Have you ever felt so tired even after sleeping for 8 long hours? Do you wake up more often with body aches and it feels like you were working all night? Then you probably didn’t get enough sleep to begin with.

You may have been experiencing even difficulties sleeping as well and when you eventually wake up, it feels like you just went to bed 5 minutes ago.

There are actual reasons why you may not be sleeping and guess what, you may be the one causing your own insomnia or tiredness after sleeping long.

Here are the following ways by which you may be causing your own lack of sleep

1. Late hour exercise

Are you the type that probably likes to exercise every morning and evening? Doing it in the evening is fine if you carry out your exercises before 6pm. It becomes a problem of you decide to jog around the neighbourhood late at night.

A normal walk with your pet or a friend just to cool off and enjoy the night breeze is okay but what will stop you from sleeping is a very hard sweat-dripping, heart-racing cardio workout carried out within 3hours before you went to sleep.

Naturally, your body temperature and blood pressure including your heart rate reduces a bit when you are asleep but with the kind of exercise which you have carried out, given how strenuous it is will cause both your body temperature, heart rate and blood pressure to increase thereby giving your nervous system an unwanted boost which will give your body a hard time adjusting to.

This means that due to exercise you carried out and the effect it had on your body and your nervous system,your body is going to have a hard time calming down your nerves hence the over excited nerves will cause your inability to sleep.

2. Too much of alcohol intake before bed

Now don’t get me wrong. You can decide to take a single glass of alcohol or maximum two glasses before going to bed, that is not harmful or detrimental to your sleep in anyway. If you even decide to take it to set a romantic mood between you and your partner, then that even makes it more beautiful and your sleep more enjoyable.

Where the problem lies is if you decide to take one or two bottles before going to bed. You probably may be wondering “But alcohol relaxes your nerves”, true, yet again but even after dropping to sleep almost immediately your head hits the pillow, alcohol has a certain way of disrupting your sleep cycle.

If you are aiming for the REM sleep that brings about dreams, alcohol has the capacity to tamper with that cycle hence your sleep becomes as though it was split into several pieces and the product is an unfulfilled rest. Plus, another downside is the fact that alcohol increases your urine production and so you are likely to always want to use the rest room every now and then.

3. Your room temperature could be the culprit

Have you ever wondered if your room temperature could be the one keeping you from sleeping? Probably not. So many experts who deal with sleep and its disorders encourage us to fix the temperatures in our rooms to 65°-72° so that we can conveniently sleep at night and be comfortable.

However, many people end up cheating themselves of a good night sleep by cutting cost of energy. During the winter period for example, these people will turn down the thermostat causing the room to freeze and the temperature to drop way below the normal standard. How then can you sleep in a freeze-mode condition?

Likewise during summer, they switch off the Air conditioning system in the house and the room becomes extremely hot way above the normal standard. Honestly, both of these cases will hijack your tendency to have a good night sleep. Too-hot or too-cold a room will make you unable to sleep.

If you are trying t cut costs due to insufficiency or lack of funds hence the fact that you aren’t going to adjust your thermostat, well then, I understand. You can do the following instead. During  the winter, wear a thick socks, and a head warmer while during summer, get a small fan by your bedside. These measures will help you get a good night rest.

4. Stress and anxiety

According to research, these two are both leading non- medical causes for short term insomnia. A mind that is filled with stress, worry or the both of them at the same time won’t give the body free reins to rest.

It is normal for us when during the day, our lives seems very busy with several activities; both the positive and negative ones. However, for some people at night, their minds tends to focus on the things that has occurs during the day but what is most unfortunate is that the mind most times focus a lot on the negatives and not on the positive ones.

If you are currently experiencing this, you can take note of the following procedures, incorporate them into your lifestyle and you just might end up getting a good night sleep

a. Ensure that you always write down your worries before you go to bed at night. This will give your mind ample time to reflect and pour out the burdens lurking within it. Asides, you can also choose to write down the positive things as well as this will help your mind reflect on some good things in your life

b. If at night, your mind starts to get really worried, get up. Don’t turn any light and go sit at a dark corner of the room for a few minutes and then go back to your bed. Doing this helps break the worry pattern and cycle hence, ensuring a calm mind even as you go to bed.

c. Have you ever heard of daily meditation practices? Well, this also helps to break the cycle of worry and stress. You don’t necessarily need to be an expert doing yoga before you can do a little meditation procedure while sitting on a mat. If you don’t know how to go about it, then you can make some research as this will go a long way to help you.

5. Caffeine intake in the afternoon or early evening

Coffee has a half life of 3-5 hours. This means that in 3-5 hours, your body will only be able to use effectively half the dose of coffee you drank.

Invariably, this means that it takes 6-10 hours or even more before your body will be able to effectively use up all the dosage of coffee. Hence, if you want to sleep at night, taking coffee 3hours before bed isn’t a good idea.

In fact, research discovered that the best time to fully maximize the benefits of coffee is in the morning when you really need to be running around either at school or at the office. This is why if you indulge in a late-afternoon cup of coffee, it may distrupt your sleep pattern hence making it difficult for you to dose off at night.

6. Having someone new in bed

While for most people, having company or a partner is beneficial to them in all areas, for others, having a partner in bed is a psychological no-no for them. It becomes worse for this kind of people if their partner snores,hugs or crowds you in bed. These people tend to feel uncomfortable in their comfort zone hence their inability to sleep.

If your inability to sleep started when you and your partner started sleeping together, then you just might fall in this category. This is why most married couples sleep in different rooms.

While we are not encouraging you to banish your partner from your bed, you can encourage your partner if he or she snores to sleep on their sides. If this still doesn’t help for long, then use earplugs. This will block out the noise and help you sleep better.

7. Having too much light on your face

For some people, it isn’t the mpnoise that disturbs them, its the ray of light coming towards their faces while they sleep. For some people, it’s more extreme for them such that even if it’s the little glow coming from the alarm clock coming towards their faces, they are already aware of it and they know they need to be awake.

If this is the problem, it is very easy to solve. Turn off all electronic gadgets and the lights. Do this at least an hour before bed time. If there are lights coming from outside into your room, try to hang black shades or curtains.

Close your room door to shut off the light coming from any other aspect of the house. Or better still, use a sleep mask over your eyes preferably the one made from satin. This will help you sleep better.

8. Eating the wrong snack before bed

Do you always crave for a slice of pizza or a pack of chips before bed which you always end up indulging in? Then don’t be amazed when you are not sleeping at night. Taking in loads of fat or protein before bed will definitely overwork your digestive system, give you heart burn and then potentially make you unable to sleep at night.

If this is the problem, we won’t encourage you to starve yourself before bed because doing this will eventually cause your blood sugar to drop at night causing you to wake up because of hunger pangs.

Therefore, if you feel hungry before going to bed, don’t take too much protein rather you can take complex carbs and little proteins. You can always go for a bowl of whole-grain cereal meal alongside with milk and a slice of white turkey or better still, go for a piece of fruit spread alongside peanut butter (if you are not allergic).

For a proper perfect night time rest, go through the outlined processes and correct that which you need to. This will enhance your sleeping cycle and help you sleep better.