Making the bedroom your friend

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Many insomniacs associate their bedroom with all the wrong things. They have conditioned their minds to associate the bed with fear, frustration and anxiety. And the longer they’ve had a sleeping problem, the stronger these associations become. There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to asleep when you’re feeling exhausted, but unfortunately, this is a reality for many people. The bed has essentially become the enemy of the insomniac, and every time he lies down to sleep, he’s at war.

Good sleepers are also subject to this sort of conditioning – but for them the situation is reversed. The conditioning actually works to their advantage. They have learned, either consciously or subconsciously, to associate their sleeping space with drowsiness, relaxation, a sense of peace, and most importantly – deep, restorative sleep. This is the normal state of affairs for a healthy individual, and it should be the goal of all insomniacs to reach this level.

So what are some techniques you could start with? Well, the most important thing is to not remain in bed if you can’t sleep (even in the early hours of the morning). A very common piece of advice is that one should never stay awake in bed for longer than 20 minutes. This advice is a little sketchy though, as it may prompt you to constantly check your clock to see how long you’ve been in bed. That's counterproductive because it adds to your anxiety. Instead of setting a precise amount of time, you should learn to trust your instinct – you can probably feel in your gut when you’ve been lying awake for too long. So the best thing is to hide your clock from view and to estimate the time yourself.

There are many things you could do when you get up, but a rule of thumb should be that it should be dull and relaxing. Here some ideas:
1. Read a book
2. Put your hands/feet under some hot water (this can be very relaxing)
3. Do some deep breathing exercises
4. Listen to binaural beats if you have any

However, you should never watch television or switch on your computer. And if you decide to read (which I highly recommend), try not to read anything too indulging. It’s also a good idea to go to a different room when you get up. When in the early stages of treating insomnia, you should expect to get up several times during the night.

And when you’re actually in bed, you should never try to sleep. This is impossible, and I’ll explain why using one of my favourite “golden rules”:

Sleeping is not something that you do –it’s something that happens to you.

Never forget this. No matter how hard you try, you can never force yourself to sleep. All you can do is to lie in your bed, get comfortable, close your eyes and relax. There’s no point obsessing about whether you’re falling asleep fast enough – it’s not within your control anyway. Once you understand this, it makes it easier to relax.

So make the bedroom your friend, and condition yourself the right way. If you're worrying when your lying in bed, then quite frankly you're better off not lying down at all. Tell yourself:

This is not the time nor place to worry about getting sleep.

What to do after a sleepless night

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There are literally hundreds of things you can do to improve your sleep. But what do you do when it doesn’t work out - how do you act when you're in that sleepless zombie-like state? It's good to be prepared. After all, you can’t expect to sleep well every night. Even the very best sleepers have the occasional bad one. Learning to survive and effectively deal with tiredness the next day is important.

You can't let yourself cave in after a bad night’s sleep. However, it is of equal importance that you set up a realistic plan of action. Ask yourself – what am I capable of achieving today at best?

I have a number of rules for myself on “the day after”:
a) pick an effective strategy for improving your sleep the next night
b) keep yourself refreshed and active throughout the day.
c) whatever you do, don’t take any naps.

Here are ten things you can do to work towards these goals.

1. take a refreshing shower in the morning

2. read a book, and make sure you read fast

3. do some yoga/meditation

4. go for a brisk walk

5. learn to set limits for yourself – you can’t be superman when you’re sleep deprived.

6. stay in a cold environment (turn down the heat). This helps keep you more alert.

7. listen to some fast paced music

8. don’t overeat (especially in the evening), but eat plenty of fruits.

9. exercise early in the day (5-6 hrs before bedtime or in the morning)

10. spend the last two hours before bedtime relaxing (no TV or internet)

If you follow these guidelines, you can have a fairly productive day despite having slept badly. I’ve had a few days where I basically gave up and did nothing, but those were exceptions. Over time I’ve gained a better sense of what I’m capable of on days when I sleep badly. The key is to be easy on yourself, but at the same time not let yourself become inactive. Maintaining a cool environment has been especially important to me. If you’re too warm, this could easily induce drowsiness and make you feel lazy. If you’re in a fairly warm environment at work, it’s a good idea to go outside for a couple of deep breaths, perhaps once every 30 minutes.

The 10 ideas listed above are the ones that I use frequently myself. Let me know if you can think of more.

Sleeping pills are useless and dangerous

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As an insomniac, I'm strongly opposed to over-the-counter sleeping pills. If you have chronic sleeping problems, they won’t do you any good. In fact, they’ll probably make your insomnia worse in the long run. I say this partly because of my own experience but also because scientific studies support this claim. I could go on for pages about why you should avoid sleeping pills, but I’ll outline the most important reasons here:

1) Pills don’t treat the root causes. While sleeping pills may help you fall asleep, their effect disappears when you stop taking them. This means that you’ll have to keep on taking them for the rest of your life in order to sleep normally. Click here to get a better idea of what sleeping pills will do to your health in the long run.

2) You get less deep sleep when you take sleeping pills. Deep sleep is the most important and restorative phase of the sleeping cycle, sometimes known as Phase 4. When you fall asleep after a period of insomnia, your body enters Phase 4 immediately to make up for lost sleep. If you take sleeping pills this phase becomes much shorter and you’ll feel terrible the next day – even if it felt as if you slept like a log.

3) Sleeping pills shorten your attention span the day after. Your thinking will become fuzzy and your ability to drive, concentrate and even carry out normal communication with other people will be diminished.

4) You could permanently damage you biological clock. Once your body adapts to less deep sleep, you may be stuck with that long after you stop taking the pills.

