Friedrich Nietzsche once said, ‘sleeping is no mean art. For its sake one must stay awake all day.'

Maximising slumber can be tricky in today's rat race, which can poach the possibility of the fabled eight hours of dream time faster than you can say ‘toss and turn'. Luckily, new research suggests we may be able to get the benefits within a shorter timeframe. Don't sleep longer - sleep smarter.

Sleep therapists advise taking naps, relaxing and exercising to hibernate effectively and wake up zingy and refreshed. So what are the dos and don'ts of catching Zs?

Long term

Sleep experts say your number could fall any where within the four to eight hour range quite easily. Ex UK Prime Minister and gender-buster Margaret Thatcher famously boasted she only needed four hours of shut-eye a night to achieve brilliance, whereas many people need a solid eight. There's no one-size-fits-all rule, it's about being attuned to your personal requirements at different times - which are not fixed and may change from time to time. Sports players training hard may require higher hours than more inactive types (such as myself).

Short term

Enter the power nap, a very useful tool indeed. It seems we can learn a thing or two of previous UK politicians - as Winston Churchill said, ‘You're better well rested than well briefed.' The odd power nap helps us relax. Even if we don't go down for the deep sleep, it freshens and restores the mind and the body.

Dream weaver

Dreams can be blissful or nightmarish, but they all play an important role in categorising memories. If we're going through a rough patch we might fear our nightmares - but they may be trying to deliver us a message or sort through issues in our consciousness, so we shouldn't avoid them. Those looking for meaning in their lives often dream a lot and can decipher direction from this.

Beauty and brains

Humans are hunter-gatherers and instinctively need to feel safe before nodding off. We all have our own little sleep aids, whether this be an open window, heating, a fan, white noise or a sleeping mask. Make sure you have a good set of blinds and earplugs handy if you need them. We use these aids to reduce distractions and tell our brains it's safe to chill out.

Activate

We're not going to be the thousandth person in your lifetime to tell you to get more exercise - but we are going to warn you about achieving balance. We all know that over-resting leaves us sluggish and lethargic, but if you over-exercise it could cause muscle strain and burnout, too. Eight hours staring at a computer screen is standard these days, and it can wear out your brain. Just like your brain shutting down when it needs to, exercise makes sure your bod winds down when the moment it needs to arrives. Don't forget it also triggers those tasty brain snack endorphins - produced by the brain, they bolster your mood and aid the production of the hormones that help you fall asleep.

Snack right

All those old wives' tales about eating before bed are on the mark but less important than you'd like to think. Eating at the right time, your ‘metabolic window', conditions your body's metabolism to wake up and wind down. Within this timeframe you can give your body an important message - in your world there is an adequate supply of food, so it can sit back and relax into sleep mode when it feels the need.

Bella Beauty Magazine #19