【英文原文】

 

Eight Ways to Good Sleep

 

1．Establish a regular bedtime and rising time, and stick to them. A regular bedtime and rising time can help you stabilize your internal clocks. Select a bedtime that’s good and natural for you. A clue that you’re getting to bed at a good hour is a lack of daytime sleepiness. Don’t change your bedtime and rising time on weekends. Reprogramming your sleep rhythms for two days doesn’t do much to help you erase sleep debt, and it throws off your sleep wake cycles just in time for a bad case of Sunday-night insomnia.

2． Avoid physical and mental stimulation just before sleep. Physical exertion too close to bedtime energizes your body’s systems by stimulation the release of adrenaline. Mental stimulation includes any activity that taxes your mind or gets your thoughts racing, such as watching an action-packed TV show. Similarly, planning tomorrow’s schedule, or reading a chapter from a convoluted murder mystery moments before turning out the light does not give you adequate time to disengage from mental activity before trying to sleep.

3．Keep the bedroom for sleeping only. If you use your bedroom as a place to eat, watch TV, read, talk on the phone, or discuss weighty matters with your partner, break that habit to get better sleep. Sleep therapists insist that if our minds associate any functions other than sleep with the bedroom, we‘re asking for sleep problems.

4． Develop sleep rituals. Sleep rituals run the gamut , from taking the garbage out to watching a certain news program, or reading a book（but not a murder mystery）.

5． Determine how many hours you should be sleeping. To determine your ideal length of sleep, factor in these considerations：（１）how many hours you slept on average as a child, （２）how many hours you slept each night on average before your insomnia began, （３）how many hours’ sleep you require to awake naturally（when you have not been overtired）without an alarm set, and（４）how many hours you must sleep so as not to experience daytime sleepiness.

6. Don’t go to bed too early. Since your body normally lets you sleep only the number of hours it needs, if you’re going to bed too early, you will likely awake too early as well.

7. Avoid naps, unless. . . Four out of five people with insomnia sleep better at night without naps. If you’re a committed napper, you can skip all naps for a week. If you feel better and sleep better, then drop them.

8.Take a warm bath within two hours of bedtime. A twenty-minute warm, soaking bath at a temperature of about 100～102F not only is a great relaxer at day’s end, but also raises your core body temperature by several degrees. The ensuing drop in body temperature will naturally initiate drowsiness and sleep.