Harvard Medical School says that a good night’s sleep plays a vital role in promoting physical health, longevity, and emotional well-being. So, what is a good night’s sleep? Why can you sometimes sleep all night and wake up tired? How can you get a better night’s rest?

This helpful video will tell you this and more. 

What is a good night’s sleep?

Transcript:

First, I want to look at what a good night’s sleep actually is. How much sleep we need varies between individuals, but research tells us that most of us need somewhere between 6 and 9 hours a day.

There are different levels of sleep. We tend to cycle around them all in around 90 minutes, that’s an hour and a half. Some people find that waking in the middle of a cycle leaves them feeling tired. So you may feel better after seven-and-a-half hours of sleep (which divides into five complete cycles) rather than eight, which wakes you partway through the next cycle.

The first cycle includes sleep latency, which is the time it takes you to actually fall asleep. Ideally, this should be 20 minutes or less.

As you fall asleep, your brain becomes gradually less active, and your brainwaves slow down. You begin to doze, and your brain waves slow down even more. Then you move to the deepest level of sleep, often called restorative sleep.

During this period, the body carries out a kind of “physical housekeeping”. By that, I mean healing, cell repair, and digestion takes place. Nutrients are moved around the body to where they’re needed or going to be stored.

When this has happened, the brain waves speed up a little. We move into REM or rapid eye movement sleep, which is also called dream sleep. It’s thought that, just as restorative sleep allows our body to repair and rest, dream sleep performs the same function for our minds. Dreams are thought to be a way of symbolically working through frustration or anxiety so that we can start the next day with a clean slate.

We generally spend around 20% of our sleep time in restorative sleep and 25% in dreaming. People who are very stressed have been shown to dream much longer, at the expense of time spent in restorative sleep. It’s one reason they can get a full night’s sleep and still wake up feeling physically tired.

If you’re stressed, taking action to reduce your stress, or at least to cope with it better, will help you get a better quality of sleep.

Keeping a sleep diary

If you’re not sure why your sleep is disturbed, keeping a sleep diary is a useful first step. Splitting it into two time zones helps because it separates the things that happen when you’re awake, and the things that happen when you’re trying to sleep. Other useful things to monitor are:

  • the food that you eat, especially in the last couple of hours before you go to bed,
  • what you drink, especially alcohol – it can help you doze off but you rarely stay asleep for long,
  • energy drinks or caffeine will just keep you awake,
  • your environment, whether it’s noisy or quiet,
  • how comfortable you are,
  • whether you feel safe,
  • medicines that you take, either over-the-counter or on prescription,
  • your health in general and even your age,
  • your personal life and your work-life balance in general,
  • your daily routine including how much exercise you get and whether or not you’ve been to work,
  • the times that you go to sleep and wake.

You can pause this video here if you like. Make a note of anything that you think applies to you. Check all these off in your sleep diary and compare them with when you get a good night’s sleep. That way, you can find out what affects your sleep the most.

Tips to improve your sleep

Once you have a better idea of what’s affecting your sleep, there are a number of steps that you can take to improve things:

  • getting an MOT from the well man or woman clinic is always a good first step. A number of health problems can impact your sleep and some, such as a hormone imbalance, might not be easily identified or resolved without medical help,
  • next, use your diary. If you’ve identified a number of factors affecting your sleep don’t try to change them all at once. Start with the simplest option and work through one at a time until you find out what helps,
    avoid anything that might keep you awake or alert in the couple of hours before you go to bed,
  • even if you want to avoid sleeping pills, and many do, you might still find that some herbal products will help if you wake up in the night, or can’t get to sleep in the first place.

Once you’re in bed, give yourself around twenty minutes, and if you’re not asleep, get up. This is so that you avoid conditioning yourself to laying in bed awake. The best things that you can do are the really boring tasks that you normally avoid! If you do something too interesting you won’t want to go back to bed.

A good bed time routine

  • A regular bedtime routine can help you drift off. Try to go to bed at the same time each day. A warm bath, perhaps with soothing aromatherapy oils, can help.
  • Set some time aside to start relaxing and winding down. Try to keep bed just for sleeping rather than TV, books, crosswords and so on. Now I know that some people are shouting at me for saying this. They do watch TV or read, and they get a good night’s sleep. But if you’re having trouble sleeping, you should try cutting them out.
  • Try to avoid exercise, heavy meals, and caffeine in the run-up to bed. They may be what’s keeping you awake.
  • Check your sleeping arrangements and environment, to make sure your bedroom is restful, a comfortable temperature, and comfortable generally.
  • Replace and turn your mattress regularly, so that you are comfortable.
  • Soothing smells help some people; try lavender or rose, either as a room spray or on your pillow.
  • Some people find an ionizer helps. It’s claimed these increase levels of serotonin and therefore help you to relax.

Help for insomnia

If you’re still having trouble sleeping, there is help available. If you haven’t already been to a medical check-up, go now. Otherwise, think about enlisting the help of a hypnotherapist or stress management coach. They can help you resolve any stress or anxiety that’s affecting you and advise you about restoring your sleep patterns.

I’m based in West Yorkshire in the north of the UK, and if you’re in that area or want to work online, I’d be happy to help.

Contact me at 01977 678593 or email me at debbie@debbiewaller.com Thank you for listening.

Author: Debbie Waller is a professional therapist, specialising in stress, anxiety and related issues, including gut-directed hypnotherapy to help with the symptoms of IBS. She also offers EMDR/Blast which is used for trauma, PTSD, phobias and OCD. For more information on any of these services, phone 01977 678593. 

Researcher: Rae Waller is an experienced researcher and writer with a special interest in mental health issues. Rae offers drafting, fact-checking, proofreading, and editing for anything from a leaflet to a website, a blog or a book, and can also provide diversity reading, especially for LGBTQ+ and autism-related issues. Please contact rae@debbiewaller.com for further information.