A good night’s sleep does more than make you feel refreshed. Getting enough zzz’s can also help you avoid weight gain. In fact, women who sleep five hours or less a night are 15 percent more likely to become obese over the course of 16 years than those who sleep for at least seven hours. Read on to learn more about the surprising connection.

## Across The Board

### Sleep Halts Snacking

A lack of slumber can cause changes in how your body regulates appetite, triggering cravings—even if you’re not truly hungry. But you won’t be reaching for the veggie platter when you’re sleep-deprived. Instead, you’ll crave foods that are high in fat and carbohydrates, which are no help to your waistline.

### Sleep Boosts Calorie Burn

The connection between sleep and the number of calories you burn is two-fold. First, if you’re well rested, you’ll have more energy to be physically active, and any activity—even a brisk walk—can help to torch calories. Second, a healthy sleep schedule can actually keep your metabolism humming, allowing you to burn more calories even when you’re resting.

### It Helps to Control Blood Sugar

Deep sleep may be crucial to regulating glucose—that is, carbohydrates including sugar— in the body. Sleeping too little, therefore, could increase your risk of type 2 diabetes. In fact, after sleeping just four hours a night for a week, otherwise healthy people’s ability to break down sugars becomes 40 percent lower than normal—similar to those who don’t make enough insulin and are at risk for diabetes.

### Sleep Can Help You Stick To a Diet

Even if you have the best intentions to eat healthfully, a lack of sleep can quickly throw you off track. People who get less than six hours of shut-eye a night are more likely to eat out instead of cooking at home (and restaurant foods tend to be more caloric than foods you eat at your kitchen table). On top of this, if you’re awake late at night, you simply have more hours in the day to give in to the temptation of the cookie jar on your counter.

Of course, getting more sleep isn’t the sole solution to hitting your goal weight, but, when paired with a healthy diet and regular exercise, it can certainly help you peel off the pounds.

A good night’s sleep does more than make you feel refreshed. Getting enough zzz’s can also help you avoid weight gain. In fact, women who sleep five hours or less a night are 15 percent more likely to become obese over the course of 16 years than those who sleep for at least seven hours. Read on to learn more about the surprising connection.

## Can a Weighted Blanket help?

A weighted blanket is a great tool for getting in the right state for sleep, and for staying asleep. When paired up with a good sleep regimen and a healthy lifestyle a weighted blanket helps you get the sleep you need to stay in shape and maintain the willpower to eat healthily.

health

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Sleep is essential for our bodies, to keep them working as they should and everything in balance, when we don't get enough sleep we can end up gaining weight.

How Sleep Can Affect Your Weight

Stress not only makes you irritable and tense during the day—it can also make it more difficult to fall asleep and stay asleep. That’s because it puts you in a state of hyperarousal, causing your blood pressure and your breathing rate to increase.The key to combatting stress: relaxation. Luckily, these smart strategies can help you unwind your mind, so your body is relaxed at night and can ease into dreamland. You can even pair them up with a Weighted Blanket to really get in the right state for sleep.

## Forget About Tomorrow

### Make a List

If tomorrow’s to-dos tend to race around your brain as you try to drift off, get them out of your head by jotting them down. Whether you prefer to use a pen and paper or type up a quick note in your smartphone, this strategy ensures that you won’t forget about anything the next day, which may help you stop worrying. Another option: Keep a nightly journal, where you can record any anxieties and frustrations—and then close the cover and leave them on the page for the night.

## Tune Into Your Body

### Breathe Deeply

Even a few inhales and exhales can calm your nervous system. Place a hand on your lower belly and feel it rise and fall as you breathe in for a count of three, and then breathe out for another count of three. Repeat this cycle five times.

### Feel Your Senses

Doing so keeps you in the present moment, which prevents you from focusing on sleep-inhibiting stressful thoughts. Think about how the sheets feel against your skin, what sounds you hear out your window, and how the air smells. A [Weighted blanket](https://sommio.co.uk/WeightedBlanket "Sommio Weighted Blanket") is a great aid for this, the gentle whole body pressure provides even stimuli across your body, providing sensations which you can tune in to.

### Tense Your Toes

Yes, you’re trying to relax, but by tensing and then relaxing your toes, you can help your whole body become calm. Lie on your back and close your eyes. Focus on how your toes feel. Now, tense and pull all ten toes up toward your face and hold them there for a count of ten. Then release them and count to ten. Repeat this exercise ten times.

guide

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Relaxing should be simple, but switching off is harder than ever! We all need good strategies to settle our minds and find calm, here's a few of our favourite tips.

