If your bedroom has become more of a sleep battleground than a sleep sanctuary, you’ve got tired company: 35 per cent of women report often or always being overwhelmed by thoughts when trying to sleep, reveals the Sleep Health Foundation.
That’s why we tracked down Dr Sophie Bostock, a pro who works with the likes of entrepreneurs and athletes, for her nocturnal know-how…
#1. Rethink Sleep’s Role
“We used to think about [sleep] as just for recovery. But the really exciting area, where the science is leading us, is proving that sleep isn’t just about getting back to where we were yesterday – it’s about improving mood, performance and memory; repairing damaged cells; making our muscles stronger; enabling us to focus better the next day; waking up able to perform new skills because they’ve become more automated overnight. There pretty much isn’t any aspect of health, wellbeing and performance that isn’t enhanced by regular sleep.”
Listen to Dr Sophie Bostockon our podcast Uninterrupted by Women’s Health Australia on Apple and Spotify. Post continues below.
#2. Train Your ‘Off’ Switch
“People can put themselves under quite a lot of pressure before bed. They might have read that they ought to wind down and it almost becomes a military operation, which can actually be quite stressful. [In reality] we’ve got to rehearse our ability to switch off the stress response multiple times a day, to retrain ourselves to be OK with… taking a bit of time out in the day, doing some deep breathing, yoga, stretching – whatever it takes, that you’re going to enjoy, that helps to slow your body down. If you go out for a walk, you’re exposed to natural light – one of the most important factors we know to control your circadian clock.”
#3. Get Bored
“I spend a lot of time reassuring people that it’s OK to wake during the night. We naturally have slightly more disrupted sleep as we get older. We [also] sleep in cycles and, between each cycle, there’s often a very brief period of wakefulness. One strategy that’s good [if you wake] in the middle of the night… is to say the word ‘the’ to yourself. Two seconds later, say it again. ‘The. The. The.’ This is, in fact, the most boring word in the English language and it forms a sort of thought blocker. So, when you’re a little bit drowsy and you just want to stop annoying ideas coming into your head, ‘the’ can be really helpful.”
#4. Build a Bed Connection
“You [want your] bedroom and bed to be associated with feelings of calm, satisfaction and relaxation, [not] an environment where sleep becomes the battleground. If you can’t sleep after 15 or 20 minutes, don’t wrestle with it. Turn on the light, get out of bed, go somewhere else in your house, like a comfy sofa. Sit under a blanket. Read a book. Do some colouring in. Even watch TV. When you start to feel your eyelids getting heavy, that’s your cue… to get back into bed. You’re rebuilding this positive sleep-bed connection by only being in bed when you’re really sleepy.”
Read: How to Choose the Right Mattress For Your Best Night’s Sleep Yet
#5. Score a Sweat Edge
“Some of us are inherent early birds – about one in four – whereas one in four of us are probably night owls. There’s fascinating research that looked at athletes’ performance on a beep test. It found that, although on average the peak [performance time] was about 4pm, if they were an early bird – naturally waking up closer to dawn – their peak was probably three hours earlier, at around 1pm, while the night owls’ performance continued to improve into the evening. So [it’s good to] understand your individual rhythm – google ‘chronotype questionnaires’. Then you can use [natural] light to try and shift that rhythm if you need to delay your peak for any reason.”
#6. Consistency = a Winner
“The simplest thing you can do is wake up at the same time every day. It provides a kind of anchoring for your body clock. That predictability will help your body to get into a good sleep rhythm. There’s quite a lot of research now [about] ‘social jet lag’, where our social rhythms give us jet lag at the weekend – we delay our wake-up time by a couple of hours and then, come Monday morning, we’ve got to wrench the body clock back to wake up for work. So, choosing a [wake up] time that you can consistently stick to at least six, if not seven days a week, is going to make a massive difference.”
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