What to Do When You Can’t Sleep

What to Do When You Can’t Sleep

We’ve all been here at one time or another. You’ve woken up from what was sure to be a wonderful night’s sleep and, no matter how hard you try, you can’t fall back into it. Believe it or not, trying to get back to sleep may actually be what is keeping you awake. Keep reading to find out why that is and learn a few useful tips for how to stay asleep all night.

What Are Some of the Reasons You Can’t Stay Asleep?

There are quite a few things that can keep you from being able to sleep through the night. Between what you do while you’re awake and how your bedroom is set up, it can be difficult to narrow down what the cause of your poor sleep may be. To help, here are some of the most common reasons for not being able to stay asleep according to WebMD:

  • A disruptive environment: Your bedroom needs to be your sleep sanctuary. It should only be used for sleeping or bedroom-related activities and should be dark, cool, and quiet when you’re ready for bed. If quiet isn’t working for you or you’re just lying there with no result, try ambient noise to help you drift off more easily.
  • An unhealthy lifestyle: Things like your diet, smoking and drinking habits, and exercise habits can all have an effect on the quality of your sleep. By eating better, smoking and drinking less, and exercising more, you can improve your sleep along with your overall wellness.
  • Discomfort: Muscle soreness can make basically any sleeping position uncomfortable no matter how tired you are. As a result, it can wake you up even if you thought you had finally found some comfort.
  • Sleep conditions: Sometimes the cause of bad sleep can be an underlying sleep condition. You’ll want to speak to a doctor to learn more about these.

How to Fall Asleep and Stay Asleep All Night

Now that you know what may causing you to wake up in the middle of the night, let’s go over some of the best things to do to help you fall back asleep and stay asleep:

  1. Practice controlled breathing: Slow, controlled, and deliberate breathing is one of the best ways to calm your mind and relieve stress. One of the best methods of controlled breathing is the 4-7-8 method. 

This method requires you to hold your tongue against the bottom of your top two teeth while breathing in through your nose for 4 seconds, holding for 7 seconds, and then exhaling through your mouth and past your tongue for 8 seconds (this should make a whooshing sound).

  1. Meditate: Meditating and controlled breathing go hand in hand. In fact, meditation is basically just an extension of controlled breathing with the addition of “a non-judgmental focus on the present moment.” Meditation promotes sleep by forcing you to focus on the here and now rather than the stuff that stresses you out.
  2. Visualize something soothing: Another great way to get back to sleep quickly is to close your eyes and direct a movie in your mind centered around something peaceful. 

Imagining an empty, white-sand beach with gently crashing waves or a trickling stream in the middle of a misty forest can help you relax and forget about what has been stressing you out. Combining your visualizations with ambient noise or guided sleepcasts can be an even more effective way to get yourself back to sleep. 

  1. Read a book: Swapping your phone, tablet, or TV out for a book can help you avoid blue light, sleep’s modern enemy, and relax your body until you gradually drift off.
  2. Count sheep: The tried and true method of counting sheep has survived the test of time simply because it works. Whether by inducing sleep through boredom or by getting your mind off of what you’ve been thinking about, we doubt you’ll even get close to 100 of whatever you’re counting.
  3. Try CBD: CBD products help you get to sleep and stay asleep while also reducing exercise-induced inflammation that can lead to uncomfortable muscle soreness. CBD has also been shown to provide a sense of calm for focus. Keep reading to learn more about how CBD may be able to help you get back to sleep.

How Can CBD Help Improve Your Sleep Cycles?

CBD has been shown to help improve sleep cycles by targeting the things that keep you up at night. For example, it’s ability to support a sense of calm can help temporarily rid your mind of stress so that you can focus on what you really want to do: get to sleep. As we said above, CBD can also reduce exercise-induced inflammation that can lead to muscle soreness which can keep you from getting a quality night’s sleep. 

Sleep Better with Charlotte’s WebTM CBD Gummies for Sleep

While all CBD products can make claims that they help with sleep, there are none better designed to do just that than Charlotte’s Web Sleep Gummies. These great-tasting gummies combine the therapeutic benefits of CBD with the sleep provoking benefits of melatonin to get you to sleep fast and help you stay asleep for a more restful night. 

Takeaway

Whether it’s caused by an unhealthy lifestyle or a bad sleep environment, waking up in the middle of the night just plain sucks. What makes it worse is when you simply can’t get back to sleep no matter what you try. Understanding the underlying causes of your sleep problems is the first step in getting back to a restful night’s sleep. Once that’s done, you can use one or a combination of the techniques above to set you up for and get you back to the best sleep possible.

To learn more about how to improve your sleep, read our blog posts on how to create a sleep routine and how to fix your sleep schedule. You can also check out our full line of CBD products or contact us directly.