Sleep Better

Being your best self means having enough sleep in the tank to put things in perspective, focus at work, be present for the people you love, or simply keep it together. A lot of the people I work with, and by a lot I mean most, have terrible sleeping habits. The work we do in session is often undermined by a late-night streaming binge, anxious tossing and turning, or just going to bed at wildly different hours every night. I have done the research so you do not have to. Below is what the National Sleep Foundation recommends.

• Eight hours is standard for adults under 65.
• Fall asleep and get up at the same time.
• Build a wind-down routine: soft light (60 watts and under), and put off heavy discussions until morning.
• Turn the TV off two hours before bed, and do not sleep with it on.
• No hot showers or baths in the two hours before bed.
• No big meals in the 90 minutes before you try to sleep.
• No exercise in the 90 minutes before bed. These last three raise your body temperature, which makes falling asleep harder.
• Use a white-noise app to cover small sounds. Choose steady sounds like heavy rainfall rather than variable ones like the occasional cricket.
• Do not co-sleep with your children. Little feet wake you up.
• No caffeine in the six hours before sleep.
• More than two drinks makes the quality of your sleep poor.
• No late-night cigarettes, or worse, middle-of-the-night ones.
• Keep the room dark and cool. Put tape over the small lights on your electronics.
• Skip daytime naps if you are struggling to sleep. A 20-minute nap is fine.
• Consider melatonin (1mg to 5mg), taken about an hour before bed, for at least 30 days.
• When anxiety hits, keep a notepad and pen by the bed and write down what you are feeling or thinking about.
• If you are tossing and turning for 20 minutes, get out of bed. Do something relaxing, and come back when you are tired again.

The most important item on this list, and the one people most often report back as effective, is turning the TV off at night. The biological reason is that the light tells your brain it is daytime, which cuts the melatonin your brain produces. Melatonin is the hormone that helps you fall asleep.

Another useful detail: we need a consistent sleep atmosphere because the brain surfaces roughly every 90 minutes to check whether anything has changed. If it notices something, like a familiar show coming on, it can wake you fully, and you are starting from scratch.

If your mind races while you are trying to fall asleep, let's talk. I have strategies to calm the mind so you can get closer to that full eight hours.

Don't let the bedbugs bite.