How to get a Good Nights Sleep
In my first blog post, I mentioned that we need to live in harmony with ourselves, others, and the natural world. One of the ways we can live in harmony with ourselves is by prioritising our health and, in this post, I want to look at one of the key pillars of good health - sleep. And as we slow down in Autumn, it’s the perfect time to focus on this.
I am not a doctor but I’ve become very interested in health over the past few years and have read a lot on the subject, especially about the various lifestyle changes we need to make to ensure good health. Sleep has come up again and again as key.
Good sleep is vital to helping our bodies rest and recover, to making sure we can function well during the day, and to ensuring we feel good. Lack of sleep has been linked to many diseases including depression, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, strokes, and dementia. It can also lead to poor judgment and more chance of accidents.
In contrast, good sleep can help us control our weight, reduce stress, improve our mental health, keep our immune system strong, feel more energetic, have more emotional stability, and have a clearer mind.
It also feeds into being in harmony with others because when we lack sleep we become impatient, irritable, and grumpy which can make us do or say things to others that we regret later.
In this post I want to explore some methods for getting a good night’s sleep that various scientists have suggested and which I have found personally work for me.
Adults need a Bedtime too
We probably all know that kids need a bedtime routine. They behave better when they have a regular routine and know what to expect. It ensures they get into good habits. But what many people do not realise is that adults also need a bedtime routine too.
Good sleep starts with having a regular bedtime and a regular wake-up time. This should be the same time every day, even on weekends. You cannot actually “catch up” with sleep on weekends and shifting your sleep patterns on those days is actually the equivalent of putting your body into jet lag.
By having a regular time you go to bed and get up each day, you get your body used to a regular cycle and your hormones (such as those that keep you alert and make you sleepy) can work more effectively.
So how can we do this? It starts with knowing what time you usually need to get up and how much sleep you actually need. Most scientists recommend you aim to get 7-9 hours of sleep (you will likely know how much you need within this range). Let’s say you have to get up at 7am each day and you know you need 8 hours of sleep. Working backwards from there means you need to be going to sleep about 11pm each night. Setting yourself an alarm on your phone can help remind you. After a few weeks of doing this you’ll likely feel quite sleepy as you approach this time anyway so you will naturally want to go to sleep then.
I know many people will work shifts (although this is bad for the body and the World Health Organisation considers it a carcinogen i.e. something that causes cancer), and parents with young children may also find that life doesn’t allow the luxury of a sleep routine - just try your best to implement what you can.
The Wind Down period
So the first step to good sleep is creating your bedtime routine. It starts with working out the timings to go to sleep as above, but there are other steps you can take as part of this routine too. It is a really good idea to have a wind-down period. This helps your body to calm down and get ready for sleep. There are lots of possibilities here and you may need to experiment to see what works for you. You could try:
Meditation
A warm shower or bath
Do some light exercise like stretching, yoga, or qigong
Drink a calming tea like chamomile or lavender tea.
Read a book in bed
Listen to a story (many meditation apps now have “sleep stories”).
One really important thing to not do during this wind-down period is use screens. So an hour or so before your bedtime, turn off any TV’s or Computers and stop using social media. The blue light from screens will interfere with production of the hormone (melatonin) that makes you sleepy. You can get blue light glasses which are said to help block out the light but I’m not sure of the scientific validity of that (that said, I have personally found they do make me a lot more sleepy when I use them). Social media can be hard to stop using (it’s designed to be addictive) and it often promotes content designed to raise your blood pressure, both of which will mean you go to bed less calm and probably stay up past your planned bedtime.
It’s also a really good idea to turn off notifications on your phone unless they are absolutely necessary. I personally have turned off notifications on emails, some forms of social media, most of my apps etc. I recommend approaching notifications from a default of always having them turned off unless you make a conscious choice for a very important reason that they should be on. And if you have a “do not disturb” setting on your phone to prevent messages during the night time, try and turn it on.
Set the right environment
Your external environment can have a significant impact on how you sleep.
As we’ve mentioned previously - having blue light in the evening can affect your sleep hormones and therefore it’s a good idea to minimise it in the evenings. But another thing that you can consider is the impact of strong overhead lights. These also interfere with our sleep hormones.
