For most of us, falling asleep is never as simple as putting head to pillow and shutting our eyes. If you’re in need of a few proven tricks for courting slumber, deep and restful, you’ve come to the right place. Read on!

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Dr. Weil’s 4-7-8 Technique

Weil’s technique is simple, takes hardly any time, and can be done anywhere in five steps. Although you can do the exercise in any position, it’s recommended to sit with your back straight while learning the exercise. Weil also recommends you place the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth, just behind your front teeth, and keeping it there through the entire exercise. Here we go!

1. Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound.
2. Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.
3. Hold your breath for a count of seven.
4. Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight.

This is one breath. Now inhale again and repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.

The most important part of this process is holding your breath for seven seconds. This is because keeping the breath in will allow oxygen to fill your lungs and then circulate throughout the body. It is this that produces a relaxing effect in the body.

[More at Dr. Weil.com]

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Trick Yourself

Research conducted on two groups of insomniacs at the University of Glasgow found that reverse psychology can genuinely help people fall asleep.

While one group was left to their own devices, the other was told to stay awake for as long as possible but banned from moving around or watching TV.

Guess who went to sleep fastest?

[More at YouTube]

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Hit the Bottle

No, not the booze bottle. (Drinking alcohol may help you get to sleep, but it’s a central nervous system depressant. When it wears off, you become more alert.) Instead, make sure your bedroom is cool, and then hit that hot water bottle.

Every night, as the body falls asleep and its systems switch to standby, its core temperature drops. Think of it as akin to a car that’s parked on a driveway after long, hot drive. By preparing a cool sleep environment—between 60 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit, 16 and 20 degrees Celsius—you’ll help your body’s core temperature reduce quickly and naturally, which creates the feeling of drowsiness.

The trick to avoiding a frigid sleep is the water bottle. Placed by your feet, the heat dilates blood vessels in your lower limbs, shifting body heat from the core (where it is while you’re awake) to the extremities (where it is when you’re snoozing happily). Enjoy!

[More at BBC]

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Check Your Alignment

This guy may be goofy, but he makes a strong argument for one of our favourite sleeping positions—on our side, hugging a pillow, a slender bolster between the legs. It’s partly a matter of personal preference, partly a matter of science. The basic idea is, regardless of your sleeping position, you should attempt to keep your ears, shoulders, and hips aligned:

1. If you sleep on your back, a small pillow under the back of your knees will reduce stress on your spine and support the natural curve in your lower back. The pillow for your head should support your head, the natural curve of your neck, and your shoulders.
2. Sleeping on your stomach can create stress on the back because the spine can be put out of position. Placing a flat pillow under the stomach and pelvis area can help to keep the spine in better alignment. If you sleep on your stomach, a pillow for your head should be flat, or sleep without a pillow.
3. If you sleep on your side, a firm pillow between your knees will prevent your upper leg from pulling your spine out of alignment and reduce stress on your hips and lower back. Pull your knees up slightly toward your chest. The pillow for your head should keep your spine straight. A rolled towel or small pillow under your waist may also help support your spine.
4. Insert pillows into gaps between your body and the mattress.
5. When turning in bed, remember not to twist or bend at the waist but to move your entire body as one unit. Keep your belly pulled in and tightened, and bend your knees toward the chest when you roll.
6. Keep your ears, shoulders, and hips aligned when turning as well as when sleeping.

[More at U of U Health]

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Snack Smart

You know how sleepy you feel after Thanksgiving dinner, when your belly’s full of turkey? That’s the tryptophan talking—turkey’s rich in it. These six sleep superfoods have way more tryptophan than does turkey. More importantly, they’re easy to consume before bedtime. Who needs Ambien when Mother Nature’s on your side?

1. Toasted sesame seed bread: Why bother with the toast when you could simply throw back a handful of sesame seeds, you ask? Bread’s carbohydrates increase your blood sugar, causing your body to produce insulin and, afterwards, the calming chemicals serotonin and melatonin—the ultimate drowsy combination.
2. Raw nuts: Almonds, pistachios, and cashews are very high in tryptophan—their butters are also excellent, just steer away from the heavily salted or sugared. Bonus: Nuts also contain magnesium, a mineral that calms muscles and nerves.
3. Fresh fish: Fish are dense in tryptophan, in addition to being the best natural source of Omega-3s. Salmon is the champion.
4. Cherries: Where most soporific foods induce the body to produce melatonin by first introducing tryptophan, cherries leapfrog the first step and give you a straight shot of melatonin. This is rare.
5. Cow’s milk:  In addition to tryptophan, milk is also high in calcium and magnesium, both known to have a relaxing effect. Milk alone will do the trick, but you’ll boost its effectiveness by taking it with a carb-rich oatmeal, granola, or toast.
6. Mozzarella cheese: Cheese is generally a bad idea before bedtime—it’ll give you bad dreams. With twice as much tryptophan as turkey, mozzarella is the exception. May we suggest a piece of Silver Hill’s Squirrelly Bread with a single slice of tomato, laid over with fresh buffalo mozza or bocconcini, drizzled with balsamic vinegar and a few drops of olive oil, topped with freshly ground black pepper?

