Caffeine Why stimulants can play havoc with your sleep cycle? Your morning coffee works for a reason. Caffeine stimulates the central nervous system brain and spinal chord, increasing your metabolic rate, blood pressure, heart rate and breathing levels. It also blocks the effects of adenosine, a natural sedative found in the brain which builds up during the day and triggers the adrenal glands to produce the stimulating hormone adrenaline. It works fast, too caffeine, which is found in coffee, tea, cola, and chocolate, is absorbed in only 15-30 minutes but its effects can last longer than four hours. No wonder caffeine makes it more difficult to get sleep and reduces the quality of sleep. Studies show that having a caffeinated drink at night makes you wake up more often and it’s particularly thought to reduce deep sleep and REM sleep. That said, one the best sleepers I know can take a double espressos ten minutes before sleep and more have no trouble dropping off. It seems some people are better at metabolizing caffeine, maybe because they’re used to consuming more.

Cutting Down

=> Limit yourself to two cups of coffee or three or four of tea, but don’t have them too late in the day.

=> If you’re relaying on coffee to give you energy, go for snacks such as banana, dried fruit or a cereal bar, which will do the trick just as well.

=> Replace one of your daily teas or coffees with an alternative. Choose from herbal tea, milk shake, fruit juice, smoothie or even decaffeinated tea or coffee.

Alcohol

If you’ve a few drink, you’ve not likely to have much more trouble getting to sleep probably on the same stairs on the way up to bed. But you’ll probably wake up again as alcohol has just as disruptive an effect on sleep as caffeine. Although it’s sedative, it causes the release of adrenaline and block tryptophan, which helps the body make the calming brain chemical serotonin which is vital for sleep. One unit of alcohol which is half a pint of beer, one small glass wine takes about one hour to metabolize. So if you drink three glasses of wine at 10pm, expect you sleep to be disrupted from around 1am. Again some people metabolize it faster than others.

Cutting Down

=> Have at least two drink free days a week.

=> Don’t drink more than two units of alcohol per day if you’re women, three units if you’re a man.

=> Alternate an alcoholic drink with a non-alcoholic one such as non-alcoholic beer, water or soft drink.

=> Sip your drink slowly so it lasts longer.

=> Try to eat before you go drinking since it will help reduce the amount of alcohol absorbed by your body.

Nicotine

The increased risk of cancer and heart disease not a good enough reason to make you give up smoking? Well, this one might work. The average smoker takes twice as long as fall asleep as a non smoker and sleeps 30 minutes less. You may feel relaxed after having a cigarette, but it’s probably because you’ve satisfied the craving rather the release of adrenaline. Like alcohol, once metabolized, nicotine can wake you up. Nicotine can cause difficulty falling asleep, problems waking in the morning and may also cause nightmare.

Cutting Down

=> If you’re women, don’t pack it in the second half of your menstrual cycle, through. Researchers have found that you’re much more likely to succeed if you do it the first half because nicotine withdrawal symptoms like depression, anxiety and irritability.

=> If you can use simply willpower, that’s great. Otherwise there’s host of options from nicotine patches and self help manuals to acupuncture and hypnotherapy. Nope of these will work unless you really want to give up, though.

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