This Wednesday: Tips...to get good sleep.

Every Wednesday is Tip Day.
This Wednesday: Tips to get good sleep.

There’s a lot of advice out there about getting good sleep; here are tips that work for me:

Good habits for good sleep:
1. Exercise most days, even if it’s just to take a walk.
2. No caffeine after 7:00 p.m.
3. An hour before bedtime, avoid doing any kind of work that takes alert thinking. Addressing envelopes—okay. Analyzing an article—nope.
4. Adjust your bedroom temperature to be slightly chilly.
5. Keep your bedroom dark. Studies show that even the tiny light from a digital alarm clock can disrupt a sleep cycle. We have about six devices in our room that glow bright green; it’s like sleeping in a mad scientist’s lab. The Big Man's new pet, a Roomba (yes, he loves his robot vacuum), gives out so much light that I have to cover it with a pillow before bed.
6. Keep the bedroom as tidy as possible. It’s not restful to fight through chaos into bed.

If sleep won’t come:
1. Breathe deeply and slowly until you can’t stand it anymore.
2. If your mind is racing (you’re planning a trip, a move, Christmas shopping; you’re worried about a medical diagnosis), write down what’s on your mind. This technique really works for me.
3. Slather yourself with body lotion. It feels good and also, if you’re having trouble sleeping because you’re hot, it cools you down.
4. If your feet are cold, put on socks.
5. Stretch your whole body.
6. Have a warm drink. Some people claim that warm milk contains melatonin and trytophan and so helps induce sleep, but in fact, a glass of milk doesn’t contain enough to have any effect. But it’s still a soothing drink. My nighttime favorite: 1/3 mug of milk, add boiling water, one packet of Equal, and a dash of vanilla. A real nursery treat.
7. Yawn.
8. Stretch your toes up and down several times.
9. Tell yourself, “I have to get up now.” Imagine that you just hit the snooze alarm and in a minute, you’re going to be marching through the morning routine. Often this is an exhausting enough prospect to make me fall asleep.

Re-frame:
Re-frame your sleeplessness as a welcome opportunity to snatch some extra time out of your day. I get up and tackle mundane chores, like paying bills, organizing books, or tidying up. Then I start the day with a wonderful feeling of having accomplished something even before 6:45 am.

Comments

[lea]

sleep: it seems the new thing to obsess about and i, for one, am deeply grateful as i am struggling with it. what keeps us up at night--the contemporary "to be or not to be." sometimes i feel anxiety peaks at night, and i am working on a few solutions (the caffeine suggestion is a great one, hard to hew to). the deeper question is how to relieve the anxiety, and understand it. is happiness/sleep a chicken/egg problem. seems that way. when i've slept well i can feel invincible.

[Ellen]

#9 has always been my favorite trick -- I'm trying to teach it to my nine-year-old now -- but #5 doesn't work for me. Dark rooms give me nightmares, which interrupt sleep cycles even more :/

[Andy]

Cheese helps me sooth down before bed :) same with toast.

[randomelginguy]

Routine I find helps, have the same routine for going to bed. Plus constant sleep times, try to always go to and get out of bed at the same time each day. Easier said than done :P

[Aaron]

No caffeine at all -- that is a key element of getting good sleep. Give it a try, and you'll be amazed at how much more energy you have throughout the day.

[laure]

I just found this blog and I absolutely love it. Thanks so much for your insight and human-ness.

on sleep, I struggled with insomnia for some time after my grandmother died and I had to move out of my apartment while they de-molded it. The thing that did the trick, finally, was not worrying about not sleeping. I finally got myself a good book and when I woke up in the night, I would just read until I could fall asleep again. I only had insomnia a couple of time after I started reading and *accepting* that I just wasn't going to sleep through the night.