Better Sleep Tips

Do you sometimes feel like you could sleep for a month and still not make a down payment on your sleep debt? If so, you are not alone. 

We know that insomnia is on the rise, and that it is almost twice as prevalent in women then in men for a myriad of reasons including sex and gender differences, hormones, and increased susceptibility to mood disorders among other factors. So what can we do to help stabilize our sleep and start feeling human again? A lot it turns out. We all have sleep windows, that time of night when we start to feel drowsy and lethargic. Start planning your day backwards so that you can try to be in bed once this sleep window occurs to take advantage of this sleep opportunity and think about when to start your wind-down routine. There are a few things we can do to help our melatonin rise at night: Being off all devices a full hour prior to sleep and making sure you are sleeping in a cool, dark environment. Dim the lights a full hour before bed to arouse sleepiness. If you cannot resist the “doom scroll” on your phone in your bedroom, see if you can push yourself to do this while standing, and once you sit down, the phone is relegated, when feasible, to another room. Lastly, focus on all of the things you are grateful for, and all of the things you are looking forward to both the next day and in the future. You are programming your brain to arouse feelings of optimism, not the negative, repetitive thoughts we can easily fall into at night.

Sweet dreams!