What your bedroom should look like if you want a good night's sleep

I’m a sleep doctor – this is what your bedroom should look like if you want a good night’s kip

• A sleep expert has revealed one reason why you may be losing hours of rest 
• Clutter, gadgets and distractions in the room may be hampering sleep quality
• READ MORE: Do you have a sleep problem? Find out by taking this NHS test

Those who spend their nights tossing and turning may think they’ve tried everything to get a better kip. 

But a sleep expert has revealed one reason why you may be losing hours of rest each night that you may not have thought of.

Dr Mike Dilkes, an ear, nose and throat surgeon in London who treats patients with snoring and sleep apnoea, believes that the state of your bedroom may be to blame. 

Clutter, gadgets and distractions in the room may be hampering sleep quality, so stripping the room of these features could tackle the problem, he says.

Dr Dilkes also shared his eight tips for tacking snoring, from a tennis ball trick to lifestyle changes. 

Dr Mike Dilkes claims that a cluttered bedroom, which is filled of electronic devices such as televisions and coffee machines, can lead to distractions and impair your quality of sleep

In the UK the average adult sleeps around six hours a night – this is at least an hour less that what is recommended by the Sleep Foundation (stock image)

In the UK and US, the average adult sleeps around seven hours a night — the lower end of the seven to nine recommended by the health service.

And around one in five Brits and a third of Americans are not getting enough sleep, surveys suggest.

Dr Dilkes said: ‘If you go to bed in a room with TVs and coffee machines and other distractions then you just don’t sleep as well as if your bedroom is stark, bare and just has a bed.’

Tech devices are considered to be highly disruptive to sleep.

Top tips to tackle snoring, by an expert 

Dr Mike Dilkes, an ear, nose and throat surgeon in London, shared his top tips to tackle snoring.

1. Exclusively use your bedroom for sleep

2. Use a tennis ball sewed into a breast pocket to stay sleeping on your side

3. Postural sensors (devices that alert you when you roll onto your back)

4. Snore scoring apps

5. Weight loss

6. Not drinking heavily

7. Mandibular advancement device (a gum shield that pulls the lower jaw forward and stops the obstruction at the back of the tongue)

8. Laser surgery on soft palate or tonsils

This is because the blue light emitted by many devices disrupts the production of melatonin, a hormone that facilities sleep and can throw off the internal body clock. 

Sounds and blinking lights from devices can also cause people to wake up in the night, experts say, while using tech right before bed and stimulate the brain and make it harder to fall asleep. 

Dr Dilkes believes the key to getting some good shut eye also depends on the amount of time spent in the room. 

‘I’ve found that not living half your life in there and only using it for sleeping can be a real help,’ he said.

Dr Dilkes, who specialises in surgery to treat snoring and sleep apnoea – when breathing stops and starts during sleep – also shared his cheap fixes for the conditions. 

He added: ‘The most common cause of snoring is posture and how we sleep in bed. 

‘If you sleep on your back, almost every human being will snore.’

Sleeping on your side can help and is an easy first step that is ‘free of charge’, he said.

To ensure you stay in this position through the night, he recommended sewing a tennis ball into a breast pocket of a pyjama top and wearing it backwards. 

This means that, when turning onto your back in the night, you will feel the ball and can roll back onto your side.

He also recommends that patients use a sleep-tracking app before and after trying the tennis ball trick for a month to see if their sleep score improves.

On top of this, he said that losing weight and cutting back on alcohol can also make a ‘major difference’ on sleep quality.

Dr Dilkes said he would only recommended surgery as a last resort if these approaches hadn’t worked. 

Source: Read Full Article