Do you dream of sleeping well and waking rested? If you are like many Americans, the stresses of work and family life may have you tossing and turning each night and walking up on the wrong side of the bed each morning.

Believe it or not, you can live longer without food than you can without sleep. Unfortunately, sleep can be terribly elusive for many of us in this fast paced world.

W.C. Fields once joked that the best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep. Lack of sleep is definitely not a joke. It can affect your demeanor generating feelings of crankiness and fatigue. Additionally, a lack of sleep can cause you to perform even the simplest of everyday tasks.
There may not be much you can do to prevent an occasional work-related nightmare. However, you can prevent nightmares while sleeping simply by making good lifestyle and nutritional choices, and by having a good mattress and pillow.

The Michigan Chiropractic Society and your chiropractic physician recommend the following tips to help you sleep well:

Choose The Right Mattress
When choosing a mattress, look for one that is comfortable and supportive. The “sleep industry” once focused on the firm “table board” mattress. However, the new trend is “selective support.” Selective support allows you to press down on an area of a mattress while leaving other areas entirely unaffected. Be sure to completely test out the comfort of the mattress while you are at the store.

Rotate Your Mattress
Be sure to choose a mattress that is finished on both sides so you can rotate it every few months. Simply turn the mattress clockwise or upside down to keep your body indentations to a minimum.

Air Mattress Support
One advantage to sleeping on an air mattress is that the firmness of the bed can be adjusted to accommodate the comfort level of the person sleeping upon it. However, be sure that the air mattress is not too firm; a hard mattress can put painful pressure on your body and force your spine to arch or bow.