4 Top Tips To Make The Most of Your Recovery During Sleep

How can you enhance your chances of waking feeling refreshed and ready to face the world? Well, a wondrous thing takes place when you give your brain the rest it deserves during sleep: your body takes up its duty to repair the wear and tear of the day you’ve just lived through. So, you would want to make the most of these precious quiet hours, wouldn’t you? Here are four strategies to lead to your desired outcome of waking feeling well-rested, refreshed and ready to take on the day ahead.

Try These Health Supplements At Bed-Time

According to Jill Carnahan, M.D., founder and medical director of Flatiron Functional Medicine in Louisville, Colorado, there are particular vitamins and minerals which may improve your sleep and the overnight ‘repair and maintenance’ that your body undertakes for you. Supplements that contain melatonin (the neurotransmitter GABA) to relax you and magnesium or zinc to help calm the nervous system may provide a boost to the restorative process.

Skin Care At Night

You can take advantage of the natural slight rise in skin temperature we experience in bed to make the most of your beauty products. The warmer temperature allows your products to be absorbed into the skin better. David E. Bank, M.D., a dermatologist at the Center for Dermatology, Cosmetic and Laser Surgery in New York suggests that products containing at least one of these three ingredients: vitamin E, to erase damage done by pollution through its anti-inflammatory properties; retinol, which can promote healthy cell regeneration; and hyaluronic acid, which has super-hydrating properties to enhance your skin’s moisture retention.

Make A Mouth Rinse Part Of Your Routine

In order to protect our tooth enamel, it could be helpful to use a product with a remineralising quality such as a mouthwash. This is to negate any residual effects of the sugary and acidic foods we may have consumed in our day. At night, our saliva production drops and the protection given from swallowing our saliva regularly is decreased, allowing cavity-causing bacteria more chance to take their toll.

Side Sleeping Can Help The Body

Sleeping on your side has the advantage of speeding up the body’s lymphatic system. The lymphatic system is key to helping remove harmful metabolic waste from your brain while you are sleeping. There are potential harmful effects of allowing a build-up of this metabolic waste such as predisposing a person to Alzheimer’s disease, according to Benjamin Plog, Ph.D., a researcher at the University of Rochester.