Dumb and Tired? Sleep helps on both accounts

Here's another tidbit from the Sleep-IS-Good-For-You file: Sleep can make you smarter.

We already know sleep helps us to manage stress, improve health, fire-up our problem solving abilities, end impatience, boost productivity and minimize general crankiness.

Now science Big Wigs tell us sleep can help us store and reorganize new information and memories so that we can use them during our waking hours.

Researchers, led by a team at the University of York, found that sleep helps people remember and incorporate new information which is key to expanding our vocabulary as well as enhancing other types of knowledge.

And, according to the study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers identified the brain activity that occurs during sleep to help us organize new memories and connections with our existing knowledge.

In this study, participants were taught new words and then tested immediately. Then, their brain activity was recorded in the lab while they slept through the night. A test the next morning showed that study participants remembered more words than they did immediately after learning them. They could also identify the words faster, which indicated that sleep had actually strengthened the new memories.

Participants who were taught new information in the morning and tested in the evening before sleep, weren't as successful.

I love the idea that my brain is working to make me smarter even while I'm sleeping. And I get that sleep is good for you. In fact, I highly recommend it. I've even done it myself. Occasionally. Rarely.

More often, thoughts about whether my good jeans (or really any decent clothes) are clean enough to wear to the parent-teacher night tomorrow, or whether my crown is coming loose, or if there's enough broccoli for dinner, or the check that hasn't arrived, keep me awake. If I do drift off, I usually wake up when hear the cries on the baby monitor, or my husband's snores.

On these nights, when I don't get enough sleep, I sure don't need research to tell me that Sleep Is Good. What I need is a babysitter and a hotel room.

But, that's not likely to happen anytime soon. So, here are six sleep strategies that can help us fall asleep faster and sleep better.

• Do have a light snack. A glass of tryptophan-loaded milk and a couple of wheat crackers before bed may help, but avoid the big meal close to bedtime.
• Don't use stimulants before bedtime. No caffeine or alcohol close to bedtime. And while you're at it, cut the nicotine. Caffeine and nicotine stay in your body for about 14 hours and both cause you to wake more frequently at night. Alcohol may help you fall asleep, but once metabolized it can cause night sweats, headaches, vivid, disruptive dreams or awakening. So. Not. Good.
• Do meditate. In the beginning, meditation can even induce sleep. Yep, many a time I've fallen asleep during the early days of my practice. Later it becomes a time to release clinging thoughts, which means they're less likely to chase you down when your head hits the pillow.
• Don't do anything other than sleep and you- know-what in the bed. This is one rule I break because I like to read a bit before turning off the light. Sleep experts say that's a major sleep violation. Instead, read before bed on the couch and train your body and brain to know that it's sleep time as soon as you hit the sack.
• Do keep to a set bedtime. Wake up and go to sleep at the same time every day. It gets your body in the habit of sleeping.
• Don't have intense conversations before bed. Since the bed is often the only place I can successfully trap my husband for an in-depth conversation (he's just plain too worn out to move away from me at this point) I've been known to launch into a little late-night talk like: "How do you feel about our relationship" or "Have you thought about how to solve the World's hunger crisis?"

For SOME reason he gets annoyed at these kind of pre-sleep questions. On occasion he'll become snappish, which then leads to a discussion about our communication. Sleep is slow to come on these nights.

Avoiding deep discussions at bedtime makes sense and perhaps a couple of these other tips will help us rest easier and sleep better. We'll be smarter for it.