In this post, Emma is going to share 4 essential sleep routines that can actually help you fall asleep quickly and sleep better.
When people can’t fall asleep or they struggle with insomnia, they often look for bedtime routines to help them, and while sleep hygiene can be helpful, it’s kinda like waiting until you retire to plan for retirement, it’s kinda too late at bedtime to really create the optimal sleep situation- so in this video I’m going to share 4 essential routines that can actually help you fall asleep quickly and sleep better.
OK, there’s a ton of advice out there about sleep and some of it’s just wrong and will definitely make your sleep worse. (Especially if you have insomnia). The chief among these is that you have to go to bed at the same time each night. Now what this does is if you go to bed before you’re sleepy, you’re going to lay there and feel frustrated and anxious about not being able to fall asleep, how badly you need to sleep, how important the next day is, and all the other bad advice about how you need x number of hours of sleep to avoid brain damage or whatever and what you actually end up doing is all that anxiety makes it actually harder to fall asleep and you train your brain that bedtime is a time to worry and get anxious and upset.
First Essential Sleep Routine
According to sleep expert Martin Reed, one of the essential conditions to sleeping well is what he calls Sleep drive.. Your sleep drive is the need for sleep that your body builds up the longer you’re awake. When you sleep in late or take long naps during the day, that essentially drains your sleep drive and makes it much harder to fall asleep the next night.
Instead, a much better strategy is to wake up each morning at the same time, yes, even weekends. Let’s consider two scenarios, both of which you stay up late on a Saturday night.
Sunday morning you sleep in until 12, or Sunday morning you get up at 7.
In option 1- you feel well rested for the remaining 12 hours of Sunday, so you don’t really feel tired until about 2 am Monday morning, you either try to go to bed at 11 and just lay there for hours getting frustrated that you can’t fall asleep, or you stay up until 2 am and wake up feeling really groggy on Monday, it’s hard to get up to your alarm. You take a nap the next day to catch up, then it’s even harder to fall asleep Monday night, so then Tuesday you’re groggy again, you drink a bunch of caffeine, and then Tuesday night your sleep is super disrupted again, now it’s Wednesday and you’re still tired. Sleeping in late on Sunday can impact your ability to fall asleep for several days.
Option 2- you drag yourself out of bed at 7 am on Sunday, you feel somewhat tired throughout the day, but you push through, you’re quite tired by bedtime, so you go to bed at 10, and by 7 the next morning you’re feeling well rested and ready to go. Monday, Tuesday, etc, you keep getting up at 7 am, some nights you go to bed later, like 12, but then the next day, you’re more tired and go to bed earlier. But each night, because you have sleep drive built up, you’re able to fall asleep relatively quickly.
That’s why waking up at the same time each day is the first essential routine to sleep better.
Second Essential Sleep Routine
OK, you’re going to use early morning light (and evening dimness) to help set your circadian rhythm. You can see on this chart that humans typically have pretty drastic changes in their hormone levels throughout the day, in the morning we get a large dumping of cortisol- a stress hormone to get us moving, (including our bowels) and by evening our melatonin is rising. This is the natural sleepiness hormone. The thing that sets the timing of these natural hormone changes is light. So if you flew to the other side of the world, and your system was off by 12 hours (jet lag), eventually it would reset itself to the new time by using the daylight cues to know when to wake up and when to fall asleep.
But the cool thing is, if you’re having a hard time falling asleep at night, it might be because you aren’t getting early enough light exposure- whether that’s because it’s winter and you live in alaska, or you just work indoors with no windows and stare at a screen all day.
The ideal solution is that we all get a little sunlight in the mornings, but you can also use morning light therapy, with a light box. Light therapy can help you feel more alert and energized in the morning, but this also advances your circadian rhythm so that you can release more melatonin earlier in the evening. Again, the ideal is no light from screens within 90 minutes of when you want to fall asleep. But if you’re going to be looking at a screen, It can also be helpful to limit blue light or bright lights at night by choosing dark mode on your devices or wearing blue-light blocking glasses to help your body start to produce melatonin.
Third Essential Sleep Routine
Too little activity can lead to your body not feeling like it’s ready to rest. If you sit for most of your day, if you don’t get much physical movement during the day, you don’t exercise, you’re simply not going to sleep as well because there’s nothing to rest from. This is a common problem with office workers and seniors. I mean, you can focus on sleep hygiene at night all you want, but if your body isn’t tired, you’re not going to sleep as well. If you don’t have an exercise routine, at least Plan in some walks, dancing, or physical chores throughout your day and I promise it’s not going to hurt your sleep. However, It is recommended that you don’t do it during the hour before bedtime.
Fourth Essential Sleep Routine
Do you lay your head down on your pillow, exhausted from the day, only to find that your mind is filled with racing thoughts about all your responsibilities? You worry about the upcoming presentation, you fret about the thing you said and wonder if everyone hates you now, you try to remember if you responded to that text or put that birthday on your calendar? This is super common and it can feel like an impossible trap to get out of. A lot of people try meditation, mindfulness, distraction, or other techniques at night to try to make this go away, but that’s never going to be as effective as managing it during the day.
Here’s what’s happening. Because you’re so busy or distracted during the day, your brain doesn’t have a chance to process through these thoughts and worries while you’re awake. Your brain is actually really good at working through worries if you give it a chance to face them. But when you keep too busy during the day it doesn’t get the chance, it’s like your computer asking you to do an update over and over but you keep saying “ask me later” so pretty soon your computer is going to force the update right in the middle of something important.
Your brain doesn’t trust you that you’re going to work through those worries or to-do’s during the day, so it brings them up with you at night. Meditation, mindfulness, and distractions are all another way of telling your brain you’re just going to keep trying to avoid it so it’s just going to nag you more. This can feel really impossible to escape, but the solution is actually quite simple. It’s called scheduled worry. You schedule a time each day to worry on purpose, I recommend after 12 but before 7pm, choose 15-30 minutes to sit down and write down your worries, it’s important that you do this on paper or some sort of task management app. Never worry in your head.
This will teach your brain that you will face your worries and capture all those things you need to do so that it doesn’t have to remind you at night. THis is one of the most effective treatments for General Anxiety Disorder and it can really help you fall asleep and stay asleep. It’s also helpful to take time during the day to let your mind wander, to not be so busy all the time, and your brain will process information in the background.
Summary
So there you have it, 4 essential routines to help you sleep better- you can see how you can’t wait to do them at bedtime, you’ve got to do them in the morning or during your day to help regulate your sleep cycles and sleep more deeply.
- Get out of bed at the same time each day
- Use light to your advantage
- Exercise
- Schedule Worry
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