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The signals your brain needs to sleep better in quarantine
It is normal to find it difficult to fall asleep during confinement, but maintaining good sleep hygiene is not as difficult as it sounds.
If there are those who already sleep badly, it may be that since the quarantine caused by the coronavirus crisis began, they have not slept. Also, those who already suffer normally the ailments of a bad rest are now accompanied by many others who, after seeing their daily routine broken, find Sleeping problems.
Sleeping well is almost an art that takes a lot to master. And although it is always important establish healthy routines in order to have good sleep hygiene, during confinement it is imperative. We must strive, from the moment we wake up, to enjoy a good night’s sleep. The neuroscientist at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), Diego Redolar, explains that, during quarantine, there are two profiles of people who may find it difficult to sleep. On the one hand, it explains that a more minority group may have trouble falling asleep due to a high level of anxiety. “When we find ourselves in a situation of uncertainty like this, if we feel a lack of control, this generates anxiety and consequently affects the quality of our sleep, finding problems to reconcile it or experiencing frequent awakenings,” says the expert. On the other hand, he explains that the bulk of the population may experience difficulties sleeping due to the change from our daily routines: “The lack of exposure to light, physical exercise and social relationships mean that our body does not find the signals it needs to regulate our biological rhythms.”
A healthy routine
Javier Albares, medical director of the Sleep Unit of the Teknon Medical Center in Barcelona and a member of the SES, explains that by losing the “External synchronizers”Like the aforementioned exposure to light or decreased physical movement, our body has difficulty repeating the 24-hour cycle in which it alternates between wakefulness and sleep. But, although this is altered by confinement, it assures that even though we do not have the ideal conditions, we can get quite close to replicating them.
Diego Redolar explains that we have various tools to adjust our current conditions to the ones we had before starting the quarantine. Write down first the importance of maintaining a routine and recommends doing certain things always at the same time. “Setting the alarm clock, making the bed, not staying in pajamas … these are small actions of critical importance for our nervous system, since this is the way to send signals”, he says.
For his part, Javier Albares talks about the importance of managing light and darkness: “If before confinement we already lived with a lack of light, now we need more,” he says and therefore urges us to, when we get up, “have the more natural light at home ». To do this, he recommends us raise the blinds well, to live in the brightest part of the house and, to get used to going out to the balcony or looking out the window for a while “so that the brain realizes that it is daytime and we activate”.
Daily physical exercise
Both experts highlight the importance of physical exercise at this time. Albares recommends exercising, if possible, in the morning and points out that the ideal thing would be to be able to do it in a garden or terrace. Also, it recommends that during the day we get up from time to time and let’s walk around the house for five or ten minutes. “It is difficult to move as before, but sedentary life must be minimized,” he points out.
For his part, the UOC neuroscientist talks about the virtues of all the «online actions» to do physical exercise from home that we find these days on social networks. “There are complete routines, even meditation or yoga. The idea would be to do something every day, “he explains.
Taking care of the “space of our bedroom” is another of the necessary pillars to achieve a pleasant rest. Diego Redolar first comments on the importance of keeping the room orderly. “By maintaining order we are motivating a routine, which is always beneficial,” he says, adding that we must ventilate the room well every day, since it is important to “have the correct amount of oxygen”; if we don’t have one good ventilation, in some way it can affect the quality of our sleep.
Delimit the bedroom
On the other hand, it is very important to allocate the bedroom to a single function, its main function: sleeping. That is why the expert recommends not working there, as well as, if before going to sleep we go, for example, to read, do it in the living room and move to the room once we go to sleep. Of course, both experts recall the importance of avoiding the use of screens before going to bed, since they give off a blue light that sends activation signals to our brain.
Likewise, Javier Albares indicates that, after dinner, we can spend some time doing mindfulness, meditation or to reading; “Activities that relax us.” “We can also listen to relaxed music, talk with our family or even with ourselves,” he says.
Finally, it is interesting to consider how diet affects the quality of our sleep. Dr. Albares states that we should have dinner at least two hours before going to bed, and that our dinner should be light. “We must avoid foods with sugars and ultra-processed foods throughout the day, and much more at night,” says the expert, who, together with Redolar, recommends following, in general, a light diet and avoiding, beyond noon, stimulants such as coffee, tea, or chocolate. “The consumption of sugar, in general, activates us, so it is better to avoid it after certain hours,” concludes Redolar.