ASLEEP IN 15 MINUTES!
Every night, millions of us find ourselves joining The Insomnia Club – with anxiety about not being able to drop off keeping us awake! We asked the experts how to fall asleep in minutes – and stay that way
Our guide will help you sleep better
A Sleep Council survey found that a third of us only manage 5-6 hours a night*
BUSY BRAIN SYNDROME
A quiet mind is a prerequisite for sleep. ‘Twentyfour-hour living has a lot to answer for,’ says Professor Jason Ellis, of the Northumbria Centre for Sleep Research. ‘We have stretched our days, shrunk the nights and, in the process, marginalised our sleep. We’re simply not giving ourselves time to slow down and get into sleep mode. We think we can go from wake to sleep without any transition – we take it to the wire, and now the wire’s breaking.’
SLEEP SOLUTION Programme in wind-down time and put the day to bed well before you turn in. Leave worries aside by writing tomorrow’s to-do list, put away phones and laptops, and don’t do heavy exercise or eat a big meal within two hours of bedtime. Keep the lights low in the run-up to going to bed. ‘Research has shown that normal everyday lighting directly compared with dim light can inhibit production of the sleep hormone melatonin by up to 1.5 hours,’ says Professor Colin Espie, of Oxford University.
THE WRONG BEDTIME!
If you lie awake for 30 minutes or more when you go to bed, you may be an owl who’s trying to live like a lark. Most of us tend towards either early to bed/early to rise or late to bed/late to rise, and if your tendency is clearly in one direction, overriding it can cause problems. SLEEP SOLUTION When sleep is not happening, get up. Leave your bedroom, keep the light dim, do something relaxing and only go back to bed when you feel really sleepy. One way to find out your natural sleep/wake time is on holiday. Only go to bed when you’re really sleepy and allow yourself to wake naturally – give yourself a week to adjust and find your natural rhythm. ‘The number of hours sleep you need is as individual as you are,’ says Professor Espie. ‘Don’t assume you need the often-quoted seven to eight hours. Discovering the sleep that you personally need, and then making that your new pattern, is a really good starting point to improving your sleep.’
ENVIRONMENTAL CHAOS
While young children seem to be able to sleep anytime, anywhere, adults aren’t like that. Noise, light, being too hot or too cold, an uncomfortable mattress or the wrong pillows can all delay or disturb your sleep. SLEEP SOLUTION ‘There’s no doubt that your sleep environment plays a crucial role, so it’s very important to get the temperature, light and noise levels in your bedroom right,’ says Professor Espie. ‘When we are not at the right temperature, we have lighter sleep. The ideal temperature is around 18°C. Too hot and you may get restless, too cold and you may struggle to drop off, and have bad dreams.’ Minimise anything else that may be disturbing sleep: light, noise, a mobile phone or even a ticking clock can all disturb light sleep. Noise is more likely to wake you from light sleep than deep sleep and tends to be more disruptive in the second half of the night.
NO NIGHT-TIME ROUTINE
Your body is programmed to follow a 24-hour sleep cycle, and craves regularity, so having no regular sleep/wake time is going to be disruptive. The Sleep Council found that 14% of those who complained about poor sleep had no bedtime routine. SLEEP SOLUTION Stick to a regular pattern as far as possible. ‘Getting up at the same time every morning is even more important than the time you go to bed, as it helps align the biological processes involved with sleep during the day,’ says Professor Ellis. ‘Being exposed to natural light, particularly in the morning, also helps strengthen your body clock.’ If you have a bad night, don’t compensate by sleeping in the next day, as you can unwittingly make it harder for yourself. Nap if you need to but time it to hit the post-lunch low (2-3pm) and make it short (around 20 minutes). Too long and you will feel groggy, and it may interfere with sleep later.
TRYING TOO HARD
We all know what it’s like – the more you can’t sleep, the harder you try to sleep. And the more anxious you feel, the more you can’t sleep… and so the cycle goes on. SLEEP SOLUTION Try to stay awake instead. It sounds ridiculously simple but there’s evidence that this reverse psychology actually works. Sleep is essentially an involuntary process and trying to control it is likely to make the problem worse because it builds anxiety. University of Glasgow researchers recruited 34 insomniacs and told one group to try to go to sleep as normal, while the others were told to stay awake as long as they could. They had to lie in bed with their eyes open but couldn’t move around, watch TV or read. After 14 days the insomniacs trying to stay awake fell asleep more quickly than those who kept to their normal habits.