As the holidays arrive, the pace gets more hectic and some of us can over do it! Here are 6 helpful hints to help you get more and better sleep.
1. Stop trying to achieve the perfect eight. The recommendation that we all need eight hours of sleep is a myth, however what each person needs can depend on your own makeup. A major study of more than one million adults conducted in 2002 by Daniel Kripke, M.D., at the University of California-San Diego found that sleeping seven hours a night was associated with lower death rates than sleeping eight hours or more. Keep in mind that these are long-term epidemiological studies -- it doesn't mean that crashing for 10 hours one night suddenly puts you into a high death-risk category. A 2004 study from Japan that monitored the sleep habits of more than 1,000 participants, ages 40 to 79, over a nine-year-period found that those who slept an average of nine hours a night had a higher risk of death than people who slept five; people who slept 10 hours had a higher risk than people who slept four. It's important for people with insomnia to understand that their insomnia is not going to kill them or make them sick. Part of what fuels the cycle of insomnia is the worry about lack of sleep. Taking the fear factor out is the first step. Also, it's important to not attribute lack of sleep to everything that might be going wrong in your life. "People need to understand that sleep is not the primary cause of all of their problems," cautions Donna Arand, Ph.D., clinical director of the Kettering Sleep Disorders Center.
2. Change your attitude. Swap out negative sleep thoughts (NSTs) with positive sleep thoughts (PSTs). NSTs are unconstructive, often exaggerated thoughts. Examples of NSTs include: "I'm dreading bedtime," "I can't sleep without a sleeping pill" or "I'm going to lose my job eventually if I can't sleep." NSTs are knee-jerk reactions. Sometimes you don't even know you're having them -- and that they're having a disastrous effect on your sleep. You need to learn to recognize them and then actively replace them with PSTs, like, "I need less sleep than I thought," "I always fall back to sleep sooner or later" or "My sleep is getting better and better." Sound hokey? Just try it: The little mantras we repeat in our brains have a much bigger impact than we think.
3. Stop giving yourself jet lag. If you use the weekends to make up for sleep you lost during the week, you're just fueling the cycle of insomnia. By Sunday night, you haven't been awake long enough (called "prior wakefulness") to be able to fall asleep at your normal time. You've basically induced jet lag. The best thing to do is to establish a regular rising time -- and stick to it, no matter what time you fall asleep. If you have the opportunity to nap during the day, even for just 10 minutes, you do it -- just limit it to 45 minutes and don't take it later than 4 p.m., or within six hours of bedtime.
4. Don't go to bed too early. Going to bed early in an attempt to "catch up" if you're not really tired will most likely leave you lying awake and growing more frustrated. If you can't fall asleep, or you wake up, get out of bed after 20 minutes, says Norah Vincent, Ph.D., associate professor at the University of Manitoba's department of clinical health psychology. "Have a place you go, and do something dull," she says. Only go back to bed when you're sleepy.
5. Your bed isn't the enemy. You want to turn your bed into a cue for sleep -- not wakefulness. When Vincent conducted a study on online-based CBT training, sleep restriction -- or not spending too much time in bed -- was key. Try to avoid doing anything else in bed (except sex), like watching TV, checking e-mail on your laptop or talking on the phone.
6. Find your relaxation response. Just as your body has a stress response (to fight or flee), it also has a relaxation response (RR). Try to channel your body's natural ability to calm down through relaxing the muscles, deep breathing (belly breathing, which is how we breathe when we sleep), imagery -- such as a favorite vacation spot, floating on a cloud, the beach, a mountain or any other place that feels peaceful to you -- and simply repeating mantras, words like "relax" or "peace." Practicing the RR throughout the day (10 to 20 minutes of practice a day is ideal) will help you become a pro when it's time to relax at night. Start by relaxing your muscles, and then move to noticing your breathing patterns and using a mantra or trying visual imagery.
Make it a great night!
