What to do to sleep better at night

INDIANAPOLIS — Sleep is vital to good health, but many people struggle to get to sleep or get good sleep.

Sleep is just as important as eating right and getting exercise, according to Scott Haase, a health coach with Community Health Network.

“If you can get sleep down, it’s a bit of a performance enhancer,” Haase said. “Whatever your health goals are, if you can add on top of that good sleep, or just even better sleep, it will help everything else.”

There are several steps you can take to get better sleep, according to Haase. One of them is to focus on your breathing.

“What I tell most people is, if you can inhale for two seconds and then exhale for three second or five seconds, it slows down your heartrate, which is required for sleep, and makes you focus on your breathing, which kind of gets rid of other things in your head,” Haase said.

Putting your phone down is another way to improve your sleep, Haase says.

“You can start with just turning your phone off and having no screen time, anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour or more before you go to sleep, then hitting vibrate or silent, and then putting it farther away from you and out of reach,” Haase said.

Haase says that exercise can also help you get better sleep.

“The more you exercise, whether it’s cardio, resistance…any kind of exercise that’s more than you’re doing now is going to help challenge and strengthen your heart. The better you can use your heart, the better you can breathe, and you’re going to get better and better sleep if you’re challenging your heart,” Haase said.

For more tips on getting better sleep, visit the CDC website.