How Sleeping In Hostels Makes You Appreciate A Proper Night’s Sleep
We’ve all heard or even experienced first-hand the joys and horrors of hostel living. For every happy hour, new friendship and summer romance there are public showers, squeaky bunk beds and scorching hot dorm rooms. For every memory made there are sleepless nights of late-night door slamming, drunk bunkmates, fellow travellers snoozing their alarms non-stop, talking through the night, doing all sorts of things not so subtly throughout the night.
Though we won’t hear a negative word against the memories we’ve made in the crappy hostel dorm rooms and in the absolutely incredible cities that they were situated in. So let’s hear the defence of the pastime we all love.
What We Love About Travelling
When you’re backpacking through Europe, South America, Asia – where have you, the joys of travelling and seeing the world more than makes up for how utterly tired you are and how in need you are of a properly warm shower with a properly dry towel and more than a minute of silence. There’s no beating an evening drinking 4 Euro wine on the banks of the Seine, there’s nothing that can compete with seeing the Roman forum in person, nothing than can compete with a day spent eating Burek as the sun glints off the city walls in Dubrovnik, eating tapas in Barcelona, punting in Oxford, getting drunk in a proper Irish pub. Travelling is undoubtedly one of the biggest joys in this life but when you get home from a few months of travel you’ll find out that a comfortable bed and a proper night’s sleep can be a pretty damn incredible too!
Benefits of a Good Night’s Sleep
It’s more than just a feeling, there are actually a whole slew of health benefits that come from getting a restful night of high-quality sleep. Deep sleep helps reduce stress and improve your memory. A good night’s sleep helps bolster your immune system by producing extra protein molecules and giving your body time to rest. It can also help to lower your blood pressure which in itself is incredibly beneficial to your health. As well as improving your mood, a full night’s sleep may also reduce your chances of suffering from a serious disease like type 2 diabetes by improving how the body processes glucose. A good night’s sleep can improve your heart health by reducing the stress and inflammation to your cardiovascular system which may reduce your chances of developing a heart condition.
In addition to all the health benefits, getting a full night’s sleep just makes you a better person who will be able to face all the challenges of the day ahead of them. As any mother would tell you, missing naptime (or in the case of fully grown adults, only getting a handful of hours of poor quality sleep) makes you cranky. If you’re the sort of person who loves backpacking and travelling then you’re likely the sort of person who’d love to seize the day and there’s no way you’re going to be able to continue to rally and seize the day if you’re exhausted.
So, How Do You Make Sure You Get A Good Night’s Sleep?
The quality of our sleep is important. So how do we ensure the quality of our sleep? Firstly, avoid blue light. Even low-level exposure to blue light such as sitting on a room lit by LED light, can confuse your internal clock or circadian rhythm and severely lessen the amount of restorative sleep you’ll get each night. More intense exposure to blue light such as sitting in front of a computer screen or scrolling through an iPhone can have severe negative effects on your sleep: suppressing melatonin, increasing alertness and resetting your body clock. You can also improve the quality of your sleep by making simple changes to your bedroom making sure it is dark, quiet and between 15° and 18°C. If your bedroom at present does not meet these requirements you can consider purchasing blackout curtains, a white noise machine or perhaps air conditioning. Another serious factor you need to consider is the bed itself. You need to disabuse yourself of the notion that ‘a bed is simply a bed’, in fact, the quality and style of your mattress can have a major impact on the quality of your sleep. Firm top, soft top, sleep number? To do more research on the topic, check out this comparison resource.
Sometimes sleeplessness is not caused by environmental or lifestyle factors, instead, it could potentially be caused by a medical issue such as snoring or sleep apnea. If you think you have a sleep disorder then you should consult your doctor, however, keep in mind, that these conditions are relatively common and are no major cause for concern. What is sleep apnea? A condition that comes from difficulty breathing overnight which stops you from taking in the optimal amount of oxygen which interrupts your natural sleep patterns and keeps you awake. Luckily, advances in medical technology have been made over recent years which means that sleep disorders can easily be treated with the use of CPAP machines. These machines help those suffering from sleep disorders take in more oxygen overnight helping you get a full night sleep if you’re interested in learning more about these machines you can head here. If you have been diagnosed with sleep apnea then your first night using this machine will feel like your first night back in your own bed after months hostel-hopping and a long haul flight in economy on a budget airline.
At the end of the day, we only have one life to live and it’s our responsibility to live that life to the fullest and experience all the joys that life has to offer. Two of life’s greatest pleasures are travelling and feeling like you’ve made the most out of every day. The only way to make sure you’re in the position to enjoy every day to the fullest is if you’re getting enough high quality sleep every single night. So prioritise your sleep to make sure you’re getting the most out of your days.