If
you are sleeping with stress—and waking up at all the wrong times—here's how to
put yourself on snooze control:
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THROW OUT YOUR
DEFINITION OF A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP
Just as three
square meals a day has given way to all-day grazing and smaller portions,
"what's good for you" has changed here, too.
"Thinking
it's necessary to stay asleep for 8 hours straight may be unrealistic,"
says David Neubauer, M.D., associate director of the Johns Hopkins Sleep
Disorders Center and author of Understanding Sleeplessness: Perspectives on
Insomnia. "Just as we experience a dip in alertness mid-afternoon, the
inverse is a dip in sleepiness in the middle of the night. There's strong
evidence that there's a kind of awakening that's totally normal."
History
supports this take, Dr. Naiman says. "Before the industrial revolution,
people had their first sleep for 3 to 4 hours, awoke for an hour or two, then
slept for another 3 or 4 hours."
Even waking
every 60 to 90 minutes can be part of a healthy sleep pattern. The deeper
stages of sleep, or REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, occur about every 90
minutes and get longer as the night goes on, so your brain might become more
alert between those cycles.
Since we're
conditioned to think that waking during the night is a problem, when it
happens, we panic. That reaction causes our brains to awaken even further, Dr.
Neubauer explains.
If you find
yourself awake in pre-dawn hours, Dr. Naiman advises first assessing your
physical state. Do you have an ache, a cramp, or need to go to the bathroom? If
so, take care of it.
If you don't
have a physical complaint, then chances are you are experiencing a normal stage
of the sleep cycle. Knowing this "helps replace worries that you'll be
useless without 8 solid hours of sleep with more neutral thoughts,"
suggests Sat Bir Khalsa, Ph.D., instructor in medicine at Brigham and Women's
Hospital at Harvard Medical School. "The useful thought is: ‘I can handle
the disruption and still feel rested.'"
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GET BED-READY
After an
action-packed day (or one equally packed with worry), our brains need some time
to catch up, to make order of things, and to slow their frenetic firing before
we're ready to sleep. Pure bodily exhaustion can probably get you at least that
first hour of dozing, but then worries will rise to the surface and cause you
to stir. How can you get your mind to chill?
"We need
to learn to apply the brakes before the car is in the garage," Dr. Naiman
says. "Clearing your head is key to a good night of sleep." Simply
taking 15 minutes to sit quietly, meditate, pray, or do rhythmic breathing can
allow your mind to slow down enough to sleep through the night.
Establishing
any ritual that you do before bed—anything but checking your e-mail!—will do
more than relax you right then and there. The repetition also conditions your
brain and body for sleep, Thompson explains.
While you're
transitioning to Z-mode the same way night after night, you're also creating a
Pavlovian response to your ritual. So simply sitting in the spot where you do
your breathing or turning on the shower water signals your mind that it will be
sleeping soon, Thompson says.
Another way
to condition yourself sleepward is by playing off the body's internal clock.
Dr. Naiman suggests simulating dusk about an hour before you plan to go to bed
and dimming the lights significantly. This triggers natural circadian rhythms
that help us prepare for sleep.
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MAKE THE
BREATH-BRAIN CONNECTION
Dr. Khalsa
recently supervised a small Harvard study using specific breathing techniques
to treat insomnia, and all subjects reported an improvement in the quality and
quantity of sleep. "There is evidence that long, slow abdominal breathing
will reduce anxiety and arousal," Dr. Khalsa explains.
Dr. Naiman
recommends one breathing exercise (similar to those Dr. Khalsa used) called the
4-7-8 breath exercise. With your tongue resting on the roof of your mouth, just
behind your upper teeth, exhale completely. Close your mouth and inhale through
your nose for four counts. Hold your breath for seven counts. Then, exhale
while mentally counting to eight. Repeat the cycle three more times. Both are
important for restful sleep.
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TAKE A POSE TO
THE DOZE
"There's
a feedback loop between the muscles and the brain," Dr. Naiman explains.
"When you stretch and release tension, the brain relaxes too." The
deepest meditative state is known as "sleepless sleep."
To get to a
sleepful state, Dr. Khalsa finds the yoga Bridge pose especially useful. Lie on
your back with knees bent at a 90-degree angle and your heels parallel, close
to your butt. Lift your hips and arch up onto your shoulders. Lace your palms
together underneath your body and press your arms into the floor or mat. Hold
the posture while taking 10 to 15 long, slow breaths.
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WHEN YOU WAKE
UP ANYWAY
Despite all
your best efforts, here you are, awake at an hour even a fisherman would call
ungodly. What do you do now? First, here's a big don't: "If you open your
eyes and see the clock, that's it for many stressed people," Dr. Walsleben
says. "Seeing the time can trigger them to become fully awake." Keep
your eyes closed, roll over, or move the clock so the display isn't visible.
If you're
still far from dreamland try a mantra. Silently repeat any word that's soothing
or pleasant to you, or simply think "inhale" as you inhale
"exhale" as you release your breath. Thinking the words over and over
focuses and relaxes you, but requires less energy and attention than counting
sheep, which can actually be too engaging to work the way it's supposed to.
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"GET OUT,
GET OUT!"
After 15
minutes of lying awake in bed, you need a change of venue. "When someone
can't sleep, the bedroom can become a torture chamber," Dr. Khalsa says.
"Staying there is counter-productive." And you risk associating the
bed with your trouble sleeping, which will exacerbate the problem in nights to
come.
Go to go to
another room. You don't want to become too alert, so make sure you have a
nightlight in your hallway and won't need to turn on brighter lights. Occupy
yourself with something calming like listening to chill music on your iPod or
even performing your pre-sleep ritual again. Only when you feel drowsy, Dr.
Khalsa says, should you go back to bed. In a very short while, you should be
the picture of blissful sleep.
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GETTING YOUR
NAP ON
It's not just
for toddlers. Napping makes great sense for adults, whether or not it puts you
in touch with your inner child. When adults napped between 2 and 4 p.m., one
recent study showed, they performed better on tests and had no problems falling
asleep at night.
NASA found
that military pilots and astronauts who took a 40-minute nap improved alertness
by 100 percent and performance by 34 percent, and recent Harvard University
research also revealed that college students who napped between tasks performed
better than those who stayed awake.
How does
napping work its brain magic? "It may protect brain circuits from overuse
until those neurons can consolidate what's been learned about a
procedure," says Robert Stickgold, Ph.D., coauthor of the Harvard study.
Unless you
know the correct way to conduct a daytime doze, however, you could snooze and
lose. "Napping can steal the drive for nighttime sleep, so you need to be
cautious," says David Neubauer, M.D., associate director of the Johns
Hopkins Sleep Disorders Center. "The key is to nap early and short.
By early he means
daylight hours, at least five hours before you plan on going to sleep that
night (between 2 and 4 p.m. is prime). Any later and your circadian rhythms
will kick in, possibly making you feel disoriented upon waking and likely
preventing you from conking out come your regular bedtime. As for short, keep
your naps to less than an hour; 20 to 30 minutes is enough for most people to
get the benefits.
To help stick
to this nap-plan, stay out of the sack—likely not a problem at the office—since
you associate your bed with long periods of rest. Find a quiet couch or
carpeted floor where you can lie down. Even shutting your eyes in your office
chair for 20 minutes will relax and refresh you. (That's if you can stifle your
phone; if not, find an unused conference room.)
Home or work,
you'll find that—just like in kindergarten—after a nice restorative nap, you'll
play much better with others.
Source: LIESA
GOINS
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