8 Habits of Healthy Sleepers
What do people who get a good night’s sleep do differently than you? Read on to find out their strategies that really work.
By Mary Bolster, November 2014
It’s not the healthy sleepers we insomniacs can learn from. What do they know? They crawl into bed and fall asleep without even thinking about it. It’s the recovered toss-and-turners who hold the secret to successful slumber. They know the despair of sleepless nights and have found a way to overcome it.
Here, with a little help from a sleep expert, are their insights.
1. Implement the basics
You know what you should be doing, you just probably don’t do it. If your sleep habits are all over the map and you’re tossing and turning every night, take the time to follow through with “good sleep hygiene.” It means creating conditions that encourage your body’s natural drowsiness, including establishing a sleep schedule (going to bed at the same time every night and getting up at the same time every morning, even on weekends), keeping your bedroom cool (between 65 and 72 degrees) and dark (many healthy sleepers swear by black-out curtains), turning off the TV and computer an hour before bedtime, using white noise machines [the National Sleep Foundation recommends the Dohn, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Medical links to free machines on its website, and not eating or drinking alcohol or exercising too close to bedtime.
2. Stick with what works
Once you’ve learned the rules, don’t be afraid to break them. If, for example, your best sleep happens with the television and lights on, forget what the experts say about keeping your bedroom pitch black and dead quiet, says Larisa Wainer, Psy.D., a psychologist at the Morris Psychological Group in Parsippany, NJ. “People can get idiosyncratic and ritualistic when it comes to sleep,” she explains. “They may have to have a certain number of pillows or face a certain way or shift a certain number of times.” If the quirks work, adopt them without apology.
3. Write down your worries
Overstimulation and excitement can certainly delay sleep but what keeps most of us up all night is anxiety, including anxiety about trying to fall asleep, says Dr. Wainer. Instead of lying in bed all night staring at the ceiling, Dr. Wainer recommends keeping a pad on your bedside table where you can jot down your concerns and plans for addressing them. If things are really bad, consider cognitive behavior therapy. “It can help you challenge your thoughts and beliefs that trigger and perpetuate worry,” says Dr. Wainer.
4. Turn off your thoughts
If jotting down your worries doesn’t calm your buzzing brain, Dr. Wainer suggests deep breathing, muscle relaxation exercises like body scans, or guided imagery. Concentrating on your breath or a mantra or visualizing a peaceful sanctuary helps slow the chatter in your head and induce relaxation, says Dr. Wainer. You can download a variety of relaxation tapes at the MITMedical.
5. Get out of bed
It’s important to associate your bedroom with sleeping so when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, don’t toss and turn for hours, say experts at the National Sleep Foundation. Get up and go to a different room in the house and do some non-stimulating activity (reading in dim light, drinking warm milk, or listening to a relaxation tape—not watching TV or turning on the computer) until you feel sleepy again then return to the bedroom. That will help reinforce the link between your bed and sleep.
6. Meet the morning sun
If your internal body clock (circadian rhythm) is out of whack after too many sleepless nights, exposing yourself to morning sun (between 8:00 am and 12 noon) can realign it, encouraging wakefulness during the day and drowsiness in the evening, says Dr. Wainer. Science bears her out. In a small study of 20 participants, researchers found that exposing study subjects to two hours of morning light and restricting their exposure to evening light successfully recalibrated their circadian rhythms. To reap the regulating benefits of morning sun, aim to get out of bed by 8 am and open the curtains to let in the light. Better still, step outside and soak up the sun for 5 or 10 minutes. If morning light isn’t consistently available (it’s always raining or it’s winter in Alaska), consider investing in a dawn and sunset simulator, a light that almost imperceptibly lightens your room in the morning and dims it at night, easing you into and out of wakefulness. Reliable brands include BlueMax Sunrise System and Phillips Wake-Up Light.
7. Create a pet-free zone
Experts recommend banishing pets from the bed and even the bedroom, citing their sleep-disrupting noises and movements, but not everyone agrees. “For some pet owners, the comfort of having a pet nearby outweighs the occasional sleep interruption,” says Dr. Wainer. You make the call. If Fido isn’t too fitful during the night and his regular breathing lulls you to sleep, keep him close.
8. Don’t give up
Before resigning yourself to a lifetime of sleeplessness, consider this: Insomniacs are 10 times more likely to suffer from depression and about 17 times more likely to have anxiety than people without insomnia, says Dr. Wainer. Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control are equally grim. Sleep deprivation contributes to automobile accidents, industrial disasters, and dozens of health problems like obesity, Alzheimer’s, and even cancer. The message is simple: a regular good night’s rest is worth every penny of therapy, white noise machines, black-out curtains, worry pads, and guided imagery tapes.