Sleep Hygiene
Despite the bizarre-sounding name, sleep hygiene is actually quite useful. This article looks at the practice of sleep hygiene - what it is and why it works.
What is sleep hygiene?
Sleep hygiene is the name given to the routines and practices that encourage good sleep. It involves getting your mind and body into a favourable state for sleep and making the bedroom the best possible environment for sleeping in.
Who is sleep hygiene for?
Sleep hygiene is for people who generally sleep ok. Perfect sleep doesn’t exist - but sleep hygiene can help stack the odds in your favour of having a better night’s sleep.
An important point is that sleep hygiene is not effective for insomnia…
Insomnia is different to the general poor sleep we may all experience from time to time. It a specific diagnosis, and a much deeper rooted sleep problem that has a much more significant knock on effect on how you feel and function during the day.
Insomnia requires a more specific treatment - the gold standard treatment is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi), and there are other evidence-based medical treatment such as Daridorexant and Melatonin that can also be used.
Sleep hygiene measures can be broadly divided into three -
Scheduling
One of the main systems that controls your sleep is the circadian rhythm. This is a cycle that runs for 24 hours a day (‘circa’ is Latin for round and ‘dia’ is day). Certain practices reinforce the wake phase of your circadian rhythm, so the sleep phase arrives more naturally at night. This can be done by:
Keeping a fixed wake-up time and not varying it by more than one hour at weekends.
Getting into daylight (or bright light) in the first hour after waking
Carry out moderate exercise during the day, ideally in the morning.
Preparation for Sleep
This is getting your mind and body into the right state for sleep:
Avoid stimulants such as caffeine and nicotine in the evenings - these are wake promoting substances
Avoid alcohol – alcohol can reduce the time it takes to fall asleep, but it often leads to more fragmented sleep later on in the night. It can also reduces the time spent in the REM stages of sleep.
Use dim lights in the evening. Warmer-toned lights do not promote the wake phase of the circadian rhythm in the same way as cooler daylight tones.
It’s important to try and turn your mind off before getting into bed. Avoid activities that activate your mind, such as work emails or social media. If thoughts are chasing themselves around inside your head it can be helpful to write them down in a list - this registers the thoughts and acknowledges that they exist, and you can make a note to pick-up thinking about them the following day (and not while you are getting ready for sleep).
If you’re struggling to get to sleep, then don’t force it. You’re better off getting out of bed and giving yourself a break. Find a relaxing and distracting activity like reading a book, or even watching TV, while you wait for the urge to sleep to come back.
The Sleeping Environment
Your bedroom should ideally be cool, dark and quiet.
The transition from the wake phase of your circadian cycle to the sleep phase is marked by a drop in your core body temperature, so keeping your bedroom cool can help with this.
Keeping your bedroom dark is harder than you think! There are many charging and standby lights in modern bedroom, and often streetlight sneaking in around the curtains. Light, even if it doesn’t wake you, can pull you to shallower states of sleep which are less restorative. An eye mask is an option if you struggle to keep your room dark.
Keeping your room quiet helps int eh same way as keeping it dark. Noises can make you sleep lighter, even if it doesnt make you up. Ear plugs can be used if there is a lot of noise your can’t control.
Pets should be discouraged from sleeping on beds - they have a very different sleeping habit to humans, and often wriggle around a lot, or need to go out for a pee!
Two Important Points
1) Sleep hygiene isn’t a set of hard-and-fast rules. Its a helpful checklist of things to look at if you want to improve your sleep.
2) Sleep is a very individual thing, and so not all parts of sleep hygiene advice apply to everyone. For example, some people can drink coffee until midnight and sleep ok, while others can’t have any after midday without disrupting sleep. So it’s always important to reflect on the different points of sleep hygiene, and think about what parts might help you as an individual.
