Best Gifts to Help Sleep Better You’ll Wish You Discovered Earlier

Why would you be looking for the best gifts to help you sleep better? It’s not like when we’re sleeping, we do anything else. But if you find it hard to fall asleep or you know an insomniac, you know they would give anything to be able to catch some ZZZs immediately when they get into bed.

Just like everyone else, insomniacs would love chocolates or the latest gadgets as a gift. But do you know what they’d love even better? Some effective sleep related gifts. And there are lots of people out there suffering from insomnia. An estimated 30% of adults in the US suffer from the sleep disorder. So, there are lots of things out there that promise to make falling asleep easier.

Chronic Sleeplessness and How It Affects the Body

Insomnia doesn’t only take away the ability to shut down and recharge your ability. It also puts the person at an increased risk of other medical conditions like GSD, chronic pain, heart failure, and diabetes. Finding a sleep gift basket or set, or just about anything that would make sleeping easier could save the life of your insomniac friend.

These aftereffects of sleeplessness is why folks with habitual sleeplessness always look dog tired. Their bodies can’t tap into the glucose energy sources, which happens mostly when we sleep. Like a vicious cycle, the side-effects of insomnia make it even harder to fall asleep. That means you don’t even have to focus on finding gifts to improve sleep. You can get a gift that offers relief from the side effects of sleeplessness and still help your friend sleep better.

5 Eye-Opening Insomnia Statistics That Can Help You Find the Right Gift

You do need to know a few things about insomniacs if you’re going to find the right gift. Some of these might actually startle you.

• 40% of people who experience regular sleeplessness also suffer from a coexisting psychiatric condition
• Nearly 100,000 car crashes every year are caused by sleepy drivers. Most of them are insomniacs too drowsy to concentrate on the road
• Pets can suffer from insomnia too according to studies and often have the same symptoms as humans.
• Sleeping pills don’t cure insomnia although one out of four Americans take them to help them sleep. 
• Only cognitive behavioral therapy is proven as a cure for sleeplessness.

While these facts might be frightening, they can actually clue you in on the perfect gifts for restless sleepers. Just think about if your friend has complained about or experienced any of the above and the right gift will magically pop up. But not to worry. At the end of the article, you’ll find a handy list of 6 best gifts for better sleep you can get for your friend, family member, or even pet languishing in the land of the walking sleepy.

Before we get to that though, a little on how people without insomnia seem to fall asleep. With knowledge on how ordinary folks are able to effortlessly fall asleep will help you in choosing the right gift because you know what works and what doesn’t work.

How People Effortless Fall Asleep

Falling asleep might not seem like a big deal to regular people. If you have insomnia, being able to go to bed and sleep is the equivalent of a superpower. Insomniacs spend the better part of their night tossing and turning, and just as they are able to drift off, the alarm goes off.

It’s a brand-new day, and you feel like you had a couple of minutes of sleep!

How do they do it? How is it that other folks can jump into bed, turn off the lights, and minutes later, they’re sawing logs and stacking them like they’ve downed an entire bottle of sleeping pills.

For starters, falling asleep is not a superpower. Nor is it magic. It’s natural, and this is why.

Why We Sleep (Even If You Only Seem to Sleep A Couple of Hours Each Night)

While we still don’t know what sleep does, we do know that we spend nearly a third of our lives asleep. That must mean sleep is really important, doesn’t it? And it further justifies your search for gifts to help someone sleep better.

But we don’t actually know why we sleep. There are lots of speculations, but nothing is proven so far. All we know is, at a certain point, our body and brain need to power down. But we don’t know what happens to us when we fall asleep, apart from dreaming and a few other processes. What we do know for sure is how we actually go to sleep.

Scientists have uncovered what makes us go to sleep and the kind of environment that induces sleep. That’s great news if you’re shopping around for sleep gift set or sleep gifts in general because you’ll actually be able to tell if it works.

So, let’s take a brief look at how we go to sleep. And this might take you back to your Biology class, but we’ll try and make it as interesting as possible.

1. It All Starts in the Hypothalamus

The hypothalamus is a fancy name for the peanut-sized part of your brain that controls sleep and arousal. It contains special clusters of suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) cells that register light exposure in your eyes as well as your behavioral rhythm. Keep this in mind because it comes in handy when searching for the perfect objects that help you sleep. Damage to the SCN inevitably results in erratic sleep throughout the day because the brain cannot control the circadian rhythms because light and dark cycles don’t register.

2. The Brain Stem Tells the Hypothalamus When to Sleep and Wake Up

The hypothalamus needs an off and on switch, and that’s where the brainstem comes in. It tells the hypothalamus when to switch off (go to sleep) and when to wake up (arousal). The two organs produce a special brain, chemical scientists call GABA, that either reduce or increase arousal sensations. The brain stem also plays a role in REM sleep, the deepest form of sleep you get to experience.

3. The thalamus goes quite.

When you’re awake, the thalamus is quite active. It sends a lot of information from your eyes, ears, and other senses to the cerebral cortex. When you sleep, the thalamus switches off, giving you the peace and quiet you need for a relaxing snooze. This is also important when searching for gifts for people with insomnia or difficulty sleeping.

4. The pineal gland produces sleep hormones

When the SCN from the hypothalamus notices a decrease in light, it tells the pineal gland in your brain to produce sleep hormones – melatonin. You might have noticed a pattern here. The brain knows it’s time to sleep when the lights go down and noise levels go down too. Keep this in mind when looking through our list of sleepytime gifts.

5. The basal forebrain and the midbrain drive your sleep

By releasing adenosine, a chemical by-product of cells breaking down glucose, the basal forebrain and the midbrain support your sleep cycle. Drinking caffeine will block the release of adenosine.

That’s all you need to know about the sleeping process so that you can choose the right gift. Now, it’s time to check out some excellent sleep gift set. This list should help you narrow down the range of gifts you can get for restless sleepers so that you don’t end up buying gifts for athletic teenage guys guaranteed to keep someone awake hours on end.