When you go to bed and when you get up are keystones to restful, refreshing sleep. Once you learn to synchronize your body's biological clock, your body will know when to sleep and when to be alert.

1. Wake at the Same Time Every Day.A good night's sleep actually starts in the morning. The second your eyes flutter open, light shoots down the optic nerve and into the brain's biological clock. There it stimulates the production of a smorgasbord of hormones that regulate growth, reproduction, eating, sleeping, thinking, remembering -- even how you feel from minute to minute."Sunlight activates the brain," says Frisca L. Yan-Go, M.D., medical director of the UCLA Sleep Disorders Center. And activating it at the same time every morning synchronizes your body's biological clock. Then your body has a clear direction that at midnight it's supposed to be asleep and at noon it's supposed to be awake.Wake up at a different time every day and the clock is out of sync. You feel groggy and hungover for hours, and even when you start to feel a bit more alert after that first Starbucks, you really never achieve the mental edge of which you're capable.

2. Hit the Sheets Only When Sleepy. No, not just tired. Sleepy, as in your eyes are droopy and you keep losing track of what people are saying to you.

3. Get Up. Sleeping from 11:30 P.M. until 2:00 A.M., tossing and turning until 4, then sleeping until 6 gives you eight hours in bed but only 4 1/2 hours of sleep. That's a huge mismatch that can actually inhibit your sleep drive and cause insomnia all by itself. To prevent that from exacerbating your sleep issues, when you wake at 2:00 A.M., get up and go read a book in the living room. Being up increases your sleep drive -- which just could make you sleepy enough to actually fall asleep when you return to bed.One caveat: Don't stay in bed when you're awake. A part of your mind will begin to associate the bed with being awake rather than being asleep. And that can turn on a nasty "I'm-not-going-to-sleep!" anxiety that will rev your engines whenever you get into bed. It's one of the most insidious -- and potent -- causes of chronic insomnia.

4. Give Yourself an Hour. The one right before bed. You need it to wind down and transition from the woman-who-can-do-everything into the woman-who-can-sleep. Unfortunately, most women are not giving themselves one single second. According to the 2007 National Sleep Foundation poll, during the hour before bed, around 60 percent of us do household chores, 37 percent take care of children, 36 percent do activities with other family members, 36 percent are on the Internet, and 21 percent do work related to their jobs.

5. Beware Sunday Night Insomina. Staying up late on Friday and Saturday nights and sleeping in on Saturday and Sunday mornings is frequently the gift we give ourselves on weekends after a hard week at work. Yet that little gift -- small as it is -- is enough to screw up our biological clocks. Even if you get to bed early on Sunday night, you will not be ready to sleep, and you will not end up being the happy camper you were expecting come Monday morning.

何時睡覺和何時起床是獲得使人休息充分、精神煥發(fā)的睡眠的關(guān)鍵。一旦你學會了如何調(diào)整身體的時鐘，你的身體就知道什么時候睡覺、什么時候要清醒。

1 每天定時醒來

一宿好覺實際上從清晨開始。你眼睛睜開的那一刻，光線照射在視神經(jīng)上，傳入大腦的生物鐘里。在那里它刺激一種瑞典自助餐式的荷爾蒙生產(chǎn)，荷爾蒙能調(diào)節(jié)生長、生殖、飲食、睡眠、思考、記憶－－甚至你每一分鐘的感覺如何。“陽光激活大腦，”加州大學洛杉磯分校睡眠障礙中心的醫(yī)學主任，弗里斯卡·L·嚴戈博士說。每天早晨在同一時刻激活大腦就校對了人的生物鐘。于是你的身體就獲得了明確的指示，在半夜它應(yīng)該睡覺，在中午它要清醒。每天起床的時間不同，生物鐘就會紊亂。你會幾個小時感覺眩暈、像宿醉一般難受，即使你在喝了一杯星巴克咖啡后感覺好點，你也決不能表現(xiàn)出你的最佳狀態(tài)。

2 只有當困倦的時候才就寢

光是累了不行，只有困倦得眼皮也睜不開，別人對你說什么都聽不進去時才去睡。

3 睡不著時就起床

從夜里11點睡到凌晨2點，然后翻來覆去睡不著到4點，接著又睡到6點，你在床上待了8個小時卻只有4個半小時的睡眠。這種嚴重的不一致，本身就很可能抑制你的睡意，導(dǎo)致失眠。要預(yù)防你的睡眠問題惡化，當你在凌晨2點醒來的時候，起床到起居室看一會書。起來不睡會增加你的睡意－－這就能使你困得在回到床上時倒頭就睡。有一點要注意：醒著的時候不要待在床上。你的一部分意識會把床同清醒而不是睡意相聯(lián)系，這會引發(fā)一種危險的“我睡不著覺”的焦慮，無論何時你上床，它都會使你的馬達倒轉(zhuǎn)。這是一種最不為人覺察的－－也是潛在的－－慢性失眠的原因。

4 給自己一小時時間放松

上床前一小時，你需要放松發(fā)條，把自己從什么都能干的女人變成想睡覺的女人。不幸的是，多數(shù)婦女連一秒鐘也不給自己。根據(jù)2007年國家睡眠基金會的一次調(diào)查，在睡覺前的一小時內(nèi)，大約60％的婦女做家務(wù)，37％的人照顧孩子，36％的人和家人一起做事，36％的人上網(wǎng)，還有21％的人在干與工作有關(guān)的活。

5 小心周日晚上的失眠癥

周五、周六晚上待到很晚不睡，周六和周日早上睡過頭，經(jīng)常是我們在一周辛苦工作之后獎勵自己的小禮物。然而，這份小禮物－－盡管它不大－－也足夠把我們的生物鐘全毀掉。即使你在周日晚早早上床，你也沒準備好睡覺，當周一來臨的時候，你也不能像自己期待的那樣，像個快活的露營者。