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What Is Sleep Hygiene? Why Does It Matter? And How Do We Improve It?

What Is Sleep Hygiene? Why Does It Matter? And How Do We Improve It?

Hygiene is something we’re hopefully all aware of. Personal hygiene. Dental hygiene. Bathroom hygiene. Kitchen hygiene. The list is endless! But have you ever considered your sleep hygiene? For most of us, the answer is “Ehhh, I guess so?” Read on to learn about how better sleep hygiene can improve your life!

What is Sleep Hygiene?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, hygiene is essentially defined as “conditions or practices conducive to maintaining health and preventing disease.” Keeping that definition in mind, sleep hygiene refers to the conditions of your sleep environment and the practices we observe to keep stay well-rested and healthy. To an extent, this is similar to “standard” hygiene as it involves keeping your sleep space clean from germs, allergens and other contaminants. However, it also extends much more broadly to your general sleep habits and behaviors.

Why Does Sleep Hygiene Matter?

Maybe we don’t really think about sleep hygiene because we’re quite literally asleep. However, it is every bit as important as the other types of hygiene in our lives! Poor sleep hygiene can lead to a whole host of diseases and disorders. If you’re not getting enough quality sleep due to a poor sleep environment or bad sleep habits, your risk increases for everything from heart disease, to depression, to diabetes. And that’s not all! It can also cause hormonal imbalance, slowed metabolism, increases in cortisol levels and weight gain. That’s not even counting cognitive issues like memory loss, lack of alertness, increased reaction times, and decreased job performance.

In short, lack of sleep is far worse for the human body than many of us realize. Good sleep hygiene means getting enough sleep, but also getting the right kind of sleep. For instance, you may get 7 or 8 hours of sleep per night. But if you’re tossing and turning or waking up frequently throughout the night, you may still be chronically sleep-deprived.

person sleeping with text functions of sleep

How Can We Improve Sleep Hygiene?

Over the past couple years, we’ve made a concerted effort here on the blog to create an in-depth resource for our readers and customers. We want to be more than North Georgia’s locally-owned mattress superstore. We want to provide real value that will help you sleep better, and live a healthier, happier life!

The good news is that most of our sleep hygiene woes are fixable with a few small lifestyle changes and/or changes to our sleep environment. It really could be as simple as a problem with your circadian rhythm, too much screen time or caffeine before bed, allergens in the bedroom air, or an old pillow. To diagnose exactly what parts of your sleep hygiene could use a little work, we recommend reading up on a few of our past articles:

Woodstock Furniture & Mattress Outlet: Metro Atlanta’s Better Sleep Solution Since 1988

Craving even more information on how to sleep better? Would you like to discover and address the not-so-obvious factors that negatively impact the quality of your sleep? If so, be sure to read our 4-part Sleep Factors series and click on the Sleep Series category on our blog for even more sleep tips. As always, if you’ve got other sleep questions we haven’t addressed, we’d love to hear them! Coming soon, join us for a brand new series about common sleep disorders and how Woodstock Furniture & Mattress Outlet may be able to help!

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