A good night's sleep is invaluable. While you may not sleep perfectly, you can improve your rest. Sleep is regulated by a clock in your brain, specifically the suprachiasmatic nuclei.
The first step is to improve your sleep hygiene. It works much better if you follow these suggestions rigidly. Once your sleep is under control, you can loosen up a bit. Sleep Hygiene is like dental hygiene e.g. brushing and flossing your teeth, it won't repair significant problems, but it will make things better. Good sleep hygiene is needed before trying our second intervention.
Here are the basics of Sleep Hygiene:
- Decide on a wake-up time that fits with your lifestyle and responsibilities. Keep the same wake-up time every day including weekends.
- Establish a regular bedtime routine, a wind-down time about an hour or so before your bedtime. Stick to this bedtime routine.
- As much as possible, make your bedroom, cool, quiet, comfortable and dark.
- Get up out of bed after 15 minutes if you cannot get to sleep. That's true even if you wake in the night.
- When you get up in the morning, expose yourself to the best light you can get e.g. stand in an east facing window looking to the sun.
Things to avoid:
- No screens. No phones, no tablets, computers, laptops or TVs for an hour before bedtime.
- No alcohol in the evening. It may put you to sleep but it wakes you up as it leaves your body.
- No nicotine and no caffeine in coffee, soft drinks, or chocolate for 3 hours before bedtime.
- Don't do anything in your bed but sleep and have sex, but it is ok to read for a bit to fall asleep.
- No napping, even if you are tired.
Start with Sleep Hygiene, then do Sleep Compression.
Determine a bedtime that allows for 7-9 hours of sleep. For example, if your wake-up time is 7 am, you should set bedtime between 10 pm and midnight.
Track for at least a week:
- The amount of time you were asleep e.g. 6 hours
- The amount of time between when you went to bed and when you got up in the morning. For example, it would be 9 hours if you went to bed at 10 pm and got up at 7 am.
- Calculate your sleep efficiency by dividing the time in bed by the time you are asleep e.g. 6/9= 0.66. You can multiply by 100 to express it as a percentage, e.g., 66%.
- This is your sleep efficiency. The difference between your time in bed and your sleep time is non-sleep time, e.g., 9-6=3 hours.
Compress your sleep time by making your bedtime 1/6 of your non-sleep time later. E.g. 1/6 x 3 hours = 30 minutes.
Stick with this bedtime for at least a week. Calculate your new sleep efficiency. Your goal is a sleep efficiency of 0.8 or 80%.
Stick with this for a week or two. Make your bedtime the same amount later. Keep going until you get to 0.8 or 80% sleep efficiency.
Remember, the goal is better sleep, not perfect sleep. It is unlikely you will get perfect sleep.
The second strategy: Sleep Compression
The idea is to push all your sleep into one period of sleep (except for getting up for the bathroom). This will improve the quality of your sleep and can get rid of sleep interruptions. It is better to be rigid about this strategy. Once you get better sleep, you can experiment with being a bit more flexible.
