A good night’s sleep recharges your system, lowers stress levels, promotes weight loss, and even makes you live longer. Some popular pre-bed habits most of us have can deprive you of all that. If you want to fall asleep easily and get enough of healthy sleep every night, you have to follow some simple but very effective rules.

Even though we tend to think that working up a good sweat at the gym will only help us fall asleep faster, that’s not always the case. The trick here is to finish your workout 3-4 or even 6 hours before you go to bed.

You can have some water in the evenings, you just need to experiment and find your perfect amount. The National Sleep Foundation states that, in general, most people sleep well through the night after just an 8 oz glass of water before bed. Try to limit naps to 20 minutes because longer naps require you to wake up from a deeper sleep. As a result, they'll only make you feel groggy afterwards instead of refreshed.

Working late increases the chances of you spending the next few hours lying in bed thinking about all your tasks. Instead, clear your mind, create a plan for tomorrow, and write it down. You won't be at your best if don't get proper sleep, so put everything away and relax.

Be extremely careful with pills, especially prescription meds, since they can have all kinds of effects on your sleep. Some cause drowsiness while others can make you super alert. This is especially true of antidepressants. Painkillers also don’t contribute to healthy sleep, so use precaution when taking them before bed.

Many people think that a hot bath contributes to good sleep, but that's just one more popular myth. The truth is that it's a change in temperature that helps us fall asleep, not the hot bath or shower itself. And the higher this temperature difference is, the more we want to sleep.

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