So remember, if you’re anxious about something (say, a big presentation the next day), shoving pills down your throat to make yourself sleep is NOT the solution. Take a hot bath and listen to some relaxing music instead ;).

The big pharmaceutical companies are always willing to make a quick buck off desperate people. They will have you believe that sleeping pills are a natural and normal way to induce sleep. Don’t believe them.

Even doctors are slightly unreliable in this area. They have been educated to prescribe pills to insomniacs and they don't really have the time to figure out the deeper root causes of your problem. That's something you'll have to figure out for yourself.

IMPORTANT: This is all based on my own experience; I'm not necessarily telling you to distrust your doctor. But I would certainly advise you to question him about the side effects before taking any sort of medication.

Don’t go to bed when you’re not tired

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Many insomniacs are people who go to bed when they're simply not tired enough. You shouldn't be going to bed if you've still got a lot of energy. It's pointless -- you’ll have to wait hours before you settle down, and your brain will start associating your bed with lying awake. If you think you have too much energy in the evenings, here's my advice:

a) do some intense exercise during the day, preferably in the morning. a 20-minute jog around the block will do the trick; weightlifting is not advised.
b) avoid TV and computers for the last 2 hours before bedtime. Spend the last hour reading a book.

It never seizes to amaze me how people can go to bed at 9.00 or 10.00 PM and complain that they’re not falling asleep fast enough. Of course it’s taking you a long time to sleep – you’re going to bed too early! In my experience it’s much better to get five or six hours of deep sleep, instead of attempting ten hours and getting almost none. This is common sense stuff, really. If it’s taking you hours to fall asleep, estimate the time at which you doze off, and start going to bed at that time instead.

Your bed time does not necessarily have to be fixed, since your degree of tiredness in the evening depends on what happened during the day. However, I’d strongly advise you to keep a fixed waking time, perhaps at 7.00 or 8.00 am. If you don’t keep your waking time fixed, your daily rhythm will start shifting. And that's definitely not a good thing.

The world record for staying awake

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What’s your longest you’ve gone without sleep? I think my personal record was about 72 hours, if not more than that. Some nights I would intentionally keep myself awake in the hope that it would make me sleep better the next night (this is generally not a good strategy). Sleep deprivation can be used as a form of torture, but some people actually enjoy it. In extreme cases it can produce hallucinations and intensify your emotions -- usually for the worse.

As far as I know the world record for sleep deprivation is 11 days and nights. This rather amazing feat was carried out by Tony Wright, a 42 year old man from Cornwall, England. The previous record (of 264 hours) was set way back in 1964, but since then the Guinness Book of World Records has stopped publishing this particular type of record because of the health risk.

Apparently this guy stayed awake by playing a lot of pool and keeping to a strictly raw food diet. Now the real question is, why would a sane man intentionally put himself through such an agonizing experience?

Read more here.

Waking up alert – a possible solution

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My morning routine is hardly impressive. First I wake up, and snooze for at least ten minutes. Then I go endure a sort of inner battle, an intense debate to decide whether I should get out of bed or not. Usually my evil side wins the debate, and I snooze for another ten minutes. Finally I get out of bed, feeling groggy and cursing myself for not being more disciplined.

So how is it that some people can wake up with a bang, while others seem doomed to be morning zombies? Some would say your energy in the morning is related to how enthusiastic you are about life in general. And if you’re a young man, hormones could be part of the problem (e.g. testosterone takes a few hours to kick in properly). But I guess the real question is – what can actually be done about it? Well, there is one idea that seems to have good potential. I'd say it's definitely worth a shot.

The idea is based on the fact that when we wake up during REM-sleep (the dreaming phase of the sleep cycle), we feel much more alert. If we wake up during deep sleep, grogginess will naturally follow. So the way to go about this problem is to set TWO alarm clocks (preferably a radio alarm if you have one). The first one should be set just a few minutes before your normal waking time. The volume on this one should be set to such a volume that you wouldn’t wake up during deep sleep, but you would during shallow (i.e. REM) sleep. The second alarm should be set at the latest possible time that you could wake up (without being late for school, work etc.). The volume on the second alarm should be set very high, to ensure that you wake up no matter what.

By using this method, you’re giving yourself an honest chance to wake up during REM-sleep, thus increasing the probability of waking up feeling refreshed.

The purpose of this blog

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Hi there, thanks for visiting my site. The purpose of this blog is to share solutions to various sleeping problems. I've experienced sleeping problems on and off for years now, and I’ve encountered almost every conceivable sleeping disorder (sleep apnea being the big exception). Sometimes I recover quickly, and other times the problems persist for weeks.

Given my natural interest in reading, I’ve done a lot of researched on this topic. As I try out different advice I’ve started to realize that most of it doesn’t work very well. What’s most important is to filter through all the junk and get to the actual root cause of your problem.

Unfortunately there are plenty of pessimists out there. People are treating sleep deprivation as a death sentence. If you're having trouble with your sleep, the number one thing to remember is to maintain a good attitude. Giving up should not be an option.

For the time being, this is the best general advice I could give anyone about sleep:

1. Don't expect anything when you go to bed. Just lie in bed like a clueless zombie. Close your eyes and relax.

2. Never attempt some silly "technique" to help you sleep. Counting sheep never helped anyone with a serious sleeping problem. This just makes you more conscious, which is the exact opposite of what you want. Don't try anything in particular. Like I said, just relax and have no expectations whatsoever.

3. Only ever go to bed when you're really tired, and get up at a fixed time every morning.

4. Avoid caffeine and sugar at least 5 hours before bedtime.

5. Read for an hour before going to bed.

6. Exercise early in the day (go for a jog).