How an eye mask can help you sleep.
Insomnia is a terrible problem. And poor-quality sleep has nothing going for it! The list of negative consequences makes you even more fed up.
Poking about the internet for a solution, it’s easy to find sleep hygiene ideas. No screens for a couple of hours before sleep, keep regular sleeping hours, limit daytime naps to longer than 20 minutes and make sure your room is cool and dark.
On this latter point, they mean pitch black. Although as with all brain things one size does not fit all, the majority of us need a properly dark room – this is the safety of the cave. This darkness can be hard to create, particularly as we move into the light months of the year, making high quality sleeping hours difficult to achieve.
And this is where the eye mask can be fabulous. It’s also fabulous to put into the suitcase if travelling. And fabulous to use if you are stressed.
A good quality eye mask fully blocks out the light. It also lightly presses on the eyes – which is surprising at first, maybe even worrying. However, this pressure stimulates the vagus nerve, calming us down. Bear this in mind if highly stressed and sleeping so badly that a short daytime snooze is needed. Put the eye mask on whilst napping – this will make the snooze more valuable. Don’t forget to put an alarm on or you may be conked out for hours, making sleep that night impossible. If you sleep longer than 20 minutes during the day, you start to produce melatonin. You don’t want this at 2pm, but you do at 2am..