With daylight savings right around the corner, we wanted to ensure our COLD-FXers were practicing healthy sleep habits. Longer nights and shorter days can affect your night routines and sleep patterns, thereby impacting your immune health. We’re here to help ensure you are feeling well rested and on the road to optimal immune health and feeling your best!

First off, did you know that sleep contributed to your immune function? According to a study on sleep and immune function, lack of quality sleep or simply not getting enough sleep increases your likelihood of getting infected with the common cold virus. Sleep also impacts your immune system’s ability to recover quickly.

To ensure you wake up feeling your best, here are three sleep tips to weave into your bedtime routine.

Unplug

In today’s world we are constantly logged in and connected with friends, family and work. According to George Brainard, a circadian-rhythm researcher and neurologist at Thomas Jefferson University, most of the devices we use on a regular basis give off a blue light, which gives our body an alert stimulus that does not allow your brain to unwind and fall into a quality sound sleep. (Blue light study) Try turning off your devices or placing them to charge away from your bed or maybe in another room at the same time each night.

Try to go to bed at the same time every night

This tip goes hand-in-hand with our first one. Allowing your body to unwind and go to bed at the same time every night allows you to get a consistent amount of hours, creating a reliable routine wherein your mind and body start to work on a clock. This in turn, contributes to optimal immune health during the darker, colder months.

Warm bath

Take a warm bath with salts to help calm your body and mind. This allow you to detach from the stresses of the day and can help the mind switch off and relax. Warm, relaxing salt baths during the cold winter months just before a deep sleep is a recipe for feeling clear, filled with positive energy and overall optimal immune health when you wake up. The salts soaking into your skin provide the added bonus of helping your muscles relax.

Hope these tips help prepare you for the colder, gloomy, winter months, but if you need more help, we’re having a contest till December. You can get help waking up energized and feeling ready to conquer your day with a Philips Wake-Up Light. Enter here for a chance to win.