The hol­i­day sea­son is a time when peo­ple try to do too much. And that of­ten leads to stress and wor­ry, which can be the en­e­mies of a good night's sleep. So here are a few tricks to help man­age the episod­ic bouts of in­som­nia that are com­mon dur­ing the Christ­mas sea­son.

Fol­low­ing these rules can help you sleep bet­ter, bright­en your hol­i­day mood and maybe even keep your weight un­der con­trol.

Have a con­sis­tent wake-up time

This is eas­i­er said than done dur­ing the hol­i­days, as sched­ules of­ten be­come er­rat­ic and late night-par­ties make sleep­ing in a de­li­cious temp­ta­tion. Don't sur­ren­der to it.

When you sleep in, your "sleep dri­ve" is di­min­ished, mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult to fall asleep the com­ing night. You can think of your sleep dri­ve like a rub­ber band–to be able to fall asleep deeply and quick­ly, you want that rub­ber band to be ex­tra taut.

When you sleep in and then try to go to bed at the same time as usu­al, that rub­ber band is go­ing to be kind of flop­py (ie, you won't have ac­cu­mu­lat­ed enough sleep dri­ve). So hav­ing a con­sis­tent wake time will en­sure that your sleep dri­ve is high through­out the week.

Wake time is the sin­gle most im­por­tant fac­tor that sets our in­ter­nal bi­o­log­i­cal clocks–sci­en­tists have demon­strat­ed that keep­ing our sched­ules in sync with our bi­o­log­i­cal clocks is crit­i­cal to main­tain­ing op­ti­mal health.

In fact, just re­cent­ly, re­search has shown that women who have a con­sis­tent wake time have low­er body fat.

So this tip may come with the col­lat­er­al ben­e­fit of help­ing avoid those added pounds that are of­ten the com­pan­ion of hol­i­day in­dul­gence.

Ex­er­cise and do itout­side if you can

Phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty and ex­po­sure to nat­ur­al light are good for sleep and good ways to re­duce stress and im­prove mood.

Re­cent re­search has shown that en­gag­ing in reg­u­lar phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty im­proves sleep qual­i­ty in both healthy sleep­ers and in­di­vid­u­als with in­som­nia.

On the oth­er hand, a 2013 study demon­strat­ed that af­ter a poor night of sleep, par­tic­i­pants were much less like­ly to en­gage in ex­er­cise the next day.

Lead au­thor of the study, Dr Kel­ly Glaz­er-Baron, notes that "con­sis­ten­cy is the key. Keep up your ex­er­cise over the hol­i­days."

And, of course, a brisk walk af­ter din­ner can help neu­tralise the calo­ries, and pos­si­bly the guilt, that came with that sec­ond slice of pump­kin pie.

Sched­ule 15 min­utes of "wor­ry time" at least one hour be­fore bed­time

If you al­low your mind am­ple time to think through your to-do list, solve prob­lems and con­front wor­ry, it's less like­ly these demons will come call­ing at three am. Writ­ing these thoughts down can fur­ther re­duce the like­li­hood that they will reap­pear af­ter you re­turn to bed.

Sci­en­tists have shown that sched­uled writ­ing ac­tiv­i­ties can re­duce feel­ings of stress as well as phys­i­o­log­i­cal symp­toms of stress (eg, blood pres­sure, cor­ti­sol).

Sched­uled wor­ry can ac­tu­al­ly train your brain that the time to wor­ry is over when the time for a rest­ful night of sleep ar­rives.

Avoid ex­ces­siveal­co­hol con­sump­tion

A glass of wine at din­ner, a cham­pagne toast at mid­night, for many these are cher­ished hol­i­day tra­di­tions. Fine, but don't over­do it.

There are a lot of mis­con­cep­tions about the ef­fects of al­co­hol on sleep.

Sci­ence has shown us that while a "night­cap" can in­duce sleep on­set, as the body metabolis­es the al­co­hol, it ul­ti­mate­ly ends up dis­rupt­ing sleep lat­er in the night.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly around the hol­i­days, when there are plen­ty of op­por­tu­ni­ties to im­bibe, the "night­cap" can be­come three, four or more "night­caps."

This can lead to even greater sleep dis­tur­bances, not to men­tion a hang­over, which may lead you to want to sleep in and skip ex­er­cise. And thus, a vi­cious cy­cle be­gins.

Don't just lie there stew­ing in the juices of your own wor­ry

If you can't fall asleep or wake up and can't fall back to sleep, get out of bed.

Re­searchers call this tech­nique "stim­u­lus con­trol." This is an­oth­er brain-train­ing ex­er­cise, one that teach­es you to as­so­ciate the bed with sleep (and sex) and not with wor­ry, frus­tra­tion and stress but don't use this time on stim­u­lat­ing ac­tiv­i­ties like catch­ing up on work, surf­ing the net or play­ing that new video game. In­stead do some­thing dis­tract­ing enough to get your mind off your sleep­less­ness. Strate­gies that some pa­tients most fre­quent­ly use are read­ing, cross­word puz­zles, sort­ing socks (se­ri­ous­ly), cross-stitch or lis­ten­ing to re­lax­ing mu­sic.

The idea is to en­gage in this ac­tiv­i­ty un­til you feel sleepy again, at which point you re­turn to bed.

(Huff­in­g­ton Post)

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