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Sleeping should be a snooze to accomplish, but unfortunately, many of us struggle to get adequate sleep at night which can negatively impact our health and overall wellness.
There are many factors that contribute to insomnia, which can be triggered by all forms of anxiety. If you’re one of the many people whose racing mind makes it difficult to doze off at night, you might benefit from adding a simple step to your nighttime routine — audiobooks.
According to the CDC, adults should get between 7 to 9 hours of sleep every night. Not getting enough sleep has been linked to chronic diseases including obesity, diabetes, depression and cardiovascular disease. Conversely, getting adequate rest at night will help motivate to be more active and productive at work and in daily life. Plus, research shows that getting enough sleep at night can dramatically help overall mood, too. Experts advise all manners of natural ways to make it easier to get to sleep at night including everything from breathing exercises to plain old regular exercise.
The National Sleep Association found that sound is more important to the quality of our sleep than people may realize, which is why many find some sort of white noise machine to be very useful when falling asleep by providing a soothing background noise that cancels out intrusive noises. But for some, even the help of white noise may not be enough. This is where audiobooks can be useful.
An audiobook or podcast is interesting enough to hold your attention, but not so exciting (usually) that it will keep you awake, thus allowing a listener to drift off as if being read a bedtime story. One great resource for finding audiobooks is Amazon’s Audible, both because the service makes it easy to download from Amazon’s vast library of audiobooks and because it will recommend new books based on what we’ve already listened to.
See it: Try Audible for free! Trial membership lasts for 30 days and includes 5 audiobooks plus 2 Audible Originals. After 30 days, Audible is $15/month. Please note, prices are accurate at the date of publication, January 15, 2019, but are subject to change.
Amazon users can sign up for a 30-day free trial of Audible, and get seven free listens. For a limited time, new Amazon Audible users will get 5 audiobooks and 2 Audible Originals during a 30-day free trial. After that, it’s also easy on the budget at just $15 a month. There’s also no commitments and users can cancel online anytime and keep all audiobooks.
During the trial, users will get 30 days of membership free, plus any two audiobooks of our choice to get started. After that, we get one audiobook and our choice of two out of six Audible Originals each month. Copies of the three wellness and fitness titles — Finding Ultra by Rich Roll, Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes and Do Over by Jon Acuff — will be automatically added to the library to start off.
Coming in a range as wide as literature itself, everyone can find an audiobook to suit their own tastes and needs. Whether seeking a beautiful narration of a classic, like Thandie Newton’s reading of Jane Eyre, a childhood favorite like Jim Dale reading Harry Potter or perhaps a popular self-help book like The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo or even the extremely popular Becoming by Michelle Obama, there’s truly something for everyone.
Of course, just like anything else, this method doesn’t always work for everyone. There are, of course, those who would find listening to fiction before bed distracting and would prefer meditation. Luckily Audible’s collection of books also includes guided meditations for sleep, stress relief and more. There’s also all levels available for those just curious about meditation all the way to experts.
And those that aren’t as fond of meditation always have fiction to listen to including popular titles like Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, The Handmaid’s Tale: Special Edition by Margaret Atwood and The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.
Audiobooks like those you can listen to on the Audible app is an ideal solution for those who need a little distraction in order to go to sleep at night (without the harmful glare of the television). You don’t have to spend hours tossing and turning at night when you can be lulled to sleep by the sound of your favorite book narrated to you by a talented actor.
For those just interested in audiobooks, Amazon’s Audible also makes a great companion for frequent travelers or for daily commutes. Lugging around books and extra devices for reading can be a pain, so simply just bring along a preferred device and headphones to get your read on.
See it: Try Audible for free! Trial membership lasts for 30 days and includes 5 audiobooks plus 2 Audible Originals. After 30 days, Audible is $15/month. Please note, prices are accurate at the date of publication, January 15, 2019, but are subject to change.
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