if you’re besieged by lights from the street, do what hotels do and get some high quality blackout curtains.

#15: Don’t Spend Time Worrying About It

Easier said than done, we know. But one thing that almost always makes insomnia worse is lying in bed worrying about how it’s going to impact you the next day. If you’ve been unable to drift off, and time is piling up, don’t just lay there and get progressively more stressed out. Get up and do something to take your mind off the situation.

Grab a book (not an e-book that will shine blue light in your eyes, a real book), make a cup of chamomile tea and snuggle up on the couch. If you happen to fall asleep while you’re reading, so be it. Better to sleep on the couch than not sleep in the bed.

Why Is a Good Night’s Sleep So Important?

As we mentioned at the outset, sleep is not a luxury, it’s an integral aspect of life that is hard-wired into our physiology. We cannot escape the fact that we are children of the earth and beholden to its day/night nature.

Even so, the embarrassing truth is that scientists do not know why we sleep. They only know that we have to. Theories about why we sleep include the brain needing down time to organize information taken in during the previous day. In essence, it’s like defragmenting the hard drive on a computer. If the hard drive is not defragmented on a regular basis it becomes sluggish and unresponsive. Same with our brains. At least that’s one theory.

But theories of why we sleep aside, let’s look at some of the serious issues that are known to arise in people who do not get enough sleep.

Fatigue and lack of energy – This is something everyone has experienced from time to time. When we suffer through a restless night, or our night’s sleep is cut short for some reason beyond our control, we invariably feel listless and fatigued the next day. This fatigue is not only inconvenient and disconcerting, animal studies also confirm (9) that it increases the odds that we will injure ourselves during physical activity.

Cognitive impairment – In the introductory paragraph to this section we alluded to the fact that researchers strongly suspect sleep is critical to proper brain function. One of the things that reinforce those suspicions is the fact that people often become forgetful when they are sleep deprived. And the more acute the sleeplessness the worse the forgetfulness. Insomnia may also contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s (10).

Depression – A few nights of poor sleep are not going to bring on clinical depression, but it is likely to depress your mood and make you less enthusiastic about life in general. Chronic insomnia, on the other hand, may well play a role in the development of depression. Research indicates that up to 3/4 of all people being treated for depression complain of insomnia. What is not entirely clear is whether the insomnia caused the depression, or the depression caused the insomnia (11).

Irritability and moodiness – When people are sleep deprived they also tend to get irritable and impatient. They will snap at others over minor things, express frustration when something doesn’t immediately go their way and engage in heated arguments over just about anything. Fatigued individuals also tend to be moody. They’ll be enthused and engaged one moment and down in the dumps the next. This kind of emotional unpredictability can have a negative effect on both the person’s career and personal life.

Trouble concentrating – When the brain is sleep deprived it simply doesn’t work as effectively as it does when you get enough sleep. The exact reasons for this are not entirely understood but there is no denying it. This problem can be particularly vexing for students who are often up all night cramming for exams. By the time the exam rolls around they are sleep deprived and unable to muster the concentration necessary to perform to their abilities.

Food issues – When people are tired they tend to produce more ghrelin than when they are well-rested. Gherlin (12) is known as the “hunger hormone” because it plays a key role in regulating appetite. For reasons that are not entirely understood, (but may have something to do with fatigue-related cognitive impairment), ghrelin production increases when a person is fatigued. If a person is regularly fatigued this can lead to weight gain and all the problems that come with being overweight.

Increased chance of developing heart disease – The heart is the most important muscle in the body. Like all your muscles it needs sleep to recover and rejuvenate. A lack of sleep weakens the heart muscle and makes it susceptible to developing heart disease (13). This won’t happen overnight. But if you are plagued by insomnia and don’t do something to address it, then the possibility of heart disease is very much in the picture.

High blood pressure – Sleep deprivation is known to increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol (14). As is the case with heart disease, a few nights of insomnia here and there is not going to produce high blood pressure. But if you suffer long term sleeplessness and you do nothing to treat it, hypertension becomes a real possibility.

Diabetes – Most people will not make a connection between being unable to sleep and high blood sugars, and that’s understandable. But there seems to be a direct correlation between the two nonetheless (15). Researchers are not exactly sure of the mechanism that causes some sleep deprived individuals to develop type 2 diabetes, but it may have something to do with overeating caused by an increase in ghrelin production, as we mentioned earlier.

Compromised immune function – Another long-term effect of insomnia is a compromised immune system. Lack of sleep affects the production of T-cells – one of the most crucial types of white blood cells used by the body to fight off infection – as well as the activity of lymphocytes and cytokine production (16). The overall effect is that those suffering chronic insomnia are not able to fight off colds, flu or infections as easily.

Conclusion

If you are suffering from insomnia or a general difficulty getting to and staying asleep the worst thing you can do is nothing. Sleeplessness when left untreated can lead to an array of health problems ranging from the problematic to the potentially life threatening.

In most cases, the above tips should help you get the sleep you need. However, if none of these methods work it may be an indication of a more serious underlying problem. In that case you should seek the help of a medical professional. Whatever you do, don’t ignore your sleep issues.