If Sleep Is Good For Us, Why Is It So Hard to Get?

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Sleep on it.

Things will look better in the morning.

These tropes stand the test of time because we all know the feeling of waking up in the morning and things seeming less harsh than they did the night before. What gives? How does sleep change how we think and feel about ourselves and our lives? And how do we get better sleep so we can feel better?

Researchers nicknamed sleep ‘the brain’s garbage disposal system’ because it clears away the cellular trash that accumulates from a day of use. During sleep, the fluid that bathes your brain is increased by 60%. It clears the byproducts of all the firing you did in the day, rebalances the neurotransmitter levels between synapses, and flushes out the old fluid. In fact, one of the byproducts that gets cleared is beta-amyloid metabolite, a key driver of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia. When you wake up from a good night’s sleep and things don’t seem quite as bad, or new ideas immediately pop into your head, it’s due to this massive cleaning making your brain run effectively.

When you don’t get adequate sleep, you disrupt this process. Your brain is essentially dirty, affecting the efficiency of your thought processes.

When we are sleep-deprived, a thought network called the Central Executive Network (CEN) doesn't work as well. It becomes harder to focus, and it also becomes harder to turn off the judgmental, catastrophic thinking of your other thought network — the default mode network (DMN). This is why our thoughts get nastier and more intrusive when we’re sleep deprived. We can’t stop them. Yet, one of the primary drivers of nighttime insomnia? Intrusive thoughts. Research shows that the ‘stronger’ the DMN network, the more likely people are to suffer from insomnia and night waking.

So how do we stop this nasty rinse-wash-repeat cycle of negativity? Try these hacks:

1. Take a hot bath. Our bodies naturally go through changes in body temperature over a 24-hour cycle. In the hours leading up to sleep, it drops between 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit to initiate quality sleep. When we take a hot bath or shower, we draw out the heat from the core of the body by bringing it to the surface of our skin. When our hands and feet expel this extra heat, it cools off the core and brings us back in line with normal body temperature cycling. Studies show that people who take a hot bath or shower for 10 minutes or more can experience improved sleep duration and quality. In fact, a hot bath or shower helps people fall asleep almost as fast as the common pharmaceutical sleep aid Ambien. Whereas Ambien users fell asleep 16 minutes faster than the control group, people who took a hot bath or shower fell asleep 7 minutes faster. If it is too much effort or you worry that you will wake everyone else up, try using a heating pad to warm your hands and feet. It most likely isn’t as powerful as a hot bath or shower, but could trigger an attenuated version of the same cooling process.
2. Get into your body. When sleep deprivation makes it feel impossible to focus on a work presentation or school project, we have to look for simpler, easier ways to direct our attention. Start by focusing your attention on your heart. How does it feel? Does it feel tight? Is it beating quickly? Do you feel any emotions come up as you do this? Feel into those as well. Sit with the feelings without trying to change them. Take some deep breaths. You can stay focused on the heart if it feels good, or go to other parts of your body. Think to yourself, “I’m sending love to my heart (or back, or arms),” and pay attention to how it feels.
3. Switch gears. Sometimes our nervous systems are too wired to fall asleep, and we need an activity to occupy us while our bodies wind down. In that case, try reading. It is far better to have your mind engaged with a story than your own, automatic, critical thoughts. If blue light is a worry, try turning your phone onto night mode, or using an electronic reader that does not have blue light. It is frustrating to be up when you wish you were sleeping, but at least, you can direct your thoughts away from negative self-talk towards something else.

Struggling to get quality sleep can make anyone feel frustrated and hopeless. The most important thing you can do is to treat yourself with kindness and compassion. You may not get as much done the next day. You may want to crawl into bed early. Taking care of yourself can help it feel a little less hard.