Trouble Sleeping During the Holidays?

    The holiday season is one of the happiest times of the year. You get a break from school or work, there’s always great food, you get to see your family, and so much more! Most people look forward to the holidays for those very reasons.

But one thing that we do not look forward to is trying to get a good night’s rest while at a relative's house. In most cases, there are not enough beds to go around when all of the family is over. Because of this, you may end up on the floor, a couch, or an air mattress: which can be a recipe for sleep deprivation disaster. Spending all of your time with your family, while being grumpy from lack of sleep is not how anyone wants to spend the holidays. Studies show the immense effects lack of sleep has on the body. No one wants to spend their holidays with these effects, so here are a few simple tricks that can help solve the holiday sleep deprivation epidemic.

Pre-gaming

    Sometimes it is just not possible to be able to get a good night’s rest on an uncomfortable surface. If you know this is going to be the case then make sure your bank up on sleep in the days prior to visiting family. If you get extra sleep the days before the vacation, when you lose hours while you’re there, it will be easier to handle. Your body will be able to handle sleep deprivation a lot better when you have extra hours of sleep stored up.

Meditation

    If falling asleep is the problem, then meditation might work perfectly for you. Meditation can have a connotation of being only for yoga or hippie enthusiasts, but this is far from true. Everyone can benefit from very simple meditation and it can provide a wide array of health benefits. In your weeks or days prior to visiting family, look up simple meditations that you can do before bed. You then will have the chance to master them before you leave on vacation. Once you are there, you can use meditation to help you fall asleep each night and get a full night’s rest. If meditation alone does not do the trick, try taking some melatonin before meditating to help aid your body in your natural sleep routine.

Keep It Simple

    The holiday season is known for adding a stress. With all of the family together it is not always easy to pull off the family events and keep everyone happy at the same time. This can add a bundle of stress to your holidays and cause you to lose sleep.

Try to plan as much beforehand as you can and avoid last minute stress planning. This is not always plausible, but planning as much as you can is always helpful. For the times when last minute planning is inevitable, make sure to keep everything in perspective. Don’t overburden yourself trying to make things perfect. Your family just wants to see you for the holidays, not your perfectly planned Christmas party accompanied by a stressed out you. So try not to stress over the little things, so you can still get a good night’s sleep and enjoy the holidays.