15 Self-help tips for a tip top night’s sleep
17th June 2022
“Oh Sleep! It is a gentle thing, beloved from pole to pole….”
Are you getting enough good quality sleep? This is an important question because sleep is not just an inconvenient waste of time which stops you from doing more interesting things. Research shows that sleep is vitally important to our mental and physical well being:
- it improves your memory and learning ability
- it makes you more creative
- it helps you to feel happier and more resilient
- it lowers the risk of cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes and dementia
- it improves healing
- it keeps you slimmer and reduces food cravings
So, if you find that you are regularly spending the day feeling tired, you will be pleased to know that there are things you can do to greatly improve your sleep – and dramatically improve the quality of your life
In this blog post I am going to give you fifteen “dos and don’ts” to help you sleep like a top! But first, some information to explain why the do’s and don’ts are important.
The wakefulness/sleep cycle
We all need sleep: it is the time when our bodies repair themselves and, on a mental level, when most of the processing of our experiences takes place. Adults need on average about seven to eight hours sleep per night.
The timing of our wakefulness and sleep is mainly driven by daily cycle of daylight and night. When it gets light, daylight enters our eyes – even when they are closed – and specialist cells trigger the release of cortisol to wake us up. At the same time, these cells start the timing for the release of melatonin, a hormone which induces drowsiness, about twelve to sixteen hours later.
During the day, the morning level of cortisol gradually reduces, and in the evening the level of melatonin increases, preparing us for sleep. Melatonin does not actually cause us to fall asleep: it is the starting pistol which triggers other processes which lead us into sleep.
Strangely, if we are cut off from the cycle of daylight and dark, our internal body clock will lengthen to about twenty four hours 15 minutes on average (but it can be much more), so we depend on daylight coming into the eyes each morning to reset our wakefulness and sleep cycle to twenty four hours and also co-ordinate the daily function of many other processes in our bodies – such as eating and drinking, urine production, core body temperature and the production of many hormones.
This cycle can be disrupted by all sorts of things like medication, caffeine, eating a heavy meal late at night, stress and anxiety, ageing or the need to get up during the night to use the toilet.
The two types of sleep
In 1952 scientists discovered that we have two types of sleep: rapid eye movement sleep (“REM”) and non-rapid eye movement sleep (“NREM”).
REM sleep is so called because, while we are in this phase, our eyes move rapidly from side to side behind our eyelids. In this phase, our brains are as active as when we are awake, and this is when we do most of our dreaming. During REM sleep, the ability to voluntarily move our muscles is “turned off” – so we can’t act out our dreams! REM sleep makes up in total about 25% of our sleep each night.
NREM sleep is so called because there is no rapid movement of the eyes. In NREM sleep various bodily functions slow down or stop altogether. This type of sleep is divided into four stages – stages 1-4.
Stages 1 and 2 are light sleep. Stage 1 may be so light that, if we wake up from it, we may not be aware that we have been asleep. Some years ago, I went through a very stressful period, and used to listen to recordings of plays in my iPod to help me sleep. Several times the recordings seemed to skip from the beginning to the end of the play and I thought that there must be something wrong with my iPod – until I realised that I was falling asleep until I was woken up at the end of the play.
Stages 3 and 4 of NREM sleep are classified as deep sleep and it is difficult to wake someone from this stage. In stages 3 and 4, the activity of the brain changes completely. The neurons start to fire off in unison, creating slow brain waves (delta waves) at the rate of about two to four a second, a tenth of the speed of the activity while you are awake. The brain also shows even slower activity called “slow oscillations”.
In both types of sleep, the brain is carrying out essential work. In NREM sleep, your body is physically repairing itself, and the brain is removing unnecessary neural connections. REM sleep plays a an important part in memory, learning, emotional processing and healthy brain development.
Sleep cycles
During a typical good night’s sleep, we go through a series of about five cycles of NREM sleep stages 1-4 followed by REM sleep. Each cycle lasts about ninety minutes.
In the first cycle, the majority of sleep is NREM sleep, but with each cycle the length of NREM sleep decreases and the amount of REM sleep increases so that in the final cycle, REM sleep is the greater part. Why this is so is not known, but one possibility is that it is the most efficient way of removing redundant neural pathways (the NREM phase) and creating new ones (the REM phase).
Top tips for a tip top night’s sleep
What not to do…
1. Don’t surf the internet or look at your mobile phone in the hour or two before going to bed. Computers, mobiles and tablets emit light which tell the receptors in your eyes that it is time to wake up.
2. Don’t drink caffeine (in coffee, tea or Red Bull) for several hours before going to bed. For some people a coffee in the afternoon will affect their sleep.
3. Don’t use alcohol to fall asleep: it may help you to fall asleep but it disrupts your sleep so that it is not so restful.
4. Don’t drink too much of anything before you go to bed, or your sleep will be disturbed by trips to the lavatory.
5. Don’t eat a heavy meal in the three hours before going to bed or you may find yourself lying uncomfortably with a full stomach or reflux.
6. It is not a good idea to watch television in bed. Even if you fall asleep while watching, the sound and light will disturb your sleep.
Good things to do…
7. Get outside in the daylight in the morning and reset your internal body clock. If you can go for a walk in the park that will bring even more benefits, such as the release of endorphins to make you feel better.
8. Make sure that you spend sufficient time in bed each night to get a full night’s sleep! You can’t make up a deficit by having a nap the following afternoon or spending the weekend in bed.
9. Keep to a regular time for going to bed and getting up. Like it or not, your brain is a creature of habit and likes to stick to a routine. Because of the changing proportion of NREM and REM sleep as the night progresses, if we go to bed late, we miss a disproportionate amount of NREM sleep and if we get up earlier than normal, we miss out on a disproportionate amount of REM sleep. For example, if we get up two hours early to go to a meeting and miss the final cycle of sleep, we will miss sixty per cent or more of our REM sleep.
It is not a good idea to burn the candle at either end, let alone at both ends!
10. Create a relaxing routine to prepare yourself for sleep – any relaxing activity, such as reading or listening to music, for half an hour before getting into bed. A regular routine will cause your brain to release melatonin about thirty minutes before you plan to go to sleep.
11. Have a hot bath ninety minutes before bedtime. Research shows that this can help you fall asleep and stay asleep.
12. Make sure that your bedroom is a relaxing place to sleep – peaceful and not too hot, cold, untidy or full of papers that need dealing with.
13. Make sure that your bedroom is really dark until it is time to get up. If you are waking early because your curtains or blinds let in the light, wear an eye mask to block out the light.
14. Use your bedroom only for sleeping (or sexual activity) so that your brain knows that your bedroom is a place for relaxing.
15. We have all experienced how everything seems more disastrous in the middle of the night. If you are waking in the middle of the night and fretting, one of the best things you can do to help yourself to sleep better is simply to write down your anxieties and plans for the following day an hour or two before you go to bed.
I hope that you have found this information and these self-help tips helpful. If you need further help, please get in touch – I have lots of experience in helping people to get over insomnia or improve their sleep using hypnotherapy, havening and NLP.