Learning to Relax

For those who haven’t gotten enough sleep at night, a nap can often be the perfect solution. Want proof? Check out a few of the health benefits of naps:

## Recharge and Recover

### Increase Energy

Naps boost alertness and improve motor performance, which is why you feel energized after taking one. The length of your nap determines the benefits. A 20-minute snooze—called a stage two nap—is ideal to enhance motor skills and attention, while an hour to 90 minutes of napping brings Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, which helps make new connections in the brain and can aid in solving creative problems. Set an alarm to make sure you get just the right amount of sleep. (Napping for a length of time between 20 and 90 minutes may also help, but you’re likely to feel groggy afterwards.). Try our [Knitted Weighted Blanket](https://sommio.co.uk/KnittedWeightedBlanket) for a great daytime snooze.

### Reduce Stress

Regular, short naps can help lower tension, which decreases your risk of heart disease. Get the most health benefits out of your nap by doing it right. Stick to a regular napping schedule during optimal hours, which are between 1:00 pm and 3:00 pm. This timeframe is optimal since that’s usually after lunchtime when your blood sugar and energy starts to dip. Keep shut-eye short, and nap in a dark room so that you’ll fall asleep faster.

### Boost Your Mood

As anyone who has suffered from a sleepless night knows, it’s hard to be chipper the next day. Sneaking in a nap can help erase that sleep-deprived irritability. Keep in mind, a short snooze is a wiser choice than sipping espresso if you need a mid-day reboot, since consuming caffeine in the afternoon or evening can negatively affect your nighttime slumber. Napping is a natural way to revive your energy.

sleep science

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It's normal to get drowsy in the daytime, although having a nap might be seen as lazy there are some good health benefits if you do it right.

Health Benefits of Napping

Feeling foggy and forgetful these days? One key to sharpening your memory may be reworking your sleep schedule so that you get more shut-eye since your brain works overtime while you’re in bed to help boost your ability to remember. Improving your pre-bed routine makes a huge difference to the quality of your sleep; it's important to wind down in the eveining and get your body in the right state for sleep, a [Weighted blanket](https://sommio.co.uk/WeightedBlanket "Sommio Weighted Blanket") helps boost levels of Melatonin, the sleep hormone, easing you towards a satisfing sleep.

## A healthy dose of sleep can help you…

### Learn New Skills

Whether you’ve just been taught how to play piano or knit, getting enough shuteye will help cement what you learned, allowing you to perform better the next time that you sit in front of the keyboard or pick up a pair of needles. This may be because the new skills are transferred to more permanent regions of the brain while you sleep—especially if that sleep occurs soon after learning the new information. So take a nap shortly after your keyboard lesson. Even just 30 minutes of rest may help improve your memory of what you just learned.

### Create Long-Term Memories

Your friend who remembers everything that she’s read, heard, or seen may just be a great sleeper. Think of it like this: When you’re awake, your mind takes little snapshots of your experiences—what you read while studying for a test, say, or meeting new coworkers for the first time. Then, after you drift off to dreamland, the brain replays those events like video clips and builds new neuron connections to turn the experiences into long-term memories that you’ll be able to recall at least six weeks later.

### Improve Your Focus

Ever have one of those days where you find yourself reading the same sentence or paragraph over and over—and you just can’t seem to concentrate properly? Not only is your memory given a boost while you sleep, but going into the day well rested will make it easier to stay attentive to your work and digest new information. 

## How a Weighted Blanket can help

Convinced you need more sleep but not sure how? Well we've made it even easier to unwind in the evening with our [Knitted Weighted Blankets](https://sommio.co.uk/KnittedWeightedBlanket "Sommio Knitted Weighted Blanket"), a 100% organic cotton knitted blanket, perfect for lounging on the sofa. This blanket is cool, easy to wash and environmentally friendly, with no fillers, or beads.

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Getting a good night's sleep is essential to stay healthy and happy, but you might not have considered how sleep can affect your memory.

How Better Sleep Helps Your Memory

Deep Pressure, or Deep Touch Pressure is a form of tactile sensory input which is often provided by firm holding, firm stroking, cuddling, hugging and squeezing; and also therapeutically through the use of products such as weighted blankets. This deep pressure has a calming, focusing effect on children and adults alike, helping to soothe the nervous system and providing a sense of comfort and security.

