Learn About the Common Stressors That Can Affect Your Sleep

I’m sure you know that sleep regenerates your mind and body. But, did you know that when you are stressed out the quality of your sleep suffers? And you also have a harder time falling asleep? It’s true. When you are stressed, you are more likely to wake up during the night and you may even wake-up more drained than when you went to sleep. So what are the stressors that can affect your sleep? Job Your job. Ughhhhh! Even if you like what you do, it still works. And today’s workloads are heavier than ever. So heavy in fact, that most of us have to bring our work home with us. Projects, deadlines, and bosses can cause us to work into the late night hours trying to finish our assignments when we should be sleeping. Does your boss care about your beauty sleep? I doubt it! Even if we do finish our work before bedtime, some of us often stay up late thinking about what we’ve done and what we have left to do. 

Over thinking only causes us extra stress and keeps our minds active into the late night hours – which keeps us from falling asleep. What’s the solution? Well, you can quit your job, but since that’s not a viable option, you can subscribe to our mailing list and discover a few proven ways to reduce your job-related stress. Anxiety Stressing out about the events in your life can lead to anxiety. If you have an important decision to make or a certain deadline to meet, your mind may come up with different doomsday scenarios. Thinking about the worst possible outcomes will keep you awake at night. This hinders your sleep and can become a self-reinforcing loop that is hard to escape or break away from. Usually, this is temporary. But sometimes…it can last a few weeks or more. During which your sleep suffers.

Caffeine People seem to love caffeine. They consume it every day. I’m sure you know how addictive it is, but what most people don’t know is that caffeine can become a sleep stressor over time. A cup of coffee in the morning can help wake you up. But most coffee drinkers consume more than just one cup. Those that don’t drink coffee may get their caffeine fix from colas, teas, or energy drinks. Even so, caffeine is caffeine and an excessive amount of it disrupts the natural hormonal balance in your body. Since caffeine artificially stimulates the production of the “stay awake” hormones, it helps inundate your body with more hormones than it would normally have access to. Do you want to know how you can still consume caffeine and fall asleep quickly? If you want to find out how, get our sleep guide today. You’ll learn how you can still drink regular coffee without having to worry about it keeping you awake at night. Busyness I’m guilty of this one… BIG TIME! If you are like me, you have so much on your plate that you sacrifice sleep in order to get everything done.

A typical day can be so packed with work, fitness, family, friends, and running errands that you can have a 25 hour day and still not get it all done. Am I right? It seems that the more time passes, the more our lives become cluttered with new responsibilities. It becomes a struggle to figure out what to take care of first and this busyness makes life seem so hectic. This constant bustle trains your mind, body, and spirit to be in constant motion – making it hard to settle down for the night.

Relationships Ever become stressed over a relationship? I’m not just talking about romantic interests. The relationship could involve a coworker, friend, or even a rival. How you feel about the relationship can lead you to stress out about it. This usually comes from the uncertainty you feel in the relationship or from wanting the other person to live up to your expectations. It can cause you emotional stress that will plague you until you deal with it. And you do have to deal with it. Otherwise, you’ll never get any sleep. Cortisol This image is of a not so nice hormone call cortisol. It is produced during times of stress. Cortisol is normally meant to help you deal with a temporary problem or sticky situation, but if it is present in your body over extended periods of time, it can disrupt your sleeping patterns.

Luckily cortisol goes away after you are no longer stressed. Thus the best way to get rid of it is to devise some creative ways to relieve the stress you feel. I’ve come up with a few and you can learn them if you subscribe to our newsletter. Noise Here is a strange fact: Noise affects your sleep quality even if it doesn’t wake you. Crazy, right? I thought it was out there too, but some scientists (who are way smarter than me) conducted several studies in which they found out that… You don’t have to consciously be aware of the noise in order for it to have a negative impact on your sleep. Pretty interesting stuff. In any case, that brings us to the end of the major stressors that can affect your sleep. Just being consciously aware of them can help you reduce them, but if that’s not enough – sign up for our FREE newsletter that will give you advice, tips, and suggestions on how to get a good night’s sleep.