MICHAEL MOSLEY’S FAST WAY TO A GREAT NIGHT’S SLEEP

Is your bedroom an oasis of calm?

LookIng BAck, I wasn’t always a poor sleeper. As a teenager, I could sleep anytime and anywhere. I once slept in a photo booth after missing the last train home and, I have to confess, I don’t remember much about the night I slept curled up in a telephone kiosk.

sleep came naturally to me and I never worried about dropping off or whether I’d wake up during the night.

sleep definitely became more fragile and precious as I got older and for a long time I battled with quite serious insomnia. That’s why, having cracked my original insomnia, I try to maximise the chance of a great night’s sleep by creating a good bedtime environment — a firm but comfy bed, a slim pillow, a cool, dark room — and a calming bedtime routine.

Through the years, I’ve chatted with numerous sleep experts and they are all passionate about the importance of treating sleep as a habit — one that you can improve with practice, whatever your age.

All this week in the Daily Mail, I have been serialising my revolutionary new book, Fast Asleep, which brings together the latest research-backed findings about how to eat for better sleep, with a step-by-step guide for reversing even the most deeply entrenched insomnia.

If you struggle at all with your sleep, even if it’s only occasionally, there’s every chance it can be made deeper, more peaceful and more restorative by paying a little attention to what sleep specialists call ‘sleep hygiene’.

ThIs term groups together good sleeping habits and practices which have been found in studies to improve sleep quality and help prevent long-term sleep difficulties.

The best way to ring-fence good sleep, night after night, is by setting a regular bedtime and creating a sleep-inducing winddown routine you can look forward to each night, and ensuring your bed and bedroom provide a comfortable and calm sanctuary where you know you will have minimal risk of disturbance.

If you have serious sleep problems, this is unlikely to be enough on its own and you should consider taking on board every element of my Fast Asleep plan. It is, however, a great place to start and once, like me, you have cracked your insomnia, or if, like many, you have only the occasional struggle with sleep, you will be surprised at how powerfully effective simple changes to your bedroom and bedtime routine can be.

SET A SLEEP WINDOW

sleep is such an individual process. The amount, quality and type of sleep needed varies not only from person to person but also within each person’s lifetime. There’s no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution, but all the experts I’ve spoken to agree that getting into a regular wake-up-go-to-bed routine is a good starting point. That means establishing a set bedtime and wake-up time and sticking to it seven days a week.

To maximise your chance of getting deep sleep, it is a good idea to get to bed before midnight, since your brain gets its deepest sleep during the first half of the night.

I normally go to bed at 11pm, getting up at 7am, and I aim to do this seven days a week, regardless of how late I went to bed. It’s not always easy, particularly at weekends, when there is often a strong temptation to have a lie-in after a late night.

But weekend lie-ins don’t fully allow your body and brain to recharge. Worse, they mess up the body’s natural rhythms (your circadian rhythms) which are so important to drive the urge to sleep.

This urge begins early in the day. shortly before you wake, your body releases a surge of hormones, including the stress hormone cortisol, which prepares you for the day. Then waking triggers the first release of a chemical in the brain called adenosine and levels build throughout the day.

Adenosine binds to receptors in your brain, so slowing down

brain activity. This suppression of brain cell activity is what causes the feeling of drowsiness.

The longer you are awake, the higher your adenosine levels rise. The higher the adenosine levels, the sleepier you get.

When you fall asleep at night, the release of adenosine stops and the previous day’s supplies are broken up and disposed of.

a long lie-in shortens your day and reduces the potential adenosine build-up. This could trigger a poor night’s sleep. It might not be a problem when you’re young, or when you sleep well, but if you’re prone to insomnia, this shortfall could be enough to tip you into a run of bad nights.

DIM THE LIGHTS

aS parT of your evening winddown routine, it’s a good idea to dim some of the lights around your house a few hours before bed. although light from your phone is unlikely to be strong enough to reduce production of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin, lots of bright lights around the house might be.

Levels of melatonin normally start to rise about 9pm, building through the night and peaking in the early hours of the morning. So by 9.30pm each night, your pineal gland (in your brain) will be busy pumping out melatonin, which in turn will be orchestrating the rest of your brain, getting it lined up for a night of sleep. Very bright lights in the evening can disrupt this process.

Tim peake, the British astronaut who spent six months on the International Space Station, told me they have recently altered the lighting on the space station so it gradually changes, over the course of a ‘day’, from bright blue light first thing to redder light as the ‘day’ progresses.

This aimed to mimic the light changes that happen back on earth and should help astronauts maintain healthy sleep patterns.

WILL A NIGHTCAP HELP?

aLmOST all the experts I’ve consulted advise against drinking alcohol at night because, while a few drinks might help you drop off, they will also lead to snoring and more fragmented sleep later on.

although that may be true for heavy drinkers, I did find some interesting research that points to potential benefits for light drinkers.

a recent study by Israeli scientists found a medium-size glass (150ml) of red wine before bed triggered significant improvements in cholesterol and blood sugar levels, as well as better-quality sleep than people drinking water or white wine.

another study (on mice) found the human equivalent of a glass of wine helped to open special channels in the brain, ‘the glymphatic system’, improving the efficiency of the process that washes out the brain and removes waste while you are asleep.

I personally find that one glass of red wine with dinner has little effect on my sleep but a couple of glasses make it measurably worse. If you drink every night and suffer from insomnia, do try giving up.