## Understanding Your Body

Every second you have to process from anywhere 10,000 to over 4,000,000 internal and external stimuli. Stimuli are information received through our senses, which are then processed subconsciously; most of the work is done by our **Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)** which then sends signals out to regulate the functions of many of your body’s organs in response to that information

Think about the last time you were nervous: sweaty palms, racing heartbeat, fast breathing, and maybe even an upset stomach; or how you feel when you are relaxed: slow, deep breathing, slow heartbeat, and relaxed muscles. Your functioning ANS is responsible for managing this emotional and physical state.

Your ANS has two components: the parasympathetic and sympathetic. Depending on the sensory information your ANS is processing, these systems work together to put your body in the right state to best deal with your current environment.

#### The Parasympathetic  System

The division of the nervous system that controls largely automatic processes such as digestion, respiration, and heart rate. It acts in concert with the sympathetic nervous system and conserves the body’s energy by bringing bodily functions back to homeostasis, particularly after the fight or flight response is activated by the sympathetic nervous system.

#### The Sympathetic System

The sympathetic nervous system controls the body's responses to a perceived threat and is responsible for the "fight or flight" response. Whether that's the adrenaline rush before a big meeting, or when you've been in an accident, that's your sympathetic ANS at work.

## The Effect of Deep Touch Pressure

#### ANS Effects

The modern world can be difficult for your Autonomic Nervous System to understand. Evolved to get us through short periods of danger and stress, the constant stresses of work and home life can cause the sympathetic system it to be over-activated, preventing your body from achieving a relaxed, efficient equilibrium.

A weighted blanket helps to suppress the sympathetic system and promote the parasympathetic system; slowing high energy functions, and decreasing levels of cortisol is your body, enabling you to reach a more relaxed state.

#### Endorphins and Hormones

Deep touch pressure also results in increased endorphin levels and releases the “happy hormones” serotonin and dopamine. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that helps to regulate some brain functions and help with mood regulation. It is also known to stimulate parts of the brain that are responsible for sleep and the production of melatonin. Dopamine is a “happy hormone” that controls the reward or pleasure centre of the brain, it regulates our emotional responses and is in action when we set or achieve goals.

#### Sense of Security

Whether through a hug or a therapeutic product such as a [weighted blanket](https://sommio.co.uk/WeightedBlanket "Sommio Weighted Blanket"), there is a feeling of security, safety and serenity inherent in deep touch therapy. Creating an environment where you can let your guard down, recover and truly relax.

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Weighted blankets work through deep touch pressure, this simulates the sensation of being hugged which triggers your body to do some cool stuff.

Everything You Need To Know About Deep Touch Pressure Stimulation

A lot of us struggle to get a good night's sleep, but there are some things that we should really stop doing before bed to give ourselves the best chance.

Getting enough sleep at night certainly isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible, either. There are steps you can take to make getting a good night's sleep easier; the most important being making sure your body knows that it's time for bed! Winding down in the evening is essential, our [Knitted Weighted Blanket ](https://sommio.co.uk/KnittedWeightedBlanket "100% Cotton Knitted Weighted Blanket") makes this easier than ever! Pair that up with fixing the following three common mistakes and you'll be on track to better zzz’s.

## 1\. That Afternoon Coffee Break

Sipping coffee or tea with your breakfast can be a great way to feel more alert as you begin to tackle your to-do list. But another cup later in the afternoon—or worse yet, after dinner—can have serious, negative effects on your sleep, making it harder to drift off. In fact, having caffeine six hours before turning in could cost you an hour of sleep. In other words, having an afternoon coffee might make you sleep worse that night, which may make you want more coffee the following afternoon, and so on. Nip the negative cycle in the bud now and you’ll likely feel more energized.

## 2\. Drinking alcohol before bed

Having a few drinks before bed may help you fall asleep faster, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll sleep well. When you go to bed tipsy, your body goes straight into deep sleep, missing out on restorative REM sleep. You’re also more likely to wake up, both because of the disrupted sleep rhythms, and because alcohol makes you more likely to need to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.

## 3\. Leaving the Lights On

Getting a good sleep starts before you get in bed, if you leave all the lights on right up until bedtime, you could be sending your body mixed messages. Evening light exposure can delay your body’s production of melatonin, a hormone that triggers sleepiness and plays a role in setting your body’s internal sleep clock. Help your body to prepare for bedtime by using dimmers if you have them. Or, after dinner, turn off as many of the bright, overhead lights in the house as you can and use softer lamplight instead, when possible.


sleep help

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Getting a good night's sleep can be a struggle! But there are things we can stop doing befor bed to give ourselves the best chance.

 3 Common Habits Which Can Ruin Your Sleep

Dreaming can be a fun, confusing or even frightening experience, but why do we do it, and what does it do?

