By: Peter Milobar
Laying awake in the middle of the night- plagued by thoughts about midterms, quizzes, and even when Connect will start- this is the hard reality for many UBC students. However, waking up groggy can lead to sickness and a lack of mental awareness in class. Here are some basic tips on how to have a good night’s rest:
Is this you??
Set a regular sleep schedule: It seems like both the easiest and the hardest task to manage, but going to bed around the same time each night is very important, as well as waking up at around the same time. It is also very important to be smart about napping- there’s nothing I like more than coming back to Totem Park to take a “power” nap and waking up nearly 4 hours later. In young adults, this can actually lead to a level of insomnia, so try and keep the naps short! Also, if you’re like me and living a near werewolf existence try and only change your sleep schedule by 15 to 20 minutes daily instead of all at once.
Increase light exposure during the day: As you may or may not know, melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone controlled by light exposure that helps you regulate sleep. As much as we fight it, increased exposure to light in the morning is actually very helpful; so open those blinds and take off those shades! At the same time boost the production of melatonin by turning off your laptop and phones, giving yourself some time between planning to sleep and having fun Yik-Yakking, and Redditing.
Don’t have this kind of light exposure
Eat right before the night! I know with Magda’s being open so late, it becomes easy to pop in and get the casual chicken strips and feature fries, but eating a big meal at night will take a lot of work for your body to break down. This may keep you up trying to process these rich fatty foods. Similarly drinking too many liquids can result in frequent night trips, especially caffeinated drinks as they act as diuretics; only making trips worse.
Busted!
While it is sometimes hard to keep your bedroom more sleep friendly in residence, as we do everything in these rooms, but what you can do is download some sleep friendly apps to help you out! Some will feature soothing sounds, sleep timers and more! I’ll go through some top three free ones:
- Sleepbot
iPhone and android – free
Find out what’s missing during the dark of the night! Its got it all- sleep cycle alarms, movement tracker, sound recorder, sleep depth log, and with some previous bugs fixed it works better than ever!
- Relax melodies
iPhone and android – free
Relaxing melodies, cheerful scenes, and binaural beats will take the edge off your minds
- Sleep better
iPhone and android – free
While there are some premium costs, the basic app offers a smart alarm with 5 different sounds and has colorful graphs to interpret sleep statistics
Have a great sleep UBC!!
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