Certain types of anxiety are part and parcel of life. It is the by-product of living in a chaotic world. This anxiety helps you to be aware of any impending danger and motivates you to stay prepared and go for calculative risks.
But if the anxiety becomes a daily struggle then it is high time that you start acting on it, prior to it starting to snowball. The anxiety that remains unchecked can wreak havoc on the quality of your life and it can also give you sleepless nights.
Which One Comes First- Sleeplessness or Anxiety?
Researchers have found that the relationship between the anxiety and the sleep issues is bidirectional. This means that the anxiety can lead to disruption of your sleep and the sleep problems can cause anxiety. The sleep issues just like anxiety can impact upon how you operate mentally, emotionally and physically.
As the sleep and anxiety are closely related with one and another, you must not ignore any of them and take precautions if you suffer from any one of them. Moreover, the sleep issues can make you less attentive and can make miss your work and also injure yourself.
Added to that, you can also develop health conditions like hypertension, heart attack, diabetes and stroke. If you want to treat your sleep problems, then it is a must that you also address your anxiety problems.
Here are some of ways to stop your anxiety. Just take a look.
- Set Aside Some Time in the Day for Worrying – In the daytime, if you start worrying, there can be some coping mechanisms to distract yourself like calling up a friend or turning on your favourite TV show. But at night when we sleep, there is hardly any distraction and our mind drifts to those thoughts. So the sleep doctors suggest that you should set aside a specific time in the day to just sit and think about your stressors. You can write down those thoughts and also find potential solutions regarding how you can deal with them. Though it may sound paradoxical, but this can actually free up your mind and help you to sleep.
- Stay Active – Regular exercise can be great for your emotional and physical health. Regular exercise can work as effectively as that of medications. Added to that, you should also know that it is not a momentary fix. In fact, you can experience anxiety-relief for hours after the work-up.
- Limit the Alcohol and Caffeine Consumption– Drinking a great amount of alcohol and caffeine, especially, too late at night, can enhance the anxiety and limit the sleep. If you consume the alcohol close to the bedtime it can also enhance your heart rate and keep you awake for hours. You should drink plenty of water through the day but avoid drinking too much before night-time. This is because the trips to the bathroom can keep you alert and anxious for a long time.
- Eat a Healthy Diet – Mood changes can be triggered in some people by dehydration, low blood sugar levels, chemical in processed foods like preservatives, artificial colourings and flavourings and high-sugar diet. You should check the eating habits, if your anxiety enhances after eating. Do away with processed foods, stay hydrated and eat a healthy diet that is enriched with fruits, vegetables, complex carbohydrates and lean proteins.
- Limit the Use of Technology – Technology does not go well with easy sleep and this includes from TVs to phones. The scrolling through the social media in the bed and squeezing in just one more episode of your favourite television series can seem innocuous, but they are quite harmful. These actually stimulate the mind which is the exact opposite of what you need at the time when you are trying to fall asleep. You can switch on the airplane mode in your phone and switch off the TV and keep yourself away from any types of screens if you want to fall asleep faster.
- Meditate – The main goal of meditation is to do away with the chaotic thoughts from the mind and replace them with the sense of mindfulness or calm of the current time. Meditation can help in relieving anxiety and stress. Research shows that just half-an-hour of meditation can calm your mind and act as an anti-depressant.
The above are some of the things that you can try for controlling your anxiety prior to sleeping. If these don’t work, then you should consult with the top sleep specialist Long Island Ny who can help you detect the real problem behind your sleepless nights and treat it so that you can sleep peacefully at night.
