Help, I can’t sleep!

Introduction

Do you find it difficult to get to sleep? It might be that your mind races at night or that you wake up really early and can’t get back to sleep. In this article we will look at seven tips that are likely to drastically improve your sleep if you are having difficulty.

Seven tips to improve your sleep

There are so many things that compete for our attention, from social media to the demands of family life. We can get so busy that we start burning the candle at both ends. This can mean that we struggle to switch off at night. It could also mean that we worry about what may come tomorrow or what has been today. This can prove to be a real challenge to our sleep patterns, from struggling to switch off to not going to bed until very late. 

We can easily lose sight of how important rest it, but it is one of the foundations of good health. Jan Diehm from The Huffington post wrote a really interesting article about the importance of sleep. Benefits such as tissue growth and repair and muscle relaxation are just two of the key things that happen when we sleep.

For adults, it is widely accepted that between 7 and 9 hours per night is optimum. Occasionally getting less than this is not harmful to our health. If however, the difficulty of getting that amount of sleep is persistent there are a number of consequences. 

What is so good about sleep?

There are a number of reasons why getting a good night’s sleep is important

• A good night’s rest in linked to an improvement in mood
• There is an increased ability to focus
• Tissue growth and repair happen as we sleep
• Our muscles relax when we sleep, this is important especially for those who struggle with tension during the day

What kind of sleep difficulties might you notice?

Sleep difficulties can be many and varied and can include the following:

• Difficulty sleeping
• Early morning waking
• Difficulty switching off at night
• Sleeping but not feeling rested on waking in the morning
• Struggling to adjust when working night shifts
• Waking up numerous times per night
• Feeling tired and irritable much of the time due to problems getting to sleep

Does it matter what is causing my sleep disturbance?

We can experience one or a number of these difficulties for a number of reasons. It may be that we are very focused on a project or something else that may be going on. Therefore, our minds continue to process and try to think through challenges when we need to get to sleep.

For others, difficulty sleeping can be a problem that is so long lasting that it can be difficult to remember when and why things became difficult. Whether you are aware of the reasons behind the sleep challenges or not, the suggestions in this article can help? 

It is definitely true that for some, sleep comes easily. Some people have no need to take specific steps in order to improve their health in this area. If you are one of those people, that’s fantastic news. If what you are doing is working for you that is the best any of us could hope for when it comes to sleep. This article may serve to highlight how important it is to continue to prioritise sleep.

For a number of people however, sleep difficulties are a regular struggle. The NHS identifies that sleeping difficulties are experienced by 1/3 of adults at some point. If you would like to take a quick assessment of your sleep, click on this link for the NHS assessment .

Sleep difficulties can occasionally be a short term challenge that corrects itself. Sometimes however, it can be necessary to take particular steps to break the cycle of poor sleep. We can get into a cycle of struggling to sleep that can feel difficult to get out of. 

The cycle of poor sleep

Take a look at the cycle below, addressing the sleep cycle will help to improve your sleep. We struggle to sleep therefore feel tired the next day. In our efforts to manage this we can become focused on staying awake but because of our tiredness we find it is difficult to get things done. 

We then may do things to keep ourselves awake such as drinking coffee. Caffeine is indeed very effective in keeping us awake. However, the unintended consequence is that it can take up to ten hours for caffeine to completely leave our systems. As a result of this we may struggle to wind down at the end of the day. This can then lead to us worrying about getting to sleep. As a result we find it difficult to get to sleep. This cycle can feel really difficult to cope with however the tips in this article can help you break the cycle.

In light of the importance of sleep I would recommend the following seven things if you are having trouble sleeping

7 things you can do to improve your sleep.

1.    Get into a routine 

Routine is one of the most important aspects of improving your sleep. It gives your body cues that it is time to sleep. This can include having a consistent time to go to bed, engaging in a relaxing activity or taking a bath. Your routine can also set the scene for bed, things like making your room feel comfortable, turning off the heating and leaving your phone in a separate room are a sign that you are preparing to do something important.

This can also serve as a reminder that this is the most important part of your schedule. For some, it may be difficult to have a sleep outing that is the same each night. For example, a doctor who has to sleep at work cannot do all the things needed to prepare. However, having an eye mask can be a really good cue that it is time to sleep, even if other aspects are not possible.

While having a good slumber routine is important, it is also important to remember that gradual change is far more likely to be successful than doing everything at once. Setting goals for the changes you make can really set you up for success. If you think you need some support with this, take a look at this article on goal setting.

