BOUND OUT OF BED even in winter!

RISING AND SHINING CAN FEEL WAY TOO HARD ON CHILLY WINTER MORNINGS! HERE ARE SIX TRIED-ANDTESTED WAYS TO GET YOU BOUNDING OUT OF BED NO MATTER HOW COLD IT IS OUTSIDE.

- CHARIS TORRANCE

IS there any better feeling than your warm bed on a cold morning? The problem comes when you need to leave to start your day. Can we not just hibernate like the other smart mammals? Just saying… Although hibernating isn’t on the cards (not yet, anyway!), science tells us it’s completely normal to feel this way when starting your day in winter. Dr Dale Rae, director of Sleep Science and a senior researcher at the University of Cape Town, explains why, and offers some expert tips that will have you bounding out of bed like a champ!

WHY IS IT TOUGHER TO GET OUT OF BED IN WINTER?

‘There are two reasons: one is sleep-related and the other isn’t,’ Dr Rae says. ‘Leaving a warm, cosy bed and getting into a cold environment is not exactly something we look forward to, so it takes some psyching yourself up to get going.’ But that’s more of a creature comfort issue.

From a sleep perspective, our struggle is probably more related to the seasonal differences than the cosiness of our bed. Typically, when it’s colder, it’s also darker because the sun comes up later. ‘And what happens in winter is that our sleep timing wants to shift a little bit,’ Dr Rae says. ‘Because the sun goes down earlier and comes up later, we should be going to bed earlier and waking up later.’