A good night’s sleep is an absolute necessity. According to MH Advisor W. Chris Winter, MD, a neurologist, sleep specialist, and author of numerous books on sleep, including The Rested Child, “Sleep is the most important thing on the planet, outside of bacon and sex.” Moreover, for good reason. You expose yourself to a wide range of problems, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and depression, when you don’t get enough Zs—both in quantity and quality.
Even if you do everything right to get a good night’s sleep, like exercising regularly, sleeping on a schedule, staying away from alcohol at night, sleeping in cooler temperatures, and keeping your room dark and quiet, getting a good night’s sleep can sometimes be difficult. Fortunately, it is rarely a major cause for concern. It makes no difference how often you skip a meal or a cupcake. It will be fatal if either becomes the standard. Sleep is the same. According to Dr. Winter, “the difference between sleeplessness and insomnia is the anxiety you choose to bring to the situation,” so “tonight’s sleep is not that big of a deal.”
However, this does not make the inability to snooze any less annoying. Here are some things you should and shouldn’t do in the moment if you’re having trouble.
Just relax for the time being. Really.
Even if you can’t fall asleep, closing your eyes and lying in bed may not seem like much of a good idea. However, Dr. Winter says that resting is very good for your body and mind, and that we put far too much emphasis on how to fall asleep. Relaxing your body and mind simply requires rest. We just need to let ourselves off the hook and be content with being awake in bed if it is impossible not to sleep. Dr. Winter clarifies that there is nothing to be concerned about and that we should eliminate the term “unconsciousness” from our list of objectives before we go to bed. According to Dr. Winter, “I would say, if you do not mind being in bed, awake, thinking about your celebrity crush, praying about it, and thinking about it,” stay there.
Keep your eyes off the displays.
We understand that if you’ve been tossing and turning and still haven’t fallen asleep, you might want to go for your TV remote or grab your phone for some mindless scrolling to pass the time. Don’t. You should avoid using any electronics or bright light devices, advises Kuljeet (Kelly) Gill, MD, a sleep medicine specialist at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital, because the glowing light, also known as blue light, can disrupt sleep by suppressing the production of melatonin, the hormone that regulates your sleep-wake cycles.
Only sleep on your bed.
One of the biggest mistakes made while sleeping: not using the bed for sleeping purposes. Get into bed only to sleep, advises Alcibiades J. Rodriguez, MD, FAASM, Associate Professor of Neurology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Medical Director of the NYU Comprehensive Epilepsy Center-Sleep Center. Okay, also sex.) The thing is, falling asleep should be indicated by sliding between the sheets. Your brain will begin to associate your sleeping space with everything other than what it was designed for if you do other things right before bed, like work on your laptop or eat something.
Leave your bed.
It can be helpful to only stay in the bed for a certain amount of time if you have trouble falling asleep or getting back to sleep after waking up in the middle of the night. Dr. Gill adds, “get up and leave the bed and do something relaxing, low energy and in dim light such as reading, meditation, or deep breathing” if sleep does not occur after about 20 minutes. Additionally, Dr. Rodriguez advises against checking the clock. Keeping track of the passing minutes and hours can make you more worried and make it take longer to fall asleep.
When should you go to bed again? Putting a time limit on the situation is not something Dr. Winter supports. He says, “It just makes the stress worse.” If you feel sleepy, I would recommend going back to bed. If not, don’t worry about it; stay up as late as you want.
The most important thing to remember: To me, it’s not awful to be in bed and not immediately fall asleep or wake up during the night. In fact, it’s not even hard. Dr. Winter says, “It just is.” The work that some people must put in to challenge this way of thinking is the difficult part. The majority of people would rather not. They want a simple trick or pill. They do not wish to actually investigate the meaning of insomnia, which is really just fear and not lack of sleep.