2.    Avoid caffeine 

Reducing caffeine from mid-afternoon if you struggle with switch off can make a huge difference in your ability to switch off when you go to bed. Christopher Drake and colleagues conducted some research into the effect of caffeine intake zero, three and six hours before bed. 

Their results indicated that sleep can be negatively impacted up to six hours before bedtime. Therefore, if you have difficulty sleeping and need to improve your sleep, aim to stop your caffeine intake in the mid-afternoon. 

Other research supports the idea that caffeine taken in the hours before bed can delay the onset of sleep which in turn can impede functioning the following day. With this in mind, trialling cutting out caffeine in the hours before bedtime may also reveal an improvement in functioning during the day.

3.    Reserve bed for sleep and sex

This is really important. We are in a new age of extended working at home, if we work from our beds, watch tv from our beds and generally spend a lot of time there, it will therefore be difficult to switch off as there will no cues to indicate that something specific should happen when you go to your bed. 

Let’s think of an example, for most of us, whether we go to libraries or not what are the main things you think of when you think of visiting the library? Perhaps, a place with lots of books? Somewhere to study? I can almost guarantee that one of the things that also come to mind it a quiet atmosphere.

Think back to when you went to a library, it is very likely that you think of a library as a quiet place. For most of us, we automatically link quiet to the library. If therefore, we end up going there for whatever reason we will almost automatically ensure that we are quiet. 

In the same way, we can teach ourselves to automatically link certain activities to certain places. Allocating your bed for just sleep and sex means that we are cued for these things only when we go to bed. We will therefore sleep much better than when our beds are a catch all for everything.

4.    If you wake up, get up

This links to point number three, remember, we are trying to ensure that we link our beds to sleep only, and not any other activity. This includes making sure that we do not lie awake for hours on end in bed. Even if we are doing it to try to get to rest. If you wake in the night and find that after half an hour you are struggling to get back to sleep, the best thing to do is get out of bed and do a quiet monotonous activity until you feel tired. We want to make sure that we get into the habit of laying awake in bed. This will cue your brain to identify that you switch off when you are in bed and that it is not a place of struggle.

5.    Avoid alcohol

There is a myth that if you struggle to sleep, having some alcohol will help you to get off to sleep. There has been extensive research in this area however that indicates that alcohol is a is a hinderance to good quality rest. It is true that alcohol depresses the central nervous system and therefore does mean that health people will fall asleep quicker. It also means that sleep is deep for a period, but alcohol, especially if used to excess reduces its quality, rapid eye movement sleep and duration of sleep.

If you use alcohol to go to get some rest, you may wake up the next day feeling like you haven’t had a good night’s kip. At night, you will wake up regularly for as little as a few seconds each time, you will not remember this, but it will mean that your body has not been able to benefit from the positive impact of sleeping deeply. 

6.    Keep it dark

If you are struggling with sleep, leave your phone in another room at night and remove your television from your room if you have one. In fact, there is research to suggest that the blue light from the tv or your phone in the two hours before you go to bed can have a substantially negative impact on your ability to sleep well. 

7.    Keep cool

It is really important to make sure that you sleep in an environment that isn’t too warm. The optimum body temperature for sleep is around one degree lower than your usual body temperature.

In the winter months, you should aim to turn off your heating around fifteen minutes before you go to bed. This will ensure that your room is at a cooler temperature by the time you are ready to go to bed.

Often there is talk about having a bath or shower before going to be to help you to relax. This can really have a positive effect on your mood and level of relaxation that can help you to sleep. There is another key reason to have a shower before bed. During a shower, our blood vessels move to the surface of the skin. This causes our core body temperature to drop slightly. Taking a bath or shower at any point up to two hours before going to bed is likely to aid sleep.

In conclusion

We all experience difficulty switching off at times. You may feel like you have been stuck in a cycle of poor sleep for as long as you can remember. Hopefully you will find some of the tools in this article helpful. If you are really struggling with your sleep, I would encourage you to give yourself a couple of weeks to really throw yourself into engaging with all of the above suggestions to see if you notice a different.

You may be struggling to switch off and rest for other reasons. Perhaps you are feeling anxious, if that is the case, you will find some helpful tips to manage here.

You can also schedule a free 15 minute consultation if you would like to explore whether therapy could help you.

Sweet dreams!