Doing this one thing before bed can make a BIG difference to the quality of your sleep
While we all know that a decent night’s sleep is good for our skin, brain function, mood and health – do you know how to ensure your sleep IS restful?
If this question has been something that you have tried to solve, then you’ve likely turned to misting your pillows with magical sprays or downloading meditation apps but apparently the secret to sleeping well is quite simple: you need to read before you go to bed.
Just six minutes of reading can ease the tension of stress in the body, making it a faster method to calm nerves than listening to the sound of waves crashing or drinking a herbal tea. Psychologists believe that the distraction of entering another, fictional world can ease the pressure in the muscles while also helping to slow your heart rate down.
The faster you can de-stress, the faster your body is able to go to sleep, as you're zoning out the strain of the day and replace it with calming fiction. It makes sense, really, that reading a touch of Pride and Prejudice will result in a better sleep and sweeter dreams than the stomach-churning plot twists of a Stephen King novel.
As a bonus, reading fiction has been found in studies to help us empathise with other people better, thus improving our social interactions. The verdict here? If you want to sleep, dream, and live better, put down the remote, switch off your laptop and take a spot of fiction to bed with you.
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