## How much do we know?

Sleep is still poorly understood, we know it's important, but it's a confusing landscape of processes which keep us alive, and working well in the world. One of the stranger aspects of sleep is dreaming, a period of vivid hallucinations which can be a great or terrifying experience.

Like so much about sleep we don't know exactly why we dream or how, despite decades of sleep studies. We do know that we tend to dream the most and the most vividly during the REM stage of sleep, the deepest stage of sleep. the scientific community is also pretty certain that everybody experiences dreaming, although the amount remembered varies individual to individual. A [weighted blanket](https://sommio.co.uk/WeightedBlanket "Sommio Weighted Blanket, with Weightex technology") can be a great sleep aid to achieve deep REM sleep. 

## What do we think it's for?

The question of function is the most interesting, and there have been multiple thories put forward to why we dream. One of the most popular theories is that dreaming works as a tool to help our minds process all the information and stimuli which we have encountered over the course of the day. Our brains are bombarded with hundreds of thousands of external and internal stimuli every day; filtering and prioritising what is passed onto out concious thought, and tucking away information into our subconcious which we are never conciously aware of. When we sleep the amount of external stimuli is decreased dramatically which allow our bodies to focus on reinforcing learning, filtering though the stored information for the day and processing everything it has not had the resources to during the waking hours, and dismissing everything from storage which is deemed to have no further function. Some researchers believe dreaming is thought to be a component in this process.

This theory is not just speculation, during studies the participants who were tasked with more learning in their waking hours had increased dreams during their sleep. Participants in a dream study whor were taking a language course showed increased dream activity than those who were not. These studies have bolstered the confidence in this theory and have helped it to become more popular in recent years.

## What's the Alternative?

Another theory is that dreams are a way of processing our emotions; helping us to gain a better of our interaction with the world and how we can best navigate through it. During the day we are often acting to achieve a task, navigating through our environment effectively, this puts our brain's focus on the superficial and leaves little available to form deeper looser connections between more abstract thoughts. When we are asleep more processing ability is available for our brains to explore these abstract connections which helps us to form new ideas annd deal with the emotions which have been raised during the day.

## Anything Else?

The least interesting theory is that dreams serve no function, they're simple a side effect of other functions of our brain, and the random firings of elements of our brain causes the hallucinations we experience as dreams. No matter which theory you find the most interesting, until we find a better way to decode the mysteries of our grey matter it's all just theory!

Sleep is still poorly understood, it's a confusing landscape of processes which keep us alive, and working well in the world. One of the stranger aspects of sleep is dreaming, a period of vivid hallucinations which can be a great or terrifying experience.

Like so much about sleep we don't know exactly why we dream or how, despite decades of sleep studies. We do know that we tend to dream the most and the most vividly during the REM stage of sleep; the scientific community is also pretty certain that everybody experiences dreaming, although the amount remembered varies individual to individual.

The question of function is the most interesting, and there have been multiple thories put forward to why we dream. One of the most popular theories is that dreaming works as a tool to help our minds process all the information and stimuli which we have encountered over the course of the day. Our brains are bombarded with hundreds of thousands of external and internal stimuli every day; filtering and prioritising what is passed onto out concious thought, and tucking away information into our subconcious which we are never conciously aware of. When we sleep the amount of external stimuli is decreased dramatically which allow our bodies to focus on reinforcing learning, filtering though the stored information for the day and processing everything it has not had the resources to during the waking hours, and dismissing everything from storage which is deemed to have no further function. Some researchers believe dreaming is thought to be a component in this process.

This theory is not just speculation, during studies the participants who were tasked with more learning in their waking hours had increased dreams during their sleep. Participants in a dream study whor were taking a language course showed increased dream activity than those who were not. These studies have bolstered the confidence in this theory and have helped it to become more popular in recent years.

Another theory is that dreams are a way of processing our emotions; helping us to gain a better of our interaction with the world and how we can best navigate through it. During the day we are often acting to achieve a task, navigating through our environment effectively, this puts our brain's focus on the superficial and leaves little available to form deeper looser connections between more abstract thoughts. When we are asleep more processing ability is available for our brains to explore these abstract connections which helps us to form new ideas annd deal with the emotions which have been raised during the day.

The least interesting theory is that dreams serve no function, they're simple a side effect of other functions of our brain, and the random firings of elements of our brain causes the hallucinations we experience as dreams. No matter which theory you find the most interesting, until we find a better way to decode the mysteries of our grey matter it's all just theory!

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Dreams can be fun, frightening or just downright weird! Pretty much all of us experience dreaming, so what is it for?