Sleeping problems Archives - Lisette Zeeuw M.Sc.

Do you ever wake up feeling like you haven’t slept at all? Is your sleep not refreshing? This might indicate that you’re having a problem with your Quality of Sleep. In my recent post: “How to make an end to your Insomnia”, I explained how you can stop the vicious circle of insomnia.

In this post I’ll cover how to maintain good sleeping habits or “sleep hygiene”.

Even though we sleep one-third of our life, many people don’t know what they have to do to sleep well. In this article I’ll therefore explain how you can improve your Quality of Sleep.

Go to bed on the same time of the day, every day

Our body is quite sensitive to changes in schedules, especially with regard to sleeping schedules. Pick a moment on the day in which you are normally sleepy and stick to it. It can also help to start a sleeping ritual (for example, read something, take a hot shower or bath, dressing your pajama’s, brush your teeth etc.) in order for your body to get ready for sleeping. You will see how your body will prepare you for bedtime, by lowering your body temperature and closing your eyelids more and more. All this helps you in order to fall asleep better and more deeply.

Reject sleeping medication

Sleeping medication is highly addictive and has a lot of negative side effects. Sleep medication will leave you drowsy during the day, and it’s not effective in improving your quality of sleep in the long run. If you need sleeping aids, you could discuss melatonin supplements with your doctor. Melatonin supplements can reset your biological clock and can help you to fall asleep. They have no negative side effects, and are part of our natural sleep-wake system.

There are cases in which sleep medication is necessary,for example in the case of psychosis or temporary severe sleep disturbances. However, sleep medication should always be prescribed by a doctor and for a period of 2 weeks or less. If this is not the case it is better to stay away from sleep medication or to discuss your medication with your doctor again.

Leave your worries to a journal

When you go to bed with your head full of memories from the past day, it can be difficult to fall asleep. Also, you might dream restlessly. Journaling can be a great way to organise your thoughts and leave your worries behind. When you write something down you have to bring structure to what happened to you. This can already help you to make more sense of it and let it go.

Exercise during the day

It has been shown in various scientific studies that exercising during the day improves our sleep. Exercise helps in releasing the stress hormone cortisol from your body, which makes it easier to fall asleep and stay asleep. Try to exercise at least 3 hours before going to bed, so you avoid having to go to bed excited.

Excercising helps to push out the stress hormone cortisol of your body, thereby improving your Quality of Sleep.

Make sure you get enough sunlight

We humans are like plants. When we don’t get enough sunlight during the day, we don’t feel well.This is caused by a lack of Vitamin D and melatonin. Melatonin is especially important for a good night of sleep, since it regulates when you get tired and if you can sleep throughout the night. Your doctor can give you information on vitamin D and melatonin supplements if necessary. Also, if you live in area with a lack of sunlight you can consider buying a day-light therapy lamp.

However, the best way to procure you gain enough sunlight is to be outside at least for 30 minutes a day. This even works if the sun is not shining because there is still more light intensity (lux) than when we stay inside. When you’re outside try to roll up you’re sleeves so the sun can touch your skin directly (obviously you can apply sun screen beforehand).

Avoid caffeine after 2 pm

Caffeine takes 8 hours to get out of our blood. This means that if you drink a cup of coffee around 8pm, your brain will be more active until 4am at night! This is why drinking caffeine after 2pm is not a good idea if you want to improve your quality of sleep. If you’re a coffee lover, try decaf coffee.

Do a relaxing activity before going to sleep

We have a tendency of not stopping nowadays, but your body needs some time to wind off before going to bed. You can read a book, take a bath, get a relaxing massage or do a relaxation exercise.

Winding off by doing a relaxing activity like reading can help us to calm down before going to bed.

Avoid alcohol or marihuana as an aid to fall asleep

Drinking alcohol or smoking marihuana to fall asleep is like putting a band-aid on a flat tire. It might help you temporarily to fall asleep, but during the night you will wake up more frequently and your REM-sleep will be interrupted. Therefore it is important to limit alcohol to one to two drinks per day and marihuana to one or two joints per week, or less, and to avoid drinking and smoking within three hours of going to bed.

Don’t eat heavy meals before going to bed

Heavy meals take a long time to digest. During digestion, the body spends energy on processing the meal, and moving it forward through the body. This process interferes with our sleep. The fatter and heavier the meal, the longer it takes. If you eat a heavy meal, avoid doing this within two hours of going to bed.

Get pets out of the bedroom

It is very cute to have your pet sleeping on your feet, belly, or back. However, having pets in the bedroom disrupts your sleep, and makes you wake up more often. If you can, try to keep your pets out of the bedroom.

Don’t try to fall asleep while listening to music or the television

Even though calming music or the television can help you to calm down, it interferes with your quality of sleep by preventing you to reach the deeper sleep stages. The deepest sleep stages are most important to help us recover during the night. Listening to some soft music before going to bed can be a good idea though.

