Expert advice to help you find the sleep ‘sweet spot’
Getting to sleep between 10pm and 11pm could be the sweet spot, at least when it comes to heart health, according to a new study.
The research, which used UK Biobank data from 88,026 people, found there was a 12% higher risk of cardiovascular disease among those with a 11-11.59pm bedtime, 25% higher for those who sleep at midnight or later, and 24% higher for pre-10pm sleepers, compared with those whose bedtime was from 10-11pm. So how do you get the perfect night’s sleep?
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
“It’s about taking the struggle out of sleep. Putting your effort into the things you care about in your life, rather than putting it into the struggle [to sleep],” explains Dr Meadows.
There’s a Sleep School app where users can tap into this.
Dr Meadows says one of the key components of ACT is “present moment awareness”, so noticing and accepting what’s happening in that specific point in time. This doesn’t mean we’ll find it pleasant noticing we’re having a bad night’s sleep, but it does help us move away from catastrophising that we’re ‘never’ going to sleep again and the next day will be a disaster.
Dr Meadows says self-kindness/ compassion are very powerful tools when it comes to breaking any sort of anxiety cycle.
Little acts of self-kindness during the day – like a 10-minute walk, making a nourishing lunch or watching a movie – “might seem relatively mundane and small, [but] they actually help to promote a better mental environment from which sleep can emerge”, he says.