[More at London Drugs]

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Power Down

[More at Sleep.org]

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The #LDSolutions video series offers solutions to everyday problems. You trust London Drugs for tech, pharmacy, cosmetics, insurance, photography, and more – we help solve your everyday problems. Trust us for these life hacks too. 

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The original advocate: Gene Wilder, the first Willy Wonka, from the 1971 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

It’s not clear that Willy Wonka’s river flowed with dark chocolate. If it did, Roald Dahl’s lunatic chocolatier was on to something miraculous, and 40-odd years ahead of the rest of us. A host of recent European studies all point to the same delightful fact, namely, that dark chocolate is a superfood with many surprising health benefits.

The secret, as close readers of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will recall, is the cacao bean. Beloved by Oompa Loompas (see below), it is chocolate’s main ingredient. Cacao gives chocolate its robust taste, and though it’s packed with healthy flavonoids and theobromine, you won’t want to eat it by itself. (It’s disgustingly bitter.) Cacao gets an assist—in flavour, not health effects—from the milk, sugar, and butter in common chocolate bars.

Here are seven delicious facts about chocolate we bet you didn’t know—with accompanying images from one of the all-time great children’s movies.

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1) Chocolate is good for your heart

The good news: A recent study of 31,000 Swedish women confirmed chocolate’s cardiovascular benefits. Over nine years, subjects that ate one or two servings of dark chocolate each week cut their risk for heart failure by a third.

The even better news: A 2015 German study found that a daily square of dark chocolate lowered blood pressure and reduced heart attack and stroke by 39 per cent. Credit goes to the antioxidant compounds called flavonoids, which increase the flexibility of veins and arteries. A chocolate bar has five times the flavonoids of an apple.

And one caveat: Those antioxidants come with generous helpings of sugar, milk, and butter. The less sugar it takes to help the medicine down, the better, however. Stick to chocolate 70 percent cacao or higher, and limit yourself to 200 grams a week.

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Chocolate helps you lose weight

Take note, Augustus Gloop.

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have discovered a wonderful, if counterintuitive, fact—that the dark (chocolate) path leads to a lighter you. Because dark chocolate promotes greater feelings of satisfaction than its lighter cousin, it diminishes cravings for sweet, salty, and fatty foods. Sticking to your overall diet is now easier than ever. When snackishness next strikes, reach for a modest portion of dark chocolate. What could be sweeter?

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Chocolate makes you smarter

Smart enough to outwit Slugworth?

Researchers at the University of Nottingham have found that drinking cocoa rich in flavanols boosts blood flow to key parts of the brain for 2 to 3 hours, which can improve performance and alertness in the short term. An Oxford study looked at chocolate’s long-term effects on the brain by examining the diets of more than 2,000 people over age 70. They found that those who consumed flavanol-rich chocolate, wine, or tea scored higher on cognitive tests than those who didn’t.

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Chocolate in pregnancy keeps mom and baby happy

With luck, the kid turns out better than Mike Teavee.

A 2004 Finnish study found that pregnant women who ate chocolate daily handled routine stress better than expectant mothers who abstained. Even better, their babies pregnancy were more active and “positively reactive”—a measure encompassing traits such as smiling and laughing.

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Chocolate fights stress

Don’t panic, it’s only a psychedelic boat ride.

When the going gets tough, the tough often turn to chocolate. Turns out that’s a pretty smart thing. The fiendish part of stress is the cortisol it releases into your system. But Swiss scientists have found that a 30-gram dose of dark chocolate every day for for two weeks diminished cortisol levels, significantly easing stress. Next time you’re in the midst of a stress episode, skip the ice cream for a piece of dark chocolate.

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Chocolate helps prevent diabetes

Blueberries, represented here by Violet Beauregard, are another diabetes-fighting superfood.

In a small Italian study, participants who ate 45 grams of dark chocolate each day for a fortnight saw their potential for insulin resistance drop by half. “Flavonoids increase nitric oxide production,” says lead doctor Claudio Ferri. “And that helps control insulin sensitivity.”

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Chocolate protects your skin

The Oompa Loompa diet is rich in cacao beans.

London researchers wanted to test the sun-screening capacity of flavanols, a class of flavonoids. Their findings were shocking. After three months of eating chocolate dense with flavanols, subjects developed a resistance to sun exposure. It took them twice as long to develop the redness that indicates the beginning of sunburn. Subjects who ate conventional chocolate, low in flavanols, experienced no such protection.