Many people struggle with insomnia night after night. They try every method known to improve their chances of sleep, from buying special herbal pillows to special drinks to sleep-inducing medication, but still find it hard to fall asleep. If you are among those people, you know how frustrating it is to have to toss and turn every night without knowing when sleep would come, or if it would come at all. You listen to every sound in the night, you hear your partner snoring away, but there you are, still wide awake. Nobody can understand how heavy it feels not to be able to sleep soundly. And you worry about getting cranky the next day because of lack of sleep! How could you get rid of your insomnia?
Do you know that there is a natural way to improve the way you sleep? Exercise is very popular for achieving many goals, such as losing weight, improving emotional health, and the like. Do you know it can also help you sleep more soundly at night? Yes, I know it probably sounds like a contradiction, because after all, exercise hardly makes you feel relaxed, as it tends to energize your cells. But there are ways in which it can actually be helpful for improving your sleep.
The first main way that exercise helps you sleep better is that it gets your blood pumping and your muscles moving. Sometimes, people have trouble falling asleep at night because they have been too inactive during the day. Perhaps they haven't exactly taken long naps, but their muscles feel too sluggish that the nighttime doesn't feel too different from the day. You see this happening in infants, when they haven't spent all their energy before you put them down to sleep, they tend to cry to exhaust all their extra energy. For adults, it may not be that obvious, but when you are highly inactive, either you sleep all day or you have trouble sleeping at night from a feeling of restlessness. Instead, exercising will work your muscles enough for them to be relaxed afterward, and the relaxed mode is part of what helps you sleep better.
Secondly, exercise improves your overall health, making sleep a natural cycle-ender for your busy day. For example, when your heart and lungs work more efficiently, sleep will no longer be a problem. Also, when your metabolism rates improve, it will also be faster for your body to adjust its acceptance of meals and getting into relaxed mode during bedtime. In general, the routine of having exercise also prepares your body for that nighttime recharge session. It becomes more precious not only to you psychologically, but also for your muscles, physically. The natural thing that happens next is that you would find yourself dozing off without even realizing it.
Lastly, exercise improves your emotional health by releasing endorphins, hormones that trigger happy feelings. Many people who can't fall asleep easily spend their time worrying about some things and stressing about others. No wonder they can't sleep! Perhaps this is the reason why counting sheep has been popularized as a way to fall asleep. The method makes you focus on something brainless so that you won't be thinking of other, more worrisome things. Exercise gets your mind off things at the time you're doing it, but even at nighttime, the effects of the happy hormones may still leave its impact. After all, compared to prior days when you're stressed the whole day, this time you get a time period of feeling happy. The end of the day will see you more relaxed to face your pillow and win the battle against sleeplessness.
It's a good thing there is still a natural way to combat sleeplessness in the form of exercise. No longer would we need to depend on medication to induce sleep, we can simply get active and find ourselves nodding off at the exact time we need. Of course, a side note would be not to overdo it, because if you over-exhaust yourself, the results may be opposite of what you intended. Moderation is a safe key, and a good one at that, in helping you hit the sack with more effective results!
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