Do you need to sleep bet­ter? Not get­ting enough sleep is becom­ing epi­demic in our fast-paced world. Peo­ple are pay­ing the price with grumpy and irri­ta­ble atti­tudes and dif­fi­culty remem­ber­ing things. If you don’t get enough sleep you incur a “sleep debt” that may make you sleepy in the day­time when you should be wide awake and alert. You may feel tired and depressed.

It can even be dan­ger­ous as your body tries to catch up on missed sleep. Your judg­ment can be impaired and your reac­tion time slowed. Not enough sleep over time weak­ens your immune sys­tem, mak­ing you sus­cep­ti­ble to colds and flu. There is grow­ing evi­dence that a lack of sleep increases your risk of devel­op­ing diabetes.

If you are a dia­betic, not get­ting enough sleep has added detri­ments to your health. Your blood sug­ars will fluc­tu­ate more dur­ing the night, result­ing in poorer A1C aver­ages that are more dif­fi­cult to cor­rect or con­trol. Trou­ble sleep­ing affects your gen­eral atti­tude, which is vital to your daily dia­betes treatment.

How much sleep should you get? It varies from per­son to per­son. Your age and life cir­cum­stances, stress, your phys­i­cal con­di­tion and so on affect how much sleep you need. Gen­er­ally speak­ing, you should have from seven to nine hours of sleep each night. You’ll know you’re not get­ting enough sleep if you expe­ri­ence the grumpi­ness and sleepi­ness of “sleep debt” dur­ing the day.

Here are some ways to fall asleep. Some or all of them may help you to sleep bet­ter through the night.

• Your Bed­room Is For Sleeping

Your bed­room should not be your home office if you can pos­si­bly help it. It should not be your TV-watching room or com­puter room. Leave all these things for other areas of your home.

For a good night’s sleep the bed­room should be dark and quiet. Use black­out drapes or cur­tains to keep the light out. Place dim night lights where you’ll need them should you have to get up dur­ing the night to use the bath­room. Do not turn on the light in the bath­room until morn­ing. Use the night light at night.

Keep the bed­room cool, between 60 and 70 degrees, and ven­ti­lated. Use a fan if nec­es­sary to keep the air mov­ing, but not blow­ing across the bed. If the air is dry, use a humid­i­fier as well.

Some peo­ple fall asleep bet­ter with some back­ground sound. “Sound”, not noise. Some relax­ing music set with a timer (set to an hour or less) may help. A sound machine with sounds of a water­fall or rain or “white noise” can help some peo­ple sleep bet­ter dur­ing the night.

• Your Bed Is For Sleeping

Don’t work in bed, don’t watch TV in bed, don’t argue with your spouse in bed. Use your bed only for sleep and inti­macy, noth­ing else.

Make sure you use a mat­tress that is large enough for free­dom of move­ment and firm or soft enough (depend­ing on your needs). You can use a two to four inch foam top­per to make it softer — get the “con­tour mem­ory” type, not the sponge rub­ber type. Use com­fort­able sheets that are not rough or scratchy. A higher count of thread such as 800 count is bet­ter. Use flan­nel or even fleece sheets dur­ing win­ter months. Use lay­ered blan­kets as nec­es­sary, in var­i­ous thick­nesses and weights, again accord­ing to your pref­er­ences and how well you sleep.

Good pil­lows are mostly a mat­ter of what you pre­fer. It’s a good idea to have two pil­lows, a soft one where you will rest your head and a firmer one if needed for sup­port. Cover your pil­lows with a soft pil­low case that won’t scratch or irritate.

You will prob­a­bly want a bed table. Use a lamp with no higher than a 40-watt bulb. If you have an elec­tric clock or clock radio turn the light to the dimmest set­ting. It’s harder to sleep if you dread the sud­den jolt of a jar­ring alarm. Any alarm that you have to wake you in the morn­ing should not be blar­ing or rude, but beep with grad­ual increases in volume.

Other things on your bed table might be a phone and a half-full glass of water (just out of reach of acci­dents). You may also want some antacids and for the dia­betic, a glu­cose test kit along with some glu­cose tablets or Smar­ties ®. Another item might be some light read­ing mate­r­ial — but noth­ing heavy or stimulating.

• Pre­pare Your­self for Sleeping

To fall asleep quickly and sleep bet­ter through the night, here are a few sim­ple do’s and don’ts.

Do try to make bed­time the same every night. Rou­tine is good for your bio­log­i­cal “sleep clock”.

Limit nap time dur­ing the day to half an hour or less. A brief nap can be a pick-me-up, but too long of a nap will rob you of a good night’s qual­ity sleep.

Don’t drink an alco­hol “night­cap”. It may help you fall asleep but it will make your sleep rest­less. Don’t drink any caf­feine prod­ucts after lunch — cof­fee, cola, etc. — for obvi­ous reasons.

Don’t go to bed on a full stom­ach. Din­ner should be at least two hours before bed­time. A light snack may help you sleep, how­ever, such as half a turkey sand­wich or a peanut but­ter sand­wich or a glass of warm milk.

Don’t take your con­cerns about tomor­row with you to bed. If you need to remem­ber a to-do list or some­thing impor­tant, write it down so you can for­get about it dur­ing the night and pick it up the next day where you left off.

Do take a warm bath. Scented bath oil or bub­bles might also help you relax. Make sure the bath­room is warm, with a rug and a soft warm towel nearby when you get out.

Do some stretch­ing exer­cises before bed. Don’t do stren­u­ous exer­cis­ing that will step up your heart rate or metab­o­lism, just stretch to increase blood flow and help your mus­cles relax.

If you are dia­betic, check your blood sugar and take any med­ica­tions as directed by your doc­tor. Visit the bath­room before you get in bed.

Do get up and out of bed if you can’t sleep. The bed is for sleep­ing, not lay­ing there awake. Read some light mate­r­ial or have a light snack. If it’s four or five o’clock in the morn­ing, stay up for the day. You’ve prob­a­bly had enough sleep for that night.

Do get up at the same time every morn­ing, even on the week­ends. Turn on the lights when you get up. Your body uses light and dark as guides for your “sleep clock”. Set­ting a rou­tine will help your body know when it’s time to go to sleep and when it’s time to get up.

Finally, if these guide­lines don’t help, do not rely on over-the-counter reme­dies. See your doc­tor about sleep aids and treat­ments for insomnia.

Do you have any sug­ges­tions or hints for a good night’s sleep? I’d like to hear about them. Leave a comment!

The Dia­betes Book That Could Save Your Life!