You've heard it a million times by now. Our society is sleep deprived.
You are sleep deprived. You need to avoid bad sleep habits or else your mental and physical health will deteriorate. Yawn.
Still here? This week I'd like to address your need for sleep as one of the most important and easiest to achieve key to your personal fulfillment. It's a well known fact that if you're constantly feeling fatigued, you cannot be happy, successful, or effective. If you don't sleep enough, you won't think properly, your relationships will suffer, and you'll put yourself at risk for serious chronic diseases, accidental injuries, and depression.
There are a few simple questions you can ask yourself to determine whether you need to do something to improve your sleep habits. Do you feel fatigued and lack energy? Do you feel sleepy during the day? Have you ever fallen asleep while driving? Do you have trouble falling asleep because your mind is racing?
It makes sense to try to cure your sleep problems. A body of solid and well-controlled evidence is now accumulating to show that, at the very least, sleep improves your ability to learn and remember. Harvard Med School professor Robert Stickgold showed convincingly that people who practice a task before they go to sleep perform the task more efficiently after a night of sleep than do people who spend the same amount of time awake. Sleep helps many of the body's systems work more efficiently, lowering the risk of obesity, diabetes, and other chronic conditions.
Dr. Robert Stickgold, holding a very appropriate word sculpture
People fail to get enough sleep for many reasons. Of all the obligations we have in life, sleep seems like the easiest to dismiss compared to demands from work, family, and school. We are also exposed to misinformation about sleep and how to treat sleep problems. Physicians offer supposedly easy answers if we complain about insomnia. They'll readily prescribe one of the many sleep aids that, unfortunately, have the opposite effect of ruining our sleep rather helping us sleep better. If you listen carefully to the TV commercials, you can hear for yourself about the risks you run should you decide to take one of the popular formulations on the market. Though many claim to be non habit-forming, this just isn't true. And then there are the well-publicized cases of people who engage in strange, uncontrolled behaviors while under their influence. You might get a good night's sleep, but at what cost?
It's easier and safer to change your behavior than to resort to prescription remedies for sleep problems. I was invited to cover the topic of sleep this week by Dr. Tracey Marks, who recently published the short but informative book "Master Your Sleep: Proven Methods Simplified," and was glad to do so. She's got a worthwhile cause and a worthwhile message to go with it.
Everyone can benefit from learning why and how to sleep better. Dr. Marks marshals up a sleeping bag full of evidence about the benefits of sleep. She uses case examples to show how people's lives deteriorate when they fail to program enough sleep into their daily routines. That's the "why." To help people with the "how," she presents clear, evidence-based, and easy-to-follow suggestions. For example, she recommends creating a "sleep diary" to keep a record of how long you sleep and how your sleep is connected to your behavior. She also shows you how to incorporate cognitive strategies into your sleep improvement toolbox. There's even a handy "Master Your Sleep Cheat Sheet" that you can carry around with you or place near your bedside.
Maybe I just have a twisted mind (don't all psychologists?) but I enjoy particularly the way she explained paradoxical interventions to overcome insomnia. If you tell yourself definitely not to fall asleep, that you must stay awake at all costs, then lo and behold, your eyelids will droop and the z's won't be far behind. Needless to say, this must be done while you're in bed or sitting on the couch, not behind the wheel of the car.
Like other sleep experts, Dr. Marks comes down pretty hard on people who go to bed with their electronic gadgets on and nearby. Watching late night comedy TV or action movies can be almost as bad. Being plugged into your wired world just isn't that conducive to the restful state of mind you need to get your eyes to shut. She also shares the view that cognitive methods trump medication for the majority of sleep disturbances.
There are plenty of "don'ts" but also lots of "do's" if you want to improve your sleep hygiene. Here's a quick run-down of how to make the most of your down time under your down quilt.
1. Complete a sleep diary. Recording your sleep patterns along with the behaviors you engaged in before you tried to go to sleep will help you determine what your triggers are for a good or poor night's sleep. You'll also see the connection between your level of alertness during the day and the amount of sleep you got each night.
2. Follow the rules of sleep hygiene. You should avoid using your bedroom as a place to do anything other than sleep-related activities, and this includes having sex. The biggest mistake people make is using their bed areas for doing work. Dr. Marks even recommends wearing the right sleep attire. Wearing your jammies can actually help you get a better night's sleep.
3. Employ sleep restrictions as necessary. To get a better night's sleep, you sometimes have to give yourself a worse night's sleep. Eventually you can retrain yourself to get a consistent, solid, sleep each night if you force yourself to become tired through adjustments in your sleep patterns.
4. Examine your assumptions about sleep. People often sleep poorly because they have intrusive thoughts about how badly they will suffer if they don't sleep. They also tend to magnify the extent of their problems, especially as they watch the minutes or hours go by while they toss and turn. As in so many areas of psychological functioning, if you tinker with your thoughts, you can solve some of your behavioral difficulties.
5. Consult a physician if necessary. Your sleep problems may have a physiological basis which only a physician can diagnose and treat. However, be careful about what your physician recommends. Sleep medications can have unfortunate and counterproductive side effects.
You can also get terrific sleep advice, and a helpful Sleep Debt Quiz from the National Sleep Foundation. Also be sure to check out the Centers for Disease Control sleep site.
Who needs sleep? We all do. I hope this advice will help you figure out why, and how to get it!
Follow me on Twitter @swhitbo for daily news on psychology, health, and aging. Visit my website at www.searchforfulfillment.com and check out the Weekly Focus for more background on today's blog topic.
Susan is the author of 15 books including her most recent book, "The Search for Fulfillment."
Copyright Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Ph.D. 2011
