This post was sponsored by Xyzal^® Allergy 24HR but all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Ah, sleep. That glorious thing you dream about all day but yet never seem to get enough of at night.  Do you struggle with this too?

I’ve been working on prioritizing my sleep lately, as I know the quality of my sleep has a huge impact on my life the next day. Life just seems easier to manage when I’m well rested.

With that in mind, I’ve been doing a bit of research on ways to improve my sleep at night and wanted to share my findings with you.

5 Ways to Improve Your Sleep

1. Establish a bedtime routine

I used to rebel against listening to my internal clock but have learned that listening to it is probably the most important thing you can do. Better to learn this lesson late than never, right? I’ve now been trying to go to bed at the same time every night, and to do so in a relaxing manner. I love to leave my phone charging in the living room and fall asleep in bed with a good book and quality conversation with Josh.

2. Nix caffeine at night

Caffeine is great for helping you wake up in the mornings, but horrible for helping you relax at night. Unless you are my husband, who can drink coffee five minutes before falling asleep! I cut out caffeine after dinner to give my body time to unwind, digest, and get ready for bed.

3. Remove all light from your bedroom

I am incredibly sensitive to any sort of light when I sleep. After feeling like a total weirdo for most of my life, I recently discovered it’s not just me. Some people sleep much, much better when they are in a dark room. For now, I wear an eye mask, but once we have a house I’m totally investing in good blackout shades.

4. Utilize white noise

If you have racing thoughts at night, white noise will be your new best friend. It provides a little background noise that can help you settle down and clear the thoughts from your head. I personally love having a fan going, I imagine it blowing the thoughts out of my head. Other popular white noises include waves, forest sounds, and waterfalls.

5. Get your allergies in check

Want to know an unlikely but all too common culprit of bad sleep? Allergies! For some people, allergy symptoms can impact both the quality of their sleep and their lives during the day.

I was recently asked if I’d like to try Xyzal Allergy 24HR, an over-the-counter allergy medication that relieves allergy symptoms for 24 hours, so you can get a better night’s sleep and wake up ready to take on the day. As someone who is currently a sniffly, allergy-affected mess, I said, “yes, please!”

Allergies don’t just go away at night. And in my experience, getting a poor quality of sleep or less sleep because of my allergy symptoms can make me feel sleepy and grumpy during the day. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live my life with the personality of dwarves. 😉

A recent social experiment explored this concept by using wearable devices to track the sleep and activities of 80 allergy sufferers and 80 non-sufferers. It found that allergy sufferers had a harder time falling asleep and staying asleep than people without allergies. Allergy sufferers also reported that they felt less rested and less physically active during the day than the people without allergies.*

So what makes this allergy medication different from all the other allergy medicines on store shelves? Xyzal is a 24-hour allergy medication you take at night, that starts working in that first hour and is just as effective at hour 24 as it is at hour one. So when you wake up, Xyzal is still going strong. Win!

Everyone has their own struggles with sleep, but these are a few of the issues affecting mine. I hope you found these tips helpful, and that you are one step closer to a better night’s sleep and a more productive day!

Make sure to check out my Instagram later today for a fun giveaway!

Questions of the Day: Do you struggle with getting enough quality sleep? Anyone else absolutely miserable with allergies right now?

Thanks again to Xyzal for sponsoring this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

*This social experiment was sponsored by Sanofi Consumer Healthcare and conducted by Russell Research. It used wearable devices to assess the sleep patterns and activities of 80 allergy sufferers and 80 non-sufferers for 30 consecutive days between October and December 2016. Participants also completed a daily survey to track perceptions of their allergy symptoms (for the 80 allergy sufferers), sleep patterns and activities, as a way to provide additional context for the wearable device data. For the purposes of the experiment, allergy sufferers are defined as those who suffer from moderate or severe indoor and outdoor allergies in the fall or year round, and who take allergy medication 2 days per week or less.