Listening to some relaxing soft music before going to bed can be part of your sleeping ritual. Avoid music while going to sleep though

Practice a relaxation technique

Relaxation techniques are awesome! They help you to reduce anxiety and stress, and they’re a great help in calming down before going to bed. You can try to take deep and slow abdominal breaths, or do some yoga or meditation exercise.

Quality of sleep can be more important than quantity of sleep. That’s why I wrote this article. I hope you’ll find these tips helpful and that you will notice some improvement in your Quality of Sleep.

Please share the article with your friends and family :)!

Insomnia is a huge problem for many people. Not sleeping well can really ruin your day. Unfortunately when people have insomnia they usually take the wrong measures. In this blog post therefore I will give you advice on what to do to stop your insomnia and how to improve your sleep quality.

Insomnia is what keeps us awake at night

Alyssa L. Miller via Compfight

Why do I have insomnia?
Insomnia can have many different causes. Pain, worries, stress and apnea are among the most common ones. Usually what happens is that poor sleep starts a vicious cycle in which: poor sleep leads to worries about sleep, which in turn leads to ineffective measures, which finally leads to poor sleep.

Poor sleep. We all have a bad night of sleep every once in a while. What changes poor sleep into insomnia are the thoughts we have about not being able to sleep.
Worries about sleeping. When you sleep wrong once, it is easy to start worrying that next time you won’t sleep well either. Also, you might worry about how you will feel the next day or about things that might go wrong because of your lack of sleep.These thoughts actually make it more difficult to sleep and raise your anxiety level. This leads many people into taking measures.
Taking ineffective measures.Unfortunately these are usually not the most effective ones. For example, many people start checking the clock to see how much time they have been awake, which makes them even more worried. Others might start taking naps during the day “to make up for the bad night of sleep”, which actually causes them to have more trouble sleeping at night, because they’re not tired anymore. These ineffective measures complete the vicious circle of insomnia since they cause poor sleeping.

The vicious cycle of insomnia

It is important to know that whatever the cause of your insomnia is, you can do something about it:

What can I do when I don’t manage to fall asleep?
If you cannot fall asleep there are several things you can do:

Create your own sleeping ritual. It is important to prepare your body for the night and give it a sign that you’re going to bed. So try to create your own ritual before going to bed. You could include brushing your teeth, stretching your body, reading a book. Do this ritual every day before going to bed and you will see your yawns becoming more and more frequent around bed time.

Use your bed only for sleeping. This is an advice that many people find logical but hardly anyone complies with. How easy is it to have breakfast in bed, to watch a movie, to read a book… However, all these activities create a wrong association in the brain: they tell our brain that our bed is for staying awake. That’s why it’s extremely important not to use your bed for other activities than sleeping.

Use the 15 minutes-technique. The 15 minutes-technique is one of the most effective techniques to stop insomnia. It is based on breaking the connection of bed-awake and changing it into the healthy connection of bed-sleeping. It consists of the following steps:
1. Try to fall asleep.
2. If you don’t fall asleep within 15 minutes you get out of bed and you go to another room.
3. Once you’re in the other room, you engage in a boring activity like reading the dictionary or the encyclopedia until you feel sleepy.
4. When you feel sleepy you go back to bed. You try to fall asleep.
5. If you don’t fall asleep within 15 minutes, get out of bed and start another (or the same) boring activity. When you feel sleepy you go back to bed.
6. Repeat the steps until you fall asleep. Most people fall asleep within 1 or two cycles of the 15-minute technique. It’s used in all effective Cognitive Behaviour Therapy programs for insomnia. Try it!

Do not check your clock. Most people who suffer from insomnia check the clock all the time to see for how long they’ve been awake and how much time they can still sleep. Don’t do this! Watching the clock activates our brain, (especially the digital clocks) and causes you to stay awake instead of falling asleep.

Do not check your clock when you can’t sleep: it will only make you become more awake!

Change your thoughts. When you can’t sleep it’s easy to start thinking about how annoying it is that you’re unable to fall asleep, how crappy you’ll feel tomorrow, and how bad this important meeting will go because of this. At night the frontal part of our brain is less active, which causes our worries to run freely, without control. When this happens try to tell yourself that even though it might feel this way now, tomorrow the world will look different. Also, be a judge of your thoughts and try to think about days that you have been sleepy. Were you really unable to do anything? Was it that horrible?

Improve your surroundings. Try to make sure your sleeping conditions are optimal. So make sure your bed is comfortable, your mattress is soft (or tough as you prefer), and your pillow gives you the right support. Make sure the temperature in the room is about 16-18 degrees, warmer or colder makes it difficult to fall asleep. Also, prevent daylight from coming into your room, it causes our body to wake up, even though we don’t want to. And last but not least, make sure you don’t hear noise in your room, wear ear plugs if necessary.

So as you can see, there are many things you can do if you suffer from insomnia.

Please let me know what you think about the tips and which ones work best for you! Also, if you have any tips please share!

Tag Archives: Sleeping problems

How can I Improve my Quality of Sleep?