15 Natural Ways to Improve Your Sleep

The Harvard Gazette has called sleep “the latest casualty of the COVID-19 crisis”—and for good reason. While some lucky folks have actually gotten better sleep during the pandemic, most people haven’t exactly been getting regular visits from the sandman during the coronavirus era.

A March 2020 survey from The Better Sleep Council found that 52% of Americans were experiencing poor or fair sleep—an increase of nearly 10 percentage points from those who said the same thing in January. The research also found that negative mentions of sleep online skyrocketed to 73% of all sleep-related social media posts in March 2020 compared to just 45% of sleep-related posts from a year earlier.

Struggling to sleep, while a hugely frustrating experience, is understandable right now. The increased stress about health and the pandemic, as well as the indoor isolation everyone has been subjected to, are a “double-whammy challenge to good sleep,” according to Michigan Medicine.

The struggle to get rest is amplified by other pandemic-related difficulties, like adjusting to a new schedule, layoffs and other workplace woes, economic concerns, and extra screen time from Zoom calls, according to the National Sleep Foundation.