6 Natural Tips To Help You Fall Asleep Easier
Have trouble falling asleep? Here's some tips to help.
Trying to fall asleep can sometimes seem like the hardest thing to do. You just lay there, eyes closed, hoping that you'll drift off to dreamland. I've been there, you've been there, we all have been there. In fact, just last night I was having the toughest time falling asleep. I felt tired, but once I closed my eyes, my mind started to race. If you suffer from this, here are five tips to help you fall asleep.
1. Don't Nap During The Day.
I know that lots of people love naps, but personally, I'm not a huge fan. While a nap during the afternoon sounds tempting, they mess with your internal clock and sleep schedule, and you'll be staying up a lot longer than you'd like at night. But, if you just simply can't resist a nap, take a short, power nap that's 30 minutes to an hour. That way you won't enter REM sleep, which is the deep sleep stage of the sleep cycle.
2. Try Exercising.
While exercising might not be the first thing that you think of when thinking about falling asleep, it will help your body sleep deeper at night. It will tire you out, and you'll find that you can fall asleep faster because your body needs to regenerate more.
3. Get Comfy.
I know that this one seems like a no brainer, but I find that once I'm in a comfortable position in my bed, I can fall asleep fast. Goodbye stress, hello dreamland.
4. Get On A Schedule.
Getting on a sleep schedule will help your body release the sleep hormone, making you tired. That help you fall asleep and you'll find yourself more refreshed in the morning. Then eat breakfast as soon as you wake up, which will help your body become more adapt to a schedule. Also, getting seven to nine hours of sleep is what is recommended for adults by healthline.com, and that will help your body get used to a sleep schedule as well.
5. Stop Eating At Least Two Hours Before Bed.
Eating right before bed doesn't help you fall asleep. Your body needs time to digest the food and if you eat right before falling asleep, you might wake up in the middle of the night with stomach cramps, and that's no fun.
6. If All Else Fails, Take Melatonin.
Take this one with caution, you can build a tolerance to it. While this can help you fall asleep fast, it's not something to be done every night. This is just an if-all-else-fails sort of tip, and not something to become dependent on.
These are the tips that I follow when just laying in my bed isn't working for me. Hopefully, they work for you, and you can finally get that good night of sleep you deserve.
Baseball May Be Dying, But It Certainly Is NOT A Boring Sport To Watch
There is something so nostalgic about being at the ballpark on a summer day with your friends or family. With its rich history, baseball ties generations and brings people together.
In my house, being a baseball enthusiast is not optional. You fall asleep once the game ends with the last out and you wake up to the highlights on MLB Network at breakfast the next morning. Vacations are typically a road trip of sorts to whichever stadium our team is playing at that week. Watching baseball has been the one activity that brings my family together without fail. So undoubtedly, I will argue that baseball is one of the best sports out there, and the common response of, "baseball is such a boring sport," is a complete misconception.
While I can see where this opinion is coming from, it's impossible to ignore the fact that baseball is becoming steadily less popular among younger generations. The commissioner thinks that altering a tried and true tradition, by knocking a few minutes off the game taking away intentional walk pitches and limiting pitchers mound visits, will re-engage future generations. I don't agree with these changes because getting to the heart of the issue stems from disproving the common points that non-baseball fans try to make.
"The game is sooo long."
The average MLB game time this past season was three hours and five minutes, which is only one minute longer than the average football game from the 2017 NFL season. People have no problem with NFL games holding their attention spans. Some would argue that this is because the game is not as fast paced as basketball or football, which brings me to the next complaint.
"Nothing even happens."
If by nothing happens you mean that there is not constant movement around the court or field like in basketball, football, or soccer, then I guess this is a valid statement. But there is so much that goes on between pitches that leaves room for strategy and discussion between viewers. Baseball lends itself to constant thinking between the players, managers, and fans. The many intricacies and tension throughout the entire game make baseball the type of sport that is more enjoyable the more you know about it.
"It's slow paced."
I guess you could argue that baseball lacks the constant movement up and down the court or field that other sports boast, but baseball makes up for this aspect in so many ways. Baseball doesn't have a salary cap which means that you have both be big city, money spending, free agent buying teams as well as low market teams that build their farm systems. You never have the same teams consistently winning or the same matchup like the NBA. In basketball, you need star players to win. Football, you need a solid quarterback and to a certain extent, you need star players in the same way that you do in basketball. There are so many MLB teams that rise to be playoff contenders from nothing within a few seasons, making for a dynamic league and playoff picture every single year. And as far as the pace of the game itself, I can see how at a glance other sports would seem to hold an onlooker's attention for longer. But if you look at the number of commercial breaks the NFL has nowadays between timeouts, penalties, kickoffs, and punt returns, the amount of time you spend watching the action part of the game itself is not too different from baseball.
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My last, probably most overused, but also the most important point is the fact that no other sport can hold the title "America's Pastime." There is a tradition and a history behind baseball that's more deeply rooted in America's history than any other sport. There is something so nostalgic about being at the ballpark on a summer day with your friends or family. With its rich history, baseball ties generations and brings people together. Hopefully, this tradition will remain deeply rooted in American culture, so that others can experience the magic that being raised in a baseball family brought me.