The Top 12 Ways to Get a Great Night's Sleep

If you've been having trouble thinking straight, putting on pounds, or if you've had a road rage incident lately, the culprit might just be lack of sleep. 

According to a study conducted by the University of Chicago Medical Center in 1999. Sleep deprivation drastically affects your body's ability to metabolize glucose, leading to symptoms that mimic early-stage diabetes.

Inadequate sleep is also the cause of far too many vehicle accidents because your brain's frontal cortex relies on sleep to function effectively.

Insufficient rest adversely affects the frontal cortex's ability to control speech, access memory, and solve problems, whether those problems are lane changes or complex issues at work.

What's truly amazing is lack of sufficient sleep's effect on physical energy.  Healthy people who start skimping on sleep quickly show symptoms of age and early diabetes as their glucose metabolism falls by up to forty percent.  Clearly, this can cause weight gain.

If you've ever felt twenty years older as you dragged through the day, you probably didn't sleep well.

When healthy people are allowed to get sufficient sleep (seven to nine hours for most adults), these physical reactions disappear and they get their energy back.  

Gerry Morton, CEO of EnergyFirst, has these 12 suggestions for getting a great night's sleep:

1. Avoid late-night snacks, particularly if they're high in sugars and starches. They raise your blood sugar levels, making it hard to get to sleep. Later in the night, those levels will fall, which may keep you up.
2. DO eat a high-protein snack several hours before you go to bed. High-protein snacks like an ounce of low-fat cheese or a slice of deli turkey provide the L-tryptophan you need to produce melatonin and serotonin.
3. With your high-protein snack, eat one small piece of fruit such as half an apple or a small handful of berries.  Fruit sugar helps the tryptophan cross the blood-brain barrier
4. Make your bedroom as dark as possible at night.  Even a little light creeping into the room can throw off your circadian rhythm and your pineal gland's production of melatonin and serotonin—which help you sleep. This applies to the bathroom, too…use a night-light.
5. Don't watch TV before bedtime. It stimulates your brain, thus making it hard for you to fall asleep. It also disrupts your pineal gland due to the bright lights.
6. Wear socks to bed. Studies have shown that your feet have the poorest circulation in your body and thus get cold first.  Keeping your feet warm reduces wake-ups in the middle of the night.
7. Keep your bedroom no warmer than 70-72.  Most people keep their homes too warm for good sleeping, particularly the upstairs bedroom.
8. Avoid caffeine not just in the evening, but anytime after lunch. New studies show that some people don't metabolize caffeine well and it stays active longer…keeping you awake at night. Be alert to hidden sources of caffeine in sodas, teas and diet pills.
9. Treat yourself to a hot soak in the tub or a hot shower before bed. When you raise your body temperature in the late evening, it falls at bedtime and that helps you sleep.
10. Move the alarm clock so that you can't see it. Waking up and seeing “2:31”, or “4:25” stresses you.
11. Don't eat foods you're sensitive to for dinner. Common culprits include dairy and wheat products because they affect sleep, sometimes causing apnea, excess congestion, gastrointestinal upset, and gas.

 Use your bed only for sleeping and sex. Don't work or watch TV in bed because then you won't associate it with rest and pleasure.