They found that for some of the individuals, that ritual of writing things down actually helped them fall asleep in almost half the normal time.” “There was a study a few years back that measured the speed at which a group of people fell asleep, then they had them begin ‘worry journals’ to get all their concerns down on paper. “ Worry journals do seem to help,” says Walker. In practice if you sleep in on the weekend, because you're getting that dose of light later, you're effectively jet-lagging yourself.” People often assume they sleep badly on a Sunday because of work anxiety, but actually, it could just be because they slept later than usual. Whereas if you get up at the same time every day and you get exposed to light at the same time, that helps to synchronise your internal body clock. Selsick continues: “The prime synchroniser of our body clock is the first light we get in the morning, so if you're getting your first dose of daylight at a different time every day, your body doesn't know where it is in time. That creates very unpredictable and fragmented sleep.” But if the next day I wake up at 10am, my tank only reaches full at 2am. “So if I wake up at 7am, I fill up my tank and I have a high enough sleep drive to sleep at 11pm. Selsick uses the analogy of filling up a tank with sleepiness, so the longer you are awake during the day, the more your tank of sleepiness fills up, and by the time you go to bed, the tank is full and you fall asleep quickly. Wake up at the same time every day, including weekendsĬatching up on sleep by lying in at the weekend is not going to help you in the long run. If you’re not asleep within 15 minutes, get up again. ![]() Part of the cognitive behavioural programme at Selsick’s clinic involves getting out of bed if you’re still feeling wired after 15 minutes and going into another room to sit in a cosy chair (sit, don’t lie down), to read or listen to something a bit boring and wait until you feel sleepy, then go back to bed. Trying to stay awake can, ironically, be a more effective strategy for insomniacs. When someone has insomnia they spend a lot of time and energy reaching for sleep, and that makes sleep more elusive.” Selsick quotes the Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist Viktor Frankl, who wrote: “Sleep a dove which has landed near one’s hand and stays there as long as one does not pay any attention to it if one attempts to grab it, it quickly flies away.” “Good sleepers don't try to sleep, sleep is something that happens to them. “If you ask good sleepers how they sleep, they generally say, ‘I dunno, it just happens’,” Selsick says. Luckily, there are things you can do about: here are six tips to help you get a better night’s sleep.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |