5 Ideas For Extending Your Deep Sleep
By: SleepScore Labs
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August 21st, 2018
Does it feel like your body is dragging, despite getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep at night? It might mean you’re missing out on precious deep sleep. Deep sleep is the sleep stage responsible for healing and repairing your body, replenishing cells and revitalizing your immune system, and it’s important we get enough of it to feel our best each day.
You can try some of these ideas and see if they help improve your deep sleep for a more energized tomorrow!
1. Keep Your Diet Sleep-Friendly
The American Sleep Association found that a low carbohydrate diet promotes an increase in deep sleep time when compared to those who ate a mixed diet.
2. Try Pink Noise
A recent study by Northwestern Medicine found that pink noise, like waves lapping on a beach or trees rustling in the wind, increased time spent in deep sleep. There are some great sound machines that feature all varieties of sounds, including pink noise.
3. Get the Right Amount of Exercise
The National Institutes of Health recommend about thirty minutes of exercise per day, 5 days per week. Try for the 30-minute average per day of whatever you enjoy doing most. To find the energy you need to exercise each day requires good sleep. Check out these sleep products tested and scored by sleep experts to help you feel more energy!
4. Listen to ASMR Videos
Have you heard of ASMR? A 2015 study defined it as, “Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, in which individuals experience a tingling, static-like sensation across the scalp, back of the neck and at times further areas in response to specific triggering audio and visual stimuli.” This study found that 82% of respondents used ASMR to help them sleep, and 70% used it for stress management. There are a huge variety of ASMR vloggers out there, and each caters to specific ASMR “triggers.” Pull up YouTube and search “ASMR” to see if one of these videos works for you.
5. Hypnosis Before Bed
A 2014 study out of the University of Fribourg in Switzerland found that subjects who listened to sleep-promoting audio recordings containing hypnotic suggestion spent as much as 80 percent more time in deep sleep compared to those who did not listen to the recordings. There are both free and paid audio resources that lean toward the hypnotic persuasion and using one may help with your deep sleep debt.