Staying up late may often be done before exams, completing work targets, or enjoying playing games and watching movies. So, prepare a way to stay up late by taking a nap first, making sure the room light is bright, drinking coffee, snacking, and drinking water.
Table of Content
1. How to stay up late
2. How to stay fit even if you don’t sleep all night
Staying up late may often be done when you are approaching exams, completing work targets, or enjoying playing games and watching movies. However, staying up too late can increase the risk of certain health conditions. Well, in order to avoid the danger of lack of sleep due to staying up late, see how to stay up late this good.
How to stay up late
Staying up late is actually an unhealthy habit. For whatever reason, staying up late can have a bad impact on your body if you get used to it too often.
Lack of sleep can affect not only the brain’s ability to focus. In the long term, this habit also increases your risk of various chronic diseases, such as diabetes, depression, to heart disease, and stroke.
If you really have to stay up late because of an urgent need, you should plan a strategy carefully so that the effects of sleep deprivation can be controlled.
Here’s how to stay up late in a healthy way that you can do.
1. Take a nap first
The ideal sleep duration for adults aged 18 years and over is 7-9 hours per night, and this is not without reason.
Ensuring you get at least 8 hours of sleep each night can boost your immune system as well as maximize problem-solving skills and improve memory. This is certainly good to support your daily productivity.
So, you still have to sleep even though you plan to stay up late. The trick is to pay in installments at bedtime by taking a nap.
Tips for staying up late healthy is to take time around 12:30 to 14:00 for a nap of about 10-20 minutes. Napping too long above 3 pm can actually make you more tired at night.
Limiting naps to just 10-20 minutes can already make you feel more “literate” and refreshed.
Don’t nap more than once a day if you still feel like you’re lacking. The longer you nap, the more likely you are to feel dizzy afterward.
Instead, you can take a short nap before staying up late and wake up within 1-2 hours before the time for activities at night begins.
2. Make sure the room light is bright
Dimly lit rooms can exacerbate drowsiness and fatigue. Therefore, make sure the room lights are on brightly as a way to stay up late.
Exposure to bright light can inhibit the production of melatonin (a sleep-inducing hormone produced at night) so that the brain thinks that it is not time for you to sleep.
Also, adjust the room temperature so that it is not too cold, but also not too hot so that you stay focused and not be lulled by the comfort of the cold temperature.
If you have time, replace the lights in the room where you are watching with LED bulbs that can imitate the brightness of the sun and distribute the light widely throughout the room. This method will help you stay up longer.
But when the activities at night are over, get ready to turn off the lights and cool the room back down. That way, you can continue sleeping until it’s time to get back to work.
3. Drink coffee before bed
Most experts suggest that the best way to stay up late is to consume caffeine right before a nap for about 15-20 minutes.
Scientists suspect that drinking coffee before a nap can increase your body’s energy and improve your focus after you wake up.
Because, caffeine helps fight adenosine, a natural substance released by the body to trigger sleepiness.
Normally when you feel tired, adenosine flows throughout the body in high amounts and will decrease drastically after you fall asleep.
Caffeine does not work to reduce adenosine in the body like sleep. However, caffeine prevents this substance from being received by the brain.
In other words, drinking coffee before bed can increase the work of caffeine receptors in the brain so that you no longer feel sleepy and are actually more energetic when you wake up.
The effects of caffeine can last 1.5 to 7.5 hours, or even longer depending on the dose of caffeine in your coffee.
4. Do new things in your spare time
Staring at a screen continuously can cause eyestrain and worsen drowsiness and fatigue.
So take your eyes off the screen for a few minutes at regular intervals to relax your eyes.
In between activities or during breaks, try to find other activities to keep your mind busy so that drowsiness does not haunt you.
Studies have found that people who keep themselves busy when they are sleepy are more likely to return to feeling more energized because they are interested in completing a new “task”.
You can try getting up from your seat and walking to refill snacks and drinks, as well as simple stretching such as walking back and forth, jogging in place, jumping frogs, or going up and down stairs for 10 minutes as a way to stay up late at night.
A simple physical activity such as a 10-minute walk can increase your energy for two hours and make you feel more literate and refreshed.
The reason is, walking can pump oxygen through your blood vessels, brain, and muscles.
In addition, the body will send signals to the brain to remind us to stay focused on moving so that it is not affected by sleepiness.
Alternatively, you can take the time to take a shower or wash your face to quickly return to “literacy”. Brushing your teeth can also help you feel refreshed again.
5. Snacking and drinking water
nacking is a way to stay up late that can be done. Because, food intake helps the body refill energy from glucose after you have not eaten anything for a long time.
Research shows that the release of insulin after a meal can actually prolong the alertness of the brain.
On the other hand, not eating when you stay up late can actually lower your blood sugar, making you feel more sleepy and lethargic. However, choose the right snack to accompany you up late.
Avoid high-calorie heavy foods, such as packaged potato chips, donuts, or fast food like burgers and pizza.
Choose foods that are healthier and taste refreshing. For example, a plate of freshly cut fruit or salad, to yogurt topped with nuts.
Also, make sure you drink enough water when you stay up late so you don’t get dehydrated. Dehydration can actually cause fatigue that makes you sleepy.
How to stay fit even if you don’t sleep all night
Generally, we will feel most sleepy around 4 am to 5 am after staying up late.
Therefore, even if your intention is to stay up late, don’t underestimate the time left afterward to sleep for a while.
Because as explained above, getting enough sleep is important so that you can carry out normal activities.
Forcing continued literacy until the morning before it can actually make you feel even more tired and powerless.
So if we can only “redeem” for a short nap, how do we get up early in the morning even though we stay up late?
- Set an alarm and don’t procrastinate. Hitting snooze can make you sleep too much.
- Place the alarm away from the bed so you can get up immediately.
- Quickly wash your face so that you are immediately “literate”.
- Immediately get out of the house to “shower” the sun. Exposure to the morning sun helps recharge the body’s energy and makes the mood better.
- You can take a shower, but don’t use cold water right away. After staying up all night, the body’s internal temperature is still hot even after a short sleep. Taking a cold shower after staying up late can make the body go into shock.