If we think about our evolutionary past, evenings were always quite dark with low levels of light. Once the sun went down, we either sat around a fire, or later we might have had candles, but either way, there was no strong light. This signalled to our body to produce more melatonin and make us sleepy. We can create a similar atmosphere in our homes during the evening by using lamps, warm lighting, fairy lights, and candles to produce that low-light, calming, cozy atmosphere that will gradually make us sleepy. Having lower light levels in the evening has been a game-changer for me.
The next thing that really helps is to have darkness when we want to go to sleep. This is best done by investing in blackout curtains for the room to keep it dark, but you can also invest in an eye-mask too.
To fall asleep our body temperature needs to reduce so you’ll want your room to be cool (but not too cold). Apparently, the best temperature room for most people to fall asleep is around 18.5 degrees centigrade.
You could consider creating a nice relaxing scent in the room with a candle or diffuser (just remember to blow any candles out before bed). I find Lavender essential oil in a diffuser can really help to calm me.
Keep your TV out of your bedroom and ideally your phone too. For an alarm, perhaps get an alarm clock. If you need sound while you sleep, don’t leave a TV on, consider white noise instead (you can find this on meditation/sleep apps or Youtube).
Finally, invest in good bedding. You are going to spend 1/3 of your life in bed so you might as well ensure it is really comfy and cosy. Make sure you have a really good mattress, comfy sheets and pillows, and a duvet suited to the season (warmer in winter, lighter in summer). Do some research on how to make your bed really lovely and cosy.
What if I can’t sleep?
Most people will find they have nights when they can’t sleep. Doing all the above things will help reduce the chance of this but there are just going to be times when we can’t shut down our minds or we wake up in the middle of the night and it’s a struggle to sleep again.
One thing I have found that really helps me is to use a brain-dump journal during my wind-down period - I can write whatever is worrying me or I’m thinking about onto the paper and that then gets it out of my mind. It is not there to be a nice journal to go back to in future, it’s literally there to just dump whatever is in your mind out so you can stop thinking about it. You can even burn or throw away the bit of paper the next day. I find that when I do this, I tend to get a feeling of mental peace afterward and that makes it so much easier to sleep.
Another thing to be aware of is - you can’t force yourself to sleep. Don’t “try” to sleep. It doesn’t work. And don’t count sheep - scientists say that is actually counterproductive. The best thing to do is to just rest and tell yourself that you are just going to lie there with your eyes closed and enjoy resting. Also giving your mind something to distract it can help too such as listening to a calming sleep story. If I lie there in the dark, eyes closed, listening to a story or a relaxing podcast (not the news), I rarely hear the ending as I’ve fallen asleep.
We can sometimes sabotage our chances of sleeping by either eating too late before bed so our body is still digesting things when we are trying to sleep, or by drinking alcohol (studies show that while people may think it helps them sleep, it actually makes it more difficult and leads to a less deep/rested sleep), or by having caffeine too late in the day. Caffeine wakes us up and it takes a very long time to get through our system. So, many doctors and scientists now recommend not drinking any caffeine after midday so that it has time to get through your system by bedtime.
If you wake up in the middle of the night or are taking a long time to go to sleep, after about half an hour of trying it may be better just to get up and do something calming. This means maybe reading a book or something similar. Don’t go on your phone or other screens though as that will make things worse. Once you feel really sleepy, then go back to bed.
Final Tips
I have two final tips -
First, get morning light (outside not just through the window). Morning light resets our circadian rhythm (more on that in a future post) and body clock. It tells our body to boost cortisol and wake us up fully, while also telling our body to delay melatonin until later. This will mean you feel more awake in the day and the release of melatonin to make you sleepy occurs at the correct time in the evening.
Second, do some exercise. This should not be done right before bed because it will raise your body temperature and release endorphins making it harder to sleep. But there is good evidence that doing exercise during the day can really help you get to sleep faster and more deeply during the night. It can even help with sleep disorders and insomnia. (For the evidence see scientific paper here).
You could of course combine the two and do some exercise outside in the morning.
I hope some of these tips will help you like they’ve helped me and you will be able to sleep better and feel more in harmony with yourself.